English

“In the atriums there were preserved images, not statues by foreign artists, nor in bronze or marble, but figures in wax, each arranged in its niche; these images were those of the ancestors, so that they might be present at the funerals of the family, and that whenever a member of the house died, the entire lineage of the departed might attend the procession. These images were carried in public ceremonies; thus one saw walking not only those who were still alive, but those who had lived.
There was no spectacle more fitted to inflame courage and inspire the love of glory than to see the faces of so many illustrious men.
The titles of their magistracies were inscribed beneath them, and through them the entire succession of the family was traced. Thus the house was filled with these figures, and the walls preserved the traces of successive generations.”

Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book XXXV, 6–7

“According to common analysis, the image comes after the object: it is its sequel; we first see the thing, then we turn away from it, we lose it, and the image comes afterward, like memory or representation. But perhaps the situation is the reverse. Perhaps the image comes before the thing, and the thing is only the image rendered momentarily stable, fixed in the illusion of presence.
What characterizes the image is not that it is the double of an object, but that it is what makes the thing always already lost, given to us in distance. The image does not bring us closer to the thing; it diverts us from it, it is distance itself.
To see an image is not to see a poorer object, nor to see the object weakened; it is to enter a space where the thing is delivered over to its absence, where it appears as what can no longer be reached.
The image is what gives itself to be seen when there is nothing left to see, when the object has withdrawn into its absence. It is not the presence of the thing, but the presence of its absence.
This is why the image belongs to the region of death. It is the gaze fixed upon what no longer responds, upon what has withdrawn and yet still insists in its visible form.”

Maurice Blanchot, from The Space of Literature (1955)

– Tell me, in your view, what is an image?
–The word image carries within it a very ancient history…
– Very well, but where does it begin?
– It does not begin with visual representation, but with the idea of living imitation.
– Imitation of what?
– It comes from the Latin imago, imaginis. In ancient Rome, imago did not first designate a painting. It designated the funerary mask, molded from the face of the deceased. This mask was kept in the house and then carried during ceremonies.
– So the image was not a simple appearance!
– No, it was a derived presence, a face that survived the one who was no more.
– Did it replace him?
– No, it did not replace the being, but prolonged his visible power. The image was what allowed the departed to continue to appear.
– A kind of survival…
– The Latin imago is related to the verb imitari, to imitate. But in its ancient sense, to imitate did not mean mechanically to copy.
– How so?
– It meant to make appear according to a received form, to let a movement or configuration reproduce itself.
– In that sense, the image would not merely be reproduction, but transmission of form.
– Yes, we find this meaning again in ancient Greek with εἰκών (eikōn), which gave us ‘icon.’ An eikōn is not a neutral object.
– What is it?
– It is what renders visible what is not directly visible. In Byzantine thought, the icon is not regarded as a thing, but as a place of passage. The gaze does not stop on it. It passes through it.
– So from the origin, the image is less an object than a threshold.
— Yes. According to our author, this character also appears in the probable Indo-European root aim- / im-, referring to the idea of copy, double, reproduced form, but always with an active dimension. The double is not merely duplication; it is what allows something to continue elsewhere.
– That is why, if I may say so, the image maintains a deep link with absence.
– You are entirely right. When something is fully present, the image is useless.
– Am I then only an image?
– The image appears when presence withdraws or becomes inaccessible. It fills a distance, but at the same time reveals it. It renders visible what is no longer immediately there. That is why the image has long been associated with the dead, with dreams, with memory.

In medieval philosophy, imago is also the imprint left in the soul by what has been perceived. The image is not only external. It is an inner trace. It is what remains after the encounter.
In modern thought, this dimension becomes even more radical. An image is not merely what shows something. It is what makes something appear. It opens a field in which something can manifest.