The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography 1472459474, 9781472459473

Citation preview

THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO MEDIEVAL ICONOGRAPHY

Sometimes enjoying considerable favor, sometimes less, iconography has been an essential element in medieval art historical studies since the beginning of the discipline. Some of the greatest art historians – including Mâle, Warburg, Panofsky, Morey, and Schapiro – have devoted their lives to understanding and structuring what exactly the subject matter of a work of medieval art can tell. Over the last thirty or so years, scholarship has seen the meaning and methodologies of the term considerably broadened. This companion provides a state-of-the-art assessment of the influence of the foremost iconographers, as well as the methodologies employed and themes that underpin the discipline. The first section focuses on influential thinkers in the field, while the second covers some of the best-known methodologies; the third, and largest section, looks at some of the major themes in medieval art. Taken together, the three sections include thirty-eight chapters, each of which deals with an individual topic. An introduction, historiographical evaluation, and bibliography accompany the individual essays. The authors are recognized experts in the field, and each essay includes original analyses and/or case studies which will hopefully open the field for future research. Colum Hourihane received his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in 1983 for a thesis on the iconography of Gothic art in Ireland, part of which was subsequently published as Gothic Art in Ireland 1169–1550: Enduring Vitality (2003). He was deputy director of the Witt Computer Index in the Courtauld Institute until 1997 before becoming director of the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, where he was until retirement in 2014. He has edited over twenty volumes of art historical studies and has single-authored five volumes. Among the latter are The Processional Cross in Late Medieval England: The Dallye Cross (2005) and Pontius Pilate, Anti-Semitism, and the Passion in Medieval Art (2009). A fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Irish Academy in 2015.

THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO MEDIEVAL ICONOGRAPHY

Edited by Colum Hourihane

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Colum Hourihane; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Colum Hourihane to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-4724-5947-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-29837-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of figures and plates Preface Biographical notes on the contributors

ix xviii xxi

Medieval iconography, an introduction Colum Hourihane

1

PART I

The great iconographers

9

1 Andrea Alciato Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

11

2 Ripa, the trinciante Cornelia Logemann

32

3 Adolphe-Napoléon Didron (Paris 1867–Hautvilliers 1906) Emilie Maraszak

47

4 Louis Réau Daniel Russo

57

5 Émile Mâle Kirk Ambrose

65

6 Aby M. Warburg: iconographer? Peter van Huisstede

75

v

Contents

7 Fritz Saxl: transformation and reconfiguration of pagan gods in medieval art Katia Mazzucco

89

8 Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968) Dieter Wuttke

105

9 Charles Rufus Morey and the Index of Christian Art Colum Hourihane

123

10 Hans van de Waal, a portrait Edward Grasman

130

11 Meyer Schapiro as iconographer Patricia Stirnemann

142

12 Michael Camille’s queer Middle Ages Matthew M. Reeve

154

PART II

Systems and cataloguing tools

173

13 The anthropology of images Ralph Dekoninck

175

14 Classifying image content in visual collections: a selective history Chiara Franceschini

184

15 Library of Congress subject headings Sherman Clarke

192

16 Iconclass: a key to collaboration in the digital humanities Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

201

PART III

Themes in medieval art

219

17 Religious iconography Marina Vicelja

221

18 Liturgical iconography Karl F. Morrison

235

vi

Contents

19 Secular iconography Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

251

20 Erotic iconography Madeline H. Caviness

267

21 The iconography of narrative Anne F. Harris

282

22 Political iconography and the emblematic way of seeing György E. Szönyi

295

23 Picturing the stars – scientific iconography in the Middle Ages Dieter Blume

310

24 Medicine’s image Jack Hartnell

322

25 Patronage: a useful category of art historical analysis? Elizabeth Carson Pastan

340

26 Royal and imperial iconography Joan A. Holladay

356

27 The iconography of architecture Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

373

28 Heraldic imagery, definition, and principles Laurent Hablot

386

29 Medieval maps and diagrams Diarmuid Scully

399

30 The iconography of gender Sherry C. M. Lindquist

412

31 Feminist art history and medieval iconography Martha Easton

425

32 The iconography of color Andreas Petzold

437

33 Flowers and plants, the living iconography Celia Fisher

453

vii

Contents

34 The iconography of light Sharon E.J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren

465

35 The visual representation of music and sound Susan Boynton

479

36 The other in the Middle Ages: difference, identity, and iconography Pamela A. Patton

492

37 Animal iconography Debra Higgs Strickland

504

38 Monstrous iconography Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim

518

Index

534

viii

FIGURES AND PLATES

1.1 1.2 1.3

2.1 2.2 5.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

7.1

7.2 7.3

7.4

In nothos (Padua, Tozzi, 1621) 600. By permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections. Gratiam referendam (Paris, Wechel, 1534) 9. By permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections. Detail of one of the figures in the border (upper left side) from Sheldon’s Spring tapestry, now in Hatfield House. The legend reads “In Consilio” (Deliberation). Late sixteenth–early seventeenth centuries. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Title page from Cesare Ripa, Iconologia 1603 (University Library of Heidelberg). “Caritas,” from Ripa, Iconologia 1603, 64 (University Library of Heidelberg). Émile Mâle, c. 1928. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, EI-13 (2832). The Warburg brothers. Aby Warburg is on the far right; his four brothers are Paul, Felix, Max, and Fritz. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute. Gertrud Bing, Aby Warburg (center), and Franz Alber (right) in Rome. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute. Screen 47 of the Mnemosyne Atlas, last series of the Mnemosyne Atlas. Diagram showing two small nuclei from screen 47 of the Mnemosyne Atlas. Matteo de’Strozzi refers to Warburg’s text (Warburg 1892); “Pathosformel” is an important research motif throughout his work. Fritz Saxl in the reading room of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg, 1926–1927, unknown photographer. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute, London. The Nike-Mithras type, F. Saxl, Mithras: Typengeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1931), figs. 31–36. The Mundus–Annus–Homo diagram, Isidore’s De responsione mundi et de astrorum ordinatione, Günther Zainer Augsburg 1472; A. Schramm, Der Bilderschmuck der Frühdrucke ( Leipzig, 1920), fig. 292. Photograph showing Saint Jerome, dating to the mid-fifteenth century, hand-colored woodcut, first stamped “Bibliothek Warburg/Hamburg 20/114 Heilwigstrasse” (old building of the library; before 1926), ix

13 14

25 33 41 66 76 82 83

85

90 91

93

Figures and plates

7.5

8.1

8.2

8.3 9.1 9.2

10.1 10.2

10.3 10.4 11.1 11.2

12.1

12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 13.1

and afterwards stamped in London “The Warburg Institute” (no address; no affiliation with the University of London; 1933–1944) and catalogued according to the new section “Religious Iconography,” The Warburg Institute. Photographic exhibition in the reading room of the KBW for Saxl’s lecture “The Expressional Gestures of the Visual Art,” 1931. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute, London. Panofsky and his students from Hamburg University on an excursion to Westphalia from July 16 through July 20, 1932. Panofsky is sitting on the right side with his wife Dora in a white blouse behind him. For the identification of the other figures see Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 366 (Fig. 34), and additions in Wuttke, Kumulationen (as in note 1), 33. Photo courtesy of Archive Wuttke. Panofsky in his study at the Institute for Advanced Study, spring 1966. Panofsky’s gesture is inspired by the portrait of Abbot Suger in the abbey church of St. Denis, Paris. Photo courtesy of Archive Wuttke. Panofsky in his Hamburg academic gown at Harvard, 1957, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate. Photo courtesy of Archive Wuttke. Charles Rufus Morey. Image courtesy of the Index of Christian Art. The Index of Christian Art showing the two paper files. On the right side is the subject file, consisting of the alphabetically arranged twenty-eight thousand subject headings, while on the left side is the photographic file. Hans van de Waal. Unknown photographer, date unknown, Leiden University Libraries. The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis, Rembrandt (fragment, 196 × 309 cm, originally c. 550 × 550 cm), Stockholm, Royal Academy of Fine Arts (on loan to The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Portraits of the Syndics of the Amsterdam Clothmasters’ Guild, Rembrandt, 1662, oil on canvas, 191.5 × 279 cm, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Le Petit Orfèvre, also known as The Goldsmith, Rembrandt, etching, 7.7 × 5.6 cm, first state of three (B123, 1655), Leiden University Libraries. Detail of the trumeau at Moissac showing prominent swollen udders of the lioness. Moissac, Abbaye Saint Pierre. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Edward Young carrying the corpse of his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Temple, by Pierre Antoine Auguste Vafflard. Oil, 238 × 192 cm, c. 1804, Le Musée d’Angoulême. Image courtesy of Le Musée d’Angoulême, Thiery Blas. Club advertisements. The Michael Camille Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago Box 14, “Picturesque Gothic” file. Image courtesy of Matthew Reeve. Luxuria, Amiens West Front. Image courtesy of the Courtauld Institute of Art, James Austin Collection. Trumeau, Souillac. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Trinity College, Cambridge MS B 11.22, f. 73r. Image courtesy of Trinity College, Cambridge. January page, Très Riches Heures. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Michelozzo di Bartolomeo (attr.) and Pagno di Lapo Pertigiani, tabernacle for the SS. Annunziata (c. 1340), 1448–49, Florence, SS. Annunziata. x

95

100

109

112 115 124

127 131

131 137 139 144

151

158 161 163 165 167

179

Figures and plates

15.1 15.2 16.1 16.2 16.3

16.3 16.4 16.5 17.1 17.2 17.3

17.4 19.1 19.2

19.3

19.4 20.1

20.2

20.3

Christ being nailed to the cross, Gerhard Remsich, c. 1538–9, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (c. 276–1928). Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, Western façade of the Abbey Church of St.-Gilles-du-Gard, c. 1120–1160. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Iconclass system volume 2–3, p. XIX: this subtle manner of ordering concepts was not supported by the data. A man blowing his own horn while giving alms (Georgette de Montenay, Emblèmes ou devises chrestiennes [edition: Frankfurt 1619], emblem 90). (a) Saint Martin gives part of his cloak to a beggar. From Hours of Simon de Varie, Paris, c. 1455. (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek MS 74 G 37, fol. 80r). (b) Beggar on crutches (print made by Pieter Langendijk, after a design by Pieter Barbiers I, second quarter eighteenth century). Screenshot from the Iconclass browser – at: http://iconclass.org/rkd/55C21. Screenshot from the Iconclass browser – at: http://iconclass.org/rkd/46A212. Master Radovan, Nativity, lunette above the entrance to the Cathedral of Trogir, Croatia, thirteenth century. Image courtesy of Marina Vicelja. Mosaic program in the apse of the Eufrasius’s basilica in Poreč, Croatia, sixth century. Image courtesy of R. Kosinozic. The Virgin of Mercy (Madonna della Misericordia), Church of San Tomà, Venice, Italy, fourteenth/fifteenth century. Image courtesy of D. Descouens. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:San_Tom%C3% A0_-_Madonna_della_Misericordia_sec._XV.jpg. The Triumph of Death, a detail of the fresco on the façade of the Oratorio dei Disciplini, Clusone, Italy, fifteenth century. Image courtesy of E. Senza. Ebstorf Map, c. 1300, northern Germany (modern copy of the original destroyed in 1943). © Kloster Ebstorf, Klosterkammer Hannover. Schmalkalden, Hessenhof: (a) view of the Iwein Rooms, north, (b) welcoming man at the entrance, both drawings by P. Weber, “Die Iweinbilder aus dem 13. Jahrhundert im Hessenhofe in Schmalkalden,” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 12 1900–1901, 73–84, 113–20. Maienfeld, Burg Brandis, Upper Tower, Bar Fight, first third of the fourteenth century, J. R. Rahn, “Zwei weltliche Bilderfolgen aus dem 14. Jahrhundert und 15. Jahrhundert,” Kunstdenkmäler der Schweiz. Mitteilungen der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Erhaltung historischer Denkmale, 2 (1902), 1–14. Ostermiething, Old Rectory, Cockaigne, wall painting around 1470/80. Image courtesy of Harald Wolter von dem Knesebeck. Andromeda, Aratus, Phaenomena interpreted by Claudio Germanico, Carolingian Palace School, Aachen, c. 804. Leiden University Library, Ms Voss. Lat. Q79, folio 30 v detail initial C. Photograph licensed by Leiden University Library. Old man and young girl kissing: (a) with wyvern to the left, (b) with serpent to the right, corbel at the roofline of the apse, Santa Maria, Uncastillo (Aragon), after 1135. Image © Antonio García Omedes. Intercourse for male health, Aldobrandino of Siena, Régime du corps, chapter 7, North France (probably Lille), c. 1285: London, British Library Ms Sloane 2435, folio 9 v, detail. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. xi

196 198 206 207

210 211 211 212 222 227

230 231 253

257

259 260

268

270

271

Figures and plates

20.4

Herr Jakob von Warte bathing, with female attendants, Manesse Codex, Heidelberg University Library Cod.Pal.germ. 848, folio 46 v. Photograph licensed by Heidelberg University Library. 20.5 Man and woman engaged in sex play, corbel from the Church in Kirknewton, Edinburgh, National Museum of Scotland, H. KG 33. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. 20.6 Entwined male and female couple, The Psalter-Hours of Ghuiluys de Boisleux, Arras, c. 1245, Morgan Library Ms M730, folio 222 r, detail. Photo licensed by The Morgan Library & Museum. 21.1 Simone Martini, Annunciation, 1333. Tempera and gold on panel. Florence, Uffizi Gallery. Image courtesy of Scala/Minesterio per I Beni e la Attivita culturali, Art Resource, New York. 21.2 Opening sequence, Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, 1353. Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. Fr. 178. Image courtesy of HIP/Art Resource, New York. 21.3 Facade of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, c. 1149 (Palestine, today Israel), 1855–1860. Image courtesy of Adoc-Photos/ Art Resource, New York. 21.4 Medieval comb, Scenes of Courtly Love, c. 1320. Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (A.560-1910). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 22.1 Emblem XC, “Loue and feare are chiefest things,/That stablish Scepters unto kings,” Guillaume de la Perrière/Thomas Combe, A Theater of Fine Devices, London, 1614. Illustration courtesy of Google Books. 22.2 Composite picture showing Pisanello’s Portrait of Emperor Sigismund I (1433, black chalk and pen on paper, Musée du Louvre, Paris); Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of Emperor Sigismund I (1512, oil on lindenwood, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg); and Albrecht Dürer’s Emperor Maximilian I (1519, oil on lindenwood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). 22.3 The Wilton Diptych (1395–99), tempera on wood, London, National Gallery. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 22.4 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government, details (1338–40), fresco, Siena, Palazzo Pubblico. 22.5 The Great Stove (1545), majolica, Gdansk, Artus Court. Image courtesy of Gyorgy Szönyi. 23.1 Gemini, Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Ms. Voss. Lat. Q 79, fol. 16v. 23.2 Andromeda, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 5239, fol. 219v. 23.3 Aquarius, London, British Library, Harley Ms. 2506, fol. 38v. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. 23.4 Perseus, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms. 1036, fol. 10r. 23.5 Eridanus und Figura sonantis canonum, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2352, fol. 19v. 24.1 (Detail) Leprous priests receiving instruction from a bishop, from the Omne Bonum of James Le Palmer, c. 1360–75, England. London, British Library, MS Royal 6 E VI, vol. 2, fol. 301r. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. 24.2 Muscle Man, Male and Female Genitalia, Presentations of the Fetus in the Womb, and Pregnant Disease Woman, from the so-called

xii

272

274

275

284

286

288 291

296

298 301 304 305 311 313 315 316 318

323

Figures and plates

Wellcome Apocalypse, a medical miscellany from c. 1420, Southern Germany. London, Wellcome Library, MS 49, fols. 37v and 38r. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Library. 24.3 (Detail) Diagram of the Eye, from a medical miscellany including the “Book of Macharias on the Eye Called Salaracer or Secret of Secrets,” last quarter of the fourteenth or first quarter of the fifteenth century, England. London, British Library. MS Sloane 981, fol. 68r. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. 24.4 Entries for Brassica silvatica (wild cabbage or wild cole?), Basilisca (sweet basil), and Mandragora (Mandrake), from the Herbal of PseudoApuleius in a pharmacopeial compilation, second half of the twelfth century, England. London, British Library, Harley MS 5294, fols. 42v and 43r. 24.5 Saint Elzéar Curing the Lepers, c. 1373, Apt (Provence). Marble. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Image courtesy of the Walters Art Museum. 25.1 Bible presented to Charles the Bald, The First Bible of Charles the Bald (Paris, BN, MS lat. 1, fol. 423r), Tours, c. 845. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 25.2 Dedication frontispiece from the Liber Vitae of New Minster (London, BL, Stowe MS 944, f. 6r), Westminster, c. 1031. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 25.3 The Visual Colophon from the Toledo Cathedral Bible moralisée (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.240, fol. 8r), Paris, c. 1220–30s. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 25.4 Book owner kneeling in prayer, Matins of the Hours of the Virgin, Psalter-Hours “of Yolande of Soissons” (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.729, fol. 232v), Amiens, c. 1290. Image courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York. 26.1 Silver denier of Charlemagne. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques. Between 801 and 814, Mainz (?). Photo © Genevra Kornbluth. 26.2 Charles V, holding the scepter and the hand of justice, kneels before Dagobert’s throne as the archbishop of Reims places the crown on his head. Coronation Book of Charles V. London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. VIII, fol. 59r. 1365, Paris. Photo © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. 26.3a Charles the Bald seated on his throne looks into the heavens. Codex aureus of St. Emmeram. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, Clm 14000, fol. 5v. 870, Court School of Charles the Bald (location unknown). Photo: courtesy of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. 26.3b The twenty-four elders adore the lamb. Codex aureus of St. Emmeram. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, Clm 14000, fol. 6r. 870, Court School of Charles the Bald (location unknown). Photo: courtesy of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. 26.4 Imperial insignia, including, at left, the Bügelkrone (second half of the tenth century with cross from the early eleventh and arch from the reign of Konrad II [1024–39]); at right, the imperial orb (c. 1200), and diagonally across the front, the imperial sword in its scabbard

xiii

326

329

332 334

342

343

347

350

357

358

362

363

Figures and plates

(middle third of the eleventh century). Vienna, Imperial Treasury. Photo courtesy of KHM-Museumsverband. 26.5 Tomb of Philip III, king of France (r. 1271–85), at Saint-Denis. 1297–1307, Paris. Photo courtesy of Bildarchiv Foto Marburg. 27.1 Francesco di Giorgio. Ground plan of a church corresponding to the proportions of the human figure. MS. Ashb. 361, c. 10v. Image courtesy of Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence. 27.2 Anastasis Rotunda, Jerusalem, interior. Image courtesy of C. and E. V. del Álamo. 27.3 Church of La Vera Cruz, Segovia, interior. Image courtesy of C. and E. V. del Álamo. 27.4 Castle and town of Frías (Burgos). Image courtesy of C. and E. V. del Álamo. 28.1 Jeanne de Laval’s coat of arms showing a marshalling of arms. Represented are the six arms of her husband, René d’Anjou, as well as her own coat of arms, together with four different coats of arms. Next to the crowned shield – she is queen of Sicily – her badge of two linked turtledoves is symbolic of eternal love and fidelity. Jeanne de Laval Psalter, Poitiers, Médiathèque François Mitterrand, Ms. 41, f. 22r. Image courtesy of the Médiathèque François Mitterand, Poitiers. 28.2 The testone of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1466 d. 1476) shows his portrait (the name of this coin means portrait). His arms are surmounted by his crest showing the Biscia – a monstrous snake spitting at a man – as well as his monogram GZM and the tizzone badge, of a flaming stick from which two buckets hang, a possible symbol of temperance. Image courtesy of www.cgb.fr. 28.3 Donatello’s heraldic work on a gravestone in the church Santa Maria in Aracoeli at Roma. The artist used imagery from antiquity as well as the imago clipeata – a portrait of the deceased carried by two winged genii – here represented as two angels carrying the dead person’s coat of arms in an almond shield typical of the renaissance. Rome, Santa Maria in Aracoeli church. Image courtesy of Laurent Hablot. 28.4 Scene showing the dedication of a book, the Paradis de la Reine Sibylle. Here, the book is presented by the author, Antoine de La Sale, to his protector, the duchess Agnese de Bourbon. Both writer and princess are represented by their coats of arms, showing the ability of the signs to represent the figures in absentia. Chantilly, Bibliothèque des archives et du château de Chantilly, Ms. 653, f. 1r. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque des archives et du château de Chantilly. 29.1 The known world of Europe, Asia, and Africa and its islands, surrounded by ocean. Hereford mappa mundi, circa 1300. Photo courtesy of the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust and the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral. 29.2 The Roman emperor Augustus orders the measurement of the world. He is placed next to Ireland at the northwestern ends of the earth. Hereford mappa mundi, circa 1300. Photo courtesy of the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust and the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral.

