Since ancient times, people have not only created or worshipped images, but also attacked them: smashed them, burned them, sometimes intentionally mutilated them – beheaded or blinded. Most often, violence falls upon images of (foreign) gods and (overthrown) rulers. It accompanies most religious and political revolutions, as well as many armed conflicts, but it is also built into everyday life – into the relationships that people build with the invisible world, with power and with other people.

Damaging and even “killing” images is apparently as ancient a practice as worshiping them. Depending on their size and material, images were mutilated or broken into pieces. Often after such an attack, the image continued to “live”, and the wounds inflicted on it reminded of its impotence and the triumph of those who mutilated it.

This book is devoted to the various motives that prompted attacks on visual images in Europe. the long Middle Ages.. From. revenge. demons and sinners drawn on manuscript sheets, to beating statues of saints to force them to help. From the iconoclastic war that Protestant iconoclasts waged against Catholic. idols., to moral censorship that hurried to cover up or hide from view images of naked bodies.

By piercing, cutting off, or crossing out the eyes of the depicted, people interrupted visual contact with the image, in a sense "killing" it or demonstrating that it was already dead.

Features
About 200 illustrations. Some of them are medieval miniatures that have never been published in Russia.