Iconography Beyond the Crossroads: Image, Meaning, and Method in Medieval Art 9780271093017

Citation preview

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University

signa

Signa: Papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University explores questions of image and meaning in the context of current scholarship on medieval visual culture. It aims to provide a forum for fresh scholarly perspectives on the ways in which visual images addressed the concerns of both makers and viewers within a diverse and mutable medieval world. Series Editor Pamela A. Patton Director, Index of Medieval Art

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads Image, Meaning, and Method in Medieval Art

Edited by Pamela A. Patton and Catherine A. Fernandez

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Patton, Pamela A., 1964– editor. | Fernandez, Catherine A., 1978– editor. | Princeton University. Department of Art and Archaeology. Index of Medieval Art. Title: Iconography beyond the crossroads : image, meaning, and method in medieval art / edited by Pamela A. Patton and Catherine A. Fernandez. Other titles: Signa (Princeton University. Department of Art and Archaeology. Index of Medieval Art) Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2022] | Series: Signa: papers of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University | “The essays in this volume spring from a conference celebrating just over a century of iconographic studies at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University”—Introduction. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “A collection of essays by leading medievalists assessing the challenges, and potential, of current approaches to iconography and iconology”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021056606 | ISBN 9780271090566 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Art, Medieval—Congresses. | Christian art and symbolism—Medieval, 500–1500—Congresses. | LCGFT: Conference papers and proceedings. | Essays. Classification: LCC N5961 .I26 2022 | DDC 709.02—dc23/ eng/20211129 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056606 Copyright © 2022 Princeton Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University All rights reserved Printed in Lithuania by BALTO Print Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.

Contents List of Illustrations  /  vii

Introduction: Beyond the Crossroads: Iconography and Its Evolutions  /  1 Pamela A. Patton 1 Iconography and Iconology at Princeton  /  9 Elizabeth Sears 2 Whose Iconography?   /  35 Aden Kumler 3 Iconology After the Spatial Turn  /  59 Christopher R. Lakey 4 Iconographies of Progress  /  91 Beatrice Kitzinger 5 The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies in the Menil Collection and the Kariye Camii: Methodological Reflections  /  121 Glenn Peers 6 Pictured in Relief: Comparative Iconology and Civilizational Time Zones at Monreale and Quanzhou, ca. 1186–ca. 1238  /  147 Jennifer Purtle 7 Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right  /  195 Madeline H. Caviness

List of Contributors / 223 Index / 225

Illustrations 1.1. Charles Rufus Morey at the Index of Christian Art, 1950s  /  11 1.2. Index of Christian Art: Monuments File,

2.5. The Trivium and a student, in Martianus Capella, De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii, with the commentary of Remigius of

5 × 8-inch card, date-stamped Oct 1938,

Auxerre (detail), twelfth century  /  44

containing photograph of sarcophagus

2.6. Philosophia and the seven Liberal Arts,

discovered in the church of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome  /  12

twelfth century  /  45 2.7. Dialectica, from Philosophia and the seven

1.3. Index of Christian Art: Iconographic File,

Liberal Arts (detail), twelfth century  /  46

3 × 5-inch cards, date-stamped Oct 1934,

2.8. Dialectica, in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis

containing description of sarcophagus in the church of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome  /  13 1.4. Chart of stylistic development, after C. R.

philologiae et mercurii, late ninth / early tenth century / 47 2.9. Porphyrian Tree with final differentiae

Morey, “The Sources of Mediaeval Style,” Art

“mortale” and “inmortale,” eleventh

Bulletin 7, no. 2 (1924): 50  /  15

century / 51

1.5. Erwin Panofsky and Rosalie Green at the Index of Christian Art, 1960s  /  22 1.6. Adelaide Bennett Hagens, Rosalie Green, and Elizabeth Beatson (in back) and Isa Ragusa (in front) at the Index of Christian Art, ca. 1980  /  25

3.1. West facade of Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099  /  61 3.2. Interior view of relief sculptures, SainteMarie, Souillac, ca. 1120  /  61 3.3. Nicola Pisano, Nativity, Pisa Baptistery pulpit, ca. 1260  /  67

2.1. A Porphyrian Tree in a copy of Peter of

3.4. Fra Angelico, Nativity, 1440–45  /  68

Spain’s Tractatus, 1472–74  /  37

3.5. Genesis Panel 1, Modena Cathedral,

2.2. Stemma for illustrated manuscripts of Terence proposed by Leslie Webber Jones, in “The Archetypes of the Terence Miniatures,” Art Bulletin 10, no. 1 (1927): 119  /  41 2.3. Opening with Domina Dialectica and Philosophers, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt, MS 2282, fols. 1v–2r, ca. 1140  /  43 2.4. Domina dialectica presides over disputing philosophers, ca. 1140  /  44

ca. 1099  /  72 3.6. Genesis Panel 2, Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099  /  72 3.7. Genesis Panel 3, Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099  /  73 3.8. Genesis Panel 4, Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099  /  73 3.9. Relief panel of Theophilus and the Devil, Sainte-Marie, Souillac, ca. 1120  /  79 3.10. Trumeau, Sainte-Marie, Souillac, ca. 1120  /  81

3.11. Meyer Schapiro, drawing no. 75 of the capital of the Adoration of the Magi, SaintPierre, Moissac, September 3–18, 1927  /  83 4.1. Robert Gall, Crucifixion, after the Hortus Deliciarum, Hohenburg/Mont Ste. Odile, ca. 1934  /  94 4.2. Ascent to the Cross and Crucifixion, Herrad von Hohenburg, Hortus Deliciarum, fol. 150r (copy after the lost manuscript), third quarter of the twelfth century,  /  95 4.3. Octave of the Nativity, Drogo Sacramentary, Metz, ca. 840–50  /  98 4.4. Epiphany, Drogo Sacramentary, Metz, ca. 840–50  /  99 4.5. Epiphany, marble sarcophagus of Exarch Isaac, fifth century  /  100 4.6. Ivory book cover, Metz, ca. 850  /  101 4.7. Ivory book cover, Aachen (?), ca. 800  /  103 4.8. Nativity, book of hours of the Maréchal Boucicaut, Paris, 1405–8  /  106 4.9. Epiphany, book of hours of the Maréchal Boucicault, Paris, 1405–8  /  107 4.10. Meister Francke, Man of Sorrows, ca. 1435  /  108 4.11. Nativity, Drogo Sacramentary, Metz, ca. 840–50  /  109 4.12. Nativity/Epiphany, Lombardy, eighth century / 110 4.13. Franks Casket, England, eighth century / 111 4.14. Epiphany, Berthold Missal, Weingarten, 1215–17  /  114 5.1. Byzantine Fresco Chapel, interior view to the east  /  124 5.2. Byzantine Fresco Chapel, dome  /  124 5.3. Icon of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, fourteenth century  /  125 5.4. Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2000–12 / 127 5.5. Aphrodite, known as the Venus de Milo, third to first century bce / 128

viii

Illustrations

5.6. Mosaic of the Deesis, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315  /  129 5.7. Mosaic of the miracle of the healing of the leper, western side of southern arch, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315  /  130 5.8. Mosaic of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, southeast pendentive, south bay, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315  /  133 5.9. Mosaic of the healing of the multitude, south bay, western lunette, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315  /  134 5.10. Mosaic of the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, northeast pendentive of south bay, outer narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315  /  139 6.1. Bonanus of Pisa, Nativity, west portal doors, cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, 1186 / 149 6.2. Birth of the Buddha, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  149 6.3. Map showing Arab-Norman and Southern Song maritime and overland links  /  150 6.4. West portal of the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale  /  153 6.5. Detail of east pagoda base, west facade, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou  /  154 6.6. Bonanus of Pisa, Creation of Eve, west portal doors, cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, 1186  /  158 6.7. Creation of Eve, mosaic in the interior of the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, undated / 158 6.8. The pheasant beats [out] the wildfire, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou (shown with detail marked), ca. 1238  /  160 6.9. Ma Lin, Listening to the Wind in the Pines (shown with detail marked), undated  /  161

6.10. Diagram of narrative program of the west

6.21. Diagram showing textual sources for

portal doors for the cathedral of Santa Maria

each panel of the west portal doors of

Nuova, Monreale  /  166

the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova,

6.11. Diagram of narrative program of the base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou / 167 6.12. Bonanus of Pisa, Ezekiel and Zachariah, west portal doors, cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, 1186  /  169

Monreale / 176 6.22. Diagram showing textual sources for each relief on the base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou  /  177 7.1. Émile Mâle as a member of the Académie française, 1928  /  198

6.13. The blue-robed [one] offers flowers, base of

7.2. Abbot Suger kneeling at the feet of Mary

the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple,

in the Annunciation panel of the Nativity

Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  169

window (detail), Saint-Denis, Paris, twelfth

6.14. The [future] Milk-Radiant [Buddha] receives

century / 199

the prophecy, base of the east pagoda,

7.3. Erwin Panofsky  /  200

Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou,

7.4. Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514  /  201

ca. 1238  /  171

7.5. Michael Camille with a gargoyle from Notre

6.15. The empty well [and] the crazed elephant, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  171 6.16. Sahe venerates the stupa; base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  172 6.17. Yunyan[’s] lions, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  172 6.18. The three animals discuss the tree, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  174 6.19. Heavenly beings praise the crane, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  174

Dame, Paris  /  202 7.6. Goditha of Canterbury’s leg bathed in blood and water at the tomb of Thomas Becket, Trinity Chapel miracle window nIV 50, Canterbury Cathedral, ca. 1215–20  /  205 7.7. Fragment of a book of hours made for a woman, northern France, ca. 1320  /  206 7.8. Charlottesville white supremacists with pseudo-medieval insignia  /  211 7.9. Robert E. Lee statue, Charlottesville, Virginia  /  211 7.10. St. Maurice, Magdeburg Cathedral, ca. 1240–50  /  213 7.11. Magdeburger Rider (replica), ca. 1240– 50  /  214

6.20. Unicorn, the great transcendant, from base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238  /  175

Illustrations

ix

Introduction Beyond the Crossroads: Iconography and Its Evolutions

Pamela A. Patton

The essays in this volume spring from a conference celebrating just over a century of iconographic studies at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University, a span during which both the Index and its principal field have evolved dramatically. The founder of the Index, Princeton Art and Archaeology Professor Charles Rufus Morey, could hardly have guessed that his original Index of Christian Art, which began as a modest print collection of file cards and photographs recording the iconography of works from the earliest centuries of the Common Era, would grow into a complex taxonomic project with an internationally accessible online database presenting images and metadata from a “Long Middle Ages” that, if still centered in medieval Europe, increasingly reaches beyond that sphere. Nor might he have foreseen how the conception and mission of the Index have also evolved: from a tightly circumscribed print tool designed to track the iconographic variations that he hoped would shed light on the development of the earliest Christian art, it has become a multifarious print-digital hybrid open to a very wide range of topical and methodological questions and a home base for workshops, conferences, a book series, and a journal all dedicated to a deepened understanding of how medieval images work. The evolution of the Index from research tool to research center has imposed a corresponding mandate: that its staff remain attuned to developments within its field of study by identifying, evaluating, and responding to the scholarly and methodological priorities central to it. In the early days, such awareness came rather easily to the

Index, which for much of the twentieth century stood at the epicenter of iconographic research at a university where the study of iconography, and of medieval art writ large, had long been promoted and supported. In the engaging essay that opens the present volume, Elizabeth Sears reconstructs how work on iconography at Princeton flourished in tandem with the “mutually supportive strands of study” undertaken by the Index founder Morey, in his role as professor of art and archaeology at the university, and the Warburgian iconologist Erwin Panofsky, who had settled at the nearby Institute for Advanced Study in 1935. Regular engagement with the Index by these figures; by other Princeton faculty such as Ernst DeWald, Frank Jewett Mather, Albert M. Friend, and Kurt Weitzmann; and by other esteemed medievalists—at the Institute for Advanced Study, in New York, and in the Delaware Valley—for many years ensured that iconographic work pursued at the Index could track closely along with the priorities of the field. This easy exchange was disrupted in the 1980s, when profound transformations in the discipline of art history provoked what one might call an “existential crisis” for the study of iconography, along with many other methodological approaches once traditional to the field. Inspired by poststructuralist scholarship, medievalists along with other art historians struggled with questions about the relevance and efficacy of once-hallowed practices now perceived as too rigid, subjective, or paradigmatically outdated to yield the nuanced answers they desired. Such skepticism, paired with an enthusiastic embrace of critical theory, led some to dismiss iconography, along with other long-standing art-historical tools such as connoisseurship and stylistic analysis, as Darwinian casualties of the discipline’s forward movement. Madeline Caviness’s essay, which closes this volume, sets these developments into their longest perspective, tracing the impact of poststructuralism both within iconographic studies and as a factor in the academic discipline and wider political culture upon which it unavoidably impinged. As she notes, the critique arrived at a moment when traditional iconographic methods often were, in fact, overfocused on descriptive identification and text-based interpretation at the expense of more flexible analysis, so it could hardly be ignored. Some methodological battle lines were negotiated at the Index itself, where the 1990 conference “Iconography at the Crossroads” attempted to frame them for the discipline overall.1 There, a diverse cohort of scholars, among them Michael Camille, John V. Fleming, Herbert Kessler, Joseph Leo Koerner, Michael Ann Holly, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, and Keith Moxey, sought with great spirit and some success, if without marked unanimity, to chart a path for an art-historical practice clearly perceived to be in crisis. Such multiple viewpoints notwithstanding, there was one thing on which all those conference participants seem to have agreed: that the human desire to find meaning in images is virtually inescapable. Even scholars who pronounced themselves ready to abandon completely the practice they called “iconography” could not refrain from asking what images meant and how they functioned for the people who made and 12

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

viewed them. As Caviness recounts, it would fall to theoretical pioneers such as Camille and Moxey, among other key practitioners, to set the field on its new road. These “New Iconologists,” if such they might have allowed themselves to be called, demonstrated that it is possible to pursue questions of meaning in medieval images without falling prey to either an obsession with canonical types or an overreliance on canonical texts. They invited art historians to consider a far wider range of images, from marginalia to ornament to graffiti, and to recognize that the meaning of all medieval images was informed by a commensurately wider range of conditions, from oral, performative, and scientific traditions to changing contexts for viewing and reception and the peculiar knowledge and experience of the individual viewer. Still more important, they contested the surprisingly tenacious assumption that iconographic meaning was both fixed by the artist at the moment of a work’s creation and limited to the original viewpoint of a docile, passive viewer. In a poststructuralist view, the contingency of iconographic meaning upon its context and reception ensured its subjectivity. The field’s growing refusal to accept iconographic meaning as a fixed significance handed down unilaterally from artist to viewer, along with its interest in the responsiveness of a diversity of signs to their context, had salutary effects upon the study of iconography at the Index as well. Not only did it transform the kinds of images and subjects that were selected for cataloguing by Index specialists, but it also restructured the ways in which such data can now be identified, described, and searched. Where a researcher of the 1930s might have found in the card files conventional biblical and hagiographical subjects like “Virgin Mary: Annunciation” or “Ursula of Cologne: Martyrdom,” one working in the recently redesigned online database can now also search for a diverse range of new subjects, including once-marginalized marginalia such as “Cat, as Musician,” workaday objects such as “Chimney,” and figures from religious traditions outside Christianity, such as “al-Buraq.” This taxonomic expansion affords researchers access to a far wider and more varied array of images and metadata as the Index seeks to align with the scope and ambitiousness of current iconographic questions. And as the essays in this volume show, those questions entail considerable scope and ambition, generating a discourse around image and meaning that is as heterogeneous and far-reaching as it is reciprocal and collaborative. Each contribution published here was developed from a lecture given by one of seven leading medievalists at the conference “Iconography in a New Century: The Index at 100,” held at Princeton University on October 14, 2017, and the second of two Index-hosted conferences designed explicitly to address current directions in iconographic studies.2 On this occasion, conference speakers were asked to consider the multiplicity of factors that contributed to how medieval images did their work in their own time and beyond, as well as to comment on the modern approaches through which such semiotic labor can be understood. They responded with case studies drawn from areas as different as eighth-century Italy, fourteenth-century Byzantium, and thirteenth-century China, Introduction

13

scrutinized through methodological perspectives that are just as diverse. The essays that open and close the volume apply explicitly historiographic and sociopolitical lenses to key moments in the development of iconographic studies, while the five they enframe consider how factors such as medieval habits of dialectical thought, the desire to imply the passage of time, the movement of the viewer in space, the injury and fragmentation of both object and image, and the juxtaposition of cultural paradigms all contribute to the meanings that have been drawn from individual images in the Middle Ages and today. Together they demonstrate the expansiveness, flexibility, and dynamism of a field that remains heartily engaged in the challenge of its own remaking. Elizabeth Sears opens the volume with an account of the two Princetonian scholars Charles Rufus Morey and Erwin Panofsky, who, with legendary directors Helen Woodruff and Rosalie Green, helped to shape the mission of the Index from the 1930s to the 1960s, one of the most formative periods in its history. Against a finely drawn history of the early study of iconography in Europe and the United States, Sears highlights the contrasts and confluences between Panofsky’s staged analysis of images, which proceeded from “pre-iconographical” to “iconographical” to what he would eventually call “iconological,” and Morey’s methodical pursuit of meaningful iconographic patterns. Her essay tracks the productive intersection between this “Princetonian ‘iconography’ ” and “Hamburgian ‘iconology’ ” to the late twentieth-century critical conflict that ultimately challenged the validity of both. Ending her account at this moment of reckoning, Sears points the way toward the phase of disciplinary self-criticism and renovation to be addressed by Madeline Caviness in the volume’s concluding essay. Aden Kumler’s contribution confronts modern skittishness over the question of what iconography “does” with a firm defense of its continued viability as a tool for art historians. Directing her attention to the traditional identification of subject and source that was Morey’s iconography, rather than the more contextualized and interpretive iconology that Panofsky had sometimes called “iconography in the deeper sense,”3 she argues compellingly for the need to correct the former’s frequent undertheorization and lack of self-criticality to gain a fuller recognition of its potential as parallel to the dialectical structures of medieval thought and experience, whether the give and take of sic et non or the mutuality of viewer and viewed. Choosing as illustration the dialectics embodied by the mnemonic diagram known as the Porphyrian Tree, she compares the art historian’s hunt for iconographic sources and variations along an imagined stemma of descent relationships with the tree’s systematic ordering of knowledge along tidy subdivisions of trunk and branches. Her analysis presents a congenial counterpart to the iconographer’s implicitly dialectical habits of collection, specification, and binary judgments, patterns of reasoning well suited to a deeper understanding of the medieval image. The next three authors turn to recent methodologies and theoretical frames for the study of medieval images, asking how these might work with, and even redefine, traditional iconographic study. Christopher Lakey’s essay on the sculptures of Modena 14

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Cathedral explores the capacity of iconology to encompass questions of phenomenology, specifically the viewer’s spatial engagement with the work of art. Reflecting on early writing about the topic by Heinrich Wolfflin and August Schmarsow as well as its revival by scholars such as David Summers, Lakey posits that current arguments about embodied seeing can be historicized by reference to medieval theories of vision, such as those of Augustine and Alhazen, to evoke a fuller understanding of how an image worked in its own time. His examination of the reliefs of Modena Cathedral lays out the ways in which movement and perception in space might have shaped the medieval apprehension of both iconography and iconology, terms between which he prefers to maintain a sharp semantic distinction. For Lakey, it is the latter iconological meaning that emerges in the spatial encounter with the Modena reliefs—a conclusion that he sees foreshadowed in Meyer Schapiro’s famous engagement, decades earlier, with the trumeau of Souillac. If Lakey’s essay demands consideration of medieval space, Beatrice Kitzinger’s contribution calls attention to medieval time and its intersection with the narrativity fundamental to the portrayal of salvation history. More precisely, Kitzinger asks how pauses or gaps implied in the narrative flow within a visual composition can introduce new possibilities of meaning to a time-honored story. Through interlinked short case studies of works as diverse as the Drogo Sacramentary, the Boucicaut Hours, and an eighth-century enamel plaque from Italy, she demonstrates that a concern with the handling of time in narrative—both through the disposition of narrative elements and the impact of format and medium—repeatedly played a role in medieval iconographic practices across far-flung times and places. In such cases, iconography became far more than a question of mere content or story: it demanded engagement with material objects in a way that activated temporal structure and narrative relationships as functional storytelling elements. In this way, she concludes, “Classic iconographies can reveal themselves to be not static, but in the making.” Glenn Peers argues for the recognition of how the incompleteness and fragmentation of many medieval objects can shape the meanings that art historians may draw from them. He looks to disability studies, and especially the work of Tobin Siebers, as a model for understanding how the damage and fragmentation of many works of medieval art—their particular forms of “disability”—may be embraced as constitutive of meaning. His test case, an intriguingly concentric study of the damaged mosaics depicting Christ healing the disabled in the Kariye Camii, sets out how the fragmentary state of the mosaics themselves allow a new apprehension of suffering, empathy, and divine engagement that was essential to Byzantine theology as well as to the meaning of the episodes they present. He concludes that the medieval viewer’s contemplation of the suppliants’ heterogeneous vulnerabilities, juxtaposed as they are with the “homogeneously abled” figures of Christ and the Apostles, tracks closely with theological impulses to contemplate human vulnerability and God’s ineffable power to both permit and heal human suffering. Introduction

15

The study of iconography has traditionally been considered the purview of historians studying medieval Europe and the cultures contingent to it. Jennifer Purtle confronts this view with a study that juxtaposes narrative images on the west portal of Santa Maria Nuova in Monreale, Sicily, with those of the Zhenguo Pagoda of the Kaiyuan si, a Buddhist temple in Quanzhou, China, two sites set at the limits of the maritime networks known respectively by Song Chinese and medieval European geographers in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Examining the divergent conditions and expectations behind the development of the two “superficially similar” visual narratives, Purtle tests both the limits and the relevance of traditional European-born iconographic work for the study of imagery produced beyond that sphere. Her combinative approach to the monuments finds that despite tempting resemblances in design, content, and patronage, the disjunction between their cultural contexts undermines the possibility of setting them into meaningful comparative relationship. This extends to the understanding of their respective iconography, which was grounded in quite different expectations about the making and reading of images, as well as their relationship to other images, to text, and even to mnemonic practices. In this sense, Purtle argues, they illustrate the limitations of traditional iconographic methods beyond European borders and pose a challenge to the concept of the “global medieval” at the center of much current medievalist scholarship. If the central essays of this collection assert the positive potential of iconographic study for a modern understanding of medieval art and culture, the final essay by Madeline Caviness explores its darker side. Her trenchant contribution describes the collapse and rebirth of scholarship on iconography following the poststructuralist turn, as well as the birth of the new relativism made possible by a world in which everything was “post-,” as factors enabling the use of medieval iconography by popular and political movements within which historical accuracy has been of very little concern. While her account traces both the freedoms and the losses that deconstructionism brought to the profession, it emphasizes the more widespread effects of this turn upon politics and society. Among these, she argues, is the co-optation of medieval history and culture by populist movements for which ingrained relativism justifies the rejection of scholarly authority and the validity of historical evidence in favor of a selectively fabricated Middle Ages, in which medieval iconography is repurposed for modern ideological ends. Caviness calls upon medievalist scholars to reclaim iconographic interpretation as part of a larger defense of medieval history and a corrective to the modern slide away from the factual. While the 2017 speakers at “Iconography in a New Century” might not have set out to resolve all the questions posed in 1990 at “Iconography at the Crossroads,” their contributions proffer an exhilarating view of the paths that now lie open to the iconographic traveler. Where these roads will take us next will be for their readers to consider.

16

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Notes 1. Many of the lectures offered in this conference were later published in Cassidy, Iconography at the Crossroads.

2. See also Patton and Schilb, Lives and Afterlives. 3. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 3–31.

Bibliography Cassidy, Brendan, ed. Iconography at the Crossroads: Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 23–24 March 1990. Index of Christian Art Occasional Papers 2. Princeton: Princeton University, 1993. Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Harper & Row, 1939.

Patton, Pamela A., and Henry D. Schilb, eds. The Lives and Afterlives of Medieval Iconography. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2021.

Introduction

17

1 Iconography and Iconology at Princeton Elizabeth Sears

At Princeton in the early 1930s, two currents in international iconographical study met in the persons of Charles Rufus Morey (1877–1955) and Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968). Morey was then chair of the university’s Department of Art and Archaeology, a major player in American academe with significant European connections; in 1917 he had founded the Index of Christian Art to promote the rigorous study of pictorial types as an aid to writing art’s histories.1 Panofsky was professor ordinarius in art history at the University of Hamburg with close ties to the Warburg Library for Cultural Science (Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg [KBW]), a scholar then gaining an international reputation for his brilliance not only as a practitioner but also as a theorist able to tackle core art-historical questions on a philosophical basis.2 The two men first met in October 1931. Panofsky, as a “distinguished European scholar,” had traveled to the United States to teach for a semester in the nascent graduate program at New York University (NYU).3 Shortly after his arrival, Morey invited him down to Princeton, one of several visits during which Panofsky came to know the community. The relationship was maintained. In 1932 Morey sent his student William Burke, a future director of the Index, to Hamburg to study with Panofsky,4 and when Panofsky’s essay “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst” (On the problem of the description and the interpretation of the content of works of visual art) appeared, Morey eagerly got hold of it.5 Panofsky was invited back to teach at NYU in 1933—the fateful year during which, owing to newly promulgated Nazi legislation, he received word that he was dismissed as a “non-Aryan” from his professorship.6 American colleagues found a way to bring him

back the following year, but it was Morey who created the conditions that enabled him to settle in 1935 as a permanent member of the School of Humanistic Studies in Princeton’s new Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).7 A Utopia, Panofsky would call it, “realized in this sublunary world.”8 Even before their first encounter, Panofsky knew of Morey, whose article on “The Sources of Mediaeval Style” (1924) he had read intently.9 He had also heard tell of the Index and was aware of work by Morey’s students, namely E. Baldwin Smith’s Early Christian Iconography and a School of Ivory Carvers in Provence (1918) and Albert M. Friend’s “Carolingian Art in the Abbey of St. Denis” (1923).10 On the eve of Morey and Panofsky’s initial meeting, in a letter to his wife, Dora, in Hamburg, Panofsky described Morey as “the greatest American art historian,” observing that Harvard’s Arthur Kingsley Porter was more productive but that Morey was richer in ideas ( gedankenreicher).11 During his first visit to Princeton—when he signed the Visitors’ Book at the Index and described his research topic as “Iconography, esp. antique mythology etc. surviving the Middle ages”12—he heard a relevant demonstration of Princetonian iconographical research: Friend tracked the afterlife of a type rooted in antiquity—namely, the evangelist portrait before the scenae frons.13 Panofsky, in turn, gave a summary of his Warburgian work and described a gratifying reception to Fritz Saxl, his collaborator back at the KBW. After the presentation, Friend, followed by Morey, had exclaimed: “That’s iconography!”14 The 1930s saw an influx of influential academic refugees from continental Europe, but Panofsky’s settling in Princeton would have especially large consequences for Anglophone art history. It was at the IAS, before the war, that he prepared the English-​ language recasting of his “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung.” Based on lectures he delivered at Bryn Mawr in 1937,15 calibrated for an American audience, his book Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance came out in 1939 and galvanized a postwar field-wide concern with the interpretation of content. The heavily scrutinized methodological introduction to this book schooled art historians to distinguish among interpretive acts, and the summary schema embedded in the text would be more or less memorized by many. In addition to “pre-iconographical” recognition of visual forms, which was controlled by knowledge of the history of style, Panofsky defined two provinces within iconographical work: “narrower” and “deeper.” The first—directly supported by the Index of Christian Art—was an analytical mode of inquiry controlled by knowledge of a history of types and informed by reading relevant textual sources. The second—renamed “iconological” in the revised version of the text that Panofsky published in 195516—was an interpretative mode requiring particular aptitudes: drawing on “synthetic intuition,” the interpreter was to enter the domain of cultural inquiry, pursuing symbolical values and approaching the forms of thematic content as expressive of habits of mind proper to the individual and to the ambient culture. Through talks, teaching, and publication, Panofsky would shape thinking in one influential volume after another: Dürer, Abbot Suger, Gothic Architecture 10

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 1.1 Charles Rufus Morey at the Index of Christian Art, 1950s. Photo by Robert M. Mottar. Photo © Index of Medieval Art.

and Scholasticism, Early Netherlandish Painting, Renaissance and Renascences, and others— texts that continue to receive critical attention to this day. His work may be said to have kept the Index relevant even when Moreyesque concerns—whether seeking the origins of Christian art or using types to sort out dominant stylistic currents—seemed less urgent. At the same time, the Panofskian scheme likely helped hold the Index to its foundational commitments, Panofsky having so clearly defined the place of “iconographical study in the narrower sense” within the larger interpretive enterprise. Its staff assembled data with dictionary-like rigor to enable the study of the history of types. Serving all conceivable needs then, the Index would play its part in giving contour to mid-​twentieth-​century iconographical undertakings. The strands of study that came together at Princeton in the 1930s were mutually supportive. They had distinctive roots.

Charles Rufus Morey and Iconography Morey’s career unfolded wholly at Princeton. Not even an offer from Harvard, after Kingsley Porter’s death in 1933, could woo him away.17 He arrived at the university in 1906, chaired the department from 1924 to 1945, and returned to Princeton for his final five years after significant postwar work in Rome helping to restart international scholarly study (fig. 1.1). Initially trained in Classics at the University of Michigan, he had converted to art history during a three-year period in Rome, where he schooled his eye and his visual memory.18 His scholarly career opened in 1902 with an essay on Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

11

Figure 1.2 Index of Christian Art: Monuments File, 5 × 8-inch card, date-stamped Oct 1938, containing photograph of sarcophagus discovered in the church of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, reproducing a composite image from Joseph Wilpert’s I sarcophagi cristiani antichi, vol. 1 (1929). Photo © Index of Medieval Art.

Christian consular inscriptions, Greek and Latin, which he conceived as a supplement to the work of the great Christian archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi.19 Yet soon he flexed his muscles as an art historian. In an article from 1905, he turned his attention to the pictorial cycle on an early Christian sarcophagus recently discovered in the church of S. Maria Antiqua in the Roman forum (fig. 1.2).20 He rejected the “incomplete” description and “extravagant” interpretation of the carved cycle published by de Rossi’s follower, Orazio Marucchi.21 As the program was additive in nature, he had occasion to explore the potential of motif-by-motif analysis (in this case Fishermen, Baptism, Good Shepherd, Philosopher, Orans, Sea divinity, Jonah story). Whereas Marucchi had found the whole to represent an allegory of the life of the deceased, Morey saw the cycle as an amalgam of pictorial “types,” pagan and Christian, older and newer, juxtaposed by a dubiously Christian carver in the transitional fourth century. Every detail mattered. The dove at the feet of the Orans, for example, cast doubt on Marucchi’s interpretation: the woman could not be “the church in heaven” because she was of the “catacomb” or “epigraph” type, which made her a stereotypical symbol of “the soul in peace.”22 In these Roman years, Morey was in transition: the epigrapher became an iconographer, but soon the iconographer would develop into an all-round art historian, a self-trained medievalist dedicated to sifting out currents in style with the aid of the history of types. The first task undertaken by Morey’s all-female volunteer staff at the newly established Index was to catalogue subjects found on fourth-century sarcophagi; in succeeding years, the purview expanded to include the entire corpus of Christian medieval art in all media to 1400. By 1931, when Panofsky first arrived, fifty thousand monuments had been described, and two hundred thousand subject cards had been generated.23 By the late 1930s, the first salaried director, Wellesley-trained 12

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 1.3 Index of Christian Art: Iconographic File, 3 × 5-inch cards, date-stamped Oct 1934, containing description of sarcophagus in the church of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome. Photo © Index of Medieval Art.

Helen Woodruff, had honed the classification system, developing principles that would serve until the 1990s and the advent of computerization (fig. 1.3).24 The founder of the Index was a scholar disposed to the vita activa by temperament. Throughout his career, Morey participated in the institutionalization of the discipline, organizing and backing large enterprises. The creation of the Index itself served as a credential: partially on its basis, he would be invited to oversee undertakings that ranged from an archeological excavation of the late antique Syrian city of Antioch (1932–39)25 to a publication series, to the catalogue of objects in the Museo Sacro Vaticano (1936–59).26 From his first days at Princeton, he would participate in the establishment and growth of the College Art Association, inaugurated in 1911, and early on, he would publish regularly in its flagship journal, the Art Bulletin, founded in 1913 but properly launched after the war’s end.27 Morey’s early contributions to the journal provide something of an intellectual profile in the active decade before he met Panofsky. 1918: “The Art of Auguste Rodin” 1919: “The Sources of Romanesque Sculpture” 1921: “The Origin of the Asiatic Sarcophagi” 1922: “Christus Crucifer” Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

13

1924: “The Sources of Mediaeval Style” 1929: “Notes on East Christian Miniatures” Style and iconography emerge as the twin and intertwining threads of Morey’s art-historical work. Even the seeming outlier among the articles, “The Art of Auguste Rodin” (1918), was a meditation on the endurance of ancient visual formulae: Rodin is praised specifically for rejecting the dead language of classicism and foregoing “the broad simplicity of the type” so as to express, through the evocation of mobile flesh, the complexities and poignancies of modern life.28 But, for Morey, it was precisely the medieval reliance on typical forms that made iconographical study so promising: because given themes tended to be rendered in particular ways in specific locales, the study of types provided an as yet insufficiently appreciated means for dating and localizing strewn works. Morey’s article “The Origin of the Asiatic Sarcophagi” served as a demonstration piece, an effort to group and locate some fifty-five sarcophagi on the basis of common format, architectural framing (modeled on ancient stage facades), and ornament, along with shared subjects and figure types.29 All, he concluded, were Asiatic, not Italic: an earlier group could be assigned to Ephesus, a later group to a more northern center. Morey’s conclusions thus worked to support the intuitions of the Viennese art historian Josef Strzygowski, who had created a stir with his book Orient oder Rom published in 1901: controversially, as he sought the roots of Christian art in the first centuries AD, Strzygowski shifted the focus away from Rome toward the great cities of the East (Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus).30 In the introduction to the book, which unfolded as a series of close analyses of artworks, he identified “style” and “type” as the two prongs of his study. Strzygowski set Franz Wickhoff against F. X. Kraus. Wickhoff posited that an imperial style emanated from Rome in the early years, while long-enduring Christian compositions were forged in Alexandria, Antioch, and Byzantium in the fourth through fifth centuries; Kraus suggested that Christian art was born in Alexandria while the types that held sway throughout the Middle Ages came out of Rome in the fourth through fifth centuries. Strzygowski argued that Rome was always on the receiving end, and he praised Princetonian efforts to support his claim.31 Morey entered into the fray with the article of 1924 that Panofsky knew: “The Sources of Mediaeval Style.” He opened with an attempt to reconcile the theories of three Viennese art historians: Wickhoff arguing for the spread of Roman illusionism, Alois Riegl reflecting on the triumph of an optic point of view,32 and Strzygowski trying to demonstrate the impact of the art of the “Nearer East.” All had value, he suggested, if one did not assume the unity of late Hellenistic art. Morey here launched his career-long effort to follow “Neo-Attic” (Asiatic) and “Alexandrian” stylistic currents as transmitted, morphing through time. He had already given some thought to the phases of Western style, publishing on “The Sources of Romanesque Sculpture” (1919),33 and he had approached the long-standing problems posed by an array of medieval Greek, Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian manuscripts, involving dates, models, 14

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

DIAGRAM TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVOLUTION OF STYLE IN EARLY MEDIÆVAL ART HELLENISTIC

NEO- ATTIC IRISH

ALEXANDRIAN

ASIATIC

LATIN ILLUSIONISM COPTIC REIMS

NORTHUMBRIAN ADA SCHOOL

OTTONIAN

LATIN ST YLE

BYZANTINE

ITALO-BYZANTINE

ANGLO-SAXON S. FRANCE SPAIN

Figure 1.4 Chart of stylistic development, after C. R. Morey, “The Sources of Mediaeval Style,” Art Bulletin 7, no. 2 (1924): 50.

and makers, in “Notes on East Christian Miniatures” (1929). In this study, interweaving style and iconography, he used types (“primitive” and “developed”) to establish fixed points: for example, the curly-haired Christ Logos carrying the cross as a scepter “may be accepted as a sort of artistic trade-mark which stamps a ‘made in Alexandria’ on the works of art in which it occurs.”34 Panofsky would later describe Morey as a man who “could recognize in the bewildering complexity of mediaeval art a pattern so boldly simple that his ‘Sources of Mediaeval Style’ startled the art historians of 1924 as Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum had startled the astronomers of 1596.”35 Morey’s work would culminate in survey volumes, now little consulted, but welcomed with a certain reverence in their day: Christian Art (1935); the two-volume Mediaeval Art (1942), covering early Christian to Late Gothic styles; and Early Christian Art: An Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconography in Sculpture and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century (1942).36 Animating these histories was the desire to create something like a flow chart of interpenetrating stylistic forces, the whole undergirded by broad-stroke characterizations of nation, race, religion, culture, and habits of mind, pictorial types serving to confirm lines of transmission (fig. 1.4).37 The Index was core to Morey’s scholarly labors. He described it often. His early Art Bulletin article “Christus Crucifer” (1922), which he called “an experiment in Early Christian Iconography,” was cast so as to introduce the Index—at that point just five years old—to the College Art Association. His purpose was to show how a knowledge of types could serve scholarship: “The problem I have selected is: where did the type of Christ bearing or holding a Cross originate? Is it Eastern or Western? Did the notion emanate from one center, or from more than one, being conceived simultaneously in several places? If the latter is true, can we differentiate the variants in the Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

15

several localities, and so establish criteria for attributing works of art to this or that Early Christian center, such as Asia Minor, Italy, or Egypt?”38 On the basis of the fifty instances catalogued in the Index, Morey determined to his satisfaction that the motif was Eastern in origin, existed in variants, and traveled via works of the minor arts. He closed with an indication of the faith animating the early Indexers: that the file might one day be complete so as “to make conclusions final.” He reflected: “For to draw conclusions on the basis of iconography, it is not enough as in the natural sciences to assemble the majority, or a good part of one’s instances; we must have them all.”39 Morey set in motion a process to ensure the quality of the data—one of “constant checking and rigid observance of rules and principles of classification” to insure that the Index was “as errorless as can be hoped from any human creation.”40 Implied is his trust in objective fact and, with it, the assumption that the trained Indexer could discover the essential traits of any image and classify those efficiently in deftly chosen, formulaic wordings.41 By 1936, Morey’s Index had three hundred thousand cards, and the parameters had been set: “When completed, the index will cover all Christian art from the beginning to the year, 1400, the latter date being fixed as the time when the rigid traditions of iconography were beginning to lose their force and artists were starting to display originality and independence.”42 By 1942, when Woodruff published the definitive handbook on the Index, she could say that it was on an even keel, “having survived a half-dozen drastic reorganizations and at least two financial crises.” She had had to face the problem of divergent scholarly conclusions and hers was a system to classify types in the light of current interpretation, to create, she said, “not only a corpus of the subject matter of artistic expression and teaching of the first fourteen centuries of the Christian era, but also a compendium of modern investigation and opinions.” Woodruff preferred not to speculate as to whether the archetypes of the great biblical cycles were created in the early Christian centuries or why the Middle Ages favored such formulae—but whatever its cause, she concluded, “the repetition of established form has determined the character of the Index, for at one and the same time it is a catalogue of textual motivation and of ‘picture-type.’ ”43

European “Iconography” In fin de siècle Europe, as the discipline of art history sought to organize itself, large international congresses at which papers were given and proposals entertained convened periodically.44 Already in 1898, in Amsterdam, Eugène Müntz (École des Beauxarts, Paris) raised the issue of the recent neglect of iconography, especially secular: art historians, focused on attribution rather than on the meaning or merit of painting and sculpture, were fast devolving into “experts.”45 To demonstrate the necessity of iconographical studies, he drew upon his own research on tapestries, a genre too often passed over, to show the benefits of investigation into subject matter and to suggest 16

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

how much could be learned thereby about the values, deeds, and pastimes of an era. Action was taken at the next congress, held in Lübeck in 1900: August Schmarsow (Universität Leipzig)—if he did not think the situation as dire as Müntz suggested— nonetheless, as president, presented a resolution: an international commission should be established to promote iconographical study in the domain of art history, and a committee of five, headed by Müntz, should undertake appropriate measures.46 In 1902, C. de Mandach of Paris, secretary to the commission, gave a report, acknowledging that there had been disappointments: the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres had offered a prize for an iconographical investigation of the virtues and vices but had received no submissions (though the deadline was twice extended). Still, progress had been made. An International Society for Iconographical Studies had been founded. The program that Müntz developed in French, which was presented in German to the congress, shows the understanding of iconography before something called iconology began to separate out. The society’s task, it was stated, was to nurture the study of represented subjects (Darstellungsgegenstände) and concepts (Vorstellungsinhalte) in all works of the visual arts. What had been accomplished for classical antiquity had now to be undertaken for later periods. There was a terminological issue to be resolved, as iconography had a double meaning: in the narrower sense, it referred to the identification of portraits, but in the broader sense, to any visually interpreted theme. The idea to distinguish the latter by the term “iconology” was rejected, for novelty had its dangers.47 The importance of iconographical study was obvious: “what is represented?” is often the first question asked. To answer requires familiarity with the widest possible range of source materials. Accordingly, the society would undertake to create sorely needed reference works (a thesaurus iconographicus) and might intervene by suggesting classificatory models to curators of print and photographic collections. Popular imagery as well as masterpieces would be part of the purview, as would ornament, lately shown to have potential religious, moral, or philosophical significance. Müntz’s view was expansive. The research would serve the study not only of art but also of literature and cultural history in the broadest sense. A vigorous response came during the congress from A. L. Jellinek of Vienna,48 who asked that the scope be broadened to include modern art and the representation of modern figures and events: the thesaurus would then become a general guide to artistic subject matter (ein allgemeines Stofflexikon). Though this initiative petered out—the Germans withdrawing and calling for subdivisions in the project by nation—it is witness to a current in mainstream art history calling for tools to study pictorial content. If this was “iconography in the narrower sense,” the purview was broader than Morey’s—a longer span of time, secular as well as religious subjects included—and the study was defended from the outset in relation to interdisciplinary cultural study. The instinct to argue for preparation of a dictionary of image types is in evidence—at the very time Morey was in Rome beginning to selftrain in image analysis. Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

17

Among those regularly attending the congresses was Aby Warburg, a private scholar from Hamburg trained in art history, a specialist in Italian early Renaissance art, who focused on pagan revival and its consequences for style seen within a greater history of expression. Warburg coined the word “iconological” (eikon + logos) to describe his own method of linking “images and words.” Drawing on archival and literary documents alike, bringing “Wort zum Bild” and “Bild zum Wort” in often unexpected ways, he studied appropriations from the past to gain insight into shifting orientations at the dawn of European modernity, as the bonds of medieval religion were broken, and as superstition and reason continued their epic struggle. It is too small to call him an iconographer, though his scholarship is laced with accurate identification of depicted persons, things, and themes and revolves around the study of transmission of pictorial types over time, from antiquity to the present. Panofsky had first come into Warburg’s orbit in 1915, soon after completing his dissertation on Dürer’s art theory, submitted under Wilhelm Vöge at Freiburg. Continuing his study in Adolph Goldschmidt’s seminar in Berlin, he participated in a three-day excursion to Hamburg where he heard Warburg introduce his method and his library, described as “an institute for the history of expression,” a place for “mixed iconological methods,” and as  “an institute for border crossing.”49 The Warburg Library would become Panofsky’s intellectual home when, five years later, he arrived at the newly founded University of Hamburg, submitted his Habilitation, and organized the art history seminar as Privatdozent.50 He immediately entered into an intense collaboration with Saxl, Warburg’s assistant and later successor, the two working to extract serviceable implications from Warburg’s work. Panofsky now broadened his outlook. Here was a library, as he put it, whose program was the interaction of the histories of art, philosophy, and religion; Panofsky saw, but was confident he could resist, the danger of straying too far from the art-historical into the cultural-historical.51 He and Saxl tracked learned currents surfacing in the Northern and Italian Renaissances (the year 1400 representing no caesura), not only to solve pictorial enigmas but also to describe individual and collective mentalities: diachronic motif study served the task of defining attitudes, habits of mind, and period character. In 1923 they published their study of Dürer’s enigmatic print Melencolia I, subtitling it “an investigation into sources and types” and describing it as less a motif-by-motif interpretation (Deutung) than a developmental-historical explanation (Erklärung), one that would throw light on that which underlay Dürer’s conception and thus confirm its singularity.52 The year before he crossed the Atlantic and first met Morey, Panofsky published his study Hercules at the Crossroads.53 Here calling himself an “iconographer” (Ikonograph), in a test case of method, he focused on instances of the development of new pictorial types in humanist circles, distinguishing between elements constrained by texts and those spurred by analogy to related images; he defended content exegesis, arguing against those who felt that it was at odds with aesthetic appreciation, suggesting that ostensibly “artistic” and “extra-artistic” components of artworks could not be dialectically 18

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

severed. Panofsky was always disposed to isolate and elevate the problems faced by the scholarly exegete even when, like the Indexers, he became absorbed in the nitty-gritty of “textual motivation” and “picture-type.” In a brief newspaper profile published in 1929, Panofsky’s areas of research were listed as Dürer, Michelangelo, perspective, art theory and art-historical methodology, medieval architecture, and the history of types (Typengeschichte).54 It would be in the last category that his and Morey’s interests intersected.

Iconography and Ikonographie in Conversation Panofsky’s motivations for agreeing to teach for a term at NYU in 1931, beyond the career-enhancing adventure of it, seem to have been multiple. One was art-historical: to come to know American collections. But, as he explained to the university administration when petitioning for a leave, he saw it as his role to give “insight into the nature of German art and the specific working methods of the Hamburg art historical school.”55 He was willing to proselytize for the Warburg Library, its situation always precarious after Aby Warburg’s death in 1929. Saxl had supported Panofsky’s trip, providing slides, photographs, and literature related to their joint work and (with Charles de Tolnay) taking up his teaching in the hope that Panofsky would help prepare the ground for the reception of Warburg’s work.56 Panofsky agreed to give a lecture at Princeton in November (even though the department did not have the means to pay him) owing to the kindness of Morey’s invitation, his own loyalty to the Warburg Library, and the fact that this recognition on the part of a famous and anti-Semitic university would impress Felix Warburg—Aby’s brother, whose financial support was crucial to the library’s continuance.57 But another of Panofsky’s motivations was, it seems, to test the waters: the worsening political situation in Germany made emigration a standing possibility.58 From the outset, Panofsky was taken with Princeton, which he described in letters to Germany as “à la Oxford,” an “English idyll,” an “Oasis.”59 The contrast with the Graduate Division of the College of Fine Art at New York University, where he was teaching heavily—two seminars and a lecture course60—was striking: NYU could not yet boast permanent instructional space, a library, or a photo collection; the faculty was mixed (artists and art historians); students, most of them studying part-time, were little prepared—none of them had even heard of the Three Graces or Prudentius! He noted with some surprise that a “connoisseur-ish” clique within the NYU faculty had shown itself interested in his research.61 In Princeton the interest was emphatic. On November 30, 1931, Panofsky delivered a “gigantic” two-hour talk on “Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art” that seems to have brought the house down. The Princetonians turned out in force—Morey, Friend, Baldwin Smith, Ernest de Wald, and Frank Jewett Mather—along with people from Hunter College. Afterward, the students clapped for ten minutes, and Morey, when thanking Panofsky for the lecture, said that he, who Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

19

had done so much work in medieval art, was overwhelmed (erschlagen).62 Immediately, Morey suggested that the talk be published in the Art Bulletin, and shortly after he extended a third invitation to Panofsky, this one sparked by students hoping he would give them advice on their research. Panofsky obliged and found the young Princetonians, unlike the NYU students, to be very good, if a little one-sided in their education: “well trained” being the appropriate term.63 Warming to American academe, Panofsky wondered why he had found such welcome. In a letter to Dora, he reflected: “Precisely because the people here have not been so strongly bred into the Wölfflin–Pinder point of view, it is easier for them to appreciate and affirm our methods—methods that integrate pictorial content with ambient ideas (das Inhaltliche und allgemein Geistige).” True, there were those who grasped nothing, but others—and Panofsky included Morey in this category—were able to see that formal analysis is only half the matter. He had not once heard the objection “very nice; but what does it have to do with art?”—and he concluded: “In this case the absence of ‘tradition’ eased the way to understanding.”64 He was somewhat taken aback when credited with methods widespread in his own academic culture. To his new friend, William Ivins, curator of prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he wrote, in English: the very method of my work, a method which perhaps was not so well known in America, is almost a matter of course in this country, and I am indebted for it to my great teachers such as Wilhelm Vöge and Aby Warburg as well as to my friends and even to my own disciples. I came to your country as a mere messenger or representative of this tradition, bringing with me some specimens of the fruit that we endeavor to grow for several decades, and I feel a little bit ashamed when you believe me to be a kind of innovator.65 In his letter to Ivins he emphasized that the material of his talk “Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art”—which would be published in English in 1933, with Ivins’s editorial aid, in Metropolitan Museum Studies—was amassed “by the united efforts of my friend Saxl and our common pupils and collaborators.”66 The degree to which Panofsky saw himself as an emissary is indicated by the discomfort he felt when Morey first suggested that he publish his talk in the Art Bulletin. He wrote to Saxl saying the material was his to publish, though he wondered if his friend might consider cosigning his summary in English—rather dilettantish (ziemlich dilettantisch) but apparently very effective (anscheinend ganz wirksam). Saxl graciously agreed, and the two copublished the piece, with the statement: “In the present essay it will be our endeavor, while examining a single problem, to demonstrate the methods of research developed by Aby Warburg and his followers.”67 Panofsky supplied a new synthetic conclusion (his forte), and later he drew on this demonstration for the introduction to his Studies in Iconology of 1939.68 20

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

After Panofsky was dismissed from his professorship, American allies rallied round. Walter W. S. Cook, who had joined the faculty of NYU in 1932, raised money from a range of donors to bring the scholar back to New York to teach for two years: “Panofsky,” he wrote to Paul Sachs at Harvard, “is generally regarded as the most brilliant art historian of his generation in Germany, and it is a great luck for us that he has been dropped from the faculty at Hamburg.”69 The KBW transferred to London late in 1933 to become the Warburg Institute, and there Saxl worked with W. G. Constable, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, to create for Panofsky a position between the Warburg and the Courtauld.70 Harvard also attempted to appoint him.71 But Morey won the day. Seeing a way to “add powerfully to the sum of archaeological scholarship” at Princeton, he had worked with the director of the IAS, Abraham Flexner, to shape the School of Humanistic Studies (founded later than the School of Mathematics and the School of Economics and Politics). Morey’s wish list for appointments that would complement those in the Department of Art and Archaeology opened with “a specialist in the later Middle Ages and the early Renaissance,” and he named his candidate: Panofsky, the “most brilliant scholar in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance that we know.”72 If Germanic scholarship had its detractors—Francis Henry Taylor, director of the Worcester Museum of Art and later the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was one73—Cook and Morey remained true. Panofsky’s loyalty was no less steadfast: he dedicated his book Albrecht Dürer of 1943 to the two men, along with Flexner of the IAS,74 and when Morey died in 1955, he wrote a sensitive memorial, the second obituary, he said, he had ever written, the first being for Aby Warburg.75

Panofsky and the Index In 1931 Morey first learned something of the Warburg Library from Panofsky, and Panofsky put him in contact with Saxl to see about an exchange of information on classificatory systems; simultaneously, Panofsky was first coming to know the Index—this was before the arrival of Woodruff—and in a letter to Saxl, he weighed its merits.76 In those early years, he judged it not especially remarkable since only published material was indexed (unless, by chance, unpublished photographs had become available), saying it was not a place to discover “novelties”; on the other hand, one could come by a very useful summary since the Princeton Library possessed even the most obscure periodicals. Accordingly, for his Hamburg student Pia von Reutter (later Wilhelm), he sat in the Index and worked through images of the Coronation of the Virgin (Marienkrönung), this being the “iconographical problem” at the center of her dissertation.77 Panofsky is recorded in the Visitors’ Book as having returned on February 6, 1933, when he looked into “Occurrences of the Magi Adoration on sarcophagus troughs.” Once resident at the IAS, he ceased to sign the book and in later years seems to have availed himself less of the files than of the expertise of the Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

21

Figure 1.5 Erwin Panofsky and Rosalie Green at the Index of Christian Art, 1960s. Photo © Index of Medieval Art.

Indexers, valuing their unusual stores of knowledge about image types and their sources. Of the three directors he knew—Helen Woodruff, William Burke, and Rosalie Green—Panofsky worked especially closely with the last, a self-trained iconographer who received her doctorate from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on “Daniel in the Lions’ Den as an Example of Romanesque Typology” (1948). She joined the staff in 1946, took the helm in 1951, and retired in 1981, all the while scrupulously maintaining the quality of indexed information. Her esteem for Panofsky was of the highest, and he reciprocated (fig. 1.5). In 1963, at a moment when the Index was shifting location, he penned a “eulogy,” calling the Index an instrument “unique and indispensable,” “not so much a tool as a lighthouse,” and—assuming interdisciplinary implications—“a fons vitae not only for art historians but also for students of poetry, philosophy and theology.”78 Drawing from personal experience, he called attention to a two-pronged benefit: the discovery of visual as well as textual sources for a given theme or motif and the identification of unidentified images. In later years, Green would recall, Panofsky preferred to phone in queries, and the staff described their service as “Instant Iconography.”79 His third and last entry in the Visitors’ Book came just two years before his death, March 28, 1966. He wrote in as the subject of his iconographical inquiry: “God.” 22

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Of Method The existence of the Index doubtless had its effect on the way that Panofsky couched his project in the American ambient. The résumé of a talk he delivered in 1946—“What Is Iconology?”—in which he distinguished between iconography and iconology, shows him casting the former functionally in terms commensurate with Morey’s goals even as he shifted interpretative acts to the higher level: While “iconography,” as commonly understood, limits itself to a purely descriptive and statistical survey of motifs, primarily intended to facilitate the dating and location of works of art, “iconology” attempts to interpret those motifs in several ways: first, with an eye on their genesis and interpenetration as opposed to a mere description; second, with an eye to the individual situation in which a given motif is used, or changed, by individual artists and in connection with individual tasks; third, with an eye on the general intellectual context (religious, philosophical, political, etc.) within which the various motifs came into being and were developed.80 Earlier, he had put it this way: “Content, as opposed to subject matter, may be described in the words of Peirce as that which a work betrays but does not parade.”81 He, with the Indexers, felt that there was more certainty possible on the iconographical level.82 Panofsky was aware of critique and saw pitfalls, famously acknowledging: “There is . . . admittedly some danger that iconology will behave, not like ethnology as opposed to ethnography, but like astrology as opposed to astrography.”83 An exchange in 1955 with a fellow German émigré, Alfred Neumeyer, then drafting a piece on the state of the art-historical field, brings out those tensions.84 Neumeyer, who had taken a seminar with Warburg, could write of a “deepening of method” owed to Warburg, members of the Warburg Institute, and Panofsky, yet critically, he observed: “One objection to the present preponderance of iconographical studies is that it disregards the spontaneous and semi-free creative act which expresses itself primarily in the form and style of the art work.”85 Panofsky corrected Neumeyer, suggesting he write “the present preponderance of iconographical studies in the narrow sense of the term,” and he wondered whether Neumeyer shared the negative judgment or if he made exceptions for those—like Meyer Schapiro and himself—who were attempting to combine the iconographic and “stylistic” approaches.86 Panofsky’s efforts to study style, form, and content in their interrelations is evident in his Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (1953), a publication of his Norton Lectures at Harvard (1947–48). With this book, he set the field on new paths for discovering meaning in form, tactics different from those apt for approaching the “humanistic themes” of Italian Renaissance art. Focusing on later medieval art of Northern Europe in and around the year 1400, the upper limit of the Index, he posited Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

23

that its “realistic” form could potentially be saturated with symbolism, pedestrian objects of everyday life (e.g., a fire screen or a snuffed candle) could be bearers of meaning. This supposition let loose a spate of searching for “disguised symbolism.” Panofsky anticipated the problems, finding the solution to reside only in “the use of historical methods tempered, if possible, by common sense,” and going on to say: “We have to ask ourselves whether or not the symbolical significance of a given motif is a matter of established representational tradition (as is the case with lilies); whether or not a symbolical interpretation can be justified by definite texts or agrees with ideas demonstrably alive in the period and presumably familiar to its artists . . . ; and to what extent such a symbolical interpretation is in keeping with the historical position and personal tendencies of the individual master.”87 Two notes juxtaposed in the Art Bulletin in 1965 show two modes of content analysis as deployed by two Princetonians: Virginia Wylie Egbert, on the staff of the Index, and Robert Koch (PhD 1954), on the faculty. The notes appeared in the very issue of the journal in which Millard Meiss, Panofsky’s successor at the IAS, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Art Bulletin with a reflection on the journal’s history: its humble start (“like a good cookbook” offering recipes for courses), its early focus on medieval art and preference for philological or archaeological studies, and its gains in and after the 1930s.88 Egbert, who to this day is remembered as among the most accomplished of all the Index cataloguers, contributed “St. Nicholas: The Fasting Child”—a survey of medieval images of St. Nicolas of Myra in which the precociously ascetic infant turned his head from his mother’s breast. An airtight effort at “iconography in the narrower sense of the term,” it established the existence of a type and enabled the correct identification of a Romanesque relief from the abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés.89 Juxtaposed was Koch’s “Flower Symbolism in the Portinari Altar,” explicitly extending Panofsky’s analysis of Hugo van der Goes’s altarpiece, focusing on the floral “still life” in the foreground of the central panel in an effort to penetrate the mind of the artist. Cloaked symbols were unmasked on the premise that “in virtually every flower there resided some quality that evoked for the receptive, mystical soul the thought of Mary or of Christ or both.”90 Lilies, irises, violets, carnations, columbine—each floral type was shown to carry symbolic association in its form, color, and number of blooms within a web of disguised symbolism. The epigraph of the piece came from St. Augustine’s Contra Faustum: “The most hidden meanings are the sweetest.”

Epilogue: An Era Ending—1981 Panofsky died in 1968, a year of intense social upheaval, the seeds sown for sweeping changes in academe as in other spheres. The arc of the story here narrated—Princetonian “iconography” meeting transplanted Hamburgian “iconology”—resolved in a critical backlash, gathering force in the early 1980s, which caused the field to self-examine 24

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 1.6 Adelaide Bennett Hagens, Rosalie Green, and Elizabeth Beatson (in back) and Isa Ragusa (in front) at the Index of Christian Art, ca. 1980. Photo by Elizabeth Menzies. Photo © Index of Medieval Art.

and develop alternatives to methods increasingly deemed suspect and exhausted. A photograph taken of the female team of iconographers at the Index of Christian Art right around the year 1980 may serve to mark the end of a scholarly trajectory inaugurated in the 1930s (fig. 1.6). In the back, making an expansive gesture, is Green, who had kept the Index on target, maintaining strict standards, making certain her staff (“readers”) were possessed of “an enormous iconographic vocabulary,” enabling them to recognize content so as best to classify images and to field questions from the public (in 1980 some 175 users signed the Visitors’ Book, many of them multiple times).91 To Green’s left: Elizabeth Beatson, an imposing personality, British, formerly assistant to Meiss; to her right: Adelaide Bennett, later Hagens, who retired in 2017 after fifty years of work at the Index; in front: Isa Ragusa who, in 1980, had served on the Index staff for some twenty-five years, having started her career in 1951 with an MA thesis that contained something of the Warburgian: “The Re-Use and Public Exhibition of Roman Sarcophagi During the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance.”92 Behind the four women are the files, meticulously created and maintained in an analogue world. Change was in the air. In 1982, Ragusa, heir apparent to Green, prepared a think piece on the Index and its history. When it was published in 1998 as a document of a past time, she provided a new introduction that captures the pained bewilderment of the staff: “Some sixty years after its inception [that is, circa 1977], and after having earned the respect and approval, and no little gratitude, of scholars and students at home and abroad, the Index found itself . . . in an environment hostile to its traditional methods. Suddenly its very fundamentals . . . were being questioned.”93 It was a time Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

25

when Panofskian iconology was sustaining blows. Insofar as the method had devolved into the search for the text behind the image, it was criticized for its logocentrism—also for its Eurocentrism, its elitism, its assumption that meanings of images and programs were single and fixed, encoded (openly or covertly) for decoding by the learned viewer.94 In the mid-1980s, there was fear at Princeton that the Index of Christian Art might fall into obsolescence. The Index Committee, then chaired by Michael Curschmann, began to seek directors from the outside, passing over Ragusa, who resigned. Nigel Morgan (1982–87) was followed by Brendan Cassidy (1988–95) and Colum Hourihane (1996–2014). Supporting computerization, the Committee considered ways to make data “accessible to a much greater variety of prospective users and open to questions which the original collection was not expected to answer.”95 This goal set the trajectory for the coming decades—the turbulent period discussed by Madeline Caviness in the essay closing this volume.

Notes 1. On Morey, E. Panofsky’s tribute, “Charles Rufus Morey,” is a good starting place. For Morey at Princeton, see Smyth, who studied with him, “Concerning Charles Rufus Morey,” and for the postwar work, Morey’s autobiographical “Art and the History of Art.” See also “Bibliography of the Principal Publications” (a volume in his honor); later publications are listed by E. Panofsky in “Charles Rufus Morey,” 485 n. 1; for a further addition, see below, n. 19. On Morey and the Index, see Sears, “Under Miss Green’s Watch.” 2. Recent biographies of Panofsky examine his early years and time at Hamburg: Michels, Sokrates in Pöseldorf; G. Panofsky, Erwin Panofsky. The large relevant literature includes Levine, Dreamland of Humanists. On Panofsky’s American years, see Picht, Erzwungener Ausweg. 3. Richard Offner to Panofsky, December 13, 1930; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 263. 4. William Burke directed the Index from 1946 to 1951, after serving as part-time acting director during the war. In Hamburg he worked on Lucas Cranach. Panofsky to Margaret Barr, June 27 and November 18, 1932; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 320, 337. 5. William Ivins to Panofsky, August 18, 1932; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 325. Panofsky’s essay is translated by Elsner and Lorenz as “On the Problem of Describing,” followed by an analytical piece comparing Panofsky’s German and American methodological models (“Genesis of Iconology”). 6. Dean E. R. Bossange (NYU) to Hochschulebehörde, February 25, 1932; Panofsky to

26

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Hochschulebehörde, March 23, 1932, requesting leave February 1–May 1, 1933 (Hamburg, Universitätsarchiv, Personalakte, Panofsky). Panofsky was Ordinarius für Kunstgeschichte, officially, from January 1, 1926, to September 30, 1933. 7. See Schmidtke, “Near and Middle Eastern Studies,” xxxiv–xxxviii. I am grateful to Catherine Fernandez for alerting me to this study. 8. Panofsky to Abraham Flexner, March 29, 1934; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 444. For the context, see Michels, Transplantierte Kunstwissenschaft, passim; and, with recent bibliography, Beyer, “Stranger in Paradise,” 429–44. 9. See below, pp. 14–15. 10. See E. Panofsky, “Three Decades of Art History’’, 325. Friend’s article appeared in the shortlived journal Art Studies. Panofsky asked Percy Ernst Schramm for his review of Friend’s piece, published in the Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde; here, Schramm criticized the overestimation of the evidential value of iconographical similarities (“ikonographischer Ähnlichkeiten”) for locating Carolingian artworks to a given center. See Panofsky to Schramm, August 28, 1928; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 210. 11. Panofsky to Dora Panofsky, October 14, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 276. After Porter’s mysterious death in Ireland in 1933, Harvard sought in vain to appoint Morey to its faculty. See Walter W. S. Cook to Paul Sachs, January 9, 1934; in ibid., vol. 1, no. 433. 12. Visitors’ Book, p. 7, Index of Medieval Art archive.