xiv

365 367

376 378 379 381

388

391

393

394

400

403

Figures and plates

29.3

30.1 30.2

30.3

30.4

30.5

31.1

31.2 31.3 31.4 31.5 33.1

33.2

34.1

34.2

The Last Judgment. Hereford mappa mundi, circa 1300. Photo courtesy of the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust and the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral. Trial of Eugenia, c. 1120. North aisle of the nave, La Madeleine, Vézelay. Image courtesy of Nick Havholm. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, Vision I, c. 1175. Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, MS I, fol. 2r (original lost in 1945). Photo © Rheinisches Bildarchiv. Herman, Jean, and Paul de Limbourg, Flagellants, The Belles Heures of John, Duke of Berry, 1405–1408/09. New York, The Cloisters Collection 1954, MS. 54.1.1, fol. 74v. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/collections. Deaths of Dives and Lazarus, Compilation of Literary Texts, France, 1355–62. Dijon, Bibl. Mun. MS 525, fol. 131v. Image courtesy of IHRT. Commendation of the Soul, “The Hours of the Earls of Ormond,” London, before 1467. British Library, Harley MS 2887, fol. 97v. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. Mirror cover: Scenes of lovers, 1340–60, Ivory, 0.7 × diam. 9 cm (1/4 × 3 9/16 in.) Gift of Mrs. Albert E. McVitty. Princeton University Art Museum, (y1954-61). Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Mirror cover: Chess Game, fourteenth century, Paris, France. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Mirror cover: The God of Love and a Couple, 1300–1320, Paris, France. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.© Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Mirror cover: Pairs of Lovers, fourteenth century, France. Photo © Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels. Roundel with scenes of the attack on the Castle of Love, c. 1320–40, Paris, France, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 2003. Leaf carvings in the Chapter House of Southwell Minster, England, c. 1300. Cinquefoil leaves and flowers, believed to have magical powers associated with the number five, hence the Latin name potentilla. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, Flemish, c. 1470, Oxford Bodleian Library, ms Douce 210-220, f. 133. The miniature showing the Nativity is attributed to the Master of Mary of Burgundy; the flower-strewn borders were added a little later, but their origins have been associated with his work. It was typical of the Ghent-Bruges Hours that the flowers were arranged in patterns; here red roses and red double daisies were interspersed with white daisies, stocks, and a pea flower, alternating with blue speedwell, borage, cornflower, columbine, and heartsease. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. View to apse with light penetrating nave at 10:00 a.m. in July 2015, Katholikon, Monastery of Hosios Loukas, Greece, early eleventh century. Image courtesy of Sharon Gerstel. Interior of the ambulatory of the choir, Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, France, 1140–1144. Image courtesy of Stephen Gardner.

xv

408 414

416

418

419

420

428 429 429 430 431

455

458

466 468

Figures and plates

34.3

34.4

35.1

35.2 35.3

35.4

36.1

36.2

36.3

36.4

37.1

37.2 37.3 37.4 38.1

38.2

Apse with tetragram over central window, Church of the Virgin Peribleptos (St. Clement), Ohrid, Macedonia, 1295. Image courtesy of Sharon Gerstel. Nicholas of Verdun, Annunciation to the Virgin, Klosterneuburg Altarpiece, 1181. Sammlungen des Stiftes, Losterneuberg, Austria. Photo courtesy of Art Resource. Right leaf of a diptych with The Coronation of the Virgin and Angel Musicians. Venice (?), late fourteenth century. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1971. www.metmuseum.org. Angel Musicians. Beaupré Antiphonary (Volume I), fol. 2r. Walters Art Museum MS W.759. Gift of the William R. Hearst Foundation, 1957. Ivory plaque with scenes from the life of Saint Emilianus, from the reliquary of San Millan de la Cogolla. Master Engelram and his son Redolfo, c. 1060–80. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1987. www.metmuseum.org. Three Singers at a Lectern, from the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, Duchess of Normandy (Paris, before 1349), folio 146v. Attributed to Jean Le Noir (French, active 1331–75) and Workshop. New York, Metropolitan Museum, The Cloisters Collection, 1969. www.metmuseum.org. Scribal doodle of Salamó Vidal on the cover of a liber iudeorum from 1334–1340 (Arxiu i Biblioteca Episcopal de Vic, Arxiu de la Cúria Fumada, núm. 4603). Photo courtesy of Arxiu i Biblioteca Episcopal de Vic, reproduced by permission. Matthew Paris, Tartars eating human flesh, from the Chronica Majora (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 16), fol. 167r. Photo reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Story of the Muslim Converted by an Image of the Virgin (Cantiga 46), Cantigas de Santa María (Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, MS T.I.1), fol. 68v. © Patrimonio Nacional, reproduced by permission. A charivari in progress, Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibiliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr. 146), fol. 36v. Photo courtesy of BnF, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY, reproduced by permission. Saint Luke and his ox, Prayerbook of Michelino da Besozzo, Milan, c. 1420. New York, ML, MS M. 944, f. 75v. Photo courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Fox preaching poultry, misericord, oak, c. 1425. Ludlow, St. Lawrence parish church. Image courtesy of Shaun Ward. Bat-woman, misericord, oak, c. 1425. Ludlow, St. Lawrence parish church. Image courtesy of Shaun Ward. Schoolmaster, misericord, oak, c. 1450. Ludlow, St. Lawrence parish church. Image courtesy of Shaun Ward. “Monster Average,” London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B.xx, Historia de proelis in a French translation (Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre), c. 1420. Alexander Battles Blemmyes, London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B.xx, f. 80, Historia de proelis in a French translation (Le Livre et le xvi

470

473

481 482

483

485

494

494

498

499

506 510 511 511

524

Figures and plates

38.3

38.4

38.5

vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre), c. 1420, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. Alexander Battles Boars and Wild Men, London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B.xx, f. 51, Historia de proelis in a French translation (Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre), c. 1420, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. Cynocephalus, London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv, f. 3, Wonders of the East, c. 1000, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. Cynocephali, Tympanum of the Benedictine Abbey Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay. Image courtesy of Karl Steel.

Pl. 1 Michael Camille. Image courtesy of Stuart Michaels. Pl. 2 Trinity of Saint Anne with donor, Atelier of the Master of Rabenden, polychrome wood, c. 1515, Unter den Linden Museum, Colmar (89.3.1). Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. Pl. 3 Mary Magdalene, German, c. 1520–1530, Liebieghaus, Frankfurt (Inv. Nr. 2). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Pl. 4 Image of Christ, S. Appollinare in Nuovo. Ravenna, early sixth century. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Pl. 5 Carrow Psalter (Ms.W.34, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, f.27 r), English, c. 1250. Note the green crosses in the Carrying of the Cross and the Crucifixion. Illustration courtesy of Walters Art Museum, created under Creative Commons License. Pl. 6 Master of the Paradise Garden (Upper Rhenish), The Paradise Garden, c. 1420, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, HM 54. In a typical enclosed garden the Virgin is seated among flowers and the Christ Child is learning music from St. Cecilia (who has a headdress of peapods), while St. Dorothea picks cherries. Along the wall (left to right) the flowers are red roses, speedwell, betony, lychnis, stocks, iris, and hollyhock. In the grass the flowers include white lily, peony, strawberries, lilies of the valley, leucojum, cowslips, yellow wallflowers, periwinkles, daisies, and violets. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Pl. 7 Transfiguration. Church of Holy Apostles, Thessaloniki, Greece. Early fourteenth century. Image courtesy of Sharon Gerstel. Pl. 8 Horses, Rochester Bestiary, southeast England, second quarter, thirteenth century. London, BL, MS Royal 12 XIII, f. 42v (detail). © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

xvii

524

525

526 529 155

194 438 443

446

461 474

508

PREFACE

Whether we like it or not, subject matter, iconography, iconology, or whatever term we want to call the visual content of works of art is a field that is destined to remain at the forefront of art historical studies. It is a field that has suffered since it was first developed in the late medieval– early Renaissance periods and no more so has that criticism been louder than in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It has been seen as one of the two pillars of art history, along with style, and has been criticized as an antiquated approach to understanding a work of art. Mercifully, style now seems to have usurped that of iconography in terms of criticism and iconography continues along its well-trodden and useful path. It is a complex field of study, as the many essays in this volume prove. Iconography does not stand on its own but lies at the core of a complex set of interrelationships going from form to period and function to intention. How do we try to understand the working and intentions of the maker or person who commissioned the work? How do we transpose ourselves to a mentality that is totally alien to our own, and attempt to understand exactly what the subject represented or meant? Representation may be easily accomplished, but intention is a different matter and therein lie the individual creative powers that are so difficult to understand. Subject matter can interact with other elements and change meaning entirely; meaning can change simply by moving context. Coloration can alter meaning as can countless other factors. Iconography is now usually understood, thanks to Panofsky’s seminal work, as the study of the broader meanings of works of art. It does not, or at least should not, stand on its own as a means of studying a work but is closely integrated with all the other approaches. It is, unfortunately, a term that has now fallen into neglect, with the preferred term now being iconology. Iconology, as these essays show, has opened iconography out into a much richer field of study, encompassing disciplines other than art history. As complex a field as iconography or iconology is, it is also among the most exciting ways of understanding what a work means. The study of iconography has changed drastically since it was first viewed as a field of study. What we now consider as iconography has been broadened considerably, as a quick perusal of the themes or subjects in this work attests. We can now talk of the iconography of architecture or light or sound – concepts that go beyond the tangible and attempt to incorporate aspects of a work other than the immediately visual. It is now a far more inclusive term while, at the same time, less definite than its original meaning. The highpoint of iconographical studies for the medieval period was in the middle of the twentieth century when efforts were made to understand the methodologies of the field as well as their application to a wide range of subjects. Theory and application became xviii

Preface

firmly entwined in the studies of scholars such as Warburg, Panofsky, Morey, Van der Waal, and so forth – for them, understanding the approaches of those who created the works was as important as understanding what the work meant. Nowadays, understanding iconographical methodologies is a field that has been relegated to scholars other than art historians, but we are fortunate in this volume in having scholars whose interests span both aspects of the subject. This publication is designed so that both aspects of the subject are covered; we hope to look at the approaches used to describe subject matter as well as to selectively look at some of the main themes in medieval art. In much the same way as Panofsky formulated his tripartite system of subject classification, it is important for us to understand how modern cataloguing proceeds and how methodologies impact on this. We are now living in the age of the image, and it is important for us to impose some level of order and access on the huge number of images that are available in the archive or on the web. It is also important for us to get to this material using sensible approaches, the most important of which are detailed in this publication. These approaches continue the pioneering work undertaken by scholars such as Warburg, Morey, and Panofsky and bring us into the age of the computer and iconography. Even though there are many scholars working in the field of medieval iconography who could have been included in this publication, the cutoff point for inclusion was the fact that they were deceased. Scholars are rarely only iconographers and most of those who are studied here were all-round medievalists whose foundations were fundamentally iconographical. For example, it would have been possible to include Perio Valeriano Bolzni, Vincenzo Cartri, Karl Kunstle, Arthur Kingsley Porter, Gertrud Schiller, or Kirchbaum’s Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, but limits had to be imposed. For those who have been included, the most pertinent of their works have been studied to detail their contribution to the field. It would also have been possible to cover all of medieval Europe and not to look only at the Western world, but that is the situation that pertains and Byzantinists, such as Kurt Weitzmann, who employed iconography throughout his many studies, are not dealt with here – that is the subject of another publication! The second section of this first volume looks at some of the ways we catalogue medieval iconography. It is important not only to describe accurately but also to be able to retrieve what we are looking for, and that situation becomes even more pressing with the rise of many personal databases of medieval images on the Internet. It is fine to put such images on the web but they remain undervalued unless we can find them, and the way to do that is to employ relevant standards and approaches. It is these that are outlined here. The third section of the publication consists of a series of essays on high-level generalized iconographical concepts. It would have been possible to adopt the usual encyclopedic approach, starting with a figure such as Aaron and ending with somebody like Zwentibold of Lorraine, but that was never the aim of this publication. Similarly, it would not be possible to deal with every subject within the confines of one book and I apologize for the selective nature of what is included. Sports, games, and pastimes are one such subject that we omitted – simply because nobody was willing to deal with the scope of such a topic. It would also have been possible to include essays on the iconography of death or birth, the law or marriage, or any one of a thousand other subjects – the range you have here has had to be selective and my apologies if I have not included some theme you would have liked to have seen here. This collection has highlighted the lack of research of many pivotal subjects for the medieval period. It would have been possible to have significantly increased the number of topics dealt with in this volume had limitations of time and space not prevented it. The twenty-two individual themes discussed here represent some of the most significant in the field of medieval art. All of the authors here deserve to be congratulated and thanked for their heroic work. They all stuck to their topics and attempted to broaden the reading available for future research, highlighting the healthy state of iconography in the field of medieval art and showing how methodologies have changed over the last fifty or so years. The essays are a combination of case studies and generalized, high-level analysis. The writers were all asked to provide a short historiography of their subject, xix

Preface

and it is clear that such evaluations of previous research highlight the new methodologies being used in the field. Topics are now rarely dealt with as isolated, stand-alone, self-contained subjects. We realize that iconography is just one part of a much broader picture that interacts significantly with what could be called cultural history, and to fully understand our subjects we also need to understand their place in this broader picture. Such topics are now allowed to talk for themselves, and our knowledge of them is significantly enriched. We do not simply describe but also attempt to listen and understand what these images are saying. The essays in this volume do not restrict themselves to visual iconography but also cover text, idea, thought, and a myriad of other fields beyond what is represented. Iconography is no longer restricted to the visual, and even within that field it has been broadened considerably to include ideas outside the usual; it now forces us to look at the self in relation to the work and how it impinges on us. The topics themselves reflect some of the new subjects we are now seeing as influencing medieval art. Gone are the days when we dealt only with the physical and, instead, we can see how light and sound were or were not represented and not simply in physical terms. Even though the title of these volumes claims to deal with iconography, it is clear that we could easily have used the term iconology. All of these essays strive to understand the subjects in their broadest and deepest meanings. Some twenty-two themes, ranging from animals to royal and imperial iconography, are covered by some of the most eminent scholars in the field. Even though the aim of this volume was to study iconography in its broadest possible coverage, many authors are more comfortable dealing with the Western world, and as such, in many cases only reference is made to the Eastern world. This volume could not have reached its current state without the sage advice, help, and practical input of Erika Gaffney, former commissioning editor for literary studies at Ashgate. Before leaving the press she was an indispensable support for the entire history of this project and my sincere thanks go to her. Her advice and help were much appreciated. She was ably assisted by Michael Bourne, editorial administrator in the humanities in Ashgate. Some of the authors submitted their essays in languages other than English, and I wish to thank Jane Sykora, Elizabeth Weinrich, and Lorraine Knopek for their help in translating some of the extracts in this work. They were very patient with me! In the middle of this publication the project was taken over by the capable hands of Isabella Vitti, the editor for art history and visual studies at Routledge / Taylor & Francis who fully supported the project and has seen it through to publication. It is difficult taking over such a project but I was very fortunate to have been able to work with such an accomplished editor. I’m grateful to her and her colleagues for their care, help and guidance. Isabella was ably assisted by a number of colleagues including Lucy Loveluck, Julia Michaelis and Marie Louise Roberts. Lucy, as Production Editor, monitored the transformation from manuscript to book with great ease and charm. Julia oversaw the publication at an early stage and was extremely diligent in her work but also particularly helpful, kind and efficient. Marie-Louise Roberts, Project Manager from Apex CoVantage, was the final set of hands and eyes to work with the manuscript and it was she who is responsible for delivering the book to the printer. It was a pleasure to work with her. I wish to unreservedly thank Isabella, Lucy, Julia and Marie-Louise for all their help. There was considerable excitement when I first approached authors to contribute to this volume, which rapidly turned into a lot of work. I have no hesitation in saying that most of the authors found the writing of these essays extremely difficult. It was not an easy task compiling somebody’s life’s work in six thousand words, or trying to distil their contributions to iconography from the rest of their career. Similarly, trying to cover the iconography of large-scale topics is not an easy task but it is one which the authors here have attempted. They all achieved what they set out to do and my sincere thanks go to them. These are the scholars whose writings I wanted to read, and we are extremely lucky that they all agreed to contribute. Colum Hourihane, PhD, HDE, FSA, MRIA xx

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

Kirk Ambrose is professor and chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado Boulder. In addition to many articles, book chapters, and reviews, he is author of The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing (2006) and The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe (2013). Along with Robert A. Maxwell, he edited and translated Current Directions of Romanesque Sculpture Studies (2010). His current projects include a study of blindness in medieval art and an exhibition catalogue on women artists in Colorado, 1898–1950. He further serves as editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin. Dieter Blume studied history of art, history, and anthropology at the University of Heidelberg. He received his PhD in 1981 for a dissertation titled “Wandmalerei als Ordenspropaganda: Bildprogramme im Chorbereich Franziskanicher Konvente Italiens bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts,” which was published in 1983. Between 1983 and 1985 much of his time was devoted to preparing the exhibition “Natur und Antike in der Renaissance” in the Liebieghaus Museum of Sculpture in Frankfurt. He undertook his habilitation in 1991 at the University of Munich. Throughout his career he has taught at the universities of Munich, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Zürich, and Baltimore (Johns Hopkins University). Since 1994 he has been a professor at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. Between 1996 and 2013 he worked on a research project on the iconography of the constellations in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Since 2013 he has been involved with Christel Meier-Staubach on the research project “Ovidius moralizatus” by Petrus Berchorius and the illustration of Ovid in fourteenth-century Italy. Susan Boynton is chair of the Department of Music and professor of historical musicology at Columbia University. She is the author of Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain (2011) and Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 (2006). In addition to publishing more than thirty articles on subjects including liturgy and music in medieval Western monasticism, vernacular song, and music and childhood, she has coedited five volumes: From Dead of Night to End of Day: The Medieval Customs of Cluny, with Isabelle Cochelin (2005); Musical Childhoods and the Cultures of Youth, with Roe-Min Kok (2006); Young Choristers, 650–1700, with Eric Rice (2008); The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity, with

xxi

Biographical notes on the contributors

Diane Reilly (2011), and Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound, also with Diane Reilly (2015). Hans Brandhorst was trained as an art historian at Leiden University and has been using Iconclass as an iconographer ever since the 1980s. He was part of the team at Utrecht University that created the computer version of the system in the 1990s, and he has been acting as editor of the online Iconclass system since 2000. His practical research often focuses on the simple question “What am I looking at?” in an iconographical sense. His theoretical work deals with the issues of how humanities scholars, in particular iconographers, can collaborate and enrich each other’s research results rather than repeat and duplicate their efforts. To accomplish this, the use of a shared vocabulary for the description of the content of cultural artifacts – Iconclass – is an important condition. Together with Etienne Posthumus, he has created the online Iconclass browser and the Arkyves website. Madeline H. Caviness is the Mary Richardson Professor Emeritus of Art History at Tufts University and Professeur Associé at the Faculté des Lettres, Université Laval, Québec (honorary). She received her doctorate from Harvard University and is one of the foremost experts in the study of stained glass of the medieval period. She was president of the International Center of Medieval Art from 1984 to 1987 and president of the Medieval Academy of America from 1993 to 1994. She has published widely in the fields of stained glass, historiography, and sexuality. Among her many publications are Sumptuous Art at the Royal Abbey in Reims and Braine: Ornatus elegantiae, varietate stupendes (1990), Visualising Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle and Scopic Economy (2001), and “The Politics of Taste: An Historiography of ‘Romanesque’ Art in the 20th Century,” in Romanesque, Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. C. Hourihane (2008). She is currently working on a study entitled Limited Protection under the Law: Women and Jews in Sachsenspiegel Text and Image with Charles G. Nelson. Sherman Clarke is an art librarian specializing in cataloguing and authorities. He worked at the University of Pittsburgh, Cornell University, Rhode Island School of Design, Amon Carter Museum, and New York University, until retiring and doing freelance and itinerant work as a cataloguer and indexer. He studied art history and library science at Case Western Reserve University and appreciates that library work allows for a diverse and eclectic application of his art background and interest. He founded the Art NACO cooperative project, which builds name authority records in the international file maintained by the Library of Congress. He was awarded the 2005 Distinguished Service Award from the Art Libraries Society of North America. Michael W. Cothren is Scheuer Family Professor of Humanities at Swarthmore College, where he has taught art history since 1978. He is also a consultative curator of medieval stained glass at the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and served for twelve years as president of the US Committee of the international Corpus Vitrearum. Until recently his research has focused primarily on Gothic stained glass, especially the windows at SaintDenis, Rouen, and Beauvais. He has published widely in scholarly collections and journals (e.g., Art Bulletin, Gesta, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Journal of Glass Studies, Speculum, and Revue de l’art) and written a monograph, Picturing the Celestial City: The Medieval Stained Glass of Beauvais Cathedral (2006). He is currently coauthor with Marilyn Stokstad of a widely used series of textbooks for survey courses in art history. Recently his research has shifted from medieval stained glass to prehistoric Native American painting, as he seeks to xxii

