Ahead of its release this August from Zone, Publishers Weekly reviews Iconophages: A History of Ingesting Images by Jérémie Koering. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“In this adroit English-language debut, Koering, an art history professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, surveys the long and surprising tradition of how “figured representations” have been ritualistically consumed. Focusing on Christian traditions, Koering cataloging a startling array of substances that have been ingested to harness the “healing” power of the original object. He covers water poured over divine sculptures to gain their “charge”; dirt and dust from holy sites mixed with saliva for a “medicinal paste”; and scrapings from stone sculptures mixed into food.”