13. Friend drew on his recently published research, “Portraits of the Evangelists,” which included a section on “Theatre Scenery and the Portraits of the Evangelists.” 14. Panofsky to Saxl, October 21, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 277. 15. In 1937 Panofsky delivered the Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr University—a series established in 1929, the results published by Oxford University Press. See E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 620–77, passim: the title evolved from “Problems of Secular Iconography in the Renaissance”—deemed somewhat too “technical” (ibid., vol. 1, no. 633)—to “Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance.” 16. E. Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” 40. 17. Cook to Sachs, January 9, 1934; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 433. 18. From documents preserved at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (Necrology file), Morey’s academic career can be summarized: he received his AB in 1899 and AM in 1900; he was then a fellow at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome, 1900–1903 (in the final year he held the Buhl Classical Fellowship from Michigan); he was a University Fellow in Archaeology at Princeton 1903–4; an instructor in Classics, Princeton Preparatory School, 1904–5; and finally he held a string of positions at Princeton University: instructor in Classics, 1905–6; preceptor in Art and Archaeology from 1906; assistant professor from 1913; professor from 1918. He was awarded an honorary D.Litt. at Michigan in 1938. Late in life, coming full circle, he would serve as interim director of the American Academy in Rome from 1945 to 1947—which had incorporated the School of Classical Studies—while, as a cultural attaché, he did much to reestablish foreign scholarly institutes in the war-torn capital. 19. Morey, “Note supplementari al De Rossi” (not included in “Bibliography of the Principal Publications”). Orazio Marucchi, as Direttore speciale, provided a brief note indicating his pleasure in publishing the first fruits of a major work on Christian consular inscriptions by Carlo Morey, student at the American School of Classical Studies. 20. Morey, “Christian Sarcophagus.” This line of study continued in his five-part article, “Origin of the Fish-Symbol.” 21. Marucchi, “Di un pregevole monumento di antica scultura cristiana.” 22. A confident young Morey also took exception to Josef Wilpert’s claim that orans figures could never be portraits (“Christian Sarcophagus,” 156). 23. Morey, “Important Instrument of Research.” 24. The Index was long a female enclave. In the Princeton Alumni Weekly, it was boldly stated:

“Princeton is a man’s university, and one need only recall the furor caused by the Princetonian’s April fool report that we were to go coeducational to realize that it will remain masculine for several geologic ages.” The author acknowledged: “And yet a number of women hold positions of great responsibility in the University, and the scholarly work performed by them compares in significance with that of many faculty members.” By way of example: “The mighty Index of Christian Art, work of many years, has been directed by Mrs. Phila C. Nye until the present year when the editorship [sic] has been taken over by Helen M. Woodruff” (“To the Ladies,” 1940). Rensselaer W. Lee, trained at Princeton in the 1920s and later departmental chair, recalled that at one point, nine “well-trained young women” formed Morey’s “devoted staff,” and they were known as the nine Muses (“Charles Rufus Morey,” iv). 25. Approached by the French Antiquities Service in 1927, Morey created a “Committee for the Excavation of Antioch-on-the-Orontes” and raised funds for an excavation undertaken by a coalition of museums including Princeton, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Louvre. See http://‌vrc‌.princeton‌.edu‌/researchphotographs‌/s‌​ /antioch‌/page‌/introduction. 26. Morey, Oggetti di avorio; Stohlman catalogued the enamels (Smalti del Museo Sacro Vaticano, 1939) and Volbach, the textiles (Tessuti del Museo Sacro Vaticano, 1942); Ferrari edited Morey’s posthumously published work on gold glass (Gold-Glass Collection of the Vatican Library, 1959). 27. Morey was appointed as one of the first directors of the CAA and placed on the Membership and Publicity Committee. In the inaugural Bulletin of the College Art Association, CAA president Holmes Smith (Professor of Drawing and Art History, Washington University, St. Louis) documented CAA’s founding as the decision to split off from the Western Drawing and Manual Training Association (“Problems of the College Art Association”). Its membership was sought from “college instructors engaged in the cultivation of appreciation of art, whether through the teaching of its practice, theory, or history, or in any of the professional departments, such as schools of architecture” (9). In 1917 CAA president John Pickard (University of Missouri) could still decry “sloppy sentimentality in the matter of art history and criticism” (“President’s Address,” 44). 28. Morey, “Art of Auguste Rodin,” 151. 29. The material would be re-presented as part of a monograph published not long after: Sarcophagus of Claudia Antonia Sabina. Morey drew on the work of his student W. Frederick Stohlman, “Sub-Sidamara Sarcophagi.” 30. See the essays in Foletti and Lovino, Orient oder Rom?

Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

27

31. See Strzygowski’s review of Morey’s Sarcophagus of Claudia Antonia Sabina: “With this publication classical archaeology is enriched by a store of material of a late antique style which strikingly contrasts with that of Alexandria and Rome. I can only express my admiration at the conscientious achievement of Morey” (71–73). Strzygowski went on to advance some of the hypotheses about the primal contributions of Northern or Aryan peoples that have made his scholarship notorious. 32. Self-trained, Morey learned a good deal from the Viennese. Riegl was a touchstone, giving him the distinctions between haptic and optic, encouraging his faith in ornament as a prime witness to artistic identities, and perhaps, through the concept of Kunstwollen (will-to-art), confirming his ambition to prepare lasting diachronic histories of style. 33. “French Romanesque sculpture develops in three periods,” Morey said, concluding, pace Arthur Kingsley Porter, that the sources of the phases become clear once it is recognized that “the guiding influence in the evolution of mediaeval art was always the manuscript illumination” (“Sources of Romanesque Sculpture,” 10–11). 34. Morey, “Notes on East Christian Miniatures,” 7. 35. E. Panofsky, “Charles Rufus Morey,” 484. In the previous year, Panofsky had published his Galileo as a Critic of the Arts, incorporating discussion of Kepler. 36. On Morey’s Mediaeval Art, Conant wrote, “Throughout the book one feels the deep insight and sympathetic interpretation of a really wise man” (review of Mediaeval Art, 365–66). In another review, Robb, a Morey student, notes, “Unlike the preconceived idealism with which a Henry Adams viewed the mediaeval scene, or at the opposite extreme, the equally arbitrary materialism of a Coulton, the sympathetic yet critical understanding of the author has produced a conception of the Middle Ages that is controlled and determined by its own inherent qualities” (review of Mediaeval Art, 116–17). 37. Morey, “Sources of Medieval Style,” 50. The director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., would publish an analogous flow chart of modern art movements in connection with the 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art; he studied with Morey, as well as Frank Jewett Mather, at Princeton in the 1920s, receiving his BA (1922) and MA (1923). 38. Morey, “Christus Crucifer,” 118. 39. Ibid, 124. And yet historical data, because always partial, could deceive. In 1919 Morey attempted to remove the silver casket of San Nazaro in Milan (1919) from the canon of fourth-century art chiefly on the basis of iconographical anomaly, suggesting it was a work of the late sixteenth century—a conclusion not credited (“Silver Casket of San Nazaro in Milan”; cf. Spier, Picturing the Bible, 259–64).

28

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

40. Morey, “Important Instrument of Research,” 236–37. 41. The Index staff paid no heed to style but described, in formulaic language, those elements of an image that were iconographically significant and that they recognized (based on long experience) as being subject to change over time or as being key to isolating a pictorial type. 42. “Princeton Expedition to Mt. Athos,” 531. 43. Woodruff, Index of Christian Art, 6. 44. Significant exchange took place at these congresses, which allowed representatives of the emergent discipline to take corporate action: Vienna (1873), Nuremberg (1893), Cologne (1894), Budapest (1896), Amsterdam (1898), Lübeck (1900), Innsbruck (1902), Darmstadt (1907), Munich (1909), and Rome (1912). See Schmidt, “Die internationalen Kongresse für Kunstgeschichte.” In 1912 in Rome, with Adolfo Venturi presiding, representatives of different nations reported on the place of art history in higher education in their systems; Germany was far out in the lead with professorships at a good twenty-five universities, counting some 132 teachers in total. See Italia e l’arte straniera, 23–37. Venturi wrote to Allan Marquand, chair of the Princeton Department of Art, who in turn asked E. Baldwin Smith to prepare a document about the situation in the United States, subsequently published as appendix II by Lavin, “Princeton.” 45. For extracts from congress proceedings and other relevant documents, see the appendix by Dieter Wuttke in Schmidt, Aby M. Warburg und die Ikonologie, 47–89; for Müntz on iconography, see ibid., 56–57. On Müntz (1843–1902), Professor of Aesthetics and Art History at the École des Beaux-Arts, see Passini, Correspondance allemande d’Eugène Müntz. 46. The other members of the commission, representing four nations, all possessed good iconographical credentials: Franz Xaver Kraus (Freiburg i. Br.), J. J. Tikannen (Helsingfors), Julius von Schlosser (Vienna), and C. de Mandach (Paris); Schmarsow further suggested involving Kondakoff (Russia), Carl Justi (Bonn), and Adolfo Venturi (Rome), among others. 47. For the “Bericht des Vorstandes der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Ikonographische Studien,” and, in French, the program and statutes of the Société international des études iconographiques (1902), see Wuttke, appendix, in Schmidt, Aby M. Warburg, 61–70, 81–89. 48. That Arthur L. Jellinek (1876–1907) spoke in favor of a broadly conceived reference book situated between text and image is fitting: before his premature death, he produced one volume of a Bibliographie der vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte and was involved in the Internationale Bibliographie der Kunstwissenschaft.

49. See Sears, “First Contact.” 50. In July 1920, Panofsky habilitated as Privat­ dozent; from July 1921 he was tasked with setting up and directing an art history seminar, and, in the absence of a professor ordinarius, taught heavily (eventually under paid contract). He was promoted to professorship as of January 1, 1926. (Hamburg, Universitätsarchiv, Personalakte, E. Panofsky). 51. E. Panofsky to Badt, February 22, 1922; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 89. 52. E. Panofsky and Saxl, Dürer’s “Melencolia I,” introduction. 53. E. Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege. 54. Announcement of Panofsky’s being offered the chair of art history at the University of Heidelberg, Hamburger Nachrichten, August 13, 1929; on October 10, 1929, it was reported in the Hamburger Fremdenblatt that he had declined the offer (E. Panofsky, Personalakte, 361–6, IV 1204). 55. E. Panofsky to the Hochschulebehörde, January 7 and August 7, 1931 (E. Panofsky, Personalakte). 56. Saxl, “Bericht über die Tätigkeit der Bibliothek Warburg in den Jahren 1930 und 1931,” 34–35 (Saxl, Papers): “Denn dieser Aufenthalt Professor Panofskys hat unsere Beziehungen zu den amerikanischen Universitäts- und Museums-Kreisen gefestigt, für unsere Arbeiten dort einen Resonanzboden geschaffen. Unzweifelhaft wird die Bibliothek in den nächsten Jahren auch von dieser Tätigkeit Professor Panofskys in Amerika—wie sonst von seiner Hamburgischen—grossen Nutzen haben.” 57. E. Panofsky to Dora Panofsky, November 17, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 283. 58. E. Panofsky to Dora Panofsky, October 14 and December 11, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 276, 291a: “Na, wenn das schlimmste zum schlimmen kommt, wird man uns hier, glaube ich, wirklich ein Stück Brot geben.” 59. See E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 2, nos. 277, 278, 291. 60. Richard Offner to E. Panofsky, December 13, 1930, and August 30, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 263, 273. Panofsky’s petition to the Hochschulbehörde for permission to go on leave, October 1931 to February 1932, was granted on February 23, 1931 (E. Panofsky, Personalakte). Panofsky would bemoan the time required for preparation of his classes. E. Panofsky to Walter Friedländer, November 13, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, 282. 61. E. Panofsky to Dora Panofsky, October 14, 1931; to Saxl, October 21, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 276, 277. 62. E. Panofsky to Saxl, December 5, 1931; to Dora Panofsky, November 13, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 282a, 290.

63. E. Panofsky to Pia von Reutter (Hamburg), December 7, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol.1, no. 291. 64. E. Panofsky to Dora Panofsky, February 1, 1932; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 302a. 65. E. Panofsky to Ivins, March 14, 1932; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 305. 66. Ibid. 67. E. Panofsky and Saxl, “Classical Mythology,” 229. See E. Panofsky to Saxl, December 5, 1931; and Saxl’s generous response, December 29, 1931; also Ivins to E. Panofsky, August 18, 1932; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 290, 294, 325; see also Ivins to E. Panofsky, ibid., vol. 1, no. 307 (Ivins would help put the text into good English). 68. E. Panofsky to Margaret Barr, May 7, 1932; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 311. The Viennese art historian Otto Pächt, exiled in England, would specifically object to the concluding section: “too much Panofsky for my taste.” Pächt to Saxl, August 24, 1941 (WIA, GC [General Correspondence]). 69. For this history, see Cook to Sachs, January 9, 1934; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 433, with editor’s notes. 70. See correspondence between Saxl and Constable, January 2–March 17, 1934 (WIA, GC). For Panofsky’s reluctance to enter the English art-​historical establishment (where “a foreign scholar would always remain an emigrant instead of becoming an immigrant”), see E. Panofsky to Morey, July 20, 1934; to Margaret Barr, July 10, 1934; in E. Panofsky, Korrrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 471, 467. 71. Sachs to Alfred Barr, April 16, 1934; Constable to Sachs, April 18, 1934; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 447 and 453. 72. See Schmidtke, “Near and Middle Eastern Studies,” xxxv–xxxvi. The opening of the School of Mathematics on October 1, 1933, marked the beginning of the IAS. The School of Economics and Politics came next, which in 1949 was folded into the School of Humanistic Studies (renamed then the School of Historical Studies), which had itself been inaugurated in the 1936/37 academic year (ibid., xxxi–xxxiii). For his acceptance, see E. Panofsky to Abraham Flexner, March 21, 1935; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 531. 73. For an account and critique of Taylor’s anti-Germanic stance, see Meyer Schapiro’s review of Taylor’s Babel’s Tower. Cf. Taylor to E. Panofsky, January 29, 1944; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 2, no. 929. Taylor, on the other hand, would call Morey “probably the greatest mediaevalist America has yet produced” (“Charles Rufus Morey,” 140). Bernard Berenson did not count among Panofsky’s fans: see Berenson to Sachs, April 17, 1934; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 450.

Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

29

74. See E. Panofsky to Flexner, April 21, 1942; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 2, no. 858. 75. E. Panofsky, “Charles Rufus Morey.” See also E. Panofsky to Walter Friedländer, July 16, 1955; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 3, no. 1971. 76. E. Panofsky to Saxl, October 21, 1931; Bing to E. Panofsky, December 22, 1931, and response, January 1, 1932; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, nos. 277, 292, 295. A copy of the Warburg Institute’s authors catalogue would make its way to Princeton. See Saxl to E. Panofsky, April 25, 1941; and response, April 28; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 2, nos. 825 and 827. 77. E. Panofsky to Pia von Reutter, December 7, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 291; Wilhelm, Die Marienkrönung am Westportal. On Panofsky and Reutter, see Levine, “PanDora.” See also Panofsky to Hanns Swarzenski, July 15, 1931; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 1, no. 270; Panofsky’s description of the dissertation is an indication of Hamburgian iconographical method: “[Pia von Reutter] ist dabei auf die ganz schlaue Idee eines Zusammenhanges mit den Sponsus-Sponsa-Bildern der Hohelied-​ Illustrationen, bzw. deren Kommentare (Rupert von Deutz und Honorius von Autun) gekommen, die sich in einem Falle (Ratmann-​Missale . . .) sogar schon mit der ‘Assunta’-Idee (Sarkophag) verbunden finden.” 78. E. Panofsky to Green, November 29, 1963 (IMA Archive). 79. Sears, interview with Rosalie Green, 2007. 80. The summary of his talk “What Is Iconology?,” to be delivered March 28, 1947, at the University of Rochester Conference on the Humanities, was sent to the organizer on March 7, 1947; reprinted in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 2, 1133–34.

81. E. Panofsky, “History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline,” 13–14, referring to the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. 82. On “certainty” in the “lower stratum of interpretation,” see E. Panofsky to George Boas, January 25, 1951; and response, January 30, 1951; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 3, nos. 1431 and 1433. 83. Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” 32. 84. Neumeyer, who landed in Mills College in 1935 after being dismissed from teaching and museum positions in Berlin, had studied with the foremost German art historians, including Warburg. See Neumeyer, “Four Art Historians Remembered.” 85. Neumeyer, “Victory Without Trumpet,” 202. 86. Panofsky to Neumeyer, November 14, 1955; in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. 3, no. 1865. 87. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting, 142–43. 88. Meiss, “Art Bulletin at Fifty.” Meiss commended Rosalie Green for taking up the task of indexing volumes 1 through 30. 89. Egbert, “St. Nicholas.” 90. Koch, “Flower Symbolism,” 71. 91. Visitors’ Book, pp. 238–53 (IMA Archive). See Green, “Index of Christian Art”; see also “Sears, “Under Miss Green’s Watch.” 92. Ragusa’s dissertation, prepared under Panofsky’s student Harry Bober, concerned “A Gothic Psalter in Princeton: Garrett MS. 35.” 93. Ragusa, “Observations,” 215. 94. On these shifts, see, among others, Harris, New Art History. 95. “Report on the Future of the Index submitted to Provost Neil Rudenstine,” April 1987, prepared by Michael Curschmann, Professor of German Languages and Literatures, chair of the Index Committee (IMA Archive).

Bibliography

30

Manuscript Collections Archive of the Index of Medieval Art (IMA), Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Necrology file, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Panofsky, Erwin. Personalakte. Universitätsarchiv, Hamburg. Saxl, Fritz. Papers. Warburg Institute Archive (WIA), School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Published Sources Beyer, Andreas. “Stranger in Paradise: Erwin Panofsky’s Expulsion to the Academic Parnassus.” In Escape to Life: German Intellectuals in New York; A Compendium on Exile After 1933, edited by Eckart Goebel and Sigrid Weigel, 429–44. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.

“Bibliography of the Principal Publications of Charles Rufus Morey.” Art Bulletin 32, no. 4 (December 1950): 345–49. Conant, Kenneth John. Review of Mediaeval Art, by Charles R. Morey. Speculum 19, no.3 (July 1944): 365–66.

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Egbert, Virginia Wylie. “St. Nicholas: The Fasting Child.” Art Bulletin 46, no. 1 (March 1964): 69–70. Elsner, Jaś, and Katharina Lorenz. “The Genesis of Iconology.” Critical Inquiry 38, no. 3 (2012): 483–512. “The Excavation of Antioch-on-the-Orontes: 1932– 1939.” Visual Resources Collection, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. http://‌vrc‌.princeton‌.edu‌/researchphotographs‌​ /s‌/antioch‌/page‌/introduction. Ferrari, Guy, and Charles Rufus Morey. The Gold-Glass Collection of the Vatican Library: With Additonal Catalogues of Other Gold-Glass Collections. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1959. Foletti, Ivan, and Francesco Lovino, eds. Orient oder Rom? History and Reception of a Historiographical Myth (1901–1970). Rome: Viella, 2018. Friend, Albert. “Carolingian Art in the Abbey of Saint-Denis.” Art Studies 1 (1923): 67–75. ———. “Portraits of the Evangelists in Greek and Latin Manuscripts.” Art Studies 5 (1927): 115–47; 7 (1929): 3–29. Green, Rosalie B. “The Index of Christian Art: A Great Humanistic Research Tool.” Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 1, 1963, 8–11, 16–17. Harris, Jonathan. The New Art History: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2001. L’Italia e l’arte straniera: Atti del X Congresso internazionale di storia dell’arte in Roma. Rome: Maglione & Strini, 1922. Jellinek, Arthur L., ed. Bibliographie der vergleichenden Literaturgeschichte. Berlin: A. Duncker, 1903. Jellinek, Arthur L., Otto Fröhlich, Ignaz Beth, and Fritz Goldschmidt, eds. Internationale Bibliographie der Kunstwissenschaft. 15 vols. Berlin: B. Behr, 1903–20. Koch, Robert. “Flower Symbolism in the Portinari Altar.” Art Bulletin 46, no. 1 (March 1964): 70–77. Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. “Princeton: The Beginnings Under Marquand.” In The Early Years of Art History in the United States, edited by Craig Hugh Smyth and Peter M. Lukehart, 7–36. Princeton: Department of Art and Archaeology, 1993. Lee, Rensselaer W. “Charles Rufus Morey, 1877–1955.” Art Bulletin 37, no. 4 (December 1955): iii–vii. Levine, Emily J. Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky and the Hamburg School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. ———. “PanDora, or Erwin and Dora Panofsky and the Private History of Ideas.” Journal of Modern History 83, no. 4 (2011): 753–87. Marucchi, Orazio. “Di un pregevole monumento di antica scultura cristiana rinvenuto negli scavi del Foro Romano.” Nuovo bullettino di archeologia cristiana 7, no. 3 (1901): 205–16. Meiss, Millard. “The Art Bulletin at Fifty,” Art Bulletin 46, no.1 (March 1964): 1–4.

Michels, Karen. Sokrates in Pöseldorf: Erwin Panofskys Hamburger Jahre. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2017. ———. Transplantierte Kunstwissenschaft: Deutschsprachige Kunstgeschichte im amerikanischen Exil. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999. Morey, Charles R. “Art and the History of Art in Italy.” College Art Journal 10, no. 3 (1951): 219–22. ———. “The Art of Auguste Rodin.” Bulletin of the College Art Association of America 1 (1918): 145–54. ———. Christian Art. London: Longmans, Green & Company, 1935. ———. “The Christian Sarcophagus in S. Maria Antiqua in Rome.” Supplementary Papers of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome 1 (1905): 148–56. ———. “Christus Crucifer.” Art Bulletin 4, no. 4 (June 1922): 117–26. ———. Early Christian Art: An Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconography in Sculpture and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942. ———. “An Important Instrument of Research: Princeton’s Index of Christian Art, Covering 50,000 Subjects and Twelve Centuries of Time, Is Used by Scholars All Over the World.” Princeton Alumni Weekly 32, no. 11 (1931): 236–37. ———. Mediaeval Art. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1942. ———. “Notes on East Christian Miniatures,” Art Bulletin 11, no. 1 (1929): 4–103. ———. “Note supplementari al De Rossi: Inscriptiones christianae Urbis Romae, vol. 1.” Nuovo bullettino di archeologia cristiana 8, nos. 1–2 (1902): 55–71. ———. Gli oggetti di avorio e di osso del Museo Sacro Vaticano. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1936. ———. “The Origin of the Asiatic Sarcophagi.” Art Bulletin 4, no. 2 (December 1921): 64–70. ———. “The Origin of the Fish-Symbol.” Princeton Theological Review (1910–12): 8–10. ———. The Sarcophagus of Claudia Antonia Sabina and the Asiatic Sarcophagi. Princeton: Publications of the American Society for the Excavation of Sardis, 1924. ———. “The Silver Casket of San Nazaro in Milan.” American Journal of Archaeology 23 (1919): 101–25. ———. “The Sources of Mediaeval Style.” Art Bulletin 7, no. 2 (December 1924): 35–50. ———. “The Sources of Romanesque Sculpture.” Art Bulletin 2, no. 1 (September 1919): 10–16. Neumeyer, Alfred. “Four Art Historians Remembered: Woelfflin, Goldschmidt, Warburg, Berenson.” Art Journal 31, no. 1 (Autumn 1971): 33–36. ———. “Victory Without Trumpet: An Essay on Art History in Our Time.” 1956. Reprinted in College Art Journal 16, no. 3 (Spring 1957): 198–211.

Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

31

Offizieller Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Kunsthistorischen Kongresses in Amsterdam, 29. September bis 1. Oktober, 1898. Nuremberg, 1899. Panofsky, Erwin. “Charles Rufus Morey.” American Philosophical Society Yearbook (1955): 482–91. ———. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. ———. Galileo as a Critic of the Arts. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954. ———. Hercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst. Leipzig: Teubner, 1930. ———. “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline.” Reprinted in Meaning in the Visual Arts, 1–25. ———. “Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art.” Reprinted with revision in Meaning in the Visual Arts, 26–54. ———. Korrespondenz, 1910 bis 1968: Eine kommentierte Auswahl in fünf Bänden. Edited by Dieter Wuttke. 6 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001–14. ———. Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History. Garden City: Doubleday, 1955. ———. “Three Decades of Art History in the United States: Impressions of a Transplanted European.” Reprinted in Meaning in the Visual Arts, 321–46. ———.“Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst.” Logos 21 (1932): 103–19. Translated by Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz: “On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts,” Critical Inquiry 28 (2012): 467–82. Panofsky, Erwin, and Fritz Saxl, “Classical Mythology in Mediaeval Art.” Metropolitan Museum Studies 4, no. 2 (March 1933): 228–80. ———. Dürers “Melencolia I”: Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung. Leipzig: Teubner, 1923. Panofsky, Gerda. Erwin Panofsky von Zehn bis Dreißig und seine jüdischen Wurzeln. Passau: Dietmar Klinger, 2017. Passini, Michela. Correspondance allemande d’Eugène Müntz: Aux origines de l’institutionnalisation de l’histoire de l’art. Paris: Armand Colin, 2012. Picht, Barbara. Erzwungener Ausweg: Hermann Broch, Erwin Panofsky und Ernst Kantorowicz im Princetoner Exil. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008. Pickard, John. “President’s Address.” Bulletin of the College Art Association of America 1, no. 3 (November 1917): 42–46. “Princeton Expedition to Mt. Athos: Scholars Tracing the Beginnings of Christian Art Bring Back 2,200 Copies of Bible Manuscripts Hidden for Centuries in Monasteries of the ‘Holy

32

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Mountain.’ ” Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 20, 1936, 531. Ragusa, Isa. “A Gothic Psalter in Princeton: Garrett MS. 35.” PhD diss., New York University, 1966. ———. “Observations on the History of the Index.” Visual Resources 13, nos. 3–4 (1998): 215–51. ———. “The Re-Use and Public Exhibition of Roman Sarcophagi During the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance.” MA thesis, New York University, 1951. Robb, David M. Review of Mediaeval Art, by Charles R. Morey. American Journal of Archaeology 49, no.1 (January–March 1945): 116–17. Schapiro, Meyer. Review of Babel’s Tower, by Francis H. Taylor. Art Bulletin 27, no. 4 (December 1945): 272–76. Schmidt, Gerhard. “Die internationalen Kongresse für Kunstgeschichte.” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 36 (1983): 7–116. Schmidt, Peter. Aby M. Warburg und die Ikonologie, mit einem Anhang unbekannter Quellen zur Geschichte der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Ikonographische Studien. Appendix by Dieter Wuttke. Bamberg: Stefan Wendel, 1989. Schmidtke, Sabine. “Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study: A Historical Sketch.” In Studying the Near and Middle East at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1935–2018, edited by Sabine Schmidtke, xxxi– xcviii. Piscataway: Gorgias, 2018. Schramm, Percy Ernst. Review of “Carolingian Art in the Abbey of Saint-Denis,” by Albert Friend. Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 47 (1928): 579–81. Sears, Elizabeth. “First Contact: Panofsky Meets Warburg.” In Aby Warburg 150: Work, Legacy, Promise. Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming. ———. “Under Miss Green’s Watch: Three Decades of Art History at the Index of Christian Art.” In Tributes to Adelaide Bennett Hagens: Manuscripts, Iconography, and the Late Medieval Viewer, edited by Pamela A. Patton and Judith K. Golden, 15–37. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Smith, Holmes. “Problems of the College Art Association.” Bulletin of the College Art Association 1, no. 1 (1913): 6–10. Smyth, Craig Hugh. “Concerning Charles Rufus Morey (1877–1955).” In The Early Years of Art History in the United States, edited by Craig Hugh Smyth and Peter M. Lukehart, 111–21. Princeton: Department of Art and Archaeology, 1993. Spier, Jeffrey, ed. Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Stohlman, W. Frederick. “A Group of Sub-Sidamara Sarcophagi.” American Journal of Archaeology 25, no. 3 (1921): 223–32.

———. Gli Smalti del Museo Sacro Vaticano. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1939. Strzygowski, Josef. Orient oder Rom: Beiträge zur Geschichte der spätantiken und frühchristlichen Kunst. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1901. ———. Review of The Sarcophagus of Claudia Antonia Sabina, by Charles R. Morey. Art Bulletin 7, no. 2 (December 1924): 71–73. Taylor, Francis H. “Charles Rufus Morey.” College Art Journal 15, no. 2 (1955): 139–42. “To the Ladies.” Princeton Alumni Weekly, November 17, 1933.

Volbach, Wolfgang Fritz. I Tessuti del Museo Sacro Vaticano. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1942. Wilhelm, Pia von Reutter. Die Marienkrönung am Westportal der Kathedrale von Senlis: Ein Beitrag zu dem ikonographischen Problem der Marienkrönung. Hamburg: Widmaier, 1941. Woodruff, Helen. The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University: A Handbook. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942.

Iconography and Iconology at Princeton

33

2 Whose Iconography? Aden Kumler

Certes nous travaillons sans cesse à améliorer nos procédés de classement, nous faisons la critique des catégories, nous regroupons, nous subdivisons, mais, au terme de ce travail comme à son origine, il y a toujours l’unique, et l’oeuvre dont l’hérédité est le plus manifeste n’existe come telle que dans la mesure où elle se sépare. —Henri Focillon, 1937

Whereas iconology has survived serious critique and any number of intellectual “turns,” one has the sense that the reputation of iconography has not fared as well, at least in the North American art-historical ecology. It is not unusual, in my experience, to hear bright PhD students say, “But I really don’t want to make just an iconographic argument,” or to encounter in readings or in conversations with colleagues such copula as “merely iconographic” and “reductively iconographic.” As the title of an important 2012 conference made clear, many scholars today are interested in moving “beyond representation”: such movement is often implicitly, if not explicitly, framed as moving “beyond” iconography and its attachments to “subject matter” and “meaning.”1 When was the last time that you asked someone the question, “So what are you working on these days?” and got a response that began, “an iconographic study of . . .”? In my experience, such an answer has become a rarity. All this is not to say that iconography is actually less constitutive of the study of medieval art today than it was in the past. Far from it: one encounters iconographic arguments all the time. Nonetheless, iconography seems to have become an analytic

Figure 2.1 A Porphyrian Tree in a copy of Peter of Spain’s Tractatus, 1472–74. London, Wellcome Library, MS 55, fol. 202v. Photo: Wellcome Collection.

36

practice that dares not speak its name too loudly or with much conviction at present.2 Iconology—particularly the iconology of Erwin Panofsky or of Aby Warburg—has attracted considerable historiographic interest of late, but the iconography of Adolphe Napoléon Didron, Louis Réau, Émile Mâle, Charles Rufus Morey—and one should add Gertrud Schiller—has not provoked the same historiographic enthusiasm.3 Equally symptomatic, in my view, Meyer Schapiro and Michael Camille—two heroic figures for medieval art historians—are rarely invoked as avatars of iconographic analysis, despite the patently iconographic orientation, preoccupation, and contribution of their work on medieval art.4 No doubt there are many reasons for this state of affairs: both for the relative lack of historiographic interest in iconography per se and for the sense of intellectual insufficiency or outmodedness that has seemed to cling to iconography in recent years. Nonetheless, I am convinced that iconography’s reputation has suffered not because it is an inherently reductive or inadequate way to formulate questions and pursue arguments concerning works of art but rather because it has been radically underestimated, and perhaps equally important, it remains undertheorized. In this essay I will make a case for the importance and centrality of iconography to the study of medieval art. I take iconography as a term covering a complex interpretive process that involves perception, comparison, distinction, and predication in the formulation of questions and arguments concerning the signification of works of art. On this account, iconography is a demanding practice of forming judgments about how works of art produce meaning in collaboration with their beholders, a practice that involves embodied perception and thought. Most broadly, I want to suggest that iconography can be an exemplary enactment of those forms of inquiry and knowledge formation that are characteristic of the humanities, writ large. In short, I want to suggest that iconography is a profoundly dialectical undertaking. Whose “dialectic” am I talking about? Not the dialectic of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, or Friedrich Nietzsche.5 The dialectic I have in mind, or rather in my mind’s eye, is Aristotle’s dialectic taken up and transformed by Porphyry (b. 234), Martianus Capella (fl. fifth / early sixth century), Boethius (d. 524), Abelard (d. 1142), Adam of the Petit Pont (d. 1157/69?), Peter of Spain (fl. thirteenth century), and every medieval magister worth his salt. More specifically, it is the dialectical growth of a forest of medieval Porphyrian Trees (fig. 2.1).6 The Porphyrian Tree is usually discussed as one of a number of diagrammatic schemas employed in the Middle Ages to mnemonically “hold” or “fix” information and to conceptually plot out various forms of relation.7 Among medieval tree-like schemas, the Porphyrian Tree is distinct both with respect to its form and to its textually specified contents.8 Stricto sensu, the Porphyrian Tree is a diagrammatic précis of a passage from Porphyry’s Isagoge (Introduction) to Aristotle’s Categories, a text that circulated widely in the Middle Ages thanks to Boethius’s Latin translation of, and two commentaries on, the Isagoge.9 In Boethius’s Latin translation, the passage reads: Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

in unoquoque praedicamento sunt quaedam generalissima et rursus alia specialissima et inter generalissima et specialissima alia. Est autem generalissimum quidem super quod nullum ultra aliud sit superveniens genus, specialissimum autem, post quod non erit alia inferior species; inter generalissimum autem et specialissimum et genera et species sunt eadem, ad aliud quidem et ad aliud sumpta. Sit autem in uno praedicamento manifestum quod dicitur. Substantia est quidem et ipsa genus, sub hac autem est corpus, sub corpore uero animatum corpus, sub quo animal, sub animali vero rationale animal, sub quo homo, sub homine vero Socrates et Plato et qui sunt particulares homines. Sed horum substantia quidem generalissimum est et quod genus sit solum, homo vero specialissimum et quod species solum sit; corpus vero species quidem est substantiae, genus vero corporis animati; et animatum corpus species quidem est corporis, genus vero animalis. Animal autem species quidem est corporis animati, genus vero animalis rationalis, sed rationale animal species quidem est animalis, genus autem hominis; homo vero species quidem est rationalis animalis, non autem etiam genus particularium hominum, sed solum species. Et omne quod ante individua proximum est, species erit solum, non etiam genus.10 In each type of predication there are some most general items and again other most special items; and there are other items between the most general and the most special. Most general is that above which there will be no other subordinate genus; most special, that after which there will be no other subordinate species; and between the most general and the most special are other items which are at the same time both genera and species (but taken in relation now to one thing and now to another.) What I mean should become clear in the case of a single type of predication. Substance is itself a genus. Under it is body, and under body animate body, under which is animal; under animal is rational animal, under which is man; and under man are Socrates and Plato and particular men. Of these items, substance is the most general and is only a genus, while man is the most special and is only a species. Body is a species of substance and a genus of animate body. Animate body is a species of body and a genus of rational animal. Rational animal is a species of animal and a genus of man. Man is a species of rational animal, but not a genus of particular men—only a species.11 In the Porphyrian Tree drawn within the text block of the Wellcome Library’s fifteenth-​ century copy of Peter of Spain’s Tractatus (also known as Summule logicales), we see the word “substantia” inscribed in the roundel at the diagram’s apex (fig. 2.1).12 Moving downward through the diagram’s branches, we follow Porphyry’s account, quoted above, of how to understand the relation of species and genera, framed in relation to 38

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

the implicit question: what is a human being (homo)? Pursuing this dialectical line of reasoning from the highest, most general genus—substance—to the most primary or specific substance—the individual human being—we trace a path through the diagram with our eyes, proceeding downward from each central roundel or genus by way of one of its two differentiae (distinctions), until we arrive at the specialissimi or, as Aristotle calls them, “primary substances”: individuals that are neither species nor genera; in this case, the individual flesh-and-blood men Socrates and Plato.13 The Porphyrian Tree certainly served as a mnemonic device that allowed teachers and their students to apprehend and retain Porphyry’s model for the proper distinction, or predication, of homo (human being, man) in relation to the category substantia. The Porphyrian Tree, however, amounts to more than a mnemonic locus or holding place for the content of this lesson; it figures the very process of dialectical reasoning. The schema is, I am suggesting, a profoundly dynamic representation. By means of drawing and inscription, it enacts how to distinguish, how to make sound judgments about the right ways to distinguish, and how to construct a convincing response to a difficult question. A number of iconographic examinations of the Porphyrian Tree have been made, exploring the Porphyrian Tree as an archive of responses to and reworkings of Porphyry’s Isagoge, beginning with Boethius’s translation of and commentaries on Porphyry and continuing through the end of the Middle Ages and beyond.14 In her 2010 dissertation and a series of illuminating studies, Annemieke Verboon examined when and why the abstract schema acquired leaves, roots, and bark, thus coming to resemble other medieval depictions of trees.15 So too, modern commentators have examined the Porphyrian Tree’s situation within a larger forest of medieval arboreal diagrams.16 More broadly, it is thanks to a tradition of historicist iconographic study that we have the rudiments of an “evolutionary account” of arboreal schemas in the Middle Ages and that diachronic, iconographic perspective continues to yield new insights into the role played by diagrams and arboreal tropes in medieval approaches to memory, education, and the organization of information. Nor is the arboreal diagram a thing of the past; its iconographic “tradition” continues today in an interestingly reflexive manner. I have in mind those stemmatic diagrams (stemmata) employed by scholars interested in reconstructing the original state of a text, its manuscript tradition, or the diachronic transmission of iconographic motifs or pictorial formulae (fig. 2.2). The method of textual editing closely associated with the use of such schemas is usually called “stemmatic” or “genetic” criticism. Made famous by philologist Karl Lachmann (d. 1851) and subsequently revised, refined, and critiqued by other scholars, genetic criticism takes textual “errors” as the crucial clues from which to establish the “recension” or diachronic transmission history of a text from manuscript copy to manuscript copy.17 “Errors” that appear in multiple manuscripts are thus construed as common “traits” or “mutations” of a text as it is copied and recopied over time. Collating manuscripts on the basis of both “errors” and “variants,” Whose Iconography?

39

Figure 2.2 Stemma for illustrated manuscripts of Terrence proposed by Leslie Webber Jones, in “The Archetypes of the Terence Miniatures,” Art Bulletin 10, no. 1 (1927): 119.

40

the stemmatic critic painstakingly organizes all known manuscript witnesses of a text into recensions or branches of that text’s stemma. As historians of medieval art are well aware, this stemmatic or “genetic” approach to editorial (textual) reconstruction was adopted by art historians interested in tracing the transmissions and the origins of iconographic types and pictorial formulae, as well as the lines of filiation or descent employed in the post facto determination of artistic “schools” or styles.18 The use of textual and pictorial stemmata has been severely critiqued on several grounds. Condemned as a literally regressive, that is, chronologically backward moving, obsessive pursuit of imagined archetypes, at the expense of actually extant manuscripts, works, or monuments, the stemma—according to its critics—is both inadequate to the particular works it purports to classify and order and is always already undermined by the unspecifiable number of works that once existed, inspired further works, and no longer survive. As a host of intelligent practitioners and critics of stemmatic criticism have recognized, the modern stemma is itself nothing more or less than an argument.19 The chief purpose of most art-historical stemmata has been to advance “genetic” or genealogical arguments: that is, to argue inductively, working from extant works of art, about how a given iconographic motif or set of pictorial variations on a theme “evolved” over time, changing form and sometimes changing in meaning. According to this genetic or genealogical paradigm, each individual work bears some visible manifestation of its art-historical “genome,” as it were; accordingly, the art historian can track consistent structures, as well as mutations and adaptations created by successive acts of copying over time. The iconographic stemma the art historian constructs on the basis of these observations amounts to a propositional family tree; with it, the art historian constructs iconographic genealogies and infers the “family histories” of  iconographic types or pictorial formulae.20 To construct a stemma is, fundamentally, to make an argument from and about sameness and difference; in other words, it involves predicating about individuals— single works—in terms of what one perceives them to have in common and, equally, what differentiates them. The relations between individual works (be they extant or hypothesized) diagrammed by the stemma can only be posited because the stemma’s maker has recognized both repetition and variation, and both sameness and difference, among a number of objects and has developed criteria to make sense—that is, propositions—from them. The criteria employed to distinguish individual works in the first place and the processes by which the stemma maker makes sense of the mass of observations they generate concerning individual works do not register in the stemma. In critical editions and much iconographic stemmatic criticism, such considerations are aired at length in the scholarly prose that surrounds the stemma, usually in technical, detailed discussions of empirical data from the perspectives of orthography, paleography,

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

varieties of textual errors or corruptions, or in the case of works of art, salient motifs, compositional structures, the absence or presence of telling elements or details, etc. What is not usually acknowledged, let alone explicitly theorized, by both stemma makers and scholars skeptical of stemmatic criticism is the subtle, difficult work involved in perceiving and thinking sameness and difference dialectically: a process that, at least potentially, undergirds the foundational work of collation and continues to inform analysis until it is argumentatively fixed in the branching form of the stemma. I have made this excursus into the modern critical stemma because I think it has acquired the status of an emblem for the allegedly “mechanistic” or “reductive” character of iconography as a historio-interpretive practice. In the remainder of this essay, I want to challenge this dismissive view of iconography and to suggest instead that iconography, practiced critically, is in fact—or rather, in process—a profoundly dialectical labor. As a dialectical mode of apperception and interpretation, iconography deserves a different emblem, a more fitting schema, and one is already at hand: the medieval Porphyrian Tree. In what follows, I examine one twelfth-century drawing featuring a Porphyrian Tree (figs. 2.3 and 2.4).21 Preserved today in Darmstadt (Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 2282, fol. 1v), the drawing is indebted to other medieval images and texts, but in several respects, it is an iconographic unicum.22 The personification of Dialectic dominates the page. Holding a Porphyrian Tree in her right hand and a tightly coiled serpent in her left, Dialectica’s monumental frontality and large staring eyes confront the beholder in no uncertain terms. Standing upon a small footstool studded with gemstones, Dialectica wears an insistently contemporary garment and a striking crown surmounted by three crosses upon her veiled head.23 Many medieval visual representations of Dialectic personified present her as a member of a larger group. In a northern French twelfth-century illumination (Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève, MS 1041, fol. 1v), Dialectica, holding her attribute, the serpent, sits at the center of the sorority of the Trivium, flanked by Grammar on the left and Rhetoric on the right (fig. 2.5).24 Medieval artists also represented Dialectica among the seven sisters of the Liberal Arts. In a wonderful twelfth-century leaf in the collection of the Morgan Library (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.982r), each of the seven Liberal Arts appears as a bust-length figure surrounded by a cloudbank, drinking from one of seven streams emanating from Philosophy’s breast (fig. 2.6).25 First among the arts grouped on the right side of the composition, Dialectica points toward the disk featuring a number of smaller circles that she holds in her right hand. At first glance, she seems to lack the serpent that is often her only attribute. But a closer look at her figure reveals a monstrous, basilisk-like form half-concealed beneath the folds of the mantle draped over her left elbow (fig. 2.7). Each of these twelfth-century representations of Dialectica registers the influence of Martianus Capella’s vivid description of the figure in his De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii, a fundamental text in the educational cursus by the ninth century, when it was commented 42

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

upon by John Scotus Eriugena (fl. mid-ninth century), Remigius of Auxerre (d. likely 908), and Martin of Laon (d. 875). Widely disseminated and read in subsequent centuries, De nuptiis offered its audience a memorable introduction to the seven Liberal Arts, each of whom appears among the text’s dramatis personae.26 One of the three earliest depictions of a Liberal Art personified is preserved in a copy of De nuptiis dated to the late ninth or early tenth century (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7900A, fol. 132v; fig. 2.8).27 The manuscript’s full-page drawing visually conveys much of the energy and menace of Dialectica’s arrival on the allegorical scene at the start of book 4 of De nuptiis: Whose Iconography?

Figure 2.3 Opening with Domina Dialectica and Philosophers, Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 2282, fols. 1v–2r, ca. 1140. Photo courtesy Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt.

43

Figure 2.4 Domina dialectica presides over disputing philosophers, ca. 1140. Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 2282, fol. 1v. Photo courtesy Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Darmstadt. Figure 2.5 The Trivium and a student (detail), in Martianus Capella, De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii, with the commentary of Remigius of Auxerre, twelfth century. Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève, MS 1041, fol. 1v. Photo: akg-images / Jean-Claude Varga. Figure 2.6 Philosophia and the seven Liberal Arts, twelfth century. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.982r. Purchased by the Belle da Costa Greene Fund, with special gifts of the Glazier Fund, Dr. Ruth Nanda Anshen, Mrs. Harold M. Landon, and Miss Julia P. Wightman, 1978. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

Figure 2.7 Dialectica, from Philosophia and the seven Liberal Arts (detail), twelfth century. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.982r. Purchased by the Belle da Costa Greene Fund, with special gifts of the Glazier Fund, Dr. Ruth Nanda Anshen, Mrs. Harold M. Landon, and Miss Julia P. Wightman, 1978. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Figure 2.8 Dialectica, in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii, late ninth / early tenth century. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7900A, fol. 132v. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

[H]aec quoque contortis stringens effamina nodis, qua sine nil sequitur nilque repugnat item, in coetum superum ueniens primordia fandi . . . acri admodum uisu et uibrantibus continua mobilitate luminibus, cui crines tortuosi decentique inflexione crispati et nexiles uidebantur, qui tamen deducti per quosdam consequentes gradus ita formam totius capitis circulabant ut nihil deesse cerneres, nihil superfluum detineres. cui quidem pallium Athenarumque uestitus sed gestamen in manibus fuerat inopinum ac prorsus gymnasiis omnibus inexpertum. in laeua quippe serpens gyris immanibus inuolutus, in dextra formulae quaedam florentibus discolora uenustate ceris sollerter effigiatae latentis hami nexu interius tenebantur; sed quoniam eius laeua sub pallio occulebat insidias uiperinas, cunctis dextera praebebatur; denique ex illis formulis siquis aliquam percepisset, mox apprehensus hamo ad latentis anguis uirosos circulos trahebatur, qui tamen mox emergens primo spinosorum dentium acumine uenenato assiduis hominem morsibus affligebat, dehinc ambitu multiplici circumactum ad condiciones propositas coartabat. si autem quamlibet formulam nullus uellet assumere, quibusdam obuios interrogatiunculis occupabat aut latenter in 46

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

eos anguem serpere stimulabat, donec nexilis complexio circumuentos ad interrogantis arbitrium strangularet. ipsa autem femina contractioris uidebatur corporis habitusque furui, uerum dumalibus hirta setis nescio quid uulgo inexplanbile loquebatur. nam uniuersalem dedicatiuam particulari abdicatiuae obliquam, sed ambas posse uertier asserebat uniuocis aequiuoca conectendo ac solam se discernere uerum quid falsumne sit uelut quadam diuinantis fiducia loquebatur.28 Into the assembly of the Gods came Dialectic, a woman whose weapons are complex and knotty utterances. Without her, nothing follows, and likewise, nothing stands in opposition. . . . Her eyes constantly darted about; her intricate coiffure seemed beautifully curled and bound together, and descending by successive stages, it so encompassed the shape of her whole head that you could not have detected anything lacking, nor grasped anything excessive. She was wearing the dress and cloak of Athens, it is true, but what she carried in her hands was unexpected, and had been unknown in all the Greek schools. In her left hand she held a snake twined in immense coils; in her right hand a set of little forms [formulae], carefully inscribed on wax tablets which were adorned with the beauty of contrasting color, was held on the inside by a hidden hook; but since her left hand kept the crafty device of the snake hidden under her cloak, her right hand was offered to one and all. Then if anyone took one of those little forms, he was soon caught on the hook and dragged toward the poisonous coils of the hidden snake, which presently emerged and after first biting the man relentlessly with the venomous points of its sharp teeth then gripped him in its many coils and compelled him to the intended position. If no one wanted to take any of the little forms, Dialectic confronted them with some questions; or secretly stirred the snake to creep up on them until its tight embrace strangled those who were caught and compelled them to accept the will of their interrogator. Dialectic herself was compact in body, dark in appearance with thick, bushy hair on her limbs, and she kept saying things that the majority could not understand. For she claimed that the universal affirmative was diametrically opposed to the particular negative [a reference to the so-called square of oppositions schema], but that it was possible for them both to be reversed by connecting ambiguous terms to univocal terms; she claimed also that she alone discerned what was true from what was false, as if she spoke with the assurance of divine inspiration.29 The late ninth- / early tenth-century drawing in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7900A depicts Dialectica on the attack (fig. 2.8). The personification wields the wax tablet described by Martianus like a club. The “hook” that secretly secures the tablet up her sleeve in the text has been transformed by the artist into a long 48

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

implement that Dialectica actively employs to seize one of the small male figures who stand, overwhelmed, in the right half of the composition. Not content with the single snake mentioned in Martianus’s ekphrasis, the artist gave his Dialectica two coiling serpents, who abet her assault upon the helpless youths. Compared with this drawing, the Darmstadt image looks relatively static, and its depiction of Dialectica appears all the more hieratic (see fig. 2.4). Prefacing Boethius’s translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge, the Darmstadt drawing is not immediately in conversation with Martianus’s imagistic allegory, although the serpent held by the figure of Dialectica in the drawing certainly registers the enduring influence of De nuptiis upon medieval imaginings of Dialectica personified. In the Darmstadt drawing, Dialectica is represented as an autonomous figure of intellectual authority towering over the figures of four philosophers seated in the corners of the page. Inscriptions identity these male figures as Plato and Aristotle (above), and Socrates and “Magister Adam” (below). This last figure is a depiction of Adam of the Petit Pont, a famous teacher in twelfth-century Paris and the author of a treatise on Aristotle’s Analytica priora, one of the major school texts on dialectic.30 Indeed it has been argued, convincingly in my view, that the drawing—like the manuscript in which it is inscribed—was made by one of Adam of Petit Pont’s students.31 The four philosophers are grouped on the page as two pairs of interlocutors or, perhaps more accurately, disputants. Above, Plato and Aristotle point at each other across an interval of parchment. Despite the distance separating their seated forms, the profile rendering of their bodies, their gesticulations, and the marked sidelong glances they direct at each other collectively sketch a scene of animated debate. Socrates and Master Adam form a pendant scene of antiphonal argument below. Together, the four philosopher figures form an intellectual court around the central regal figure of Dialectica. The fact that Dialectica is the dominant presence and the female ruler of this pantheon of intellectual luminaries is established beyond any doubt by the composition of the drawing and by its use of differing scales for the personification and her human entourage. Nonetheless, in good scholastic fashion, the draftsman supplied a gloss for his central figure that reinforces these formal devices. Introduced by a paraph mark, itself a component part of the visual apparatus of the scholarly page, the words Domina dialectica (Lady Dialectica) hover above the personification’s crown. One of the most striking aspects of the drawing is its redoubled representation of Dialectica. While the female figure drawn at the center of the page has been universally recognized as a depiction of Dialectic personified, most commentators have not recognized that Dialectic is also represented—in nonfigural form—by the vegetal Porphyrian Tree. This botanical schema has previously been described as Domina dialectica’s “scepter” or her iconographic “attribute.”32 Although comparison with the drawing in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7900A might suggest that the wax tablet bearing formulae (or little forms) that Dialectica wields in De nuptiis has Whose Iconography?

49

been transformed into a Porphyrian Tree in the Darmstadt drawing, I think such a vision of the Darmstadt image’s vegetal stemma misses a larger, more important point. The Porphyrian Tree held by the personification of Dialectica is itself another representation of dialectic; indeed the Porphyrian Tree was the figure or icon for dialectic in the Middle Ages. Instantly recognizable to any medieval magister or student of the liberal arts, this diagrammatic representation of dialectic as a process would have been the most familiar and iconic element within this highly original drawing for its medieval beholders. What is more, the metaphysical, physical, and logical play of sameness and difference, the disciplined perceiving of the interrelationship of genera and species with both the eye and the intellect, and the formulation of statements adequate to the results of that process of apperception that are diagrammatically organized within the Tree of Porphyry are also powerfully enacted in the drawing as a whole. The symmetrically disposed tendrils that curve out from the central axis of the Porphyrian Tree rhyme with the bent arms that branch out from the attenuated vertical axis of Domina dialectica’s figure. The repetition of this symmetrical branching structure acts as a kind of visual common denominator, an underlying schema that structures both the female figure and the dialectical diagram—despite their obvious differences—as species of two different genera of representation, namely the figural-mimetic and the abstract-diagrammatic. If we examine the lowest of the Porphyrian Tree’s curling branches, the two tendrils that frame homo and deus as species of the genus “rational animal,” we cannot fail to see how the figure of Socrates has been drawn so that his form implicitly extends the homo branch of the diagram, supplying the logical conclusion to the differentia of “mortal,” which is suppressed in this Porphyrian Tree but appears in others (fig. 2.9).33 The figure of Socrates and the proper noun “Socrates” inscribed above its head thus complete the diagram by dialectically differentiating its final genus, “homo,” in the form of an individual man.34 That this is a deliberate gesture on the part of the drawing’s maker is corroborated by the convention—stretching back to Porphyry’s Isagoge—of designating the specialissimi or primary substances of the category of Substance with the names “Socrates” and “Plato.”35 The distinctly “nerdy” wit at play in this corner of the composition—a kind of visual in-joke for initiates into the art of dialectic—should not, however, distract us from recognizing that the drawing as a whole figures the very argument, prosecuted by way of careful distinction, that is enacted and represented by the Porphyrian Tree integrated into the center of the composition. The drawn figure of Socrates is a mimetic instantiation of the final, most specific (specialissimus) term in the diagram’s logical scheme, but the Socrates figure is also and equally a potential first term in the drawing’s performance of dialectical specification and collection, the twinned acts of discerning difference and sameness that allow the dialectician to make sound propositions about species and genera. 50

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 2.9 Porphyrian Tree with final differentiae “mortale” and “inmortale,” eleventh century. Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 189, fol. 1r. Photo courtesy Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek Köln.

Socrates is one of four homines (men) drawn on the page. As noted above, these figures are represented in the act of disputation: each philosopher drives his point home with a jabbing index finger; each man is depicted seated, with one leg crossed over the other, facing toward the central axis of the page; and the four disputants are represented in very similar garments. Most important, however, each of these four figures is shown enacting the proprium (the proper differentia or distinction) of Whose Iconography?

51

the species homo within the genus of animal: the capacity for reasoning that distinguishes man from all other animals. The maker of the drawing has taken considerable pains to render his four philosopher figures as equally, repetitively, and mimetically instantiating the definition of man (rationale animal) that is dialectically framed by the Porphyrian Tree held in Domina dialectica’s right hand. Nonetheless, when we look closely at these four figures we recognize that they defy characterization as “generic types.” Not only does each philosopher exhibit small (and not so small) differences from his fellow philosophers, but also, the proper nouns inscribed above each of the figures clearly designate them by name as individuals. These inscribed proper nouns are integral to the dialectical performance of the drawing as a whole; integrated into the pictorial composition, they make the significance of verbal predication in dialectical reasoning and disputation visible. What is more, each inscribed nomen, together with the individual human form it names, figures a fundamental element in medieval dialectic practice: the “simple proposition” composed of only two terms that Boethius famously exemplified with the sentence “Socrates disputat” (Socrates disputes).36 When the maker of the drawing populated the corners of his composition with the figures of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and Magister Adam of the Petit Pont, he assembled a dialectical dream team. But he also did something much more subtle and sophisticated in his drawing. He depicted each of these philosophical heroes so that they figured the most fundamental of all dialectical acts, namely the simple proposition composed of name and verb: “Socrates disputes.” In the self-reflexive enactment of dialectical reasoning that is the Darmstadt drawing, each named philosopher thus acts as the first term in a drawn syllogism responding to the question “What is a human being?” Like Aristotle and his medieval commentators, the drawing answers with the proprium: “rational animal.” But what are we when we look at this image and begin to interpret it? I think we are iconographers, and so, we too, are dialecticians. In order to begin to make statements, even the simplest statements, about this drawing, I tried to see what it has in common with other works—both other images and other texts—and I have tried to make sound distinctions, both in relation to other images in the genus “dialectic” and within the pictorial space of this single drawing. In other words, I have practiced two of the fundamental dialectical acts of judgment or reasoning: collection and specification. At times, I have worked from generalities to singular details, while at other junctures in my account, I have taken singulars as points of departure to inductively argue for a more general or generic statement or claim. I do not think I have definitively demonstrated anything, but in this way too, my iconographic reading has been dialectical: as Boethius emphasized, dialectic (unlike demonstration) does not proceed from truths that are known per se; dialectic is, instead, an art of discovering arguments that do not yield hard and fast certainties but rather convictions.37

52

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

In response to the question I have posed—What are we when we look at this image and begin to interpret it?—I will conclude by acknowledging an obvious, possibly discomforting condition that attends our encounter with, and our interpretive responses to the Darmstadt drawing. As we look at this image and begin to put questions to it, as we discover in our perception of its specific form any number of potential arguments and weigh those lines of argument, refining them and our perception of the work of art by acts of distinction and collection—as we do all of this—Domina dialectica stares out from the page, confronting us. In one hand, she holds a serpent, whose coils are capable of contorting and binding us to her propositions; and in her other hand, she holds a Porphyrian Tree, whose vital growth figures the forking path that all dialectical reasoning must trace and retrace. Returning Dialectica’s address with our iconographic gaze, we are interpellated. We complete the drawing’s scene of paired disputants by daring, no doubt rashly, to engage Dialectica herself; we join the fray.

Notes My thanks go to Pamela Patton and Catherine Fernandez—for including me in this volume and for their unflappable editorial stewardship in the midst of quite difficult circumstances—and to the other participants in the lively and thought-provoking conference that preceded the volume. I also wish to gratefully acknowledge the collegial labor of the anonymous colleague who generously agreed to peer review the volume and Annika Fisher, whose editing improved the text. This essay has benefitted from conversation with my student Martin Schwarz and from his dissertation, “Disputed City”; I thank Martin for his many contributions—textual, iconographic, and sui generis—to my thinking. I also acknowledge, with gratitude, the help of my intrepid past and present research assistants: Simon Bühler, Vanessa Gonzalvez, and Alexis Wells. My first thoughts in the direction of this essay took root among a merry band of “comparison comparers” at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin from 2014 to 2015 and were inspired by the work and friendship of Caroline McCrudden: morphologist and magistra stemmatum extraordinaire. I remain grateful for the insights shared by these fellow wanderers in the forest of dialectic. The title of this essay deliberately rings the changes on Bois, “Whose Formalism?” 1. “Beyond Representation: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Nature of Things,” September 27–29, 2012, Bard Graduate Center and Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York; the three-day conference was organized by Ittai Weinryb (Bard Graduate Center, New York), Finbarr Barry

Flood (NYU-IFA, New York), and Jaś Elsner (Oxford University). 2. In the context of this volume, it hardly needs stating that the Index of Medieval Art (olim Index of Christian Art) as a center for research and the Index’s publications program, including the journal Studies in Iconography, have hardly abandoned an explicit interest in iconography and the heuristic challenges posed by iconographic study, much to the benefit of scholars and students working on art of the medieval period. 3. Several important recent exceptions to this general rule include: Hourihane, Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography; Baschet, Iconographie médiévale; Schlink, “Enseignement ou illumination?”; Donadieu-Rigaut, “Images médiévales.” 4. Nonetheless, see Reeve, “Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages”; Stirnemann, “Meyer Schapiro as Iconographer.” 5. I should note that Andrew Cole’s revelatory reexamination of Hegel’s dialectic, Birth of  Theory, has played an oblique but significant role in my thinking about dialectic. 6. This Porphyrian Tree is integrated into a copy of Peter of Spain’s Tractatus (Dialectica), 1472–1474 ce: London, Wellcome Library, MS 55, fol. 202v; for further details, see n. 12 below. 7. On Porphyrian Trees, see Verboon, “Lines of Thought”; Hacking, “Trees of Logic”; Evans, “Geometry of the Mind; ” Verboon, “Medieval Tree of Porphyry”; Schroeder, “Arbor porphyriana”; Verboon, “Einen alten Baum.”

Whose Iconography?

53

8. For further discussion of arboreal schemata in the medieval period, from a vast bibliography, see Kamber, “Baumsymbolik und Baumschematik”; Berns, “Baumsprache und Sprachbaum”; Evans, “Geometry of the Mind”; Ladner, “Medieval and Modern Understanding”; Preisinger, Lignum vitae; Schadt, Die Darstellungen der Arbores; Brumbaugh, “Logical and Mathematical Symbolism;” Semper, “Diagrams in English Medieval Manuscripts”; Esmeijer, Divina Quaternitas, 41–47, 104–16, passim; Klapisch-Zuber, “De la nature végétale”; Klapisch-​ Zuber and Baqué, Stammbäume; Klapisch-Zuber, “Genèse de l’arbre généalogique.” For a chronologically and geographically wide-ranging and richly illustrated discussion of arboreal schemes of organizing and analyzing information see Lima, Book of Trees. 9. On Boethius’s translation of and two commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge, with further bibliography, see Casey, “Boethius’s Works on Logic”; Magee, “Boethius”; Magee and Marenbon, “Appendix: Boethius’ Works”; Martin, “Logical Textbooks and Their Influence”; Ebbesen, “Aristotelian Commentator.” 10. Porphyry and Boethius, Isagoge / Porphyre, 5–6. 11. English translation by Barnes in Porphyry, Introduction 2.4.15–32, trans. Barnes, 5–6. 12. London, Wellcome Library, MS 55, fol. 202v; the manuscript has been fully digitized, with cataloging: https://‌wellcomelibrary‌.org‌/item‌​ /b19656452. Both the biography of Peter of Spain and date of his Tractatus or Summule remain uncertain; d’Ors has shown that the older identification of the Tractatus’s author “Petrus Hispanus” with the Petrus who became Pope John XXI or a Portuguese thinker of the same name (sometimes also identified with John XXI) cannot stand (“Petrus Hispanus O.P., Auctor Summularum”; and “Petrus Hispanus O.P., Auctor Summularum [II]).” For a succinct précis of the state of knowledge concerning the Tractatus and its author, see Ebbesen, “Early Supposition Theory II,” 69. 13. Aristotle, Categories 2a11, 2a34, 2b7, trans. Ackrill, 5–7. 14. In addition to the references given in n. 8 above, see also Cameron, “Logic of Dead Humans”; Blum, “God and Individuals.” 15. Verboon, “Lines of Thought”; Verboon, “Medieval Tree of Porphyry”; Verboon, “Einen alten Baum.” 16. See n. 8 above. 17. On Lachmann: Timpanaro, Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, and Carey, “Lachmann, Karl (Carl) Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm.” 18. Kurt Weitzmann is, arguably, the most famous practitioner of such art-historical stemmatic criticism, which he preferred to call “picture

54

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

criticism”; the fullest statement and enactment of his approach is found in Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex. For a sampling of critiques and reassessments of Weitzmann’s method, see Lowden, review of The Byzantine Octateuchs; Lowden, “Beginnings of Biblical Illustration”; Dolezal, “Elusive Quest for the ‘Real Thing’ ”; Kessler, “Weitzmann’s Refrigerator.” For further discussion in relation to medieval traditions of copying and thinking pictorially and stemmatically, see Kessler, “Configuring the Invisible.” 19. For several (re)appraisals of “genetic criticism” and stemmatics, variously construed, see Deppman, Ferrer, and Groden, Genetic Criticism; Greetham, “Phylum–Tree–Rhizome”; Greetham, “Textual Forensics”; Trachsler, “How to Do Things with Manuscripts”; Hult, “Reading It Right.” 20. The recourse to tropes of genealogy, family relationships, and family resemblances by historians of illuminated manuscripts is striking; these tropes and their entailments warrant greater critical historiographic and analytic scrutiny; for a foray in this direction (not concerned with medieval illuminated manuscripts, per se) see Ginzburg, “Family Resemblances and Family Trees.” 21. My analysis of this drawing (Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 2282, fol. 1v) is indebted to the discussion of this image in Schwarz, “Disputed City.” It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge that Schwarz’s independent interpretation of drawing, as well as conversations with him, have shaped my seeing and thinking. 22. The manuscript has usually been localized to Paris, ca. 1140 ce. Citing a “mündliche Mitteilung,” Hermann Knaus notes that “nach Bernhard Bischoffs Urteil ist die Schrift als die einer ‘französischen Kathedralschule’ anzusprechen” (“Hochmittelalterliche Koperteinbänder” 332). For a full digital surrogate and cataloging of Darmstadt, Universitäts- u. Landesbibliothek, MS 2282, see http://‌tudigit‌.ulb‌.tu‌​ -darmstadt‌.de‌/show‌/Hs‌-2282. On the Darmstadt drawing, see also Verdier, “Iconographie des arts libéraux,” 332; Katzenellenbogen, “Representation of the Seven Liberal Arts,” 46; Evans, Medieval Drawings, 32; Knaus, “Hochmittelalterliche Koperteinbänder”; Verboon, “Lines of Thought,” 67–69; Schadt, Die Darstellungen der Arbores, 99–100; Camille, “Dissenting Image,” 136, 139; Cleaver, Education in Twelfth-​Century Art, 91–93, 110–12; Legner, Ornamenta ecclesiae, 67–68 (cat. no. A 13); Die Sammlungen des Baron von Hüpsch, cat. no. 60. I regret that I have not been able to consult Stolz, Artes-liberales-Zyklen, 215–39. 23. The insistently up-to-date character of Dialectica’s garment, a bliaut gironé, is identified and discussed further in Schwarz, “Disputed City.” On the two-piece bliaut gironé, see Koslin and Snyder,

“From Content to Form,” 87; and Snyder, Early Gothic Column-Figure Sculpture, 37–39. 24. For cataloging and selective digital images of Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève, MS 1041, see Section des Manuscrits enluminés, Notice of Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève, 1041, in the Initiale. Catalogue des manuscrits enluminés database: http://‌initiale‌.irht‌​ .cnrs‌.fr‌/codex‌/3265. For further discussion, see Legner, Ornamenta ecclesiae, 64, 66 (cat. no. A 10); Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts, 25 (cat. no. 135). 25. For digital images, cataloging, and further bibliography for New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.982r, see http://‌ica‌.themorgan‌.org‌​ /manuscript‌/description‌/145359. See also Cleaver, Education in Twelfth-Century Art, 30. 26. See the essays, with further bibliography, collected in Teeuwen and O’Sullivan, Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella. 27. A full digital surrogate of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7900A is available via Gallica: ark:‌/12148‌/btv1b10546779x. For detailed cataloging and bibliography, see https://​ ‌archivesetmanuscrits‌.bnf‌.fr‌/ark:‌/12148‌/cc94410h. See also Heydenreich, “Eine illustrierte Martianus Capella-​Handschrift”; Cleaver, Education in Twelfth-Century Art, 88; Wirth, “Eine illustrierte Martianus-Capella-Handschrift.” As Evans notes, only two other pre-twelfth-century visual personifications of the liberal arts have been identified: a depiction of the quadrivium in the Boethius manuscript made in Tours, ca. 845 ce, for Charles the Bald (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Class. 5, fol. 9v) and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 3110, fol. 60r. On the Bamberg manuscript, with further bibliography, see Suckale-Redlefsen, Handschriften, 30–39 (cat. no. 20). On the Paris manuscript, see d’Alverny, “Sagesse et ses sept filles,” esp. 261–66. 28. Martianus Capella, Martianus Capella, 150–53. 29. English translation in Stahl and Johnson, Martianus Capella, 2:106–8. 30. On Adam of the Petit Pont, also known as Adam of Balsham, see Klibansky, “Balsham, Adam of [Adam de Parvo Ponte]”; Minio-Paluello, “ ‘Ars Disserendi.’ ” The identification of the drawn figure labeled “Magister Adam” with Adam of the Petit Pont was made by both Knaus and Katzenellenbogen in publications of the same year (Knaus, “Hochmittelalterliche Koperteinbänder,” 332; Katzenellenbogen, “Representation,” 46). 31. Knaus, “Hochmittelalterliche Koperteinbänder,” 332. 32. For example, Katzenellenbogen identifies the implement as a “floral scepter . . . form[ing] vines enclosing in the center the names of genera, in the lateral scrolls those of species according to

the text of the treatise [i.e., the Isagoge]” (Katzenellenbogen, “Representation,” 46). Noting that the figure of Dialectica in this image holds a Porphyrian Tree, Verboon observes that the figure “took over the attributes of the crown and the flower-sceptre characteristic of Lady Sapientia or Philosophia” (“Lines of Thought,” 67). 33. For basic cataloging and digital images of Cologne, Dombibliothek, Cod. 189, consult the manuscript’s record in Codices Electronici Ecclesiae Coloniensis (CEEC): http://‌www‌.ceec‌.uni‌-koeln‌.de. 34. This observation was made by Martin Schwarz in his 2020 dissertation; Cleaver describes the figures of both Socrates and Plato as supplying the “final divisions given in the text, Socrates and Plato as individual men” (Education in Twelfth-Century Art, 93). 35. The practice is ubiquitous in the medieval logical corpus. For the locus classicus in Porphyry’s Isagoge (“Thus man, being a species, is predicated of Socrates and of Plato, who differ from one another not in species but in number”), see Porphyry, Introduction 1.2.27–29, trans. Barnes, 4. For a twelfth-​century example, see the use of Socrates as an exemplum of homo in the Introductiones dialectice Berolinenses (“si Socrates est homo, Socrates est animal”; “si Socrates est homo, Socrates est risibilis”; “si Socrates est homo, Socrates non est lapis”); quoted and discussed in Stump, “Logic in the Early Twelfth Century,” 114–16. For an early fourteenth-century instance, see Walter Burleigh’s syllogistic observation, “Similiter esset concedendum quod ista: ‘Omnis homo est animal habeat tria singularia vera et non plura,’ quia sequeretur habet tria singularia vera, et ista non sunt plura, demonstratis duobus, igitur habet tria singularia vera et non plura. Similiter oporteret concedere quod ‘Sortes et Plato sunt non-Sortes et non Plato,’ quia sequitur ‘Sortes et Plato sunt Sortes et Plato, igitur Sortes et Plato sunt non-Sortes et non- Plato,’ quia Plato est inferius ad non-Sortem et Sortes est inferius ad non-Platonem,” quoted in Brown, “Walter Burleigh’s Treatise,” 33 (§1.21). To the best of my knowledge, this interesting tradition has not yet attracted the attention it deserves; two stimulating exceptions to this general rule are Greene, “Abelard’s Donkey,” and Ziolkowski, “Humour of Logic.” 36. Porphyry, Introduction, 70 n. 61 (quoting Boethius’s second commentary on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione (i.e., Peri hermeneias) 77.5–15). 37. See Boethius’s discussion of the difference between demonstration and dialectic in book 1 of his De topicis differentiis, esp. 1181C10–1182C12, ed. and trans. Stump, 29–42. For further discussion, see Stump, “Dialectic,” 126–27, 131–35, and Stump, “Dialectic and Boethius’s De topicis differentiis.”