Biographical notes on the contributors

discover and characterize the individual artists who painted the Mimbres bowls, produced in Southwest New Mexico c. 1000–1150 CE. Peter M. Daly is past president of the Society for Emblem Studies and professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of German Studies at McGill University, Montreal. He has numerous publications on German and English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on the European emblem tradition, and on contemporary advertising. He is coeditor with G. Richard Dimler, SJ, of the series of illustrated bibliographies The Jesuit Series (1997, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007) and a founding coeditor of Emblematica, “AMS Studies in the Emblem,” and the series “Imago Figurata.” He received a Festschrift in 2002. A Companion to Emblem Studies appeared in 2007. He published an edition of Held’s German translation of Alciato (2007) and a book on Alciato in England (2013). A volume of essays entitled Emblems of Death edited with Monica Calabritto came out in 2014, as did his most recent book, The Emblem in Early Modern Europe. Having completed An Annotated Bibliography of Emblem Studies 1990–1999, he is currently working on bibliographies for the two following decades. Ralph Dekoninck is a professor in art history at the Université Catholique de Louvain, as well as codirector of the Centre for Early Modern Cultural Analysis (GEMCA). His research focuses on early modern image theories and practices, specifically in their relationship to spirituality, and on methodological issues related to the field of iconology. Among his publications is Ad Imaginem: Statuts, fonctions et usages de l’image dans la littérature spirituelle jésuite du XVIIe siècle (Geneva, 2005). He has also edited L’idole dans l’imaginaire occidental, with M. Watthee-Delmotte (Paris, 2005); Emblemata Sacra: The Rhetoric and Hermeneutics of Illustrated Sacred Discourse, with A. GuiderdoniBruslé (Brepols, 2007); Aux limites de l’imitation: L’ut pictura poesis à l’épreuve de la matière, with A. Guiderdoni and N. Kremer (Amsterdam, 2009); Ut pictura meditatio: The Meditative Image in Northern Art, 1500–1700, with A. Guiderdoni-Bruslé and W. Melion (Turnhout, 2012); Relations artistiques entre l’Italie et les anciens Pays-Bas (16e–17e siècles) (Turnhout, 2012); Fictions sacrées: Esthétique et théologie durant le premier âge moderne, with A. Guiderdoni-Bruslé and E. Granjon (Leuven, 2012); Questions d’ornement (XVe–XVIIIe siècles), with M. Lefftz and C. Heering (Turnhout, 2014); and Machinae spirituales: Les retables baroques dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux et en Europe: Contributions à une histoire formelle du sentiment religieux au XVIIe siècle, with B. d’Hainaut-Zveny (Brussels, 2014). Denis L. Drysdall graduated from the Queen’s College, Oxford (BA 1958, Dip. Ed. 1960, MA 1964) and took a Doctorat de troisième cycle at the Sorbonne (1970) with a thesis in comparative literature (La Célestine en France). He was appointed to the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, in August 1966 and retired as associate professor of romance languages in January 1996. He has published in the fields of Renaissance and seventeenth-century comedy, emblem literature, particularly early emblem theory, and some Erasmian texts, and has a special interest in the lawyer Andrea Alciato, with plans for a book on him as humanist and teacher. At present he is contributing to the translation of Erasmus, in the series Collected Works of Erasmus (University of Toronto Press), with one volume of the Adagia (CWE 35) and one of the religious controversies (CWE 73); he will edit one of the texts in this volume for the Royal Dutch Academy edition of the Opera omnia (ASD IX-12). He has been commissioned to collaborate with a colleague on the controversies with Noël Béda and the Sorbonne (CWE 80–81). Martha Easton is an assistant professor in the College of Communication and the Arts at Seton Hall University, where she teaches art history, and for the MA Program in Museum Professions. Before coming to Seton Hall, Martha Easton taught art history for many years at Cooper Union, xxiii

Biographical notes on the contributors

New York University, and Bryn Mawr College, and she spent ten years lecturing at The Cloisters. While specializing in medieval art history, she also has extensive experience with Japanese art cultivated during the six years she spent living and working in Japan. Her particular research interests include illuminated manuscripts, gender and hagiography, feminist theory, the history of collecting medieval art, and medievalism. She is presently writing a book about medievalism and the patterns of collecting and displaying medieval art in the United States during the early twentieth century, focused on the scientist and art collector John Hays Hammond, Jr., and his spectacular medieval-style revivalist castle, built in the 1920s on the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Celia Fisher gained her BA in history at Kings College, London, and, after an initial career in teaching, her love of plants took over and she joined a department of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which was evaluating the uses of plants. She returned to study history of art at the Courtauld Institute, London, where she specialized in the history of plants in art. She gained her PhD in 1996 with her thesis, “The Development of Flower Borders in Ghent-Bruges Manuscripts 1470–1490.” She has published articles in art and gardening journals and her books include Flowers and Fruit (National Gallery, 1998), Flowers in Medieval Manuscripts (The British Library, 2004), The Medieval Flower Book (The British Library, 2007), and Flowers of the Renaissance (Frances Lincoln, 2011). Gardening remains her main relaxation and her own garden in Kew has been opened under the National Gardens Scheme. Chiara Franceschini (PhD, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, 2008) specializes in Renaissance and the early modern art and history of southern Europe. She is currently a fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University (2015–2016) and a teaching fellow at University College London, having previously worked at the Warburg Institute as a Newton International Fellow of the British Academy and an academic assistant in the Photographic Collection. Her book, which is currently in press, looks at the concept of limbo (Storia del limbo) and explores relations between images of the afterlife, belief, and the social history of theology. Her publications in the fields of Renaissance art, visual culture, and European history, 1300–1650, include “The Nudes in Limbo: Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo Reconsidered,” which was awarded the I Tatti Prize for Best Essay in 2011. She coedited a special issue, “Classifying Content: Photographic Collections and Theories of Thematic Ordering,” of Visual Resources (2014). She is now working on the status and the normativity of Renaissance and early modern sacred images, with a focus on sculpted images of the crucifix. Sharon E. J. Gerstel is a professor of Byzantine art and archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the late Byzantine village and on the intersections of art and ritual. She is author of Beholding the Sacred Mysteries: Programs of the Byzantine Sanctuary (1999) and Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium: Art, Archaeology and Ethnography (2015) for which she won the 2016 Runciman Prize. She has edited A Lost Art Rediscovered: The Architectural Ceramics of Byzantium (with J. Lauffenburger, 2001), Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Archaeological, Liturgical and Theological Views on Religious Screens, East and West (2007), Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai (with Robert S. Nelson, 2010), and Viewing Greece: Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean (2016). Her current work on soundscapes in Byzantium addresses the intersection of chant and monumental painting in monasteries. Edward Grasman works at the Centre for the Arts in Society at Leiden University. He studied art history at Utrecht University and received a PhD from Leiden University. His studies are xxiv

Biographical notes on the contributors

mostly concerned with historiographical problems from the sixteenth century onwards, in the field of Italian and Netherlandish art. His publications have dealt with various subjects, including Parmigianino, Paolo Veronese, the Lion of Mark, symbol of Venice, and Vitale Bloch, art historian, collector, and dealer. He is the author of several books, one of the more recent being Gerson in Groningen: Een portret van Horst Gerson, kunstkenner en hoogleraar kunstgeschiedenis (1907–1978) (2007). He also wrote All’ombra del Vasari: Cinque saggi sulla storiografia dell’arte nell’Italia del Settecento (2000). He coedited and contributed to a book on Saint Peter’s Church in Leiden and has several publications due to appear in 2016. Among these is the first volume of Italian letters on art collected by the Fondation Custodia in Paris, transcribed and annotated together with Hans Bloemsma, Henk van Veen, and Hans Buijs. An anthology of works by Julius Held is planned for the near future. Laurent Hablot is Directeur d’études à l’Ecole pratique des hautes études. IVe section. Titulaire de la chaire d’emblématique occidentale. He works on emblematic systems and heraldry, especially in relation to forms and functionality of the heraldic sign in the Middle Ages. Sitting on the L’Académie Internationale d’Héraldique (International Academy of Heraldry), he is also involved in Société Française d’Héraldique et de Sigillographie (the French Heraldic Society). He received his PhD for a study on the badges in medieval Europe (La devise, mise en signe du prince, mise en scène du pouvoir) under Michel Pastoureau and Martin Aurell. He has published several articles on specific uses of heraldry and emblematic signs, such as the defamation of the traitor’s arms, the symbolism of the angel support, the sharing of the Visconti arms in late medieval Europe, and the blessing of the Joan of Arc standard. He is webmaster of the database DEVISE and is responsible for three research programs: SIGILLA (a national database collecting all medieval French seals), ARMMA (collecting heraldic medieval representations in Poitou), and the research team for Renaissance Emblematics. Anne F. Harris is vice president for academic affairs and Johnson Family University Professor of Art and Art History at DePauw University. She received her PhD in 1999 from the University of Chicago for her dissertation, “The Spectacle of Stained Glass in Modern France and Medieval Chartres: A History of Practices and Perceptions.” Since then she has continued to be fascinated by the narrativity, material production, and experiential reception of medieval art. Her earliest work with narrative intersected with that of liturgical drama, and the interaction between spoken word, narrative, and the architecturally situated image in the Saint Nicholas windows and plays at Chartres Cathedral. Her publications range from a consideration of the narratives of stained glass windows in the thirteenth-century spiritual and commercial economies of Chartres Cathedral to an eco-critical analysis of the late medieval wooden jubé and healing fountain of St.-Fiacre, Le Faoüet (Brittany), to a meditation on medieval art based on the word “Hewn.” She continues to work in multiple media within medieval art and has published on stained glass, ivory, wood, alabaster, and manuscripts. A persistent theme of her research is the effect of medieval art upon its audiences, both medieval and modern, reflected in essays on the teaching of medieval art to undergraduate students. Her research and publication interests have intersected with her seventeen years of teaching at DePauw University, a small liberal-arts college that prizes seminarstyle teaching and discussion. Jack Hartnell is a lecturer and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, New York, where his teaching and research focus on the visual culture of late medieval and early Renaissance medicine. He received his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2014 for a study entitled “Towards an Anatomical Art History: Medieval Objects in the Shared Space between Art and xxv

Biographical notes on the contributors

Medicine.” He has held fellowships at the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, and was visiting curator at Two Temple Place, London. He is currently completing a monograph on the image of the Wound Man, and an introduction to medieval medicine and art entitled Medieval Bodies, with the Wellcome Collection and Profile Books. Debra Higgs Strickland has taught medieval art history at the University of Oregon, University of Toronto, and the University of Edinburgh, and has served as director of the Glasgow Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies at the University of Glasgow, where she currently teaches medieval and Renaissance art history in the School of Culture and Creative Arts. Her research interests revolve mainly around representations of animals, monsters, and non-Christians in medieval and early modern Christian visual and literary cultures, on which she has published numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is the author of Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (1995) and editor of The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature (1999, 2000). Her other major publications include Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (2003), and The Epiphany of Hieronymus Bosch: Imagining Antichrist and Others from the Middle Ages to the Reformation (2016). Joan A. Holladay has taught history of art at the University of Texas at Austin since 1985. In 2003–2004 she held the Dorothy K. Hohenberg Chair of Excellence at the University of Memphis, and in the spring of 2013 she was NEH Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University. She has also taught at the Universität Zürich and the Central European University in Budapest. Her publications on thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts and sculpture in France and Germany have appeared in Gesta, Journal of Medieval History, Studies in Iconography, Art History, and other journals as well as in numerous essay volumes. She is the author of Illuminating the Epic: The Kassel “Willehalm” Codex and the Landgraves of Hesse in the Early Fourteenth Century (1997) and of a nearly completed book on imagery with genealogical content in the high and late Middle Ages. She was coeditor for Gothic Sculpture in America 3: The Museums of New York and Pennsylvania, which was published in 2016. Susan M. Kim is a professor in the Department of English at Illinois State University, specializing in Old English literature. She has published on the Old English Judith, the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, Beowulf, and the Wonders of the East, as well as on teaching the history of the English language. With longtime collaborator Asa Simon Mittman, she has coauthored a range of articles on the Wonders of the East and on Monster studies more generally; most recently, she and Dr. Mittman collaborated on an article on the image-text relationship and the representation of Satan in Junius 11. In addition, she and Dr. Mittman coauthored Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (Tempe, 2013), a sustained study of the images and texts of the Wonders of the East in BL Cotton Vitellius A.xv. Current projects include a textbook on the history of the English language (with K. Aaron Smith), a study of Alcuin’s mathematical word problems, and a continuing collaboration with Dr. Mittman on the texts, images, and material of the Franks Casket. She also teaches judo and plays traditional Irish fiddle. Sherry C. M. Lindquist is an associate professor of art history at Western Illinois University. She is author of Agency,Visuality and Society at the Chartreuse de Champmol (2008) and editor of Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art (2012). She has also published numerous articles on late medieval art addressing artistic identity, gender and sexuality, illuminated manuscripts, and late medieval Burgundy, as well as on medievalism and the history of museums. She has curated multiple exhibits xxvi

Biographical notes on the contributors

on themes in medieval manuscripts, including “Media Revolutions in the Age before Print,” at Knox College, Galesburg, IL, and “Medieval Monsters,” at the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA. Her work has been supported by the British Academy, Fulbright, Getty, Kress, and Mellon foundations, among others. She is currently investigating the innovative and sophisticated ways in which often anonymous fourteenth- and fifteenth-century artists employed the human body to make meaning and guide viewer responses as part of a “rhetoric of the flesh” in late medieval art, an important, even defining aesthetic that needs to be better integrated into art history. This somatic aesthetic interrogates the difference between human and nonhuman, male and female, human and divine. To this end, her current work addresses posthuman themes in the Vienna Hours of Mary of Burgundy, masculinist devotion in the Belles Heures, and Nude Trinities in the Hours of the Earls of Ormond. Cornelia Logemann teaches art history in the Department of Arts at the University of Munich. Her research focuses on medieval art history and the interaction between text and image as well as the role of allegory in the visual arts from the late Middle Ages to the sixteenth century. Logemann’s first book, Heilige Ordnungen: Die Vie de Saint Denis und die Bildräume in der französischen Buchmalerei des 14. Jahrhunderts, investigated the different notions of space in medieval painting and the entanglements of devotional literature with the perception of images. In 2011, she coedited a volume on Cesare Ripa, Cesare Ripa und die Begriffsbilder der Frühen Neuzeit, with M. Thimann (Zurich, 2011), and in 2012 she cocurated an exhibition on the transcultural relationship of art and religion at the University Library of Heidelberg (“Götterbilder und Götzendiener: Europas Blick auf fremde Religionen,” with M. Effinger, U. Pfisterer, Heidelberg). From 2008 to 2013, she was head of the junior research group The Principle of Personification – Visual Intelligence and Epistemic Tradition, 1300–1800. She is currently working on a book dealing with personifications in French art from the late Middle Ages to the sixteenth century. Emilie Maraszak received her PhD for a study entitled Figures et motifs des croisades: Étude des manuscrits de l’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Saint-Jean-d’Acre, 1260–1291 under Daniel Russo at the Université de Bourgogne. Her main research focuses on the history and historiography of the Crusades and Crusader states. She is the author of Les manuscrits enluminés de l’Histoire Ancienne jusqu’à César (2015). Her current research projects include a study of crusader art (military and religious architecture, sculpture, mosaics, mural paintings, icons, illuminated manuscripts), syncretism and cultural exchange between the East and West during the twelfth and thirteen centuries in the Crusader states, and cultural and artistic patronage in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Queen Mélisende, Louis IX). She is also interested in medieval literature, especially medieval historical literature which traveled to the Middle East during the Crusades (Histoire Ancienne jusqu’à César) or else was written by crusaders themselves (Histoire d’Outremer of Guillaume of Tyr). Katia Mazzucco is a researcher specializing in history of art and photographic history. She holds a PhD in art history and the classical tradition from the University of Siena (2006), and has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Università Iuav di Venezia (2008–2009). She has also held postdoctoral fellowships at the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and the Warburg Institute in London (2010). She has been a British Academy Visiting Scholar (2011–2012) at the School of Advanced Study of the University of London, and visiting scholar at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, thanks to support from the Istituto Veneto per i Beni Culturali di Venezia (2014). Among her recent publications are “Sequence 1,” “Sequence 4,” J. M. Gusmão, P. Paiva, Teoria Extraterrestre (Milan, 2015); Classifying Content: Photographic Collections and Theories of Thematic Ordering (2014), which she also coedited with C. Franceschini in Visual xxvii

