Am Tisch des Gerichts. Zur Ikonographie der Interferenz von Recht und Religion

Abstract

The table in front of the sitting judges is a medium of communication regulated by procedural law. In its elevated place and confrontational position, it radiates the court’s particular power, derived from its prestige and coercive authority. Yet its presence has so far received little attention in the iconography of law. This article examines satires critical of the judiciary that were produced at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Belgium and France. These works set the judges’ table, an emblem of domination, below the scaling device of a crucifixion scene, thus providing a comment on the relationship between the churches and the state.

The role of tables in visualising the nexus between law and religion in the preceding centuries is also discussed. Paintings of the Last Supper from the 17th and 15th centuries render the normative effect of the table particularly conspicuous. The article concludes by asking whether the modern courtroom table might not also require a supplementary scaling device beyond national self-empowerment.