Whose Iconography?

55

Bibliography Alverny, M.-Th. d’. “La sagesse et ses sept filles: Recherches sur les allégories de la philosophie et des arts libéraux du IXe au XIIe siècle.” In Mélanges dédiés à la mémoire de Félix Grat, 1:245–78. Paris: En dépôt chez Mme Pecqueur-​ Grat, 1946. Aristotle. “Categories” and “De interpretatione.” Translated by J. L. Ackrill. Clarendon Aristotle Series. Reprint, Oxford: Clarendon, 2002. Baschet, Jérôme. L’iconographie médiévale. Paris: Gallimard, 2008. Berns, Jörg Jochen. “Baumsprache und Sprachbaum: Baumikonographie als topologischer Komplex zwischen 13. und 17. Jahrhundert.” In Genealogie als Denkform in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, edited by Kilian Heck and Bernhard Jahn, 155–76. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000. Blum, Paul Richard. “God and Individuals: The Porphyrian Tree in Seventeenth/Eighteenth-​ Century Philosophy.” In Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism, 275–312. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Boethius. De topicis differentiis. Edited and translated by Eleonore Stump. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. Bois, Yve-Alain. “Whose Formalism?” Art Bulletin 78, no. 1 (March 1996): 9–12. Brown, Stephen F. “Walter Burleigh’s Treatise ‘De Suppositionibus’ and Its Influence on William of Ockham,” Franciscan Studies 32 (1972): 15–64. Brumbaugh, Robert S. “Logical and Mathematical Symbolism in the Platonic Scholia.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961): 45–58. Cahn, Walter. Romanesque Manuscripts. London: Harvey Miller, 1996. Cameron, Margaret. “The Logic of Dead Humans: Abelard and the Transformation of the Porphyrian Tree.” In Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Robert Pasnau, 3:32–63. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Camille, Michael. “The Dissenting Image: A Postcard from Matthew Paris.” In Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, edited by Rita Copeland, 115–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Carey, Stephen Mark. “Lachmann, Karl (Carl) Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm.” In Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms, Methods, Trends, edited by Albrecht Classen, 3:2434–40. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010. Casey, John Patrick. “Boethius’s Works on Logic in the Middle Ages.” In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Philip Edward Phillips

56

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

and Noel Harold Kaylor, 193–220. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Cleaver, Laura. Education in Twelfth-Century Art and Architecture: Images of Learning in Europe, c. 1100– 1220. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2016. Cole, Andrew. The Birth of Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Deppman, Jed, Daniel Ferrer, and Michael Groden, eds. Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Dolezal, Mary-Lyon. “The Elusive Quest for the ‘Real Thing’: The Chicago Lectionary Project Thirty Years On.” Gesta 35, no. 2 (1996): 128–41. Donadieu-Rigaut, Dominique. “Les images médiévales à la recherche de nouveaux cadres.” Perspective: Actualité en histoire de l’art, no. 1 (2009): 146–51. Ebbesen, Sten. “The Aristotelian Commentator.” In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by John Marenbon, 34–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ———. “Early Supposition Theory II.” Vivarium 51, nos. 1–4 (2013): 60–78. Esmeijer, Anna C. Divina Quaternitas: A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application of Visual Exegesis. Assen: Gorcum, 1978. Evans, M. W. Medieval Drawings. Feltham: Hamlyn, 1969. Evans, Michael. “The Geometry of the Mind.” Architectural Association Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1980): 32–55. Focillon, Henri. “Généalogie de l’unique (fragment).” In Actes du deuxième Congrès international d’esthétique et de science de l’art, 1:120–27. Paris, 1937. Ginzburg, Carlo. “Family Resemblances and Family Trees: Two Cognitive Metaphors.” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 537–56. Greene, Virginie. “Abelard’s Donkey: The Nonexistent Particular.” In Logical Fictions in Medieval Literature and Philosophy, 13–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Greetham, David. “Phylum–Tree–Rhizome.” Huntington Library Quarterly 58, no. 1 (1995): 99–126. ———. “Textual Forensics.” PMLA 111, no. 1 (1996): 32–51. Hacking, Ian. “Trees of Logic, Trees of Porphyry.” In Advancements of Learning: Essays in Honour of Paolo Rossi, edited by J. L. Heilbron, 219–61. Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2007. Heydenreich, Ludwig H. “Eine illustrierte Martianus Capella-Handschrift des Mittelalters und ihre Kopien im Zeitalter des Frühhumanismus.” In Kunstgeschichtliche Studien für Hans Kauffmann,

edited by Wolfgang Braunfels, 59–66. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1956. Hourihane, Colum, ed. The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography. London: Routledge, 2017. Hult, David F. “Reading It Right: The Ideology of Text Editing.” In The New Medievalism, edited by Marina Scordilis Brownlee, Kevin Brownlee, and Stephen G. Nichols, 113–30. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Kamber, Urs. “Baumsymbolik und Baumschematik.” In Arbor amoris, der Minnebaum: Ein Pseudo-Bonaventura-Traktat, 129–40. [Berlin]: E. Schmidt, 1964. Katzenellenbogen, Adolf. “The Representation of the Seven Liberal Arts.” In Twelfth-Century Europe and the Foundations of Modern Society: Proceedings of a Symposium Sponsored by the Division of Humanities of the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, November 12–14, 1957, edited by Marshall Clagett, Gaines Post, and Robert Reynolds, 39–55. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961. Kessler, Herbert L. “Configuring the Invisible by Copying the Holy Face.” In The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1998, edited by Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf, 129–51. Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998. ———. “Weitzmann’s Refrigerator.” In From Kondakov to Hans Belting Library: Emigration and Byzantium—Bridges Between Worlds, edited by Ivan Foletti, Francesco Lovino, and Veronica Tvrzníková, 2–13. Brno: Masaryk University, 2018. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. “De la nature végétale de l’arbre généalogique.” In Le monde végétal: Médecine, botanique, symbolique, edited by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, 447–68. Florence: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2009. ———. “La genèse de l’arbre généalogique.” In L’arbre: Histoire naturelle et symbolique de l’arbre, du bois et du fruit au Moyen-Age, 41–81. Paris: Editions du Léopard d’Or, 1993. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, and Egbert Baqué. Stammbäume: Eine illustrierte Geschichte der Ahnenkunde. Munich: Knesebeck, 2004. Klibansky, Raymond. “Balsham, Adam of [Adam de Parvo Ponte].” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://‌www‌.oxforddnb‌.com‌/view‌​ /article‌/37095. Knaus, Hermann. “Hochmittelalterliche Koperteinbänder.” Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 8, no. 4 (1961): 326–37.

Koslin, Désirée G., and Janet E. Snyder, eds. “From Content to Form: Court Clothing in MidTwelfth-Century Northern French Sculpture.” In Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images, edited by Désirée G. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder, 85–101. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Ladner, Gerhart. “Medieval and Modern Understanding of Symbolism: A Comparison.” Speculum 54, no. 2 (April 1979): 223–56. Legner, Anton, ed. Ornamenta ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik. 3 vols. Cologne: Schnütgen-​ Museum der Stadt Köln, 1985. Lima, Manuel. The Book of  Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. Lowden, John. “The Beginnings of Biblical Illustration.” In Imaging the Early Medieval Bible, edited by John Williams, 9–59. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1999. ———. Review of The Byzantine Octateuchs: The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the Septuagint, vol. 2, by Kurt Weitzmann, Massimo Bernabò, and Rita Tarasconi. Burlington Magazine 142, no. 1169 (2000): 502–3. Magee, John. “Boethius.” In A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone, 217–26. Malden: Blackwell, 2003. Magee, John, and John Marenbon. “Appendix: Boethius’ Works.” In Marenbon, Cambridge Companion to Boethius, 303–10. Marenbon, John, and Caterina Tarlazzi. “Logic.” In The European Book in the Twelfth Century, edited by Erik Kwakkel and Rodney Thomson, 215–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Marenbon, John, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Martianus Capella. Martianus Capella. Edited by Adolf Dick. Leipzig: In aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1925. Martin, Christopher J. “The Logical Textbooks and Their Influence.” In Marenbon, Cambridge Companion to Boethius, 56–84. Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. “The ‘Ars Disserendi’ of Adam of Balsham ‘Parvipontanus.’ ” Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1954): 116–69. Ors, Angel d’. “Petrus Hispanus O.P., Auctor Summularum.” Vivarium 35, no. 1 (1997): 21–71. ———. “Petrus Hispanus O.P., Auctor Summularum (II): Further Documents and Problems.” Vivarium 39, no. 2 (2001): 209–54. Porphyry. Introduction. Edited and translated by Jonathan Barnes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Porphyry and Boethius. Isagoge / Porphyre: Texte grec, Translatio Boethii. Edited by A.-Ph. Segonds and

Whose Iconography?

57

Alain de Libera. Translated by Alain de Libera. Paris: Vrin, 1998. Preisinger, Raphaèle. Lignum vitae: Zum Verhältnis materieller Bilder und mentaler Bildpraxis im Mittelalter. Paderborn: Fink, 2014. Reeve, Matthew M. “Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages.” In Hourihane, Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography, 154–71. Salonius, Pippa, and Andrea Worm, eds. The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Die Sammlungen des Baron von Hüpsch: Ein Kölner Kunstkabinett um 1800; Ausstellung des Hessischen Landesmuseums, ergänzt aus Beständen der Landesund Hochschulbibliothek Darmstadt. Cologne: Schnütgen-Museum, 1964. Schadt, Hermann. Die Darstellungen der Arbores Consanguinitatis und der Arbores Affinitatis: Bildschemata in juristischen Handschriften. Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1982. Schlink, Wilhelm. “Enseignement ou illumination? Les histoires de l’art française et allemande dans leurs rapports à l’iconographie chrétienne.” Revue de l’art, no. 146 (2004): 51–60. Schroeder, Peter. “Arbor porphyriana.” In Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie, edited by Jürgen Mittelstrass, 1:152–54. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995. Schwarz, Martin. “The Disputed City: Art, Architecture, and the Performance of Argument in Scholastic Paris (c. 1120–c. 1320).” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2020. Semper, Philippa Judith. “Diagrams in English Medieval Manuscripts.” PhD diss., University of Exeter, 1994. Snyder, Janet Ellen. Early Gothic Column-Figure Sculpture in France: Appearance, Materials, and Significance. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Stahl, William Harris, and Richard Johnson. Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts. 2 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971–77. Stirnemann, Patricia Danz. “Meyer Schapiro as Iconographer.” In Hourihane, Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography, 142–53. Stolz, Michael. Artes-liberales-Zyklen: Formationen des Wissens im Mittelalter. 2 vols. Tübingen: A. Francke, 2004. Stump, Eleonore. “Dialectic.” In Twelfth-Century Europe and the Foundations of Modern Society: Proceedings of a Symposium Sponsored by the Division of Humanities of the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, November 12–14, 1957, edited by Marshall Clagett, Gaines Post, and Robert Reynolds, 125–46. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961.

58

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

———. “Dialectic and Boethius’s De topicis differentiis.” In Dialectic and Its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic, 31–56. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. ———. “Logic in the Early Twelfth Century.” In Dialectic and Its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic, 111–34. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Suckale-Redlefsen, Gude. Die Handschriften des 8. bis 11. Jahrhunderts der Staatsbibliothek Bamberg. Vol. 1, Texte. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004. Teeuwen, Mariken, and Sinéad O’Sullivan, eds. Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella: Ninth-Century Commentary Traditions on “De nuptiis” in Context. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Timpanaro, Sebastiano. The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method. Edited and translated by Glenn W. Most. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Trachsler, Richard. “How to Do Things with Manuscripts: From Humanist Practice to Recent Textual Criticism.” Textual Cultures: Text, Contexts, Interpretation 1, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 5–28. Verboon, Annemieke R. “Einen alten Baum verplfanzt man nicht: Die Metapher des Porphyrianischen Baums im Mittelalter.” In Visuelle Modelle, edited by Ingeborg Reichle, Steffen Siegel, and Achim Spelten, 251–68. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2008. ———. “Lines of Thought: Diagrammatic Representation and the Scientific Texts of the Arts Faculty, 1200–1500.” PhD diss., Universiteit Leiden, 2010. ———. “The Medieval Tree of Porphyry: An Organic Structure of Logic.” In The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought, edited by Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm, 95–116. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Verdier, Philippe. “L’iconographie des arts libéraux dans l’art du moyen âge jusqu’à la fin du quinzième siècle.” In Arts libéraux et philosophie au Moyen Âge: Actes du quatrième congrès international de philosophie médiévale, 305–55. Montreal: Institut d’études médiévales, 1969. Weitzmann, Kurt. Illustrations in Roll and Codex: A Study of the Origin and Method of Text Illustration. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. Wirth, Karl-August. “Eine illustrierte Martianus-​ Capella-Handschrift aus dem 13. Jahrhundert.” Städel-Jahrbuch, n.s., 2 (1969): 43–74. Ziolkowski, Jan M. “The Humour of Logic and the Logic of Humour in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance.” Journal of Medieval Latin 3 (1993): 1–26.

3 Iconology After the Spatial Turn Christopher R. Lakey

Merleau-Ponty’s thought was close to my own. His work on Cézanne and on the nature of perception shared quite a lot with my concerns. Merleau-​ Ponty read an immense amount about art and perception. No other philosopher seemed to know as much about the material process, the concrete technique of making art, or about the complexity of perception. —Meyer Schapiro, 1994

In an essay in the 2014 special issue of IKON, which was a follow-up to the 1990 Index of Christian Art conference “Iconography at the Crossroads,” Michael Ann Holly addresses the relationship between iconology and phenomenology. She asks: “Does iconology have the capacity to entertain a phenomenological perspective or even the new materialist turn in art history? Do iconology and phenomenology, meaning and presence, ever converge?”1 By asking these questions, Holly charges the reader to unpack the differences between iconography—or the subject matter of the work of art—and iconology. Iconology, according to Erwin Panofsky, is iconography in the “deeper sense”—that is, how an understanding of an artwork can open onto broader cultural symbols, themes, and concepts.2 Famously, it is a “symptom of something else.”3 Yet, Holly asks, what might this “something else” be, and how can we access it?4 In this essay I will argue that this “something else” could be a historicized account of embodied seeing. Embodied seeing emphasizes the beholder’s physical act of sight

that is linked to perception, movement, and cognition and has best been expressed in critical theory and art history through phenomenological analyses of objects in space. This essay will first unpack the long history of the discipline’s interest in space, both depicted and actual, in order to better understand the relationship between iconology and phenomenology. Next, it will look at two case studies that highlight the different poles of embodied vision, the iconological in the relief sculptures on the west facade of Modena Cathedral (fig. 3.1) and the phenomenological in Meyer Schapiro’s analyses of Romanesque sculpture (fig. 3.2). In so doing, I will demonstrate that balancing iconological analyses with the phenomenological processes by which beholders see (or saw) permits the uncovering of a richer account of an object’s meaning.

The Art-Historical Roots of the Spatial Turn Part of Holly’s interest—and mine—in these questions is that, as she writes, “it seems to me that the history of art in the wake of iconology’s dominance has frequently sacrificed an attention to the phenomenological and material presence of works” (and here she does not simply mean what they are made of).5 To begin to answer these large questions, she suggests, via Hans-Georg Gadamer, that instead of asking first, or only, “What does this picture represent?,” we might think of our relationship to images of the past in terms of their “complex contemporaneity” and acknowledge that we can only come to a historical conscious(ness) through active engagement.6 “Complex contemporaneity” is Holly’s way of identifying a work of art’s presence as a thing in the world, as opposed to it simply being a representation of a certain subject or motif. Or as Gadamer puts it, “While it is doubtless a product of a particular historical era and a particular artist’s life history, we nevertheless encounter even an artwork from long ago as immediately present.”7 The presence Gadamer talks about is not simply temporal, but also spatial. We encounter artworks from long ago in present space whenever possible: whether in their current museum homes or, as often in the case of medieval sculptures, in their original locations. The importance of both present time and present space cannot be emphasized enough. Our discipline requires (or should require) an active engagement with the object of study in the present—our present—and as historians, one of the more difficult tasks is to situate our present against the object’s past. There are of course fail-safes for this, just as there are fail-safes that curb our subjectivity. Iconography and iconology are among the interpretive analyses that were meant as a bulwark to the overbearing presence of stylistic analysis and our own subjectivity. However, I argue that only with an acknowledgment of an object’s “complex contemporaneity” through active, spatial engagement will its historical value or meaning (or consciousness) reveal itself most vividly. Form, space, and meaning should all work together to produce an interpretative framework worthy of the stakes of the discipline, which, since its 60

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 3.1 West facade of Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099. Photo: Christopher R. Lakey. Figure 3.2 Interior view of relief sculptures, Sainte-Marie, Souillac, ca. 1120. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Pol Mayer / Paul M. R. Maeyaert) (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0).

founding in Germany in the late nineteenth century, has always been concerned with issues of space, actual and represented. Three writers in particular staked these claims while the formation of the academic discipline of art history was nascent: Adolf von Hildebrand, Heinrich Wölfflin, and August Schmarsow. Hildebrand was interested in the relationship between space, embodiment, vision, and the visual arts. For him, sculpture is the art of space rather than the ideal of beauty, pace Winckelmann. His theory of vision and space is one of continua: “By a spatial continuum we mean space as three-dimensional extension and as a three-​dimensional mobility or kinesthetic activity of our imagination.”8 This imagination depends on the beholder’s vision to re-create a three-dimensional experience. To Hildebrand, vision is two-dimensional, with the capacity for recreating three dimensions in the mind. Iconology After the Spatial Turn

61

For this reason, painting in its planar qualities reflects the two-dimensional reality of perception, while sculpture in the round is insufficient in perceptually recreating three dimensions, because there is no two-dimensional, planar surface onto which the beholder can project an evocation of space as he understood it. Therefore, relief sculpture is the medium par excellence for the relationship between embodiment, space, and vision. Relief, Hildebrand claims, “is based on the idea of the object as a planar stratum of uniform depth. The total volume of the picture . . . consists of a number of such imaginary strata placed one behind another in a series and again made coherent as one appearance of uniform depth.”9 Wölfflin, one of the founders of the discipline, began his career with a dissertation on the affective nature of space, or rather the embodied experience of architecture. In Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture from 1886, Wölfflin explains, “Our own bodily organization is the form through which we apprehend everything physical. I shall now show that the basic elements of architecture—material and form, gravity and force—are defined by our experiences of ourselves; that the laws of formal aesthetics are none other than the sole conditions under which our organic well-being appears possible; and finally, that the expression intrinsic to horizontal and vertical articulation is present to human (organic) principles.”10 He goes on to describe the relationship between bodies and architectural features. Width and height resemble our own human proportions; the horizontal axis is equivalent to our sense of bodily symmetry. “If you recall what I said earlier on the mechanical significance of all relations of form,” Wölfflin states, “you will not object when I equate the relation of height and width . . . to the relation of ascent and repose and discern in these qualities the expressive value of proportion. Here, again, the character resides in the bodily factor.”11 Similar to Wölfflin’s account of embodiment and architectural space is that of Schmarsow, whose theory of architecture emphasizes bodily movement through space with the idea of Raumgestaltung (spatial forming).12 The principal texts in which he developed his thesis on architectural space were written between 1893 and 1896, after which he turned to the Italian Renaissance, among other topics. In a way, Schmarsow blends Hildebrand’s interest in sight with Wölfflin’s theory of the affective nature of space (or empathy) to create his new vision of architectural space. In “The Essence of Architectural Creation” from 1893, he claims, “Psychologically, the intuited form of three-dimensional space arises through the experiences of our sense of sight.” As he writes: The intuited form of space, which surrounds us wherever we may be and which we then always erect around ourselves and consider more necessary than the form of our own body, consists of the residue of sensory experience to which the muscular sensations of our body, the sensitivity of our skin, and the structure of our body all contribute. As soon as we have learned to experience ourselves and ourselves alone at the center of this space, whose 62

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

coordinates intersect in us, we have found the precious kernel, the initial capital so to speak, on which architectural creation is based.13 Like Hildebrand and Wölfflin, Schmarsow would go on to influence later generations of German scholars, most notably Wilhelm Pinder.14 Since the early twentieth century, perspective—specifically, the ascent of centralized one-point perspective in Italy—has been the predominant topos for the study of spatial representation in premodern art. This topos, I argue, has hidden from view the important relationship between bodies, movement, and standpoints.15 The most enduring and perspicacious accounts of this type of art-historical writing occurred in Panofsky’s work of the 1920s, specifially, in section three of Die Perspektive als symbolische Form (Perspective as Symbolic Form; 1927) and in the introduction to Die deutsche Plastik des elften bis dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (German sculpture of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries; 1924).16 In these works, Panofsky critically reflects on stylistic change in the Middle Ages in relation to the history of perspective by conceptualizing distinct periods from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries in terms of Hegelian advances and losses, or what he terms “recoils” (Rückkehr) in the representation of space.17 Each stage in this stylistic teleology has a parallel development in the philosophy of space, from Plato, to the scholastic revival of Aristotle, and finally, to a “modern” epistemology of space voiced by Giordano Bruno. Panofsky explains this history according to a relationship between, on the one hand, surface and depth and, on the other, bodies and space. The influence of Panofsky’s essay on perspective cannot be overstated, and a number of writers have responded both positively and negatively to his arguments as recently as 2018.18 While perspective as well as pictorial space, generally speaking, have certainly continued to preoccupy art-historical writing from the discipline’s founding until today, it is more difficult to trace the continuous historical influence of writers such as Hildebrand, Schmarsow, and Wölfflin (at least regarding his theory of embodied space). With Panofsky’s move from Germany to the United States in 1931, he turned away from a more philosophical art history and toward iconographic studies, which have dominated the fields of medieval and early modern art history ever since.19 In this context, as well as that of Social Art History and the so-called New Art History (with their emphases on gender studies, sexuality, feminism, postcolonial theory, and deconstruction), scholarly focus on a phenomenological or spatially embodied art history has seemed to be in decline, at least until recently.20 There are many ways one could characterize the present so-called spatial turn in art history or the humanities at large, and the question of whether this renewed interest is tied directly with art history’s past evocations of such issues depends on the individual author.21 Exemplifying this turn is new work on cartography as “art” that visualizes knowledge and speaks both to medieval ideas about spatial relations in two dimensions and to more modern, theoretical approaches to understanding world views via cartographic representation.22 Iconology After the Spatial Turn

63

Theoretical approaches to “place” and “space” have also fundamentally changed the ways in which art-historical analysis operates in terms of beholder-object relations, especially in relationship to monumental art and architecture.23 For my purposes, David Summers’s 2003 magnum opus, Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of  Western Modernism, allows for real possibilities of phenomenological analyses along historical and iconological lines. Summers does not exactly turn away from iconography or iconology in this work, although they are clearly not his focus. With the growth of what he calls “contextualism (including the rise of iconography),” Summers argues that iconography has “been taken for granted either as a standard method of reconstructive art-historical interpretation, or as the available body of results of such reconstruction.”24 He believes that too much about the art work is left out of interpretive analyses based solely on iconography or what preceded it, namely formalism. For instance, according to Summers, the history of formats like the altarpiece or gallery picture, and the culturally specific situation in which these forms appeared and disappeared, drops out. What is missing, he believes, is an analysis of the real, culturally specific spaces in which these objects appeared and still exist based on the “explanatory power of the real spatial” situation, his heavily modified idea of “contextualism.”25 This “real spatial” situation is, of course, in large part based on the phenomenological accounts of  “being-in-the-world” by Martin Heidegger and of spatial perception and embodiment by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.26 In particular, Summers was drawn to Heidegger’s phenomenology because he believes “that art records the many ways in which the world at hand has been acknowledged in being shaped by human beings.”27 One crucial difference between Heidegger and Summers, according to Oliver O’Donnell, is that “Summers’s project is primarily empirical and directs its attention outward toward things in the world. Heidegger’s project, on the other hand, is phenomenological and directs its attention inward towards the structures of human consciousness.” However, what they share is an “embodied focus” in that they “accepted the bodily conditions of knowledge.”28 In addition, Summers’s important conception of cardinality, which he defines as “the cardinal structure of the human body—its normative uprightness, symmetry (including the symmetry of handedness) and facing,”29 owes a great deal to the philosophy of spatial embodiment put forward by Merleau-Ponty in his early work.30 For instance, Summers accounts for real space, one of three types of space in his book, as “ultimately defined by the human body, more specifically by the body’s finite spatio-​ temporality, its typical structure, capacities and relations.”31 This, in other words, is the space we occupy along with other objects and things, including works of art: paintings, sculptures, textiles, manuscripts, reliquaries, and so on. Rather than referring to these objects of representation as “visual arts,” Summers reorients them as “spatial arts,” following the relationship between vision and embodied space first promoted by Hildebrand and later Schmarsow. For Summers, painting presents “virtual space,” sculpture is the art of “personal space,” and architecture is the art of “social space.”32 64

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

What is important to my argument is how accurately these terms describe a beholder’s relationship to the various arts. Painting represents three-dimensional space that only exists in our minds, but sculpture does orient one’s body to it: we share a sense of embodiment with a sculpture of another human body. If it is in the round, we are tempted to walk around it, to see it from all angles. Architecture is a frame for sociability. A particular space often contains within it some type of institution (ecclesiastical, governmental, etc.) that includes and excludes certain ranks, classes, and genders. According to Summers, it arranges groups of people into settings or places. Relief sculpture, then, mediates the personal and the social. We respond to relief in similar ways as to sculpture in the round, though our movement is restricted by the architectonic location of the sculpture. Nevertheless, movement is of the utmost importance in understanding relief’s purchase on a beholder and its iconology. Compare Summers’s account to that of Merleau-Ponty, who understands spatial perception through bodily awareness, extension, and standpoints: “I see the next door house from a certain angle, but it would be seen differently from the right bank of the Seine, or from the inside, or again from an aeroplane.”33 The house is a projection according to geometric optics, a projection on our minds that can appear, disappear, and reappear again and again depending on our spatiotemporal location. We stitch together all of these “views” of the house, some of which are invisible to us, in the sense that we have moved from one location to the next, to formulate its presence in our mind. For Merleau-Ponty, vision is embodied in the sense that our bodies are located in particular positions. These positions can change, and with that change, our relationship to the object of sight changes as some of these “views” are no longer present. Vision is a bodily operation that allows us to understand the complex relationship between ourselves and objects in the world through the extension of consciousness. As Paul Crowther understands this operation in his excellent book on art and embodiment, “The fact that the invisible dimension can structure perception is intimately bound up with the fact that we know ourselves as belonging to the sensible world, that is, we know that we who see and are sentient can ourselves be seen and sensed.”34 As I will argue in the second section, there is a way to historicize embodied seeing and thus to better grasp iconological meaning through knowledge of the nuanced theories of vision by the most important writers on the subject in the Middle Ages, Augustine of Hippo and Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, in Latin). To these ends, I take up Holly’s charge to better understand the relationship between iconology and phenomenology by reading the reliefs at Modena Cathedral (ca. 1105), both iconographically in the narrow sense— that is, what the reliefs represent in terms of localized subject matter—and iconologically, or iconographically in the deeper sense (see fig. 3.1). The difference between an iconographical and an iconological reading is one of emphasis. I emphasize the importance of movement and embodied seeing as a necessary precondition for understanding these reliefs, allowing us to unpack the full array of meanings the reliefs would have had, and still have, for situated beholders. Iconology After the Spatial Turn

65

Iconography, Iconology, and Vision In Panofsky’s landmark introduction to Studies in Iconology, he introduces a significant difference between iconography and iconology as an interpretive framework.35 In his essay, iconography in its narrow sense refers to the subject matter of a work of art based on one’s familiarity with motifs, themes, and concepts found in contemporaneous textual sources (literary, religious, etc.). Iconography, he explains, is how we know that thirteen men sitting around a table (from our preiconographic recognition of forms) is a representation of the Last Supper. Iconology, which he characterizes as “iconography in a deeper sense,” requires more complex types of prior knowledge of the period’s “symbolic values” or worldview, which Panofsky describes as “insight into the manner in which, under varying historical conditions, essential tendencies of the human mind were expressed by specific themes and concepts.”36 Iconology, therefore, is a unifying principle that explains both the visible event (the image) and its intelligible significance. Panofsky offers, by way of example, a change in the type of the Nativity found in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: prior to circa 1310, the “traditional” type of Nativity depicting Mary reclining on a bed or other type of furniture, such as Nicola Pisano’s Nativity on his Pisa Baptistery pulpit of circa 1250 (fig. 3.3), changed to a type depicting Mary kneeling before Christ, as in Fra Angelico’s Nativity in the monk’s cells of San Marco, Florence, of circa 1436 (fig. 3.4). Simple research shows this shift is not universally true (one can find the “traditional” type post 1310), but it is sufficiently so to take his interpretation seriously. As Panofsky presented it, not only did the Nativity change compositionally, from a triangular format to a rectangular one, but it changed iconographically, directing the beholder to new types of texts by Pseudo-Bonaventura and St. Bridget of Sweden, as well as iconologically, revealing “a new emotional attitude peculiar to the later phases of the Middle Ages.”37 Another example of this is a shift concerning Crucifixion images, which changed from the triumphant Christ of the early Christian tradition to the more solemn, human Christ of the early Middle Ages, and then to the grotesque, bloodied, and emaciated Christ of the later Middle Ages. The subject matter—the iconography of the image—changes little, but its iconology evinces a change in the attitude or emotional response expected in the viewer. The key to these iconological shifts, it seems, is one of affect—attitude, emotions, senses—that famous “symptom of something else.” Panofsky’s “Introduction” to Studies in Iconology of 1939 was a revision of an earlier publication in German, “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst” (On the problem of describing and interpreting works of the visual arts), which was published in the journal Logos in 1932.38 As Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz explain, the differences between these texts (let alone the 1955 revision published in Meaning in the Visual Arts)39 interestingly point to Panofsky’s shifting ambitions once in America. For instance, the Logos essay was first given as a lecture at the Kant Society in Kiel, and the journal’s editorial board included luminaries like Ernst 66

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 3.3 Nicola Pisano, Nativity, Pisa Baptistery pulpit, ca. 1260. Relief panel, ca. 87 × 109 cm. Photo: Christopher R. Lakey.

Cassirer, Edmund Husserl, and Heinrich Wölfflin. The 1939 book was first delivered as a series of lectures at Bryn Mawr College from 1937 to 1938. As Elsner and Lorenz put it quite succinctly, these contexts are “radically different both in the level of academic experience and agility one might expect of the audience and in their levels of education.” From the choices of images and texts, appropriate to the different audiences, the book was a “move away from the display of erudite learning and from a kind of point scoring appropriate to the major players in the German intellectual firmament.”40 Although to different ends than in his 1939 revision, in the Logos essay Panofsky already made the important distinction between iconography and iconology, between “intrinsic content” and “intrinsic meaning.” Content (or subject matter) is something “proper to the object,” while meaning is something the beholder discovers through “the unintentional and subconscious self-revelation of a fundamental attitude towards the world that is characteristic in equal measure of the individual producer, the individual people and the individual cultural comminute.”41 To put it mildly, the English version of his last great German essay was far less philosophically ambitious in nature and far less provocative. This methodology, as others have noted, clearly marks a distinction between the meaning of a work of art and the attitude, or attitudes (or emotions, or feelings) of an entire culture.42 By opening up the interpretive method of iconology to “the unintentional and subconscious self-revelation” of a culture, it should welcome other methodological or theoretical currents, such as phenomenology, into its fold. In dwelling here on the differences between iconography and iconology, I am trying to tease out possible links between the search for the meaning of a work of art and its Iconology After the Spatial Turn

67

presence, then and now. The great Italian art historian and Marxist Gulio Carlo Argan (also the first communist mayor of Rome from 1976 to 1979) recognized these possibilities in an important essay from 1975.43 In “Ideology and Iconology,” Argan argues that Panofsky’s shift from iconography to iconology brought art from the “intellectual plane” to the “plane of individual and collective psychology.” This shift “allows the way to be open toward a confluence of psychoanalytical and sociological research, toward the dialectical encounter of the Freudian-Jungian line with the Marxist line, a meeting that is one of the essential goals of today’s culture. The level of possible connection is the phenomenological level; in this sense the iconological method owes much, in spite of the apparent discrepancy, to the method of pure visibility.”44 In a similar tone, in his essay “The Politics of Iconology,” Keith Moxey questions our ability to fully know our historical subjects and asks where that leaves us in the study of images. His solution, surprisingly, is a turn to phenomenology—likely, though not explicitly, based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of vision: “One of the most appealing solutions is the phenomenological view, which bases itself upon the spectator’s existential response to images. The appeal to this approach lies in its recognition of the power of vision. We are tempted to trust more the truths vouchsafed to us by the sense of sight than those provided by language.”45 Argan’s account of “pure visibility” refers specifically to Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodied vision, which emphasizes our perception of the world through our bodily senses and awareness of the self-reflexivity of vision itself. We can be seen as much as the object of our sight. For Merleau-Ponty, vision and the body were inseparable to his project. For instance, in “The Eye and the Mind” he explores how an artist (in this case, a painter) extends his body, through hands and eyes, through the world to demonstrate the world in art. Bodily extension is embodied vision.46 Though he rightly dismisses medieval theories of vision as being incorrect from a modern point of view, the idea of experiential vision can be found in the earliest of writers on the topic. So, too, can Moxey’s appeal to phenomenology because it favors the “power of vision,” as opposed to language, to record the truth to beholders. I argue that medieval writers and artists understood this difference between images and bodies, as well as the power of vision to disclose higher truths, in analogous ways.47 Since the early Middle Ages, it was believed that knowledge of one’s self and of higher spiritual things was mediated through objects of sight, especially human bodies. In De trinitate, Augustine claims, “We recognize the movement of our bodies also from their resemblance to ourselves, and from this fact we perceive that others live besides ourselves; since we also so move our body in living as we observe those bodies to be moved.”48 For Augustine, corporeal knowledge is key to distinguishing between one’s own self and others and between images and objects. Augustine makes this case repeatedly in De Genesi ad litteram when he explains the difference between objects we perceive with corporeal knowledge and those we perceive with intellectual knowledge, which we “enumerate, distinguish, and define . . . not by a perception Iconology After the Spatial Turn

Figure 3.4 Fra Angelico, Nativity, 1440–45. Fresco, 164.5 × 193 cm. Florence, Museo di S. Marco. Photo: Scala / Art Resource, New York.

69

of their outlines, colors, sounds, odors, or tastes, their degree of heat or cold, their hardness or softness, or their smoothness or roughness, but by another vision, another light.”49 All of these different qualities make up objects of sight, defining them against others through sense perception, the process that begins with the act of vision and ends with image processing in the brain. Again, from the bishop of Hippo: “From all such objects [of sight] we distinguish the bodies which we see, and which are present to our senses, so that we have no doubt that these are bodies and that the others are images of bodies.”50 In addition, it was believed that vision could disclose the truth of physical and spiritual things, empirical and anagogical. For instance, in 430 ce, Paulinus of Nola instructs his audience to “see the pictures on the porticoes painted in a long series and to somewhat labor by bending back your neck, to scan all of them with a reclined gaze” (reclinato perlegis omnia vultu).51 Here, Paulinus not only suggests that it is from a particular standpoint in the world that beholders can view the images most clearly but also that they have to move around to take in the full cycle of monumental scenes from the Old Testament spanning the width of the basilica at Saint Felix in Cimitile-​ Nola. For Paulinus, embodied seeing can lead to higher truths: “He who sees this, recognizing truth from empty figures nourishes his faithful mind with a worthy [non vacua] image.”52 Later, circa 1120 ce, Honorius of Autun remarks that “we cannot learn from the masters what we cannot test through the truth of vision. For teachers bring forth merely the sound of words, but hearers by the truth inwardly teaching learn words through mind, things through sight.”53 Finally, the same type of vision that Merleau-Ponty advocates for in his metaphor of the viewer and the house—in which the viewer must mentally stitch together different views of the house to find its pure visibility—is likewise clearly a point of departure for medieval writers on vision. For instance, Nemesius of Emesa claims that “in beholding the object piecemeal, and not as one whole, sight must, of necessity, travel from one part to another, and the object of perception, as the gaze travels, is always limited to the part upon which the gaze is falling. But memory keeps account of all that has been seen previously.”54 The great Arabic writer on optics Alhazen describes this type of vision as “based on scrutiny and previous knowledge” and distinguishes it from “vision based on first glance.” He characterizes the former as “[the] vision of all visible objects that sight has perceived [before] and remembers having perceived when it scrutinizes their impression and examines all the characteristics possessed by them.”55 Drawing on Alhazen’s work, Nader El-Bizri explains embodied vision in this way: “The fixity of the viewing and vanishing points in geometric perspective is in sharp contrast with the vibrancy of the gaze in vision. Spatiality, which itself appears through the kinesthetic movements of the human body, shows that our embodiment grounds what we trust as being as evidentia perceptionis.”56 We can understand how this works by envisioning a beholder moving along a church facade or another monument and taking in a series of relief panels successively, as at the cathedral of Saint Geminianus in Modena. 70

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

The cathedral is basilical in plan with a nave, two aisles, no transept, and a raised sanctuary. It was built on the grounds of the fifth-century church erected over the tomb of Saint Geminianus. Pope Paschal II consecrated the building on October 7, 1106, when he oversaw the transference of Geminianus’s relics to the crypt on a visit to the city (fig. 3.1). Buttresses frame the central portal of the cathedral’s west facade, where four reliefs designed by Wiligelmus are located. Originally the panels were evenly dispersed at a height of circa 6.8 feet from the ground, just above the eye level of a beholder standing in the piazza.57 The northern- and southernmost panels were displaced above the lateral portals, which were a late thirteenth-century addition. The four panels include twelve scenes from the book of Genesis, representing the fall of humankind by original sin and its redemption through the church and the rite of baptism. The first panel comprises scenes from Genesis 1–3: God at the Creation of the world, the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, and the Fall (fig. 3.5). The second panel contains scenes from Genesis 3: God rebukes Adam and Eve, the Expulsion from the garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve tilling the earth (fig. 3.6). The third panel displays scenes from Genesis 4: the sacrifice of Cain and Abel, the death of Abel, and the curse of Cain (fig. 3.7). The fourth panel also contains scenes from Genesis 4: the death of Cain by Lamech, the deluge and Noah’s ark, and Noah and his sons leaving the ark (fig. 3.8). In terms of iconography, the reliefs refer to the history of salvation through the church and the politics of church reform surrounding the construction of the cathedral, specifically the Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy, which spanned from the Council of Reims in 1049 to the First Lateran Council in 1123 and attempted to reform church policies according to a scriptural and eschatological ideal that argued for Petrine authority and independence from secular authority.58 The reliefs to some degree reflect this very “local” iconography—a phrase Dorothy Glass has aptly used to describe this level of meaning.59 The story is bookended by the figures of Adam and Noah, who were believed by twelfth-century reformers, such as Peter the Venerable, to be Fathers of the Church. Peter described Adam and Noah as Church Fathers in a letter denouncing the Petrobrusians because they were Old Testament figures who prefigured Christ’s sacrifice. Adam and Eve represented Christus Novus and Ecclesia, while the death of Abel refers to the passion and death of Christ and associated Cain with the Jewish people.60 The Cain and Abel narrative was particularly relevant to this reform iconography because it related to the contemporary idea that Abel stood in for the “good priest” and Cain for the “evil priest” in the context of concerns over simony.61 Meanwhile, redemption through the church, specifically through the liturgical rite of baptism, was represented by the story of the death of Cain by Lamech, the deluge, and Noah and his sons, themes carried forward in the writings of Bruno of Segni (ca. 1050–1123).62 Bruno, one of the period’s finest exegetes, was an intimate of the Modenese literati and of Popes Urban II and Paschall II during the planning and construction of the cathedral. He was also an outspoken opponent of the claims Iconology After the Spatial Turn

71

Figure 3.5 Genesis Panel 1 (God appearing at the Creation, the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the Fall), Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099. Photo: Christopher R. Lakey. Figure 3.6 Genesis Panel 2 (God rebukes Adam and Eve, the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve tilling the earth), Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099. Photo: Christopher R. Lakey.

Figure 3.7 Genesis Panel 3 (The sacrifice of Cain and Abel, the death of Abel, the curse of Cain), Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099. Photo: Christopher R. Lakey. Figure 3.8 Genesis Panel 4 (The death of Cain by Lamech, the deluge and Noah’s ark, Noah and his sons leaving the ark), Modena Cathedral, ca. 1099. Photo: Christopher R. Lakey.

made to investiture by the emperor. In the De laudibus ecclesiae (ca. 1100), a six-part commentary on liturgical rites meant to be utilized in sermons, he describes a church dedication in terms of Noah’s ark. Yet the story of Genesis resonated on so many levels in the Middle Ages that it is difficult to say with certainty what the reliefs at Modena would have signified iconologically—namely, what they would have meant to every imaginable beholder. To do so, I argue, requires understanding medieval theories of vision and embodiment and considering how relief mediates beholder-object relations through movement. Wiligelmus’s carving style and the lateral format of the reliefs, which demands movement of the beholder, reinforce the notion of embodied seeing, while the narrative promotes an iconology of sight that can lead modern viewers to a deeper understanding of medieval epistemologies of seeing. The monumentality of the cathedral facade, which spans over fifty feet in width, renders it possible to view the reliefs as a continuous narrative only from a great distance, one that negates the workmanship and understanding of material revealed by Wiligelmus’s carving technique upon closer viewing. Stationing oneself anywhere between five and ten feet from the facade produces an angle of vision large enough (between 20 and 35 degrees) to take in the figures’ full-bodiedness and their individual expressiveness.63 Through deep carving, Wiligelmus emphasized their sharp outlines and allowed each figure to retain their own space underneath the running arcade that defines the pictorial setting, front to back. He created a real sense of depth and space within each narrative panel, a space one can imagine the figures inhabiting, despite the fact that they all emerge from the block and are not carved in the round. One of the biggest differences between painting and sculpture lies in a beholder’s response to the human body. Beholders relate to sculpted bodies in ways that are not possible with painted images: through their movements and gestures, their body language, and the shared physical space (“personal space,” in Summers’s terms). If carved in the round, the viewer can walk around the sculptures and view them from all angles, become enraptured by them, and touch them and feel analogous relations between them and their own bodies. Although Wiligelmus’s figures at Modena are not carved in the round, they are not two-dimensional images: they are reliefs, carved in three dimensions yet retaining certain pictorial qualities. The narrative aspect of the Genesis reliefs allows for a different type of movement in relation to the sculpted bodies: it is the movement of ritual, of procession, of pilgrimage. Following the narrative from north to south, along the principal axis of the facade, the sculptures transform the minds and the places of the beholders through movement, whether out of sin and into grace, from the piazza out of doors into the Heavenly Jerusalem, or just through the piazza itself. In order to recall the story, viewers would have to piece together images that are no longer visible (those lost to their line of sight) of previous reliefs in order to understand the narrative from beginning to end.

74

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

A broader understanding of medieval vision and optics and their cultural importance for a number of institutions (i.e., ecclesiastical, medicinal, scientific) can aid in more than understanding the ensemble as a whole: it can also help to solve an iconographic idiosyncrasy. The scene of Lamech killing Cain in the fourth panel does not occur in the Genesis account of Creation, as the other scenes do. Instead, it appears in a number of Jewish sources, for instance the Midrash Tanhuma, as well as in some Christian exegetical writings.64 However, it is not a part of the most widely read commentaries on Genesis by Augustine and Ambrose nor does it seem to have been a very popular or well-known subject, at least outside of exegetical circles. There are no precedents for this scene in monumental sculpture or in surviving manuscript production; it is possible that there was an early Christian source, but this is impossible to prove. To my knowledge, all scenes of Lamech killing Cain postdate the Modena reliefs, and its inclusion there begs explanation. Most commentators have provided an answer in terms of reform iconography: Glass, for example, understands the scene as bringing an end to the “cycle of evil” that begins with the Temptation of Adam and Eve in the first panel, punctuating a new beginning, just as the appearance of Noah’s ark, as an obvious symbol of redemption through baptism and the church, does next to Cain’s death.65 I believe that there is more to the presence of this rare scene at Modena that has to do with the importance of sight, both in the Genesis story itself and in medieval culture more broadly. Wiligelmus paid particular attention to the eyes of each figure, often marking their pupils with lead or other materials to make them stand out. The series begins with Christ as Logos staring intently out of the frame toward the beholders, and the narrative that follows has as much to do with a loss of spiritual vision in the Fall of Adam and Eve (and humankind) as it does with reform movements. Careful viewing reveals a sleeping Adam with heavyset eyelids, while the wide-open eyes of Adam and Eve after they learned of their expulsion signal that they have understood the importance of their mistake. Lamech is the only figure whose pupils are not emphasized and whose eyes are closed because, as the sources recount, he was blind and mistakenly loosed his bow at Cain, thinking he was hunting a wild animal. However, he was not blind, or not exactly: according to medieval exegetes, he suffered from a curable condition known in both the early Latin sources and in medical sources as oculos caliginosos—or blurred or cloudy vision. This is not insignificant. Aside from writers like the anonymous author of the Glossa Ordinaria, who described Lamech as suffering from this disease, the condition and its cure are attested to in a number of medicinal and optical texts from the early Middle Ages through to the twelfth century. These texts were translated into Latin from Greek and Arabic sources and taught in monasteries, in cathedral and medical schools, and later in universities. Their descriptions of oculos caliginosos are often practical, in the sense that they aimed to heal the eyes through the use of a liquid laxative made from rhubarb, milkweed, and asparagus, but they are also spiritual.66 Unhealthy eyes were metaphorized as spiritual

Iconology After the Spatial Turn

75

darkness by a number of authors. Walafrid Strabo (d. 849) describes an episode in the life of St. Gall when the eyes of a sinner suffering from caligo were “freed from darkness” (oculorum detersea calignes) by divine intervention.67 Bruno of Segni described Isaac as not having the power to see spiritually under the veil of the Old Testament because of his caligaverunt oculi, a condition commonly associated with the Jewish figure during this period. In such accounts, the only way such spiritual veils can be lifted and healthy sight restored is through Christian baptism. Applying this concept to the figure of Lamech is significant in unpacking a broader iconology of sight: I suggest that Lamech is shown killing Cain because he was suffering from a temporary blindness, a disease highly curable in both the physical sense and the spiritual sense—through medicine and through Christ and the Church. The implication is that the beholder could also be cured of whatever physical and spiritual ailments they might have. If we are to assume a traditional iconographic reading of an image as a one-toone correspondence between text and image, we must presuppose that the image and text are complete and whole. As Holly put it at the Index conference in 1990, such a reading “connotes directionality, coherence, and lack of fragmentation,”68 implying the coherence of an image and a clear textual reference for its meaning. If an image is fragmented or lacks coherence, presumably there is a textual referent around which it can cohere. I have shown that the Lamech scene derived not from Genesis but from a number of other sources that the general beholder would not have known; in this way, its comprehension is fragmented and highlights a problem in current scholarly practice. The texts we use—critical editions of Latin, Greek, and Arabic writings, let alone critical editions of oral sources (e.g., sermons, lectures, or speeches)—were not available to the diverse plethora of medieval beholders and artists.69 It is only by moving away from iconography in the narrow sense to the broader interpretative method of iconology that these fragmentations can be reconciled with a culture’s “symbolic values” or attitudes about how art bears upon a beholder’s affective nature, emotions, and senses.

Fragmentation and Meyer Schapiro’s Phenomenology of Romanesque Sculpture There is another type of fragmentation that makes the art historian’s task difficult: physical fragmentation. Schapiro’s magisterial analysis of the tympanum and trumeau sculptures in the abbey church of Sainte-Marie, Souillac, presents an archeological dilemma. At some point during their medieval afterlives, the sculptures had been moved, presumably from the exterior facade and portal to the inside of the church, so that “the sculptures now preserved in the inner west wall of the abbey church of Souillac are the fragments of a larger whole which we can no longer reconstruct.”70 As Michael Camille has suggested, Schapiro was not only talking about the dangers in attempting to discover archeological truths from fragments but also the “acceptance of 76

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

the always already fragmentary and marginal nature of objects.”71 We will never know the true location of these sculptures, nor the trumeau’s fourth side as it is embedded in the wall, nor what other sculptures would have been in dialogue with the tympanum (if it was one) and the trumeau. We can speculate that the reliefs depicting the story of Theophilus and the Devil was in fact a tympanum that greeted viewers through the main portal to the church, bifurcated by the trumeau—though I agree with John Williams that both the fragments’ format and subject matter would make better sense as a lateral porch sculpture, much like we find in Moissac.72 Schapiro struck out to find coherence in the fragmentary. Schapiro has rightly been celebrated as one of the foremost writers on sculpture in the Anglo-American tradition, generally in terms of his close eye for the relationship between form, structure, and detail and his Marxist approach to social matters. I argue that what drove Schapiro’s analyses (especially his grasp of formal and structural elements) was his “being-in-the-world”—that is, his being in the real spaces he analyzed—and his early interest in phenomenology. The importance of his presence in a specific place, with the ability to walk around that place, always looking and drawing, was not lost on him. In a letter sent from northern France to his future wife, Lillian Milgram, dated July 12, 1926, Schapiro claims: To walk in and out of a cathedral, to follow the vaulting from below & to trace its ribs, supports, and buttressing from all sides, to climb the towers & pass thru the triforium openings & galleries & to discover the adjustments of parts everywhere, and the variation from bay to bay, & column to column, & to see the whole in space with such liberty of movement that I seem to learn at each step—is an awful sentence to finish, dear—but these things quite fill me & I easily lose myself in amazement & then fall into reverie which descends to melancholy historical retrospection & I awaken to a beautiful tolling in the lantern which tells me to draw & give up dreaming.73 Schapiro’s movement in these spaces, his intent looking, and his drawing of various plans, reliefs, arches, and other elements all had major effects not only on his writing style but also on his interpretative analysis of form and meaning. I would suggest that what led Schapiro on this journey were his varied theoretical underpinnings, which have generally been outlined only with regard to Marxism (or “Social Art History”) and semiotics. However, it is clear that he read widely and thought deeply about critical theory and its place in his humanistic endeavors. As David Craven points out, he was deeply invested in the Frankfurt School (he was close friends with Theodor Adorno) and Freudian psychoanalysis.74 His own methodological goals during the 1930s were equally sympathetic to the work of the New Vienna school of art history led by Hans Sedlymayr and Otto Pächt, especially their formalist approach to structuralism (Strukturanalse), even if his review of their publication Iconology After the Spatial Turn

77

(Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen II, 1933) in the Art Bulletin seems lukewarm: “The new Viennese group wishes to be concrete in analysis of works of art as individual, objective, formal structures; but in turning to history, they lose sight of the structure of the historical object, namely the particular human society, and deal with absolute general categories that seem to produce history by their own internal logic [by which Schapiro meant a type of Kunstwollen or Geist].”75 Although it could be argued his own formalist tendencies owed something to his exposure to these writers (he had a cordial correspondence with Pächt), if not their forebearer Alois Riegl, I would like to suggest that very early on, Schapiro demonstrated an interest in the phenomenological. This interest bears out in his own writings, but his intellectual trajectory to the philosophy of phenomenology is difficult to track prior to the 1940s and the publication of his essays on Romanesque sculpture. It is not known, for example, whether or not Schapiro engaged with Edmund Husserl’s Introduction to Phenomenology, first published in 1913, although he did read Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art” and famously responded to it.76 We also know that he was familiar with the early works of Merleau-Ponty, with whom he met in Paris in the 1940s to discuss theories of perception.77 Schapiro’s detailed structural and formal analyses of medieval sculpture, based not only on his bodily awareness and his embodied seeing but also, in some cases, on his drawing of the work, anticipates avant la lettre the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty; thus it is no surprise that he was drawn to his work and that of Heidegger.78 The Souillac essay, like his prior essays on Moissac and Silos, offers a comprehensive formal and structural analysis of the tympanum relief before proceeding to an iconological interpretation based on Schapiro’s Marxist interests. The central story is that of a lay clerk of the church named Theophilus, who, after refusing a position that would bring him great riches, becomes angry and makes a pact with the devil (fig. 3.9). Repenting for his sins, he goes to a church and prays before a statue of the Virgin, who grants his plea, returning the pact to him to burn. The relief itself depicts this story in a way that deviates from “normal” Romanesque structures, which are highly ordered and symmetrical. What Schapiro saw was discoordination, “a grouping or division such that corresponding sets of elements include parts, relations, or properties which negate that correspondence.” He did not see this discoordination as a marker of bad artistic merit but rather as one of ingenuity, which “must be seen in detail to be understood.”79 The fact that Theophilus was depicted four times and served as the central figure, instead of more holy figures like the Virgin, allowed Schapiro to find not just formal but social discord. Accordingly, he could offer (after more than half of the essay!) an iconological interpretation concerning a shifting attitude in the relationship between the laity and ecclesiastics based on the new proto-capitalistic economy that would (arguably) overturn feudalism during these years. Schapiro has been reproached for this reading: for not paying enough attention to the monastic order for which these sculptures were made (the Benedictines), for 78

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 3.9 Relief panel of Theophilus and the Devil, Sainte-Marie, Souillac, ca. 1120. Photo: Catherine Fernandez.

not paying enough attention to the figure of the Virgin, and for his “faulty sociology of medieval art.”80 However, it is not simply his Marxist approach to art history that led him to this conclusion but his own detailed analysis of form, of the relationship between part and whole, and of the importance of bodies to the design—something Camille later described as “somatic” iconology.81 His argument rests on an understanding of medieval monumental sculpture as mediating social relations through analogous bodily relations in three dimensions and demanding an awareness of movement through space (kinaesthesia) and a dependence on standpoints in that space. Most critical is how this mediation occurs: because these sculptures were located in highly charged public settings, their social dimensions must be underscored. Because everything revolved around the socioreligious concerns of a community, the works’ visibility and accessibility were critical to their design and display. This awareness reveals how architectural sculpture mediates between two distinct types of space, personal and social, often by breaking the virtual plane, or frame, of representation. This material facture of the virtual plane is significant, and its encroachment as a sign per se was classically formulated in Schapiro’s treatment of the pictorial field in his pioneering 1969 essay “On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs.” Here, Schapiro described the invention of a closed, smooth picture field in both painting and relief sculpture as the necessary precondition for the emergence of three-dimensional space in a picture.82 In his view, various representational strategies depended on the invention of the enclosed picture field: optical planes, margins and frames, directionality, expressiveness, movement, and hierarchical or Iconology After the Spatial Turn

79

Figure 3.10 Trumeau, Sainte-Marie, Souillac, ca. 1120. Photo: Christopher R. Lakey.

80

geometrically ordered systems served as signifiers in and of themselves. In the trumeau at Souillac, Schapiro saw the fanciful creatures and despondent humans crossing the frame of the structure as exemplifying an unbound expressiveness that was common in medieval art (fig. 3.10). He knew that a representation of the Christian allegory of reconciliation and the prefiguration of the sacrifice of Christ, the Sacrifice of Isaac, was entwined with images of birds snapping at humans, but in this instance, equal visual weight was given to the ravenous birds as to the Old Testament characters.83 What mattered was as much their materiality and location as their subject matter. The crucial point is that for any art object, the pictorial iconography is not always the dominant signifier.84 The fact that the trumeau rests on a pier the size of a human being underscores the awkwardness of the visual experience, as one initially engages the various figures on the three different sides of the trumeau, well above eye level. This results in viewing conditions that are hardly ideal. They emphasize the cramped area in which the trumeau is now located and the physical strain of trying to comprehend the narrative while looking up at an almost 90-degree angle of vision, recalling Paulinus of Nola’s admonition “to somewhat labor by bending back your neck” in order to see monumental images from the ground. Moreover, the viewer’s inability to walk around the entire object prevents their taking in the narrative by locating the different scenes entangled in the vines and fantastic creatures. Such conditions establish an embodied relationship between sculpted object and observer in which each beholder must come to terms with how they will navigate the work. The image is not flat and static but dynamic and three-dimensional. How close or how far does one position oneself to best view the trumeau? From what standpoint is the Sacrifice of Isaac best visible? Compare Summers’s concept of sculpture as “art of personal space” with Schapiro’s account of nonmimetic signs: “Personal space is articulated by relations of artifacts to the real spatial conditions of our embodied existence, that is, our sizes, uprightness, facing, handedness, vulnerability, temporal finitude, capacities for movement, strengths, reaches and grasps.”85 In this instance, relief sculptures demand something of the beholder, who does not simply and statically behold. What is remarkable about Schapiro’s understanding of these phenomena is not the conclusions he draws in terms of medieval attitudes, which can obviously be contradicted, but that it shows he began to think about the relationship between situated beholders and the formal features of sculpture very early on in his career. This is also evident in a drawing dated to 1927 (between September 9–13), in which Schapiro drew two different views of a capital of the Adoration of the Magi in the cloister at Moissac (fig. 3.11). The sketch portrays two views of the Virgin, who occupies the northeast corner of the capital as the Magi approach from the west. One view is from the front, the other from the side. The view from the side clearly indicates how the Virgin breaks the plane, as her head is completely detached from the block and the throne itself. The reason Schapiro drew both of these views is revealed in his notes on the drawing. Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

He was interested in the relationship between the flat picture plane, occupied by the Virgin’s throne, and the Virgin herself who comes forward: “The cushion & seat are || to picture plane; so | that V. seems to stand. | note throne—& its posts.”86 The fact that drawing (like painting) also involves bodily movement and bodily awareness was not lost on the phenomenologists. Paul Valéry famously said that “there is a tremendous difference between seeing a thing without a pencil in your hand and seeing it while drawing it.”87 Drawing is a bodily activity that grounds artists in this world yet allows them to depict the reality they see (each to his or her own). Schapiro made hundreds of drawings of works of art, and they were not attempts to index Christian iconography throughout his travels but to understand the relationship between form and body, his own and that represented. Merleau-Ponty also understood this relationship, writing, “It is by lending his body to the world that the artist changes the world into paintings. To understand these transubstantiations we must go back to the working, actual body—not the body as a chunk of space or a bundle of functions but that body which is an intertwining of vision and movement.”88 David Rosand makes the case that this is even more true of drawing because “the movement of the body, actual and imagined, are more directly recorded by the tracing hand.”89 Drawing is a reconstructive act and a projection of the body; this is something Schapiro must have implicitly understood.

Figure 3.11 Meyer Schapiro, drawing no. 75 of the capital of the Adoration of the Magi, Saint-Pierre, Moissac, September 3–18, 1927. © Miriam Schapiro Grosof, trustee under the will of Meyer Schapiro.

82

Holly asked in 2014 whether or not iconology and phenomenology, meaning and presence, ever converge. Her answer to this question was that “the presence of a work as an object on which one can linger does not necessarily obviate the possibility of making meaning. . . . Presence insists on our attention, and our attention deserves a meaning.”90 I have argued in the case of Modena that the format and carving of the reliefs require bodily movement by the beholder (and thus embodied seeing) and that the subject matter, iconologically, relates to the theme of sight writ large, allowing for a deeper understanding of medieval epistemologies of vision, exemplified by the figure of Lamech. Relating to these reliefs phenomenologically makes the case for their iconological meaning possible, or at least more fully apparent. I have also suggested that Schapiro’s method of reconstruction, his interest in drawing and understanding the relationship between form and body through drawing as his own embodied seeing, paved the way for his detailed formal descriptions of sculpture—of relations between parts and the whole, between bodies and planes. Coupled with his deep commitment to social structures in society—both modern and medieval—he created a type of iconology that can take in larger intellectual pursuits, like Marxism, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology. I believe that Schapiro understood this well in the 1930s, and it is during this fecund period of his intellectual development that phenomenology and iconology met.