Biographical notes on the contributors

Resources 30/3 (September 2014); “Images on the Move: Some Notes on the Bibliothek Warburg Bildersammlung (Hamburg) and the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection (London),” Art Libraries Journal 38/4 (2013), 16–24. Asa Simon Mittman is a professor of art history at California State University, Chico, where he teaches ancient and medieval art. He is author of Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (2006), coauthor with Susan Kim of Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (2013, awarded a Millard Meiss Publication Grant from the College Art Association and an ISAS Best Book Prize), and author and coauthor of a number of articles on monstrosity and marginality in the Middle Ages, including pieces on Satan in the Junius 11 manuscript (Gesta, with Kim) and “race” in the Middle Ages (postmedieval). He coedited with Peter Dendle the Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (2012), and is the founding president of MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory And Practical Application). Mittman is codirector of Virtual Mappa, with Martin Foys, an interface to allow searching and linking among medieval maps and geographical texts. His research has been supported by CAA, ICMA, Kress, Mellon, American Philosophical Society, and NEH grants. He edits book series with Boydell and Brill. Current research interests include the Franks Casket and images of Jews on medieval maps. Mittman is an active (and founding) member of the Material Collective, and a regular contributor to the MC group blog. Karl F. Morrison is the Lessing Professor Emeritus of History and Poetics at Rutgers University, where he was based until 2013. He undertook his undergraduate studies at the University of Mississippi in 1956 and went on to receive his doctorate from Cornell University in 1961. His research has always centered on the history of ideas and he has worked extensively on the history of political thought, historiography (especially Church history), and the mechanics of tradition. Among his many publications are “I Am You”: The Hermeneutics of Empathy in Western Literature, Theology and Art (1988), History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (1990), Understanding Conversion (1992), and Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Papers from “Verbal and Pictorial Imaging: Representing and Accessing Experience of the Invisible, 400–1000,” coedited with Giselle de Nie and Marco Mostert (2005). Elizabeth Carson Pastan is a professor of art history at Emory University and president of the American Corpus Vitrearum, the body of scholars devoted to the study of medieval stained glass. Her books include Les vitraux du choeur de la cathédrale de Troyes (2006) and The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts: A Reassessment (2014), co-authored with Stephen D. White and Kate Gilbert. She also served as a coeditor of The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Art in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness (2009) and as a guest editor of the Journal of Glass Studies 56 (2014). Most relevant to this publication is the fact that she co-organized the Princeton conference Patronage: Power & Agency in Medieval Art (2013) with Colum Hourihane. Pastan has also contributed to numerous anthologies, including “Problematizing Patronage: Odo of Bayeux and the Bayeux Tapestry,” with Stephen D. White, in New Approaches to the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Martin K. Foys et al. (2009); “Charlemagne as Saint: Relics and the Choice of Window Subjects at Chartres Cathedral,” in The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade, ed. Matthew Gabriele and Jace Stuckey (2008); and “Glazing Romanesque and Gothic Buildings,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (2006). She takes pride in receiving both the Emory Williams Award for excellence in teaching in the humanities (elected by the faculty) and a Crystal Apple Award for teaching (elected by the students) at Emory University. xxviii

Biographical notes on the contributors

Pamela A. Patton is the director of the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University. A specialist in medieval Iberian art, she has published two single-authored books, Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister: Cloister Imagery and Religious Life in Medieval Spain (2004) and Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (2012), the latter the winner of the 2014 Eleanor Tufts Book Award. Her edited volume, Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, was published in 2015. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on such topics as monastic architectural sculpture, the image-text relationship, and the role of visual culture within the dynamic multiethnic communities of high and late medieval Iberia. Her current research project concerns the semiotics of skin color in Spain and the western Mediterranean. Andreas Petzold was educated at Manchester University and the Courtauld Institute of Art, where he received a PhD on the use of color in English Romanesque manuscripts. He was a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1987 to 1999, specializing in medieval and Renaissance art. He currently teaches history of art at Mander Portman Woodman in London, and is an associate lecturer at the Open University. He is the author of Romanesque Art (1995) in the Everyman Art Series. He has published several articles and papers on the subject of color, among which are “His Face Like Lightning: Colour as Signifier in Representations of the Holy Women at the Tomb,” Arte Medievale (1992), and “De Coloribus et Mixtionibus: The Earliest Manuscripts of a Romanesque Illuminator’s Handbook,” in Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production, ed. L. Brownrigg (1995). Etienne Posthumus studied computer science in Johannesburg and first encountered Iconclass in 1999 while working at the University of Utrecht. He created the various online versions of the Iconclass service. His passion is making simple software solutions to complex problems and he specializes in cultural heritage computing and data manipulation. In 2015 he completed a master’s degree at the University of Amsterdam in book and manuscript studies. Matthew M. Reeve is an associate professor of art history and Queen’s National Scholar at Queen’s University. He has published extensively on later medieval art and architecture, including a monograph on the vault paintings of Salisbury Cathedral, edited volumes on Gothic architecture, and a volume on architecture in the classical tradition. He is currently completing a monograph on eighteenth-century medievalism in England, provisionally entitled Gothic Architecture, Sexuality and Aesthetics in the Circle of Horace Walpole. Aspects of this project have recently appeared in The Art Bulletin, Architectural History, Studies in Iconography, and elsewhere. In 2015 he was mid-career fellow of British art at the Paul Mellon Centre, London. Daniel Russo is a French historian of medieval art who studied at the École normale supérieure (Ulm, Paris), the Sorbonne (Agrégation d’histoire), and later at the French School in Rome. He was a professor in Rennes and Paris before moving to Dijon, where is now based. He teaches medieval art history with a special focus on iconography (early Christian as well as late medieval), the historiography of art history, medieval Burgundy, and the art of Italian cities. He is currently working on the writing of medieval art history in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France. Among his publications are Saint Jérôme en Italie: Étude d’iconographie et de spiritualité (1987) and Marie: Le culte de la Vierge dans la société médiévale (with D. Iogna-Prat and É. Palazzo) (1996). He has also worked on medieval and Renaissance paintings in Burgundy, Peintures murales médiévales, XIIe–XVIe s: Regards comparés (2005), and has edited a volume in honor of André Vauchez, Expériences religieuses et chemins de perfection dans l’Occident médiéval (2012). His xxix

Biographical notes on the contributors

publications range from history to hagiography, iconography, iconology, and the history of theology and mural paintings. Diarmuid Scully lectures in medieval history at the School of History, in University College Cork, Ireland. His research and teaching explore classical, late antique, and early Insular and medieval representations of Britain and Ireland, and their impact on Bede, Gerald of Wales, and other key textual and visual sources, including the Hereford mappa mundi. These interests build on his doctoral thesis, supervised by Dr. Jennifer O’Reilly, on classical and late antique representations of Britain and Ireland, and their impact on Gildas and Bede. He is now writing a monograph on Gerald of Wales’s late twelfth-century narratives about Ireland (the Topographia Hibernica and Expugnatio Hibernica) and their impact on English representations of the island and its inhabitants, marvels, and natural world; the maps and marginal illustrations in manuscripts of the Topographia and Expugnatio receive close attention. He has written articles on Bede as historian and exegete, Ocean and the British-Irish archipelago in the Greco-Roman, early Insular, and medieval imagination, Bernard of Clairvaux, Gerald of Wales, and the Hereford mappa mundi. He has coedited, with Elizabeth Mullins, Listen, O Isles, unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in Honour of Jennifer O’Reilly (2011). Patricia Stirnemann was a researcher in the Institut de recherché et d’histoire des texts in Paris until her retirement. She completed her doctorate at Columbia University under John Plummer for a thesis entitled “The Copenhagen Psalter.” She is well known for her manuscript studies, especially those from France, but she has also published and lectured widely on those outside the country, such as the Insular manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and on manuscripts from the Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg, which she coedited with Ludmil Kisselva in 2005. Among her recent publications are The Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry (2010) and Der Psalter Ludwigs des Heiligen: Ms. Lat. 10525 der Bibliothèque nationale de France, with a commentary by Patricia Stirnemann and Marcel Thomas (2011). A Feschrift in her honor, Le manuscrit enluminé: Etudes réunies en hommage à Patricia Stirnemann, was edited by Michel Pastoureau and published in 2014. György E. Szönyi is professor of English at the University of Szeged and of cultural/intellectual history at the Central European University, in Budapest. His interests include cultural theory, the Renaissance, Western esoteric traditions, and the conventions of symbolization – early modern and (post)modern. He is on the editorial board of Aries and Aries Monograph Series and several other national and international journals. He is a board member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE). He has held fellowships and scholarships from the Fulbright and Mellon Foundations. He has served as Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Department of English, Communication, Media and Film in Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Among his recent publications are Pictura & Scriptura: 20th-Century Theories of Cultural Representations (2004), Gli angeli di John Dee (2004), and John Dee’s Occultism (2004). He has also edited European Iconography East & West (1996), The Iconography of Power (with Rowland Wymer, 2000), The Iconology of Gender (with Attila Kiss, 2008), and The Iconology of Law and Order (with Attila Kiss and Anna Kérchy, 2012). He is currently finishing The Enoch Readers: A Cultural History of Angels, Magic, and Ascension on High and The Mediality of Culture and the Emblematic Way of Seeing. Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo was a professor of art history at Montclair State University, New Jersey up to her retirement in 2016. Best known for her research on medieval Spain, xxx

Biographical notes on the contributors

monasticism, funerary arts, and audience response, her interpretation of the sarcophagus of Doña Blanca in Nájera (1996) brought together all these interests. She coedited Memory and the Medieval Tomb (2000), with Carol Pendergast, and Decorations for the Holy Dead (2002), with Stephen Lamia, collections of essays on tombs and shrines. Her interest in mourning and memory also resulted in an article about the fourteenth-century royal tombs at Alcobaça, Portugal: “La rueda de la tumba de Pedro I como diagrama mnemotécnico” (2013). Her publications on Santo Domingo de Silos culminated in the book Palace of the Mind: The Cloister of Silos and Spanish Sculpture of the Twelfth Century (2012), in which the monastery’s medieval library and liturgy formed the basis for analyzing the sculpture’s iconography. “Hearing the Image in the Cloister of Silos” extended her Silos studies to include the soundscape of the cloister (2015). Recently, she examined Bernard of Cluny’s customary for the use of Benedictine cloisters (2014). Earlier forays into architectural iconography include “Tarragona, lieu de mémoire” (2013) and “Portals and Figured Columns in Spanish Sculpture before Maestro Mateo” (2015). With Constancio del Álamo, she wrote entries on Spanish sculpture for Gothic Sculpture in America, Vol. 2, and the recently published Vol. 3. Upon studying the Epiphany reliefs from Cerezo de Riotirón, now at The Cloisters Museum, her interest in twelfth-century Castilian royalty developed (1990, 2010). Her current research focuses on art in Castille during the reign of Alfonso VIII and Leonor Plantagenet (1158–1204), for which she received the Montclair State University Distinguished Professor award in 2015. Peter van Huisstede studied art history and history at Leiden University. In 1992 he received his PhD at that same university for a thesis on the Mnemosyne Atlas of Aby M. Warburg. He worked for nearly ten years at the Department of Computers and Humanities, in Utrecht University. While there he was part of the team that made the computer version of the Iconclass system. Together with Hans Brandhorst he compiled the three-volume catalogue Dutch Printer’s Devices 15th–17th Century: A Catalogue, with CD-ROM (Leiden, 1999). He is currently working at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he coordinates material relating to the EUR repository (http://repub.eur.nl) of its Open Access academic publications. Future plans include a computer edition of the Mnemosyne Atlas. Marina Vicelja is a professor in the Department of Art History and director of the Center of Iconographic Studies at the University of Rijeka. She graduated in art history from Zagreb University, where she also completed her PhD with a dissertation entitled Byzantium and the Stone Sculpture in Istria – Origins and Influences. Her main areas of research are late antique and early medieval art, Christian iconography, iconology, and medieval urbanism. She has a special interest in the early medieval sculpture of the North Adriatic region. She is the main editor of IKON – the Journal of Iconographic Studies and the principal researcher on a number of other research projects on the medieval art of Istria and Kvarner. She is a partner in the European project “Francia media – Cradles of European Culture” and has collaborated on several international projects on iconography and iconology. She sits on the editorial boards of a number of publications and professional councils, and is the organizer of the annual international conference of iconographic studies in Rijeka. She is one of the founders of the Association of Art Historians of the region. From 2008 to 2011 she was a vice dean for research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the humanities representative on the Research Board of the University of Rijeka. She has held fellowships from Erasmus, the University of Thessaloniki, Fulbright Fellowship, Princeton University, Saxl Fund Fellowship, The Warburg Institute and Oxford Colleges Hospitality Scheme. Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck has been a professor of art history at the Institute of Art History at the University of Bonn since 2008. He has a particular focus on the arts of the xxxi

Biographical notes on the contributors

medieval and Byzantine worlds. He received his PhD in art history from the University of Göttingen in 1998 for a study entitled Der Elisabethpsalter in Cividale del Friuli: Buchmalerei für den Thüriunbger Landgrafenhof zu Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts (The Psalter of Elizabeth: Book Illumination Made for the Court of the Thuringian Landgraves at the beginning of the Thirteenth century), which was later published in Denkmäler deutscher Kunst, hg. Vom Deutschen Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, in 2001. He subsequently received his habilitation in the history of art at the University of Kassel in 2006 for a study entitled Bilder für wirt, wirten und gast: Studien zur profanen Wandmalerei von 1200 bis 1500. Much of his research focuses on profane and Christian art and iconography, medieval manuscript illumination, and wall paintings, especially in Germany and Italy, as well as goldsmiths’ work and bronze casting. One of his most recent publications is his contribution to Die Wandmalereien im Braunschweiger Dom St. Blasii (ed. by Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck and Joachim Hempel) (2014). Dieter Wuttke, professor emeritus in Bamberg, is a German philologist and art and cultural historian. After finishing studying German, Latin philology, and history in Hamburg, Saarbrücken, and Tübingen, he became a teacher at the Altes Gymnasium in Bremen for five years. From 1962 through 1995 he taught German philology of the Middle Ages and early modern times at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, and Bamberg. From the start of his career he included art and cultural history in his teaching and research. As early as 1953 he came into contact with and was under the guidance of Erwin Panofsky and of the legacy of Aby M. Warburg and the Warburg Institute in London. Officially named by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 1965, he was elected to the special commission created to promote and renew humanism research in postwar Germany. He was a visiting professor at the Universität Hamburg, a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a fellow at a number of other institutions, including The Warburg Institute, Czech Academy in Prague, Westfield College (London), Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (Washington, DC), Stiftung Volkswagenwerk (Hannover), and Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities (Los Angeles, CA). He is a corresponding member of the Institute of Romance and German Studies of the University of London. In 1977 he started the series “Gratia” for Renaissance research (now edited by Joachim Knape) and in 1979 he began his series “SAECVLA SPIRITALIA” (still edited by himself) with his edited publication Aby M. Warburg: Ausgewählte Schriften und Würdigungen (Baden-Baden). The most recent and most complete bibliography of his work is in Artium Conjunctio: Kulturwissenschaft und Frühneuzeitforschung: Aufsätze für Dieter Wuttke, ed. Petra Schöner and Gert Hübner (2013).

xxxii

MEDIEVAL ICONOGRAPHY, AN INTRODUCTION Colum Hourihane

Most definitions of the term iconography begin by expounding on the Greek origins of the word, and I too have been guilty of that!1 I will not break away from such an established tradition here! It is derived from the Greek terms eikon, meaning an image or icon, and graphia, which has traditionally been understood as writing, describing, or sketching. Taken together, and in their most basic meanings, the term means the description of images. Description is just one aspect to the meaning of the term, however, and we also have to take factors such as the classification and interpretation into consideration. Since man first made images in the Paleolithic period he has sought to imbue them with meaning, and the situation is no different in the Middle Ages. Creation is a personal experience, but that does not mean to say that it does not relate beyond the self, and iconography is in many ways trying to understand what is conveyed in such messages. Seeing is an easy task compared to understanding and describing, and all are inextricably intertwined. The first serious attempt to look at subject matter is usually credited to Giorgio Vasari, who described the subject matter, its origins, and function of his works in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in the Ragionamenti.2 He outlined the entire iconography as if the audience would be unaware of its meaning, and this is the first document that describes the personal for the many. It really was not until the very end of the Middle Ages and more significantly at the start of the Renaissance that systematic documentation of motifs and content started with scholars such as Cesare Ripa (c. 1560–c. 1622), Andrea Alciato (1492–1550), Perio Valeriano Bolzani (1477–1558), or Vincenzo Cartari (c. 1531–1569) – who worked on emblem books. These books, particularly popular in sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century Europe, were illustrated catalogues of allegorical figures with accompanying texts and explanations, and have to be seen as part of the humanistic movement of the period. Iconography is not referenced in these works and, instead, it is iconologia, as in Ripa’s Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell’imagini Universali cavate dall’Antichità et da altri luoghi. Largely classical in origin, these scholars included allegories from Greek and Roman sources, which of course were also known to artists of the Middle Ages. These were scholarly encyclopedias that attempted to analyze and understand the origins of motifs as well as providing a useful reference work for future generations. There is a considerable gap between these studies and the next generation of researchers, which happens primarily in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholars such as Adolphe Didron (1806–1867), Anton Heinrich Springer (1825–1891), Émile Mâle (1862–1954), and Louis Réau 1

Colum Hourihane

(1881–1961) were art historians/antiquarians in their own right, with a primary interest in Christian iconography and whose works were strongly influenced by their own beliefs. Their work was pioneering and, whereas they did not adopt an encyclopedic approach like Ripa or Alciato, they nevertheless attempted to be as inclusive and methodical as possible. Their efforts raised the discipline to a scientific level and provided a framework for future generations. It has to be remembered that images of medieval art and the works themselves were not as well known as they are today and what these scholars had to work with in terms of material and case studies was relatively limited. Their work was limited by what was known, and does not compare to the current situation, where the image rules. They were also responsible for introducing the strong dependency for iconographer to seek out a textual relationship for whatever subject was being studied. This was also popularized by Panofsky, and it is only recently that this overdependency on text has been abandoned, having been a hallmark of iconographic research for many years. There is clearly a comfort for the cataloguer to work with a textual parallel that will confirm the visual, but not all images have such a support or parallel. We do not know if artists would have worked with such texts or how they were used when they existed, and it is always best for the cataloguer to approach the work of art from as impartial and objective a stance as is possible. As is constantly being demonstrated, the subject matter of medieval art can come from a variety of sources, including the imagination, and it is important that we remember that these works were made for different audiences – a fact we are inclined to forget. The general interest in iconography, which Charles Rufus Morey credits as being the impetus behind his own iconographical research and the foundation of the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, happens in the early part of the twentieth century. That has to be seen as part of a larger and more generalized humanistic approach which was underway at that time. Were it not for his untimely death, Aby Warburg would clearly have expanded even further our knowledge of the way man approaches subject matter. As it was, World War II, and the dispersal of many of his students throughout the world led to the same expansion only a little later. Even though it is now fashionable to criticize Erwin Panofsky, our enormous debt to him in the field of iconography has to be acknowledged. It was he, as well as contemporaries such as Saxl, Morey, and Van der Waal, who put the discipline on a firm footing and paved the way for future generations. Interest in images has never waned, despite the unfashionable stance adopted toward iconography when the new art history developed in the 1970s. Some pivotal studies, such as those by Baxendall, Bryson, Foucault, Freedberg, Ginzburg, Haskell, Vovelle, and Lancien, enabled us to understand images better than we had, but the desire was always there to extend the iconographical stance to its full potential.3 It is clear that the age of the great iconographers has now largely gone, and the pivotal works so often referred to in this publication will not be repeated. Iconographical studies still continue, but not with the same force as in the past, and certainly not with the same pioneering efforts. Instead, this is now the age of the iconologist. Iconology bears little or no relationship to the term as defined by Panofsky, and was first developed as a new approach toward the end of the twentieth century. There can be no doubt about the significant role computers have played in reviving iconography. Medieval art is complex and its composite nature, such as a building façade or shrine with multiple faces or an altar piece with painting and sculpture, can cause cataloguing problems. Complex relationships have to be electronically preserved to fully understand these programs. The application of computers to art history in the mid-1970s was significant, and nowhere more so than in the field of iconography.4 Computer access to images has increased an awareness of the importance of iconography and made it one of the most widely used fields. Iconographic access has necessitated the cataloguing of minute detail. Whereas previously general subject terms 2

