Seeing with the Eyes of the Soul. Pacino di Bonaguida’s Scenes from the Life of Christ and the Life of Blessed Gerard of Villamagna (New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, M.643)

The purpose of this article is to investigate the mental and spiritual process of interiorization of the Passion imagery, the mechanism that permitted the transition from a material representation, experienced with the senses, to a mental image, impressed into the memory, then evoked and relived in a purely spiritual form. To do this, it will adopt a combined methodology, putting together the art-historical approach with investigative tools and theories developed in other fields of knowledge and recently integrated into the humanities following the cognitive, sensorial and material turns. The starting point of the investigation will be an illuminated manuscript, a picture-book produced by Pacino di Bonaguida around 1320 and currently preserved in New York (Pierpont Morgan Libray & Museum, M.643). The codex contains a sequence of illustrations serving as meditation on the sacred event, and thus allows us to examine the practi es and experiences of the faithful of the time from the material data.