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Notes 1. Holly, “Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination,” 7. 2. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 3–31. 3. Ibid., 8. 4. Holly, “Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination,” 7. 5. Ibid., 10. Emphasis added. 6. Ibid., 8. See Gadamer, Relevance of the Beautiful, 38. 7. Quoted in Holly, “Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination,” 8. The phrase “complex contemporaneity” is Holly’s. For the Gadamer quote, see Truth and Method, 167. 8. Hildebrand, Problem of Form, 238. 9. Ibid., 251. 10. Wölfflin, Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture, 157–58. Emphasis added. 11. Ibid., 167–68. Wölfflin would continue this line of inquiry in his second book (his Habilitationsschrift), Renaissance und Barock. 12. On Schmarsow, see especially, Basu, “Ornament and Empathy,” 94–110; Schwarzer, “Emergence of Architectural Space,” 48–61. 13. Schmarsow, “Essence of Architectural Creation,” 286–87. See also, “Über den Werth der Dimensionen,” 44–61. 14. On the relationship between Schmarsow and Pinder, see Nagel, Medieval Modern, 259. 15. Important exceptions to this trend are Jung, “Kinetics of Gothic Sculpture,” 133–63, and Lubbock, Storytelling in Christian Art. 16. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, and Panofsky, Die deutsche Plastik. 17. Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, 47–66; Die deutsche Plastik, 1–68. See also Wood’s introduction to Perspective as Symbolic Form, 18–24. 18. See Lakey, Sculptural Seeing; Belting, Florenz und Bagdad; Kemp, Die Räume der Maler; Damisch, Origin of Perspective; Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception; White, Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space. 19. On Panofsky’s move to the United States, see Panofsky, “Three Decades of Art History,” 321–46. 20. The bibliography on Social Art History is too vast to survey here. See Werckmeister, “Working Perspective,” 83–87; Werckmeister, “Radical Art History,” 284–91; Clark, “On the Social History of Art,” 9–20; Clark, “Conditions of Artistic Creation,” 561–62. Prior to Clark and Werckmeister, there was an initial foray into Marxist or Social Art History by writers like Frederik Antal, Arnold Hauser, and Meyer Schapiro. I will discuss Schapiro’s Marxist account of Social Art History later in this essay. On the New Art History, see Harris, New Art History, and the essays in Bryson, Calligram.

84

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

21. On the spatial turn in art history, see Lehmann and Ursprung, Bild und Raum, and Burbulla, Kunstgeschichte nach dem Spatial Turn. 22. For example, see Jaynes, Christianity Beyond Christendom; Kupfer, Art and Optics; Whittington, Body-Words; Kahlaoui, Creating the Mediterranean. 23. For example, see Lakey, “From Place to Space,” and M. Cohen and Madeline, Space in the Medieval West. For more theoretical accounts, see Malpas, Place and Experience; Casey, Fate of Place; Smith, To Take Place. 24. Summers, Real Spaces, 17–18. 25. Ibid., 18. On the potential of Summers’s work for addressing questions of place, see Campbell, Endless Periphery, 34–36. 26. The locus classicus of Heideggerian phenomenology in art history is his text “Origin of the Work of Art.” For Merleau-Ponty’s writings on art, see especially his “Cézanne’s Doubt” and “The Eye and the Mind.” 27. Summers, Real Spaces, 19. 28. O’Donnell, “Revisiting David Summers’ Real Spaces,” 14. O’Donnell’s essay is a critical and positive reassessment of Summers’s project, which has not been widely taken up as a theoretical framework for art history of any period. For two different accounts of Real Spaces, see Wood, “Space Travel,” 20, and Carrier’s review of it in CAA.reviews. 29. Summers, Real Spaces, 37. 30. See especially Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. 31. Summers, Real Spaces, 36. 32. Ibid., 43. 33. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 77. 34. Crowther, Art and Embodiment, 110. 35. According to William Heckscher, Warburg was the first to introduce the word “iconology” at the Tenth International Congress of Art History, which took place in Rome in October, 1912 (“Genesis of Iconology,” 246). For an account of this episode, see Holly, “Unwriting Iconology,” 20–24. Warburg discussed the freedom he found in the methodology he adopted in his acclaimed essay on the Palazzo Schifanoia frescoes in Ferrara (“Italian Art and International Astrology,” 563–92). I do not have space to discuss the differences between Panofsky’s and Warburg’s iconology except to say that Panofsky was not interested in cultural anthropology as Warburg was, nor in any temporalities that moved beyond the classical revival of antiquity in the Renaissance (and to a lesser extent in the Middle Ages), as Warburg’s concept of the Nachleben reveals. 36. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, 15. Italics original.

37. Ibid., 7. 38. Panofsky, “Zum Problem der Beschreibung,” 103–19. See the translation by Elsner and Lorenz, “On the Problem of Describing,” 467–82. 39. Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” 26–54. 40. Elsner and Lorenz, “Genesis of Iconology,” 493. 41. Panofsky, “On the Problem of Describing,” 479. 42. See Lorenz and Elsner, “Genesis of Iconology,” 487, and Podro, Critical Historians of Art, 202. 43. For Argan’s legacy, see his obituary in The New York Times, November 14, 1992. He was also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992). 44. Argan, “Ideology and Iconology,” 304–5. 45. Moxey, “Politics of Iconology,” 28; cf. Moxey, “Panofsky’s Concept of ‘Iconology,’ ” 265–74. 46. See Merleau-Ponty, “The Eye and the Mind,” 77–83. For two important accounts of the problem of pure visibility, see Wiesing, Visibility of the Image, and Jay, Downcast Eyes, 298–328. 47. For a fuller account of embodied vision and its relationship to medieval sculpture, see Lakey, Sculptural Seeing, chapters 1 and 2. 48. Augustine, De trinitate, CCSL 50:8.6.9, ed. Schaff. Cf. Miles, “Vision,” 125–42. 49. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.3. 50. Ibid., 12.12. 51. Paulinus of Nola, Carmen 27.511–13, Carmina 2.285, CSEL 30.2. Translation mine. 52. Ibid., Carmen 27.514–16. Translation mine. 53. Honorius Augustodunensis, Cognitio vitae, PL 40:1025, trans. Cizewski, “Doctrine of Creation,” 152. 54. Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of Man, 106. 55. Alhazen, De aspectibus 2.4.34. 56. El-Bizri, “Philosophical Perspective,” 202. 57. See Salvini, Duomo di Modena, 80–85, fig. 27, and Fernie, “Notes on the Sculpture,” 88–93. 58. The relationship between these reforms and the art of this period is well documented. See, for instance, Kessler, “Gregorian Reform Theory of Art?,” 25–49. 59. Glass, Sculpture of Reform, 153. 60. Though this changes over time, the identification of Cain with the Jews and Abel with Christ dates back to before Augustine. See J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 28–35. 61. Glass, Sculpture of Reform, 170–71. 62. Gandolofo first made this point (“Note per una interpretazione iconologie,” 323–37). 63. For the angle of vision at Modena, see Picnoi, “Restauro della facciata,” 366. 64. For a full range of textual sources, see Byron, Cain and Abel. 65. See Glass, Sculpture of Reform, 171–74.

66. See, for instance, Hildegard of Bingen, Physica, PL 197:1136B. 67. Walafrid Strabo, Vita Sancti Galli, PL 114:1010B. 68. Holly, “Unwriting Iconology,” 18. 69. The issue was raised by Cassidy in his introduction to Iconography at the Crossroads, 6–8. 70. Schapiro, “Sculptures of Souillac,” 102. For the origins of this essay and its importance in Schapiro’s oeuvre, see Crow, Intelligence of Art, 16–23. 71. Camille, “ ‘How New York Stole the Idea,’ ” 68. 72. Williams, “Meyer Schapiro in Silos,” 460. 73. Schapiro to Lillian Milgram, July 12, 1926, quoted in Schapiro and Esterman, Meyer Schapiro Abroad, 22. 74. Craven, “Meyer Schapiro,” 45. 75. Schapiro, “New Viennese School,” 460. In his commentary on Schapiro’s essay, Wood says Schapiro’s attitude “reflects the customary, skeptical Anglo-American response to the New Vienna school that for a long time obfuscated the reception of Alois Riegl” (ibid., 452). Cf. O’Donnell, Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates, 35–56. 76. See Schapiro, “Still Life as Personal Object,” 203–9. 77. O’Donnell, Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates, 134. 78. Others have noted this connection. See Dynes, “Work of Meyer Schapiro,” 164: “In fact, in some instances he has pushed the capturing of idiographic detail to such a fine pitch that we seem to stand on the threshold of realizing the utopian program of the phenomenologists for a truly complete account of some segment of perceived reality.” See also Kleinbauer, introduction to Modern Perspectives in Western Art History, 75. 79. Schapiro, “Sculptures at Souillac,” 104. 80. For some of the critiques, see Baschet, “Iconography Beyond Iconography,” 23–45; Williams, “Meyer Schapiro in Silos,” 460; Werckmeister, review of Romanesque Art, 60–64. 81. Camille, “ ‘How New York Stole the Idea,’ ” 67. 82. Schapiro, “On Some Problems,” 3. 83. Schapiro, “Sculptures of Souillac,” 127 n. 14: “It should be observed further that the theme of Abraham and Isaac, which is not only a symbol of salvation and of the Crucifixion but has also the value of an instance of submission to authority . . . is parodied on the opposite side of the trumeau by images of conflict between a youth and an old man, wrestling pairs who resemble Abraham and Isaac.” 84. Though I do not know if we are coming at this from precisely the same philosophical perspective, in this regard, I am extremely in favor of Baschet’s call to expanding iconography beyond the subject matter of a particular image in order to take into account placement and relational axiality, particularly

Iconology After the Spatial Turn

85

regarding monumental depiction, something he calls “relational-iconography” or the “iconography of space/place.” See Baschet, “Iconography Beyond Iconography,” and Baschet, Iconographie médiévale. 85. Summers, Real Spaces, 25. 86. See Schapiro and Esterman, Meyer Schapiro Abroad, 228, no. 75. On the epistemological uses of drawings by Schapiro, see Koering, “Au moyen du trait,” 74–111.

87. Valéry, “Seeing and Copying,” 36. Emphasis in the original. 88. Merleau-Ponty, “The Eye and the Mind,” 164. 89. Rosand, Drawing Acts, 13–14; cf. Suthor, Rembrandt’s Roughness. 90. Holly, “Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination,” 14.

Bibliography Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham). De aspectibus: The Optics of Ibn Al-Haytham; Books I–III, On Direct Vision. Translated by A. I. Sabra. 2 vols. London: Warburg Institute, 1989. Argan, Giulio Carlo. “Ideology and Iconology.” Translated by Rebecca West. Critical Inquiry 2, no. 2 (1975): 297–305. Arnheim, Rudolf. Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Augustinus Hipponensis. The Literal Meaning of Genesis. 2 vols. Translated by John Hammond Taylor. New York: Newman, 1982. ———. On the Holy Trinity. Edited by Philip Schaff. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1979. Baschet, Jérôme. L’iconographie médiévale. Paris: Gallimard, 2008. ———. “Iconography Beyond Iconography: Relational Meanings and Figures of Authority in the Reliefs of Souillac.” In Current Directions in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Sculpture Studies, edited by Robert A. Maxwell and Kirk Ambrose, 23–45. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Basu, Priyanka. “Ornament and Empathy in August Schmarsow’s Psychophysical History of Art.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 67/68 (2016/17): 94–110. Belting, Hans. Florenz und Bagdad: Eine westöstliche Geschichte des Blicks. Munich: Beck, 2008. Bryson, Norman, ed. Calligram: Essays in New Art History from France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Burbulla, Julia. Kunstgeschichte nach dem Spatial Turn: Eine Wiederentdeckung mit Kant, Panofsky und Dorner. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015. Byron, John. Cain and Abel in Text and Tradition: Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the First Sibling Rivalry. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Camille, Michael. “ ‘How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art’: Medieval, Modern, and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro.” Oxford Art Journal 17, no.1 (1994): 65–75.

86

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Campbell, Stephen J. The Endless Periphery: Towards a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Carrier, David. Review of Real Spaces, by David Summers. CAA.reviews, October 14, 2003, http://‌www‌.caareviews‌.org‌/reviews‌/585‌​ #.X0RXVtNKhE4. Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Cassidy, Brendan. “Introduction: Iconography, Texts, and Audiences.” In Iconography at the Crossroads: Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 23–24 March 1990, edited by Brendan Cassidy, 3–16. Princeton: Index of Christian Art, Department of Art and Archeology, 1993. Cizewski, Wanda. “The Doctrine of Creation in the First Half of the Twelfth Century.” Ph.D. diss, University of Toronto, 1983. Clark, T. J. “The Conditions of Artistic Creation.” Times Literary Supplement, May 24, 1974, 561–62. ———. “On the Social History of Art.” In Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution, 9–20. London: Thames & Hudson, 1973. Cohen, Jeremy. Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Cohen, Meredith, and Fanny Madeline, eds. Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. Craven, David. “Meyer Schapiro, Karl Korsch, and the Emergence of Critical Theory.” Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 42–54. Crow, Thomas. The Intelligence of Art. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Crowther, Paul. Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Damisch, Hubert. The Origin of Perspective. Translated by John Goodman. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994.

Dynes, Wayne. “The Work of Meyer Schapiro: Distinction and Distance.” Journal of the History of Ideas 42, no. 1 (1981): 163–72. El-Bizri, Nader. “A Philosophical Perspective on Alhazen’s Optics.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 15 (2006): 189–218. Elsner, Jaś, and Katharina Lorenz. “The Genesis of Iconology.” Critical Inquiry 38, no. 3 (2012): 483–512. Fernie, Eric. “Notes on the Sculpture of Modena Cathedral.” Arte Lombarda 14 (1969): 88–93. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. The Relevance of the Beautiful. Edited by Robert Bernasconi. Translated by Nicholas Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ———. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall. New York: Crossroad, 1989. Gandalfo, Francesco. “Note per una interpretazione iconologie delle Storie del Genesi di Wiligelmo.” In Romanico padano, Romanico europa, edited by A. C. Quintavalle, 323–37. Parma: Universita degli Studi, 1982. Glass, Dorothy. The Sculpture of Reform in North Italy, ca. 1095–1130: History and Patronage of Romanesque Facades. Burlington: Ashgate, 2010. Harris, Jonathan. The New Art History: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2001. Heckscher, William. “The Genesis of Iconology.” In Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes, 3:239–62. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1967. Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” 1935/36. In Poetry, Language, Thought, 15–86. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Originally published as “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” in Holzwege, edited by F.-W. von Herrmann, 1–74. (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1950). Hildebrand, Adolf von. The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts. In Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, 227–79. Translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou. Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994. Originally published as Das Problem der Form in der Bildenden Kunst (Strasbourg: Heitz & Mündel, 1893). Hildegard of Bingen. Physica. Edited by J. P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 197. Paris: Apud J. P. Migne, 1844–64. Holly, Michael Ann. “Iconology and the Phenomenological Imagination.” IKON 7 (2014): 7–16. ———. “Unwriting Iconology.” In Cassidy, Iconography at the Crossroads, 17–26. Honorius Augustodunensis. Cognitio vitae. Edited by J. P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 40. Paris: Apud J. P. Migne, 1844–64.

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Jaynes, Jeffrey. Christianity Beyond Christendom: The Global Christian Experience on Medieval Mappaemundi and Early World Maps. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018. Jung, Jacqueline E. “The Kinetics of Gothic Sculpture: Movement and Apprehension in the South Transept of Strasbourg Cathedral and the Chartreuse de Champmol in Dijon.” In Mobile Eyes: Peripatetisches Sehen in den Bildkulturen der Vormoderne, edited by Stefan Neuner and David Ganz, 133–73. Paderborn: Fink, 2013. Kahlaoui, Tarek. Creating the Mediterranean: Maps and the Islamic Imagination. Boston: Brill, 2007. Kemp, Wolfgang. Die Räume der Maler. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996. Kessler, Herbert L. “A Gregorian Reform Theory of Art?” In Roma e la riforma gregoriana, edited by Serena Romano and Julie Enckell, 25–49. Rome: Viella, 2007. Kleinbauer, Eugene. Introduction to Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971. Koering, Jeremei. “Au moyen du trait: Meyer Schapiro et le dessin comme outil épistémologique.” Cahiers du Musée National d’Art Modern 136 (2016): 74–111. Kupfer, Marcia. Art and Optics in the Hereford Map. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Lakey, Christopher R. “From Place to Space: Raumkasten and the Moving Spectator in Medieval Italian Art.” In The Public in the Picture: Involving the Beholder in Antique, Islamic, Byzantine and Western Medieval and Renaissance Art, edited by Beate Fricke and Urte Krass, 113–36. Zurich: Diaphanes, 2015. ———. Sculptural Seeing: Relief, Optics, and the Rise of Perspective in Medieval Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Lehmann, Annette J., and Philip Ursprung, eds. Bild und Raum: Klassische Texte zu Spatial Turn und Visual Culture. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018. Lubbuck, Jules. Storytelling in Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Malpas, Jeff. Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. New York: Routledge, 2018. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “Cézanne’s Doubt.” 1945. In Sense and Non-Sense, 1–25. Translated by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964. ———. “The Eye and the Mind.” 1961. In The Primacy of Perception, 159–90. Translated by Calerton Dallery. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

Iconology After the Spatial Turn

87

———. The Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 2003. Originally published as Phénomènologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945). Miles, Margaret. “Vision: The Eye of the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s ‘De trinitate’ and ‘Confessions.’ ” Journal of Religion 63, no. 2 (1983): 125–42. Moxey, Keith. “Panofsky’s Concept of ‘Iconology’ and the Problem of Interpretation in the History of Art.” New Literary History 17, no. 2 (1986): 265–74. ———. “The Politics of Iconology.” In Cassidy, Iconography at the Crossroads, 27–32. Nagel, Alexander. Medieval Modern. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012. Nemesius of Emesa. On the Nature of Man. Translated by R. W. Sharples and P. J. van der Eijk. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008. O’Donnell, C. Oliver. Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates: Art Through a Modern American Mind. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2019. ———. “Revisiting David Summers’ Real Spaces: A Neo-pragmatist Interpretation.” World Art 8, no. 1 (2018): 212–38. Panofsky, Erwin. Die deutsche Plastik des elften bis dreizehnten Jahrhunderts. Munich: K. Wolff, 1924. ———. Perspective as Symbolic Form. Translated and with an introduction by Christopher S. Wood. New York: Zone, 1991. Originally published as “Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form,’ ” special issue, Bibliothek Warburg Vorträge 4 (1924–25). ———. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Harper & Row, 1939. ———. “Three Decades of Art History in the United States: Impressions of a Transplanted European.” In Meaning in the Visual Arts, 321–46. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955. ———. “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst.” Logos 21 (1932): 103–19. Translated by Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz as “On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts.” Critical Inquiry 28 (2012): 467–82. Paulinus of Nola. Carmina. Edited by Guilelmus de Hartel. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 30.2. Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1894. Picnoi, Sergio. “Il restauro della facciata (1973–1984).” In I restauri del Duomo di Modena, 1875–1984, edited by Cristina Acidini, Luciano Serchia, and Sergio Piconi Luchinat, 360–72. Modena: Panini, 1986. Podro, Michael. The Critical Historians of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

88

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Rosand, David. Drawing Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Salvini, Roberto. Il duomo di Modena e il Romanico nel Modenese. Modena: Cassa di risparmio di Modena, 1966. Schapiro, Meyer. “The New Viennese School.” In Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s, edited by Christopher S. Wood, 453–58. New York: Zone, 2000. Originally published in Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 258–66. ———. “On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs.” In Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist, and Society, 1–32. New York: George Braziller, 1994. Originally published in Semiotica 1, no. 3 (1969): 223–42. ———. “The Sculptures of Souillac.” In Romanesque Art: Selected Papers, 102–30. New York: George Braziller, 1977. Originally published in Medieval Studies in Memory of Arthur Kingsley Porter, edited by W. Köhler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), 359–87. ———. “The Still Life as Personal Object—A Note on Heidegger and van Gogh.” In The Reach of Mind: Essays in Memory of Kurt Goldstein, edited by Marianne L. Simmel, 203–9. New York: Springer, 1968. Schapiro, Meyer, and Daniel Esterman. Meyer Schapiro Abroad: Letters to Lillian and Travel Notebooks. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007. Schmarsow, August. “The Essence of Architectural Creation.” In Empathy, Form, and Space, translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, 281–97. Originally published as Das Wessen der architektonischen Schöpfung. (Leipzig: Karl W. Hiersemann, 1893). ———. “Über den Werth der Dimensionen im menschlichen Raumgebilde.” Philologisch-​historische Klasse 48 (1896): 44–61. Schwarzer, Mitchell W. “The Emergence of Architectural Space: August Schmarsow’s Theory of Ramgestaltung.” Assemblage 15 (1991): 48–61. Smith, Jonathan Z. To Take Place: Toward a Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Summers, David. Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of  Western Modernism. London: Phaidon, 2003. Suthor, Nicola. Rembrandt’s Roughness. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Valéry, Paul. “Seeing and Copying.” In Degas, Manet, Morisot. Translated by David Paul. New York: Pantheon, 1986. Walafrid Strabo. Vita Sancti Galli. Edited by J. P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 14. Paris: Apud J. P. Migne, 1844–64.

Warburg, Abby. “Italian Art and International Astrology in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara.” 1912. In The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, edited by Kurt W. Foster, translated by David Britt, 563–92. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999. Werckmeister, O. K. “Radical Art History.” Art Journal 42, no. 4 (1982): 284–91. ———. Review of Romanesque Art, by Meyer Schapiro. Art Quarterly 2 (1979): 60–64. ———. “A Working Perspective for Marxist Art History Today.” Oxford Art Journal 14, no. 2 (1991): 83–87. White, John. The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space. 2nd ed. London: Faber and Faber, 1967. Whittington, Karl. Body-Words: Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic Imagination. Toronto: PIMS, 2016.

Wiesing, Lambert. The Visibility of the Image: History and Perspectives on Formal Aesthetics. Translated by Nancy Ann Roth. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Williams, John. “Meyer Schapiro in Silos: Pursuing an Iconography of Style.” Art Bulletin 85, no. 3 (2003): 442–68. Wölfflin, Heinrich. Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture. In Empathy, Form, and Space, translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, 299–318. Originally published as Prolegomena zu einer Psychologie der Architektur. (Munich: Dr. C. Wolf & Sohn, 1886). ———. Renaissance und Barock. Munich: Theodor Ackermann, 1888. Wood, Christopher S. “Space Travel.” Bookforum (February/March 2005): 20.

Iconology After the Spatial Turn

89

4 Iconographies of Progress Beatrice Kitzinger

In the late fifteenth-century N-Town dramatic cycle from East Anglia, the Annunciation is preceded by a conclave of virtues in heaven.1 Having heard their arguments concerning salvation history, the three persons of the Trinity decide to set a new era in motion by sending the Son to earth, having identified Mary of Nazareth as the virgin mother-to-be. They instruct Gabriel in detail about what to say to the woman to allay her predicated fears and doubts. As anticipated, Mary declares herself struck dumb with confusion and dread when the angel arrives and gives the well-known greeting, “Ave.” Gabriel proffers explanations, praise, and reassurance that the pregnancy will not entail the loss of Mary’s prized virginity. Then there is a long beat, enforced by a stage direction in the single manuscript that preserves the play, before the anxious angel speaks again: “Here [th]e aungel makyth a lytyl restynge + Mary beholdyth hym, + [th]e augel seyth: / Mary, come of and haste the, / And take hede in thyn entent / Whow [th]e Holy Gost, blyssyd he be, / Abydyth [th]in answere and [th]in assent.”2 Facing Mary’s continued silence, Gabriel redoubles his efforts, piling on twenty lines of injunction to the effect that the salvation of the whole just world, past and present, depends upon her agreement. So Mary finally bows her head, declaring herself the Lord’s handmaiden. Gabriel pours a four-line river of thanks and relief, and the play moves on. For the purposes of this paper, the critical aspect of the N-Town Annunciation is not the theological labyrinth concerning whether Mary had any say in the matter of the Incarnation. Rather, I am interested in the tense structure of the exchange, where Mary’s silence and Gabriel’s pleading define the rhythm of the scene. In the Christian

sphere of the fifteenth century, the conclusion of that scene might well be taken for granted as long foregone. No matter how familiar the story, though, when the angel makes “a little resting” and Mary stares at him, withholding her pivotal consent, the play makes space for its audience to consider the possibility of her dissent.3 The repeated deferrals and Gabriel’s increasingly frantic justification of the divine plan inject a shot of uncertainty into the encounter: the play is constructed with a gap between the offer of salvation and the moment it was assured. On the one hand, this caesura simply contributes frisson to the play. On the other hand, however, it testifies to an elemental premise of Christianity: the religion is founded on a set of central stories. Stories unfold in time; time becomes history. The N-Town Annunciation flirts with the failure of history to move forward. This equivocation throws into high relief the narrative structure underpinning Christianity and the sense in which, by virtue of its medium, theater can literally stage temporality as the predicate for Christian history and, in turn, for Christian representation.4 The raw material of a play is passing time—theater is, in the strict sense of the term, a time-based medium. As such, it is easy to see how medieval theater is primed to bring to the fore the importance of passing time to Christianity by making time itself—in a honed consciousness of instant or process—a component part of Christian art.5 This essay builds a florilegium of brief readings to propose that painting and sculpture can do the same. My larger premise is that artists developed strategies to work with real time within technically static compositions in order to serve a project core to much medieval art: namely, to excavate how story, history, and the present are imbricated in the Christian tradition.6 On the occasion of the Index’s hundredth birthday, I will emphasize an iconographic angle to this argument. There are various ways to make “real time” part of a work of painting or sculpture and constitutional to how the work signifies. For instance, colleagues have explored the effects of shifting light, the confluence of a work’s subject with liturgical occasion, or the way access to a work changes as it is manipulated or mentally processed.7 I propose to investigate how time can be harnessed for the composition of images. Relative to classic iconographic method, this approach requires two departures. First, it necessitates conceiving of the medium and placement of a picture as inseparable from the image’s “content.” Second, it demands the recognition that multiple images in the same object depend on one another for how their iconography reads. The set of examples I have gathered here explores the theme of real time’s incorporation into pictorial composition. Each case picks up the premise so beautifully concentrated in N-Town—namely, that works of art can demonstrate that salvation history itself had to be constructed, made up out of discrete actions that fit together in a flow of cause and effect.8 One might simply call this pictorial narrative and leave it at that. But in working through the following examples, I hope to suggest that, in planning how to coordinate subjects with pictorial composition and pictorial composition with a specific medium, image-makers were interested in more than crafting 92

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

a rendition of the founding Christian narratives and in more than using narrative to reflect on Christian time. They were also invested in thinking about how images mean what they mean. Accordingly, they staged the genesis of set-piece iconographies themselves as component parts of image sequences. I will begin with an example that, to my mind, offers the closest visual analogue to the N-Town Annunciation. I will then turn to a group of works unified by subject and discuss Epiphany scenes for the balance of the essay. While focusing mostly on compositions from the early Middle Ages, I have varied the historical contexts enough to clarify that I do not wish to propose any determined arc of development. Each case belongs to its own moment, and its arguments are contingent on issues of medium and context that all bear further analysis than I give them now. The discussion could also readily be expanded to include other media, image subjects, and cultural contexts.9 In the present essay, I mean simply to roll a ball through the intersection of pictorial composition and medium, treating time as a component of each, in order to suggest an approach to the iconographic work of medieval artists themselves.

Attaining the Crucifixion The present Chapel of the Cross at Hohenburg (Alsace) boasts a large twentieth-century rendition by the muralist Robert Gall of a twelfth-century Crucifixion scene (fig. 4.1). The composition numbers among the most intricate drafted for the historiotheological encyclopedia known as the Hortus deliciarum, compiled by the convent’s towering Abbess Herrad (ca. 1130–1195).10 Teeming with figures, Herrad’s Crucifixion is encyclopedic in its own right relative to contemporaneous depictions of the gospel event. The Hortus Crucifixion multiplies the possible pairs of figures flanking Christ’s cross to include Longinus and Stephaton, Mary and John, the two thieves, and, in the foreground, Ecclesia on a tetramorph and Synagoga on a donkey. Sun and Moon as well as the rent temple curtain frames the upper zone of the cross; the resurrected dead accompany Adam’s grave at the base. The composition corrals elements that point the meaning of its subject toward the ecclesiological, the eschatological, and the typological, alongside the narrative of Christ’s death on Golgotha. Seen in isolation, as it is on the wall at Hohenburg, Herrad’s masterful concatenation of motifs showcases both the key place of the Crucifixion in the religious landscape of the canonesses and the wealth of ideas coordinated in the Hortus. Danielle Joyner has characterized that wealth as generative of a book made to facilitate the Hohenburg women’s exploration of various types and natures of time(s).11 Joyner locates the Crucifixion as the moment of Ecclesia’s appearance in the visual world of the manuscript; she characterizes the image as a composition that links up with preceding motifs from the Old Testament section of the compendium and with the computus sections that coordinate present time with both liturgy Iconographies of Progress

93

Figure 4.1 Robert Gall, Crucifixion, after the Hortus Deliciarum, Hohenburg / Mont Ste. Odile, ca. 1934. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (SteveK) (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0). Figure 4.2 Ascent to the Cross and Crucifixion, Herrad von Hohenburg, Hortus Deliciarum, fol. 150r (copy after the lost manuscript), third quarter of the twelfth century. Photo: © Bildarchiv Foto Marburg / Art Resource, New York.

94

and history. The Crucifixion thus occupies a space of many simultaneous times in its essential, self-contained design.12 With the appearance of Ecclesia and the rending of the Temple curtain, moreover, the composition signals a juncture in the course of salvation history. Complex and self-sufficient as the composition may be, the mural version of the Hortus Crucifixion occludes Herrad’s full visual design for the scene. That design knit the Crucifixion iconography into a long, multistage story. The Hortus manuscript was destroyed in 1870, and analysis depends upon the Warburg Institute’s reconstitution of most of its visual program from nineteenth-century studies; the color edition was edited by the Index’s own Rosalie Green.13 If we trust the copyist, Herrad designed her fulsome rendition of the Crucifixion as a pair with a much sparer image placed above it on the page (fig. 4.2). This vignette depicts Christ preparing to mount the cross. While the Crucifixion folds time, the full pair of scenes stretches it. In the upper register, the Hortus stages a caesura: the moment just before the Crucifixion. The irresolution of this pivot point in salvation history is amplified in the composition (as copied). The cross appears off center, with the central axis of the image defined only by a disjointed line of hands and legs. Pilate’s titulus on the cross has not been filled Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

in. Most importantly, Jesus himself has not assumed the essential position: he waits off to the side, shoulders hunched and hands clasped, a stance suggesting no sign of salvation. A workman kneels poised to nail Christ’s body to the cross, but his raised hammer has not fallen; the cross is still empty. A sweep to fulfillment is built into the page, for the moment of decision that produces the Crucifixion occurs in direct visual relation to the Crucifixion itself. However, a temporal suspension inheres between Christ and the cross. In the space of this pause, the viewer of the manuscript is asked to consider the stages by which the Passion unfolded, unleashing all the balancing forces depicted in the Crucifixion. The Crucifixion below brings a depth and harmony that resolves the compositional and historical problem posed by the upper register, but the force of the full configuration does not simply rush ahead to the richer image. The two exist in balance partly because the Crucifixion composition informs the drama of the upper image as much as the depiction of the moment before informs the drama of the lower image. The Hortus gives us scenic stages of history, with a heightened consciousness of both the contingency between them and the time that it takes to move from one to the other.14 Like the N-Town Annunciation, Herrad’s Crucifixion sequence works with temporal momentum to generate the central event and to characterize it as a turning point in salvation history. In that characterization, the Hortus also shows the generation of the Crucifixion as a rich interpretive image—meditation on history becomes just as much reflection on what painting can show about history’s meaning.

Becoming Epiphany The arc of major episodes in the Christological narrative contains few scenes as germane to my theme as the Epiphany (or the Adoration of the Magi; or, in Index parlance, “Magi: Adoration”). As has long been recognized, Epiphany images attest an adventurous array of temporal experiments like the integration of contemporary donors— temporal experiments that are inseparable from compositional ones.15 Moreover, the theme of recognition is essential to the meaning of the scene—this theme itself turns on transition and narrative crux. Recognition is intimately related to visual understanding in various medieval contexts, both imagistic and verbal; but in the kings’ apprehension of God in a stable, the Epiphany is driven almost entirely by the theme. The kings’ decision to journey toward the child is predicated on their recognition of his divine nature, as is their exceptional ability to see beyond the mean circumstances of the stable to the meaning of the holy family. Accordingly, popular late medieval meditation texts emphasize the kings’ acute combination of sight and understanding. In the Golden Legend, for example, Jacobus de Voragine explicitly invokes the Church Fathers’ efforts to reconcile what the Magi saw with what they understood. Beginning with a credit to Augustine, he quotes: 96

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

“I am amazed when I see the cloths and perceive the heavens, I am shaken when in the crib I look upon a beggar Child whose glory rises above the planets!” In the same vein Bernard writes: “What are you doing, O Magi, what are you doing? You worship a baby at the breast, wrapped in poor cloths, in a shabby hut? Is this a God? . . . Here the wise men give up their wisdom in order to become wise.” . . . And Jerome, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, says: “Look upon the cradle of Christ and see heaven!”16 The Golden Legend thus invokes the kings’ ability to see the temporal and the eternal, the narrative and the iconic, the humble and the glorified natures of Christ and his mother, all at the same time. Starting from the earliest Epiphany scenes, artists also took the themes of recognition and vision as elemental to the subject. While they depicted the Magi’s actions and experience, image-makers experimented with possibilities to exercise the trio of subject, composition, and medium to craft a sense of recognition for their viewers as well. Many instances of this iconography stage a notably powerful confluence among the subject represented, the manner of its representation, and the relationships constructed between the viewer and the work; I will describe some of these instances here. It is worth remarking that the way I will characterize relationships between viewers and works produces a certain alignment between the way a contemporary iconographer might look at an image and the way some compositions position a historical viewer. To posit such a correspondence is not to assume that the two subject positions are anything alike. Rather, it is to suggest that, already in early generations, recognizable image types and traditions existed as such and that artists made use of certain types and traditions when conceiving their new compositions.17 Like the Hortus Crucifixion, the Epiphany of the ninth-century sacramentary made for Bishop Drogo of Metz stands alone as a complex composition but does not exist in isolation within its manuscript (fig. 4.4).18 Unlike the Hortus folios with their tiered composition, though, the interdependent scenes of the Drogo Sacramentary are not all visible at the same time. The Epiphany initial is justly famous for its daring perspective and time-lapse repetition of figures that emphasize the Magi’s journey. Two folios prior, though, appears a much less discussed initial for the octave of the Nativity, which literally looks forward to the major feast day ahead (fig. 4.3). The progression between the two vignettes enacts the passage of liturgical time between feast days, mirroring the notion of time passing between clear junctures in the life of Christ. Thinking in terms of iconographic convention as well as liturgical time and biblical story, however, reveals the full degree of expectation in the octave and also amplifies the effect of the Epiphany scene when its time is ripe. In the Nativity octave initial, mother and child sit in strict profile inside the D. Two attendants populate the stem of the letter, and Joseph sleeps enclosed within the curve of its bowl. By depicting the Virgin this way, the Metz painter sat her ready for Iconographies of Progress

97

Figure 4.3 Octave of the Nativity, Drogo Sacramentary, Metz, ca. 840–50. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9428, fol. 32v. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Figure 4.4 Epiphany, Drogo Sacramentary, Metz, ca. 840–50. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9428, fol. 34v. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

Figure 4.5 Epiphany, marble sarcophagus of Exarch Isaac, fifth century. Ravenna, San Vitale. Photo: Beatrice Kitzinger.

100

the Magi who have not yet arrived. In the Epiphany initial, the Phrygian caps of the Magi affiliate them with an older tradition of representing the Eastern visitors, as seen on the fifth-century sarcophagus of Exarch Isaac (fig. 4.5) or in smaller scale on the stone reliquary of Quiricus and Judith (both in Ravenna).19 Another late antique Epiphany element is present in Metz, but it was transplanted to the octave. In many early examples, the Virgin and Child receive the Magi from a high chair, sometimes explicitly wicker, and appear seated in profile, whether the kings approach from the left or from the right. On an ivory from the same group of manuscripts as the Drogo Sacramentary and on another ninth-century ivory book cover held at the Liebieghaus Museum in Frankfurt, whose carving has also been ascribed to Metz, the carvers employed this late antique iconography quite precisely. This usage suggests that the motif was common currency in the Carolingian world and particularly well known at Metz (fig. 4.6).20 Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 4.6 Ivory book cover, Metz, ca. 850. Frankfurt, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Ms. Barth. 180; long-term loan to the Liebieghaus Museum. © Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Stefan Roller.

Before reflecting further on the Metz painter’s negotiation between the octave and Epiphany initials, it is worth dwelling for a moment on the ivory example in Frankfurt. This case illuminates several points about the sacramentary by contrast and comparison. Like the Drogo Sacramentary, the ivory is marked by a notable fluidity and vivacity in the artists’ conception of the scenes. The same carver who completed the panel containing the Epiphany worked the scene of the kings’ deferral outside Herod’s palace, where an attendant whispers in the tyrant’s ear, as well as the neighboring panel of the visit of the shepherds to the Bethlehem manger, in which one of Iconographies of Progress

101

the rustics bends to coo over the baby while Mary pulls her veil around her throat.21 Again like Drogo’s painter, the carver invested in the Magi’s travels to see the child, sending them riding out of the frame in the lower register of the left-hand vertical panel, to reappear at Bethlehem’s gate facing the other direction in the panel just above, and then to wind around again to approach the waiting Virgin and Child on foot in the next panel up. Here, however, the Magi’s Phrygian caps are reserved for the kings’ ceremonious arrival at Mary’s door. In the quite extended cycle of scenes depicting their journey to Bethlehem, encounter with Herod, and visitation from an angel, the kings are not dressed for the Epiphany occasion, boasting bowl haircuts in place of the characteristic soft caps with a forward fold at the top. The addition of the caps at this stage might describe the discrete importance of the meeting. But in respects both practical and significant, the stronger signal is that of a venerable model amid the creative noise of the surrounding scenes. To be sure, the carver adapted the model as needed for the scheme of architectural framing, but the core components of the profile holy figures and capped Magi were developed long before. The effect of a conventional composition in an otherwise quite fluid field is that of a peg on which to hang the key moments of the story.22 Like the Magi themselves, the viewer recognizes the mother and child who are to be adored. The continuity of the vivid narrative is structured into moments of anticipation and aftermath as the travelers make their way to Bethlehem, see the child, and then receive their angelic visitation prompting their departure. Boxed into a rectangular register, the Metz carvers still had a dramatic element of simultaneity at their disposal that the Metz painters exercised as well (cf. figs. 4.4 and 4.11). Mary receives the shepherds and takes the child to the Temple while the kings are busy negotiating their passage with Herod. On the vertical to the right, another carver achieved a similar simultaneous effect around the Nativity on the Frankfurt plaque. Mary, Joseph, and the midwife occupy one compartment, with the child below them—lamp hanging above his manger and ox and ass to either side—with the Annunciation to the shepherds following. The compositions on the book cover are full of details that locate the gospel events in specific, dramatic moments: Mary’s hand is at her throat when the angel arrives, and the shepherds take the shock of annunciation in their knees. This immediacy occurs within a structure formed by the complex temporal orchestration of the story that was created by interweaving strands of the narrative (such as the distinct narratives of the Magi and the Holy Family). The current assemblage of ivories may not have always belonged on the same book cover, but they have been arranged in a form known from the Lorsch Gospels in the Carolingian period, which participates in a robust earlier tradition.23 In this generally five-part format, many phases of the gospel story are visible at once in the side panels, which frame a central scene that is narratively disconnected. The central scene is generally in portrait mode, as in the Oxford book cover, which corresponds well to the Metz case in its full narrative frame and particularly active central figure 102

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 4.7 Ivory book cover, Aachen (?), ca. 800. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 176. Photo: Bodleian Libraries.

(fig. 4.7). Especially relative to the isolated center—whether a portrait, a separate scene, or a blend of the two—the presence of sequence and progression from episode to episode in the frame becomes essential to the effect of the composition as a whole.24 The importance of understanding the gospel story as a narrative becomes an argument of the full composition of the ensemble because the framing narrative is not to be taken for granted as the only strategy of representation. The character and independence of the narrative mode, defined in moments like Mary’s hand at her throat or the cloth wrapped around the stable post, contextualizes and activates set pieces like the Annunciation or the Epiphany, building the story anew but presenting it as a unified, visible fait accompli with a fixed historical structure at one and the same time. Iconographies of Progress

103

By virtue of its book medium and distribution through major initials, the infancy narrative in the Drogo Sacramentary cannot work like the ivory ensemble. The whole story is present insofar as the liturgical year is complete, but the scenes are not visible in a single frame. The interior form of the codex orchestrates the progression of the narrative. Moving stepwise toward Epiphany, the painter turned the combination of his medium and his iconographic arsenal to advantage in shaping the story. The effect of expectation is amplified in the Nativity octave because the iconography is incomplete: the Virgin and Child await visitors, and their pose telegraphs exactly for whom they are waiting. When the Magi arrive, the painter underscores the progression of the story and the energy of his pictorial practice. Mary’s face relaxes into a three-quarter posture that opens the group, while her right-angled arm retains the echo of the older composition. In other words, Epiphany iconography is present by anticipation in the unconventional octave initial, but when the Epiphany itself is realized the rendition of that same iconography has shifted just enough to make an image that is both vivid and recognizable as another variant in the same tradition.25 On the back of the D in the Drogo Nativity octave, a green cloth hangs from the vegetal ornament of the letter. Relative to the gospel story, the fabric serves no narrative end whatsoever, as far as I can see, but it serves a telling purpose in the artist’s approach to narrative painting. In the Epiphany image, curtains frame the Virgin and Child, enhancing the drama of revelation and the importance of the formal audience with the approaching Magi. Two folios back, the cloth plays no such defined role, except insofar as it, like the Virgin, is poised: it hangs in profile as if ready to become the cloth of honor. Hanging cloth is useful for defining the momentary, as the carvers of the Liebieghaus ivory also knew very well. Cloth creates movement and spontaneity. It has to be hung and can fall down; it is not a large piece of scenery like a gabled doorway or an arch. In the ivory, cloth’s arrangement by characters within a scene—such as Mary pulling her veil together at the visit of the shepherds or her midwife bringing either an extra blanket or a curtain at the Nativity—or cloth’s deployment around dividing posts, ends flying, become means to cultivate an active space in which the program can unfold moment by moment. In the Drogo octave, the cloth’s indeterminate purpose speaks to the “not-yet” nature of the scene but also to the fullness of its own time. Six hundred years after the Metz artists imagined the Epiphany, in another book genre designed for the formalization of Christian time, the Boucicaut Master took a tack strikingly akin to the sacramentary program. The Boucicaut Master is celebrated for introducing spectacular new ideas in renderings of well-established scenes, such as the glowing sun that rises as Mary and Joseph make their way to Egypt in his eponymous book of hours, made for Jean le Meingre between 1405 and 1408.26 The ten folios between the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi in the hours of the Virgin span one of the late Middle Ages’ most robust exercises of the manuscript medium for iconographic effect. When Christ is born (fol. 73v), his parents and the angels adore 104

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

him as he lies on a makeshift canopied bed seen from the side, made quite grand by the rich red-and-green patterned fabric that is tacked up to the stable roof (fig. 4.8). The Annunciation to the Shepherds has its blaze of glory in the interim (fol. 79v), and then the Magi arrive (fol. 83v; fig. 4.9). In a seminal article from 1986, James Marrow employed this sequence to reflect on the Master’s command of space and how his 90-degree revolution of the stable situates the viewer relative to a pictorial world so real it obeys the laws of physics.27 I would like to shift the terms of discussion to emphasize the temporality of the sequence and the location of the viewer relative both to the book and to the story. The Master positions the viewer relative to a flexible, illusory space behind the picture plane, but he also positions the viewer relative to the very tangible object between his or her hands. As in the Drogo Sacramentary, the progression from Nativity to Epiphany in the Boucicaut Hours works specifically with the body of the codex and with the way one moves through real time—be it an admirer’s few swift page turns or the longer hours of prayer. The multipart composition demonstrates that to shift spatial and temporal perspectives on the stable is to shift figurative perspectives as well. Turning bed hangings into a cloth of honor reveals, in unmistakable pictorial language, the royalty that was previously visible only in oblique view.28 In the Boucicaut Hours, sight and understanding align at the coming of the Magi; as in the Hortus Crucifixion, compositional irresolution is balanced out. As in the Drogo Sacramentary, a visual clue planted in one image bears fruit in the course of progression to another. The vector of convention, though, relative to the Drogo program, is more straightforward. If incongruous bed hangings are rare in late medieval stables, formal cloths of honor can appear in all settings to mark an encounter with powerful figures.29 Indeed, they can even create such a setting entirely, the temporality of cloth becoming part of a broader meditation on the Incarnation (fig. 4.10).30 In the Boucicaut Hours, the arrival of the Magi wrests the eccentric cloth around to play a well-established part. The encounter with divinity is brokered by an encounter with conventional composition; the drama of the kings’ recognizing the child’s divinity amid the squalor of the stable is communicated by the recognition that an iconography of royalty was present all along.

The Meaning of Medium Speaking to the nature of a day that falls between two major feasts, the octave initial in the Drogo Sacramentary does not just look forward to the coming of the kings; it also looks back to the Nativity (fol. 24v) (figs. 4.3 and 4.11). The solicitous women in blue and pink at the top and bottom of the octave letter D’s spine would seem to have continued their attendance on the Christ Child from his bath in the lower part of the Nativity initial C, while Joseph continues to sulk, from the top serif in the C to the curve Iconographies of Progress

105

Figure 4.8 Nativity, book of hours of the Maréchal Boucicaut, Paris, 1405–8. Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, MS 2, fol. 73v. Photo © RMNGrand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

Figure 4.9 Epiphany, book of hours of the Maréchal Boucicaut, Paris, 1405–8. Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, MS 2, fol. 83v. Photo © RMNGrand Palais / Art Resource, New York.

Figure 4.10 (opposite) Meister Francke, Man of Sorrows, ca. 1435. Oil on oak panel, 930 × 671 mm. Hamburg, Kunsthalle, inv. no. HK-499. Photo: bpk Bildagentur /Hamburg, Kunsthalle / Elke Walford / Art Resource, New York. Figure 4.11 Nativity, Drogo Sacramentary, Metz, ca. 840–50. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9428, fol. 24v. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

of the D. I will close with a case from another cultural and material context that also works on the principle of blended composition. The gilt copper plaque ascribed to eighth-century Italy and held at the Bodemuseum in Berlin presents another iconographic fusion of Nativity and Epiphany scenes (fig. 4.12). The Child’s uncommon gesture equivocates between tucking a hand underneath his newborn head and greeting the Magi from the bed. As such, the composition does double duty in a small space.31 It also happens to catch an awkward temporality, Iconographies of Progress

109

Figure 4.12 Nativity/Epiphany, Lombardy, eighth century. Gilt copper, 130–32 × 570–90 mm. Berlin, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. no. 1007. © Berlin Staatliche Museen zu Berlin— Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst. Photo: Antje Voigt.

110

as if the travelers arrived before the mother and child were quite ready for them. Somewhat ambiguous temporal fusion is, in fact, the hallmark of the plaque. A seated king bearing a banner adorned with a cross joins the line of the Magi at the far right, separated from them by a curving plant. This figure has been called Herod, in keeping with possible narrative priorities of the scene.32 However, the banner considerably complicates this identification. The fourth king is perhaps specifically Constantine, holding his labarum. It is also possible that the figure is a generic contemporary Christian ruler, which would affiliate the plaque with the long tradition of potentates desirous of joining the Magi’s procession and artists who wrinkled time to put them there.33 It is also worth noting that the king, seated and gesturing, bookends the Virgin to the far left, taking what otherwise might be Joseph’s compositional place in a Nativity that contains both other scenes and other times.34 Especially decontextualized as this plaque is, it becomes hard to posit precise motivations for merging Nativity and Epiphany together in one frame and for the Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

flexibility in the identity of the seated male figure as well. The isolation of this composition itself raises an important point about the reading of iconography. In contrast to all the foregoing cases, where single pictures are read with reference to their physical relationships to other pictures, the Berlin plaque raises the specter of possibilities we cannot tap when reading the image. It is conceivable that the plaque always stood alone but much more probable that the relief originally formed part of a multifaceted object, perhaps a small box.35 The Franks Casket, a famously complex contemporary case, underscores how large the theater of meaning created by physical contextualization might have been for the Berlin plaque (fig. 4.13).36 In this Insular case, the Adoration of the Magi provides one of the only canonical points in an iconographic scape of scenes that has long struck scholarship as unconventional. The varying sources for the scenes on each surface of the box set Roman history, Germanic legend, and biblical narrative in counterpoint to one another across the facets of the object. The Adoration of the Magi is part of the only Iconographies of Progress

Figure 4.13 Franks Casket, England, eighth century. Whalebone, 229 × 190 × 109 mm. London, The British Museum, inv. no. 1867,0120.1. Photo: The British Museum.

111

plaque that places two scenes from different traditions in immediate juxtaposition: the gospel scene is paired with the legend of  Weland the Smith. Both visually balanced and physically contiguous, this complication of the typical Christian iconography is impossible to divorce from the Epiphany; commentators have long acknowledged that we are required by the object to read the two scenes together.37 That is to say, even if the Franks Casket fell apart and the four-fifths of it that introduce further scenes were lost, we would still know that someone was thinking about the Epiphany and the Weland legend as a mutually contextualizing pair. On the Franks Casket, the Adoration is not built or achieved in the same spirit as the cases I have discussed so far—in large part because it is not part of a single narrative flow. As a scene and as a framed composition, it is presented emblematically. Benjamin Tilghman describes the Franks Casket as a deliberate enigma requiring active decryption.38 In these terms, the whole program becomes about process—about the use of scenes and stories in more or less fragmentary form to create a new iconographic whole, with multiple possible variations on that whole’s chronology and progression. The Weland-Epiphany plaque frames the scenes with a verbal riddle whose answer is the material of the object itself (whalebone). As Tilghman observes, this riddle presents a microcosm of the puzzling required by the whole casket. The material contiguity of the disparate scenes builds a new, single image in which both play an equal part and in which the real-time negotiation of meaning forms part of the composition.39 In this, the twin images of the single plaque mirror the possible continuities and comparisons staged by the box in its entirety. The fusion of Nativity and Epiphany on the Berlin plaque does not require the same kind of mental gymnastics as the Weland-Epiphany panel of the Franks Casket, being two contiguous moments in the same well-known story. Their status as discrete scenes is a matter of how artistic convention meets scriptural narrative and is possibly also contingent on functional considerations, like the representation of events that enjoy separate liturgical commemoration. Perhaps there was a topical reason to construct the scene as a blended one—a theological view on what it means to combine Nativity and Epiphany might emphasize the human birth of an incarnate God. In any case, the multiplied iconographic characteristics of the image again compress to a fresh unity in Berlin: a new image emerges from the precise moment people are caught in action, and the image includes the totality of the object—remembering that in this case we do not know how varied that totality was. The Adoration of the Magi is a scene about motion. Artists like the painter of the Berthold Missal rendered a brilliantly timed sequential narrative in the fluid coming and going of the kings around the fixed point of the Virgin and Child (fig. 4.14).40 The composition of the cases I have discussed goes a step further in complexity. The Hohenburg, Metz, and Lombard artists and the Boucicaut Master did not just tell a good story within a bounded picture plane. They involved the substance of the pieces that bear their pictures in a fusion of content and form. Like the Franks Casket with 112

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

its riddle, this fusion pulls the object itself into a central position of representational work. Such stitching-in of the object context for images complicates the definition of iconography. When we talk about the “meaning” of pictures in the Drogo Sacramentary or the Boucicaut Hours, that meaning is partly predicated on conversation between pictures, in a relationship argued largely by the way the physicality of the manuscript intersects with the images’ subjects. The relationship I have described between the octave and Epiphany images in the Drogo Sacramentary depends on the codex medium; our ignorance of the Berlin plaque’s original range of meaning yawns in comparison, thanks to the composition’s current lack of physical context. As the Berlin plaque only can by contrast, examples like the Drogo Sacramentary or the Boucicaut Hours underscore how rarely the full contents of an artwork are couched in a single picture and, conversely, how rarely the full range of meaning in a picture rests in its graphic composition alone. Integrating an image with others in the same book or on the same box is one way to redefine the boundaries of iconography and iconographic method. Expanding the inquiry to include other objects that originally existed in the same space or in ephemeral contexts like liturgical song opens further methodological Pandora’s boxes as scholarship aims to define what might constitute an image’s meaning and how we define our terms for those results.41 Artistic self-awareness is hardly exclusive to the modern. The Metz artists themselves elaborated on their own involvement of medium in the way they told their stories. The interest in the observation that the story of the Epiphany flows through a letter D does not stop with the Metz painters’ formal innovation and whimsy (see fig. 4.4). It extends to the fact that the fabric of the book—the letters themselves—contains and presents the story that structures the liturgical year. The letters thus oscillate among their status as letters qua letters, their status as frames for painting that operate according to the logic of the painter, and the concurrent suggestion that they are spaces so real or objects so concrete that cloth can hang from their supports. As an act of representation, the Epiphany painting is not only, or even primarily, about three Magi and their journey—it is about the representational power of book painting itself to structure a story in time. The example showcases how material works of narrative can fit time into stories and stories into time in order to make the temporal structure of a story itself part of their subject, in turn. In the Drogo Sacramentary, as in all the works discussed above, a recognizable composition with deep veins of visual convention is rendered as constructed in space and realized in time. The artists of the examples offered here all lifted the hood on iconographies classifiable in their own era as well as in ours. They crafted energetic compositions to depict events key to Christian history, and they built the attainment or the derivation of those very events into the stream of narrative. Such reflection within medieval programs on the genesis of major iconographies is a matter of pictorial invention. The cases just discussed show it also to be a matter of coordination between pictures and their placement within specific media. As such, the works described here Iconographies of Progress

113

Figure 4.14 Epiphany, Berthold Missal, Weingarten, 1215–17. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.710, fol. 19v. Purchased by J. P. Morgan (1867–1943), 1926. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

permit reflection on ways that the “how” and the “what” of images’ meaning are profoundly entwined; indeed, they are arguably inseparable in a full definition of images’ iconography. Like the transitory moments in the stories that they represent, images understood as continuous with their media can show classic iconographies to be not static but remade each time one looks at them.

Notes 1. See Meredith, Mary Play, 73–75, lines 1279– 1355 (the Annunciation). The N-Town manuscript is in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian D.viii; the stage direction appears on fol. 64r. 2. The N-Town play contains fully twenty-four stage directions, some in English and some in Latin. Meredith remarks that the variation implies different sources and that all the English directions are transcribed integrally with the text, while all the directions fit into the margins are Latin (Mary Play, 20). 3. This kind of “imagination” on the audience’s part differs from that discussed by Beadle, who focuses on the interdependent traditions of devotional meditation and audience-involved drama. Beadle points to a chain of sourcing from the N-Town dramatist back to Nicholas Love’s English version of the Meditations on the Life of Christ and Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons for the inspiration to implicate the audience in convincing Mary to take up her role (“ ‘Devoute ymaginacioun,’ ” 5). Cf. Bernard, Homelia super “Missus est” 4.8, Bernardi opera, 4:53. 4. On the narrative structure of Christianity as related to representation in various forms, see, inter alia, Nichols, Romanesque Signs, and Boureau, Événement sans fin. 5. I previously remarked on the presence of this equation in the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge (“Judgment on Parchment,” 74). On the “opportune moment” of the Annunciation in wider artistic perspective, see Baert, Kairos or Occasion, 81–90. 6. My current book project, Present History: Carolingian Illumination and the Uses of Narrative, specifically investigates Carolingian visual narrative to this end. See also Anne-Orange Poilpré’s forthcoming study, Figurer la Bible. 7. Studies in architectural media that relate iconography and real time by focusing on environmental factors include, for the impact of light on iconography, Binski, “Angel Choir at Lincoln,” and Caviness, “Stained Glass Windows in Gothic Chapels.” For procession and liturgical occasion, the locus classicus remains Fassler, “Liturgy and Sacred History.” The temporal quality of manipulable media

has been well explored relative to objects like winged altarpieces or folding pages; see, for example, Connolly, “Imagined Pilgrimage”; Zchomelidse and Freni, Meaning in Motion; Gertsman, Worlds Within; and Borland, “Moved by Medicine.” Palazzo’s study of energy in art and the liturgy is highly pertinent as well (Souffle de Dieu). 8. Baxandall has attended closely to the various stages of the Annunciation, considering the relationship between the visual and verbal rendition of the episode (Painting and Experience, 49–56, and “Pictorially Enforced Signification”). 9. I will concentrate on narrative Christology here, but the first case that prompted me to consider the issue of the momentary in medieval art was a coronation of the Virgin triptych attributed to a Cologne workshop, 1325–50, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (17.190.211; http://‌www‌​ .metmuseum‌.org). In this example, contrary to the far more frequent model of an angel descending with a crown to effect the Virgin’s visual investiture as Queen of Heaven, the angel in the peak of the arch tracery pulls back his hands, his work complete. Whichever direction the angel moves in, he defines the Virgin’s perceptible royalty as contingent: if the crowning is a process, she was not always crowned. That hinging moment is itself important to the range of meaning in the image type, which presents a wide range of visual approaches to a transformative moment. 10. On the modern history of the Chapel of the Cross at Mont Sainte-Odile / Hohenburg, see Fischer, Treize siècles d’histoire, 291–92. 11. Joyner, Painting the “Hortus deliciarum”; on the Crucifixion in Christian time, see esp. 137–39. 12. I discuss the multitemporal nature of the Cross in Kitzinger, The Cross, the Gospels, and the Work of Art. 13. Herrad of Hohenburg, Hortus deliciarum; see Joyner, Painting the “Hortus deliciarum,” 2. 14. Joyner discusses the relationship of the Hortus’s conception of times to that of Ambrose of Milan, who authored hymns focusing listeners’ attention on the way that times of day map onto events of the

Iconographies of Progress

115

Passion, including the Ascension onto the Cross at the third hour. Ambrose presents the ascent as the juncture when Christ assumed the sin of Adam and staged a turning point to “the days of blessedness” (Painting the “Hortus deliciarum,” 104–5). See also Ramsey, Ambrose, 168–70. 15. See, for example, Trexler, Journey of the Magi. 16. De Voragine, Golden Legend, 83; cf. Meditations on the Life of Christ, 50. 17. The concept of “graphicacy” is relevant to the theme of recognition. For this term and for consistent attention to the question of balance between contemporary scholarship and historical production when discussing visual convention, see Brown, Garipzanov, and Tilghman, Graphic Devices. For varied studies on medieval artists’ cognizant and productive use of models, see, inter alia, Lowden and Bovey, Under the Influence, and Kitzinger and O’Driscoll, After the Carolingians. 18. The Drogo Sacramentary is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9428; 265 × 210 mm. 19. For a panoply of further examples, see Beer, Woelk, and Michael, Magi, 26–43 (cat. nos. 2–10). The profile setting of the figures is sometimes stricter than others. 20. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9388 is the gospel book that partners the Drogo Sacramentary (see further n. 25 below); the Epiphany appears on one of its original covers, now mounted on MS lat. 9393. The Liebieghaus ivory is Frankfurt, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, MS Barth 180; 220 × 180 mm overall. See Goldschmidt, Elfenbeinskulpturen, 1:42–43 (cat. no. 75, as MS Barth. typ. 2). For another Carolingian rendition of the profile Epiphany, see the late ninth-century plaque in the Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. 150–866; Beer, Woelk, and Michael, Magi, 46–47 (cat. no. 12). 21. The plaques in the frame all have slightly different measurements, and the carvers’ approach to faces varies enough that I think it is worth speaking of the reliefs in four separate groups. I thank Stefan Roller for the opportunity to examine the ivory, and Christoph Winterer for discussing it with me. Goldschmidt dates the carving circa 850 and locates it in Metz partly by comparison to the cover of the Drogo Sacramentary. He proposes that the reliefs remain in their original wooden frame and notes the likelihood of a gilded metal sheet under the heavily undercut and latticed carving; he further argues for the central scene as the Temptation of Christ and remarks on the distinct style and quality of its carving relative to that of the framing plaques. 22. Granger remarks that the use of highly familiar liturgical or devotional lines of Latin in the English cycle plays to a similar effect (N-Town Play, 92, for example).

116

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

23. For early Christian cases, see Lowden, “Word Made Visible.” For a Merovingian descendant, see the Gospels of St-Lupicin, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9384: Bardiès-Fronty, Denoël, and Villela-Petit, Temps mérovingiens, 190–92 (cat. no. 144). 24. The Adoration of the Magi itself was a subject for the central plaque of book covers—for example, the sixth- to seventh-century Egyptian or Syrian plaque held at Manchester, John Rylands Library, inv. ivory 6; see Beer, Woelk, and Michael, Magi, 56–57 (cat. no. 17). Here, the Virgin and Child appear frontally, with the Magi displaced to the sides. This modification of the common late antique configuration of the scene in profile changes the position of the viewer, who directly meets the central figures’ gazes. The revolved perspective of a frontal Epiphany resonates with much later examples, such as the Boucicaut Hours discussed below or the ivory tabernacles invoked in n. 28. 25. Poilpré recognizes a closely related iconographic play with the Annunciation in MS. lat. 9388. These two manuscripts represent a highly original and ambitious case in which an iconographic program is fully played out between discrete books and within liturgical usage. I will discuss the books further in Present History; Poilpré’s analysis is forthcoming in Figurer la Bible and “Drogon.” I warmly thank Poilpré for sharing her work with me in advance of publication. 26. Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, MS 2; 274 × 190 mm. See Meiss, French Painting, 7–22. 27. Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning.” 28. The idea of hanging a cloth behind the Virgin has an early precedent in the Fulda Sacramentary of circa 990, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 3548, fol. 14r. A convention, particularly in French Gothic Adorations of the Magi, imagines the Virgin crowned to receive the kings; a subset of this group interweaves the Virgin and Child’s presence in and outside of the narrative, staging them as the statue central to a tabernacle. See Sarah Guérin’s forthcoming work on this theme: Ivory Palaces: Material, Belief, and Desire in Gothic Sculpture, chapter 6, on the conflation of the Adoration of the Magi and the Coronation of the Virgin. 29. The Boucicaut Hours is riddled with such cloths of honor. For instance, the Virgin and Child’s royal welcome to the Magi is anticipated by their formal enthronement under a baldachin at the Mass for the Virgin (fol. 46r). Nicholas (fol. 33v) is one of the many saints framed by cloth in the manuscript; his setting is notable in that the cloth is not tacked up but held by angels—a variant that reinforces the sense of a specific moment and encounter. 30. Michael Camille’s analysis of Meister Francke’s monumental Hamburg Man of Sorrows (Kunsthalle, inv. nr. HK–499) includes the

observation that the angels’ attributes locate the apparition at a moment, a “here and now” that involves reflection on the End of Time. I would add extra emphasis on the way the angels hold the cloth that cradles Christ, which underscores the sense of the momentary. See Camille, “Seductions of the Flesh”; Camille, “Mimetic Identification and Passion Devotion”; Nürnberger, “Ein Maler in Hamburg,” 104. 31. Berlin, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. nr. 1007. 32. The suggestion builds on Volbach, Mittelalterliche Bildwerke, 153–54 (cat. no. 1007). See Beer, Woelk, and Michael, Magi, 44–45 (cat. no. 11, entry by Arne Effenberger). 33. Examples are legion; one might first cite the Empress Theodora in San Vitale, Ravenna, and Otto IV on the shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne Cathedral. Broadly on patrons’ identification with the Magi, see Trexler, Journey of the Magi, and Büttner, Imitatio pietatis. On the particular intersection of kingship and the Three Kings, see Deshman, “Christus rex et magi reges.” 34. For an example of Joseph and Mary formally seated on either side of the crib, see Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 9386, fol. 64r. 35. The sheet of copper is wrapped around another gilt plaque, which Eggenberger posits as inserted at a date later than the relief. The bent edges of the relief sheet show irregularly spaced nail holes. I thank Elisabeth Ehler and Julien Chapuis for the opportunity to examine this object, and Charles Barber for looking together with me. Three facets of an ivory box were devoted to different scenes in

the story of the Magi in another Metz example, circa 870–80 (including a strictly profile Virgin and Child in the Adoration): Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. nr. MRR 75; see Beer, Woelk, and Michael, Magi, 103–9 (cat. no. 39). 36. London, British Museum, inv. no. 1867,0120.1. 37. See, inter alia, Abels, “What Has Weland to Do with Christ?,” and Karkov, “Franks Casket Speaks Back,” 37–61. 38. Tilghman, “On the Enigmatic Nature of Things,” 9–19. 39. In this vein of creating meaning in real time, the Insular tradition also offers the cross page before the prefaces in the Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero D.iv, fol. 2v). The nonfigural geometric fields of the composition scaffold a schematic crucifixion, permitting the viewer to fill in from memory any one of multiple iconographic possibilities for figures flanking the cross above and below. See Kitzinger, The Cross, the Gospels, and the Work of Art, 145 and 148. 40. In emphasizing the kings’ movement through space, the Weingarten painter worked in the tradition of the Metz carver of the Liebieghaus ivory, who, in turn, had company in the ninth century: cf. the example in Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. nr. L 403; Beer, Woelk, and Michael, Magi, 106–7 (cat. no. 38). 41. Standing in for the burgeoning field of inquiry that closely integrates medieval art and music, see Williamson, “Sensory Experience in Medieval Devotion,” and Boynton and Reilly, “Sound and Image in the Middle Ages.”