Medieval iconography, an introduction

sufficed, scholars are now looking for specific details. In the Index of Christian Art for example, a general subject term such as “Christ Crucifixion” no longer caters for user needs, and now scholars are looking for the Crucifixion with one cross and the Virgin only, or three crosses with Sol and Luna only. Existing terms need to be refined and extended to cater for such demands. Throughout history, iconographic cataloguing has used free text descriptions, controlled vocabulary terms or thesaurus like structures or combinations of all three forms.5 Specific databases covering individual topics, such as music or medicine, have been created to enable in-depth cataloguing.6 Databases are also now covering more than Western art and resources covering Islamic, Jewish, Chinese, and Indian art forms have been created. These have necessitated the creation of suitable terminologies but the field is by no means exhausted. Similarly, the initial drive to develop iconographical standards and guidelines that took place in the 1970s and 1980s seems to have petered out.7 This, despite the dominance of the image, is unusual. Archives and image collections continue to use their own in-house standards and still create new ones. A few large-scale cataloguing standards, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Iconclass, dominate the field, and other initiatives, such as François Garnier’s standard, seem to have fallen by the wayside.8 Similarly, the Art and Architectural Thesaurus developed by the Getty Art History Information Program does not seem to have been widely used for iconographic access and its strength is mainly for object terminology.9 The hoped-for single portal to allow iconographic access to disparate collections has not materialized and it may never, given the obstacles. Similarly, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Artstor database, developed independently of any specific collection but which was seen by many as the solution to image needs, has a long way to go. Despite heroic efforts, the data and coverage are inconsistent and iconographic access is not well represented. Of all institution types, museums seem to have been most successful in allowing iconographic access to their collections, and it is rewarding to see that a number of institutions, such as the Walters Art Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are now offering free images for academic use through their online sites. Even though their entire collections are not yet available online, these resources are making us aware of the potential of such sites. A similar, free image site developed by Wikipedia –Wikimedia Commons, where individuals and institutions can make their images available – offers limited but useful resources. Iconographic access is provided for the images and, even though they are catalogued at a basic and rudimentary level, it is a valuable resource covering all periods and areas. Given the number of images taken from this resource to illustrate articles in these two volumes, it is clear that it has more than proved its value. Of course, the value of such a database lies in image owners making their resources available through such a site and it is hoped that this will happen. A similar but smaller database is also available on the website of the International Center of Medieval Art, which is once again dependent on its members making their images available free of charge for use in the scholarly community. Libraries and individuals continue to add their images to both of these resources, but it is a slow process. Many individual scholars have now put their own image resources online but with limited metadata, and iconography is very rarely included. Their initiatives are to be applauded, but the value of such resources is undermined by the lack of cataloguing and, in many cases, these databases are never consulted or used simply because the images are inaccessible. Even though the transfer from an analogue system to a digital one was rapidly undertaken in the field of library catalogues, it has not yet been accomplished in the field of image collections. This highlights the overall relatively neglected field of visual studies. Image archives such as those in the Warburg or Courtauld Institutes in the University of London are still not completely digitized, despite a need to have them online. Iconographical studies have come a long way since they first started in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries. The term itself has been broadened considerably and concepts are now 3

Colum Hourihane

included which have never entered scholarship before. In our quest to understand images we have gone beyond the level of simply recognizing and describing and have focused on understanding not only what is represented but also what they mean in the bigger picture and how they are mediated through the viewer. Traditional iconographical studies have focused on the chronological and developmental stages of a motif ’s history, but this has now largely been abandoned. It may still be there, but now it is incorporated into a deeper study. Our emphasis nowadays is on iconology as much as iconography, but we seem to forget that to get to the iconological level we first need to progress through the iconographical. We can never understand the subject matter of any work by simply looking at one image. Value lies in relating the subject matter to other examples, seeing how individual works differ and why this is so. Even though iconographical research may have lessened, it is clear that much remains to be studied in the field. Some large-scale topics are still understudied while other topics have not even been approached. Celia Fisher, in her essay on plants and flowers in this volume, appeals to other scholars to undertake research on the subject. The many flowers and plants found in the borders of medieval manuscripts for example were used with purpose, and yet their meaning has largely evaded us. The iconography of what has been described as ornament, for example, has only recently received limited attention. Nonrepresentational motifs were used consciously, and certainly with meaning, but we are unaware of what these were. One such motif consisting of three dots arranged in a triangular arrangement and called the “cintamani” motif was recently studied with profit by Jaroslav Folda.10 The spiral and interlace ornament on the Irish High Crosses was used with intent, and yet it has never been explained. Space was highly valued and limited on these monuments, and decorative iconography would simply not have been used. It is unfortunate that a vocabulary to describe these terms has never been devised, but it is just one of the many remaining challenges in the field of iconography.11 It would also be a good investment if software design was able to link subject matter with period or style. It is one of the most frequently requested associations with subject matter and not all cataloguing systems cater for such refinements. As it presently stands, neither iconography nor iconology offers any associations beyond itself and, as these studies show, it is a quality which constantly changes. It is always interesting to plot such changes in relation to period or style and taste. Given its investigative powers, it is disappointing to find that iconography is still relatively neglected in formal curricula. Iconography is still not formally taught in third-level education, and yet surveys have shown it to be one of the most used fields by the public as well as the specialist.12 Most cataloguers learn just the skill of recognizing and describing subject matter through experience, and even then they are usually limited to a single period. The medievalist, for example, will not recognize subject matter in nineteenth-century works of art to the level required by the specialist researcher. Claims have been made for the last twenty or so years that object recognition software will replace such cataloguers, and that it is nearly ready to be fully implemented. The situation is unclear and even though enormous strides have been made, it still does not appear to be fit to launch. Neither has automatic image annotation proved to be the solution it was once hoped for and, until further enhancements are made, it is not practical.13 As an approach, iconology has increased over the last twenty or thirty years, but not with the pace that the new exponents would have liked. Iconology does not solely deal with what images say to us, but what we can also say about them. It is a more complete and rounded picture than envisaged by Panofsky.14 It has also changed since Warburg’s use of the term but does not appear to be fully understood as yet and is still developing as an approach; we are still, to use the title of a recent monograph, working “Towards a New Iconology.”15 There seems to be a certain dissent as to whether iconology centers on the actual investigation of the work or the results of that research. This was first proposed by Creighton Gilbert in 1952 and subsequently extended by other scholars.16 4

Medieval iconography, an introduction

If iconographical studies continue, they are now largely focused on individual themes, as the essays in the last section of this book show. Iconology has taken the subject out of the hands of the art historian and made it the remit of the cultural historian. In doing so, it has opened up the field enormously and made us aware of connections and relationships that had not previously been studied. It has validated the visual as a separate and worthy document which cannot be ignored. The anthropology and performativity of images are now looked at, and a far more holistic approach has been proposed – and all are examined throughout this publication.17 It seems to be unfashionable nowadays to use the term iconography, and reference is usually made to iconology – a far trendier term. The field of iconological studies has been led by a few intrepid scholars, such as Hans Belting, Horst Bredekamp, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Barbara Baert, W.J.T. Mitchell, Keith Moxey, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, who have opened up the field of understanding images enormously. Projects have been developed around the concept and its future.18 Numerous journals, monographs, conferences, and listservs attest to its popularity but iconography is still not dead! Iconology is heavily orientated toward anthropological studies.19 It is claimed that there is now a greater awareness of the visual thanks to visual studies or the visual turn, terms which developed thanks to W.J.T. Mitchell’s 2004 study What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images.20 This opened up the realm of the visual to other disciplines and media and elevated the image to its own rightful position in cultural studies. Even though it is claimed that the visual is no longer the sole remit of the art historian, it is still not being used by scholars outside of the field to the level that it should be. The hoped-for expansion has not yet happened. It is a movement which needs to take place and for whatever reason the holistic approach is more often than not lacking. Iconology is now used to explain a multiplicity of factors underlying the creation of the work of art. It is expected to provide the reasoning why the maker chose the subject in the first place, and this comes from studying the work and subject in relation to context, time, and form. The researcher needs to look beyond the immediate art historical context and instead to probe the socio-historical background of the work and world in which it was created and to explore the conscious as well as the subconscious reasons why the work was made in the first place. Roelof van Straten believes that such explorations can then reveal the principles that characterize not only the individual but also the entire attitude of the period, area, group, or beliefs in which the work was made. It is believed that all can be determined through the individual who was responsible for the work.21 Images are seen as living entities that can communicate directly with the viewer. The image now stands in for reality and is not a static, dead representation.22 For Belting, the image is an object that works in social space and is animated by the gaze.23 Our perceptions may change over time, but our senses remain the same and we develop an intimate relationship with the image. Ruben’s painting of the Crucifixion known as “Le Coup du Lance,” now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (oil on panel, 311 × 429 cm, inv. No 297) but originally made around 1620 for the high altar of the Franciscan Church of the Minor Friars in Antwerp, has an interesting iconological afterlife. The work shows one of the soldiers at the foot of the cross piercing Christ’s side. Its composition was imitated on several occasions, one of the most interesting from an iconological perspective is the painting on a porcelain plate from the Qing Dynasty and dating to c. 1720–1730.24 Bolswert’s print after Rubens’s original traveled as far as China, probably with Catholic missionaries, where it was reproduced in color in this medium. It was made there in the reign of Kangxi, fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, by a local artist in Jingdezhen who had at least seen the print but may or may not have understood it.25 Such a work shows the power of images to travel and to cut across the borders of understanding, also showing the difficulties in trying to unravel the place and meaning of such an image. Most theories try to 5

Colum Hourihane

evaluate the impact images have on us and how we analyze their content, but comparatively few make any effort to see what we do after seeing such work. One of the most significant is where we put our ideas into a physical form and that is usually done using the textual correlate. In the end we fall back on words. Studies have shown how we mentally read an image usually from the lower left corner and proceed in an arch ending in the upper right.26 Thorough identification, cataloguing, and description should proceed in a similar pattern. Whereas studies of the visual are especially welcome, it is also clear that greater collaboration is needed between art historians and scholars from other disciplines and that iconology in inexperienced hands is a dangerous tool. Iconology as used by scholars outside the field of art history frequently lacks the basic iconographical background and knowledge, and has meant that some scholars have a tendency to go into orbit regarding interpretation. Many non-art historians lack the basic iconographic steps necessary to understand images, and their iconological studies can frequently extend the interpretation into the unknown. Whereas interpretation is personal, it always needs to be based on the evidence. It was Panofsky who defined iconography as the “description and classification of images,” and iconology as “an iconography turned interpretive.”27 Whatever we want to call it, our need to understand the subject matter and meaning of images still continues. Compared to subsequent periods, iconological research, as distinct from iconographical work, into the Middle Ages has been relatively limited and the focus instead seems to be on the later period and the Renaissance in particular. The chapters in this volume represent a balance between some of the better-known iconographical concepts and some of the most recent. They all highlight the contemporary role iconography plays in medieval studies and how its approaches and methodologies have adapted to changing needs. They highlight issues other than simple recognition, which was one of the guiding lights for such studies at the start of the century. They continue to show the lessening dependency on the text-image associations so beloved of past iconographers.28 Nowadays, iconography is seen in all its guises – from being an important key to understanding a work to the fact that it operates in different ways over time and space. It is no longer the static and focused element it was, and instead is seen to operate on levels which were previously unknown. Iconography can change when, for example, the work is moved – it can alter its meaning under different lighting conditions, its role can change when it interacts with other elements such as sound, its meaning can change in front of different audiences – these are just some elements which are discussed in these essays. The chapters highlight the value of iconography not only for the art historian but also for a variety of other disciplines, such as music, literature, and history, and the value of all these fields working together. The chapters highlight the changes in approaches over the last few centuries, from the value of describing and cataloguing to looking beyond the work itself to the creator, viewer, and world. Apart from providing an iconographical history of man’s endeavors to unravel meaning, these essays also highlight some of the future avenues for research and methodologies which will pay dividends.

Notes 1 C. Hourihane, “Iconography,” in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (New York, 2005), 1069–78. See also M. Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. Philip Mairet (New York, 1961); J. Białostocki, “Iconography,” in Dictionary of The History of Ideas, ed. P.P. Wiener (New York, 1973), 7: 524–41; J. Bialostocki, Stil und Ikonographie: Studien zur Kunstwissenschaft (Cologne, 1981); M. Dvořák, The History of Art as the History of Ideas, trans. John Hardy (London/ Boston, 1984); S. Sinding-Larsen, Iconography and Ritual: A Study of Analytical Perspectives (Oslo, 1984); “Iconography,” in Automatic Processing of Art History Data and Documents. Pisa. Scuola Normale Superiore.

6

Medieval iconography, an introduction

2

3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12

13

14

15

16 17 18 19

20 21

September 24–27, 1984. Proceedings, ed. L. Corti and M. Schmitt (Florence, 1985), 321–31. One of the most recent and useful books on the subject is by R. van Straten, An Introduction to Iconography, trans. Patricia de Man (Yverdon/Langhorne, 1994). See also F. Büttner and A. Gottdang, Einführung in die Ikonographie (Munich, 2006); P. Taylor, “Introduction,” in Iconography without Texts, ed. P. Taylor (London, 2008), 1–10. Ragionamento di Giorgio Vasari Pittore Aretino fatto in Firenze sopra le invenzioni delle storie dipinte nelle stanze nuove nel palazzo ducale Con lo Illustrissimo Don Francesco De’ Medici primo genito del Duca Cosimo duca di Fiorenza, Firenze, Biblioteca della Galleria degli Uffizi. See http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/ 894/1/Davis_Fontes47.pdf. See M. Vovelle and D. Lancien, Iconographie et Histoire des Mentalités (Paris, 1975); D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989); F. Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven, CT/London, 1993). See M. Schmitt, Object, Image, Inquiry, the Art Historian at Work (Los Angeles, 1988). C. Hourihane, Subject Classification for Visual Collections,Visual Resources Bulletin, No. 12 (Columbus, 1999). Although now slightly out of date, a useful guide is that by J.B. Friedman and J.M. Wegmann, Medieval Iconography: A Research Guide (New York, 1998). See C. Hourihane, “It Begins with the Cataloguer,” in Introduction to Art Image Access, Issues, Tools, Standards and Strategies, ed. M. Baca (Los Angeles, 2002), 40–58. F. Garnier, Le langage de l‘image au moyen âge, 2 vols. (Paris, 1982–1989). See Guide to Indexing and Cataloging with the Art & Architectural Thesaurus, ed. T. Petersen and P.J. Barnett (New York/Oxford, 1994). See J. Folda, “Crusader Artistic Interactions with the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century: Figural Imagery, Weapons, and the Çintamani Design,” in Interactions: Artistic Interchange between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period, ed. C. Hourihane (University Park, 2007), 147–66. It is worth looking at L. Finance, Ornement: vocabulaire typologique et technique (Paris, 2014). A.C. Foskett, The Subject Approach to Information (London, 1981); P.G.B. Enser, “Query Analysis in a Visual Information Retrieval Context,” Journal of Document and Text Management 1:1 (1993), 25–52; C. Gordon, “Patterns of User Queries in an ICONCLSS Database,” Visual Resources XII (1996), 177–86; L.H. Armitage and P.G.B. Enser, “Analysis of User Need in Image Archives,” Journal of Information Science 23(4) (1997), 287–99. See P.G.B. Enser, C.J. Sandom, and P.H. Lewis, “Automatic Annotation of Images from the Practitioner Perspective,” in Image and Video Retrieval; Fourth International Conference, CIVR 2005, Singapore, July 20–22, 2005 Proceedings, ed. W.-K. Leow, M. S. Lew, T-S Chua, W.- Y. Ma, L. Chaisorn, and E. M. Bakker (Berlin, 2005), 497–506. E. Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art,” in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (New York, 1955), 26–54. See also E.H. Gombrich, “Aims and Limits of Iconology,” in Symbolic Images, Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London, 1972), 1–25, and W. Heckscher, “The Genesis of Iconology,” in Stil und Überlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes, 3 vols., Akten des 21. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte in Bonn 1964, (Berlin, 1967), 239–62. Brendan Cassidy credits Warburg with being the first to use the term “iconology” in a lecture he delivered in Rome in 1912; see B. Cassidy (ed.), Introduction to Iconography at the Crossroads, Papers from the Colloquium sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 23–24 March 1990 (Princeton, 1993), 5. Warburg may have stopped using the word “iconography” in 1908 and replaced it with “iconology” – see M. Hatt and C. Klonk, “Iconography – Iconology: Erwin Panofsky,” in Art History: A Critical Introduction to Its Methods, eds. M. Hatt and C. Klonk (Manchester, 2006), 98. See also History and Images: Towards a New Iconology, ed. A. Bolvig and P. Lindley (Turnhout, 2003) and the essay on Warburg elsewhere in this volume and the work by Wuttke referenced there. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconology. The performative aspect of images for example is dealt with by Ralph Dedoninck in this volume. One such project is Project Bilderfahrz, Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology, See http:// iconology.hypotheses.org/uber. See B. Baert, S. Lehmnn, and J. Van den Akkerveken, “A Sign of Health: New Perspectives in Iconology,” in New Perspectives in Iconology,Visual Studies and Anthropology (Brussels, 2011), 7; see also M. Hatt and C. Klonk, “Iconography – Iconology: Erwin Panofsky,” in Art History: A Critical Introduction to Its Methods (Manchester, 2006), 98. W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago, 2004). R. van Straten, An Introduction to Iconography: Symbols, Allusions and Meaning in the Visual Arts (Abingdon/ New York, 1994), 12.

7

Colum Hourihane 22 P. Vandenbroeck, “Matrix Marmorea: The Sub-Symbolic Iconography of the Creative Energies in Europe and North Africa,” Baert, Lehmann, and Akkerveken, New Perspectives (as in note 19), 180. 23 H. Belting, Bild-Anthropologie: Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft (Munich, 2001), 158. 24 Among the copies recently shown in the exhibition “Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cezanne,” held at the National Gallery, London, January 24 – April 10, 2015, were works by Edwin Landseer (1840, Her Majesty the Queen) and Delacroix (1850, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, inv. 2625) and a print by Boetius Adamsz Bolswert (c. 1580–1633, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerp); see Rubens and His Legacy, exhibition curated by Nico Van Hout and Arturo Galansino with Katia Pisvin (London, 2014). 25 Now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, inv. No. 5160. 26 M. Baffon, “Right and Left in Pictures,” The Art Quarterly 13 (1950), 312–15. 27 See A. Tudor, Image and Influence: Studies in the Sociology of Film (New York, 1974), 115. 28 This aspect of iconography was also highlighted by Brendan Cassidy in the introduction to Iconography at the Crossroads, Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, ed. B. Cassidy (Princeton, 1993), 10.

8

PART I

The great iconographers

1 ANDREA ALCIATO Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

Andrea Alciato’s name appears in early publications as Andrea Alzatus, after the village of Alzate near Como, where his family originated, but Giovanni Andrea Alciato, as he is known to the world, was born in Milan on May 8, 1492. He received his early education there under teachers who included Parrhasius, Lascaris, and Chalcondyla, from whom he acquired his exceptional mastery of Latin and Greek and his sophisticated philological technique. At the university of Pavia he studied law under Giasone del Maino and Filippo Decio, and then moved to Bologna in 1511 to continue under Carlo Ruini, eventually taking the doctoral degree in both civil and canon law at Ferrara in 1516. From as early as 1515 he was to publish a series of outstanding legal works that applied the philological lessons of Poliziano and Budé to the restoration of the texts of Roman law, not only of the Digest but also of the lawyers of the earlier empire whom Justinian had pillaged and fragmented, and even of the earliest Twelve Tables.1 It was an undertaking that earned him the reputation, with Budé and Zasius, as one of the great “triumvirate” of humanist lawyers of his time.2 As early as 1508 he had also essentially completed an historical and philological study of Roman inscriptions in the Milanese,3 which, though it remained unpublished, formed an important element of the posthumously published Rerum patriae libri IV and was eventually recognized by Theodor Mommsen in the nineteenth century as a significant contribution to the history of epigraphy.4 Other historical works included a letter to Galeazzo Visconti, originally published as a preface to his Annotationes in 1517, and later known as the Encomium historiae, which sought to restore the reputation of Tacitus alongside that of Livy. In the autumn of 1518, with the help of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, his principal Franco-Milanese patron, Alciato took up a teaching post in the university of Avignon, where in 1520 one of his students was Boniface Amerbach. The latter was already in close touch with Erasmus and Zasius, and it was through Amerbach that Alciato’s letter to Bernard Mattius, later known as the Contra vitam monasticam, was passed on to Erasmus. Fear that the letter might become public caused Alciato much concern when, in the first years of the Lutheran dispute, he sought to conceal his early reformist leanings.5 In 1521 he was made a count palatine by Leo X, giving him the right to award doctorates. It was during this Avignon period that he modified his early philological approach to include more attention to the medieval commentators, developing a broader conception of jurisprudential methods which characterized the teaching that earned him his European reputation. He left Avignon in the autumn of 1522 after a dispute with the authorities about 11

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

his stipend. From 1522 to 1527 he taught in Milan, suffering considerable losses during those troubled years, especially as a result of the Battle of Pavia. In 1527 and 1528 he returned to Avignon, but was able to move, under much better conditions, to Bourges, where he was honored with the presence of François I in his inaugural lecture. His treatise on dueling, De singulari certamine, was written to support the king in his dispute with Charles V. In Bourges from 1529 to 1533 his fame as a teacher reached its peak and his presence there was largely responsible for the development in France of the historical school of law.6 However, after negotiations with both Milan and Venice, Alciato was obliged by the Duke of Milan to return to Pavia, where he spent four rather difficult years. In 1537 he was reluctantly allowed to take up a post in Bologna, where one of his students was the emblem writer Hadrianus Junius. It was at this time that he began to publish his Parergon iuris, which were mostly philological notes from his wide reading in literature and history, accumulated during his work on legal texts, but reflecting also his particular interest in Plautus.7 In 1542 he was obliged by the imperial authorities to return to Milan. War again gave him the opportunity to move, this time to Ferrara at the invitation of Ercole II d’Este, but he was again obliged by the imperial authorities to move back to Pavia in 1546. Student indiscipline and the gout made his remaining years difficult, although his reputation remained undiminished. He died in Pavia in the night of January 11–12, 1550.

