In this paper, we present the narrative role of small jet figures linked to pilgrims' attire within the sacred ecosystem of the Camino de Santiago. Beyond their function as identifiers and circulatory devices, such as amulets or pilgrimage souvenirs, these portable images served as visual devices that condensed and projected the spiritual experience of the journey and, therefore, as devotional objects with symbolic, personal and ritual uses. These objects were intended to be sewn or attached to clothing or hats, or to be hung. This contribution, which also briefly addresses antecedents and influences, fundamentally explores their production and uses, their relationship with other objects of the Way, and their presence in portraits, inventories, and literary or artistic testimonies that tell us about their bearers. Despite being mass-produced objects, as attested to in guild documentation, the archaeological record is still very scarce, but it allows us to confirm a use linked to both genders and to better understand their context and functionality. The small number of known examples and their dating based mainly on stylistic criteria still make precise dating difficult. Today, jet and the Camino follow divergent paths. Over time, these objects have undergone a process of reinterpretation, losing their purely devotional or apotropaic character.
The Great Arsenic is an audiovisual allegory inspired by the Flemish sacred painting tradition of the 15th to 16th centuries, particularly The Temptations of Saint Anthony by Pieter Huys, with echoes of Bosch and Beccafumi. Drawing on this iconographic archive, Albert Merino constructs a visual universe that deactivates the moralizing dimension of sacred images and reconfigures them from a contemporary, critical, and non-normative perspective. The article analyzes how the work transforms these sources into a fragmentary visual system, in which the absence of the saint shifts the interpretive focus toward secondary figures and autonomous symbolic elements. Through a qualitative approach that combines visual analysis, film analysis, and an interview with the artist, the formal and symbolic strategies that articulate the piece are examined. It is argued that The Great Arsenic does not reinterpret sacred iconography in narrative terms, but rather activates it as an open visual archive, characterized by ambiguity, fragmentation, and the suspension of meaning. From this perspective, the work allows us to consider the persistence of forms of devotional visuality in contemporary culture not as a transmission of religious values, but as symbolic structures reconfigured through an aesthetic and critical logic. This visual logic shifts the meaning toward an open interpretive experience, in which images associated with temptation, desire, or evil cease to function as fixed moral categories.
Presentamos en este trabajo el papel narrativo de las pequeñas figuras de azabache ligadas al atuendo del peregrino dentro del ecosistema sagrado del Camino de Santiago. Más allá de su función identitaria y circulatoria, como amuletos o recuerdos de peregrinación, estas imágenes portátiles funcionaban como dispositivos visuales que condensaban y proyectaban la vivencia espiritual del viaje y, por lo tanto, como objetos devocionales con un uso simbólico, personal y ritual. Estos objetos estaban destinados a ser cosidos o sujetos en la ropa o sombrero o a ser colgados. Esta aportación explora su producción y usos, su relación con otros objetos del Camino y su presencia en retratos, inventarios y testimonios literarios o artísticos que nos hablan de sus portadores. A pesar de ser objetos fabricados en masa, como queda atestiguado en la documentación gremial, la huella arqueológica es todavía muy escasa, pero nos permite confirmar un uso ligado a ambos géneros. El reducido número de ejemplares conocidos y su datación basada fundamentalmente en criterios estilísticos dificulta todavía dataciones precisas. Hoy en día azabache y Camino siguen vías divergentes. Con el paso del tiempo estos objetos han sufrido un proceso de resignificación perdiendo su carácter puramente devocional o apotropaico.
This article analyzes the identification of female portraits with divine attributes as possible representations of Ptolemaic queens assimilated to the goddess Isis. To this end, it examines the main characteristic attributes of the goddess within the Egyptian religious context, the historical precedents of divine assimilation by royal women, as well as the type of portrait and the function of the various iconographic media on which the Lagid queens are depicted. The proposed hypotheses are based exclusively on images whose identification is supported by inscriptions or by a clearly documented archaeological context. This analysis confirms that the symbolic association between queens and the goddess Isis/Hathor was a widely used visual device in Egyptian art of the Ptolemaic period. Nevertheless, it is proposed that anonymous female portraits in Isiac style should be interpreted as representations of the divinity, with the possibility of a royal identification considered only when the royal diadem is present as a distinctive attribute.
This article examines the epistemological implications of artificial intelligence-generated images without empirical referents, focusing on their credibility, historical plausibility, and impact on collective memory. Drawing on visual culture and the philosophy of history, it argues that their plausibility stems not from documentary evidence but from the recognition of shared aesthetic codes. Methodologically, the study adopts a hermeneutic and critical approach, based on the analysis of selected cases of synthetic medieval representations disseminated on social media. Although entirely fictional, these images reproduce stylistic attributes established in historical painting and iconography, activating a collective aesthetic memory that renders them seemingly credible. The study concludes that their epistemic authority lies not in referential fidelity but in their capacity to mobilize culturally validated visual repertoires. This poses challenges for historiography, heritage transmission, and the uses of the past in the digital era, within a qualitative framework centered on image theory, philosophy of history, and software studies.