Bibliography Abels, Richard. “What Has Weland to Do with Christ? The Franks Casket and the Acculturation of Christianity in Early Anglo-Saxon England.” Speculum 84 (2009): 549–81. Baert, Barbara. Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium: “Nachleben,” Iconography, Hermeneutics. Leuven: Peeters, 2016. Bardiès-Fronty, Isabelle, Charlotte Denoël, and Inès Villela-Petit, eds. Les temps mérovingiens: Trois siècles d’art et de culture (451–751), Musée de Cluny 26 octobre 2016–13 février 2017. Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2016. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-​Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. ———. “Pictorially Enforced Signification: St. Antonius, Fra Angelico, and the Annuncation.” In

Hülle und Fülle: Festschrift für Tilmann Buddensieg, edited by Andreas Beyer, Vittorio Lampugnani, and Gunter Schweikhart, 31–39. Alfter: VDG, 1993. Beadle, Richard. “ ‘Devoute ymaginacioun’ and the Dramatic Sense in Love’s Mirror and the N-Town Plays.” In Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20–22 July 1995, edited by Shoichi Oguro, Richard Beadle, and Michael G. Sargent, 1–17. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Beer, Manuela, Moritz Woelk, and Jane Michael, eds. The Magi: Legend, Art and Cult; Catalogue Published for the Exhibition at the Museum Schnütgen, Cologne, 25 October 2014–25 January 2015. Munich: Hirmer, 2014.

Iconographies of Progress

117

Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernardi opera. Edited by J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais. 8 vols. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1966. Binski, Paul. “The Angel Choir at Lincoln and the Poetics of the Gothic Smile.” Art History 20 (1997): 350–74. Borland, Jennifer. “Moved by Medicine: The Multisensory Experience of Handling Folding Almanacs.” In Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, edited by Fiona Griffiths and Kathryn Starkey, 203–24. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. Boureau, Alain. L’événement sans fin: Récit et christianisme au Moyen Âge. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1993. Boynton, Susan, and Diane J. Reilly. “Sound and Image in the Middle Ages.” In Resounding Images, edited by Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, 15–30. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Brown, Michelle P., Ildar H. Garipzanov, and Benjamin C. Tilghman, eds. Graphic Devices and the Early Decorated Book. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017. Büttner, Frank O. Imitatio pietatis: Motive der christlichen Ikonographie als Modelle zur Verähnlichung. Berlin: Mann, 1983. Camille, Michael. “Mimetic Identification and Passion Devotion in the Later Middle Ages: A Double-Sided Panel by Meister Francke.” In The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late Medieval Culture, edited by A. A. MacDonald and H. N. B. Ridderbos, 183–210. Groningen: Forsten, 1998. ———. “Seductions of the Flesh: Meister Francke’s Female ‘Man’ of Sorrows.” In Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen, edited by Klaus Schreiner with Marc Müntz, 243–69. Munich: Fink, 2002. Caviness, Madeline. “Stained Glass Windows in Gothic Chapels and the Feasts of the Saints.” In Kunst und Liturgie im Mittelalter, edited by Nicolas Bock, Sible De Blaauw, Christoph Luitpols Frommel, and Herbert Kessler, 135–48. Munich: Hirmer, 2000. Connolly, Daniel K. “Imagined Pilgrimage in the Itinerary Maps of Matthew Paris.” Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 598–622. Deshman, Robert. “Christus rex et magi reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon Art.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 10 (1976): 367–405. Fassler, Margot. “Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres.” Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 499–520. Fischer, Marie-Thérèse. Treize siècles d’histoire au Mont Sainte-Odile. Strasbourg: Éditions du Signe, 2000.

118

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Gertsman, Elina. Worlds Within: Opening the Medieval Shrine Madonna. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015. Goldschmidt, Adolph. Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingsichen und sächischen Kaiser, VIII.– XI. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1969. Granger, Penny. The N-Town Play: Drama and Liturgy in Medieval East Anglia. Westfield Medieval Studies. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009. Guérin, Sarah. Ivory Palaces: Material, Belief, and Desire in Gothic Sculpture. Forthcoming. Herrad of Hohenburg. Hortus deliciarum. Edited by Rosalie Green, Michael Evans, Christine Bischoff, and Michael Curschmann. 2 vols. London: Warburg Institute, 1979. Joyner, Danielle B. Painting the “Hortus deliciarum”: Medieval Women, Wisdom, and Time. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2016. Karkov, Catherine E. “The Franks Casket Speaks Back: The Bones of the Past, the Becoming of England.” In Postcolonising the Medieval Image, edited by Eva Frojmovic and Catherine E. Karkov, 37–61. London: Routledge, 2017. Kitzinger, Beatrice E. The Cross, the Gospels, and the Work of Art in the Carolingian Age. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. ———. “Judgment on Parchment: Illuminating Theater in Besançon MS 579.” Gesta 55, no. 1 (2016): 49–78. ———. Present History: Carolingian Illumination and the Uses of Narrative. Forthcoming. Kitzinger, Beatrice E., and Joshua O’Driscoll, eds. After the Carolingians: Re-Defining Manuscript Illumination in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. Lowden, John. “The Word Made Visible: The Exterior of the Early Christian Book as Visual Argument.” In The Early Christian Book, edited by William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, 15–47. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Lowden, John, and Alixe Bovey, eds. Under the Influence: The Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Marrow, James H. “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance.” Simiolus 16 (1986): 150–69. Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. Ital., 115. Edited by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie Green. Translated by Isa Ragusa. Prince­ton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master. London: Phaidon, 1968.

Meredith, Peter, ed. The Mary Play from the N. Town Manuscript. Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1997. Nichols, Stephen G. Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Nürnberger, Ulrike. “Ein Maler in Hamburg, Gen. ‘Meister Francke’—Christus als Schmerzensmann in Leipzig und Hamburg.” In Meister Francke Revisited: Auf den Spuren eines Hamburger Malers, edited by Ulrike Nürnberger, Elina Räsänen, and Uwe Albrecht, 109–15. Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2017. Palazzo, Éric. Le souffle de Dieu: L’énergie de la liturgie et l’art au Moyen Âge. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2020. Poilpré, Anne-Orange. “Drogon: Un évêque et ses livres pour un empire chrétien.” In Le livre enluminé médiéval, instrument politique, edited by Vinni Lucherini and Cécile Voyer. Rome: Viella, 2021. ———. Figurer la Bible et ses histoires: La vie du Christ en images dans les livres évangéliques latins (VIe–XIe siècle). Forthcoming.

Ramsey, Boniface. Ambrose. London: Routledge, 1997. Tilghman, Benjamin C. “On the Enigmatic Nature of Things in Anglo-Saxon Art.” Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 4 (2014): 1–43. Trexler, Richard C. The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Volbach, Wolfgang F. Mittelalterliche Bildwerke aus Italien und Byzanz. Bildwerke des Kaiser-​Friedrich-​ Museums, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980. Voragine, Jacobus de. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger Ryan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Williamson, Beth. “Sensory Experience in Medieval Devotion: Sound and Vision, Invisibility and Silence.” Speculum 88, no. 1 (2013): 1–43. Zchomelidse, Nino, and Giovanni Freni, eds. Meaning in Motion: The Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Iconographies of Progress

119

5 The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies in the Menil Collection and the Kariye Camii Methodological Reflections

Glenn Peers

One of my themes in this chapter will be the ways that vandalism, looting, and restoration can be inserted, profitably, into a context of disability studies. I will argue that the recent surge of interest in disability studies among art historians is a natural engagement—and maybe even more so for premodern art historians—because we are so accustomed to the variety of physical states and so attentive to the precariousness and preciousness of the things left to our care and ministrations. I think this is a natural engagement, as I say, but it is an emergent awareness, one that brings a lot of self-consideration and object regard. I take some of my methodological reflections from the late Tobin Siebers, whose books, especially Disability Aesthetics from 2010, were pioneering for art historians open to issues of difference and agency. In the first place, Siebers establishes basic premises for scholars investigating cultural meanings of disability and identity. Disability in this model is not an example of personal misfortune or failure or defect; it instead demonstrates diversity and difference and establishes a positive identity for the disabled, but it also defines basic terms for what it is for anyone to be human.

Disability, Siebers argues more than once, is part of everyone’s present and/or future, and we need to embrace disability in the present in order to be fully human in our lives’ trajectories.1 I also want to use that strong position to argue for the primacy of objects’ disabilities and what our focus on them might allow us to see and understand. Siebers is generous in his inclusion of multiple bodies in his arguments, perhaps even all possible bodies.2 And I want to continue my own arguments on behalf of things, which include humans, but also all things in the world that we normally, habitually consider inert and nonagential: all things made, formed, and found, in other words.3 My particular concern in the context of this volume is to focus on the fragmentary and the indeterminate, both in the Menil Collection in Houston and in the Kariye Camii in Istanbul. Byzantine art historians are accustomed to their broken pieces of that past culture’s art, and we are grateful for them. But our tendency is to use the iconographic clues left to us to make whole and certain what is, in fact, partial and defective. Indeed, iconography opposes fragmentation and difference, qualities to which disability studies fully commit. As a position toward understanding historical art, iconography has traditionally privileged series, analogy, narrative teleologies, and completions. Iconography is the enemy of the heterogeneous, the abated, the exception. We continue to engage in a kind of iconographic ableism by ignoring the vicissitudes of conditions and time and by assigning specific, often exclusive, meaning and intention to those works of art. Iconography as an art-historical method can be remobilized as a diverse and organic process, one might say. Time is also implicated in that process, for iconography as a system flattens and homogenizes time’s passages and effects. In the two case studies examined here, the frescoes in the Menil Collection and the mosaics of healing in the Kariye Camii, time has wrought substantial alterations and continues to work on different tracks. The Menil pavilion once housed looted Cypriot frescoes that show the sudden dramatic effects of damage and repair to Byzantine art. Integrated into a contemporary frame, the frescoes openly declared their status as healed ruins. The mosaics at the Kariye Camii, by way of contrast, reveal a different pace, a slow, nearly indiscernible process of decay that was arrested (partly and openly) with restorations in the last century, but the process also continues in the general deterioration of flesh and skin—that is, building and decoration. Time has acted on these monuments, and our care for them has left their different bodies bent and broken in divergent ways. History has made these objects of our study “out of order” as functioning objects of a defined past moment in time (they would not work for their intended Byzantine viewers in their present condition, let’s say). But disability studies help us perceive and appreciate not only iconographic richness in difference and the incomplete but also the healing indeterminacy of studying disabled iconographic traces.

122

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Broken and Mended Byzantium at the Menil Collection So, before I turn my attention to the Kariye Camii, let me try to demonstrate what I mean with two examples from the Menil Collection in Houston. The first is especially dear to me: the former Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, which resided for fifteen years in a special pavilion on the campus of the Menil (1997–2012) and which now resides—I hope temporarily, though I fear it is forever orphaned—in the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation Byzantine Museum in Nicosia. Once part of a larger program in the rural chapel of Hagios Themonianos outside Lysi, now in the so-called Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, the surviving portions of fresco, comprising the dome and apse, were violently torn from the chapel, cut into transportable pieces, and exiled (and they are still exiled, in some important way, even in Nicosia). I was a great admirer of the installation of the frescoes myself, though I understand that it was not without problems, and one of the stimulating, compelling elements of the Menil presentation was the false skeleton of the chapel that sustained the frescoes in a semblance of its original form (fig. 5.1). To be sure, the skeleton had none of the solidity, opacity, or enclosure of the walls and vaults of the chapel, but it provided a semblance of the limbs, a set of approximations, that mimicked the original body without claiming to do so authentically (fig. 5.2). In other words, the simple structures of the chapel functioned as prostheses that allowed the medieval frescoes to continue to live—not on life support but as operational, engaged, and showing fields of figuration. This chapel was a reintegrated entity, artificial and yet cohesive, in the best traditions of restorations (as we now understand them) making clear where original and additional begin and end. But the sutures, plates, and embedding frames were also supplemental, enhancing the original meanings and functions, both focusing inward on sacramental space on the floor and expanding outward to the black “infinity box,” as the architect called it, that overshadowed the installation. Another example from the Menil, a late Byzantine icon of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, has now just a partial figural ground standing in for the whole object. The resulting play between historical painted ground and “neutral” warm wood shows conservation’s work in making a small, damaged passage wonderfully live again. By sacrificing most of the attributes that would have allowed the icon to live its full and active life in a Byzantine church, the panel is now, at least, a beautiful survivor (fig. 5.3).4 Neither case of capture-and-rescue allows the thing to reenter its home environment: in the case of the frescoes, the current installation would have to be broken again to get the paintings into the small chapel at Lysi or that chapel itself be sundered; and in the case of the icon, the painting is now scarcely legible as a devotional object, and so its functional value is too, diminished. Yet we use both cases for historical investigations, for a historical exhibition that seeks insights into the past is otherwise no longer accessible, and for aesthetic pleasure in their age value (to use Alois Riegl’s term). These things are no longer what they were, simply, and we honor and value

The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

123

Figure 5.1 Byzantine Fresco Chapel, interior view to the east, Houston, The Menil Collection, 1997–2012. Installation: François de Menil, Architecture, April 1997, integrating Byzantine frescoes from a church in Lysi, Cyprus. Photo: Paul Hester / The Menil Collection, Houston. Figure 5.2 Byzantine Fresco Chapel, dome, Houston, The Menil Collection, 1997–2012. Installation: François de Menil. Architecture, April 1997, integrating Byzantine frescoes from a church in Lysi, Cyprus. Photo: Paul Hester / The Menil Collection, Houston.

Figure 5.3 Icon of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, fourteenth century. Tempera and gold leaf on canvas transferred to modern wood panel, 37 1/2 × 28 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. Houston, The Menil Collection, 1985-057.06 DJ. Photo: Paul Hester / The Menil Collection, Houston.

them just the same, even if we mostly overlook the implications of their disabilities in our analyses; we make them whole in our scholarly imaginations, but they exist in a new state, still authentically themselves and yet somehow queered, too.5 I want to argue, with Siebers, that we can push beyond their historically framed representation, as liturgical space or as devotional objects, so that we would also lean away from their beauty, from their strongly aestheticized framing both of sumptuous chapel and of rich wooden bed. Whether that pushing and leaning seems hard or just a little unusual, the motions are useful, I would argue, because they disallow the pretty, an object of the pleasing gaze, and open up the strange and even queer. These vandalized works are suffering, and they are disabled in some meaningful ways beyond metaphor; their shattered and recomposed forms reveal the revisions the world works on bodies, all bodies, and they evidence sturdiness and hardiness as well as fragility and vulnerability—the conditions of all valued bodies.6 So, I want to try to argue that we should look for strangeness and queerness in Byzantine art. Those qualities are also lurking in areas of images we might often think of as iconography, those aspects of historical art that are explained, destranged, and The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

125

unqueered, to put it one way. Siebers and others have proposed the comparison of sculptures of women with missing limbs: Marc Quinn’s sculpture of Alison Lapper at eight-months pregnant, dating to 2000 and displayed from 2005 to 2007 in Trafalgar Square in London, with unexceptionable works from the canon, like the Venus de Milo (figs. 5.4, 5.5).7 Some contemporary criticism excoriated Quinn for his choices in subject and presentation, focusing on the so-called ugliness and the discomfort it caused in viewers. And yet the sight of a dysmelic woman was used by many to point out the limitations of our standards of beauty and appropriateness. This is an easy example and, I hope, demonstrative of the point I am trying to make: that strange and queer can exist in our familiar works once we have begun to see more fully the fragility and diversity of things in all their states.

Conservation Prosthetics at the Chora: The Orphaned Leper Now, we protect and tend, in our best moments, all those disabled by age, by harm, or by political and military violence, be they people or artworks. And these instances of care allow us to reflect back, through the broken and reassembled bodies, on the meanings of differences among bodies, human and otherwise, in the past. I want to turn at this point to the specific subject of this methodological experiment, the scenes of Christ’s healing in the church of the Chora, or Kariye Camii, in Istanbul, the most famous and beautiful monumental program of the late Byzantine world. The scenes I am concerned with are located in the northwestern arm of the inner narthex, suspended among the major components of the extant program, the life and ministry of Christ and the Last Judgment program of the parekklesion, and woven into the great Deesis on the eastern wall of the inner narthex (fig. 5.6). I will forecast some features of this argument through a brief examination of this mosaic of the healing of the leper, located on the western side of the southern arch of the inner narthex (fig. 5.7).8 The scene is damaged, incomplete, and the conservators decided to leave a blank plaster ground, tonally not so far off the architectural field against which the encounter takes place. Now, of course, this area was filled in the original composition with the upper body of Christ, who was presumably directing his right hand toward the leprous man to his left (the nomina sacra above the figure identifies Christ with certainty). The leprous man was also affected by the pictorial damage: his right hand is likewise amputated. The leper is then left facing a blank ground, where his healing ought to have been originating; he is now caught in motion, with his beseeching right hand gone and only his self-demonstrating hand remaining (I am interpreting the downward direction of his gesture in this way, though it matters not very much). His pocked body perdures, with his slightly turned toes indicating abnormalities in the extremities; his arms also reveal some bumps or possibly protrusions. However, there is some physical ambivalence as his body is strikingly 126

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 5.4 Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2000–12, displayed in Trafalgar Square, London, in 2005. Photo: 123RF.

Figure 5.5 (opposite) Aphrodite, known as the Venus de Milo, third to first century bce. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York. Figure 5.6 Mosaic of the Deesis, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315. Byzantine Institute Dumbarton Oaks fieldwork records and papers, approximately 1925–2009, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC.

developed, with a well-defined chest and abdomen, and he stands strongly upright. The carpeting of his entire body with large spots makes manifest his affliction, if not his discomfort or suffering.9 The ambivalence of the scene is worth trying to evoke since it characterizes all of the healing scenes: the suffering that attends the evident affliction is mostly inferred since faces do not reveal any emotion except perhaps expectation, and the bodies themselves are only mildly distorted by their impairments. We are surely accustomed to the restrained expressions and neutral affect of so many Byzantine figures. What The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

129

Figure 5.7 Mosaic of the miracle of the healing of the leper, western side of southern arch, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315. Byzantine Institute Dumbarton Oaks fieldwork records and papers, approximately 1925–2009, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC.

constitutes such distances between emotional intensity and physical impassivity has been the subject of a number of important studies over the years. What is the actual moment(s) being presented here? At what step(s) have we caught the narrative: the first encounter between Christ and the patient (characterized by recognition and acknowledgment) or the actual miraculous lifting of affliction (in which case the spots are the retrospective elements that diverge from the liberated and grateful 130

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

body)? The inscriptions, when they survive, use a present participle to specify the durative mood of the scene, and process seems key in the frozen moment between illness and health. But if we are proceeding to health, we are not given glimpses of the whole and healed body here. It is a kind of hybrid: apparently strong and erect but also marked and abject. Pulling these points together then: the image is itself broken, and it is relating its own impairment through the field left by the lost tesserae comprising Christ; the broken image related fellow feeling with the abject (?) man within (to us, of course, not the fourteenth-century audience), and so the image can be read forward and backward at once. But the figure of the leper is abject and unbowed at the same time, and I wonder if we can also begin to think about surplus aspects of the disabled, the ill, and the impaired in the Chora. They are marked by illness in different ways, and some, more than others, appear both heroic and abject. In the figure of the leper, for example, we see a type I want to return to later, the “super-crip,” the queerest and strangest of the disabled and impaired.

Iconographic Diagnoses I am pushing pretty hard on this position, and I will make further arguments along this line, but I want also to acknowledge the kinds of iconographic examinations of the healing scenes at the Chora that have been pursued by colleagues to this point. Scholars have closely examined many aspects of the program at the Chora, but the studies have not been exhaustive, nor have they displayed a great deal of methodological variety or imagination (with the exceptions of Robert Ousterhout and Robert Nelson, in my opinion). That statement might be taken as criticism, but in fact so much basic (in some ways) work needs to be done on the mosaic program that we are still grappling with the initial questions.10 For the most part, the healing scenes have attracted questions of identity and spatiopictorial connections. The great Deesis panel has been the focus of these studies, perhaps for obvious reasons: it is large scale, clearly positioned for maximum visibility according to carefully planned sight lines, and it has the iconographic richness of established types, like Christ Chalketes, and of historical figures, like Melania the nun, also known as Maria Palaiologina, widow of a Mongol khan, who died in 1265. The connection between the Deesis and the woman with the issue of blood has been examined several times now, first by Natalia Teteriatnikov. She explored the personal connections between this scriptural scene and the Deesis, and she concluded that the miracle of the bleeding woman and the other scenes of healing were “plausibly used here as a deliberate juxtaposition to Melania’s personal history.”11 Rossitza Schroeder refined and expanded the argument by drawing out the penitential and devotional context of the Deesis and healing scenes, but her reading remained premised on the donors’ central role in devising the program and controlling The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

131

its meanings.12 Intention and meaning are two key, limiting terms for understanding the program in this scholarly conversation.13 This perspective fundamentally informs the recent arguments about the scene of the healing of the bleeding woman, or Haemorrhoissa, offered by David Knipp (fig. 5.8).14 Pursuing the same general lines as the scholars already mentioned, Knipp examines the striking divergence of the scene of the bleeding woman from the other scenes of healing in this area of the church. As he notes, the woman acts out her need dramatically and forcefully. She sprawls across the spandrel while she reaches desperately for the hem of Christ’s garment. Two groups of men bracket her lunge, and her position of want is forcefully underlined by this difference. Unlike in other scenes, she is not standing (like the leper) nor is she reclining on a bed but lunging headlong. Knipp reads the spatial qualities of this action as emergent into the architectural setting of the mosaic, in the first place, arguing for the continuities of space between mosaic ground and the viewers’ fields of action and, in the second, for the intentional connection between her action and Melania’s directly below. Scholars seem to agree that personal histories of donors determined the iconographic particularities of the healing scenes. Moreover, Knipp is willing to follow Teteriatnikov in speculating on the sermons on Christ’s healing by Theoleptus of Philadelphia (ca. 1250–1322), in which he describes illness as rising from imbalances among the eight passions of the soul, which only Christ could correct. Knipp concludes, “It is thus quite obvious that regarding this image, we can presume a twofold meaning, theological and biographical. Clearly, the entire healing cycle in the narthex has at least two layers of meaning: an illustrative one, and another expressing current theological speculation.”15 Now, leaving aside the questionable persuasiveness of statements framed “thus quite obviously, we can presume,” I would like to agree with his real point: we are dealing with multiple intentions, all of which can be argued for (although they are seldom fully controlled by subsequent historians) and which entail more active meaning-making capacities than we are quite able to master.16 In significant ways, we are confined by the publication history and preservation state of the monument. As Nelson points out, the first major publication by Paul Underwood (1902–1968) was an extraordinary achievement of description in the first three volumes, boxed as a set, while the later fourth volume comprised thematically arranged essays by major scholars; these texts worked by a process of selection and isolation, and arguments sought discrete contexts and exclusive meaning.17 Nelson admits to falling into a similar line, and his several studies on the Kariye Camii argue for a contemporary political interpretation for many of the major scenes. These interpretations are largely plausible as connections between current events and the unusually presented scenes (of which there are quite a few), but they presuppose a certain way of reading and approaching images, and that presupposition, while largely accepted, is not without methodological uncertainties. Nelson acknowledges as much when he declares that he is following in Underwood’s footsteps no matter how sophisticated 132

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 5.8 Mosaic of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, southeast pendentive, south bay, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315. Byzantine Institute Dumbarton Oaks fieldwork records and papers, approximately 1925–2009, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC.

his own subsequent arguments are; I myself would fall behind the idea with which he ends his 1999 article on intertextuality: we need to break apart the formalist and self-referential abstractions of the Underwood books.18 Like Nelson, I would like to try to reanimate this series of healing images, and I would like to posit a different reading, using in particular the scene in the lunette opposite the Deesis that depicts the generalized healing of the multitude on the west wall of the inner narthex (fig. 5.9).

The Multitude’s Afflictions The inscription at the top of the crowded lunette facing the Deesis states that Christ “is healing those afflicted with various diseases.”19 Underwood in his description states that the cycle of healing scenes in the southern bay of the inner narthex “comes to a close” with this scene, and one can understand why that particular description of sequencing through the mosaics would make sense.20 The lunette shows a generalized group therapy that has none of the direct, concise drama between Christ and the afflicted that is found in the other scenes. Its expansive nature is in keeping with the scriptural basis of the scene, which does not contain much detail at all. The lunette is large, some 3.5 The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

133

Figure 5.9 Mosaic of the healing of the multitude, south bay, western lunette, inner narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315. Byzantine Institute Dumbarton Oaks fieldwork records and papers, approximately 1925–2009, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC.

by 1.5 meters, and it offers a kind of summation of Christ’s healing activities referred to broadly several times in Christian scripture (e.g., Matthew 15:30 and Mark 1:34). This scene, for these reasons perhaps, is highly unusual in the choice and arrangement of figures, and the handling of the encounter between Christ and the afflicted engaged the mosaicist and/or programmer to a high degree. They had few precedents, unlike for the other healing scenes, and only a few comparanda exist in this period.21 On the left-hand side, a group of three apostles gather; the men stand upright, in positions that show attention to the actions of Christ, but also some distance, hesitation, or even reservation over his involvement. Christ shows no reluctance to intervene for the impaired group he faces. He raises his right hand, while his left gathers his tunic and grasps a scroll. Most noticeable perhaps is his hinging forward to address the group; he bends at the waist so that his posture strongly diverges from the erect cluster of followers behind him. He also stands on the same field as the afflicted, while the apostles stand on the green ground zone beneath. The afflicted group of ten, comprising women, men, and children, is among the most compelling in the entire program. Not having been derived from established, conventional models, the figures show an unusual amount of individuality and not a little pathos in their bent, broken, and pained bodies. The two women frame the far right-hand side of the scene, the closer one bent double, a posture Christ himself echoes opposite, and the one behind with a veiled left hand, which implies its loss. A 134

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

man stands in front of them, leaning on a clublike cane; his covered legs may indicate some illness kept out of sight since the other men do not wear leggings at all. Two mothers stand in the background, behind a small hill and before a building (if one attempts to read the space literally). The mother further back has a child tucked into her gown, while the other extends her child for Christ to see and touch; we can get a sense of her urgency because the legs of the child seem to be misshapen, and the child also extends his or her arms outward, though the gesture is difficult to read exactly. This mother also nicely balances Christ as both stoop, and both are echoed and framed by the bending tree in the center of the composition. Between them sit three men. The one below Christ’s hand appears to be blind and possibly crippled (the visual clues are not always helpful for identifying precise impairments), and he holds a hand crutch in his left hand; the last two figures in the center of the group are seated, lean forward slightly, and gesture toward Christ, like all the adults do, with their right hands. The left-hand figure in red seems to be blind, while the beardless man to his left sits with his legs exposed. Between the legs of the man in the yellow tunic is surely the most extraordinary iconographic element in the entire program, a large distension that seems to fall below his knees. This egglike protuberance sits smooth, flesh-toned, and placid on the ground, cupped by his legs. I have noted a number of striking details that ought to resonate strongly for anyone who spends a lot of time looking at Byzantine art. This culture’s art is strongly idealized, its glimpses of its present so highly and thickly mediated that art historians look within a fairly narrow range of visual types for the exceptional and different. Here, however, the differences are strongly defined, with the crowd of the impaired outnumbering the apostles on the left (Peter is distinguishable, but all three are very similar in body and dress); their traits—bent, misshapen, maimed, impaired, and, in one instance grotesquely, oversized—give them only difference. Their impairments constitute their individual selves. Those selves are surely not without pain, but like in so many images, pain is a quality found in the empathy of the viewer not worn on the face of the sufferer.22 Yet however clichéd, invented, or unrevealing of their interior lives, these figures are strongly differentiated. The details comprise the individual.

Puncta of the Disabled and Their Abeyance Details are always crucial for the differentiation of the disabled and the nondisabled. Details are the pathology of disability. Thus, the stereotypes in the appearance of the apostles’ robes on the left and the generally consistent garb of Jesus throughout serve to mark these figures as homogeneously abled. The others are detail-bound to their disabilities. One might say that this heavily detailed passage of the multitude on the right-hand side of the mosaic is full of puncta, the elements of a work of art that make difference. The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

135

As Siebers points out, the punctum, the wound or prick, is what makes an individual work distinctive and, consequently for him, what makes a body individual, the wound that is always differentiating self from others.23 Punctum is a well-used term derived from Roland Barthes’s last book from 1980, translated into English as Camera Lucida, and it has been applied to many contexts.24 In that book, the punctum is one of the features that animates a work, that attracts and reaches the receiver unexpectedly; it is a sting, a peck, a cut, a cast of dice that is an accident, an unexpected bruising, catching one off guard. Related but opposed, the studium is the coded, the expected, the elements that draw one in generally but without any special motivation, wounding, or compulsion. I want to follow through with Siebers’s use of the punctum as a way to form and recognize the disabled body in art. And I could choose any number of examples from this mosaic panel, but the hernia in the center seems to me the most acute: it is remarkably integrated into the body, and the man’s expression and position are eager but easy, yet the extension of his body beyond the usual limits is a highly arresting passage. It seems to me that there is a way of trying to understand this image, almost in Barthes’s terms, as pensive, as an image that thinks itself a little ahead of us. In its nonfrightening, nonrepellent way (I am assuming this through my reaction and reading of the smooth qualities represented here), the image of the herniated man subverts a certain understanding of disability as monstrous. It looks ahead to the outcome of Christ’s leaning into the group: the presumably (but, crucially, not necessarily) pain-free, undamaged existence that constitutes healthy life. The participle iomenos in the inscription gives the mood: ongoing, durative action toward a goal. And yet the disabled and impaired are bent but not broken, crippled but not crushed, distressed but not disheartened. They animate the image. They make the image the adventure it is, and to paraphrase Barthes, they can animate us (us today, as well as, I would argue, the fourteenth-century us). And they create a pensive mood, a kind of indeterminacy between active and passive, doing and receiving; to quote Jacques Rancière, “It is to speak of a zone of indeterminacy between thought and non-thought, activity and passivity, but also art and non-art.”25 He argues that the pensive image works to thwart the logic of the action within the image: “On the one hand, it extends the action that had come to a halt. But on the other hand, it puts every conclusion in suspense.” Possible completion, resolution, and healing, in fact, are kept in abeyance.

Triumphs of Pain The two sides of pain are shown on either side of Christ: the endurance and even celebration of impairment and suffering of the multitude and the suspicious attitudes of the apostles attending Christ. The latter’s huddling separate from their master compresses them in ways that distinguish them from the open, varied groupings of 136

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

the impaired. The apostles look, to my eye, apprehensive, and perhaps they are afraid of the miasma of the impaired. But pain is also a marker of a disabled body, and pain also serves to frighten us; it undermines our integrity, our self-control, and our dignity as humans.26 So the pain marking these disabled bodies can surely be assumed by the postures and features on their exteriors, although no evident suffering as such is shown. The apostles’ faces, especially the figure on the far left-hand side of the mosaic, look pinched and strained in contrast. Here, then, could be an element of that pensive image, resulting from the incapacity of determining the full price of an impaired or disabled life despite the vivacity present in that small community of pain. Furthermore, Christ’s devotion and attention to the broken instead of to his apostles leaves them at once uncertain and even a little envious of the disabled who are so fervently ministered to by their master. Disability studies allow us to retrospectively see the dignity and independence of these broken and blighted people. One of the hallmarks of disability studies is to avoid ascribing impairment to personal misfortune or individual defect but to understand it rather as the product of disabling environments, constructed and made.27 This understanding can lead, according to advocates and theorists, to positive identity formation, greater independence and agency, and freedom from the medical oppressions rooted in ableism.28 Pensive images, like this mosaic in my argument, think forward and back, a possibility that is part of its productive indeterminacy. Thus, I want to try to have it both ways now: for the impaired to be seeking whole bodies through the hands of the Lord, to be like “everyone else” in this way, to participate in the homogeneity of the abled, and for them to be owning their individuality, their unique possession of difference and pain, and to be answering the Lord as equal participants in his gesture of gracious stooping. Byzantinists are well accustomed to reading about and seeing healing in their historical materials. And some see Orthodox Christianity as especially attuned to the care of vulnerable people in society, unlike pagan predecessors. The primary argument is based on a literal reading of Christianity’s supersession of paganism and its better ethics, generally. For example, in the 2017 article “The Disabled in Byzantium,” Stephanos Efthymiades appeals to the particular kinds of sources that Byzantinists asking such questions must use, namely hagiographies, typika, miracle stories, and so on.29 Efthymiades is sympathetic to the philanthropic attitudes strongly evident in Byzantium, but he also describes the general causes behind illness and impairment, which relate to the activities of the devil and his minions. Both physical and mental disabilities were largely ascribed to the power of the devil in the world, which, as Efthymiades says, “came about as a result of the establishment of Christianity in the fourth century and society’s overall reluctance to totally discard superstition.”30 But medical sources also make other claims: excess of bile is among the most common, but behavioral lapses, like intercourse on the sabbath, for example, are also available diagnoses. The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

137

However, those texts used by scholars like Efthymiades are not disinterested, and we need to discard uncritical terms like superstition. We can treat these texts as realistic, but then we would have to accord a similar status to the Chora mosaic, and we are disinclined—as we should be—to permit it that status or quality. Secular sources provide some data but quite matter-of-factly, with little context provided, and we are confronted with issues similar to those in the Middle Ages in the West, in which basic definitions and categories are lacking. Classicists and medievalists do disability studies, but they do so despite their subjects, who may have lived it but had no particular vocabulary or theory to guide them.31 From this biased perspective, the instinct for moral correction and physical integrity, free from pain and external markers of pain and difference, is natural. And Christian narratives do reaffirm that point of view: Christ consistently heals, sometimes, it must be said, with no strings attached and sometimes with specific injunctions against erring again. An example from the cycle at the Chora shows this deliverance from physical oppression: the invalid at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:2–15) is addressed by Christ in one scene and then superhumanly(!) carries the bed that had formerly been his prison on his back like it was nothing (against the Sabbath dictates) (fig. 5.10).32 Anna Rebecca Solevåg, however, argues for a nuanced view of such episodes, where sin appears to be the reason for affliction, and sin’s release the cause of the affliction’s disappearance. Focusing on Mark’s story of the healed paralytic, she positions disability as a narrative prosthesis that allows the Gospel writers to claim authority for Jesus’s divinity and provided “the crutch the narrative needs in order to show that God is great.”33

The Real Superhumans in the Healing Scene Returning to a punctum in the healing of the multitude scene, the man with the large hernia cannot perform any such feat, and unlike that unusual before-and-after scene of the paralytic, we do not see the outcome of Christ’s healing—this is part of the abeyance for which I am arguing. But viewers who knew the saints’ lives would surely have recalled stories about the unpredictable healer in their city, St. Artemius. Artemius specialized in hernias and male genital disorders, and the stories (dating to the seventh century) are vivid, amusing, wince-inducing, and always resolved in favor of the afflicted, though with frequent unexpected turns. Several hernias are described that recall our man in the mosaic. One miracle has a virtuous man in hospital, “in addition to the illnesses which he had, his genitals now sank right below his knees, so that he could not join his knees together nor even turn right or left.” The doctor simply throws up his hands and, calling on long experience, diagnoses the growth as part of the unfortunate consequences of advanced age; he says, “You have it until the resurrection; for this hernia is untreatable.” (An interesting point, given the resurrection 138

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 5.10 Mosaic of the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, northeast pendentive of south bay, outer narthex, Kariye Camii, ca. 1315. Byzantine Institute Dumbarton Oaks fieldwork records and papers, approximately 1925–2009, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, DC.

is happening around the corner at the Chora.) But the saint’s healing ability is the place of last resorts, and after a nighttime incision of the testicle that drains two bucketfuls of fluid, blood, and pus, the man is delivered of his suffering and returned to normalcy, while a sweet-smelling perfume fills the hospital. The saint sometimes uses a word to address his petitioners—skatze—which the editors Virgil S. Crisafulli and John W. Nesbitt suggest might be rendered “crip.” The slang term may suggest a rough fondness on the part of the saint for his impaired patients, but the usage is not perfectly clear, and like our use of the term, it would need a lot of (not uninteresting) unpacking to clarify its meanings.34 In any case, my point is that a framework existed for understanding the healing of the man with that growth in the mosaic, and it was generated by Christ himself, as Artemius also claims. Deliverance could be at hand for anyone who correctly performed rituals of prayer and penitence and who attended on God and saint in the proper places (evidence for a hospital or clinic at the monastery here is slender, by the way).35 Seemly supplication, like the multitude performs in the mosaic, is demonstrated as a highly effective means of encouraging divine aid and perhaps the route to wholeness before the resurrection shown in the nearby parekklesion. This interpretation of the images in spatial and sequential terms, a way argued for persuasively by scholars who find special unity and cohesion in the overall program of the church. The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

139

But let me offer an alternative reading to keep that seemingly natural resolution at bay and to keep the indeterminacy of this highly unusual scene in the balance. Rather than appealing to Byzantinists who have long been acculturated to a particular practice by using their particular sources, I will try to turn away from those conventions and appeal to scholars and artists in the tradition of disability studies.36 One of this field’s tenets is to accord agency and independence to the performative subjects on display.37 This shift allows for better analysis of the body’s place in its cultural context and of how that body was categorized and interpreted in visual culture and perhaps even in history. It also pushes back against the medical model of fixing the nonnormative body. Through this perspective, we might be able to sense some thought of resistance, of withholding, or of acceptance on the part of Jesus and the waiting crowd in the mosaic. Queering the scene can help to see the people and possibilities of the moment a little more vividly, I believe. Viewing and staring at nonnormative subjects can be part of voluntary participation in spectacle, here putting the disabled into the category of the “freak,” which has been appropriated as a positive term for queering disability.38 I will introduce Bob Flanagan (1952–1996) here as a means to demonstrate, by strong contrast, some of the meanings available in recognizing the indeterminacies of the mosaic.39 This choice might seem simply provocative, but I do intend to present his work in relation to this historical monument with all the respect their suffering and fortitude earn. Flanagan died of cystic fibrosis in 1996, and throughout his life, he fought against the pain that his chronic condition caused him.40 He fought that oppressive pain, but he did so in the queerest way; he made performance art and poetry from his exploration of pain and sexuality, from his willingness to endure, and from his strength in submitting voluntarily to pain inflicted by his lover. Owning pain was his way to control his own life and body and to reclaim it from a system that worked oppressively to alleviate—but never to cure—his suffering. He wrote, “I was forced to be in the medical world, so I turned that into something I could have control over instead of something that was controlling me.”41 Flanagan challenged heteronormative sexuality, and the mélange of pleasure and pain allowed him to exhibit his disability frankly, honestly, and powerfully: “In a bizarre, alternative universe kind of way, I sort of resemble Superman. Look, up in the sky, suspended by his wrists, and sporting a huge erection—it’s me. . . . And despite my skinny physique and frail sensitivities, I possess certain powers and abilities far beyond those of so-called normal human beings. . . . In a never-ending battle not just to survive but to subdue my stubborn disease, I’ve learned to fight sickness with sickness.”42 One of the oppressive forces enacted against the impaired, disabled, and ill is coerced freeing from pain because a painful life is considered by many to be a life without dignity and worth.43 Flanagan flagrantly disallowed any such condescension, and he also constantly pushed back at being co-opted by neoliberal forces through his refusal to accept a normative, comfortable “super-crip” status.44 Within the confines of a very difficult condition, he lived a long life, and he made a lot of pleasure for himself. 140

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

The Wise and His Unanswerable Question The afflicted multitude at the Chora, albeit less dramatically, manifestly own their pain, but they also model forbearance, dignity, and discretion.45 The punctum that pierces so painfully among that group, however, is the hernia sufferer, and his obvious bearing of his crippling impairment and his seemly request for relief make his physical and emotional burdens available for empathy. The grotesqueness makes his pain approachable—a punctum of grotesqueness—and the incidental, almost accidental quality of that detail animates the image with suffering. The leper, even closer to Flanagan perhaps, takes those qualities and magnifies their intensity in his heroic, damaged body. And what of Christ’s role in this presentation of impairment? He is no longer visible in the scene of the leper, whose now-amputated body remains as the superhuman, enduring sign of the never-quite-healed. But in the scene of the multitude, Christ is among them, swaying into their small community and away from his defensively arrayed apostles. Christ approaches this stigmatized array of outcasts vis-à-vis the apostles, who stay away. His body is the gesture of mercy and of care. In terms Erving Goffman (1922–1982) used in his book on stigma from 1963, Christ is a “wise,” a term he applies to someone who is “normal” but whose own situation makes them sympathetic to, and knowledgeable about, the conditions of lives lived in secret or with stigma. A “wise” is allowed into the community, given a measure of acceptance by courtesy of this partially shared knowledge of marginalization, and before such a person, the marginal need not feel shame or self-consciousness.46 Christ may be healing, as the inscription says, but his act, frozen in the mosaic, is still and forever incomplete. He is for now, the durative now, a “wise,” who acknowledges the disabled multitude’s difference and autonomy and who allows the emancipated leper to stand his ground, even with his “wise” gone (see fig. 5.7). So why does this “wise,” who controls and makes all things, allow the multitude to suffer? It is an eternal and unanswerable question. But some Byzantine thinkers tried to respond to the dilemma of suffering at the hands of a benevolent God, as so many have before and since. Theoktistos the Stoudite wrote a vita of the Patriarch Athanasios I (ca. 1235–ca. 1315) in the 1320s or 1330s, roughly contemporary to the restorations at the Chora. In one healing miracle, a mute woman is afflicted by “that which a multitude of sins can bring on, heaping up diseases on wretched bodies through the disorder of elements, God permitting this in the depth of his wisdom and foresight and ordinance with ineffable reasons of accommodation and incomprehensibility.”47 On the wings of faith, she went to the saint’s shrine and was healed straightaway, Theoktistos tells us. Christ is the good doctor,48 but if Christ is “wise,” then he is also a God who punishes—though the woman’s sins are never specified—and a God who does not reveal his reasons; only he can know the cause for the disorders he sends. Perhaps here is the reason for the apostles’ holding back: if he can heal, can he not also afflict? Kept in the balance in this image are the promises of pain, affliction, and healing, and difference, The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

141

integrity, and self-determination. The apostles appear like uneasy children behind the seemingly self-contradictory Lord, while the impaired are knowing, receptive, and alert to God’s opaque wishes for them. And as Theoktistos states elsewhere, such moments are “an excellent example of fortitude and teaches us that in difficult times we should not give up begging for the kindness of God, whenever He is slow to grant his mercy and is delaying the relief of the sufferer for reasons of more profound dispensation.”49 This more profound dispensation is a mystery, an unreachable truth, but such images help us do some of the thinking.50 If never resolving nor answering our questions, their pensiveness does give us ways to contemplate our vulnerability and our bodied passage through these lives.

Notes 1. See Siebers, Disability Theory. 2. Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, 25–26: “Aesthetics studies the way that some bodies make other bodies feel. Bodies, minimally defined, are what appear in the world. They involve manifestation of physical appearance, whether this appearance is defined as the physical manifestation itself or as the particular appearance of a given physical manifestation. Bodies include in my definition human bodies, paintings, sculpture, buildings, the entire range of human artifacts, as well as animals and objects in the natural world.” 3. See, for example, G. Peers, “Sense Lives of Byzantine Things,” 11–30, and G. Peers, Animism, Materiality and Museums. 4. See G. Peers, Animism, Materiality and Museums. 5. Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, 83: “Vandalized images fail to represent what they represented before their injury—and yet we resist the fact. The act of vandalism changes the referential function of the artwork, creating a new image in its own right.” And as Garland-Thomson states, we must value them for the are rather than the ought (“Case for Conserving Disability,” 341). 6. Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, 83–99. See also “Repair,” the special issue of the journal Manual about the exhibition Repair and Design Futures (October 5, 2018–June 30, 2019) held at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence. 7. See also Millett-Gallant, “Sculpting Body Ideals,” 427–39. 8. Underwood, Kariye Djami, 1:148. 9. On leprosy in the Byzantine world, see Miller and Nesbitt, Walking Corpses; Miller, “Medical Thought and Practice,” 254; Stathokopoulos, “Death in the Countryside,” 105–14.

142

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

For the Islamic world, see Richardson, Difference and Disability, and Ricordel, “Pistes pour une étude sociologique,” 113–28. As Patricia Skinner points out, in some cases, an untoward appearance can produce social disability, which does not need to arise from actual physical disability (“Taking Out the Eye”). 10. See now the study by Nektarios Zarras, “Illness and Healing,” on the intellectual background to the selection and presentation of the healing scenes. 11. Teteriatnikov, “Place of the Nun Melania,” 163–84. 12. Schroeder, “Prayer and Penance,” 37–53. 13. Rico Franses’s book Donor Portraits in Byzantine Art examines this intentionalist bias in the art-historical examination of Byzantine monuments closely. 14. Knipp, “Narrative and Symbol,” 143–63. 15. Ibid., 161. 16. Upson-Saia gives a sense of the many facets available in texts about illness and bodies in the essays collected in “Rethinking Medical Metaphors.” 17. See Nelson, “Chora and the Great Church,” 67–101, as well as Nelson, “Heavenly Allies,” 31–40; Nelson, “Taxation with Representation,” 56–82. 18. Nelson, “Chora and the Great Church,” 101. 19. Underwood, Kariye Djami, 1:149–51. See also Rossi, “Reconsidering the Early Palaiologan Period,” 71–84. 20. Underwood, who thought the source document was a lectionary, argued for liturgical sequencing (“Some Problems in Programs,” 262–64); Dufrenne argued for liturgy performed during Pentecost (Programmes iconographiques, 58–59). 21. Teteriatnikov, “Place of the Nun Melania,” 170: “Although this general understanding of the role of Christ’s miracles in the liturgical year is correct, it

explains neither the location nor the choice of subjects in the churches. The program of each individual church has to be individually examined.” 22. The locus classicus is now Maguire, Art and Eloquence, but see also Brubaker, “Perception and Conception,” 19–32. 23. Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, 123–29. 24. See Barthes, Camera Lucida. 25. Rancière, Emancipated Spectator, 107. 26. See Siebers, “In the Name of Pain,” 183–94. 27. See, for example, David, Disability Studies Reader, and works by ancient and medieval historians including Laes, Disabilities and the Disabled; Nolte et al., Dis/ability History; Skinner, Living with Disfigurement; and, among her several books on the subject, Metzler, Fools and Idiots? Other recent collections are Laes, Disability in Antiquity; Upson-Saia and Marx-Wolf, “State of the Question.” 28. Siebers, Disability Aesthetics, and essays in Tremain, Foucault and the Government of Disability. 29. Efthymiades, “Disabled in the Byzantine Empire,” 388–402. 30. Ibid., 390. 31. Solevåg, Negotiating the Disabled Body, 12–16. 32. Underwood, Kariye Djami, 1:126–29, 136. 33. Solevåg, Negotiating the Disabled Body, 29–52, 59–64. 34. Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles of St. Artemios, 130–36. 35. I find no mention in Bennett, Medicine and Pharmacy, Stathokopoulos, “Discovering a Military Order,” 255–73, or Miller, Birth of the Hospital. A hospital is, however, mentioned by Sevcenko (“Theodore Metochites,” 32), and therefore assumed by Knipp, to the point of allowing him to suggest a consequent realism at work in the mosaics in the healing of the multitude (“Narrative and Symbol,” 163). Rossi, likewise, looks for the scene’s “textual equivalents” in miracle accounts of healing contemporary to the mosaic (“Reconsidering the Early Palaiologan Period”). 36. I am particularly leaning on Millett-Gallant and Howie, Disability and Art History. 37. Millett-Gallant, Disabled Body in Contemporary Art, 6. 38. See McRuer, Crip Theory. 39. See https://‌archive‌.newmuseum‌.org‌​ /exhibitions‌/251.

40. Kuppers, Studying Disability Arts and Culture, 30–31; Siebers, “In the Name of Pain”; Reynolds, “Disability and BDSM,” 41–52; McRuer, Crip Theory, 171–98; Garland-Thomson, “Seeing the Disabled,” 358–59; Kauffman, Bad Girls and Sick Boys. Important sources on the artist’s life and work include Juno and Vale, Bob Flanagan, and Dick’s documentary SICK. 41. Juno and Vale, Bob Flanagan, 11. 42. Ibid., 3. 43. Siebers, “In the Name of Pain,” 184. 44. See D. Peers, “From Inhalation to Inspiration,” 331–49, and McRuer, Crip Theory. 45. On Byzantine pain, see Tirnanic, “Touch of Violence,” 223–37. 46. Goffman, Stigma, 28. 47. Theoktistos, quoted and translated in Talbot, Faith Healing in Late Byzantium, 111 (59). 48. Bennett, Medicine and Pharmacy, 155: “Their approach to suffering and death seems to have combined a certain fatalism and submission to the will of God, and a knowledge of the ‘one physician,’ Jesus, ‘who empowered suffered and enabled them to endure.’ The physician’s arts, whether intelligible or not to the patient, were a means to healing, but if they failed, the will of God would prevail.” 49. Theoktistos, quoted and translated in Talbot, Faith Healing in Late Byzantium, 79 (27). 50. See, in a related vein, Gassaway, “Divining Disability,” 75–76: But when scholars are forthright about the arbitrary ruptures and conjunction under which the different disciplines operate, history is then able to reveal truth more effortlessly. In a way, the object is thus better able to ‘push back’ against us, and even to protect itself from the harm sometimes inflicted upon it with all our poking and prodding. Stated in general terms, the purpose of these objects—as with all art perhaps—is, as art historian Esther Pasztory notes, ‘to deal with problems on a symbolic level that cannot be dealt with on a practical level.’ By seeking always to encapsulate art within a socioscientific context, or to explain it away as merely imitative or illustrative, historians actually deprive art of its elegance, spontaneity, and affinity for abstraction.

Bibliography Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill & Wang, 2010.

Bennett, David. Medicine and Pharmacy in Byzantine Hospitals: A Study of the Extant Formularies. London: Routledge, 2017.

The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

143

Brubaker, Leslie. “Perception and Conception: Art, Theory and Culture in Ninth-Century Byzantium.” Word and Image 5 (1989): 19–32. Crisafulli, Virgil S., and John W. Nesbitt. The Miracles of St. Artemios: A Collection of Miracles Stories by an Anonymous Author of Seventh-Century Byzantium. Leiden: Brill, 1997. David, Lennard J., ed. The Disability Studies Reader. 5th ed. New York: Routledge, 2017. Dick, Kirby, dir. SICK: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. 1997. Dufrenne, Suzy. Les programmes iconographiques des églises byzantines de Mistra. Paris: Klincksieck, 1970. Efthymiades, Stephanos. “The Disabled in the Byzantine Empire.” In Disability in Antiquity, edited by Christian Laes, 388–402. New York: Routledge, 2017. Franses, Rico. Donor Portraits in Byzantine Art: The Vicissitudes of Contact Between Human and Divine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Case for Conserving Disability.” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 9, no. 3 (2012): 339–55. ———. “Seeing the Disabled: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography.” In The New Disability History: American Perspectives, edited by Paul K. Longmore and Laurie Umansky, 335–74. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Gassaway, William T. “Divining Disability: Criticism as Diagnosis in Mesoamerican Art History.” In Millett-Gallant and Howie, Disability and Art History, 60–81. Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Juno, Andrea, and V. Vale, eds. Bob Flanagan: Super-Masochist. New York: RE/Search, 2000. Kauffman, Linda. Bad Girls and Sick Boys: Fantasies in Contemporary Art and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Knipp, David. “Narrative and Symbol: The Early Christian Image of the Haemorrhoissa and the Mosaics in the Narthex of the Kariye Camii.” In The Woman with the Blood Flow (Mark 5:24–34): Narrative, Iconic and Anthropological Spaces, edited by Barbara Baert, 143–63. Louvain: Peeters, 2014. Kuppers, Petra. Studying Disability Arts and Culture: An Introduction. New York: Red Globe, 2014. Laes, Christian. Disabilities and the Disabled in the Roman World: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. ———, ed. Disability in Antiquity. London: Routledge, 2017.

144

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Maguire, Henry. Art and Eloquence in Byzantium. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. McRuer, Robert. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Metzler, Irina. Fools and Idiots? Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. Miller, Timothy S. The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. ———. “Medical Thought and Practice.” In The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium, edited by Anthony Kaldellis and Niketas Siniossoglu, 252–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Miller, Timothy S., and John W. Nesbitt. Walking Corpses: Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014. Millett-Gallant, Ann. The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art. New York: Palgrave, 2010. ———. “Sculpting Body Ideals: Alison Lapper Pregnant and the Public Display of Disability.” In The Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard J. David, 427–39. New York: Routledge, 2017. Millett-Gallant, Ann, and Elizabeth Howie, eds. Disability and Art History. London: Routledge, 2017. Nelson, Robert S. “The Chora and the Great Church: Intervisuality in Fourteenth-Century Constantinople.” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 23 (1999): 67–101. ———. “Heavenly Allies at the Chora.” Gesta 43, no. 1 (2004): 31–40. ———. “Taxation with Representation: Visual Narrative and the Political Field of the Kariye Camii.” Art History 22 (1999): 56–82. Nolte, Cordula, Bianca Frohne, Uta Halle, and Sonja Kerth, eds. Dis/ability History der Vormoderne: Ein Handbuch / Premodern Dis/ability History: A Companion. Affalterbach: Didymus, 2017. Peers, Danielle. “From Inhalation to Inspiration: A Genealogical Auto-ethnography of a Supercrip.” In Tremain, Foucault and the Government of Disability, 331–49. Peers, Glenn. Animism, Materiality and Museums: How Do Byzantine Things Feel? Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2021. ———. “Sense Lives of Byzantine Things.” In Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium, edited by Margaret Mullett and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, 11–30. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2017. Rancière, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. Translated by Gregory Elliott. London: Verso, 2009. Reynolds, Dawn. “Disability and BDSM: Bob Flanagan and the Case for Sexual Rights.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 4 (2007): 41–52.

Richardson, Kristina L. Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World: Blighted Bodies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Ricordel, Joëlle. “Pistes pour une étude sociologique des anomalies physiques acquises ou congénitales aux premiers siècles de l’Islam.” In Handicaps et sociétés dans l’histoire: L’estropie, l’aveugle et le paralytique de l’Antiquité au temps modernes, edited by Franck Collard and Évelyne Samama, 113–28. Paris: Harmattan, 2010. Rossi, Maria Alessia. “Reconsidering the Early Palaiologan Period: Anti-Latin Propaganda, Miracle Accounts, and Monumental Art.” In Late Byzantium Reconsidered: The Arts of the Palaiologan Era in the Mediterranean, edited by Andrea Mattiello and Maria Alessia Rossi, 71–84. London: Routledge, 2019. Schroeder, Rossitza. “Prayer and Penance in the South Bay of the Chora Esonarthex.” Gesta 48, no. 1 (2009): 37–53. Sevcenko, Ihor. “Theodore Metochites, the Chora, and the Intellectual Trends of His Time.” In The Kariye Djami, vol. 4, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami and Its Intellectual Background, edited by Paul A. Underwood, 17–91. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. ———. “In the Name of Pain.” In Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality, edited by Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland, 183–94. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Skinner, Patricia. Living with Disfigurement in Early Medieval Europe. New York: Palgrave, 2017. ———. “Taking Out the Eye of a One-Eyed Man and Other Hypothetical Moments of Sensory Impairments in Early Medieval Law.” In Sensory Perception in the Medieval West, edited by Simon C. Thomson and Michael D. J. Bintley, 181–94. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Solevåg, Anna Rebecca. Negotiating the Disabled Body: Representations of Disability in Early Christian Texts. Atlanta: SBL, 2018.

Stathokopoulos, Dionysios. “Death in the Countryside: Some Effects of Famine and Epidemics.” Antiquité tardive 20 (2012): 105–14. ———. “Discovering a Military Order of the Crusades: The Hospital of St. Sampson of Constantinople.” Viator 37 (2006): 255–73. Stewart, Susan. The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Talbot, Alice-Mary M. Faith Healing in Late Byzantium: The Posthumous Miracles of the Patriarch Athanasios I of Constantinople by Theoktistos the Stoudite. Brookline: Hellenic College Press, 1983. Teteriatnikov, Natalia. “The Place of the Nun Melania (the Lady of the Mongols) in the Deesis Program of the Inner Narthex of Chora, Constantinople.” Cahiers Archéologiques 43 (1995): 163–84. Tirnanic, Galina. “A Touch of Violence: Feeling Pain, Perceiving Pain in Byzantium.” In Harvey and Mullet, Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls, 223–37. Tremain, Shelley, ed. Foucault and the Government of Disability. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Underwood, Paul A. The Kariye Djami. Vol. 1, Historical Introduction and Description of the Mosaics and Frescoes. New York: Pantheon, 1966. ———. “Some Problems in Programs and Iconography of Ministry Cycles.” In Underwood, The Kariye Djami, vol. 4, Studies in the Art of the Kariye Djami, 243–302. Upson-Saia, Kristi, ed. “Rethinking Medical Metaphors in Late Ancient Christianity.” Special issue, Studies in Late Antiquity 2, no. 4 (2018). Upson-Saia, Kristi, and Heidi Marx-Wolf. “The State of the Question: Religion, Medicine, Disability, and Health in Late Antiquity.” Journal of Late Antiquity 8, no. 2 (2015): 257–72. Zarras, Nektarios. “Illness and Healing: Τhe Ministry Cycle in the Chora Monastery and the Literary Oeuvre of Theodore Metochites.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 75 (2021): 85–119.

The Iconography of Healing and Damaged Bodies

145

6 Pictured in Relief Comparative Iconology and Civilizational Time Zones at Monreale and Quanzhou, ca. 1186–ca. 1238

Jennifer Purtle

Iconography and iconology, systematic methods of analyzing and comprehending the visual content of images and their contexts, originated in European (and subsequent American) practices of art history. However, despite their long and storied history in these contexts, including in the Index of Christian (now Medieval) Art, systematic visual communication and methods for parsing it have long existed in cultures whose epistemological and linguistic structures do not permit their articulation in these terms of Greek origin. As we know them in the discipline of art history, the terms “iconography” and “iconology” originate within Western epistemological structures and intellectual histories, albeit ones that postdate the Middle Ages.1 Yet avant, in the case of Europe—and more accurately, absent la lettre in the case of non-European cultures such as that of China—images and objects systematically communicated information in visual images without a self-reflexive vocabulary to explain such enterprises, presuming rather than problematizing the intelligibility of images and their textual referents. In hopes better to understand disparate practices of systematic visual communication in the variably defined “Global Middle Ages,” both before and yet inextricably linked to the dawn of the World System, 1250–1350, this essay examines programs of religious narrative relief sculpture from two linked sites within the maritime networks that connected Europe, the Islamic world, and East Asia. One cycle, that of the

Figure 6.1 Bonanus of Pisa, Nativity, west portal doors, cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, 1186. Cast bronze, approximately 37.5 × 30 cm. Photo: Album / Alamy Stock Photos. Figure 6.2 Birth of the Buddha, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014.

148

bronze doors for the west portal of the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova at Monreale made by Bonanus of Pisa (fl. ca. 1179–86) in 1186 and exemplified by an image of the Nativity, inscribed nativitas d(omi)ni (lit., the birth of the Lord), the text of which was accidentally cast in mirror-image reversal, represents the iconographic practices of Norman Sicily (fig. 6.1). Notably, a Chinese geography of circa 1225 recorded Sicily, the westernmost point known in Chinese maritime networks that extended from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.2 The other cycle, that of stone-carved reliefs for the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda 鎮國塔, or east pagoda, of the Kaiyuan si Buddhist temple in Quanzhou made under the supervision of the Buddhist monk Benhong 本洪 (fl. early–mid thirteenth century) circa 1238 and exemplified by an image of the Birth of the Buddha, inscribed 毗藍誕瑞 (Pilan danrui, lit., the auspicious birth in [the] Lumbini [garden]; fig. 6.2), is taken as typical of the iconographic practices of Southern Song China, the port city of Quanzhou, the easternmost point named in an Arab-Norman-Byzantine world geography of 1154 (fig. 6.3).3 At these two linked sites, Monreale and Quanzhou, narrative reliefs fashioned from durable materials communicated text-based content to audiences of variable literacy able to parse their three-dimensional representational codes and/or their laconic texts, including those that portrayed the human form of divine beings, as noted above.4 By means of comparative iconography and iconology, this essay argues that profoundly different textual worlds inflected the possibilities for visual communication at each of these linked sites, their coincident temporalities paradoxically constituting different civilizational time zones. Following a methodological preamble and justification of the comparanda, this essay reveals the differential development of iconographic practices at each site through three broad lines of inquiry. First, it examines and compares individual images formally, iconographically, and historiographically to reconstruct normative practices of visual communication at each site; second, it assesses and juxtaposes the narrative cycles of each site to comprehend their practices of programmatic visual communication; and, third, it quantifies and contrasts the number of the textual sources that inform the narrative cycle of each monument. By demonstrating the primacy of discrete textual technologies at each site—manuscript, a civilizational benchmark of the medieval, at Monreale, and print, a civilizational benchmark of the early modern, in Quanzhou (the latter anachronistically precocious by the standards of Europe)—these lines of inquiry reveal the simultaneous, albeit geographically discontiguous, existence of medieval and early modern iconological contexts during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The superficial similarity of the monuments and the copresence of their sites in geographies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries notwithstanding, the nearly invisible disjunction of civilizational benchmarks (and thus time zones) at Monreale and in Quanzhou problematizes, if not pressures, the idea of a Global Middle Ages and the methods for understanding how images communicated within and across this period. Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 6.3 Map showing Arab-Norman and Southern Song maritime and overland links. Map © Lora Miki, 2020.