The emblems That Alciato was in fact the father and initiator of the illustrated poetic genre which is now called the emblem is not in doubt.8 It was, in large part, the fruit of a hobby, translating Greek epigrams,9 that he had cultivated, it seems, since his youth.10 Some sixty of his translations appeared with others by well-known contemporaries, including Erasmus and Thomas More, in an anthology published by Bebelius in 1529. During the 1520s he seems to have developed the idea of the emblem; the Emblematum liber, printed – although without his authorization – by the Augsburg publisher Heynrich Steyner in 1531, was the first printed work to use the term in its title. It launched what was to become an immensely influential genre of illustrated books. This first edition contained 104 emblems; the second, authorized edition, by Christian Wechel of Paris, added another nine, and two more were added by the same publisher in 1542. A second collection of eighty-four new emblems appeared, after maneuvers which remain something of a mystery, from the house of Aldus in Venice. The two collections were combined, though still as two separate parts of the work, by Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Gazeau of Lyon in 1547, and the total was brought to 212 by various additions made in the editions published by Guillaume Rouille and Macé Bonhomme in Lyon between 1548 and 1550. In these editions Barthélemy Aneau, who was primarily a teacher, rearranged the emblems, apparently with Alciato’s approval,11 to form a sort of commonplace book. This became the more common form of the work, but the two formats existed side by side until early in the next century, suggesting that there were readers who not only used it as a commonplace book but also enjoyed it for the pleasure of the unexpected in reading, which Aneau obliterated when he reorganized the work. Autonomous editions of Alciato’s emblems presented from the start a three-part composition, consisting of a title or motto, an illustration, and an epigram, but editions contained within volumes of his Opera usually lack the illustrations. The format was not followed by all his imitators, some of whom omitted the title or motto, others the epigram. In the editions which do not have the format introduced by Aneau the emblems appear to follow no ordered sequence. Some, as we suggest ahead, are personal and occasional devices, some seem to have a topical political or satirical intention (the particular circumstances of some may now be unknown to us), and 12

Andrea Alciato

others propose moralizing interpretations of subjects drawn from mythology or natural history (Figs. 1.1–1.2). The epigrams vary considerably in length from one to sixteen distichs. What they do have in common is a description or at least an identification of the subject illustrated and an interpretation, though even here not always in that order, and occasionally emblems are found in which the name of the subject or the intended meaning is to be seen only in the title or motto. The symbolism, as explained ahead, seems to be consistently of a traditionally allegorical or metaphorical rather than a Neoplatonist nature. How should one characterize Alciato’s emblems? Various approaches suggest themselves. One could ask about the provenance or source of the emblem. One might look at the application or interpretation of the emblem in the subscriptio. One could attempt to group emblems according to some larger topic, such as politics, religion, or ethics. One could consider the central motif, the object or event illustrated. Source hunting is unlikely to account for the popularity of Alciato’s emblems, although questions of source and provenance may interest scholars. One possible source, however, is worth a

Figure 1.1 In nothos (Padua, Tozzi, 1621) 600. By permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.

13

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

Figure 1.2 Gratiam referendam (Paris, Wechel, 1534) 9. By permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.

comment. The scholars of the Renaissance wrongly believed that in the Hieroglypica Horapollinis they had discovered a key to the meaning of the ancient Egyptian signs inscribed on obelisks and other monuments, whereas the hieroglyphs were really a form of esoteric writing. These hieroglyphs flowed into the mainstream of the emblem both directly through the original Greek version of the Horapollo, first printed in 1505, and translated into Latin in 1517 (there were at least thirty subsequent editions12), and indirectly through medieval Christian allegory, the most important work of this kind being Physiologus, and through the books of “imprese.” One of the first literary works to use the hieroglyphs fairly systematically was Francesco Colonna’s richly 14

Andrea Alciato

illustrated Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which probably dates back to the 1460s, although it was first published in 1499. Colonna’s hieroglyphs and their inscriptions were considered genuine, although in fact they were essentially recreations of his imagination, largely inspired by other imitations of hieroglyphs. Alciato certainly used some of the same hieroglyphs as this work, but it seems unlikely that he conceived of them as signs in the same way as Colonna. Assuming that one opted for the application or interpretation, the “meaning” of an emblem, then the first task would be to assign such meaning to each and every emblem. But it is not always possible to equate one emblem with one topic, let alone one meaning. Should the motto always be regarded as providing the meaning, or direction of meaning? For instance, Alciato uses the emblem “Imparilitas” (Inequality) to rate Pindar above Bacchylides. Is this emblem then a form of literary criticism? Or should the emblem be considered a comment on the inequality of Alciato’s colleagues? It features four birds: the high flying falcon, and the jackdaw, goose, and duck that remain close to the earth. Alciato usually, but not always, identified the general topic of his emblem in the motto, but some mottoes, such as those of the tree emblems, merely name the object. Then again, Alciato’s epigrams occasionally present more than one application. For instance, the emblem “In facile a virtute desciscentes” (On those who easily fall from virtue) shows a small remora impeding the progress of a great ship. The epigram suggests that the image conveys three things: a petty cause, a lawsuit, and “passion for a harlot, which draws youths from outstanding studies.” As first printed, Alciato’s emblem book was a more or less unorganized collection of self-contained statements on a variety of topics. Some editions, such as the French translation by Barthélemy Aneau (Lyon, 1549), regrouped the emblems in loci communes. But the new orderly arrangement is far from satisfactory. Why should “In silentium” be grouped under “Fides,” or “Garrulitas” under “Superbia,” or “In colores” under “Amor,” to take but three examples? But some early and later editions continued the original unorganized arrangement, notably those of Jean de Tournes and those containing the French translation of Jean le Fèvre. Alciato’s emblems do, however, provide evidence of ethical, social, political, and religious principles, and occasionally of economic concerns. The emblems of the originator of the new genre cover a wide spectrum of characteristic humanistic concerns. Without prioritizing the themes, it seems clear that Alciato’s overriding concerns may be labeled moral, rather than moralistic, and ethical in the broadest sense. “Moral” here includes traditional notions of good and evil, with the virtues and vices taking an important place. Then there are professional concerns with justice and education, the former perhaps inevitable for a lawyer. Political topics are more widespread than a casual reading may suggest, and these range from the celebration of Milan’s rulers through the denunciation of greedy rulers and ungrateful sponsors, through questions of justice and power, statecraft and administration, to the rights of the people in near absolutist societies. But not everyone will agree on the definition of a topic or theme of a given emblem. Is the emblem “Nec quaestioni quidem cedendum,” for instance, a political emblem addressing tyranny and the rights of the people to rebel, or does it highlight bravery in the face of adversity (here torture)? Certain economic concerns also break the surface, although they never represent a dominant topic. Social issues are raised. They include the question of love, marriage, and of woman, and here Alciato seems very conservative, even unrelentingly misogynist. He never married, but whether such emblems on women bespeak personal experience or reflect a dominant mood in a patriarchal society is another matter. It may appear odd to some readers that religious issues play a very minor role in these emblems. The friendship and mutual respect that bound Erasmus and Alciato13 might lead one to expect that Alciato would have used more emblems for religious commentary. In fact, his religious emblems are few in number and they deal with very general questions. His experience with the letter to Bernard Mattius suggests he was concerned to protect himself. 15

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

Perhaps the simplest and best approach to categorizing Alciato’s emblems would be to report on the central motifs that shape the emblems. Some later emblem writers would stress the role of natural history, human history, classical mythology, the Bible, and so on in the creation of their emblems. It is obvious that Alciato based many of his emblems on classical history and mythology. One has only to think of his use of figures such as Achilles, Actaeon, Aeneas, Anchises, Ajax, Arion, Aristomenes, Bellerophon, Brutus, Cadmus sowing the dragon’s teeth, Cecrops, Chimera, Cyclops, Democrates, Diomedes, Geryon, the three Graces, the Harpies, Hector, Heraclitus, Hercules performing many labors, Icarus, Janus, Leana, Marc Antony, Medea, the Minatour, Myrtillus, Ocnus, Odysseus, Phaeton, Phidias, Phrixus, the pigmies and Hercules, Polyphemus, Prometheus, the Sphinx, Tantalus, Thrasybulus, Triton, and Zetes. They tend to typify a human experience, which is used for didactic purposes: personifications such as Invidia, Nemesis, and Occasio; gods such as Bacchus, Mercury, and Pan; goddesses such as Athena, Minerva, and Venus; the figures of Cupid and Anteros. Then there are those many emblems that are based on nature, or natural history: animals, reptiles, fish, birds, plants, and trees. Alciato’s emblems are replete with apes, beavers, bees, beehives, beetles, crabs, chameleons, crickets, deer, dogs, dolphins, donkeys, eels, elephants, foxes, goats, hares, horses, lions, lizards, mice, oxen, oysters, pigs, rams, snakes, scorpions, tortoises, and wolf cubs; fish of various kinds, and many different birds. It is always a traditional property of the creature that becomes the basis for interpretation and application. Praz was one of the first to draw attention to the “emblematic . . . mentality . . . of the Middle Ages with their bestiaries, lapidaries and allegories.”14 However, it is to Arthur Henkel and Albrecht Schöne that we are indebted for a fuller account of the relationship of medieval nature allegory to emblematic art.15 The typological exegesis of the Middle Ages presumed an ordered and meaningful universe, created by God to reveal Himself and His plan for salvation. Both the medieval allegorist and the Renaissance emblematist held that everything that exists points to meanings beyond the things themselves. The relationship of meaning to created thing is, therefore, not arbitrary or capricious in this world view, because meanings were derived from a quality of the object. A single creature like a lion could be seen from many different points of view, connoting many different meanings. These meanings could be good or bad, depending on the qualities involved. The lion could mean Christ, because it was believed to sleep with its eyes open; or the devil, because of its bloodlust; or the blasphemous heretic, because of its evil-smelling mouth; or the upright Christian, because of its courage. Everything could be interpreted in this way, for “good or ill” in recognition of inherent good or evil qualities.

Alciato’s use of the term “emblem” What is in doubt is how Alciato himself intended the word “emblem” to be understood when he first used it.16 Nothing he says can be construed with assurance as a definition; he does not specify the number or the relationship of the parts of the composition in the way some modern theorists have tried to formulate definitions, nor does he explain how his compositions function as symbols. All the evidence available gives rise to uncertainties and questions and Alciato’s contemporaries and imitators did not agree about how the term should be used. The first occasion on which Alciato used the word in writing is a letter to his friend and one-time publisher Francesco Calvo. This letter, dated January 9, 1523, contains the following statement: These past Saturnalia, in order to gratify the noble Ambrogio Visconti, I put together a little book of epigrams to which I gave the title Emblems, for in each epigram I describe 16

Andrea Alciato

something which is taken from history or from nature and can mean something unusual [elegans], and from which artists, goldsmiths, metal-workers, can fashion the kind of objects which we call badges and which we attach to our hats or use as trade-marks, like Aldus’s anchor, Froben’s dove or Calvo’s elephant, which is in labour so long and gives birth to nothing.17 Calvo had been holding some of Alciato’s legal works without publishing them for some time; the Saturnalia were what the humanists called the end-of-year holidays; and the Visconti family was at the time Alciato’s patrons in Milan. It is now agreed by most scholars that Alciato used the word “emblems” here not to specify illustrated poems but as a title for the collection of verses he had composed. These epigrams were to have a symbolic meaning in that they attributed to the thing described (an object, animal, person, or event) an “unusual” meaning. Elegans means the opposite of banal; history or natural history in medieval and early modern culture suggests familiar, traditional allegory, but elegans suggests something more esoteric. Alciato seems to be saying that his epigrams, while retaining the basis of commonplace knowledge and assumed significances, are chosen to demonstrate his ability to make novel interpretations. We know from his correspondence that he had been translating Greek epigrams into Latin and composing epigrams himself since his youth. He was well acquainted with the fact that such epigrams were intended to accompany representations like statues and pictures, and that they usually made a moral or satirical “point.”18 But to understand the choice of the word “emblem” we have to see how it was likely to be understood by contemporaries. Of all the meanings which the humanists found in classical texts, and of which they had already made considerable use,19 the common factor is the notion of an ornament which can be inserted in or attached to something else: a badge to a hat, a carved stone in a ring, embroideries to furniture, moldings to architecture, or, in a figurative sense, figures of speech and commonplaces inserted in literary discourse. What explains the choice of the word is not the symbolic use to which the epigrams are put but the notion that what the epigram describes, or the text of the epigram itself,20 can be such a transposable ornament. Thus, although it seems clear that Alciato used the term here as a title for his epigrams, the idea of a representation of the subject is also implied. His successors, influenced by their knowledge of the classical meanings, were not slow to see the implication, and to shift the meaning of the new name in that direction. In the end the “emblem” came to be primarily the illustration, although modern scholars, looking back over the production of centuries, prefer to apply the term to the complete combination of text(s) and visual image. Perhaps the best evidence for what Alciato had in mind is found in his treatise on dueling, De singulari certamine liber, written for François I in 1528. Here Alciato uses the word three times in a way which can be understood only as intending a personal device.21 The first equates “emblema” with items of apparel or ornaments, which were used to display the aspiration or the loyalty of the knight in the joust: It is accepted by a number of scholars that the practice of duelling was invented by the Mantineans, mainly on the argument that the military cloak and ancient armour are called “mantineae.” For this reason “mantineae” can be said in present terms [to be] the “ephestris”, which we commonly call the “surcoat”, the apex of helmets, pennons and emblems and combatants’ ornaments of that sort. The second mentions an emblem called the image of Mars worn apparently as a talisman on helmets: “There are those who think anyone who had on his helmet the emblem which is called the 17

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

image of Mars would be invincible.” The third is the passage quoted by Alciato’s commentators to explain the emblem assigned to the duchy of Milan. In the Annals there is the well known encounter of Otho Visconti with a certain Saracen in Asia. Having defeated him and struck him down, he took the ornament from his helmet and added it to his own family insignia, that is, a viper vomiting out of its mouth a newly born infant still covered in blood – in fact the emblem taken by Alexander the Great. Indeed, you can see the same image on ancient coins of his, to show how that ruler claimed enigmatically that he was born of Jupiter. For Jupiter was worshipped in many places in Greece in the form of a serpent, and there are in Asia types of serpents which men say give birth through the mouth.22 In the same period this usage is supported by an occurrence in a memorial publication for the chancellor of Charles V, Cardinal Mercurino Gattinara. Jan Dantyszek, Polish ambassador to the imperial court, describes an epigram he contributed to this publication, which appeared in 1530, as pertaining to the “emblem” of the chancellor, which was evidently the image of a phoenix symbolizing faith.23 There is possibly further support, again in the circle of the imperial court, in the bookplate described as the “emblem” of Willibald Pirckheimer in his Opera of 1610. Pirckheimer also died in 1530, but it is yet to be established that the word actually occurs in a work of his published before that time.24 An undated poem of Celio Calcagnini uses the term in this same way: “You will fashion on my ring these tokens and these emblems.”25 Another occurrence of the term, though not quite so clear, is also suggestive. In a letter of April 22, 1490, to Geronimo Donato, Angelo Politian uses the word in a passage where he is speaking of mottoes (breve dictum) and devices (insigne). In this case the “emblem” is something inlaid in a ring, probably a stone, on which the words are to be engraved. It seems quite probable, and it is perfectly compatible with the letter of 1523, that Alciato, in using the term “emblem” for his title, was thinking of his epigrams as verses designed to elucidate or accompany visual devices,26 which in this case were created for Ambrogio Visconti and his circle in 1522. These devices would have been the original core of the later collection, which was expanded with other items that may not conform strictly to this definition. Whether Alciato himself originally conceived of a publication with illustrated poems remains uncertain, though the fourth line of the dedication to Peutinger, which appears in all editions, including the unauthorized first, may indicate that visual representations existed: While a walnut beguiles boys and dice beguile young men And old men waste their time with picture cards. . . . I forge these emblems in my leisure hours, And the tokens were made by the master-hand of craftsmen. Just as [we can] attach embroideries to clothing and badges to hats So each should be able to write with mute signs. . . . For my part I shall give, as one poet to another, paper gifts Which you should accept as a pledge of my friendship.27 It is also clear from his correspondence that the appearance of the illustrations in 1531 came as no great surprise, although he complained bitterly of their quality: That book was published, I assure you, without my knowledge, as I also wrote to our friend Palma. In truth, since it is so full of mistakes, whether we consider the 18

Andrea Alciato

absurdities of the pictures or the corrupt text of the poems, I am forced to put my hand to the work and to acknowledge this disowned and exposed off-spring, just when it was near the point of death, and to bring it forth again enlarged and better prepared . . . [Italics added]28 Although there may still be some uncertainty about whether Alciato originally intended his collection to be illustrated, he approved of the illustrations for the Wechel editions that followed from 1534, and those who purchased or read Alciato’s emblems received illustrated emblems. In terms of reception the question of Alciato’s original intention is in fact irrelevant.

