Jasmin Mersmann:
Dealing with the Devil, Promoting the Virgin: The Case of Christoph Haizmann

Not many people have seen the devil with their own eyes, and even fewer have painted him afterward. One of the rare individuals who did was the artist Christoph Haizmann, who was exorcised in Mariazell in 1677 and 1678 after confessing to having made a pact with the devil. The active force behind his deliverance was the miracle-working statue now known as Magna Mater Austriae. Haizmann’s case, however, is not unique. In fact, the more demons were expelled, the more they seemed to proliferate: possession became contagious, spreading through broadsheets, treatises, and ex-voto offerings. Paradoxically, it was the devil who became one of the major guarantors of the efficacy of contested images and sacramentals. The talk reflects on the authenticity of reenactments and the possibility of reconstructing what might be called the historical imaginary.

Jasmin Mersmann is a professor of Art History of the Early Modern Period at FU Berlin. Until 2023, she was a professor at the University of the Arts in Linz, and prior to that, a research associate at Humboldt University. Visiting professorships and postdoctoral fellowships have taken her to Villa I Tatti, the Italian Academy at Columbia University, Université Paris 1, the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, IKKM in Weimar, and IFK in Vienna. After studying in Freiburg, Paris, and Berlin, she completed her doctoral thesis on Lodovico Cigoli and Forms of Truth around 1600 at Humboldt University. She is currently completing a book on encounters with demons in Early Modern Europe and working on a research project on various techniques for improving nature.