A Postglobal Approach to Monuments of the Global Middle Ages Whereas “medieval art” once principally referred to objects made in Western Europe (and was less frequently applied to the periodization of the art of non-European cultures within which an intermediary phase could be identified), the new discourses of the Global Middle Ages underpin the idea of a global medieval art history.5 Even as historians acknowledge the complexity, utility, and difficulty of the Global Middle Ages, art historians have variably problematized the idea of global medieval art history.6 Entranced by material that, on account of being visual, material, and mute more easily elides disjunctions (such as linguistic ones that indicate clear cultural boundaries to historians working principally with texts), art historians have been able to produce connective approaches to the material that they study across broad geographic areas of linguistic, cultural, and political discontiguity.7 More elusive are 150

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

comparative, postglobal approaches to a geographically expansive medieval art history that, while acknowledging the connectivity of the Global Middle Ages, foreground its irreconcilable differences.8 As an emerging method in the discipline of art history, the procedures of a comparativist approach remain in flux. From its inception, the discipline of art history embraced the study of objects made in different times and places.9 Moreover, modes of comparative visual analysis—notably, the formalism of Heinrich Wölfflin and the iconology of Erwin Panofsky—have long been foundational to the discipline.10 Challenges posed by the expansion of the discipline to encompass the study of the material and visual remains of all times and places require a more focused sense of comparativism, one able to address the Eurocentrism of the global, the reaching out of “the West” to “the rest” that, given the dominantly European and North American demographics of the discipline, is structurally inherent.11 Regrettably, these demographics all too often guarantee that scholars working only in one or more Western languages and/or cultures seek to shape scholarship of the “global,” despite their inability to work across the linguistic and cultural boundaries of the Euro-American tradition; thus they are limited in their ability to rethink, if not provincialize, the tradition they principally study.12 Art-historical points of convergence exist in multiple scenarios. Such points of convergence exist connectively, in geographical and historical networks in which seemingly discrete artistic traditions meet; this type of historically demonstrable connection has long been a standard for art-historical inquiry.13 Further art-historical points of convergence also occur comparatively, namely as parallel, discrete, synchronic (or diachronic) artistic phenomena that, despite their lack of geographical or historical contiguity, nonetheless exhibit similarities that permit them to be juxtaposed; such similarities have long underpinned the discipline of comparative literature, but the status of similar practices in art history has been questionable at best.14 Art-historical points of convergence also exist in discrete contexts, their differences apparent only through comparative analysis; this approach approximates what some scholars have deemed “combinative.”15 This latter approach is a useful tool for addressing “the global” without reifying the implicitly Euro-American models that inform the discipline.16 It enables established standards for art-historical inquiry to meet the challenges of comparison posed in other disciplines and postcolonial frameworks. The stakes of connective, comparative, and combinative approaches to art-​historical phenomena are significant. The stakes are high because “global” art history, as advanced by scholars principally invested in the European tradition who are supported by the tacitly Western structures of the discipline, too often use connective approaches to link “the West” to “the rest,” thereby once again colonizing the discipline. Consequently, scholars working outside the European tradition have sought “postglobal” antidotes to such practices. Specifically, those from and working in “emerging art histories,” the histories of art of cultures that, while producing art, have not framed it in the terms Pictured in Relief

151

afforded by the implicitly “Western” discipline of art history, have begun to propose “postglobal” approaches for the study of art from these regions.17 These approaches seek to elucidate such art in their own emic terms. By identifying similarities to and differences from established etic paradigms through comparison, such approaches seek to juxtapose emic considerations with those etic ones that shape the epistemological structures and language of established art histories. The goal of “postglobal” art-historical inquiry and its variably comparative approaches is to consider art made outside “the West” literally in emic terms, better to understand the resemblance, correspondence, and incommensurability of “non-​Western” cultures with those of “Western” art history. Thus, such inquiry seeks to restore the primacy of “non-Western” art and to undercut the dominance of “Western” art history.18 By seeking to reveal the characteristics of narrative reliefs in early thirteenth-​century Quanzhou and by analyzing them in contradistinction to the properties of narrative reliefs in late twelfth-century Monreale (which, despite the exceptional mobility of the Normans, nonetheless embody Eurocentric norms for art-historical periodization), this essay eschews a connective approach to the narrative reliefs in favor of a combinative one. Here, comparison takes precedence even as connection—namely, the copresence of Sicily and Quanzhou in Norman and Southern Song geographies of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the migration of certain iconographies—is acknowledged.19

Networked Comparisons: Morphological Resemblances and Geographical Links of Norman Sicily and Southern Song China, ca. 1186–1238 Resemblances of artistic form, content, and context make comparative art histories possible. Specifically, similarities of monument types, the function of their components within the whole, the mythologies of their facture, their locations considered with respect to local and regional/network dynamics, the formal and visual implications of such locations, and the historiography of the monuments (which casts light on the art-historical methods that have shaped the understanding of them) facilitate such inquiry. Indeed, supporters of comparative historical method have advocated for precisely such resonances as the foundation for comparison.20 Like the bronze doors of the west portal of the cathedral of Monreale (fig. 6.4), the reliefs from the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda of the Kaiyuan si Buddhist temple in Quanzhou (fig. 6.5) form a composite monument composed of multiple narrative relief panels. Their comprehensive, multipanel programs each contain individual tales, narrative cycles, and nonnarrative panels.21 Furthermore, the constituent reliefs of both monuments are glossed with short texts. Most strikingly, to the viewer who has seen both monuments in situ, the similarity of the figural and textual scale of the images is uncanny.22 152

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 6.4 West portal of the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale. Photo: Ivan Vdovin / Alamy Stock Photos.

Figure 6.5 Detail of east pagoda base, west facade, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou. Photo © Jennifer Purtle, 2014, edited by Lora Miki, 2020.

154

The bronze doors of the west portal at Monreale and the east pagoda base in Quanzhou further resemble each other as constituent components of their respective religious institutions. Specifically, each is one of two monuments of similar type located within the religious structure of which they are a part. At Monreale, there exists a second set of the bronze doors, made by Barisianus of Trani (fl. ca. 1179–1200) for the north portal, between circa 1185 and 1189.23 Cast in low relief and finished by chiseling, these doors are different in style from those of Bonanus and provide an immediate local comparison.24 Within the Kaiyuan Temple, reliefs on the base of a second pagoda, the Renshou Pagoda 仁壽塔, or west pagoda, renovated by the monk Zizheng 自證 (fl. ca. 1228), who began to replace tile facing with stone in 1228, provide a similarly immediate comparison.25 The reliefs from its base feature flowers and animals (no human subjects) in compositions derived from contemporaneous Chinese decorative painting; they are realized in a more exuberant sculptural style and bear no inscribed texts.26 Coincidentally, the founding tales of the cathedral of Monreale and the Kaiyuan Temple each relate their founders’ supernatural experiences of the site, marked by a distinctive tree, in a dream sequence. In the case of Monreale, the legend, preserved in a text of the eighteenth century by Michele del Giudice (1651–1727), recounts how Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

William II of Sicily (1153–1189, r. 1166–89) fell asleep under the shade of a carob tree (albero di Siliqua) while hunting in the woods near Monreale. The Virgin Mary (Signora del Paradiso) appeared to him in a dream, suggesting that he build a church on that site. Upon removing the carob tree to facilitate this project, he found that its roots revealed a treasure, gold coins that were used to finance construction.27 As for the Kaiyuan Temple, a text from the fourteenth century reveals that between circa 685 and 686, a wealthy man of the time named Huang Shougong 黄守恭, who owned a house and garden in what would become the heart of the city, daydreamed that his mulberry trees blossomed with lotus flowers; on account of this dream, he donated his house to be made into a Buddhist temple fittingly known as Lotus Flower Temple (Lianhua si); in 738, an imperial decree changed its name to Kaiyuan si.28 That both monuments are located in formerly peripheral areas brought to prominence by shifts in seats of power within their respective polities establishes a further point of comparison. In the case of Monreale, the Arab occupation of Palermo forced its bishop to move his see to the small village of Monreale, its status subsequently elevated under Norman rule by William II, who likely undertook the building of the cathedral by circa 1172 and certainly by 1174.29 In the case of Quanzhou, the southward flight of the Song dynasty imperial family circa 1127 in the face of aggression from northern, non-Chinese people not only resulted in the relocation of the capital to Hangzhou but also led to the establishment of an imperial clan residence in Quanzhou so that by the mid-twelfth century, Quanzhou was home to the largest number of royal family members anywhere in the empire outside the capital.30 Each monument is also located at the furthest reaches of the other’s maritime world, as noted previously; the transregional networks in which their polities participated thus shaped each monument. Quanzhou, referred to as Jānkū, was one of the points furthest east mentioned in the Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fi’ikhtirāq al-āfāq ([The book of] pleasant journeys into faraway lands) completed by the Arab geographer al-Idrisi (1100–1165) at the court of Roger II (1095–1154) in Palermo in 1154.31 The Kingdom of Sicily 斯加里野國 (Sijialiye guo) was one of the furthest points to the west mentioned by Zhao Rugua (1170–1231), a member of the Song dynasty royal family and maritime trade superintendent, in his Zhufan zhi (Record of all [that is] foreign) of circa 1225.32 The silver planisphere associated with al-Idrisi’s text crafted a seamless image of the known world.33 The Chinese gridded maps of Zhao’s era presented the world with accurate distances between points.34 Despite this cartographic sophistication, seafarers from both cultures principally used coastal navigation aids. The cosmopolitan architectonic framing of each monument acknowledges its position within extensive maritime trade networks. At Monreale, Islamicate mosaics on the facade surrounding the west portal evoked the larger Muslim maritime world to which Sicily was connected; which culture or cultures the now-lost mosaics would have signaled is unclear (see fig. 6.4).35 In Quanzhou, each sculptural panel is accentuated by a carved Islamicate foliate border (e.g., fig. 6.2), and each panel is framed Pictured in Relief

155

by sculpted stone forms derived from local Brahmanic temple architecture and local Islamic gravemarkers (see fig. 6.5).36 Each monument thus speaks a transregional language of form; together, they connect the artistic languages of the North Sea to that of the South China Sea in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, via their intermediaries, thus revealing the artistic extent of the Global Middle Ages. Both monuments visually articulate their proximate and distant cosmopolitan connections, yet, perhaps needless to say, this essay does not seek to show the “influence” of the earlier monument on the later nor indeed any connection between the two. Instead, this essay trades on the resemblances of form, content, and context between these two monuments to reveal their differences; given the expansive geography of the global medieval world, their differences should not be taken for granted. It is from this complex position of difference-despite-similarity that this essay considers “iconography” both before and outside the tradition that “invented” this concept, its terminology, and its place in the discipline of art history. The historiographic similitude of the monuments—namely, that prior art-historical scholarship of each one foregrounds the recovery of the iconography of individual components of each monument—further underscores the utility of the comparison.

Discrete Contexts: Analogous Forms and Local Cultures at Santa Maria Nuovo (Monreale) and Kaiyuan si (Quanzhou) Even as resemblance makes comparative art histories possible, it is the disjunction of context that permits comparative art histories to operate across cultures—be they local, regional, polity-wide, or imperial. The bronze doors of the west portal of the Norman cathedral of Monreale and the Southern Song stone-carved reliefs for the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda of the Kaiyuan si Buddhist temple in Quanzhou share analogous features that support their comparison. Each monument is unique compared to other works of its type, each type native to the region in which it is found: there are no bronze cathedral doors known from China nor pagoda bases from Sicily.37 Moreover, each monument is distinctive in relation to works in other media drawn from its native region—namely, Europe / Byzantium / the Islamic world in the case of Monreale and China / India / the Islamic world in the case of Quanzhou. Local and regional practices of materiality, style, composition, and media thus shaped each monument. The bronze doors of Bonanus contain forty-six panels sculpted in high relief and cast in bronze, forty of which depict biblical and related content, narrative and iconic (fig. 6.4). Relief-sculpted bronze cathedral doors were not uncommon.38 Neither earlier surviving examples of similar content nor contemporaneous examples closely resemble those of the west portal of Monreale, with one exception: the bronze doors of the San Ranieri portal in the cathedral of Pisa, also made by Bonanus.39 The plasticity and three-dimensionality of the west portal reliefs (see figs. 6.1, 6.6, 6.12) are distinctive 156

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

compared with bas-relief figures used on the north portal doors at Monreale by Barisianus of Trani.40 The scholarly literature on the west portal doors at Monreale links their style to various artistic contexts including Northern European, Tuscan, and Byzantine, citing, respectively, their resemblance to the Hildesheim doors; their compositional affinity to Byzantine illuminations and ivory carvings, as well as Byzantinizing doors such as those from Novgorod; and their visible relationship to the Tuscan origins of Bonanus.41 The volumetric linearity of the figures, together with the absence of backgrounds in the compositions of the reliefs, appear to translate two-dimensional renderings of three-dimensional forms, such as those pictured in the mosaics at Monreale, back into a three-dimensional medium.42 For example, the west portal door panels that depict the Creation of Eve, inscribed d(omi)n(v)s dedi(t) uxore(m) ada(m) (lit., The Lord gave a wife to Adam), and Cain killing Abel, inscribed caim uc(ci)se fra(t) suo abel (lit., Cain killed his brother Abel), resemble the mosaics of the same events inside the cathedral (cf. figs. 6.6 and 6.7).43 In these examples, it is as if Bonanus has transformed preparatory drawings for mosaic images into three-dimensional relief sculpture. Scholarly consensus is that the doors were manufactured in Pisa, but their compositional resonance with mosaics perhaps suggests the diffusion of that medium-​based aesthetic northward and an awareness of the context in which the doors would be placed. The placement of Bonanus’s doors in the main portal of the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova exemplifies a visible and visual multiculturalism possible only under the rule of the Norman kings of Sicily. The sculptural style of the north portal doors exemplifies the Tuscan artistic networks of which Monreale was the southernmost terminus, which differed from the Apulian networks of Barisianus. Their position, framed by—and controlling access to—mosaics with both Byzantine and Islamic stylistic traits, establishes the links of these Tuscan and Apulian stylistic networks to Byzantine and Islamic ones. Moreover, they do so within a building whose form belongs to the northern architectural network of the Norman kings. It is the Norman conquest of Sicily in 1061 that engendered this royal style driven by the overlapping of these diverse networks of form, facture, and style.44 In Quanzhou, when Benhong replaced the tile facing of the Zhenguo Pagoda with stone circa 1238, forty relief-sculpted panels came to adorn the pagoda base.45 Reliefcarved facings for pagodas were not uncommon in stone-built pagodas (which were less common than their wooden counterparts), but neither earlier surviving examples of similar content nor contemporaneous examples with different content resemble those of Quanzhou. The plasticity and three-dimensionality of the Kaiyuan si reliefs, as exemplified in the Birth of the Buddha (fig. 6.2), is distinctive when compared with a pictorial relief of the same subject from the tenth-century Sheli Pagoda at the Qixia si, near Nanjing.46 The idiosyncrasies of content and composition found in the Zhenguo Pagoda reliefs are also evident when compared to surviving examples of Pictured in Relief

157

Figure 6.6 Bonanus of Pisa, Creation of Eve, west portal doors, cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, 1186. Cast bronze, approximately 37.5 × 30 cm. Photo: Album / Alamy Stock Photos. Figure 6.7 Creation of Eve, mosaic in the interior of the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, undated. Photo: Album / Alamy Stock Photos.

sculpture from China’s Southern Song dynasty (1127–1276/79). While consistent with relief carving from sites throughout coastal Fujian, they are notably distinct from those found further north at various sites in Zhejiang province.47 The style of relief sculpture on the base of the east pagoda might best be understood to be a product of Quanzhou’s Buddhist and mercantile cosmopolitanism; the city was described by Marco Polo as “one of the two greatest ports in the world” and was connected to much of the known world by its maritime networks.48 The formal properties of the Zhenguo Pagoda base reliefs, as seen in the Birth of the Buddha (fig. 6.2), and the sculptural framing of all of the narrative reliefs (as visible in fig. 6.5) resonate with contemporaneous Brahmanic sculpture from Quanzhou; an undated architectonic module from one of Quanzhou’s now-lost Brahmanic temples that depicts a relief-sculpted image of a sacred cow and Śiva linga exemplifies such sculpture.49 Even as the sculptural style of the east pagoda base reliefs give form to the expansive maritime networks of which Quanzhou was the eastern terminus, their compositions, such as that of the thirty-fifth relief, inscribed 雉撲野燒 (Zhi pu ye shao, lit., the pheasant beats [out] the wildfire; fig. 6.8), exhibit strong typological and compositional associations with the painting of the Southern Song dynasty imperial court at Hangzhou. For example, the landscape found in the right-hand part of the composition of this relief (fig. 6.8, inside box) resembles the lower portion of Listening to the Wind in the Pines of 1246 by the court painter Ma Lin (fl. ca. 1225; fig. 6.9, inside box).50 Given the large population of imperial family members resident in Quanzhou, their proximity to the Kaiyuan Temple (many lived in the Harmonious Lineage Hall [Muzong yuan], across the street from the west wall of the temple), and the documented transfer of imperial images from the capital to imperial family members resident in Fujian, the compositional resonance of the east pagoda base reliefs and court paintings may result from their local proximity.51

Double Trouble: Comparative Approaches to the Iconography of Norman and Chinese Narrative Reliefs The methods of iconography and iconology developed to address European and Chinese materials diverged based on the needs of the works studied and the world views of those who studied them. In the case of Europe, Aby Warburg used the term “iconography” in his early research, replacing it in 1908 with “iconology” in his particular method of visual interpretation called “critical iconology,” which focused on the tracing of motifs through different cultures and visual forms.52 Subsequently, Panofsky developed his now-classic method, in which one considers first primary or natural subject matter, then secondary or conventional subject matter (namely, iconography), and finally, intrinsic meaning or content (namely, iconology).53 Pictured in Relief

159

Figure 6.8 The pheasant beats [out] the wildfire, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou (shown with detail marked), ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014, edited by Lora Miki, 2020.

160

In contrast, Sinologists, perhaps familiar with developments in European art history, devised their own methods for parsing visual communication. Paul Demiéville, in The Twin Pagodas of Zayton: A Study of Later Buddhist Sculpture in China, one of if not the first Western-language monograph on Chinese art to use the term “iconography” on its title page, takes the pagodas of the Quanzhou Kaiyuan si as the objects of his study but does not offer a clear statement of method.54 Inferring method from the published text, it appears that Demiéville used philology to determine the textual source(s) for each narrative relief at the site based on its inscribed text, when such source(s) could be identified; the text also addresses nonnarrative sculpture.55 Then, Demiéville provided, relief by relief, a description of how the pictorial elements—Panofsky’s primary subject matter—relate to the source texts identified by the inscriptions—that is, Panofsky’s secondary subject matter. It is the philology of inscribed text that shapes perception of visual data and, by extension, iconography, not the other way around. Given this philological emphasis, there is only a limited discussion of the broader context that Panofsky describes as “iconology.” Despite archetypal articulations of methods for iconographic and iconological analysis, the methods applied to the study of each monument address the symbiosis of text and image. In the case of Bonanus’s bronze doors at Monreale, forty-two of Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 6.9 Ma Lin, Listening to the Wind in the Pines (shown with detail marked), undated. Ink and color on silk, 226.6 × 110.3 cm. Taipei, National Palace Museum. Photo edited by Lora Miki, 2020.

forty-six reliefs on the west portal doors bear short inscriptions that identify their biblical subjects: iconographic analysis is thus necessarily linked to its textual referent. Albert Boeckler’s text on the Birth of Christ and the Annunciation to the Shepherds reveals his analytical process (see fig. 6.1). After giving the subject matter and illustration number, he continues, “One finds no appreciable deviations from [Bonanus’s doors from] Pisa. This time the child in the bathtub is not missing; a woman holds him. Above the cave appears the star. nativitas. d(omi)ni is written in mirror-​image script, an oversight that is understandable for an artist who works generally in sand-casting, whereas in [lost] wax-casting a reversal of the script is not necessary. Mary’s right side was cast unsuccessfully.”56 Boeckler thus provides a brief account of the visual content of the image. Comparative in its approach, Boeckler stakes his analysis of the iconography of the Nativity at Monreale on that of the same subject realized by Bonanus in his doors for Pisa Cathedral. Of that Nativity, Boeckler writes: In the cave, Mary sits on a cushion, her left hand slid somewhat under her head, her right arm under her coat, the head veiled in a matronly manner; the child is in the crib behind which are the animals; Joseph is in the usual pose; the group of two women, who are preparing the bath for the child, pour the water into the basin and test its warmth. The figures are irregular, distributed solely in accordance with the available space; Mary’s pillow and form are, for lack of space, cut off below. On the hill, one sees the graceful form of a young, flute-playing shepherd and an older, bearded shepherd, supported by his staff, with the herd, across from nearly identical forms of two angels who bring them the tidings, both with long scepters. The shepherds have, besides the usual attributes of bags slung over their shoulders and water jugs, fur coats and Jewish hats, and although this addition is not uncommon, it is worth mentioning here as proof of the appearance of this headgear in what are certainly Italian works of the twelfth century. The scepters and shepherds’ staffs are broken off. nativitas d(omi)ni. The depiction can only be understood as a close derivative of the Byzantine standard type compositional template for such an image, as it is found in countless examples.57 Longer than his descriptive text for the Birth of Christ at Monreale, Boeckler’s description of the Birth of Christ from the bronze doors of Pisa nonetheless similarly emphasizes the visual components of the image and the technical constraints of the margins of the image. In both passages, Boeckler’s method of studying iconography is clear and consistent. So well known is the subject matter that Boeckler does not bother to separate Panofsky’s primary or natural subject matter from his secondary or conventional subject matter, that is, iconography; indeed, it might seem odd or forced to do so.58 162

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Instead, because the conventional subject matter is familiar, Boeckler simply explains its relation to the forms depicted. Moreover, Boeckler does not indicate textual sources for these depictions of the Nativity.59 The only iconological contexts Boeckler considers are the Byzantine compositional models and the bronze-casting practices relevant to the reversed script of the Monreale doors. Whereas Boeckler almost certainly knew the work of Panofsky on iconography and iconology, as well as that of other art historians, it is unknown whether or not Demiéville, principally a Sinologist, was conversant with and/or attempted to apply such art-historical methods to the reliefs in Quanzhou, despite invoking the term “iconography” in his study.60 Indeed, the principal tools used by Demiéville to decode the imagery of the reliefs of the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda at Quanzhou’s Kaiyuan si were those of the philologist. The fact that thirty-nine of the forty reliefs incorporated four-character inscriptions on the edges of their picture planes facilitated this approach; unlike the bronze doors of Bonanus, the subject matter of the east pagoda base reliefs was not so obvious as not to require such analysis. Demiéville’s text on the Birth of the Buddha (see fig. 6.2) reveals his method: Inscription: 毗藍誕瑞, “the auspicious event of the birth in the Lumbinī garden in Kapilavastu.” 毗藍 is an abbreviation, still usual in Japan, for 迦毗 藍城and 藍毗尼園 [the Lumbini Garden in the East of Kapilavastu, in which Prince Siddhartha was said to have been born]. The newborn Boddhisattva is pictured standing in a washbasin, raising his left and lowering his right hand. According to tradition, at his birth he was taken up by Indra (T. 190, p. 687; Hsüan-tang [Xuanzang (602–64 ce)], Watters, II, 14; Fa-hsien [Faxian (338–423/24 ce)], Giles, p. 38; Rockhill, Life, p. 16), or by Brahmā (T. 187, p. 553a), or by the four Devarājas (T. 189, p. 625), who had previously covered their hands with precious cloth (kāsikā): see the god kneeling on one side with his hands covered, probably Indra, while the other god is Brahmā. After that, according to tradition, he walked seven steps in the four (or six!) cardinal directions, raising one hand and declaring: “I alone am most venerable above in heaven and below heaven,” etc. The hand he raised was the right one (T. 185, p. 473c; T. 189, p. 625; etc.), not the left one as in our carving. Wherever he had put his foot down, a lotus appeared: see the lotus-flowers on each side of the basin. From the air the two Nāgarājas (T. 184, p. 463c; T. 187, p. 554c; T. 189; Hsüan-tsang; but nine according to T. 186, p. 494, while the other texts do not mention the Nāgarājas) let flow on him two streams of water, one cold, one hot, and the gods bathed him (T. 186, 187). The ablution took place on a golden stool (T. 184, 185), or in two pools (T. 190) or springs (Hsüan-tsang), not in a basin as in the carving. According to T. 184, it was only after the ablution that Indra and Brahmā wrapped him up in heavenly cloth, a variant which seems to agree with our carving.61 Pictured in Relief

163

Here Demiéville crafts a text virtually unreadable to the nonspecialist: lacking even romanization of key Chinese-character terms, it presumes that the reader can work easily between Sanskrit Buddhist terminology and its Chinese equivalents. In his analysis of other reliefs, Demiéville examines stylistic features but largely does so only when an appropriate textual source cannot be determined.62 Whereas Boeckler uses descriptions of the visual elements of Bonanus’s reliefs as the foundation of his study, linking visible elements to a generalized account of the birth of Christ (rather than to the specific text from the Gospel of Luke or postbiblical accounts), Demiéville analyzed the Birth of the Buddha image by linking its visual content to details enumerated in specific Buddhist sūtras. The textual corpus noted by Demiéville in the passage above includes six of the sūtras that contain variant accounts of the life of the Buddha (T184, T185, T186, T187, T189, T190), the larger corpus of such texts being akin to the four Gospel accounts of the life of Christ, each offering slightly different accounts and phrasing.63 Identification of this corpus of possible source texts permitted Demiéville to assess which visual details in the relief derive from which sūtra. Demiéville’s approach is grounded in the content of the inscriptions on the east pagoda base reliefs themselves. This approach is possible for some (but not all) reliefs because their wording is drawn directly from the canonical Chinese sūtras that were translations of Sanskrit and Pāli originals. The inscribed texts in Quanzhou may replicate short passages of sūtras verbatim to facilitate recall of a memorized text; in a culture of nonalphabetic literacy, readers must learn to correlate sound and meaning by rote, and viewers were as likely to recall a memorized text that they could link to inscribed characters as they were to be able to actually read them.64 Thus, these inscriptions differ from the vernacular, hybrid Latin-Tuscan ones of Bonanus’s doors at Monreale, suited to a reader able to recognize and thus perhaps sound out the initial letters of the Latin and Tuscan words spelled out on the panels. Unlike Boeckler, who seeks to understand the visual models for the Monreale reliefs (including their Pisan progenitors), Demiéville views the Kaiyuan si reliefs principally as indexical of their textual sources. When Demiéville problematizes images, it is rarely on account of possible visual models but rather on account of the visible content of the relief diverging from the visual information conveyed in its canonical source text(s). For example, the raised left arm of the Buddha’s body does not conform to canonical accounts, which make the right arm the one raised.65 Perhaps artistic license was invoked to reverse the arms to facilitate a sympathetic response from viewers too unsophisticated to calculate the discrepancy between the visible attributes described in an archetypal text and their mirror-image as viewed from the audience perspective. The differences in the methods of Boeckler and Demiéville, art-historical and philological, are visible in their respective treatments of mirror-image reversals of text and image. Where Boeckler, focused on images, dismisses the problem of mirror-image text as a mere technical fault of casting, Demiéville’s attention to text does not allow 164

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

him to easily dismiss the pictorial reversal of the Buddha’s arms. Yet, even as Panofsky advocated for a third iconological and contextual approach to visual communication, neither Boeckler nor Demiéville systematically probe the larger context of the image reversals in their respective objects of study. Had they done so, they might have uncovered very different contexts of literacy, writing, and print. For artisans, patrons, and audiences of Bonanus’s doors at Monreale, a text in mirror-image script was neither an aesthetic impediment nor a barrier to the comprehension of the text and image. In contrast, for a literate Chinese audience not only knowledgeable of antiquarian bronzes and their casting methods but also familiar with the widespread use of carved seals and print, such a reversal could only constitute artistic license, an accommodation for less sophisticated viewers unable to calculate the difference of audience right and left from stage right and left—or a significant failure of fabrication.66 However, these seemingly small differences in the potential reception of a single relief and its mirror-image reversals, one at each site, become evident when the programs of the west door at Monreale and the east pagoda base are studied.

The Bigger Picture: Comparative Analysis of Bonanus’s and Benhong’s Iconographic Programs From at least antiquity, iconographic programs figured sequential narratives larger than a single tale in both Europe and China. Bonanus’s doors for the west portal at Monreale and the relief carvings of the base of the east pagoda at the Kaiyuan si each contain such a narrative program (figs. 6.10, 6.11; appendices I–II). Examination of the two programs indicates subjects suited to each monument. Moreover, analysis of the two programs indicates the range and complexity of religious ideology at each site, their parameters established by bibliographic context. At Monreale forty-two of forty-six reliefs on the west portal doors bear short inscriptions identifying their biblical subjects (e.g., figs. 6.1, 6.6, 6.12).67 The systematic, programmatic communication of the sculptural reliefs is evident when the subject matter of these images is divided into five thematic groups (fig. 6.11, appendix I). The first consists of four decorative images of griffins and lions (panels 1–4). The second thematic group is fourteen scenes from Genesis (panels 5–18), ranging from the Creation of Adam, inscribed d(omi)n(v)s plasmavi(t) ada(m) de limo ter(r)e (lit., The Lord formed Adam from the dust of the earth), to the Creation of Eve (fig. 6.7), and ending with an image labeled abraa(m) yzaahc [sic] iacop (Abraham, Isaac, [and] Jacob).68 Portraits of prophets form the third theme within the image program, specifically, six panels that contain portraits of twelve prophets, grouped in pairs (panels 19–24): Moses and Aaron, Malachi and Balaam, Hosea and Isaiah, Micah and Joel, Daniel and Amos, concluding with a relief inscribed ezechiel zacarias p(rophetae) Pictured in Relief

165

Figure 6.10 Diagram of narrative program of the west portal doors for the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale. Photo by Eugen Poppel, 1927. Photo: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd. / Alamy Stock Photo; diagram © Lora Miki, 2020. Figure 6.11 Diagram of narrative program of the base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou. Photos © Ryan Whyte, 2020 (reliefs) and © Jennifer Purtle, 2014 (stairs + bridge); edited by and diagram © Lora Miki, 2020.

(lit., The p[rophets] Ezekiel [and] Zachariah; fig. 6.12).69 The fourth thematic group comprises twenty images picturing moments in the life of Christ, principally drawn from the Gospels (panels 25–44), beginning with the Annunciation, inscribed ave maria grasia [sic] plena d(ominv)s tecv(m) (lit., Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you), including the Nativity, and ending with the Ascension, inscribed as(c) ensio d(omi)ni (lit., the Ascension of the Lord).70 The fifth group, composed of two reliefs (panels 45–46), depicts Mary and Christ in Glory.71 The images read like Latin text, left to right; unlike standard Latin text, they read bottom to top, the eye of the viewer ascending from earthly creation to heavenly paradise. At the Kaiyuan si, each of the thirty-nine reliefs on the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda has a four-character inscription; the fortieth relief, either a blank placeholder or an image of nirvāṇa, has none.72 Each inscription reads, as is standard for premodern Chinese text, from top to bottom. The order of the narrative program of the reliefs progresses from right to left around the base of the pagoda, beginning on its southeast face (see fig. 6.11).73 The images read like Classical Chinese text (and handscroll paintings), right to left; the directionality of this reading across the narrative program leads to the clockwise circumambulation of the pagoda, standard practice in Buddhist worship.74 In its present form, staircases and stone bridges prevent continuous circumambulation of the pagoda, but it is not known whether these architectonic forms are original to the rebuilding of the pagoda base in stone circa 1238 under Benhong or the result of a later renovation.75 The systematic and programmatic communication of content by the base reliefs of Zhenguo Pagoda becomes clearer when they are divided into ten thematic groups.76 The first four of these groups cover four of the eight facades of the pagoda and address Buddhist history and practice. The first group contains two images of Buddhist prehistory (reliefs 1–2), that is, Jātaka Tales (namely, stories of the past lives of the future Buddha), exemplified by the second image inscribed 青衣獻花 (Qingyi xian hua, lit., the blue-robed [one] offers flowers; fig. 6.13). This relief illustrates a tale from various sūtras that narrate the life of the future Buddha: to make an offering to the Buddha Dīpaṃkara, a Brahmin student (who in a later reincarnation would become the historical Buddha Śākyamuni), bought flowers from a blue-robed servant girl who gave him extra flowers if he promised to take her as a wife in future incarnations; more significantly, Dīpaṃkara prophesized that the student would become a Buddha.77 The second thematic group is composed of ten scenes from the life of the historical Buddha (reliefs 3–12), which span three facades of the pagoda, including the fourth image of the entire program, which depicts the birth of the Buddha (see fig. 6.2), as noted above.78 Following the past lives and the life of the Buddha, the next two thematic groups of narratives—the third group (comprising four reliefs) and the fourth group (also comprising four reliefs)—reveal the possibilities and practices of Buddhism to their viewers. The images of the third group picture Buddhist miracles in the natural world 168

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 6.12 Bonanus of Pisa, Ezekiel and Zachariah, west portal doors, cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, 1186. Cast bronze, approximately 37.5 × 30 cm. Photo: Album / Alamy Stock Photos. Figure 6.13 The blue-robed [one] offers flowers, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014.

(reliefs 13–16), as exemplified by the sixteenth image of the program inscribed 乳光 受記 (Ruguang shou ji, lit., the [future] Milk-Radiant [Buddha] receives the prophecy; fig. 6.14). This relief represents a cow and calf who, on account of giving their milk to Indra, receive his prophecy that they will become, respectively, an Arhat (namely, an enlightened being that has not yet achieved Buddhahood) and a Buddha named “Milk-Radiant.”79 The fourth thematic grouping consists of four reliefs that address Buddhist practices and parables (reliefs 17–20), exemplified by the eighteenth image of the program. Inscribed 丘井狂象 (Qiu jing kuang xiang, lit., the empty well [and] the crazed elephant; fig. 6.15), it pictures the story of a man taking refuge in a tree from a raging elephant; in this parable, the forest represents transmigration (saṃsāra), the elephant impermanence (anityatā), and the details the various challenges the man must face in his transmigration; contemporaneously, the content of this Buddhist tale also circulated in Europe, where it was also illustrated but interpreted somewhat differently.80 Whereas the first four facades of the pagoda establish the foundation of Buddhism in four thematic groups of images, the latter four facades contain six sets of thematic images that localize and personalize Buddhism for adherents in Quanzhou. The fifth group contains six reliefs found on a single facade of the pagoda, and it addresses chakravartin, divine Buddhist kingship in India and its impact in China. In the fifth group (reliefs 21–26), the twenty-fourth image, inscribed 薩訶朝塔 (Sahe chao ta, lit., Sahe venerates the stupa; fig. 6.16), depicts the story of Liu Sahe (345–ca. 436), known as the monk Huida after he took holy orders. In South China, late in the fourth century, Liu Sahe discovered an Aśoka stupa, one of the eighty-four thousand reliquary monuments to the historical Buddha built by the early Indian Buddhist king Aśoka (ca. 268–ca. 232 bce) and distributed throughout the known world, including to China, by supernatural means (pictured in the previous relief). As monuments that inspired Buddhist belief in Aśoka’s time, these reliquaries embodied the enduring power of acts of Indian chakravartin (lit., wheel-turning, i.e. Buddhist) kingship in China.81 Even as the fifth group of reliefs underscores the historical transmission of Buddhism to Chinese courts in the first and third centuries ce—and by extension, the Sinification of Buddhism—the sixth thematic group of images locate Buddhist practices in South China.82 Specifically, two reliefs (27 and 28) place Buddhist practice in China by using animals to allude to particular South Chinese clerics. The twenty-​ seventh relief, for example, is inscribed 雲岩獅子 (Yunyan shizi, lit., Yunyan[’s] lions; fig. 6.17). Yunyan was the name of a temple in Tanzhou 潭州, Hunan, and the toponym associated with the monk Tancheng 曇晟 (742–841) who lived there in the early ninth century. The inscription puns lions 獅子 (shizi) for teachers 師子 (shizi) from a line of Buddhist text associated with Tansheng, the pun both audial and visual given the shared elements of the Chinese characters.83 Its pendant similarly alludes to another South Chinese Buddhist master.84

170

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 6.14 The [future] Milk-Radiant [Buddha] receives the prophecy, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014. Figure 6.15 The empty well [and] the crazed elephant, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014.

Figure 6.16 Sahe venerates the stupa; base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014. Figure 6.17 Yunyan[’s] lions, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2019.

The seventh and eight groups of reliefs represent parables that showcase beasts and birds native to the region, thereby translating Indian tales into the natural history of South China based on Jātaka tales and avadānas (Buddhist tales, often apologues, that correlate past lives’ virtuous acts to subsequent events). The seventh group of images contains four reliefs (29–32) in which quadrupeds are chief protagonists, including the twenty-ninth image of the program, inscribed 三畜評樹 (San chu ping shu, lit., the three animals discuss the tree; fig. 6.18), in which an elephant, a monkey, and a bird rank themselves in terms of the precedence with which each knew the tree, living in harmony according to this hierarchy.85 The eighth group of images contains four reliefs (33–36) that depict birds and other winged creatures, exemplified by the thirty-third relief inscribed 天人讚鶴 (Tianren zan he, lit., heavenly beings praise the crane; fig. 6.19), presumably for tearing flesh from its body to feed its offspring. This imagery of the cranes’ self-sacrifice also traveled contemporaneously to Europe, where it was associated both with the crane and the pelican.86 The final two groups of reliefs bring the cycle to a conclusion by picturing asceticism and self-sacrifice, practices that may ultimately lead to extinction (nirvāṇa), that is, freedom from the cycle of rebirths, for all Buddhists. The ninth thematic grouping of reliefs contains two reliefs (37–38) that portray famous ascetics (and the women sent to distract them from their religious practices), for example, the thirty-eighth relief, inscribed 獨角大僊 (Du jiao da xian, lit., Unicorn, the great transcendent; fig. 6.20). This relief depicts the horned hermit Unicorn, to whom the king of Benares sent a courtesan to destroy his supernatural powers.87 The final group of reliefs (39–40) pictures a famous tale of self-sacrifice followed by a void framed by an abstract, geometric pointed foliate form; this latter relief either represents nirvāṇa (extinction from the cycle of Buddhist rebirths) or serves as a placeholder for a missing relief.88 The difficulties encountered in the recovery of the iconography of the objects of this study point to their dissimilar contexts. In the case of Bonanus’s bronze doors at Monreale, the texts diverge from the Latin of the Vulgate: tempered by Tuscan words, they present challenges for understanding the contexts of oral and manuscript cultures in which these doors were produced and viewed.89 Nonetheless, the relief panels of Bonanus’s doors are indexical of identifiable biblical content. In the case of the reliefs on the base of the east pagoda at the Kaiyuan si, the use of Chinese abbreviations for Sanskrit terms suggests a complex linguistic context in which different literary languages of Buddhism mingle. Moreover, at the Kaiyuan si, the Chinese character glosses do not always posit a straightforwardly indexical relationship of the relief and its source text.90

Pictured in Relief

173

Figure 6.18 The three animals discuss the tree, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014. Figure 6.19 Heavenly beings praise the crane, base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014.

Figure 6.20 Unicorn, the great transcendant, from base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 × 104 cm. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2014.

Picturing Medieval Textual Worlds: Timely Manuscript and Precocious Print Despite the similitude of the two monuments at Monreale and Quanzhou, the number of textual sources utilized in creating content for each relief, and for the overall pictorial program of each monument, differ significantly. The west portal doors at Monreale present a tightly focused program of foundational stories drawn from the Old and New Testaments, the Old prefiguring the New, literally conjoined by panels depicting Old Testament prophets. The textual sources of these images include Genesis and the Gospels, as well as Exodus, Numbers, select books of the Prophets, and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as nonbiblical texts—for a total of twenty-two titles (fig./table 6.21; appendix I). However, when one examines only the narrative reliefs (and excludes the reliefs that bear iconic images of the prophets), the textual sources are simply Genesis, the Gospels (principally Luke), Acts, and a few apocryphal and/or liturgical texts.91 Of forty-two reliefs with captions, three present text verbatim from what are now considered standard editions of the Vulgate Bible; five near-verbatim; five present redacted versions of verbatim text; and one remixes key words of its source into its own new text.92 This is noteworthy on account of what it suggests about the standardization of the manuscript text (or lack thereof) prior to the advent of printing in Europe. Moreover, only eight of the thirty-six narrative reliefs represent content from more than a single title.93 This suggests a very narrow conception of how the reliefs might relate to source texts. In the case of the prophets, their bodies are indexical of their eponymous texts, the content of which is not otherwise pictured (see fig. 6.12).

Pictured in Relief

175

Various non-Biblical

John 8:12

45

Matthew 27:57-66 Matthew 28:1-7 Mark 16:1-8 Luke 24:1-12 John 20:1-29

John 20:16-17

42

43

Matthew 26:17-30 Mark 14:12-26 Luke 22:7-38 John 13:1-30

Matthew 26:47-49 Mark 14:43-45 Luke 22:47-48

Matthew 27:35-37 Mark 15:25-26 Luke 23:26-38 John 19:18-19

38

Matthew 4:1-11

John 11:38-44

33

34

Matthew 2:16

Matthew 2:13-14

29

39

Luke 1:39-45

25

26

Book of Hosea Book of Isiah

21

Book of Micah Book of Joel

22

Exodus 2:23-35 (?) Genesis chpts 17-50, passim Exodus chpts 2-4, 6, 33, passim

Genesis 22:9-13

17

18

Genesis 4:8

Genesis 6:8-22

13

Genesis 3:19

Genesis 3:16

9

Genesis 2:7

Genesis 2:21-25

5

6

1

2

40

Luke 2:22-35

Matthew 3:13-17

31

36

32

Matthew 2:1-2 Luke 2:7-14

Unknown source Matthew 2:1-2

Book of Daniel Book of Amos

Book of Zachariah Book of Ezekiel

Exodus 4:28

Book of Numbers Book of Malachi

27

23

19

24

20

16

Genesis 4:2

11

Genesis 2:25 Genesis 3:1-2

28

Genesis 18:2

15

Genesis 4:1-2

10

John 16:11 Ephesians 4:9-10 1 Peter 4:6 Athanasian Creed Apostle’s Creed

Matthew 17:1-7

35

Genesis 9:20

14

44

Matthew 21:1-11 Mark 11:1-11 Luke 19:28-44

30

Luke 1:26-38

Figure 6.22 Diagram showing textual sources for each relief on the base of the east pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, with source titles written in each panel. © Lora Miki, 2020.

Luke 24:50-53 Acts 1:1-2, 9-11

Luke 24:13-54

41

37

Figure 6.21 Diagram showing textual sources for each panel of the west portal doors of the cathedral of Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, with source titles written in each panel. © Lora Miki, 2020.

46

12

Genesis 3:3-7

7

8

3

4

T184, 2:467a T185, 1:475a T186, 3:503b T187, 5:571b T189, 2:631c

6 T184, 2:470a T185, 2:479a–b T186, 5:512a T187, 8:583c–584a T190, 26:772b

T184, 2:466b–467b T185, 1:474b–475a T186, 3:502c–503b T187, 5:569c–571c T188, 1:618b–619a T189, 2:629c–631c T190, 14:719c–15:725b

16

30

8

T186, 8:531a T1988, 2:561b T2121, 13:67a T2127, 2:279a

T2060, 16:554a, 16:559b T2064, 3:966c, 5:982a T2122, 84:906c

14

13

T184, 2:472b T186, 6:521c T187, 9:590b, 9:594b T189, 3:640a T190, 29:790a T203, 7:480c–481b T2122, 11:369a

T2034, 12:105a T2035, 35:462a T2037, 1:771c T2059, 1:325a–b Sui shu, 35:1097

T160, 1:332b–333b T172, 1:424b–428a T663, 4:354a–356c T664, 8:397a–399c T665, 26:451b–454b T2121, 96:990a–991a T2122, 96:996b–997c

T262, 1:8c T264, 1:141c

T2035, 36:338c

24

T2035, 33:318b

23

22

29

T152, 3:13a

11

17 T99, 23:164b T2040, 5:77c T2042, 1:101c T2043, 1:134b–135a T2058, 3:307c T2122, 43:622a

34

33

21

T2076, 14:314c–315b

27

T2053, 3:235b T2087, 6:902c

T207, 527a

32 T190, 16:726b T1450, 12:161a–c T1509, 17:183a–c T2121, 39:209c–210a

39

T186, 5:512b T187, 7:583c T190, 26:772a

28

T203, 1:449a

7

T663, 1:335a; 4:351c–353c T665, 9:447c–450c T2121, 36:192a–193a

T2061, 23:856c T2076, 13:304a, 16:326c,16: 332b, 17:339b, 20:361c, 23:391c, 26:420a.

35

T184, 2:467c–468a T185, 1:475b T186, 3:504a T187, 6:572a–578c T188, 1:619b T189, 2:633a T190, 15:721c

18

25 T1421, 18:121a T1428, 50:940a T1435, 34:242a–c T1805, 3.3:394c 2053, 3:235c T2121, 47:247b

1

12

19

36

40

2

T208, 1:533b T217, 801b–c T475, 1:539b T1690, 787a–b T2122, 44:626b

T1509, 16:178c–179a T2087, 6:903b–c

T205, 1:503a

3

T1488, 1:1038b T1545, 143:735b

26

T2001, 3:30c, 9:116c T2003, 4:177b, 8:200c, 8:202a–b, 9:210a, 10:217b

T374, 14:449b–451a T375, 13:691b–693a

T190, 37:824b

15

20 T2035, 54:470a T2037, 1:766b T2059, 1:419b T2109, 1:479a Wei shu, 114:3025–3026 Sui shu, 35:1096

T189, 1:621c–622a T190, 666b–667b

9

Qian Yi, Dongwei zhi, 5:2a–b

T262, 2:12c–14c T264, 2:145b–147c

4

T184, 1:463b T185, 1:473b T186, 2:491a–b T187, 2:548c T189, 1:624a T193, 1:57c–58a

T184, 2:469c–470a T185, 2:479a T186, 511c–512c T187, 7:583b–584a T189, 3:639b T190, 24:765a–b, 25:771a, 25:771c

10

T808, 754a–b T809, 745b–756b T2121, 15:81a

5

T184, 1:463c T185, 1:473b–474a; 1:473c T186, 1:494b T187, 3:553a–554c T188, 618a T189, 1:625a–b, 1:627a T190, 8:687b–688b T202, 10:418c

38

31 T152, 5:25b–c T194, 1:119a–b T202, 2:359c–360b T1509, 14:166c–167a T2121, 8:40b–c, 39:208a

37

In contrast, and as noted above, prior scholarship of the reliefs of the base of the east pagoda at the Kaiyuan si has not found programmatic coherence in them.94 Such scholarship has mistaken the complexity of their program for lack of sophistication attributable to popular patronage and lack of knowledge of the Buddhist canon.95 However, dozens of independent cloisters and/or subtemples surrounded the Kaiyuan si, including those housing specialists in Chan (Zen) Buddhism, monastic precepts (vinaya), and specific sūtras such as the Lotus Sūtra and the Cheng weishi lun (Discourse on the perfection of consciousness-only).96 Therefore it is unsurprising that content related to each of these textual expertises is found in the relief program.97 Inscriptions on the relief point to no fewer than sixty-five titles as the sources for the reliefs of the Zhenguo Pagoda base, hence their programmatic intricacy (fig./ table 6.22; appendix II). Furthermore, of the forty reliefs of the program, only eight appear to be based on a single title.98 The remainder relate to multiple titles of similar content, akin to the Gospels in their variations on a single narrative; these sources also include popular Buddhist texts published in the canon (but read by lay audiences) and secular texts that include Buddhist content.99 Of particular note are glosses taken verbatim from standard, printed editions of Buddhist texts, which occur in eleven of the forty reliefs, suggesting the one-to-one correlation of the relief to printed text (although these texts are often commentaries on a title, not the title itself).100 Unlike the inscriptions found on the Monreale reliefs of which most derived from a single source, of the eleven verbatim texts incised on the Zhenguo Pagoda reliefs, only one reprises a single source; the remaining eleven reproduce text found in more than eighty titles, suggesting that inscribed text optimized the links of the images and their content to a larger printed textual corpus.101 Published in 1935, four years before Panofsky’s Studies in Iconology, Ecke and Demiéville’s The Twin Pagodas of Zayton does not articulate its methods, appearing to have worked from a European notion of “iconography” derived from the identification of subject matter in Christian art. For Ecke, the art-historian son of a theology professor at the University of Bonn, and especially for Demiéville, a leading researcher on Buddhism of his day supported by multiple French colonial institutions, the reliefs of the east pagoda base at the Kaiyuan si in Quanzhou constituted a voluble but not entirely coherent monument, one perfectly suited to their bravura performances of visual analysis and Sinology.102 By positing parallelism, the archetypal structural principle of Classical Chinese poetry and prose, as the foundation for the narrative program, Demiéville at once appeared to explain the monument in emic (namely, Chinese) cultural terms, even as his “mastery” of this monument revealed it to be the product of an alien tradition unable to communicate systematically in etic (Western) visual terms.103 The reliance of Demiéville on “iconography,” a term derived from the Greek linguistic roots for “image” and “writing,” may underpin the problem: the idea of writing implies a human scale of textual production and reproduction, namely manuscript culture.104 In contrast, the Chinese term xiaoxiang, now used to translate 178

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

“iconography,” in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meant “to portray”; at this time, xiaoxiang was often used to tag portraits of named individuals, indicating the correlation of the picture to the subject, including ones reproduced by mechanical means.105 Despite (or perhaps because of) Demiéville’s engagement with texts as sources for the east pagoda base reliefs, more often through the intermediary of European-​ language translations of Sanskrit or Pāli originals than one might expect for a Sinophone project, he appears not to have probed the more significant problems of how the source texts relate to the Buddhist canon as a whole and how these source texts were physically accessed—and their content mobilized—at the Kaiyuan si.106 Bibles (or individual books of the Bible) and other texts were still being copied by hand in Europe (including at Monreale, in Palermo, and elsewhere in Sicily).107 Similarly, the sūtra library of the Kaiyuan si was once home to a complete hand-copied edition of the Tripiṭaka in three thousand chapters (juan), a project sponsored by the warlord Wang Chao (846–898) when he assumed control of Quanzhou in 884. A fire of 895 destroyed this copy of the Tripiṭaka.108 Whereas manuscript copies of canonical religious texts circulated both in Monreale and Quanzhou, in the centuries preceding the creation of the east pagoda base reliefs, printed editions of such texts were disseminated in Quanzhou. Approximately two hundred kilometers north of Quanzhou, the provincial (meaning the circuit or lu) capital of Fuzhou was, from the eleventh century, a center for printing Buddhist texts.109 Notably, three editions of the complete Buddhist canon (Dazang jing, lit., Great repository of sūtras) were printed in Fuzhou.110 First, the Chongning Wanshou Tripiṭaka (Chongning Wanshou dazangjing), the first privately sponsored Tripiṭaka printing project, was undertaken by the Dongchan dengjue Monastery (Dongchan dengjue yuan) in Fuzhou, circa 1080 to 1112; the imperial court bestowed its title in 1103. The Chongning Tripiṭaka is the first Chinese edition of the Tripiṭaka to use “accordion-​ binding” (folded pages) for a Buddhist canon, which became the standard format for subsequent Chinese editions. This edition contained 1,451 titles, which totaled 6,358 chapters, placed in 595 book-boxes (han), the containers used to hold Chinese string-bound books.111 Second, the Pilu Tripiṭaka (Pilu zang), another privately sponsored project, was managed by the Kaiyuan si Temple in Fuzhou, circa 1112 to 1151. This edition is also “accordion-bound,” like the Chongning Tripiṭaka, but in a slightly smaller format; it includes 1,452 titles totaling 6,359 chapters in 595 book-boxes.112 Third, a second edition of the Pilu Tripiṭaka was undertaken between 1164 and 1176 to supplement the original with Chan and Tiantai sect texts.113 Fuzhou editions of the Tripiṭaka presumably found ready markets in Quanzhou in part due to the historical importance of the Tripiṭaka at the Kaiyuan si and in part because the more than one hundred independent cloisters surrounding the Kaiyuan si during the Song dynasty (960–1276), despite most narrowly focusing on the study of specific groups of texts, nonetheless required access to the canon as a whole. Pictured in Relief

179

The complexity of sources for the Zhenguo Pagoda base reliefs suggests their relationship not only to the printed Tripiṭaka but also to printed noncanonical popular Buddhist texts and secular printed books. Even when the east pagoda base reliefs picture fundamental, well-known Buddhist stories, they often do so based on multiple texts—markedly unlike Bonanus’s doors at Monreale, with their limited number of biblical and liturgical/apocryphal sources. Additionally, some of the narratives are obscure and could be known only by those with a good command of—and/or access to—the Tripiṭaka. Ultimately, the complexity of the iconographic program underscores its relationship to the printed Tripiṭaka: the sixty-five titles on which the reliefs are based represent multiple genres within the Tripiṭaka, including Āgamas (early Mahāyāna sūtras); Jātaka tales; Avadānas; famous sūtras; works connected to famous sūtras; the Vinaya; sūtra commentaries; and works that address schisms, histories, biographies, encyclopedias, and dictionaries, as well as noncanonical Buddhist works and secular texts.114 Moreover, the complexity of the iconographic program also embodies the density and diversity of the textual expertise found in the monastic community of the Kaiyuan si and of the cloisters just beyond its walls.115 Even as vast printed sets of canonical texts exponentially multiplied the possible iconographic sources of narrative reliefs in Quanzhou during the Global Middle Ages, mnemonic practices of the period allowed educated men there to recall significant content from these texts. Not later than the mid- to late ninth century, the printing of Buddhist texts made standardized editions of canonical texts available in monasteries, where they coexisted alongside manuscripts of canonical and other content.116 At a time when Quanzhou natives excelled in the civil-service exams, their success predicated in part on the recall of large quantities of material drawn from canonical secular texts, Quanzhou’s sizeable population of Buddhist monks also committed large quantities of text to memory for rote reproduction.117 Together, the availability of standardized texts and sophisticated mnemonic practices enabled recall of narrative content. In this context, the characters inscribed on the reliefs perhaps served as prompts, not glosses, for facilitating visual communication well before and beyond the rhetoric of “iconography.” Moreover, they did so for a textual corpus, symbiotically linked to human recall, the scale of which far surpassed that of contemporaneous Europe due to what, from the European vantage, appears to be the precocious emergence and use of print in China.118

Coda: Global Standard Time in Art History The idea of the Global Middle Ages tacitly establishes an expansive geographical context for the objects of art history, one that implies fluid borders and cultural synchronicity. Seemingly unburdened by the kind of regional difference integral to Janet Abu-Lughod’s model of a World System from 1250 to 1350, this framework might all 180

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

too easily elide emic periodization of much of the world’s art in favor of etic periodization, specifically that normative for Europe, one of the least developed regions of the globe between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. Yet the totalizing approach of the Global Middle Ages also paradoxically—and productively—reveals fractures in the artistic landscape and asynchronicity among civilizational time zones. Thus it serves as a rubric through which the precociousness of one non-Western Other (in this essay, China) becomes apparent and can thus pressure the retardataire European temporality normative in the discipline of art history. In this case study, the practice of a postglobal art history that pictures comparatively—in relief, as it were—the simultaneous but disjunctive medieval and early modern iconological contexts of Monreale and Quanzhou rests upon the most foundational methods of the discipline: iconography and iconology. As argued above, during the Global Middle Ages, the disjunction between “iconography” in the Western sense, rooted in manuscript cultures that delimited possibilities for textual referents of images, and its Chinese doppelgänger, based on print, amplified—if not exploded and transformed—the possibilities for source materials and thus, by extension, practices of visual communication. Iconography and iconology accordingly reveal the disjunction between the creation in China of systematic visual meaning in pictures shaped by a precocious and expansive relationship to print and normative Western notions of periodization. Perhaps what is most remarkable is that these well-worn methods of scholarly inquiry, reprised in the appendices of this essay, nonetheless retain their ability to inform the discipline in new and unprecedented ways conversant with, but not beholden to, the debates of a single moment.

Notes I wish to acknowledge the generous support I have received for this project. This support includes residencies (Visiting Scholar, Getty Research Institute, 2009; Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, 2011–12), fellowship support (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 2008–13), and serving as Principal Investigator of the Getty Connecting Art Histories project, “Global and Postglobal Approaches to Medieval Art and Art History” (2014–17). The Connecting Art Histories project afforded me the opportunity to view Bonanus’s doors on site at Monreale, enabling me to conceptualize this project in relation to the Quanzhou materials on which I was already working. I also wish to thank Jinah Kim, Giancarla Periti, Walid Saleh, Cheng-hua Wang, Eugene Wang, Yudong Wang, and Ryan Whyte for their intellectual support of this essay; Elizabeth Rose, whose knowledge of Latin grammar improved appendix I;

Walter Cahn, for whom parts of this project were first developed; Lora Miki, for her graphic design work; and Ryan Whyte, for his photographs: this essay could not have been completed in its present form without their support. The appendices for this essay will be found at https://ima.princeton​ .edu/appendices-pictured-in-relief. Where noted, translations are my own. Otherwise, they follow the secondary scholarship cited. 1. On the origins of the terms “iconography” and “iconology,” see Oxford English Dictionary OED Online, http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry​ /Entry/90897 and http://www.oed.com/view​ dictionaryentry/Entry/90900, respectively; see also Bialastocki, “Iconography,” 2:524–41. 2. On the bronze doors of the west portal at Monreale, see Boeckler, Die Bronzetüren, esp. 18–26, plates 36–96, and Melczer, Porta di Bonanno. On Bonanus, see Walsh, “Bonanus of Pisa,” 1:375; see also

Pictured in Relief

181

appendix I. On contemporaneous Chinese knowledge of Sicily, see Zhao Rugua, Zhufan zhi 1:36a–b; for a translation of the relevant passage, see n. 32. 3. On the manufacture of the stone pagoda reliefs for the Zhenguo Pagoda at the Kaiyuan si in Quanzhou, see Quanzhou fuzhi (1612) 16:20b; Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi 1:7a; see also appendix II. Benhong was also referred to as Bengong 本供. Benhong is used in Quanzhou fuzhi (1612) 16:20b, and Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi 1:7a. Bengong is used in Quanzhou fuzhi (1612) 24:17b. On Norman knowledge of Quanzhou, see al-Idrisi, Géographie d’Edrisi, 1:85. 4. On the links between the two sites, see Purtle, “Production of Painting,” 631–32; on the idea of the World System, 1250–1350, see Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, esp. 3–42. 5. On European medieval art in a non-European context (i.e., in China), see Purtle, “Far Side,” 167. 6. For excellent analyses of the problems of the Global Middle Ages, see Davis and Puett, “Periodization and ‘The Medieval Globe,’ ” and Holmes and Standen, “Introduction.” See Purtle, “Global and Postglobal Perspectives,” 7; for an excellent published essay on these topics, see Cheng, “Camel’s Pace.” 7. For methodological and historiographic perspective on connective approaches to the arts of the Global Middle Ages, see Caskey, Safran, and Cohen, “Introduction.” 8. Essays that provide methodological perspective on the critical theory underpinning such comparative, postglobal approaches include Rowe, “Other”; Overbey, “Postcolonial”; Walker, “Globalism.” 9. Before and at the inception of the Western discipline of art history, Pausanius (ca. 110– ca. 180 ce), Pliny the Elder (23–79 ce), and Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) all engaged such notions. In China, the earliest extant art history, the tenth-century Lidai minghua ji (Record of famous paintings of historical dynasties) by Zhang Yanyuan (ca. 815– ca. 877) addresses geographical variation in artistic production; the eleventh-century Yizhou minghua lu (Record of famous painters of Yizhou) by Huang Xiufu (fl. ca. 1000), with a preface dated 1006, is the earliest surviving regional history of painting in the Chinese tradition. 10. Davis, “Bivisibility,” 42–60, 51. 11. Purtle, “Double Take,” esp. 72–73, and Purtle, “Global and Postglobal Perspectives,” 7. On the broader context of this problem, see Elkins, Impending Single History of Art, esp. chapter 1. 12. Elkins, Impending Single History of Art, chapter 1. 13. Neer, “Was the Knidia a Statue?,” 145. 14. Notably, two recent studies of Chinese sculpture make excellent use of comparativism as a methodology: Y. Wang, “Relief Problem,” and Abe, “Sculpture.”

182

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

15. On the idea of a combinative approach, see Holmes and Standen, “Introduction,” 3, 23–25. 16. On the prospect of a more culturally equitable comparative literature that rethinks the function and ethics of comparativism, see Spivak, “Rethinking Comparativism.” 17. Purtle, “Global and Postglobal Perspectives,” 7. The statement above rather polemically restates the unpublished application material: “Recent fascination for ‘the global’ in more developed art histories often springs from a desire to engage emerging (often non-Western) art histories by connecting them to Western traditions. In emerging art histories, the idea of ‘the postglobal’ constitutes an important new paradigm for writing art histories in ways conversant with, but not beholden to, the art historiography and current scholarship of established art histories that address materials from their cultures.” 18. The thematic focus of the 34th International Congress of the History of Art (CIHA) held in 2016 in Beijing was termed precisely so that panelists might begin to talk to one another across regional and language-specific vocabularies of art history. 19. It is tempting to focus on what appear to be cultural continuities in the Global Middle Ages. The transformation and transmission of the tale of the life of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni (lit., Sage of the Śākya clan), into the Christian tale of Barlaam and Josaphat is but one example of the shared values that enable a sacred tale to move between religions. Multiple anecdotes in The Travels of Marco Polo, including both Polo’s observation that “Sagamoni Borcan,” that is, Śākyamuni Buddha, “had he been a Christian, he would have been a great saint with our Lord Jesus Christ,” reveal such a sensibility. On the tale of Barlaam and Josaphat, see Hilsdale, “Worldliness in Byzantium and Beyond”; see also Purtle, “From Dunhuang to Mount Athos.” On the ability of people of Polo’s time to understand shared values across religions, see, for example, Polo, Travels, 281–83, esp. 283. 20. In his manifesto on comparative history, Marc Bloch offers multiple modes of working. Perhaps in his most explicit statement of method, he notes: Qu’est-ce, tout d’abord, dans notre domaine, que comparer? Incontestablement ceci: faire choix, dans un ou plusiers milieux sociaux différents, de deux ou plusiers phénomènes qui paraissent, au premier coup d’oeil, présenter entre eux certaines analogies, décrire les courbes de leurs évolutions, constater les ressemblances et les différences et, dans la mesure du possible, expliquer les unes et les autres. Donc deux conditions sont nécessaires pour qu’il y ait, historiquement parlant, comparaison: une certaine similitude

entre les faits observés—cela va de soi—et une certaine dissemblance entre les milieux où ils se sont produits. What is it, first of all, to compare in our field? Incontrovertibly this: to make a choice, from one or several different social milieux, of two or more phenomena that appear, at first glance, to offer some analogies between them; describe the arcs of their evolution; note their similarities and differences; and to the extent possible, explain them both. Therefore, two conditions are necessary for, historically speaking, there to be a comparison: a certain similitude between the facts observed—this goes without saying—and a certain dissimilarity between the contexts in which they were produced. Bloch, “Pour une histoire comparée,” 16–17; partially cited in Weinryb, “Object in Comparative Context,” 79; I have heavily modified the present translation from those parts cited in Weinryb. For a more extensive discussion of Bloch’s comparativism, see Kaufmann, Dossin, and Joyeux-Prunel, “Reintroducing Circulations,” esp. 6–8. 21. On the bronze doors as a composite and programmatic monument, see Boeckler, Die Bronzetüren, esp. 18–19, plate 36, and Melczer, Porta di Bonanno, 47–53. On the relief sculptures on the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda as individual sculptural panels, see Demiéville, “Iconography and History,” and on these reliefs as a program, see pp. 80–81; for the first iteration of an alternative reading of this program, see Purtle, “Buddhist Tales.” 22. The lettering of the bronze doors is approximately five to seven centimeters tall, as are the Chinese characters incised on the stone reliefs; the majority of figures on both monuments are approximately sixteen to twenty centimeters tall, their heights varying with respect to their spatial position within the picture plane. 23. On the bronze doors of Barisano at Monreale, see Boeckler, Die Bronzetüren, esp. 53–70, plates 147–70; see also Walsh, “Iconography of the Bronze Doors,” passim, and Walsh, “Bronze Doors.” On the presumptive date and the alternative transcription of the artist’s name as Barisianus, see Weinryb, Bronze Object, 179, fig. 94. 24. The stylistic difference in the doors is self-​ evident. However, for a published account of them, see Walsh, “Bronze Doors,” 1:405. 25. Ecke and Demiéville omit the pagoda base relief sculptures at ground level from their analysis of the iconography of the sculptures of the Renshou (West) Pagoda, beginning their analysis with the sculptures of the first story. Some of the base sculptures are, however, illustrated in the text.