Alciato’s notion of symbolism Two sources allow us to gain some insight into Alciato’s notion of symbolism: the first is the contemporary history of the hieroglyphs, to which Alciato explicitly relates his emblems, and the second is his explanation of the nature of language. For both of these sources we need to refer to his treatise and commentary De verborum significatione, which was published in 1530, but which he had been working on since 1520.29 In an aside at the beginning of the commentary Alciato mentions his emblems and compares them to the hieroglyphs30 of Horapollo and Chaeremon; that is, he considers them at this stage not in the context of artistic production but as meaningful signs. He says, “Words signify, things are signified. However, sometimes things too can even signify, like the hieroglyphs in Horapollo and Chaeremon; I too have composed a book of epigrams in this genre; its title is Emblemata.”31 The mention of “mute signs” in the dedication to Peutinger may also be an allusion to the hieroglyphs. The significance of these allusions lies in the question of how Alciato understood the functioning of such symbols, to which he compares his epigrams here as being of the same genre.32 The collections of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica published at this time33 consisted of verbal descriptions of symbolic objects without illustrations. One may understand Alciato’s remark therefore as drawing a parallel with them: his Emblemata contain epigrammatic descriptions of “things which signify.” The question here is: how do these “things” signify? Students of the emblems have usually referred to Ficino and his commentary on some lines of Plotinus to deduce that the hieroglyphs were thought of as “natural” signs. These do not represent, like verbal language, a discursive, linear account of the meaning, but provide a total, unmediated access to its reality, which is the platonic idea itself and is beyond words. But there was another possibility. In Bologna Giovanni Battista Pio and Filippo Beroaldo the Elder read the hieroglyphs with the help of Diodorus Siculus and Lucius Apuleius. For these writers, the starting point for the creation of the symbol is a natural property of the object. The hieroglyph in this case is seen as a representation of that property, a sign which is not the idea itself but an intermediary between the idea and the reader, with this difference from the arbitrary verbal sign that it is rooted in a natural quality of the object portrayed and functions like a simile or simple metaphor in the manner known to all from Aristotle.34 As Alberti observed, such signs might be considered universal because to understand them, the reader needs no other knowledge than what natural history and technology teach him. The emblems can be understood as a form of hieroglyph, and both symbols can be thought of as conventional in the sense that they retain the basis of commonplace knowledge and assumed significances as, for example, in traditional allegories. Alciato, following Erasmus in his famous commentary on the adage “Festina lente,”35 seems to have understood the hieroglyphs in this way, not as esoteric signs whose meaning was divinely ordained or fixed by a religious tradition but as humanly devised symbols to which he could attribute his own “unusual,” and surprising, interpretations.36 19

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

In Book 2 of the treatise we find a clear statement about where Alciato stands in the debate about natural or conventional, fixed or changing meaning in language.37 He refers to Cicero, Horace, Quintilian, and Aulus Gellius to show that words acquire their meaning from usage defined by the authority of the learned. In considering the nature of words and images as signs, the humanists had three basic possibilities from which to choose.38 Firstly, Aristotle and Hermogenes in Plato’s Cratylus authorize the view that words are purely arbitrary and conventional, that meaning is created by usage. Secondly, there is the view that words are endowed, in their original form, with a certain similarity to the thing that they named; they are “natural by their etymology.” Socrates speculates that this similarity is a matter of the phonetic representation of the qualities of flow or constraint inherent in all things according to the philosophy of Heraclitus. This seems to be Socrates’s own view, that names have an inherent correctness, though, when he turns to argue with Cratylus, he makes some concessions to the role of error and convention. Thirdly, there is the group of views, which go back to the idea of the “natural sign” espoused by Cratylus, represented by hermetic, cabalistic, or Neoplatonic theory, that some signs are magical or miraculous symbols, that they have the power of, or are, the thing itself. For Alciato, if there ever was a language, Hebrew for example, which was the origin of all others, and in which letters or words had a “natural” meaning, the languages which descended from it have not preserved this virtue, but have formed and reformed meaning through the mechanism of usage. It is usage, therefore, which will determine the meaning of words. The inclusion in the Commentary of the reference to the hieroglyphs and what was still a manuscript collection of emblems is fortunate because it is the only moment in the work when Alciato speaks of nonverbal signs – a subject which he admits is not really relevant to his treatise. The passage enables us to speculate with some probability about how their author was now thinking of the emblems. The point he makes is that things as well as words can sometimes be signs. As far as hieroglyphs and emblems are concerned, we may understand that they are not in essence words – ekphrases or epigrams – but “things,” or at least representations of things. His title, Emblemata, is not to be taken simply and literally as “Epigrams” would be, but as an image referring to forms of ornament which the dictionaries and usages of the time had already made familiar. They are, he says, giving a legal parallel, like certain forms of circumstantial evidence (“præsumptiones”), that the law can accept as “signs,” and which are also “things which signify.” Alciato then gives a short account of words and meaning, in which the “res,” as meaning, is seen as being added directly to the “verbum,” the sound pronounced, to form the “dictio,” the meaningful word. The authority he names is Fortunatianus, but he is basing himself on an account of meaning which would be familiar to many contemporaries as that of St. Augustine.39 This account in fact distinguished between the “res” as object, without reference to meaning, and the “dicibile” as the idea of the object (mental image, we might say) which could be added to the “verbum” to form the “dictio.” Alciato has simplified even this scheme, omitting the “dicibile,” to allow himself the notion of a thing which signifies. This is clearly unsatisfactory, even in the case of the emblem, in that it makes no allowance for a distinction between the “res” as the object pictured and the “aliquid elegans,” which Alciato himself had in his letter of 1523 distinguished as his intended meaning. It seems that his definition is somewhat hasty, at least as far as hieroglyphs and emblems are concerned. However, if this argument is pursued in the context of the ideas on meaning described earlier, it is possible to suppose that he thought the “meaningful thing” does not have to have a meaning added to it, as the word does; it has an inherent meaning. When he says in the letter, therefore, that in his emblems he describes an object or an event which may have an unusual meaning, he may be thinking of the object or event not so much as having a figurative meaning added arbitrarily 20

Andrea Alciato

to it but rather as having a figurative meaning already in it because of its natural properties. The idea of the purely conventional sign is not relevant to the hieroglyph and the emblem; only letters and words could be considered in this light. The indications are that Alciato’s emblems, being “things” or images of things, are signs of the second kind mentioned earlier – that is, they are analogous to words with an inherent likeness to the thing they represent, but are capable, as such words were capable, of change through usage, of reinvention and redeployment. The evidence suggests that Alciato did not think out the semantics of his emblems very carefully, but we can say that his idea, as far as it appears, is consistent with the concept of the hieroglyph to be found in Diodorus Siculus and transmitted by the Bolognese and Erasmus, rather than with the essential, and therefore immutable, Neoplatonic sign described by Plotinus and Ficino.

Translations As we have noted, there were vernacular translations into French, German, Italian, and Spanish,40 and many of Alciato’s emblems were also translated into English in Whitney’s A Choice of Emblems (1586). However, one should not suppose that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century translators were necessarily guided by modern notions of the purposes of translation. We may today assume that translation seeks to reproduce the meaning and effect of the original in a different language. But, although most printed translations of Alciato’s emblems include Latin texts, that is not necessarily the purpose of the early modern translator. John Manning notes in his discussion of Thomas Palmer, “we do not know to what extent the original was regarded as authoritative, or merely as a stimulus to fresh composition.”41 Even when translators make pronouncements about their translations in prefaces or introductions, these are usually so brief and general as to afford little insight. A full comparative account of Alciato’s translators and commentators would take too much space, and the various translations and commentaries have not all received adequate critical attention. The material bibliographical information is summarized here. Between 1534 and 1542 Wechel published three editions of a French translation by Jean le Fèvre, secretary to Cardinal De Givry.42 One other edition containing Latin and French texts but without illustrations, probably pirated, is now known to be by the Lyon printer Denis de Harsy. Le Fèvre’s text continued to be published occasionally until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Jean de Tournes printed the translation of the first book with the same plates as his Latin edition in 1548, 1555, and 1570. His French edition of 1615 contained Le Fèvre’s translation for the first book and new translations for the second.43 In 1562 Jean Ruelle published a bilingual edition with Le Fèvre’s translation but with illustrations for only about a third of the emblems. The “line-by-line” translation of Barthélemy Aneau, which followed the new topical organization of the emblems he had introduced in the Latin of 1548, was certainly the closest but certainly also the least elegant of the French translations. It appeared five times between 1549 and 1574, published by Rouille or De Marnef and Cavellat. Claude Mignault’s translation, accurate but, as Alison Saunders shows,44 mannered and overdecorated, appeared in a bilingual edition in 1584 and 1587. The first German translation was also published by Wechel, like the French of Le Fèvre, in a bilingual edition. Wolfgang Hunger, who claims to have made his translations between 1537 and 1539, is the first to suggest that the emblems had a potential use as an educational and especially linguistic instrument, seeing them as a valuable and easy way to enrich his own German for both literary and professional purposes. Like Le Fèvre, Hunger translated Alciato’s epigrams, regularly for the most part, into eight-line verses. He apparently hoped to produce a trilingual edition in order to include French. But Wechel could not accommodate all three texts on a page facing the 21

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

illustration and preferred to publish separate French and German editions in 1542. This, however, was the only publication of Hunger’s work, which seems to have been overshadowed by the second German translation, that by Jeremias Held.45 Jeremias Held produced the second German translation.46 It, too, is a bilingual edition with the Latin texts followed by Held’s German version. Held’s version was printed by Georg Raben in Frankfurt for Sigismund Feyerabend and Simon Hüter in 156647 and 1567 by two different printers, the second with “epimythia” different from those of Aneau. The first was reprinted in 1580 and the second in 1583, both by Nicolaus Basse. Held does not seem to have known the work of the first German translator, Hunger, or at least does not appear to have used his edition. Held’s version contains 13248 woodcuts in text to Alciato’s 212 emblems, and they are numbered i–ccxvii. The numbering of the emblems has caused some confusion. Henry Green (190) called the number 217 a misprint, which it is not. The number 217 is correct and derives from the separate numbering of the alternative versions of the epigrams, which Alciato had labeled “aliud,” to four of the emblems.49 As far as the Latin text is concerned, this is the first complete edition of Alciato’s emblems, although not all the emblems are illustrated. It does include the often omitted “offensive” emblem with the Latin motto “Adversus naturam peccantes,” though according to Tung’s concordance it is absent from this edition.50 A ten-page preface in German [Vorrede] by the translator is dedicated to Raymund Graff and dated September 9, 1566; a thirteen-page address to the reader also in German [Vorrede an den Leser] has the same date. Some of the illustrations bear the initials of the artist. The image for emblem no. 73 bears the initials of Jost Amman, while the picturae for nos. 113 and 135 have the initials of Virgil Solis. A second edition of this bilingual Latin-German volume appeared in 1580, also in Frankfurt. This time it was printed by Nicolaus Bassée. The contents, both text and pictures, are the same as in the 1566–67 issue, although some textual contractions are now printed in full. Pagination and fingerprint are identical. There was only one translation into Spanish in the early period. It was made by Bernardino Daza of Valladolid and published by Rouille and Bonhomme in 1549.51 From the phrase “añadidos de figuras y de nuevos Emblemas en la tercera parte” in the title, it would seem to have been based on the edition made by Gryphius in his Reliqua . . . opera of 1548, since this is the only edition of the Emblems which divides them into three parts. Daza’s edition is nevertheless in two books, like that of Jean de Tournes, preserving the order of the original editions of Wechel and Aldus. It is of interest primarily because it contains ten new emblems by Alciato, bringing the total to 210 (the “offensive” emblem “Adversus naturam peccantes” is omitted). Daza also adds two emblems of his own, dedicated to patrons. He uses a limited variety of verse forms, generally matching in length those of Alciato, and keeps fairly close to the latter’s expression and intention. At least two translations into Italian were published, one by Giovanni Marquale,52 the other by Paolo Aemilio Cadamosto.53 Guilo Cesare Capaccio,54 author of a treatise on imprese, published in 1620 his Il Principe, which contained unillustrated translations of Alciato’s emblems. Surprisingly little has been written about these translations beyond Henry Green’s brief comments. There is little to be learned about Marquale and his translation from the prefatory material. The privilege is dated August 9, 1548. The dedication, to Francesco Donato, Doge of Venice, states that the translation is made for the benefit of those who do not understand Latin, and the poem addressed to the reader emphasizes the moral profit to be derived from the emblems. Marquale uses Aneau’s arrangement, including some emblems from each of his categories and concluding with eleven of the fourteen trees, but translates only 136 emblems in the 1549 edition, and 180 in 1551. This remained the total in all the other editions (1564, 1576, 1579).

22

Andrea Alciato

Commentaries Both Bernardino Daza and Wolfgang Hunger55 claim to have written full-length commentaries on Alciato’s emblems, but neither work has survived. The first commentaries to appear in print were the “briefues expositions Epimythiques” added by Barthélemy Aneau to his French edition of 1549. These are very brief, usually one-sentence summaries of the moral interpretation of the emblem. They were not translated and added to the Latin editions until 1564,56 and subsequently continued to appear until the edition of 1616 by the heirs of Guillaume Rouille. The next commentaries to appear were the “Commentariola” of Sebastian Stockhamer, whose dedication to Juan de Sotomayor is dated 1 March 1552 from the University of Coimbra. He wrote commentaries for the emblems of the first book of Jean de Tournes edition in 1556, a most unusual edition since it does not have Alciato’s epigrams. A second edition of the same year contains the two books, both with Alciato’s text; the first book now has illustrations, but the second remains without either illustrations or commentaries. In later editions by De Tournes, including those of the French of Le Fèvre, commentaries for the second book are provided which are based on those of Mignault. The Latin commentaries of Sánchez de las Brozas, professor of Greek and rhetoric in the University of Salamanca, are relatively brief, but thorough as regards sources, and complete in that they gloss all the emblems.57 They were published by Rouille in Lyon in 1573, but, as Luis Merino and Jesús Ureña have shown,58 were probably begun before 1554. Despite the single publication, they were influential in that they were a source for Diego López’s Spanish commentaries and were included with Mignault’s in the combined commentaries of the Tozzi editions. The only commentaries other than Aneau’s in a vernacular language were the Declaración magistral sobre las [sic] emblemas de Andres Alciato by Diego López (1615). He was at the time a teacher of grammar at Toro and Olmedo in the province of León, and dedicated the work to the governor of the province, Diego Hurtado de Mendoça.59 He explains carefully the historical allusions and symbolism of each emblem and interprets their moral teaching. There were three subsequent editions in 1655, 1670, and 1684. At the beginning of his commentary of Emblem 4 (“In deo laetandum”) Claude Mignault seems to seek to distinguish himself from Las Brozas by saying that he will not always state the source of the emblem first, “as some others do,” but say whatever seems important about each emblem.60 In fact he spends a great deal more space than Las Brozas on what he calls the “application” – that is, on the moral of each emblem. His commentaries are by far the most extensive of the period. According to the dedicatory letter of 1571, they were already in a fairly finished state at that time, but he chose in that publication to excerpt only the parts relating to origin and meaning. In 1573 Plantin published what were then the full commentaries, with a “Letter to the Reader,” a preface entitled “Quid emblema sit, et quae eius ratio,” and a considerable number of “Notas posteriores.” The preface was entirely reworked and expanded in 1577 to become the “Syntagma de symbolis,” which now constituted a history of symbolism. The commentaries continued to receive minor additions in the editions of 1591 and 1602.61 Considerably shortened for the “compendious” editions of 1584, 1591, and 1599, they were translated for Mignault’s bilingual, Latin and French, edition of 1584 and 1587. Finally Mignault’s commentaries formed the major part of the combined commentaries, with the notes of Sánchez de las Brozas, the corrections of Laurentius Pignorius,62 and the “Corollaria” of Fredericus Morellus, in the great Paduan editions, edited by Joannes Thuilius and published by Peter Paul Tozzi in 1618, 1621, and 1661.

23

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

The reception of Alciato’s emblems in the material culture The actual evidence of Alciato emblems in the material culture,63 understood as cultural forms that are not products of the printing press, is slight. But one must always bear in mind that over the years fire and warfare have obliterated many of the products of the material culture. Much too, and probably most, of earlier emblematic decoration has disappeared, as tastes changed, and the need to modernize was obeyed. None the less, there is some evidence, but what we are left with must be a pale reflection of what once was. The emblem book is only one of the many media that disseminated the combination of symbolic picture and interpretative text. As we know, emblematic designs were incorporated into almost every artistic form. They are found in stained glass windows and carving, in jewelry and glass, needlework and tapestry, in painting and portraiture, wall and ceiling decoration, and architecture. Veritable emblem programs may be found adorning private residences, such as Bickling Hall and Llanhydroc House in Cornwall, and ecclesiastical buildings. Emblems were used as theatrical properties in dramas and street processions. Poets, preachers, writers, and dramatists frequently employed emblems and emblem-like structures in the spoken and the written word. In addition to the emblem book, we shall find perhaps even more evidence in the material culture of what is known as “imprese,” designed to accompany tournaments, or incorporated in tapestry and embroidery, in wood and stone carving, and on painted walls and ceilings. The earliest use of Alciato’s emblems in England is discovered in tournaments. It appears that the English employed imprese in tournaments as early as 1477,64 and the practice continued intermittently throughout the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Alan Young’s edition of 521 English tournament imprese65 shows that the English frequently used continental models. It has long been known that the Elizabethan Accession Day tilts were important political and emblematic exercises, in which the imprese shields of English aristocrats played a prominent role. On occasion, Alciato’s emblems served as sources or models. For instance, in George Peele’s Polyhymnia (London: Richard Ihones, 1590) a tilt is described that was celebrated on November 17, the first day of the thirty-third year of Elizabeth’s reign. Sir Henry Lee, the queen’s champion, decorated his shield with the Alciatan motif of bees and helmet: “My helmet now shall make an hive for bees.”66 Alan Young’s descriptions allow us to identify a number of possible sources, or parallels, in Alciato for English tournament imprese.67 In 1602–1603 the Moravian nobleman Zdenek Brtnicky z Valdstejna, otherwise known as Baron Waldstein, visited London after studying in Strasburg. His diary68 records Waldstein as seeing a picture in Whitehall Palace “of a cripple being carried on a blind man’s shoulders” (p. 43). Waldstein does not specify in which of the palace rooms he saw the picture. The Moravian traveler noted that the picture was accompanied by Latin verses, which we know correspond with the epigram to Alciato’s emblem of a lame man being carried on the shoulders of a blind man. Those Latin verses were followed on the Whitehall picture by the motto “Mutuum auxilium.” Although Waldstein does not attribute the picture or the texts to Alciato, the Italian was evidently the source.69 This same motif of the mutual assistance provided by the lame man and the blind man is depicted on one of the carved wooden panels that were moved from a house built in 1572 to University College, Oxford. It also features on the Spring tapestry of Sheldon’s Four Seasons Tapestries, now hanging in Hatfield House (Fig. 1.3). The evidence of Waldstein’s diary account is one more small piece of evidence of the reception of Alciato’s emblems in Elizabethan England.70 John Harvey, father of the poet Gabriel Harvey, was a successful yeoman farmer, rope-maker, and businessman in Saffron Walden, Essex. Sometime around 1570 he decorated the fireplace in the parlor of his town house with a large mantelpiece of carved clunch (limestone).71 The 24

Andrea Alciato

Figure 1.3 Detail of one of the figures in the border (upper left side) from Sheldon’s Spring tapestry, now in Hatfield House. The legend reads “In Consilio” (Deliberation). Late sixteenth–early seventeenth centuries. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane.

emblematic decoration is based on three of Alciato’s emblems that receive new mottoes. On Harvey’s mantelpiece the center panel shows Ocnus the rope-maker, and is flanked on one side by an ass eating thistles, and on the other by a beehive. The ass eating thistles has the motto “Aliis non nobis” [For others not for ourselves]; Ocnus is making rope that is destroyed by an ass and has the motto “Nec aliis nec nobis” [Neither for others nor for ourselves]; the bees leaving and returning to the hive are supplied with the motto “Aliis et nobis” [For others and ourselves]. The three panels make a statement about the value of labor and reward, moving from the negative to the positive. Alciato’s emblems have been re-encoded to make an economic and moral statement. This notion is then encapsulated in a motto that literally underlines the three panels – that is, is written beneath those three emblems. Emendated it reads “Nostrae placentae sunt labor” [Our cakes are our labor] – that is, our labor brings its own rewards. Alciato’s warning in the Ocnus emblem, about spendthrift wives or harlots, makes way for a celebration of mercantile entrepreneurialism on Harvey’s fireplace. The Summer Room at University College Oxford is decorated with English wood carvings dating from the late sixteenth century.72 Twenty of the twenty-eight carvings depict in relief motifs taken from Alciato’s emblems. These include among others Prometheus and the eagle, the ass bearing the statue of Isis on its back, Ganymede on Jupiter’s eagle, Tantalus, three girls playing at dice, the lame man carrying the blind man, and the figure of constrained genius whose right hand is weighed down with a stone block.73 Some warships were known to have been emblematically decorated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Elizabeth I’s warship the “White Bear”74 and Charles I’s warship the “Sovereign 25