See Demiéville, “Iconography and History,” 20, 29, plates 9–12. On 1238 as the date of the renovation, see Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi 1:9a; for a variant date of 1225–27, see Quanzhou fuzhi (1612) 24:18a. 26. Purtle, “Buddhist Tales,” 6. 27. Del Giudice, Santa Maria Nuova di Morreale, 46. 28. Shishi jigu lüe (An outline of historical research [into] the Śākya [family] lineage), T2037, 3:819c [titles in the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō hereafter indicated by the letter T and their title number, e.g., T2037]; see also Quanzhou fuzhi (1612) 24:17a; Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi 1:1a–b. For the Chinese text and English translation of the Quanzhou fuzhi passage that describes the founding of the temple and the building of the pagodas, see Purtle, “Production of Painting,” 194–98; for the Chinese text and English translation of the Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi account, see Ecke, “Structural Features,” 274–76. 29. On the foundation and building of Monreale Cathedral, see Lello, Historia della chiesa di Monreale, esp. 1–94; Krönig: Duomo di Monreale; Brodbeck, “Monreale from Its Origin,” esp. 384–85; Bongianino, “King,” esp. 28. For an art-historical overview of the cathedral, see “Monreale Cathedral.” 30. Specifically, in 1311 the Southern External Branch of the Imperial Clan, resident in Quanzhou, had 338 members. Roughly a century later, circa 1228 to 1233, 1,427 Imperial Clan members resided within the Quanzhou Harmonious Lineage Hall (Muzong yuan) that lay opposite the Kaiyuan si; a further 887 Imperial Clan members resided outside it. By the Mongol Conquest of Quanzhou in 1276, perhaps as many as three thousand Imperial scions lived in the city. See Chaffee, Branches of Heaven, 229, 253, table 9.1. On these aristocrats, see also Song huiyao jigao (Draft edition of a compilation of Song government documents; hereafter SHYJG) 20:37b–38a; Zhen Dexiu, Xishan Zhen Wenzhong gong wenji (Literary anthology [of ] “West Mountain,” [aka] Zhen Wenzhong [that is, Zhen Dexiu]) 15:11a; Zhao Shitong, Nanwai tianyuan Zhaoshi zupu (Genealogy of the southern external branch of the Zhao family [of] divine origin) [i.e., the Song Imperial Family]), 50; see also Purtle, “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” 31. Al-Idrisi, Géographie d’Edrisi, 1:85, 99–100. The latter part of the text states, in French translation: Le premier de ces ports est, comme nous l’avons dit, celui de Khankou ‫خانقوا‬: c’est le plus considérable. . . . De Khankou à Djankou ‫( جانكو‬la distance manque). Celle-ci est une ville célèbre, remarquable par l’élégance de ses édifices, la beauté de ses bazars et la fertilité de ses jardins et de ses vergers. Les fruits y sont en abondance. On y travaille la verre chinois, ainsi que toute espèce d’étoffes de soie, et l’on peut s’y procurer tout ce qui trouve à Djanfou ‫جانفو‬, laquelle est située

Pictured in Relief

183

auprès d’un grand fleuve qui l’entoure, et par lequel on remonte à un grand nombre de villes chinoises, comme nous l’avons dit plus haut. The first of these ports is, as we have said, that of Khankou [Khānqū, that is, Guangzhou]: it is the most significant. . . . From Khankou to Djankou [Jānkū, that is, Quanzhou] (the distance is missing [in the text; it is noted earlier as taking three days, “De la ville de Khancou [sic] à la ville de Djankou, on compte 3 journées,” [p. 85]). This is a famous city, noted for the elegance of its buildings, the beauty of its bazaars, and the fecundity of its gardens and orchards. Fruit is abundant there. There they work “Chinese glass” [that is, porcelain, or more accurately proto-porcelain], as well as all types of silk fabrics, and one can obtain everything there that one finds in Djanfou [Jānfū, that is, Jianfu 建府, aka Fuzhou, the regional capital], which is sited near a large river that surrounds it, from which one goes upriver to a large number of Chinese cities, as we have said above. (Translation mine.) See also Purtle, “Production of Painting,” 632. Al-​ Idrisi’s text was also known in Arabic as the Kitāb Rujār and in Latin as Tabula Rogeriana, both literally, “The Book of Roger.” Quanzhou was later known in Arabic as “Zaitun” and as Europeanized versions of this name. See, for example, Polo, Travels, 237–39. 32. Zhao Rugua, Zhufan zhi 1:36a–b. The text states: The Kingdom of Sicily (Sijialiye) is proximate to the state boundaries of [the Holy] Roman (Lumei) [Empire, notably as was the case during the reign of Roger II, when Sicilian lands extended well up the boot of Italy]. [Encircled by the] sea, the breadth of the island is one thousand li [equivalent to approximately four hundred eighty-six kilometers, i.e., overestimated by a factor of approximately 1.5 times]. The clothes, customs, [and] spoken language [of its people] are the same as those of Lumei [that is, Rome]. This kingdom has a mountain crater [that is] extremely deep, [which] emits fire throughout the year [lit., in all four seasons]: [when] viewed from afar, [it is] hazy [at] dawn [and] fiery [at] dusk; [when] viewed [at] close [range], the fire [appears] extremely strong. Translation modified from Chau Ju-kua, 153; see also Purtle, “Production of Painting,” 631. On the length of a chi (Chinese foot) and thus a li (Chinese mile) in Quanzhou during the Song dynasty, see Qiu Guangming, Zhongguo lidai duliangheng kao (An investigation of Chinese historical weights and measures), 99.

184

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

33. On the silver planisphere, see Cassarino, “Palermo Experienced,” 127. One extant example of the map associated with al-Idrisi’s text is Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Arabe 2221, a thirteenth-century copy made in the Maghreb. See https://‌gallica‌.bnf‌.fr‌/ark:‌/12148‌/btv1b6000547t. 34. On Chinese gridded maps of the Song dynasty, see Yee, “Reinterpreting Traditional Chinese Geographical Maps,” 35–70, esp. 46–50. 35. The form of the facade mosaics cannot be known. Given the way that the precious stone mosaic and marble panels that line the walls of the cathedral and the floor mosaics serve as an Islamicate foundation for the golden Byzantine mosaics that rise above them and given the use of mosaic on the exterior of the east (apse) facade of the cathedral, the lost mosaic program perhaps shared similarities with these surviving mosaics that privilege the beauty of the natural materials over figural representation. For the classic study of the mosaics at Monreale, see Kitzinger, Mosaics of Monreale; for a recent study of cultural plurality in mosaics of the twelfth century, including in Sicily, see James, Mosaics in the Medieval World, esp. 384–98. 36. For examples of such Brahmanic and Islamic monuments in Quanzhou, see Purtle, “Salvaging Meaning,” esp. 70–73, figs. 4.8–4.11. 37. The furthest point west of Quanzhou where a Chinese-style pagoda is known to have existed is Nagapattinam, in southern India. See Elliott, “Edifice”; see also Guy, “Lost Temples.” 38. For an overview of bronze doors found throughout Europe, Byzantium, and the Middle East from antiquity to the thirteenth century, see Salomi, Porte di Bronzo. 39. On these doors and the broader context in which Bonanus worked, including his doors in Pisa, see Melczer, Porta di Bonanno, 33–45; see also Weinryb, Bronze Object, 143–45. Bonanus also made now-lost bronze doors for the main portal of Pisa cathedral, completed after a year’s work in 1180 and destroyed by fire in 1595. On these lost doors, see Boeckler, Die Bronzetüren, 9–10; Melczer, Porta di Bonanno, 34, 41–43; Weinryb, Bronze Object, 145; Walsh, “Bonanus of Pisa,” 375; White, “Bronze Doors of Bonanus,” 158–59; Mende, Bronzetüren des Mittelalters, 125 n. 103. 40. On the north portal doors, see nn. 23 and 24 above. 41. For a comparison of Bonanus’s west portal doors with the bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, see White, “Bronze Doors of Bonanus,” 176–77. Boeckler principally seeks stylistic models for Bonanus’s doors, especially those of Pisa, in such Byzantine objects (Die Bronzetüren, plates 1–16); see also, for example, Melczer, Porta di Bonanno, 156–61. On the relation of Bonanus’s doors to Byzantinizing

doors found beyond the Byzantine world, see White, “Bronze Doors of Bonanus,” 161. On the Tuscan origins of Bonanus in regards to the language of his bronze doors, see Baldelli, “Inscrizioni latine,” 1:389–98, 2:355–59. Given that Vasari describes the practice of the maniera greca in Florence, notably in the work of Cimabue (1240–1302) and his predecessors, certain Byzantinizing tendencies were transplanted to, and might be thought of as localized in, Tuscany during the Middle Ages. 42. To my eye, this explanation seems like the most visually compelling of the sources. On the relation of Bonanus’s doors at Monreale to mosaic images, see Melczer, Porta di Bonanno, 60–254, passim. 43. On this point and for reproductions of these works, see ibid., 64–67 and 92–95. 44. For an excellent overview of the transition to, and life under, Norman rule, including at Monreale, see Companion to Medieval Palermo, esp. 39–234, 383–412. 45. The reliefs that currently adorn the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda appear not to be those photographed by Ecke circa 1925. However, it is impossible to know with certainty whether or not the reliefs photographed by Ecke were the originals of the thirteenth century or later replicas. Their style is consistent with stone carving in Quanzhou and elsewhere in Fujian during the thirteenth century, but Quanzhou and its hinterland are full of replica- and renovated stone monuments. For Ecke’s photographs, see Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, plates 32–41; on the problem of replicas, see Purtle, “Salvaging Meaning,” 70–71, 78; Purtle, “Rock, Paper, Scissors”; Yan Aibin, “Reintegration.” 46. Sirén, Chinese Sculpture, 1:160, 4: plate 595. 47. Examples from Fujian include: the Chongmiao baosheng jianlao ta 崇妙保聖堅牢塔 (lit., Worship the marvellous and protect the saints fortified pagoda) in Fuzhou, also known as the Black Pagoda (Wu ta), built in circa 944 during the Min Kingdom (909–45) of the Five Dynasties-Ten Kingdoms period (907–79); the Shijiawenfo ta (lit., Śākyamuni stupa), also known as the Guanghua si ta 廣化寺塔 (Pagoda of Guanghua temple) built in the county seat of Putian in 1165; the stone pagodas that adorn the Luoyang Bridge in Quanzhou, undated but likely coeval with or later than the building of the bridge from 1053 to 1059; the stone pagodas that adorn the Anping (lit., Peace) Bridge in Jinjiang, undated but likely coeval with or later than the building of the bridge, first in 1138 and then in 1151; and the Baita (lit., White pagoda) built in the old village of Anhai, Jinjiang, in 1152 and restored in 1606. On these examples, see respectively, Guojia wenwu ju (National Agency for Cultural Relics), Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Fujian fence, 1:344, 345, 346–47, 348, 349; 2:361. For

comparanda from neighboring Zhejiang province, see Guojia wenwu ju (National Agency for Cultural Relics), Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Zhejiang fence, 1:359, 389, 429–31. The Tianzhong wanshou ta (lit., Heavenly longevity pagoda) in Xianyou county, an Indian Hōkyō-in dhāraṇī sūtra-style pagoda, putatively built in 1059, which exhibits similar Indic framing devices, may, despite official recognition of it as a Song dynasty monument, be a later fabrication. See Purtle, “Salvaging Meaning,” 71, 71 n. 50; Yan Aibin, “Reintegration.” 48. Polo, Travels, 237; on merchant patronage, see Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 6. 49. For a reproduction of this and related images, see Purtle, “Salvaging Meaning,” 64, fig. 4.3; Guy, “Lost Temples of Nagapattinam and Quanzhou,” 309, fig. 25. On these temples, see Lee, “Constructing Community.” 50. On this point, see also Purtle, “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” 51. On imperial scions resident in Quanzhou, see n. 30 above. On the Harmonious Lineage Hall and its location, see Yudi jisheng (Superior record of scenic sites) 130:5b; Zhang Yining, Cuiping ji 3:36a; Fujian tongzhi 62:55a–b; Quanzhou fuzhi (1763) 12:19a–b. 52. Hatt and Klonk, “Iconography-Iconology,” 98. 53. Panofsky, “Zum Problem der Beschreibung”; Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, esp. 1–17. 54. The title page notes: “Photographs and introduction by G. Ecke” and “Iconography and history by P. Demiéville.” 55. On the iconography of the nonnarrative sculpture of the east and west pagodas, see, respectively, Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 29–41, 66–79. 56. Boeckler, Die Bronzetüren, 22: “Christi Geburt und Hirtenverkündigung (Abb. 71). Es finden sich keine nennenswerten Abweichungen von Pisa. Das Kind in der Badewanne fehlt diesmal nicht, die eine Frau hält es. Über der Höhle steht der Stern. nativitas. d(omi)ni in Spiegelschrift, ein Versehen, das bei einem in allgemeinen in Sandguß arbeitenden Gießer vertständlich ist, während beim Wachsguß eine Umkehrung der Schrift nicht erforderlich ist. Die Rechte Mariae ist im Guß mißglückt.” Translation mine. 57. Boeckler, Die Bronzetüren, 12: Christi Geburt und Hirtenverkündigung (Abb. 8). In der Höhle Maria auf dem Pfühl, die Linke etwas unter den Kopf geschoben, den rechten Arm unter dem Mantel, das Haupt matronal verhüllt, das Kind in der Krippe, dahinter die Tiere, Joseph in der üblichen Haltung, die Gruppe der beiden Frauen, die dem Kind das Bad bereiten, das Wasser in die Kufe gießen und seine Wärme prüfen. Die Personen sind unregelmäßig, nur

Pictured in Relief

185

nach Maßgabe des vorhandenen Raumes verteilt, Polster und Gestalt der Maria aus Raummangel unten abgeschnitten. Auf dem Hügel sieht man die anmutige Gestalt eines jugendlichen, Flöte spielenden und eines älteren, bärtigen, auf seinen Stock gestützten Hirten mit der Herde, gegenüber die fast völlig sich gleichenden Gestalten zweier Engel, die jenen die Kunde bringen, beide mit dem lange Szepter. Die Hirten haben außer den üblichen Attributen der umgehängten Tasche und das Wassergefäßes Fellröcke und Judenhüte, was zwar ebenfalls nicht selten vorkommt, hier aber zu erwähnen ist als Beweis für das Auftreten dieser Kopfbedeckung auch in sicher italienischen Werken des 12. Jahrhunderts. Szepter und Hirtenstab sind abgebrochen. nativitas d(omi)ni. Die Darstellung ist nur verständlich als enge Anlehnung an den byzantinischen Standard-Typus, wie er in unzähligen Beispielen erhalten ist. Translation mine. This narrative relief panel is pictured in plate 8. 58. Boeckler does not list Panofsky in the bibliography of Die Bronzetüren. However, Boeckler received his doctorate in 1921 under the supervision of Adolph Goldschmidt (1863–1944) at Humboldt University in Berlin, where Goldschmidt also served as a postdoctoral supervisor of Panofsky, circa 1914 to 1920. See Sorensen’s entries in the Dictionary of Art Historians for “Boeckler, Albert,” “Goldschmidt, Adolph,” and “Panofsky, Erwin.” 59. Luke 2:1–21. 60. Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, title page; 27, 29–81, passim. 61. Ibid., 44–45. I have added the text in brackets to improve intelligibility. 62. See, for example, Demiéville’s discussion of the form of pagodas rendered in the twenty-second relief for the base of the east pagoda (ibid., 55). 63. These are: Xiuxing ben qi jing (Sūtra on the acts and life [of the Buddha], Sanskrit: Cāryanidāna, T184), translated by Zhu Dali (fl. late second century ce) and Kang Mengxiang (fl. ca. 194–99 ce); Taizi ruiying benqi jing (Sūtra on the auspicious omens and life of the prince [that is, Siddhartha], T185), translated by Zhiqian (fl. ca. third century ce); Pu yao jing (The extensive performance [of the life of the Buddha] sūtra, Sanskrit: Lalitavistara, T186), translated by Dharmarakṣa (239–316 ce); Fangguang da zhuangyan jing (The extensive performance [of the life of the Buddha] sūtra, Sanskrit: Lalitavistara, T187), translated by Divākara (613–687 ce); Guoqu xianzai yinguo jing (Sūtra on past and present causes and effects, T189), translated by Guṇabhadra (394–468 ce); and Fo benxing jijing (Sūtra of Buddha’s fundamental deeds, Sanskrit: Abhiniṣkramaṇasūtra,

186

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

T190), translated by Jñānagupta (523–ca. 600 ce). On further sūtras that detail the life of the Buddha, see appendix II. 64. Jean-Pierre Drège has argued that during the latter part of the Song dynasty, silent reading, reading with the eyes and not with the ear, came to replace rote memorization of texts through oral recitation (“La lecture et l’écriture,” 94–103). 65. Taizi ruiying benqi jing, T185, 1:473c; Yichu pusa benqi jing, T188, 618a; Guoqu xianzai yinguo jing, T189, 1:627a. 66. Wu Hung provides an account of an exceptional use of inverted text to figure the numinous world of the afterlife (“Transparent Stone,” 58–86). Mainstream histories of Chinese printing make clear knowledge of the inversion of the block. See, for example, Tsien, Paper and Printing, esp. 135–59; see also Zhang Xiumin, Zhongguo yinshua shi, 11. 67. On these, see Boeckler, Die Bronzetüren, 18–26, and Melczer, Porta di Bonanno, 60–254. 68. This image can also be linked to Exodus. For the textual sources of these images, see appendix I. 69. For the textual sources of these images, see appendix I. 70. For the textual sources of these images, see appendix I. 71. For the textual sources of these images, see appendix I. 72. Each inscription indicates the putative subject of the image, preliminary identifications of which were published by Demiéville in 1935. But Demiéville only schematically relates the subjects of each relief to the idea of a larger narrative cycle, divided principally into a first group of reliefs of “the legend of Śākya Boddhisattva (nos 1–12)” and the second “various scenes from the history or legend of Indian and Chinese Buddhism (nos 13–39), the arrangement of which does not follow any chronological or traditional order, but is based on the principle of parallelism.” While parallelism serves as an explanatory logic for the subject matter, the program is more complex than this might suggest; moreover, Demiéville does not offer a rigorous account of this parallelism (Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 80). Demiéville makes no mention of the fortieth relief, and Twin Pagodas of Zayton does not reproduce an image of it. For a reproduction, see Wang Hanfeng, Quanzhou Dongxi ta, 222. 73. For the earliest chart that describes the placement of the reliefs on the pagoda base, see Wang Hanfeng, Quanzhou Dongxi ta, 212. This chart, however, puts the reliefs in an order that does not conform to their installation at the site, arranging them left to right (as modern Chinese is read) and not right to left (as Classical Chinese is read and as clockwise circumambulation dictates).

74. The Buddhist pilgrim Yijing (635–713 ce), sought to confirm the correct direction through investigation during his travels, concluding that it was clockwise. See Yijing, Nanhai jiguinei fa zhuan (Dharma tales from [travels] to [and on the] return [from] the South Seas) 3:225b–c; for a translation of this text, see I-Tsing [Yijing], Record of the Buddhist Religion, 140–46, esp. 140–42. 75. The architectonic impediments to the continuous circulation of the pagoda base mean that sequential clockwise viewing of the reliefs requires the viewer to make a right-to-left pass of each face of the pagoda, beginning in the southeast. The viewing of all eight faces, despite the interruptions required to navigate the current structural features of the pagoda base, together constitute the clockwise circumambulation of the entire pagoda base. 76. A previous attempt to impose themes on the reliefs has been published by Wang Hanfeng, who finds five groups of subject matter in the reliefs: 1) Past Lives of the Buddha Tales (Fo benxing gushi), 8 reliefs; 2) Life of the Buddha Tales (Fo benxing gushi), 13 reliefs; 3) Tales of King Aśoka Following the Buddha (Yu Wang gui fo gushi), 4 reliefs; 4) Tales of the Eastern Transmission of Buddhism (Fojiao dong jian zhuan gushi), 5 reliefs; 5) Tales that Allude to Buddhist Sūtras (Fojiao biyu jing gushi), 7 reliefs. See Wang Hanfeng, Quanzhou Dongxi ta, 188–211, passim. For a summary of previous attempts to parse the iconographic program of the base of the East Pagoda, see C. Wang, “Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery,” esp. 160–61, 274–75. 77. On the iconography of this image, see Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 43; for sources of this image and the other images detailed below, see appendix II. 78. On the iconography of this image, see ibid., 44–45. For translations of two of these source texts, see Lalita-vistara. 79. On the iconography of this image, see Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 51–52. 80. On the iconography of this image, see ibid., 52. As Ecke and Demiéville note, a Christianized version of this tale circulated in Europe during the Middle Ages, when it was also illustrated; the Psalter of Yolande of Soissons, made in Amiens circa 1275, contains such a work. On this illustration, see Gould, Psalter and Hours of Yolande of Soissons, 76–81; see also Purtle, “From Dunhuang to Mount Athos.” 81. On the iconography of this image, see Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 56–57. 82. On the iconography of reliefs 25 and 26, see ibid., 57–58. 83. On the iconography of this image, see ibid., 58. 84. See appendix II. 85. On the iconography of this image, see ibid., 58.

86. On the iconography of this image, see ibid., 59–60. As Demiéville notes, the image of the crane feeding its flesh to its young was known in medieval Europe. In Europe similar imagery of the pelican also came to be associated with the sacrifice of the Eucharist, as by Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–1274) in his Adoro te devote (Schoot, “Eucharistic Transformation,” 67–79). 87. On the iconography of this image, see Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 64–65. 88. On this relief, see n. 73; Purtle, “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” 89. On the language of the inscriptions, see Baldelli, “Inscrizioni latine e volgari”; for a case study of language and the composition of a Tuscan Bible, notably the Tuscanization of the Latin, see Chasson, “Earliest Illustrated Tuscan Bible,” esp. 130–31, 131a–35. 90. Most notably, as mentioned above, the twenty-seventh relief inscribed “Yunyan[’s] lions” (fig. 6.17) puns lions (shizi) for teachers (shizi), the latter used in the source text. On this image and its sources, see appendix II. 91. For a summary of these texts, see appendix I; on the reliefs based on apocryphal and/or liturgical texts, see appendix I, reliefs 40 and 45. 92. Those panels with verbatim texts are 26, 40, and 46; those with near-verbatim text are 25, 34, 35, and 37; those with a redacted verbatim text are 15, 31, 38, 41, and 42; and the one that remixes the words of the biblical passage into its own caption is 43. On these captions, see appendix I. 93. These are reliefs 27, 35, 37–39, 41, and 44–45. On the sources for these reliefs, see appendix I. 94. Prior scholarship has asserted that parallelism, presumably derived from principles for composing Classical Chinese poetry and prose, is their ordering principle, a statement with which I do not agree. On the putative parallelism of the reliefs, see n. 73; on the general categories of subject matter identified by Wang Hanfeng, see n. 77. 95. The presumption of popular patronage is most evident in Demiéville’s lack of identification for those reliefs for which he erroneously took the content to be less grounded in doctrine and more based in popular tales or “decorative” use. For example, relief 13, inscribed 錫解鬪虎 (Xi jie dou hu, lit., the staff [that] parts the fighting tigers) and relief 14, inscribed 鉢降火龍 (Bo jiang huo long, lit., the alms bowl subdues the fire dragon) are not random decorative works but rather are connected, as two titles in the Tripiṭaka indicate. See Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 50, 57–58; on the sources of these reliefs and those they share, see also appendix II. 96. Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi 2:20a–41b, passim, and Nichols, “History, Material Culture, and Auspicious Events,” 59, 523–61, passim.

Pictured in Relief

187

97. Chan Buddhism-related content is found in reliefs 14, 19, 28, 30, and 39; Vinaya-related content is found in reliefs 2, 5, 7, 29, and 38; Lotus Sūtra-related content is found in reliefs 19, 20, and 23; Cheng weishi lun–related content is found in relief 39. On these reliefs and their sources, see appendix II. 98. These are reliefs 8, 15, 22, 24, 27, 33, 34, and 36. Of these, several come from rare and idiosyncratic sources. On these reliefs and their sources, see appendix II. 99. Reliefs based on more popular Buddhist literature include 4, 22, 24, 25, 26, 29, 31, 32, 35, 37, and 38; reliefs based in whole or part on secular texts include 15, 25, and 26. On these reliefs and their sources, see appendix II. 100. These are reliefs 5, 7, 8, 12, 19, 20, 23, 28, 37, 38, and 39. On these reliefs and their sources, see appendix II, passim. 101. See appendix II, passim. 102. On Ecke, see Demiéville, “Obituary: Gustav Ecke”; on Demiéville, see Gernet, “Nécrologie: Paul Demiéville.” 103. See n. 73. 104. Indeed, when William of Rubruck (ca. 1210– ca. 1270) described sculptures of gospel stories by the French goldsmith Guillaume Boucher at the Mongol capital of Karakorum, he used the term ystoria Evangelii to indicate the source of their content (“Itinerarium,” 1:282; translation adapted from Komroff, Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 163). 105. On the term xiaoxiang, see Hanyu da cidian, 6:1173. 106. Demiéville defers to Sanskrit and Pāli sources, including in translation, in his analysis of the iconography (Twin Pagodas of Zayton, 43, 53–56, 58, 61, 63–65). 107. On book culture and its manuscript technology in Norman Sicily, see Cassarino, “Palermo Experienced,” esp. 106; Grévin, “Linguistic Cultures”; Mandalà and Moscone, “Tra latini, greci e ‘arabici.’ ” 108. Huang Tao, Tang Huang yushi ji (Collected works [of the] Tang [dynasty] censor Huang [Tao]) 5:1b; Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi 1:10a; see also Clark, “Consolidation,” 142; Clark, Community, Trade, and Networks, 60; Nichols, “History, Material Culture, and Auspicious Events,” 48. 109. Loehr, Chinese Landscape Woodcuts, 23–26. Indeed, sūtras were already being collected in

Fuzhou during the time of the Wang Shenzhi (862–925), founder of the Min Kingdom (909–45). Fujian tongzhi 62:17a, 36a. 110. On the printing of the Buddhist canon in China during the Song dynasty, including the three Fuzhou editions, see Li Fuhua and He Mei, “Appendix I,” 312–13; see also Sanshan zhi (Gazetteer of “The three mountains” [i.e., Fuzhou]) 33:11b. 111. Li Fuhua and He Mei, “Appendix I,” 312. This source includes the alternate enumeration of the Tripiṭaka by its coauthor He Mei in a prior publication: 1,454 titles totaling 6,357 chapters in 595 bookboxes. See He Mei, Lidai Hanwen dazangjing mulu xinkao, 1:64. For an alternative history and quantification of the constituent titles (compilation dates 1080–1104; 1,440 titles totaling 6,108 chapters in 580 book-boxes), see National Palace Museum, “Lidai Hanwen dazangjing kanke yilanbiao,” http://‌www‌​ .npm‌.gov‌.tw‌/exhbition‌/sut9907‌/html‌/japan‌.htm; see also Loehr, Chinese Landscape Woodcuts, 23–25. For an image of printed pages from this edition, now held in the Library of Congress, see Wu, “Chinese Buddhist Canon,” 22, fig. 1.1. 112. Li Fuhua and He Mei, “Appendix I,” 312–13. For an alternative history and quantification of the constituent titles (compilation dates 1112–76; 1,451 titles totaling 6,132 chapters in 595 book-boxes), see National Palace Museum, “Lidai Hanwen dazangjing kanke yilanbiao” (List of historical Chinese imprints of the Tripiṭaka), http://‌www‌.npm‌.gov‌.tw‌/exhibition‌​ /sut9907‌/html‌/japan‌.htm; see also Loehr, Chinese Landscape Woodcuts, 25–26. 113. Li Fuhua and He Mei, “Appendix I,” 313. 114. See appendix II. 115. Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi, juan 2, passim.; Nichols, “History, Material Culture, and Auspicious Events,” 42–132, passim, esp. 59, 85, 125. 116. The earliest dated printed book to survive as a complete copy is the Chinese version of the Diamond Sūtra from the Tang dynasty, now in the collection of the British Library. 117. On the success of Quanzhou natives in the examinations of the Song dynasty, see Clark, “Consolidation,” 366–77; see also Chaffee, Thorny Gates of Learning, 149–50, 238 n. 77. 118. On the relationship between printing and civilizational development, see Buringh and van Zanden, “Charting the ‘Rise of the West,’ ” 409–45.

Bibliography Abe, Stanley. “Sculpture: A Comparative History.” In Elsner, Comparativism in Art History, 94–108.

188

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Abu-Lughod, Janet. Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1250–1350. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Baldelli, Ignazio. “Le inscrizioni latine e volgari nelle porte di Bonnano Pisano.” In Salomi, Porte di bronzo, 1:389–98, 2:355–59. Bialastocki, Jan [Jan Białostocki]. “Iconography.” In Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener, 2:524–41. New York: Charles Scribner and Son, 1980. Bloch, Marc. “Pour une histoire comparée des sociétés européennes.” Revue de synthèse historique 46 (1928): 15–50. Boeckler, Albert. Die Bronzetüren des Bonanus von Pisa und des Barisanus von Trani. Berlin: Deutsche Verein für Kunstwisschenschaft, 1953. Bongianino, Umberto. “The King, His Chapel, His Church: Boundaries and Hybridity in the Religious Visual Culture of the Norman Kingdom.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 4, nos. 1–2 (2017): 3–50. Brodbeck, Sulamith. “Monreale from Its Origin to the End of the Middle Ages.” In A Companion to Medieval Palermo: The History of a Mediterranean City from 600 to 1500, edited by Annaliese Nef, 383–412. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Buringh, Eltjo, and Jan Luiten van Zanden. “Charting the ‘Rise of the West’: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe; A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth Through Eighteenth Centuries.” Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (2009): 409–45. Caskey, Jill, Adam Cohen, and Linda Safran. “Introduction: Surveying the Borders of Medieval Art.” Medieval Encounters 17, nos. 1–2 (2011): i–x. Cassarino, Mirella. “Palermo Experienced, Palermo Imagined: Arabic and Islamic Culture Between the 9th and 12th Century.” In A Companion to Medieval Palermo: The History of a Mediterranean City from 600 to 1500, edited by Annaliese Nef, 89–132. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Chaffee, John. Branches of Heaven: A History of the Imperial Clan of Sung China. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999. ———. The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung [Song] China: A Social History of Examinations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Chasson, Robert. “The Earliest Illustrated Tuscan Bible (Edili 125/126).” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1979. Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chï. Translated by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill. St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911. Cheng, Bonnie. “A Camel’s Pace: A Cautionary Global.” Medieval Globe 3, no. 2 (2017): 11–34.

Clark, Hugh R. Community, Trade, and Networks: Southern Fujian Province from the Third to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. “Consolidation on the South China Frontier: The Development of Ch’üan-chou [Quanzhou], 699–1126.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981. Davis, Kathleen, and Michael Puett. “Periodization and ‘The Medieval Globe’: A Conversation.” Medieval Globe 2, no. 1 (2013): 1–14. Davis, Whitney. “Bivisibility: Why Art History Is Comparative.” In Elsner, Comparativism in Art History, 42–60. Demiéville, Paul. “Iconography and History.” In Gustav Ecke and Paul Demiéville, The Twin Pagodas of Zayton: A Study of Later Buddhist Sculpture in China, 42–47. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935. ———. “Obituary: Gustav Ecke, 1896–1971.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 92, no. 3 (1972): 470. Drège, Jean-Pierre. “La lecture et l’écriture en Chine et la xylographie.” Études chinoises 10, nos. 1–2 (1991): 94–103. Ecke, Gustav. “Structural Features of the Stone-Built T’ing-Pagoda: A Preliminary Study.” Monumenta Serica 1, no. 2 (1935): 253–76. Ecke, Gustav, and Paul Demiéville. The Twin Pagodas of Zayton: A Study of Later Buddhist Sculpture in China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935. Elkins, James. The Impending Single History of Art: North Atlantic Art History and Its Alternatives. Unpublished, unpaginated manuscript. http://‌www‌.jameselkins‌.com‌/index‌.php‌​ /experimental‌-writing‌/254‌-english‌-is‌-the‌​ -language‌-of‌-art‌-history. Elliott, Walter. “The Edifice Formerly Known as the Chinese or Jaina Pagoda at Negapatam [sic].” Indian Antiquary 7 (1878): 224–27, 2 plates. Elsner, Jaś, ed. Comparativism in Art History. London: Routledge, 2017. Fangguang da zhuangyan jing (The extensive performance [of the life of the Buddha] sūtra, Sanskrit: Lalitavistara). Translated by Divākara. Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T187. Fo benxing jijing (Sūtra of Buddha’s fundamental deeds, Sanskrit: Abhiniṣkramaṇasūtra). Translated by Jñānagupta. Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T190. Fujian tongzhi (Gazetteer of Fujian). Compiled by Hao Yulin and carved by Xie Daocheng. Reprint of Siku quanshu the 1737 edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–19.

Pictured in Relief

189

Gernet, Jacques. “Nécrologie: Paul Demiéville (1894–1979).” T’oung Pao, 2nd ser., 65, no. 1/3 (1979): 1–9. Giudice, Michele del. Descrizione del real tempio, e monasterio di Santa Maria Nuova di Morreale. Palermo: Regia Stamperia d’Agostino Epiro, 1702. Götz, Ute. “Die Bildprogramme der Kirchentüren des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts.” PhD diss., University of Tübingen, 1971. Gould, Karen. The Psalter and Hours of Yolande of Soissons. Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1978. Grévin, Benoît. “Linguistic Cultures and Textual Production in Palermo, from the End of the 11th to the End of the 15th Century.” In A Companion to Medieval Palermo: The History of a Mediterranean City from 600 to 1500, edited by Annaliese Nef, 413–36. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Guojia wenwu ju (National Agency for Cultural Relics), comp. Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Fujian fence. 2 vols. Fuzhou: Fujian sheng ditu chubanshe, 2007. ———. Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Zhejiang fence. 2 vols. Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2009. Guoqu xianzai yinguo jing (Sūtra on past and present causes and effects). Translated by Guṇabhadra. Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T189. Guy, John. “The Lost Temples of Nagapattinam and Quanzhou: A Study in Sino-Indian Relations.” Silk Road Art and Archaeology 3 (1993–94): 292–310. Hanyu da cidian (Comprehensive dictionary of Chinese words). 12 vols. Edited by Hanyu da cidian weiyuanhui (Committee for the Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Words). Shanghai: Hanyu da cidian chubanshe, 1990. Hatt, Michael, and Charlotte Klonk. “Iconography-​ Iconology: Erwin Panofsky.” Art History: A Critical Introduction to Its Methods. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. He Mei. Lidai Hanwen dazangjing mulu xinkao (A new bibliographic investigation of historical Chinese [editions] of the Tripiṭaka). Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2014. Hilsdale, Cecily. “Worldliness in Byzantium and Beyond: Re-assessing the Visual Networks of Barlaam and Ioasaph.” In Re-assessing the Global Turn in Medieval Art History, edited by Christina Normore, 57–96. Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2018. Holmes, Catherine, and Naomi Standen. “Introduction: Towards a Global Middle Ages.” Past and Present 238, issue supplement 13 (2018): 1–44. Huang Tao. Tang Huang yushi ji (Collected works [of the] Tang [dynasty] censor Huang [Tao]).

190

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Reprint of the Ming dynasty Sibu congkan edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Huang Xiufu. Yizhou minghua lu (Record of famous painters of Yizhou), preface dated 1006. Reprint of Qing dynasty Hanhai edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Idrisi, al-. La géographie d’Edrisi traduite de l’arabe en français d’après deux manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du roi et accompagnée de notes. Translated and edited by Pierre Amadée Jaubert. 2 vols. Paris: L’imprimerie royale, 1836–40. ———. Nuzhat al-muštāq fī iḫtirāq al-āfāq ([The book of] pleasant journeys into faraway lands). BnF Manuscrit Arabe 2221, Bibliothèque nationale de France. https://‌gallica‌.bnf‌.fr‌/ark:‌/12148‌​ /btv1b6000547t. I-Tsing [Yijing]. A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practiced in India and the Malay Archipelago. 671– 95. Translated by Junjirō Takakusu. London: Clarendon, 1896. James, Liz. Mosaics in the Medieval World: From Late Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Jingang bore boluomi jing (The diamond sūtra; Sanskrit: Vajracchedikā prajñāpāramitā sūtra). China: n.p., May 11, 868. Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel. “Reintroducing Circulations: Historiography and the Project of Global Art History.” In Circulations in the Global History of Art, edited by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, 1–22. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Kitzinger, Ernst. The Mosaics of Monreale. Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1960. Komroff, Manuel. Contemporaries of Marco Polo. New York: Dorset, 1989. Krönig, Wolfgang. Il duomo di Monreale e l’architettura normanna in Sicilia. Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1965. The Lalita-vistara: Memoirs of the Early Life of Sakya Sinha (Chapters 1–15). Translated by Rajendralal Mitra. Reprint of the 1881–86 edition. Delhi: Sri Satguru, 1998. Lee, Risha. “Constructing Community: Tamil Merchant Temples in India and China, 850–1281.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012. Lello, Giovanni Luigi. Historia della chiesa di Monreale. Rome, 1596. Li Fuhua and He Mei. “Appendix I: A Brief Survey of the Editions of the Chinese Buddhist Canon.” In Spreading Buddha’s Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, edited by Wu Jiang and Lucille Chia, 311–20. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Loehr, Max. Chinese Landscape Woodcuts. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1968. Mandalà, Giuseppe, and Marcello Moscone. “Tra latini, greci e ‘arabici’: Ricerche su scrittura e cultura a Palermo fra Xii e Xiii secolo.” Segno e testo: International Journal of Manuscripts and Text Transmission 7 (2009): 143–238. Melczer, William. La porta di Bonanno a Monreale: Teologia e poesia. Palermo: Novecento, 1987. ———. La porta di Bonnano nel Duomo di Pisa: Teologica ed imagine. Pisa: Pacini, 1988. Mende, Ursula. Die Bronzetüren des Mittelalters, 800–1200. Munich: Hirmer, 1983. “Monreale Cathedral.” In The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by Colum P. Hourihane. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. DOI: 10‌.1093‌/ acref‌/9780195395365‌.013‌.1589. National Palace Museum. “Lidai Hanwen dazangjing kanke yilanbiao” (List of historical Chinese imprints of the Tripiṭaka). http://‌www‌.npm‌​ .gov‌.tw‌/exhbition‌/sut9907‌/html‌/japan‌.htm. Neer, Richard. “Was the Knidia a Statue? Art History and the Terms of Comparison.” In Elsner, Comparativism in Art History, 145–64. Nichols, Brian J. “History, Material Culture, and Auspicious Events at the Purple Cloud: Buddhist Monasticism at Quanzhou Kaiyuan.” PhD diss., Rice University, 2011. Overbey, Karen. “Postcolonial.” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 145–56. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. http://‌www‌.oed‌.com. Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939. ———. “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst.” Logos 21 (1932): 103–19. Polo, Marco. The Travels. Translated by Ronald Latham. London: Penguin, 1958. Purtle, Jennifer. “Buddhist Tales, Urban Legends: Fashioning a Civic Image from Religious Narrative.” Unpublished conference paper presented at “Visualizing and Performing Buddhist Worlds,” University of Toronto, November 2, 2007. ———. “Double Take: Chinese Optics and Their Media in Postglobal Perspective.” Ars Orientalis 48 (2018): 71–117. ———. “The Far Side: Expatriate Medieval Art and Its Languages in Sino-Mongol China.” Medieval Encounters 17, nos. 1–2 (2011): 167–97. ———. “From Dunhuang to Mount Athos: The Illustrated Life of the Buddha Tale and Its Migration to the Christian West.” Unpublished seminar paper, Yale University, 1991.

———. “Global and Postglobal Perspectives on Medieval Art and Art History.” Unpublished application document, Getty Connecting Art Histories Program, Getty Foundation, 2014. ———. “The Production of Painting, Place, and Identity in Song-Yuan (960–1368) Fujian.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2001. ———. “Rock, Paper, Scissors: Durable Ephemera and Networks of Stone in Quanzhou’s Zhenguo Pagoda.” In Wang, Site and Sight, forthcoming. ———. “Salvaging Meaning: The Art of Recycling in Sino-Mongol Quanzhou, 1276–1408.” In “Medieval Re-creations: Acts of Recycling, Revision, and Relocation,” edited by Hannah Weaver and Joseph Shack. Special issue, Medieval Globe 6, no. 1 (2020): 57–91. Pu yao jing (The extensive performance [of the life of the Buddha] Sūtra, Sanskrit: Lalitavistara). Translated by Dharmarakṣa. Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T186. Qiu Guangming, ed. Zhongguo lidai duliangheng kao (An investigation of Chinese historical weights and measures). Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1992. Quanzhou fuzhi (Gazetteer of Quanzhou prefecture). Compiled by Yang Siqian et al. Reprint of the 1612 edition. In Zhongguo fangzhi ku (Library of Chinese gazetteers). Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–19. Quanzhou fuzhi (Gazetteer of Quanzhou prefecture). Compiled by Huai Yinbu et al. Reprint of the 1763 edition. In Zhongguo fangzhi ku (Library of Chinese gazetteers). Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–19. Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi (Gazetteer of the Kaiyuan Temple of Quanzhou). Compiled by Yuanxian. Reprint of a 1927 reprint of Ming dynasty edition with a preface dated 1643. Taipei: Mingwen shuju, 1980. The Romantic Legend of Śākya Buddha: A Translation of the Chinese Version of the Abhiniṣkramaṇasūtra. Translated by Samuel Beal. London: Trübner, 1875. Rowe, Nina. “Other.” In “Medieval Art History Today—Critical Terms.” Special issue, Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 131–44. Salomi, Salvatorino, ed. Le porte di bronzo dall’Antichità al Secolo XIII. 2 vols. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1990. Sanshan zhi (Gazetteer of “The three mountains” [i.e., Fuzhou]). Compiled by Liang Kejia. Reprint of a Ming dynasty printed edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Schoot, Henk J. M. “Eucharistic Transformation: Thomas Aquinas’ Adoro Te Devote.” Perichoresis 14, no. 2 (2016): 67–79. Shishi jigu lüe (An outline of historical research [into] the Śākya [family] lineage). Compiled by Jue’an.

Pictured in Relief

191

Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T2037. Sirén, Osvald. Chinese Sculpture from the Fifth to the Fourteenth Century. 4 vols. London: E. Benn, 1925. Song huiyao jigao (Draft edition of a compilation of Song government documents). Compiled by Xu Song. Reprint of the manuscript edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Sorensen, Lee, ed. “Boeckler, Albert.” Dictionary of Art Historians. http://‌www‌.arthistorians‌.info. ———. “Goldschmidt, Adolph.” Dictionary of Art Historians. http://‌www‌.arthistorians‌.info. ———. “Panofsky, Erwin.” Dictionary of Art Historians. http://‌www‌.arthistorians‌.info. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Rethinking Comparativism.” New Literary History 40, no. 3 (2009): 609–26. Taizi ruiying benqi jing (Sūtra on the auspicious omens and life of the prince [that is, Siddhartha]). Translated by Zhiqian. Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T185. Takakusu, Junjirō, et al., eds. Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (Taishō[-era] revised Tripiṭaka). Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō kanko kai, 1924. Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin. Paper and Printing, vol. 5.1 of Science and Civilization in China. Edited by Joseph Needham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Artists. Translated by Julia Conway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Walker, Alicia. “Globalism.” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 183–96. Walsh, David A. “Bonanus of Pisa—Sculptor.” In The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture, edited by Colum Hourihane, 1:375. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ———. “The Bronze Doors of Barisanus of Trani.” In Salomi, Porte di bronzo, 1:399–406, 2:161–73. Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1990. ———. “The Iconography of the Bronze Doors of Barisanus of Trani.” Gesta 21 no. 2 (1982): 91–106. Wang, Chen-shan. “Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery: Architecture, Iconography, and Social Contexts.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2008. Wang, Eugene, ed. Site and Sight: The Chinese Pagoda. Cambridge: Harvard CAMlab, forthcoming. Wang, Hanfeng. Quanzhou Dongxi ta (The East and West Pagodas of Quanzhou). Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1992. Wang, Yudong. “The Relief Problem: Some Notes from an Art Historian.” Ars Orientalis 48 (2018): 166–79.

192

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Weinryb, Ittai. The Bronze Object in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. ———. “The Object in Comparative Context.” In Elsner, Comparativism in Art History, 79–93. London: Routledge, 2017. White, John. “The Bronze Doors of Bonanus and the Development of Dramatic Narrative.” Art History 11, no. 2 (1988): 158–209. William of Rubruck. “Itinerarium.” In Sinica Franciscana, 1:164–332. Florence: Quaracchi, 1929. Wu Hung. “The Transparent Stone: Inverted Vision and Binary Imagery in Medieval Chinese Art.” Representations, no. 46 (1994): 58–86. Wu Jiang. “The Chinese Buddhist Canon Through the Ages: Essential Categories and Critical Issues in the Study of a Textual Tradition.” In Spreading Buddha’s Word in East Asia: The Formation and Transformation of the Chinese Buddhist Canon, edited by Jiang Wu and Lucille Chia, 15–45. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Xiuxing ben qi jing (Sūtra on the acts and life [of the Buddha], Sanskrit: Cāryanidāna). Translated by Zhu Dali and Kang Mengxiang. Reprint in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T184. Yan Aibin. “Reintegration, Shifts in Meaning, and Transformation: Three Junctures in the Morphological Changes of Casket Seal Stupa-Tower.” In Wang, Site and Sight, forthcoming. Yee, Cordell D. K. “Reinterpreting Traditional Chinese Geographical Maps.” In The History of Cartography, vol. 2.2, Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, edited by J. B. Harley and David Woodward, 35–70. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Yichu pusa benqi jing (Sūtra [of] the great renunciation; Sanskrit: Abhiniṣkramaṇa-sūtra). Translated by Nie Daozhen. Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T188. Yijing (635–713). Nanhai jiguinei fa zhuan (Dharma tales from [travels] to [and on the] return [from] the South Seas). Reprinted in Takakusu, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, T2125. Yudi jisheng (Superior account of the geography [of the empire]). Compiled by Wang Xiangzhi. Reprint of a Qing dynasty copy of a Song dynasty manuscript edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Zhang Xiumin. Zhongguo yinshua shi (A history of Chinese printing). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1989. Zhang Yanyuan. Lidai minghua ji (Record of famous paintings of historical dynasties). Reprint of Ming dynasty Jindai mishu edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Zhang Yining. Cuiping ji (Literary anthology of Cuiping [the mountain man, i.e., Zhang Yining].

Reprint of a Ming dynasty, Chenghua era imprint of a Ming dynasty manuscript edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Zhao Rugua. Zhufan zhi (A record of all [that is] foreign). Reprint of the Qing dynasty Xuejintao edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Zhao Shitong, comp. Nanwai tianyuan Zhaoshi zupu (Genealogy of the southern external branch of the Zhao family [of] divine origin) [i.e., the Song imperial family]). Reprint of the 1724

edition. Quanzhou: Quanzhoushi yinshua guanggao gongsi, 1994. Zhen Dexiu. Xishan Zhen Wenzhong gong wenji (Literary anthology [of ] “West Mountain,” [aka] Zhen Wenzhong [that is, Zhen Dexiu]). Sibu congkan reprint of Ming dynasty, Zhengde era edition. In Zhongguo jiben guji ku. Zhongguo jiben guji ku (Foundational library of ancient Chinese texts). Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–19.

Pictured in Relief

193

7 Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right Madeline H. Caviness

Theoretical exploration in art history became so active and diverse in the 1980s that it rapidly splintered into different movements and groups, vying for labels and for the modernist notion of somehow getting ahead of the field as an avant garde, as if Georg Hegel would allow anything to be ahead of its time.1 In that way it reminds me of early twentieth-century Western painting and sculpture, when the Fauvists had to try to steal primacy from the Blaue Reiter movement in Germany. By 1990, art historians and critics no longer knew whether modern meant the most up-to-date contemporary art or if it already belonged to the past and was therefore modernist. As soon as paradigms seem jaded, new designations appear. Yet the solution of calling everything post—poststructuralist, postmodern, post-Marxist, postfeminist, postcolonial—has tripped on the same wire because we do not know what to say after post. I will leave such labels aside while defending the necessity of “theory” to the practice of art history and especially to the business of decoding the “meaning” of visual images since that is central to the Index of Medieval Art. I will mention a few of the influential theorists who contributed to those epistemological fields. The most prominent modernist, or poststructuralist, movements in our historical disciplines in the second half of the twentieth century were deconstruction based in semiotics, social history based in Marx, and feminism based in Marx and Freud. I argue that an important distinction among them is that only social history and feminism support the kind of ethical notions that we associate with the humanities, since

both are closely allied with praxis.2 With this insight, I slant the first part of this essay on modern and postmodern critical theory toward a critique of one development— the liberating effect and eventual popular misuse of deconstruction—because this has recently become an issue of urgent concern. In the second part, I examine the exploratory frameworks that are being used by medievalists to respond to a very real current crisis.

From Émile to Camille and Beyond The great colonial iconographer Émile Mâle (1862–1954) became a straw man for scholars who interrogated medieval cultural production differently and helped to create a different canon of medieval works. Michael Camille (1958–2002) freed himself to do this without much overt theorizing, by absorbing a blend of deconstruction, socialism, and feminism. That Jean Lafond (1888–1975), my mentor in medieval art history in 1960, had been a student of Mâle and lived long enough for Camille to have hypothetically known him reminds us how close we are, generationally, to the nineteenth century. Mâle presented his dissertation in 1899, after a thorough grounding in Latin, and always used texts that were known or written during the Middle Ages as a way to identify and classify works of art. The same mentality informed the organization of a card catalogue at Princeton that sorted Christian iconography by biblical reference or by a saint with their feast day. Indeed, Mâle may have had similar card files of bibliographic references, and the national collection of photographs was already in the rue de Valois for him to consult when he was working on a book on the Christian art of France in the twelfth century, the third title in his great trilogy.3 He must have consulted many examples of the Last Judgment in twelfth-century French art to adumbrate the formula that it was usually placed at the west end of the church because of the double meaning in the word occidens, meaning “the west” and “dying” (as in the “dying day,” when the sun goes down). He argued that the sculpture and stained glass of each great Christian church taken together constituted a unified and predictable iconographic program. His approach was essentially positivist and logocentric: for each Christian image there must be a textual source. Those of us who grew up having to use the five printed volumes of indices to the Patrologia Latina can well imagine how delighted Mâle would have been with the word searches we can now do online; he was far more interested in the theologians who were contemporary with the decoration of twelfth- and thirteenth-​century churches in France than he was with simple biblical sources. For him, medieval epistemology encompassed a Summa of theology such as that of Vincent of Beauvais, a collection of saints’ lives such as the Golden Legend, and these decorative programs. In a similar way, Erwin Panofsky argued for a link between the ordering of the Gothic bay (into two and then four subdivisions) and scholastic theology that presented knowledge and belief in clusters of twos, threes, and fours.4 196

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Neither found it necessary to articulate the concept of Zeitgeist that underlay their suppositions because it had been naturalized in historical discourses. Brian Stock has referred to the invention of the Middle Ages as “an enabling historiographical premise in the construction and distinctive character and destiny for Western Europe.”5 Mâle’s ordered medieval world presented French-speaking people, including the colonized people of North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, with a uniquely Catholic European civilization in which French culture was ascendant. He was about eight years old in 1870 when the Prussian army destroyed much of Paris, and the threat of Germany must have stayed with him. In a photograph taken at the height of his career, he is posed in a courtyard of the Institut de France, wearing the badge of a Grand Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, one rank below the Grand Croix (fig. 7.1).6 His costume, still worn by members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, was in fact designed for Napoleon’s generals and subsequently assigned by him to the elected members of the Académie, who are known as the “éternelles” (immortals).7 Mâle must, however, have been aware that the empire was crumbling. He makes abundantly clear in his book on the end of the Middle Ages that although some pagan subjects were tolerated by the clergy in the waning Middle Ages, true Christian faith permeated the works that were created under their supervision in France from the twelfth century and into the sixteenth.8 It is easy to imagine what schoolchildren in the French colonies were taught, and British colonial education was no different. My pen friend of the 1950s in Tanzania told me that her people did not have a religion until the British came; my Indian friends in college had learned nothing of the richness of Buddhist and Hindu art in their homeland. For any who are now attempting to be postcolonial, Mâle becomes one of the colonialist straw men.

Mâle’s Cathedral under Siege Deconstruction was a valuable tool in knocking down Mâle’s cathedral. The first move, setting aside the authors and treating the cathedral as a text, does minimal damage since medieval works are notably anonymous, but it does deflect the power of creation from famous theologians toward shared responsibility with the craftsmen. Yet few of either have known biographies. As Keith Moxey points out, one implication of Roland Barthes’s denial of the significance of an author’s or artist’s biography to their creation is that Albrecht Dürer’s life need not be considered in relation to the meaning of his famously puzzling print known as Melancholia.9 On the other hand, the deconstructive move to treat written histories as narrative constructions, contingent on the circumstances in which they are written, brings an author back into the framework—in our case, Mâle, whose colonial context I emphasized above. In order to reveal the contingency of the medieval world Mâle created, I have risked reducing him to a stereotype by giving a few highly selective indications concerning Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

197

Figure 7.1 Émile Mâle as a member of the Académie française, 1928. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

his historical context. If we consider him alongside one of his favorite twelfth-century works, the representation of Abbot Suger praying to the Virgin Annunciate in the stained glass of Saint-Denis Abbey Church, we might unravel his predilections further: Suger’s windows, with their long Latin inscriptions, lend themselves to logocentric exegesis (fig. 7.2). Mâle could also claim the compositions, especially the Tree of Jesse, as highly innovative and influential, though others judge him to have overrated the importance of Saint-Denis.10 Coincidentally, artists in Mâle’s Paris, such as the Fauve painters, were highly competitive, and art history was in the business of creating geniuses. Like Mâle, Suger was learned and devoutly attached to his church and its liturgy (even if he led an army to defend his abbey’s lands); he was close to the king of France, and he was the custodian of the Oriflamme, the banner that led crusaders into battle against the infidel. He could appear as a great French hero to Mâle, even a distant mirror. Yet who am I to say that of Mâle? If the death of the author has a reincarnation in reception histories that take into account the biography of the historian writing, it 198

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

also raises questions about the historiographer. At the first stage, this kind of analysis introduces new aspects to be integrated into a more complex story than the one told by the historian, as if it reveals an invisible veil that was wrapped around the work of art. Moxey ingeniously compares the circumstances of Panofsky’s life in exile with his explanation of Melancholia as symptomatic of unresolved conflicts in Dürer’s life; he even finds a photograph of Panofsky in which he appears to mimic the gesture of Melancholia (figs. 7.3, 7.4).11 However, it is just as likely that Panofsky adopted the traditional posture of the thinker to be photographed by his former student William Heckscher. And Moxey’s own method demands recognition that it is he who is speaking in 1986, mediating between Panofsky and Dürer. Is it fair to say that I vividly recall him as he was fifteen years earlier, when we were colleagues? It seems to me he was an immigrant, too. He stroked his beard reflectively. He was a defender of student and faculty rights against authority and capable of innovative iconoclastic thinking. He had an unusually good relationship with artists. The death of the author brought about a chain reaction that involves the identity of the reader/critical historiographer as well as the intermediate art historian. The next move would be for the art historian to preempt this by identifying him/herself in relation to the process of interrogating the text, but as a rhetorical strategy, this invites criticism as mere subjectivity. Returning to Mâle’s cathedral, a more useful way to look for cracks in the edifice is to consider what he left out. Not until the end of the Middle Ages did he pause to Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

Figure 7.2 Abbot Suger kneeling at the feet of Mary in the Annunciation panel of the Nativity window (detail), Saint-Denis, Paris, twelfth century. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Vassil).

199

Figure 7.3 (opposite) Erwin Panofsky. Photo: William Heckscher, Heckscher-Archiv, Warburg-Haus, Hamburg. Figure 7.4 Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514. Engraving, 24 × 18.5 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 43.106.1. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1943.

glance at the puzzling and sometimes demonic figures in the margins that had fascinated his predecessors. In seeking a way to read them, Champfleury had advocated a radically different approach to Mâle’s logocentrism by claiming the primacy of the image as the object of interest.12 Mâle seems to have agreed with St. Bernard that they were meaningless, so he looked no further for exegetical texts, though he labored to justify them by praising their vitality. He worked hard to resist viewing the uncomfortably unchristian figures that lurked in the shadows around the late Gothic cathedrals Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

201

Figure 7.5 Michael Camille with a gargoyle from Notre Dame, Paris. Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

and under the seats of the canons as a symptom of a decaying society; for him, only Protestantism and the Reformation could end this phase of great Christian art.13 So he had to excuse the fifteenth-century canons for (as he supposed) approving the masons’ proposal to carve base subjects under their misericords that include peasant laborers, monsters, sorcerers, devils, witches, and wives fighting their husband to wear the trousers. By the 1990s, Camille had made major progress on the demolition of Mâle’s cathedral by paying sustained attention to the marginalia that he called images on the edge: the sculpted consoles and capitals, corbels and gargoyles, that articulate boundaries.14 He delighted in their deformity and saw them giving expression to the underbelly of society. An archaeologist would have immediately encountered a snare: these parts have often been worn away by the weather and replaced with imitations, like the mid-​ nineteenth-century gargoyles of Notre-Dame in Paris that are so accessible to tourists. Their modernity easily betrays itself to the connoisseur. However, deconstruction threw out authenticity with the author, and connoisseurship ceased to be taught. Camille at first overlooked—or was indifferent to—the nineteenth-century date of his favorite gargoyles (fig. 7.5). Later in life, when he realized the excitement of doing thick historical research, he wrote a book on the circumstances in nineteenth-century Paris in which the stone cutters produced these pseudo-medieval gargoyles.15 It is worth pausing to consider the revolution that had occurred in the humanities throughout the 1980s and its impact on the way that historians and critics interrogate art. Deconstruction had brought dramatic freedom from old constraints, but some 202

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

considered them deprivations, and there were rifts in many academic departments. The theoretical framework of New Criticism suppressed many traditional interconnected concepts while substituting others. I can only list them here, with a few bibliographic signposts:16 • authorial intention;17 the author/artist replaced by the reader;18 no more creative genius; • authenticity; objectivity;19 history is a construction, another story involving narrativity;20 • precise meaning gives way to multivalence; • binaries are unequal at best and suspect if they serve power structures;21 gender is socially constructed/performed;22 • “works of art” are texts/images; art history becomes the study of material culture. Despite Moxey’s assurance that he is not denigrating Panofsky, his use of personal events to explain a rationally argued interpretation was deeply hurtful.23 Furthermore, there was often a strong reaction against deconstruction because its critics feared that it would eviscerate objectivity and lead to relativity. It could undermine authority at every level: with the rejection of authorial intention as a valid subject for speculation and then of the author and any possibility of creative genius go mastery; and by a chain of invalidated writers, gone also is the objectivity of the new text. With creative genius gone, so also are great works of art. And if authenticity is deemed irrelevant, connoisseurship is gone. At that point, deconstruction ceases to be purely theoretical because it undermines the art market; sculptures and pictures and prints and films could now be treated like texts. Dates may be left out, giving the impression of presentism. All of this had stirred up a great deal of bitter contention in literary departments (and of course, there was no more literature), and it spread into art history departments. The losses were intolerable to those who did not want to explore “theory” or felt uncertain about venturing into such new ways of thinking: a famous poet resigned from Tufts University, and one of her colleagues insisted on taking his named professorship outside the English department. These were indeed culture wars. The debate intensified when some early anti-Semitic articles by Paul de Man (1819–1983) resurfaced after his death; he was the influential founder of the Yale school of criticism, and critical theory had become indispensable to the humanities.24 Lynne Cheney could not get a job in a literature department because she could not do theory-speak, so when she became head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, she gutted academic research. Her budget cuts helped her husband with his oil wars.25 She later founded the American Council of Trustees and Alumni as a force for conservative nationalist values. Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

203

Gains in the Margins There were, however, significant gains for humanists who found some form of deconstruction liberating. It assisted canon change by encompassing all creative production, substituting material culture for works of art. It transformed iconography: the meaning of images continued to take center stage, now subject to change with the viewer or viewing community, though that never meant that words mean what we want them to mean; we learned that most medieval works are multivalent. Deconstructing Mâle’s cathedral was greatly advanced by introducing medieval viewing communities other than the canons who designed great theological programs or sat on scurrilous misericords, and that, too, enlarged the cannon: the cult of relics, not the stone portals, brought lay pilgrims, including cripples and women (fig. 7.6).26 They might hear vernacular sermons, but they had their own folklore and legends. Scholars like Ruth Mellinkoff and Nina Rowe examined the implications of Christian depictions for Jewish communities.27 The margins became a metaphor for all who were “othered.” Fortunately, Lillian Randall had begun the pioneering work of collecting and classifying the figures in the margins of Gothic manuscripts during the 1950s for her Harvard dissertation.28 This kind of activity continues to reveal forgotten works and themes, though rather sadly, I think cataloguing is often pushed out of the way by “mainstream” concerns. These are the reference works we can plunder for new grist. Largely using Panofskyan pre-iconographic descriptions to arrive at a nomenclature for weird subjects, Randall devised an index; hybrid men engaged in different activities occupy three pages. She took her own photographic details and assiduously referenced the manuscripts. She also began to unravel mysteries by hunting in sermon exempla, fabliaux, riddles, and the like—a pursuit engaged by many later.29 Medieval iconography no longer prioritized the sacra pagina. By the time Camille was ready to take a wrecking ball to Mâle’s crumbling cathedral, he had an idea where to look. He had become fascinated with the acrobatics and lewd behaviors of figures on the edge, their monstrosity, the agency of severed body parts. But he largely saw the margins as a site of Bakhtinian carnival that might challenge the center yet in the end reauthorize the written word and ecclesiastical power, and he was aware of the power of the book through its material presence in a semiliterate society. He vowed to be “careful not to think of the medieval margins in Postmodern terms.”30 Yet he longed for subversive artists, and he considered resonance, intervisuality, and multivalence when he read images. Most of us working with theory in the ’90s maintained flexibility, including receptiveness to complex frameworks. Camille’s social analysis of the relationship of peasant workers and chivari to the lord of the manor and the lord of heaven in the Luttrell Psalter generally stay within the frame of Marxist social history, as espoused by Meyer Schapiro—the margins are doing ideological work in a class struggle.31 Feminists spin theory from Marx to examine the social standing of women but from Freud in issues 204

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 7.6 Goditha of Canterbury’s leg bathed in blood and water at the tomb of Thomas Becket, Trinity Chapel miracle window nIV 50, Canterbury Cathedral, ca. 1215– 20. Photo reproduced courtesy of the Chapter of Canterbury.

relating to the sexed body. Prayer books in which a woman’s likeness was embedded—perhaps at the behest of a donor-husband—could work on their consciousness day and night. The reception of the figures in the margins remains contested, but it seems that as far as possible, the individual circumstances of the first owner(s) and reader(s) need to be prioritized in understanding it, over a king who paid for the work and the famous artist who received the commission. In some cases—such as when that reader is Jeanne d’Evreux as the thirteen-year-old bride of a king—her prayer book could warn her not to stray from her prayers into the worldly temptations of the freaks in the margins; if these figures provoke laughter as well as fear, whose joke is it?32 There may be cases, as argued by Kathryn Smith, of mature women who chose the images in their books.33 Even so they would collude with the dominant ideology.34 The postmodern appeal of images in the margins lies in their openness to several ways of reading, including adaptability to different readers. At the top of one folio in a fragment of a book of hours made for a woman circa 1320 is a nude couple with the man kneeling between the knees of the woman (fig. 7.7). Their posture has been interpreted by Paula Gerson and myself as cunnilingus, whereas Camille’s “queer reading” sees a man trying to reenter the womb.35 His association of the image with the adjacent Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

205

Figure 7.7 Fragment of a book of hours made for a woman, northern France, ca. 1320. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.754, fol. 16v. Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

phrase in Psalm 87:5, “This man and that man were born in you. The habitation of all delights is within you,” does not rule out sexual pleasure. Stanley Fish once argued that when two readers disagree on the meaning of a text, there may be no way to settle the matter.36 In this case, we do not have to because the image seems ingeniously to accommodate both parts of the phrase depending which one the viewer privileges, and that is a good demonstration of the way reception works if the political stakes are not high. Queer reading, which places heterosexual reading in question, has also enriched this sense of multivalence. Camille and Dominic Leo have brought attention to the prevalence of anal iconography in this book and in the Voeux du paon.37 Autonomous body parts include legs and buttocks, long-beaked birds peck anuses, and there are numerous examples of “anal intrusion.” Yet the aggregate meaning in a book made for a woman is hard to construe. Overall, since Mâle dismissed images on the edge as no more than carefully regulated comic relief, medieval art history had become a carnival ground for every sort of weird creature. And however many theories or strategies we invoke, they can never be reduced to simple meanings: there are monsters, hybrids, freaks, and chimeras, derived from emblems, puns, fabliaux, proverbs, and mots poilus. They may seem humorous, whimsical, diabolic, frightening, or hegemonic, even apotropaic, as we engage with modern and postmodern theories to do battle with them.38 It has indeed been a wonderful playground for imaginary adventures.

The Citadel Looms over Us Yet for some, deconstruction had abdicated the more serious enterprise of examining colonial and capitalist ideology. One such ardent social theorist is Otto Karl Werckmeister (b. 1934). Like Schapiro, he used very close visual analysis and careful reading 206

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

of documents in support of his arguments, usually concerned with Romanesque art. Past the millennium, he still borrowed the Marxist structuralism of Schapiro and H. P. L’Orange in assuming a direct relationship between social and compositional order.39 The liturgical colors and the controlling geometry that he sees in a paired musician and performer in the Silos Beatus seem to be due to an artist who was also the new prior of the monastery.40 Werckmeister finds a parallel in the assertion of pictorial order and the reform of the monastery that brought an end to freer Visigothic ways. Contextualization and political critique have always aided Werckmeister’s reading of works. Marxism proved a more powerful tool than deconstruction in destabilizing Mâle’s cathedral: Werckmeister’s students, Barbara Abou-El-Haj and Jane Welch Williams, exposed the documented strife that was occurring between the canons of Reims and Chartres and the townspeople at the very time the great Gothic churches were being built.41 Social harmony and outpourings of piety that caused people to pull carts of stone up the hill and to give money for the windows proved to be ideological constructs. Williams argues for an inversion: the canons depended on the serfdom that was rapidly giving way to wage labor; workers did not yet have rich guilds to pay for glass, but the clergy could reassert their authority by prominently depicting the mandatory offerings they made in kind, in the cathedral windows.42 Continuing such debates about patronage and donation is essential to a reexamination of the hegemonies and economies of religious cults.43 On the whole, medieval studies seemed to be thriving in the ’90s, and the strands I have emphasized scarcely indicate the richness and variety of the good work being done. Ominously however, Werckmeister, as well as a handful of other scholars, began warning of the inherent and very grave weaknesses in deconstruction that have consequences for us today beyond academia. He wrote a visionary book in the late 1980s, just before the Berlin Wall came down, predicting the intensification of a “citadel culture” afterward.44 With the fall of communism, we would have untrammeled globalization of capitalism; the rich would retreat to hilltop and gated communities, and the poor would congregate outside. His harsh criticism of deconstruction was on ethical rather than philosophical grounds; he found it spawned “a bloated academic literature of books and journals,” and “by blurring the distinctions between word and object, cause and effect, sensation and concept, deconstructive thinking constitutes itself as a self-contained explication of philosophy. . . . As a rhetorical critique of culture, it has infiltrated and largely replaced the political critique of culture from the left.”45 In 1993, Terry Eagleton warned that deconstruction divorced ethics and human rights from the will of a subject: “De Man will accordingly shift the whole question of ethics from a subjective to a linguistic register. . . . The ethical, in this bleak scenario, has nothing to do with human decision.”46 He also raised the question of whether Jacques Derrida was at all concerned about human rights, finding that he sat on the fence: “He was not for socialism, but not against it either.”47 He, too, proved to be prophetic, warning: “The truth that neither liberal nor post-structuralist seems to be able to countenance is that there are certain key political struggles that someone is going Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

207

to have to win and someone will have to lose. To deconstruct these binary oppositions is to be complicit with the political status quo.”48 Coincidentally, Nancy Miller remarked that scholars impatient with traditional humanist values shifted their “critical attention instead to language itself, with all its slipperiness, its leakages, its ironies.”49 Ten years later, Eagleton was still lamenting that cultural studies had displaced Marxism and trivialized social theory.50 Some of the energy left gender studies when the critique of essentialism removed it from a concern with the plight of women as subjects of oppression to a debate over how to identify “women.”51 Racial difference as another term of present oppression continued to be overlooked in discussions of the historical contingency and instability of the term “race.”52 The humanities had become neglectful of immediate human concerns. Many art historians were waiting for some big new theories that they could pull in from other fields, as others had done in the ’70s and ’80s, or for a new direction provided by a renewal from within. We were inevitably, as Eagleton wrote in 2003, “living now in the aftermath of what one might call high theory.”53

Deconstruction Commandeered by Populist Neo-Liberalism Meanwhile, Fish had noted in 1994 that “many on the liberal and progressive left have been disconcerted to find that words, phrases, and concepts thought to be their property and generative of their politics have been appropriated by the forces of neoconservatism.”54 Indeed, while we were waiting for Godot, popular culture not only ran away with deconstruction but also with “our” Middle Ages. The two seem to be causally connected, so I will present them sequentially, before looking at some of the theoretical frameworks used to meet this crisis. The deconstructive moves that were once resented as intellectually elitist by people unwilling to make the effort to understand the theory have been weaponized in forms that are all too easily parroted by a general public. Whether this began with a series of misunderstandings or a deliberate act of misappropriation is hard to say, but the Alt Right and other ultra conservative organizations have been active in the process of charting neo-liberalism. Here is the new game of consequences and its litany: • without authorial intention, a text can mean what we want it to; • without an author, we can plagiarize; • if there is no authority in the text, we can refuse to believe it (it is fake news); • if objectivity is impossible, we can say what we like in the moment, and scientists cannot prove evolution or climate change; • history is a construction, so we can write another story with alternative facts; • multivalence allows us to interpret the right to bear arms our way; • medical opinion and scientific research can be ignored and may even be dangerous. 208

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

And there are further assertions that lead from the mistrust of authority and intellectual argument: • gender is not socially constructed; there are two sexes, and men are superior; • dead white men were the only creative geniuses; • art history should concentrate on the “great works” by male artists of our “own” white civilization; • the Holocaust did not happen; it is a construction by Jews for political reasons; • the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax invented for political reasons. This populist deconstruction is now fueling neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, and a growing neo-Nazi movement. And populism has invented, as a mirror image of its “white” self, a monstrous nonhuman enemy that tramples its “civilization.” Among early warning signs in the United States, Barack Obama’s parents, a Muslim African and a white American woman, became a vector for long-standing racist anxieties that link nonwhite immigrants, the rape or abduction of white women, and racial impurity. The same birther myth has been put out about the current vice president, Kamala Harris. Thorough investigative journalists are attacked with the cry of “fake news,” and the Holocaust and the COVID-19 pandemic are indeed being denied. The Confederate flag is displayed as the racism of the Jim Crow era reemerges in full view, and statues of Confederate Civil War “heroes,” erected by their descendants to keep alive the claim that their defeat was a legitimate “Lost Cause,” have become icons for white supremacists to rally around.55 Revisionist work of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries might have prevented these appropriations, but there was already an organized resistance movement on campuses in the United States: the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), founded in 1995, was promoting the traditional (white) canon, and www‌.NoIndoctrination‌.org was publishing student complaints of [liberal] bias online.56 These are the culture wars that eventually led Richard B. Spencer to the Alt Right and Charlottesville, via the universities of Colgate, Virginia, Chicago, Vienna, and Duke. Meanwhile, many brilliant art historians had embarked on historiographical criticism and a quest for new theoretical frameworks for the interrogation of material culture of the European period known as “the Middle Ages.” Some, for instance, weighed the limitations and potentiality of modern feminism.57 Some branched out to engage with concepts such as reification and materiality.58 Other critics challenged national boundaries and the boundaries of knowledge, encouraged relational thinking to pull together the old mantras of “multidisciplinary” or “race-class-and-gender,” and adopted intersectionality as “critical enquiry and praxis.”59 Social distinctions and the locus of power intersect additionally with “ethnicity, citizenship, sexuality, and ability”—and also religion.60 Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

209

The Crisis Posed by the Alt Right and the Readiness of Academe to Deal with It It may be comparatively rare in the history of the humanities that a single event has demanded the invention of new ways to interrogate it or the strenuous adaptation of older frameworks, but the Stonewall riots were a catalyst for gay rights in 1969, and critical theory began to be “queered” afterward.61 Another such event took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 17, 2017 (fig. 7.8). One of the leaders was Richard B. Spencer, who intended the march to bring together the united right or Alt Right. The trigger was a decision by the city council to remove a large bronze equestrian statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a public space because it was a relic of the Jim Crow era and was hurtful and offensive to descendants of slaves (among many others). In 1919, more than half a century after the end of the Civil War, Paul Goodloe McIntire had commissioned this particular monument for a new park in the town.62 It was ceremonially unveiled in 1924, with the participation of the Sons of the Confederacy and a torch parade by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) (fig. 7.9). The historical context, ideology, and events leading to the 2017 march are well documented, as are the fatalities and legal cases that ensued.63 The arms and the insignia of the Charlottesville marchers were deeply disturbing to medievalist art historians, given their apparent roots in Northern Europe of the early Middle Ages or in Christian crusader imagery. Many academics immediately rallied in response to the shock of the blatant symbols used by the Alt Right, often blaming the way they had taught their field, especially if they had encouraged heroization of the crusading knights who had driven out Muslims.64 Many are alarmed that universities and museums have allowed the impression to remain that the people of  Western Europe in the Middle Ages were exclusively white—and concerned that this assessment has too long mirrored our profession.65 Yet it is not clear whether many of the people who joined the Alt Right had attended any classes in medieval studies. And had they done so, I doubt many classes since Mâle’s time would have featured knights in shining armor. Professors have addressed race, class, and gender in their research and, consequently, in their classes; academic scrutiny into the margins of art and society had already gone a long way to destabilize Mâle’s cathedral. Strenuous efforts have been made to increase diversity in the field, both in terms of its practitioners and in attention to racial diversity in medieval Europe.66 My own work has connected the startlingly white complexion of saints in art works of the crusader king, Louis IX and the concomitant darkening of heathen, pagan, and Jewish faces forward in time to the modern racism of Clint Eastwood movies.67 Geraldine Heng’s probing study of the many geographic and chronological variants of race in the European Middle Ages has forged links with the lived experience of colonial racism.68 A new field already much in demand was cultural exchange, notably between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Mediterranean and in Spain.69 The well-researched and illustrated volumes on The Image of the Black in Western Art made new material available 210

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 7.8 Charlottesville white supremacists with pseudomedieval insignia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Anthony Crider) (licensed under CC BY 2.0). Figure 7.9 Robert E. Lee statue, Charlottesville, Virginia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Martin Falbisoner) (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0).

Figure 7.10 St. Maurice, Magdeburg Cathedral, ca. 1240–50. Photo: Hickey & Robertson / The Menil Foundation, Houston.

212

for teaching, and the remarkable sculpture of St. Maurice in Magdeburg Cathedral is far better known and loved in United States classrooms than the equestrian statue of his king, Frederick Hohenstaufen (figs. 7.10, 7.11). Even the name “Maur” reflects Maurice’s ethnic origin, and it seems plausible that he was thought of in thirteenth-​century Magdeburg as a freed slave, like those in the entourage of the emperor.70 As such, he was an example to other slaves and captives to convert to Christianity, becoming “free” by renouncing their own religious and cultural heritage.71 Yet the skin color of some popular figures in medieval legends and of some biblical figures, like the Queen of Sheba and even the Madonna, was remarkably fungible, now black, now white. After Charlottesville, scholars immediately applied their knowledge of medieval iconography to the United Right masquerade, identifying the Othala runes, heraldic eagles, Celtic crosses, and the cross of St. Andrew on the painted shields and banners carried by the marchers (see fig. 7.8).72 Karen Overbey raised the issue of ethics in the practice of art history.73 Many academics began “organizing . . . against oppressive ideologies,” and “new collectives of scholars” were “working to transform and destabilize our notion of the Middle Ages and to whom they belong”; by 2019 they produced an impressive volume of essays under the rubric Whose Middle Ages?, intended in part to help explore new ways of teaching the field.74 In the volume, “real” peasants, Jews, Black Africans, and Muslims in Europe in the Middle Ages; representations of varied masculinities and racial difference; and practices of intolerance and persecution, are subjected to renewed scrutiny. Several essays connect forward to modern or contemporary medievalisms: Maggie Williams examines the modern ideology of “Celtic” crosses, Marian Bleeke exposes the reimposition of a male/female gender binary in “on-line macros that make use of materials from the European Middle Ages” and by the Alt Right, Cord Whitaker explores the double consciousness of Black Americans in the Harlem Renaissance, and Helen Young addresses the issue of race and representation in the Middle Ages and in the medieval fantasies of current popular media. William Diebold and I are among those who had been examining Nazi uses of medieval imagery, and in Whose Middle Ages?, he presents a detailed analysis of Heinrich Himmler’s remodeling of the medieval church in Quedlinburg.75 Thus, scholars of medieval material culture, as well as civic authorities and civil rights activists, responded to Charlottesville in a variety of ways, in theory and praxis. In addition, we humanists must ask how we should react to counter a current popular movement that is expropriating and contorting good theoretical and historical work, as was done in Germany during the Third Reich. It is now more widely known that John Powell, a graduate of the University of  Virginia, Charlottesville, founded the white supremacist Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America in 1922 and that James Alex Fields Jr., who drove across the country and killed Heather Heyer, an anti-supremacist protester, loved all things German and especially Hitler.76

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Figure 7.11 Magdeburger Rider (replica), ca. 1240–50. Magdeburg, Kulturhistorisches Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Friedrichsen) (licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0).

From Magdeburg to Charlottesville via Munich Equestrian statues of conquering heroes have a long history in Western art, from Rome to the United States. Statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson do not surprise us as a generic type, though their replication throughout the former Confederate states might. The proponents of the “Lost Cause” had fully understood the power of images, though this has often been overlooked in the United States. Art historians had also provided such images to Hitler’s Germany: in Diebold’s detailed account, on the eve of his defeat in 1941, Hitler organized one more great German art exhibition that traveled through some of the lands he had recently conquered—such as Poland and the Netherlands. It included a replica of the Magdeburg Rider that had been praised as embodying all the noble beauty of the German knights (see fig. 7.11). Easily replicated statues to commemorate heroes of the white supremacists in the South also appeared in the early part of the twentieth century. They were in place by the time Nazi jurists came over to study United States segregation and miscegenation laws in the early 1930s in order to write Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws.77 It is possible that the equestrian statues of American heroes also inspired the Germans to exploit the ideological power of their medieval knights. The use of Nazi emblems in Charlottesville was thus only renewing an old bond. The Fraternal Order of Alt Knights (F.O.A.K.) now fantasize about being mounted and in full armor. The American Storm Troopers assembled in Charlottesville fed their adherents paranoia over threats to their icons—such as the statue of defeated Confederate General Lee that loomed in the background (see fig. 7.9). The United Right rallies in Charlottesville in 2017 mimicked the Nazi parades of the 1930s; the marchers carried torches and even chanted “Lügenpresse” (lying press) and “Blut und Boden” (blood [ties] and [home]land), as well as “Jews shall not take our jobs.” Hearing those voices brought home that my generation has not only lived from Émile to Camille but also from Hitler to Trump. Despite the growing visibility of the American National Socialist Party since 2016, it was a shock to see the straight-armed salute, the swastika, and fascia on display, while shields and helmets gave the impression of  “medieval” foot soldiers. Regardless of revisionist work at an academic level, selected aspects of medieval culture have been expropriated by the Alt Right movement as emblematic of white heritage, including Viking runes, crusading armor and regalia, and the term “Anglo-Saxon.” It is now up to us to correct this spurious link. The sources and influences for most white supremacists lie outside the classroom: in illustrated magazines, in popular reenactments of combat, in computer games, and on the internet,78 which makes readily available Nazi posters, photographs of the Tag der Deutschen Kunst parades in Munich from 1938 and 1939, and portraits of Hitler (including in armor). A Google search for runes immediately brings up an article on their use by the German National Socialist party, including the SS for the elite corps, and the Othala rune for homeland.79 A search for “fascist symbolism” produces drawings of Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

215

the bundle of twigs and an axe of purportedly Roman origin, used first by Mussolini and then by the Third Reich, which could easily be copied onto shields.80 The medievalism of Charlottesville turns out to have been largely mediated through the Third Reich, with some admixture from the Ku Klux Klan, the Lost Cause mythology of the South, and current popular media. These neo-knights collapsed past and present by displaying the Confederate flag, a shield with the medieval German eagle, and Nazi helmets, while their mistrust of government is evinced by the goggles and scarves they wore to protect themselves from tear gas (see fig. 7.8). They came ready to fight, and one is now a convicted murderer. The invention of new insignia using runes or Gothic script, together with new regalia and uniforms, empowers identity politics, as the Nazis knew. As in the 1930s, paranoia required icons from a glorious past to restore confidence in white male supremacy. A major difference between Germany’s Nazi movement and the neo-Nazi movement in America is that the expropriation of medieval works of art as political propaganda was organized by Hitler’s government from the moment it came into power in 1933. Official pageants were designed in great detail to symbolize making Germany “Great Again.” That year an elaborate float with a cast of the Bamberg Knight was pulled through the streets of Munich. Even grander parades were realized in 1938 and 1939, with a Viking ship on one float presaging the invasion of Norway.81 The neo-Nazi parades in America were not officially instigated by then-President Trump, although his second impeachment in 2021 attributed to him direct responsibility for the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol that same year. Then again, Kristallnacht was not officially instigated by the Führer. As both leaders knew, fanning hatred and fear and encouraging mob violence can help to maintain or advance political power. After Charlottesville, this was made clear by Trump’s own cheap deconstructive claim that “there were good people on both sides.”82

Civic Responses to Racist Icons As a countermeasure to the rise of Lost Cause and neo-Nazi cults, some civic authorities have bravely begun to engage in the kind of “key political struggles” for which Eagleton called. In 2017, Catherine Pugh, mayor of Baltimore, quickly put into effect a city council vote to remove Confederate flags and statues from public places, accomplished at night with armed guards.83 Among the statues removed was that of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice who wrote the court’s opinion in the Dred Scott case in 1857, supporting slavery and depriving African-Americans of citizenship. Like the redistribution of power after the Berlin Wall was taken down, the current populist neo-Nazi movement in America accentuates the need for a new theoretical framework beyond academic historiography. In fact, a year before the Charlottesville parade, French philosopher and social scientist François de Bernard essentially 216

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

predicted the situation we had in the United States under Trump, much as Werckmeister had foreseen the outcome of the Reagan years. For Bernard, civil society is destroying itself from within, and unheeding participants in this corrosive process—whom he calls “post-citizens”—have abnegated social responsibility in favor of egotistical claims to freedom at the expense of society—the essence of neo-liberalism. He laments that “scientists look no further than the doors of their laboratories, journalists advocate controls on absolute freedom without limiting their own, . . . artists claim a unique right to self-expression.”84 A dramatic example in the United States is the claim that constitutional protection lets every racist killer own a military-grade gun. Bernard’s main thesis is that the Western colonial discourse of civilization versus barbarity has been corrosive to the point that our “civilization” is breaking down: “The illusion of civilization is one of the leading causes of suffering in the world. Ever since antiquity, this illusion has been responsible for devastating ills and endless crimes, in the ‘West’ as much as in the ‘East,’ and in the ‘other’ parts of the world. It is the principal driving force of imperial wars, world wars, and innumerable others. It is the lynch-pin of genocides.”85 It is important to be clear that he is not objecting to the conservation of ancient cultural artifacts or the study of them in a different framework: it is the illusions about Western civilization that have authorized wars and genocides. One might find a parallel in the Southern “Lost Cause” illusion. Yet Bernard holds out hope that post-citizens can be reeducated, and like many French intellectuals, he regularly publishes in newspapers and online. He advocates the teaching of history and philosophy beginning in grade school and throughout the education of the new citizens. In support of that solution, it is evident in reunited Germany that in the old Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD)—the West—the study in schools of the crimes against humanity of the Third Reich, including the Jewish Holocaust, preempted the rapid rise of a neo-Nazi movement, such as the one seen in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR)—the East—where these subjects had not been taught. Here in the United States of America, where a strategy of the right has been either to take over school boards or to home school their children, there seems no chance of educational reform. However, we do have the power of the internet. If the Alt Right has achieved so much through social media, we in academe might quietly put out sound bites about a different Middle Ages than the one that fuels white crusaderism—without being combative but with the aim of popularizing other aspects. And this must be preceded by continuing to study popular culture, garnering its manifestations in cyberspace, and making as strenuous an effort to understand its devotees as we do to understanding medieval believers. In light of such information, post-citizens of Charlottesville might well be surprised to learn that the shield with the German eagle was carried by many representations of the Black St. Maurice in the Middle Ages. Any popular website on fighting in the Middle Ages should not only mention battles and jousts but also the attitude of the Christian church that regarded most armed conflict as a symptom of bad government Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

217

and condemned the souls of combatants killed on the battle field to purgatory—even if they died on crusade. If we adopt Bernard’s advice, we will invert the old adage “enough of words” and use more words before we act. Strengthening humanistic discussion of words, sounds, and images might be a beginning, not as an alternative to action but as its conscience. We need “different ideas and words for the world, and for a citizenship that has to be reconstructed.”86

Notes 1. For a clear exposition of the theory of Zeitgeist to interpret all cultural phenomena, formed by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), see Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations, 28–29: “Working and thinking in a particular historical time and place, an artist (or artisan) of necessity makes his or her work conform to an essential ‘idea’ or spirit of the age.” 2. Caviness, “Feminist Project.” For a more recent assessment of the feminist contribution to philosophy, including recognition of “life situations such as the knower’s body, emotions, values and social roles,” see Gary Gutting, “Feminism and the Future of Philosophy,” The New York Times, September 18, 2017, https://‌nyti‌.ms‌/2jCgRfo. 3. Mâle, Art religieux du XIIe siècle. 4. Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. 5. Brian Stock, paraphrased by Middleton, “Medieval Studies,” 12–13. 6. According to Wikipedia, it now takes a total of forty-one years to qualify as a Chevalier de la Légion, beginning with twenty-five years distinguished service in a profession; Officier is below only the Grand Croix and the Grand Master. See https://​ ‌en‌.wikipedia‌.org‌/wiki‌/Émile‌_Mâle, and https://‌en‌​ .wikipedia‌.org‌/wiki‌/Legion‌_of‌_Honour. 7. Michel Zink (Secretaire Perpetuel of AIBL) in oral communication with the author, Paris, February 2019. 8. Mâle, Art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age, 485–89. 9. Moxey, Practice of  Theory, 51, 56. 10. Mâle, Art religieux du XIIe siècle, 151–85. Reassessments of Saint-Denis came from Watson, Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse, and later Kidson, “Panofsky, Suger and Saint-Denis.” 11. Moxey, Practice of  Theory, 75–78, fig. 2. 12. Adeline and Champfleury, Sculptures grotesques et symboliques, ii. Champfleury was the pen name for Jules François Felix Fleury-Husson (1821–1889). 13. Mâle, Art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age, 485–95. 14. Camille, Image on the Edge.

218

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

15. Camille, Gargoyles of Notre Dame. 16. Several reference works provide articles on critical concepts and practitioners, such as Makaryk, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory; Groden and Kreiswirth, Johns Hopkins Guide; and Payne, Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. 17. Wimsatt and Beardsley, “Intentional Fallacy.” 18. Barthes, Image Music Text, 142–48. 19. Fiercely defended by Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation. 20. White, Content of the Form. 21. Derrida, Of Grammatology. 22. Butler, Gender Trouble. 23. Gerda Panofsky-Soergel (Erwin Panofsky’s widow) in oral communication with the author, Index conference, Princeton, October 14, 2017. 24. See summary by Srinivasan, “De Man, Paul,” 134–35. 25. As Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney instigated the first attack on Iraq in 1991. Lynne Cheney was Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993. 26. Koopmans, “Kentish Pilgrims.” 27. Mellinkoff, Mark of Cain, and Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City. 28. Randall published her dissertation as Images in the Margins. 29. Randall, “Exempla as a Source,” and Sandler, “Bawdy Betrothal.” 30. Camille, Image on the Edge, 10. 31. Camille, Mirror in Parchment. 32. Caviness, “Patron or Matron.” 33. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion. 34. Barrett, “Ideology and the Cultural Production.” 35. Gerson, “Margins for Eros,” 50, fig. 11, cf. Camille, On the Edge, 54, fig. 24. 36. Fish, There’s No Such Thing, 115: “It is not that there are no choices to make or means of making them; it is just that the choices as well as the means are inextricable from the din and confusion of partisan struggle.” 37. Leo, Images, Texts, and Marginalia.

38. For example, Sandler, “Study of Marginal Imagery,” and Mellinkoff, Averting Demons. 39. Schapiro, “From Mozarabic to Romanesque,” and L’Orange, Art Forms and Civic Life. 40. Werckmeister, “Style and Ideology.” 41. Important unfinished work by Barbara AbouEl-Haj is presented by Michael Davis et al., The Lordship and Commune Project: A Collaboratory, at http://​ ‌www‌.medievalart‌.org‌/lordship‌-and‌-commune. 42. Williams, Bread, Wine and Money. 43. Hourihane, Medieval Patronage. 44. Werckmeister, Citadel Culture. 45. Ibid., 19. 46. Eagleton, “Deconstruction and Human Rights,” 122–24. 47. Ibid., 123. 48. Ibid., 124. 49. Miller, “Changing the Subject,” 5. 50. Eagleton, After Theory, 37. 51. Also eliciting some pragmatic responses: Frye, “Possibility of Feminist Theory,” and Moi, What Is a Woman? 52. Caviness, “(Ex)Changing Colors.” 53. Eagleton, After Theory, 2. 54. Fish, There’s No Such Thing, 102. 55. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that 1,747 of these monuments still stood in public spaces in 2018 (Whose Heritage?, 12; for updates, see http://​ ‌www‌.splcenter‌.org‌/whose‌-heritage). 56. During a lunch-time address to the American Council of Learned Societies, Lynne Cheney, then head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, declared that there was no “great” black literature. By 2006 I had my syllabus for a Women’s Studies course solicited by a student organization called Academic Freedom, and I became aware each year of a student who sat in the back, turned in no work, and dropped before the midterm. 57. Borland, “Immediacy of Objects,” and Easton, “Feminist Art History.” 58. Kumler and Lakey, “Res et Significatio.” 59. Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, 31–62. 60. Ibid., 2. 61. The term, of course, means more than the recognition of contributions by gay men: Burger and Kruger, Queering the Middle Ages. Binary gender theory had to be broken down by recognizing that gender is performative, as by Butler, Gender Trouble. 62. Spencer, Summer of Hate, 7. 63. For a chronology, see Nelson and Harold, Charlottesville 2017, ix–xvi. 64. Huneycutt et al., “Future of the Past.” The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America addressed “The Global Turn in Medieval Studies.”

65. See, for example, Dorothy Kim’s threads on the Facebook site SMFS—Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. 66. For example, the group Medievalists of Color, https://‌medievalistsofcolor‌.com. 67. Caviness, “From the Self-Invention of the Whiteman.” 68. Heng, Invention of Race. 69. Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability,” and Patton, Art of Estrangement. 70. His leather surcoat, leather apron, and short sword are not those of a knight. The Theban Legion led by St. Maurice would have been part of the Roman infantry, and later representations of standard and lance bearers are usually standing. See Heng, Invention of Race, 225, 234–35. 71. I have argued that “Black Madonnas” had a similar function (Caviness, “(Ex)changing Colors,” 569–70). 72. See, for example, Paul B. Sturtevant’s entries at https://‌www‌.publicmedievalist‌.com and articles on the Material Collective Facebook page. 73. Karen Overbey, “Towards the Ethical Practice of Art History,” Material Collective Facebook page, August 1, 2018. 74. Perry, introduction to Whose Middle Ages?, 6. 75. Diebold, “Nazi Middle Ages.” See also Diebold, “Early Middle Ages”; Caviness, “Germanophilia”; Caviness and Nelson, Women and Jews, chapter 6. 76. Spencer, Summer of Hate, 2. 77. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model. 78. For example, Medieval Warfare Magazine might supply inspiration and even mail order costumes and arms. 79. See https://‌en‌.wikipedia‌.org‌/wiki‌/Runic‌​ _insignia‌_of‌_the‌_Schutzstaffel. 80. See https://‌en‌.wikipedia‌.org‌/wiki‌/Fascist‌​ _symbolism. 81. Caviness and Nelson, Women and Jews, 300–391, fig. 6.2. 82. For the transcript of Trump’s press conference, see https://‌www‌.politifact‌.com‌/article‌/2019‌​ /apr‌/26‌/context‌-trumps‌-very‌-fine‌-people‌-both‌-sides‌​ -remarks. 83. Gaudet, “Baltimore’s Confederate Monuments.” 84. Bernard, Pour en finir, 104: “Le scientifique, qui ne voit pas au-delà de la porte de son laboratoire, a la sienne. Le journaliste, qui revendique une liberté absolue sans contraintes, a la sienne. . . . L’artiste, qui pretend tout se permettre, a la sienne.” 85. Ibid., 115: “L’illusion de la civilisation est l’une des causes premières des malheurs du monde. Depuis l’Antiquité, cette illusion est responsable de maux dévastateurs et de crimes sans fin, aussi bien en ‘Occident’ qu’en ‘Orient’ et dans le ‘reste du

Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

219

monde.’ C’est le moteur principal des guerres impériales, des guerres mondiales et de nombre d’autres. C’est la cheville ouvrière des genocides.” 86. Ibid., 149: “Renonçons d’abord à la vieille rengaine qui réclamait: ‘Assez de mots, des actes!’ et

renversons-la, car il nous faut précisément d’autres mots avant les actes. Des idées et des mots différents pour un monde et une citoyenneté à reconstruire.”

Bibliography Adeline, Jules, and Champfleury. Sculptures grotesques et symboliques: Rouen et environs. Rouen: E. Augé, 1879. Albin, Andrew, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O’Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, and Nina Rowe, eds. Whose Middle Ages? New York: Fordham University Press, 2019. Barrett, Michèle. “Ideology and the Cultural Production of Gender.” In Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class and Race in Literature and Culture, edited by Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt, 65–85. New York: Methuen, 1985. Barthes, Roland. Image Music Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Bernard, François de. Pour en finir avec la civilisation. Gap: Yves Michel, 2016. Borland, Jennifer. “The Immediacy of Objects: Assessing the Contribution of Art History to Feminist Medieval Studies.” Medieval Feminist Forum 44, no. 2 (2008): 53–73. Burger, Glenn, and Steven F. Kruger. Queering the Middle Ages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Camille, Michael. Gargoyles of Notre Dame: Medievalism and the Monsters of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. ———. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. ———. Mirror in Parchment: The Lutrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Caviness, Madeline H. “(Ex)Changing Colors: Queens of Sheba and Black Madonnas.” In Architektur und Monumentalskulptur des 12.–14. Jahrhunderts: Produktion und Rezeption; Festschrift für Peter Kurmann zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by S. Gasser, C. Freigang, and B. Boerner, 553–70. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. ———. “The Feminist Project: Pressuring the Medieval Object.” Frauen Kunst Wissenschaft 24 (1997): 13–21. ———. “From the Self-Invention of the Whiteman in the Thirteenth Century to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” Different Visions, A Journal of New

220

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Perspectives on Medieval Art 1 (2008). https://​ ‌differentvisions‌.org‌/wp‌-content‌/uploads‌/sites‌​ /1356‌/2020‌/03‌/Issue‌-1‌-Caviness‌-2‌.pdf. ———. “The Germanophilia of William Randolph Hearst and the Fate of His Collection.” In Collections of Stained Glass and Their Histories: Transactions of the 25th International Colloquium of the Corpus Vitrearum in Saint Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, 2010, edited by Timothy Ayers, Brigitte Kurmann-Schwarz, Claudine Lautier, and Hartmut Scholz, 175–92. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012. ———. “Patron or Matron: A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed.” In Studying Medieval Women, edited by Nancy Partner, 31–60, 175–81. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1993. Caviness, Madeline H., and Charles G. Nelson. Women and Jews in the Sachsenspiegel PictureBooks. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Collins, Patricia H., and Sirma Bilge. Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity, 2016. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Diebold, William J. “The Early Middle Ages in the Exhibition Deutsche Grosse (1940–1942).” In Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages, edited by J. Marquardt and A. A. Jordan, 363–86. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. ———. “The Nazi Middle Ages.” In Albin et al., Whose Middle Ages?, 104–15. Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. New York: Basic, 2003. ———. “Deconstruction and Human Rights.” In Freedom and Interpretation: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, edited by Barbara Johnson, 121–45. New York: Basic, 1993. Easton, Martha. “Feminist Art History and Medieval Iconography.” In The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography, edited by Colum Hourihane, 425–36. London: Routledge, 2017. Fish, Stanley Eugene. There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Frye, Marilyn. “The Possibility of Feminist Theory.” In Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference, edited by Deborah L. Rhode, 174–84. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Gaudet, Chris. “Baltimore’s Confederate Monuments Taken Down Overnight.” Baltimore Patch, August 16, 2017. https://patch.com​ /maryland/baltimore/baltimores-confederate​ -monuments-taken-down-overnight-reports. Gerson, Paula. “Margins for Eros.” Romance Languages Annual 5 (1993): 47–51. Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth, eds. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Hoffman, Eva R. “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century.” Art History 24, no. 1 (2001): 17–50. Holly, Michael Ann. Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. Hourihane, Colum, ed. Medieval Patronage: Power and Agency in Medieval Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Huneycutt, Lois, et al. “The Future of the Past: Students Finding Crusaders and Nazis.” Southern Historical Association 84th Annual Meeting, 2018, Birmingham, AL. Kidson, Peter. “Panofsky, Suger and Saint-Denis.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): 1–17. Koopmans, Rachel. “Kentish Pilgrims in Canterbury Cathedral’s Miracle Windows.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 80 (2017): 1–27. Kumler, Aden, and Christopher R. Lakey. “Res et Significatio: The Material Sense of Things in the Middle Ages.” Gesta 51, no. 1 (2012): 1–17. Leo, Domenic. Images, Texts, and Marginalia in a “Vows of the Peacock” Manuscript (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS G24): With a Complete Concordance and Catalogue of Peacock Manuscripts. Leiden: Brill, 2013. L’Orange, H. P. Art Forms and Civic Life in the Late Roman Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. Makaryk, Irena R., ed. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Mâle, Émile. L’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Age. 5th ed. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1949. Originally published in 1908.

———. L’art religieux du XIIe siècle en France: Étude sur les origines de l’iconographie du Moyen Age. 6th rev. and corr. ed. Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1953. Originally published in 1922. Mellinkoff, Ruth. Averting Demons: The Protective Power of Medieval Visual Motifs and Themes. 2 vols. Los Angeles: Ruth Mellinkoff, 2004. ———. The Mark of Cain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Middleton, Anne. “Medieval Studies.” In Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, 12–40. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1992. Miller, Nancy. “Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing and the Reader.” In What Is an Author?, edited by Maurice Biriotti and Nicola Miller, 19–41. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Moi, Toril. What Is a Woman? And Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Moxey, Keith. The Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Nelson, Louis P., and Claudrena N. Harold, eds. Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2018. Panofsky, Erwin. Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. Cleveland: Meridian, 1957. Patton, Pamela A. Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2012. Payne, Michael, ed. A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. Malden: Blackwell, 1997. Perry, David. Introduction to Whose Middle Ages?, edited by Albin et al., 1–8. Randall, Lilian M. C. “Exempla as a Source of Gothic Marginal Illumination.” Art Bulletin 39 (1957): 97–107. ———. Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts. California Studies in the History of Art 4. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Rowe, Nina. The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. “A Bawdy Betrothal in the Ormesby Psalter.” In A Tribute to Lotte Brand Phillip, edited by W. Clark, C. Eisler, W. Heckscher, and B. Lane, 154–59. New York: Abaris, 1985. ———. “The Study of Marginal Imagery: Past, Present, and Future.” Studies in Iconography 18 (1997): 1–49. Schapiro, Meyer. “From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos.” Art Bulletin 21 (1939): 312–74.

Iconography Deconstructed, from Mâle to the Alt Right

221

Smith, Kathryn Ann. Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours. The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture. London: British Library, 2003. Southern Poverty Law Center. Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy. Montgomery: SPLC, 2018. http://‌www‌.splcenter‌.org‌/whose‌​ -heritage. Spencer, Hawes. Summer of Hate: Charlottesville, USA. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2018. Srinivasan, Shiva Kumar. “De Man, Paul.” In Payne, A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, 134–35. Watson, Arthur. The Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934. Werckmeister, Otto K. Citadel Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991 (German ed. 1989).

222

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

———. “Style and Ideology: The Image of the ‘Jugglers’ in the Beatus of Silos.” In Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, edited by Elizabeth Sears and Thelma K. Thomas, 128–39. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. White, Hayden V. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Whitman, James Q. Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Williams, Jane. Bread, Wine and Money: The Windows of the Trades at Chartres Cathedral. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Wimsatt, W. K., and M. C. Beardsley. “The Intentional Fallacy.” Sewanee Review 54, no. 3 (1946): 468–88.

Contributors Madeline H. Caviness is Mary Richardson Professor Emeritus of Tufts University, where she taught courses in art history, gender studies, and comparative religion. She was born and educated in England and earned a doctorate in art history at Harvard. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she is a fellow and former president of the Medieval Academy of America. She has served as president of the Union Académique Internationale, to which she was a delegate from the American Council of Learned Societies from 1984 to 2019, and as president of the international board for one of its projects, the Corpus Vitrearum. Her most recent book, coauthored with Charles G. Nelson, is Women and Jews in the Sachsenspiegel Picture-books. Her other books include Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle and Scopic Economy (Japanese translation by Kumiko Tanaka), Art in the Medieval West and Its Audience, and The Windows of Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury. Since 1963, she has published over one hundred articles in scholarly journals and collections. Catherine Fernandez is an Art History Specialist at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. Her research interests center on medieval treasuries, the afterlife of antique gems, and Romanesque architectural sculpture. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Charlemagne’s Pectoral: The Medieval Afterlife of the Gemma Augustea at Saint-Sernin of Toulouse. Beatrice Kitzinger is Associate Professor of Medieval Art in the Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University. Her current research is supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Harold Willis Dodds University Preceptorship; her book in progress concerns the functions of visual narrative in Carolingian illumination. Kitzinger is the author of The Cross, the Gospels, and the Work of Art in the Carolingian Age, coeditor of After the Carolingians: Re-defining Manuscript Illumination in the 10th and 11th Centuries, and a series editor for Sense, Matter, and Medium: New Approaches to Medieval Literary and Material Culture. Aden Kumler is the Professor for Ältere Kunstgeschichte at the Universität Basel. Before joining the University of Basel, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Translating Truth: Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and England and has written on topics ranging from illuminated manuscripts to the medieval origins of the waffle. Her current book project examines the mutually emulative material forms and theorizations of coins, seals, and the Eucharist over the medieval longue durée.

Christopher R. Lakey is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art at Johns Hopkins University. He received his doctorate in the history of art from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds an MA in medieval studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. Lakey’s research interests include the relationship between art and science in the Middle Ages, the history of sculpture and sculptural aesthetics, and the history of visual theory from antiquity through the Renaissance. His first book, Sculptural Seeing: Relief, Optics, and the Rise of Perspective in Italy, was a finalist for the ICMA Book Award in 2019. Pamela A. Patton is Director of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. Her field of research is the visual culture of the medieval Iberian peninsula. She is the author of Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain and editor of Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, among others. Glenn Peers is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Music Histories, Syracuse University. He is the author of Orthodox Magic in Trebizond and Beyond: A Fourteenth-Century Greco-Arabic Amulet Roll and Animism, Materiality and Museums: How Do Byzantine Things Feel? He is currently writing a book on Byzantine media subjects and on disability studies in relation to Byzantine art history, as well as collaborative projects on Byzantine tree life (with Thomas Arentzen and Virginia Burrus) and on Isaac of Antioch’s verse sermon concerning a theologically inspired parrot (with Robert Kitchen). During the 2020/21 academic year, he was a fellow in residence at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA. Jennifer Purtle is Associate Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art History in the Department of History of Art at the University of Toronto. She is author of Peripheral Vision: Fujian Painting in Chinese Empires, 909–1646, Reading Revolution: Art and Literacy During China’s Cultural Revolution, and articles and essays published in journals such as Art History, Journal of Asian Studies, Medieval Encounters, and Medieval Globe, as well as in volumes of collected essays edited by James Elkins, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Jerome Silbergeld, Eugene Wang, and Wu Hung, among others. She served as Principal Investigator of the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories Project “Global and Postglobal Perspectives on Medieval Art and Art History” (2014–17) and is currently completing a book-length manuscript, Forms of Cosmopolitanism in Sino-Mongol Quanzhou. Elizabeth Sears is George H. Forsyth Jr. Collegiate Professor of History of Art at the University of Michigan. Trained in the Warburgian tradition, she specializes in Western medieval art—Carolingian to Gothic—and disciplinary historiography. In a series of studies, she has investigated the life and work of figures including Aby Warburg, Adolph Goldschmidt, Ernst Steinmann, Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind, W. S. Heckscher, H. W. Janson, Jean Seznec, and Raymond Klibansky, and she is now completing a book, Warburg Circles, set in the years 1929 to 1964, treating the intellectual movement that traced its origins to the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg. Her recent work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and residential fellowships in Rome (British School), Hamburg (Warburg Haus), Berlin (American Academy), Washington (CASVA), and New York (Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library).

224

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Index Italicized page references indicate illustrations. Endnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the endnote number. Aachen, ivory book cover, 102–3, 103 Abel (biblical figure), 71, 73, 157 Abelard, Peter, 36 Abou-El-Haj, Barbara, 207 Abu-Lughod, Janet, 180 Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 17 Adam and Eve, 71, 72, 75, 157, 158 Adam of the Petit Pont, 49, 55n30 Adoration of the Magi. See Epiphany iconography Adorno, Theodor, 77 Alhazen, 70 altarpieces, 24 Alt Right, 208–9, 210, 211, 212, 215–17 Ambrose of Milan, 115–16n14 Angelico, Fra, Nativity, 66, 68 arboreal schemes. See Porphyrian Tree architecture, and embodied space, 62–63, 64–65 Argan, Marxist Gulio Carlo, 69 Aristotle, 39 Analytica priora, 49 Categories, 36 Art Bulletin (journal), 13–14, 20, 24 Artemius, 138–39 Aśoka, 170 Athanasios I, Patriarch, 141 Augustine, 96 Contra Faustum, 24 De Genesi ad litteram, 69–70 De trinitate, 69 Barisianus of Trani, 154 Barr, Alfred H., Jr., 28n37 Barthes, Roland, 136, 197 Baschet, Jérôme, 85–86n84 Baxandall, Michael, 115n8 Beadle, Richard, 115n3 Beatson, Elizabeth, 25, 25 Benhong, 148 See also Kaiyuan si Temple, Quanzhou Bernard, François de, 216–17, 219–20nn84–86 Bernard of Clairvaux, 115n3, 201 Berthold Missal, 112, 114 Bleeke, Marian, 212 Bloch, Marc, 182–83n20 Bober, Harry, 30n92

bodies, defined, 142n2 See also Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics Boeckler, Albert, 162–63, 164–65, 185–86nn56–58 Boethius, 36 Bonanus of Pisa, 148, 156, 157, 184n39 See also Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale Boucher, Guillaume, 188n104 Boucicaut Master, 104–5, 106, 107 Brahmanic temple architecture, 156, 159 Bruno of Segni, 71, 76 De laudibus ecclesiae, 74 Buddhist temples. See Kaiyuan si Temple, Fuzhou; Kaiyuan si Temple, Quanzhou; Qixia si Temple, Nanjing Burke, William, 9, 22, 26n4 Byzantine Fresco Chapel, Houston, Menil Collection, 123, 124 Byzantinizing designs, 157, 185n41 CAA (College Art Association), 13, 27n27 Cain (biblical figure), 71, 73, 75, 76, 157 Camille, Michael, 2, 3, 36, 76–77, 79, 116–17n30, 196, 202, 202, 204–6 Canterbury Cathedral, 205 capitals, 80–82, 83 cartography, 63 Cassidy, Brendan, 26 Cassirer, Ernst, 66–67 Champfleury, 201, 218n12 Chapel of the Cross, Hohenburg, 93, 94 Charlottesville, VA march (2017), 210, 211, 212, 215–17 Cheney, Dick, 203, 218n25 Cheney, Lynne, 203, 218n25, 219n56 Chora, Church of. See Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics Christ bearing a Cross iconography, 15–16 Crucifixion iconography, 66, 93–96, 95 dispensation of mercy, 141–42, 143n48 Epiphany iconography (see Epiphany iconography) healing iconography (see Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics) Incarnation iconography, 105, 108 Nativity iconography, 66, 67, 68, 97, 98, 104, 105, 106, 109, 162 Cimabue, 185n41 Cleaver, Laura, 55n34

cloth and curtains, 104, 105, 116nn28–29 Cole, Andrew, 53n5 College Art Association (CAA), 13, 27n27 Conant, Kenneth John, 28n36 Constable, W. G., 21 Cook, Walter W. S., 21 Coronation of Mary iconography, 21, 115n9 Craven, David, 77 Crisafulli, Virgil S., 139 Crowther, Paul, 65 Crucifixion iconography, 66, 93–96, 95 crusaderism, 210 Curschmann, Michael, 26 curtains and cloth, 104, 105, 116nn28–29 deconstruction criticism of, 203, 207–8 as liberating, 202, 204–6 and Mâle, 196–202 populist neo-liberal appropriation of, 208–9, 217 Demiéville, Paul, 160, 163–65, 178–79, 183n25, 186n72, 187n80, 187n86, 187n95 Derrida, Jacques, 207 DeWald, Ernst, 2 Dialectica (personification), 42–44, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48–50 dialectics, 36 See also Porphyrian Tree Didron, Adolphe Napoléon, 36 Diebold, William, 212, 215 disability studies, 121–22, 137, 140 disabled, the. See Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics Dongchan dengjue Monastery, Fuzhou, 179 drawing, act of, 82 Drège, Jean-Pierre, 186n64 Drogo Sacramentary, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 109, 113 Dufrenne, Suzy, 142n20 Dürer, Albrecht, Melencolia I, 18, 197, 199, 201 Dynes, Wayne, 85n78 Eagleton, Terry, 207–8, 216 Ecke, Gustav, 178, 183n25, 185n45, 187n80 Efthymiades, Stephanos, 137 Egbert, Virginia Wylie, 24 El-Bizri, Nader, 70 Elsner, Jaś, 66, 67 embodied vision and art history’s interest in space, 60–65 and bodily movement, 62–63, 65, 69, 70, 74, 77, 80, 82 as concept, 59–60 and iconological analysis of Modena Cathedral, 61, 72, 73, 74–76 medieval understanding of, 69–70 and phenomenological analysis of Sainte-Marie reliefs, 61, 78–80, 79, 81 and phenomenological analysis of Saint-Pierre capital, 80–82, 83 Epiphany iconography

226

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Aachen ivory book cover, 102–3, 103 Berthold Missal, 112, 114 Boucicaut Hours, 104–5, 107 Drogo Sacramentary, 97, 99, 100, 104, 105, 109, 113 Exarch Isaac sarcophagus, 100, 100 Franks Casket, 111, 111–12 Fulda Sacramentary, 116n28 Lombard gilt copper plaque, 109–11, 110, 112, 117n35 Manchester ivory book cover, 116n24 Metz ivory book cover, 100–102, 101, 104, 116n21 Metz ivory box, 117n35 recognition theme, 96–97 equestrian statues, 210, 211, 214, 215 Eriugena, John Scotus, 43 Evans, M. W., 55n27 Eve and Adam, 71, 72, 75, 157, 158 Ezekiel (prophet), 169 Fields, James Alex, Jr., 212 Fish, Stanley, 206, 208, 218n36 Flanagan, Bob, 140 Fleming, John V., 2 Flexner, Abraham, 21 fragmentation acceptance of, 76–77 and disability studies, 121–22, 137, 140 restorations, 123, 124, 125 strangeness and queerness in, 125–26 textual reconciliation of, 76 and vandalism, 142n5 See also Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics Francke, Meister, Man of Sorrows, 108, 116–17n30 Frankfurt School, 77 Franks Casket, 111, 111–12 Frederick Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor, 212, 214 frescoes, 123, 124, 125 Freudian psychoanalysis, 77, 195, 204–5 Friend, Albert M., 2, 10, 19, 26n10, 27n13 Fulda Sacramentary, 116n28 Fuzhou, 179 Gabriel (angel), 91–92, 125 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 60 Gall, Robert, 93, 94 gargoyles, 201–2, 202 Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, 142n5 Gassaway, William T., 143n50 Geminianus, Saint, 71 Genesis narrative, 71, 72, 73, 74–75 genetic criticism, 39–42, 41 Gerson, Paula, 205 Glass, Dorothy, 71, 75 Global Middle Ages, approaches to, 150–52, 180–81 Glossa Ordinaria, 75 God, will of, 143n48 See also Christ Goes, Hugo van der, altarpiece, 24 Goffman, Erving, 141 Goldschmidt, Adolph, 18, 116n21

Grammar (personification), 42, 44 Granger, Penny, 116n22 Green, Rosalie, 22, 22, 25, 25, 30n88, 94 Hagens, Adelaide Bennett, 25, 25 Harris, Kamala, 209 healing, by saints, 138–39, 141 See also Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics Heckscher, William, 84n35, 199 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 36, 53n5, 195 Heidegger, Martin, 64, 78 He Mei, 188n111 Heng, Geraldine, 210 hernias, 134, 135, 136, 138–39, 141 Herrad von Hohenburg, Hortus Deliciarum, 93–96, 95 Heyer, Heather, 212 Hildebrand, Adolf von, 61–62 Hildesheim Cathedral, 157 Hitler, Adolf, 215, 216 Hohenburg, Chapel of the Cross, 93, 94 Holly, Michael Ann, 2, 59, 60, 76, 82 Honorius of Autun, 70 Hourihane, Colum, 26 Houston, Menil Collection, 123, 124, 125 Huang Shougong, 155 Huang Xiufu, Yizhou minghua lu, 182n9 Husserl, Edmund, 67, 77 IAS (Institute for Advanced Study), 10, 21, 29n72 iconographic studies comparative approach, 150–52, 182–83nn17–20 (see also Kaiyuan si Temple, Quanzhou; Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale) deconstruction (see deconstruction) dialectic approach (see Porphyrian Tree) in Europe, early-twentieth century, 16–18, 28n44 of fragments (see fragmentation) Morey’s approach, 13–16, 15, 28nn31–33, 28n36 Panofsky’s approach, 18–19, 20, 23–24, 66–67, 84n35, 151, 159 reputation of iconography vs. iconology, 35–36 response to Alt Right medievalism, 210, 212, 217 spatial approach (see embodied vision) temporal approach (see temporality) “Iconography at the Crossroads” (1990 conference), 2–3 “Iconography in a New Century: The Index at 100” (2017 conference), 3–4 iconology European origins, 17, 18, 84n35 in Panofsky’s work, 23–24, 66–67, 84n35, 151, 159 reputation of, vs. iconography, 35–36 al-Idrisi, Kitāb nuzhat al-mushtāq fi’ikhtirāq al-āfāq, 155, 183–84n31 Incarnation iconography, 105, 108 Index of Christian Art. See Index of Medieval Art Index of Medieval Art challenges in 1980s, 2, 25–26 classification system development, 12–13, 16, 28n41

establishment, 1, 9 female staff, 12, 25, 25, 27n24 historical overview, 1–3 Morey’s promotion of, 15–16 Panofsky’s influence on, 11 Panofsky’s use of, 21–22, 22 subject cards, 11, 12, 12, 13 inscriptions, philological vs. iconographic analysis, 160, 162, 163–65 Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), 10, 21, 29n72 International Society for Iconographical Studies, 17 Isaac the Armenian, sarcophagus, 100 Islamic architectural design, 155 Ivins, William, 20 ivories book cover, Aachen, 102–3, 103 book cover, Manchester, 116n24 book cover, Metz, 100–102, 101, 104, 116n21 box, Metz, 117n35 Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 96–97 January 6 insurrection (2021), 216 Jeanne d’Evreux, Queen of France, 205 Jellinek, Arthur L., 17, 28n48 Jesus. See Christ Joyner, Danielle B., 115n14 Justi, Carl, 28n46 Kaiyuan si Temple, Fuzhou, 179 Kaiyuan si Temple, Quanzhou, 149, 154, 160, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175 narrative program, 167, 168–73, 186–87nn72–76 philological analysis, 160, 163–65 sculptural style, 157–59 similarities with Santa Maria Nuova, 152–56 textual sources informing, 163, 164, 177, 178–80, 186n63, 187n95, 188n97 Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics bleeding woman scene, 131, 132, 133 Deesis panel, 129, 131 details of the disabled, 135–36 dignity of the disabled, 136–37, 141 dispensation of mercy, 141–42 herniated man scene, 135, 136, 138, 141 indeterminacies of, 136, 137, 140 invalid at the Pool of Bethesda scene, 138, 139 leper scene, 126–31, 130, 141 multitude scene, 133–35, 134 scholarship on, 131–33 supplication and deliverance interpretation, 139 Katzenellenbogen, Adolf, 55n30, 55n32 KBW (Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg), 9, 18, 19, 21 Kessler, Herbert, 2 Knaus, Hermann, 54n22, 55n30 Knipp, David, 132, 143n35 Koch, Robert, 24 Koerner, Joseph Leo, 2 Kondakoff, Nikodim, 28n46 Kraus, Franz Xaver, 14, 28n46

Index

227

Lafond, Jean, 196 Lamech killing Cain, 71, 73, 75, 76 Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg, 2, 28n44 Lee, Rensselaer W., 27n24 Lee, Robert E., 210, 211, 215 Leo, Dominic, 206 leprosy, 126–31, 130, 141 Liu Sahe, 170 Lombardy, gilt copper plaque, 109–11, 110, 112, 117n35 L’Orange, H. P., 207 Lorenz, Katharina, 66, 67 Lorsch Gospels, 102 Love, Nicholas, 115n3 Magdeburg Cathedral, 212, 213 Magdeburger Rider, 212, 214, 215 Magi. See Epiphany iconography Mâle, Émile, 36, 196–202, 198 Ma Lin, Listening to the Wind in the Pines, 159, 161 Man, Paul de, 203, 207 Manchester, ivory book cover, 116n24 Mandach, C. de, 17, 28n46 manuscript culture vs. print culture, 175, 178–80 manuscript marginalia, 204–6, 206 manuscripts Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Class. 5: 55n27 Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, Cod. 189: 51 Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 2282: 42, 43, 44, 49–52 Frankfurt, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Ms. Barth. 180: 100–102, 101, 104 London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian D.viii: 115n1 London, Wellcome Library, MS 55: 37, 38–39 New York, The Morgan Library & Museum MS M.710: 112, 114 MS M.754: 205–6, 206 MS M.982r: 42, 45, 46 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 176: 102–3, 103 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MS lat. 3110: 55n27 MS lat. 7900A: 43, 47, 48–49 MS lat. 9388: 116n20, 116n25 MS lat. 9428: 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 109, 113 Paris, Bibl. Sainte-Geneviève, MS 1041: 42, 44 Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, MS 2: 104–5, 106, 107 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 3548: 116n28 marginalia, 202, 204–6, 205, 206 maritime networks, 148, 150, 155 Marquand, Allan, 28n44 Marrow, James, 105 Martianus Capella, 36 De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii, 42–43, 46–48 Martin of Laon, 43 Marucchi, Orazio, 12, 27n19

228

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Marx, Karl, 36 Marxist or Social Art History, 77, 84n20, 195, 204, 207 Mary. See Virgin Mary Mather, Frank Jewett, 2, 19, 28n37 Maurice, St., 212, 213, 217, 219n70 McIntire, Paul Goodloe, 210 Meiss, Millard, 24, 30n88 Melania (Maria Palaiologina), 131, 132 Mellinkoff, Ruth, 204 Menil Collection, Houston, 123, 124, 125 Meredith, Peter, 115n2 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 64, 65, 69, 70, 78, 82 Metropolitan Museum Studies (journal), 20 Metz Drogo Sacramentary, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 109, 113 ivory book cover, 100–102, 101, 104, 116n21 ivory box, 117n35 Michael (angel), 125 Michele del Giudice, 154 Midrash Tanhuma, 75 Milan, silver casket of San Nazaro, 28n39 Miller, Nancy, 208 Modena Cathedral, 61, 71–75, 72, 73 modernist movement, 195 Moissac, Saint-Pierre, 80–82, 83 Monreale, 155 See also Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale Morey, Charles Rufus, 11 approach to iconography, 13–16, 15, 28nn31–33, 28n36 archeological pursuits, 13, 27n25 career overview, 11–13, 27n18 early relationship with Panofsky, 9–10, 19–20, 21 establishment of Index of Christian Art, 1, 9 mentioned, 2, 36 Morgan, Nigel, 26 mosaics Santa Maria Nuova, 155, 157, 158, 184n35 See also Kariye Camii (Church of the Chora), healing mosaics movement, bodily, 62–63, 65, 69, 70, 74, 77, 80, 82 Moxey, Keith, 2, 3, 69, 197, 199, 203 Müntz, Eugène, 16–17 Nativity iconography, 66, 67, 68, 97, 98, 104, 105, 106, 109, 162 See also Epiphany iconography Nazi symbolism, 211, 215–16 Nelson, Robert, 131, 132–33 Nemesius of Emesa, 70 neo-Nazi movement, 209, 211, 212, 215–16 Nesbitt, John W., 139 Neumeyer, Alfred, 23, 30n84 New Vienna school, 77–78, 85n75 Nicolas of Myra, 24 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 36 Noah (biblical figure), 71, 73

N-Town Annunciation, 91–92, 115nn2–3 Nye, Phila C., 27n24 NYU (New York University), 9, 19, 21 Obama, Barack, 209 oculos caliginosos (cloudy vision), 75–76 O’Donnell, C. Oliver, 64, 84n28 Ousterhout, Robert, 131 Overbey, Karen, 212 Pächt, Otto, 29n68, 77–78 paintings and embodied space, 62, 64–65, 74 frescoes, 123, 124, 125 Panofsky, Erwin, 200 approach to iconography and iconology, 18–19, 20, 23–24, 66–67, 84n35, 151, 159 career overview, 18, 19–21, 29n50 early relationship with Morey, 9–10, 19–20, 21 the Index, use of, 21–22, 22 influence of, 10–11, 36 mentioned, 2, 196 on Morey, 10, 15 on perspective, 63 and Wilhelm (von Reutter), 21, 30n77 Paris, Saint-Denis Abbey Church, 198, 199 Paschal II, Pope, 71 Paulinus of Nola, 70, 80 Pausanius, 182n9 perspective, one-point,63 Peter of Spain, 36, 54n12 Tractatus (Summule logicales), 38 Peter the Venerable, 71 phenomenology, 59, 64, 69, 77, 78 See also embodied vision philology, 160, 163–65 Pickard, John, 27n27 pictorial field, 79–80 pictorial narrative, 92–93 Pinder, Wilhelm, 63 Pisa Cathedral, 162, 184n39 Pisano, Nicola, Nativity, 66, 67 plaques, 109–11, 110, 112, 117n35 Plato, 39, 49 Pliny the Elder, 182n9 Poilpré, Anne-Orange, 116n25 Polo, Marco, 159, 182n19 populist neo-liberalism, 208–9, 217 Porphyrian Tree as concept, 36–39 designs, 37, 43, 44, 51 Dialectica represented in, 42, 49–50 individuals (specialissimi) represented in, 39, 50–52 and stemmatic diagrams (stemmata), 39–42, 41 Porphyry, Isagoge, 36 Porter, Arthur Kingsley, 10, 28n33 poststructuralist movement, 2, 195 Powell, John, 212 Princeton University, 9, 10, 11, 19, 21 print culture vs. manuscript culture, 175, 178–80

Pugh, Catherine, 216 punctum, 135–36 Qixia si Temple, Nanjing, 157 Quanzhou, 148, 150, 155, 159, 183n30, 184n31 See also Kaiyuan si Temple, Quanzhou queer reading, 125–26, 140, 205–6 Quinn, Marc, Alison Lapper Pregnant, 126, 127 race, 210–12, 213, 215 Ragusa, Isa, 25, 25, 26, 30n92 Rancière, Jacques, 136 Randall, Lillian, 204 Ravenna Exarch Isaac sarcophagus, 100, 100 Quiricus and Judith reliquary, 100 Réau, Louis, 36 recognition, theme of, 96–97 reliefs and embodied space, 62, 65, 74, 80 Franks Casket, 111, 111–12 Lombard gilt copper plaque, 109–11, 110, 112, 117n35 Modena Cathedral, 61, 71–75, 72, 73 Sainte-Marie, Souillac, 61, 76–77, 79, 81 silver casket of San Nazaro, 28n39 See also ivories; Kaiyuan si Temple, Quanzhou; Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale Remigius of Auxerre, 43 Rhetoric (personification), 42, 44 Riegl, Alois, 14, 28n32, 78, 123 Robb, David M., 28n36 Rodin, Auguste, 14 Rome, Santa Maria Antiqua, 12, 12, 13 Rosand, David, 82 Rossi, Giovanni Battista de, 12, 143n35 Rowe, Nina, 204 Sachs, Paul, 21 Saint-Denis Abbey Church, Paris, 198, 199 Sainte-Marie, Souillac, 61, 76–77, 79, 81 Saint-Pierre, Moissac, 80–82, 83 San Nazaro silver casket, Milan, 28n39 Sanskrit, 164, 173 Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, 12, 12, 13 Santa Maria Nuova, Monreale, 149, 153, 158, 169 iconographic analysis, 160–63, 164–65 narrative program, 165–68, 166, 173 sculptural style, 156–57 similarities with Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, 152–56 textual sources informing, 175, 176 sarcophagi, 12, 12, 13, 100, 100 Saxl, Fritz, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 29n56 Schapiro, Meyer, 23, 36, 76–82, 83, 85n75, 85n83, 204, 207 Schiller, Gertrud, 36 Schlosser, Julius von, 28n46 Schmarsow, August, 17, 28n46, 62–63 Schramm, Percy Ernst, 26n10 Schroeder, Rossitza, 131–32

Index

229

Schwarz, Martin, 54n21, 55n34 sculpture and embodied space, 61–62, 64–65, 74 equestrian statues, 210, 211, 214, 215 gargoyles, 201–2, 202 sarcophagi, 12, 12, 13, 100, 100 strangeness and queerness in, 126 See also reliefs Sedlymayr, Hans, 77–78 Sicily, 148, 150, 155, 184n32 Siebers, Tobin, 121, 122, 126, 136, 142n2, 142n5 sight. See embodied vision Skinner, Patricia, 142n9 Smith, E. Baldwin, 10, 19, 28n44 Smith, Holmes, 27n27 Smith, Kathryn, 205 socioeconomics, 78–79 Socrates, 39, 49–51, 52 Solevåg, Anna Rebecca, 138 Souillac, Sainte-Marie, 61, 76–77, 79, 81 spatial turn, 60–65 See also embodied vision Spencer, Richard B., 209, 210 standpoints, 65, 70, 79, 80 statues, 210, 211, 214, 215, 216 stemmatic diagrams (stemmata), 39–42, 41 Stock, Brian, 197 Stohlman, W. Frederick, 27n29 Stonewall riots (1969), 210 structuralism, 77 Strzygowski, Josef, 14, 28n31 Suger, Abbot, 198, 199 Summers, David, 64, 65, 74, 80, 84n28 Tancheng, 170 Taney, Roger B., 216 Taylor, Francis Henry, 21, 29n73 temporality in Crucifixion iconography, 94–96, 95 expectation in progression from Nativity to Epiphany, 97, 98, 99, 100, 104–5, 106, 107 facilitated by medium, 112–15 fusion of Nativity and Epiphany, 109–11, 110, 112 sequential and unified narratives in book covers, 101, 101–3, 103 in theater, 91–92 Teteriatnikov, Natalia, 131, 132, 142–43n21 theater, 91–92 Theoktistos the Stoudite, 141, 142 Theoleptus of Philadelphia, 132 Theophilus, 78, 79 Tikannen, J. J., 28n46 Tilghman, Benjamin, 112 time. See temporality Tolnay, Charles de, 19 Tripiṭaka, 179–80, 188n111 Trump, Donald, 216 Underwood, Paul, 132–33, 142n20 University of Hamburg, 9, 18

230

Iconography Beyond the Crossroads

Upson-Saia, Kristi, 142n16 Urban II, Pope, 71 Valéry, Paul, 82 vandalism, 142n5 Vasari, Giorgio, 182n9, 185n41 Venturi, Adolfo, 28n44, 28n46 Venus de Milo, 126, 128 Verboon, Annemieke, 39, 55n32 Virgin Mary Coronation iconography, 21, 115n9 in dreams, 155 Epiphany iconography (see Epiphany iconography) Nativity iconography, 66, 67, 68, 97, 98, 104, 105, 106, 109, 162 in N-Town Annunciation, 91–92 vision. See embodied vision Vöge, Wilhelm, 18, 20 Walafrid Strabo, 76 Wald, Ernest de, 19 Wang Chao, 179 Wang Hanfeng, 187n76 Warburg, Aby, 18, 19, 20, 30n84, 36, 84n35, 159 Warburg, Felix, 19 Warburg Library for Cultural Science (KBW), 9, 18, 19, 21 Weingarten, Berthold Missal, 112, 114 Weitzmann, Kurt, 2, 54n18 Weland the Smith, 112 Werckmeister, Otto Karl, 206–7 whalebone, Franks Casket, 111, 111–12 Whitaker, Cord, 212 white supremacists, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215–16 Whose Middle Ages?, 212 Wickhoff, Franz, 14 Wilhelm (von Reutter), Pia, 21, 30n77 Wiligelmus, 71, 74, 75 William of Rubruck, 188n104 William II of Sicily, 155 Williams, Jane Welch, 207 Williams, John, 77 Williams, Maggie, 212 Wilpert, Josef, 27n22 Wölfflin, Heinrich, 62, 67, 84n11, 151 Wood, Christopher S., 85n75 Woodruff, Helen, 13, 16, 21, 22, 27n24 Wu Hung, 186n66 xiaoxiang, 178–79 Yijing, 187n74 Yolande of Soissons, 187n80 Young, Helen, 212 Zachariah (prophet), 169 Zhang Yanyuan, Lidai minghua ji, 182n9 Zhao Rugua, Zhufan zhi, 155, 184n32 Zizheng, 154