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly

of the Seas”75 had extensive emblematic decorations, which included citation and modification of some of Alciato’s emblems, although the information is far from complete. Young notes that a German visitor to England in 1611 copied out twenty-seven mottoes and described twelve accompanying pictures in Elizabeth I’s “White Bear.” The sources were Paradin, the impresa shields on display at Whitehall, and Whitney, although two of Whitney’s emblems are identical with Alciato’s. These are “Festina lente” showing a dolphin and anchor, and “Maturandum” accompanied by a snake entwined about a dart or arrow.76 The stem of Charles I’s “Sovereign of the Seas” was decorated with an equestrian statue of King Edgar and Cupid riding and bridling a lion, which appears to be a variation on Alciato’s emblem of Cupid holding the reins of two lions (no. 106). Perhaps the most impressive remaining example of the appropriation of Alciato’s emblems in the decorative arts in England is the Four Seasons tapestries, which hang in Hatfield House.77 The tapestries, which probably date from the first decade of the seventeenth century – the Winter tapestry is dated 1611 – were originally made for Sir John Tracy of Toddington. Francis Hyckes is assumed to have been the designer of the Four Seasons tapestries. He had enjoyed an education in the classics at Oxford, and he retained a lifelong interest in Latin and especially in Greek. During what his son Thomas describes as a “countrie retirement,” Francis translated Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian Wars and selected dialogues of Lucian. It is thought that Francis designed the Four Seasons tapestries during his retirement when he was making these translations from the Greek. He based his designs on four engravings by Maarten de Vos.78 He retained the central deity, the three zodiac figures at the top, and many of the rural activities depicted in his sources. However, the English designer enriched the tapestries with additional flowers, animals, and country scenes. But the most significant departure from the designs of Maarten de Vos is the addition of a wide border containing an unbroken rope of loops, 9 inches in diameter, which enclose twopart emblems, each separated from the next by a flower. The borders of the four panels of the tapestries contain no fewer than 170 emblems, each comprising a Latin motto and a circular picture. These emblematic borders are virtually without parallel in the history of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century European tapestry.79 Since all the Spring emblems derive directly or indirectly from Alciato and Sambucus, and none is an original creation of Whitney, it seems reasonable to conclude that Hyckes drew on these two continental sources. A publisher of both Sambucus and some of the most influential Alciato editions was Christophe Plantin and so probably of the edition used by Hyckes. We know that Hyckes knew Latin and Greek, and he would therefore have had little difficulty with the Latin in the Alciato and Sambucus editions. Plantin also published the Whitney compilation, which drew heavily on the plates Plantin had already used for Alciato, Sambucus, and others.80 An examination of the changes in the texts of the mottoes in the Spring tapestry reveals that Francis Hyckes read his emblem sources very carefully and made modifications according to a clear conception of how the emblem works. Whereas Alciato composed his emblems with a cultured and humanistically educated reader in mind, Hyckes was producing a tapestry for a patron, Sir John Tracy of Toddington. The tapestry was presumably intended to adorn Sir John’s home as an object of significant beauty, but probably not as an intellectual puzzle. The Latin mottoes of the 170 emblems in the borders were intended to be understood by the educated visitor. With perhaps one or two exceptions, they were not intended as intellectual riddles. On the continent tapestry emblems were recognized as fulfilling a valuable educational and didactic function. Thus Andreas Maximillian Fredro recommended their use for the private apartments of rulers, where the emblems could serve as silent counsellors.81 Reviewing the distribution of some of Alciato’s emblems in the tapestries, one finds the following pattern of usage: Spring has twenty Alciato emblems from a total of forty-two – that 26

Andrea Alciato

is, almost half derive from Alciato. Summer has nine Alciato emblems out of the forty-four. Autumn has eleven Alciato emblems out of the forty-two. Winter has twelve Alciato emblems of the forty-two. That means that out of a total of 170 emblematic border roundels no fewer than fifty-two derive from Alciato. In Hyckes’s selection of emblems, Alciato plays the largest role, accounting for almost a third of the total emblematic roundels. But Alciato’s emblems also served in more modest fashion in the decoration of trenchers, which were usually circular in shape, and often given as presents. Such wooden trenchers were used to serve cheese or fruit from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries in Great Britain. We are indebted to Michael Bath and Malcolm Jones for detailed information. Bath describes two of seven oblong trenchers that copy Alciato emblems: “Mutuum auxilium” (Mutual help) depicting a blind man carrying on his back a lame man, and “Fidei symbolum” (Symbol of fidelity) with the figures of Truth, Honor, and Chaste Love. Bath is able to show that the trencher designs are based on Wechel’s Paris editions of Alciato’s emblems. The designer evidently took hints for the coloring from Alciato’s epigrams, although he also used Mignault’s commentaries. As Bath observes, these trencher designs were “by no means simple or unthinking copies of available pattern books” (p. 365). That such trenchers were quite common at the time is revealed by Bath’s quotations from Puttenham, Harrington, Burton, and Donne.82

Notes 1 The fullest biography is by R. Abbondanza in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 2 (Rome, 1960), 69–77. For the bibliography of emblem studies, including Alciato, see the Companion to Emblem Studies, ed. P.M. Daly (New York, 2007), 519–99. 2 So called by Claude Chansonnette (Cantiuncula) in a letter to Cornelius Agrippa (Abbondanza, 74). 3 P. Laurens and F. Vuilleumier, “De l’archéologie à l’emblème: la genèse du Liber Alciati,” Revue de l’Art 101 (1963), 86–95. 4 Corpus inscriptionum latinorum (Berlin, 1877), I, 624. 5 Andreae Alciati contra vitam monasticam epistula: Andrea Alciato’s Letter against Monastic Life, ed. D.L. Drysdall. Supplementa humanistica lovaniensia xxxvi (Leuven, 2014). 6 D. R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (New York/London, 1970), ch. 4. 7 D.L. Drysdall, “Alciato and the Grammarians: The Law and the Humanities in the Parergon iuris libri duodecim,” Renaissance Quarterly 56:3 (2003), 695–722. 8 Most scholars who have treated the European emblem, from the Victorian Henry Green (Andrea Alciati and His Books of Emblems [London, 1872]) to John Manning in the first years of this century, have also revisited the emblems of Alciato. The most recent reassessment of Alciato and his emblems is by D.L. Drysdall, “Andrea Alciato, Pater et Princeps,” in Companion to Emblem Studies (as in note 1), 79–97. 9 The most recent critical account of Alciato’s epigrams, their illustrations, and Alciato’s translation of the Greek Anthology is by R. Cummings, “Alciato’s Illustrated Epigrams,” Emblematica 15 (2007), 193–228. On the relation of Alciato’s emblems to the Greek Anthology, see also J. Hutton, The Greek Anthology in Italy to the Year 1800 (Ithaca, 1935); M. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery (Rome, 1964); A. Saunders, “Alciato and the Greek Anthology,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 12:1 (1982), 1–18; V. Woods Callahan, “Uses of the Planudean Anthology: Thomas More and Andrea Alciato,” in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Bononiensis, ed. R. J. Shoeck (Binghampton, 1985), 399–408. 10 See the correspondence with Pietro Bembo: G.-L. Barni, Le Lettere di Andrea Alciato (Florence, 1953), no. 93, 156–57, ll. 11–18, February 25, 1535; and Petri Bembi cardinalis epistolarum familiarum, libri VI . . . (Venice, Gualterus Scottus, 1552), 267–68, March 21, 1535. 11 D.L. Drysdall, “Epimetheus, An Alciati Companion (review of William S. Heckscher, The Princeton Alciati Companion),” Emblematica 4:2 (1989), 379–91. 12 D.L. Drysdall, “A Note on the Relationship of the Latin and Vernacular Translations of Horapollo from Fasanini to Caussin,” Emblematica 4:2 (1989), 225–41. 13 V.W. Callahan, “Erasmus’s Adages – A Pervasive Element in the Emblems of Alciato,” Emblematica 9:2 (1995), 241–56.

27

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly 14 Praz, Studies (as in note 9), 12, 24. 15 A. Henkel and A. Schöne, Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst der XVI. und XVII. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1967). 16 An excellent survey of earlier discussions of this is provided by B. F. Scholz, “‘Libellum composui epigrammaton, cui titulum feci Emblemata’: Alciatus’s Use of the Expression Emblema Once Again,” Emblematica 1 (1986), 213–26. 17 Barni, Le Lettere (as in note 10), no. 24, 46, ll. 28–35. 18 See contributions by Cummings, Illustrated Epigrams (as in note 9), and Hutton, Greek Anthology (as in note 9), Laurens and Vuilleumier, De l’archéologie à l’emblème (as in note 3), and M. Tung, “Alciato’s Practices of Imitation: A New Approach to Studying His Emblems,” Emblematica 19 (2012), 153–257. 19 D.L. Drysdall, “Occurrences of the Word ‘emblema’ in Printed Works before Alciato,” Emblematica 14 (2004), 299–325. 20 Barthélemy Aneau seems also to have envisaged this possibility: “que toutes et quantesfoys que aulcun voudra attribuer, ou pour le moins par fiction applicquer aux choses vuydes accomplissement, aux nues aornement, aux muetes parolle, aux brutes raison, il aura en ce petit livre (comme en ung cabinet tresbien garny) tout ce qu’il pourra, & vouldra inscripre, ou pindre aux murailles de la maison, aux verrieres, aux tapis, couvertures, tableaux, vaisseaulx, images, aneaulx, signetz, vestemens, tables, lictz, armes, brief à toute piece et utensile, & en tous lieux: affin que l’essence des choses appartenantes au commun usage soit en tout, et par tout quasi vivement parlante, et au regard plaisante.” (Italics added.) 21 Alciato, De singulari certamine (Lyon, 1544). The first edition (unauthorized) was by Kerver (Paris, 1541). The earlier manuscripts seem to have been lost. See Barni, Le Lettere (as in note 10) no. 42, dated May 26, 1528. For a general account see M. Grünberg-Dröge, “The De singulari certamine liber in the Context of Its Time,” Emblematica 9:2 (1995), 315–41. Alciato’s source for the reference to the Mantineans is Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 4.154d. 22 Ibid., ch. 2, 7–8; ch. 37, 69; ch. 43, 81. 23 This has been identified by Agnes Kusler in an as yet unpublished piece of research as the obverse of a portrait medal of Gattinara made by Christoph Weiditz in 1529. 24 W. Pirckheimer, Opera omnia (Frankfurt, 1610; repr. Hildesheim, 1969), 22. One of the dedicatory poems reveals that the illustration was executed by Dürer. The bookplate has been identified as no. 300b in Ilse O’Dell, Deutsche und Österreichische Exlibris 1500–1599 im Britischen Museum (London, 2003). The word occurs in each case in a text by the contributors to this seventeenth-century edition and the necessary proof that Pirckheimer himself used the term “emblema,” as the texts seem to imply, is yet to be found. 25 “De annulo expoliendo” [date unknown] in Carmina illustrium Poetarum Italorum, vol. 3, ed. J. Bottari (Florence, 1719–26), 105–06, ll. 29–30. 26 D.L. Drysdall, “Devices as ‘Emblems’ before 1531,” Emblematica 16 (2008), 253–69. 27 In Latin line 4 reads “Artificum illustri signaque facta manu”. 28 D.L. Drysdall, “The Emblems in Two Unnoticed Items of Alciato’s Correspondence,” Emblematica 11 (2001), 379–91, at 383 and 385, note 11. It is not known who Palma was nor is any letter to such a person extant. He was possibly Johann Bebelius, publisher of the 1529 Selecta epigrammata graeca, which included many translations by Alciato, and whose device was a palm tree. 29 The commentary grew from notes on the De verborum significatione when he lectured on it at Avignon in 1520–21 (Barni, Le Lettere, [as in note 10] no. 5, 12, l. 44); the accompanying treatise was added in 1528. 30 E. Klecker regards Alciato’s emblems as hieroglyphs. See “Des signes muets aux emblèmes chanteurs: les Emblemata d’Alciat et l’emblématique,” Littérature 145 (March 2007), 23–52. 31 Alciato, De verborum significatione (Lyon, S. Gryphius, 1530), 102. The lapidary formula, “Verba significant, res significantur,” is taken from Accursius: Glossa in Digestum Novum, Corpus Glossatorum IX (Turin, ex Officina Erasmiana, 1968), 558 (f. 280v of the original), gloss of Digest 12.1.6. In Amerbach’s manuscript notes of Alciato’s lectures (Basel, Universitäts-bibliothek, ms. C VI 13, 34, col. 1), although the hieroglyphs are mentioned at this point, the reference to the emblems does not appear. 32 For “argumentum” as “genre” see J. Chomarat, Grammaire et rhétorique chez Erasme, vol. 1 (Paris, 1981), 510 (3), 511 (10), 537 (159). 33 For example, that of Fasanini, who taught rhetoric at Bologna when Alciato was there completing his doctoral studies. See D.L. Drysdall, “Filippo Fasanini and His ‘Explanation of Sacred Letters,’” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 13 (1983), 127–55 and “A Note on the Relationship of the Latin and Vernacular Translations of Horapollo from Fasanini to Caussin,” Emblematica 4:2 (1989), 225–41.

28

Andrea Alciato 34 D.L. Drysdall, “The Hieroglyphs at Bologna,” Emblematica 2:2 (1987), 225–47. 35 Erasmus, Adagia II.i.1 (2001). This commentary appeared first in the Venice edition of 1508. 36 D.L. Drysdall, “The Hieroglyphs at Bologna” (as in note 34), 234–37. This understanding of the hieroglyphs seems to be compatible with that described by Laurens and Vuilleumier, De l’archéologie à l’emblème (as in note 3) in the context of Alciato’s epigraphical studies. 37 De verborum significatione, 39–40. See D.L. Drysdall, “A Lawyer’s Language Theory. Alciato’s De verborum significatione,” Emblematica 9:2 (1995), 269–92. 38 For linguistic theories of the period and knowledge of the commentaries of Ammonius Hermæus on Plato’s Cratylus and Aristotle’s On Interpretation, see M.A. Screech, Rabelais (London, 1979), 377–85. 39 The text had been published under the name of Fortunatianus in Hoc in volumine aurea haec opuscula continentur. . . . Dialectica Chirii Consulti Fortunatiani . . . (Venice, Christophorus de Pensis, 1495). For Augustine see the translation by B. D. Jackson, Synthese Historical Library, vol. 16 (Dordrecht/Boston, 1975), 86–91. 40 A selection of English translations will be found in P.M. Daly and M.V. Silcox (ed.) assisted by S. Cuttler, Index Emblematicus: Andreas Alciatus. Volume II: Emblems in Translation (Toronto, 1985). The German translation by Wolfgang Hunger was issued in a facsimile edition (Darmstadt, 1967 and 1980). The German texts of the translation by Jeremias Held are in A. Henkel and A. Schöne, Emblemata . . . (as in note 15). A facsimile edition with introduction and indexes appears in the series Imago Figurata, vol. 4 (P.M. Daly, Jeremias Held, Liber Emblematum [Frankfurt, 1566] Imago Figurata, vol. 4 [Turnhout, 2007]). 41 J. Manning, The Emblems of Thomas Palmer: “Two Hundred Poosees,” Sloane MS 3794, AMS Studies in the Emblem 2 (New York, 1988), xiii. 42 1536, 1540, 1542, all containing the Latin as well. For a comparison of the three sixteenth-century French translations, see A. M. Saunders, “Sixteenth-Century French Translations of Alciati’s Emblemata,” French Studies 44 (1990), 271–88. 43 De Tournes’s Latin editions had contained two books since 1547 and continued to appear in this format until 1629 (Green Alciati and His Books of Emblems [as in note 8] no. 159). In 1614 the first book of his Latin edition contained Stockhamer’s Commentariola and the second notes based on Mignault’s commentaries. 44 See Manning, The Emblems of Thomas Palmer (as in note 41). 45 D.L. Drysdall, “Defence and Illustration of the German Language: Wolfgang Hunger’s Preface to Alciati’s Emblems (text and translation),” Emblematica 3 (1988), 137–60. S. Rowan notes, “Wolfgang Hunger studied under Zazius for a while after 1533, but he left for Bourges to finish his degree under Andrea Alciato” (Ulrich Zazius: A Jurist in the German Renaissance 1461–1535 [Frankfurt, 1987], 84). See also P.M. Daly, “The Intertextuality of Word and Image in Wolfgang Hunger’s German Translation of Alciato’s Emblematum liber,” in Intertextuality: German Literature and the Visual Arts, ed. I. Hoesterey and U. Weisstein (Columbia, SC, 1993), 30–46. 46 Held’s version has only now been offered in its entirety in a modern reprint. See P.M. Daly, Jeremias Held (as in note 40). 47 The colophon has 1567. 48 H. Green, Alciati and His Books of Emblems (as in note 8), indicates “130 only” (190). M. Rubensohn in Griechische Epigramme (Weimar, 1897) writes of 212 poems and 130 illustrations, while M. Tung, “Alciato’s Practices” (as in note 18), records a total of 132 with seven duplicates. We find 132 illustrations. Some copies are defective, and that will affect the number of emblems and illustrations present. 49 There are two variant versions of the “Parvam culinam” emblem (Held nos 162 & 163), and seventeen emblems of trees (Alciato has fourteen), with three versions of the “Cupressus” emblem (Held nos 200–2), two of the “Laurus” emblem (Held nos 203–4), and two of the “Quercus” emblem (Held nos 205–6), all of which are numbered separately. 50 See M. Tung, “Concordance” (as in note 16), 324 and 334. Rubensohn, Griechische Epigramme (as in notes 4–8), recognized that the “offensive” emblem is present as no. 83. 51 K.L. Selig, “The Spanish Translations of Alciato’s Emblemata,” Modern Language Notes 70 (1955), 354–59. See also P.F. Campa, Emblemata Hispanica: An Annotated Bibliography of Spanish Emblem Literature to the Year 1700 (Durham, 1990). 52 Green, Andrea Alciati (as in note 8), nos 41 and 42. 53 Green, Andrea Alciati (as in note 8), no. 155. 54 Green, Andrea Alciati (as in note 8), no. 151. 55 See Selig, The Spanish Translations (as in note 51), and Drysdall, “Wolfgang Hunger . . .” (as in note 45). 56 In the 16mo edition of 1566 they are often shortened or even omitted, apparently for reasons of space.

29

Denis L. Drysdall and Peter M. Daly 57 Except “Adversus naturam peccantes.” 58 “On the Date of Composition of El Brocense’s Commentaria in Alciati Emblemata,” Emblematica 13 (2003), 73–96. 59 Not the author of the Guerra de Granada, who died in 1575. 60 See the text and translation of this commentary on the Glasgow emblem website: http://www.emblems. arts.gla.ac.uk/Mignault_intro.html. 61 There were many other editions with Mignault’s commentaries; we have mentioned only those that were important for their development. 62 For Pignorius’s corrections to the iconography of several emblems, see J. Manning, The Emblem (London, 2002), 116–18, 243, 256. 63 Daly attempted to deal generally with the emblem in the material culture in the Companion to Emblem Studies (New York, 2007), 411–56. 64 A.R. Young, “The English Tournament Imprese,” in The English Emblem and the Continental Tradition, ed. P.M. Daly (New York, 1988), 61–81. 65 A.R. Young, The English Tournament Imprese (New York, 1988) and his essay (as in note 64). See also his Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments (London, 1987). 66 See Works, ed. A.H. Bullen, 2 vols. (London, 1888), vol. 2, 283. 67 See Young, The English Tournament (as in note 65), no. 441. Many other tournament imprese make use of classical motifs, which may or may not derive from Alciato as an intermediary – for example, nos 63, 109, 162, and 461. 68 Published as The Diary of Baron Waldstein: A Traveller in Elizabethan England (London, 1981). The diary is translated and edited by G.W. Groos. 69 The emblem “Mutuum auxilium,” depicting a blind man and a lame man, had been printed in the first edition of Alciato’s emblems in 1531 (B2). The picture that Waldstein saw and described evidently still existed in 1649, since it had been transferred at some time from Whitehall Palace to Hampton Court, and had been listed in the inventory of Charles I’s possessions by Oliver Cromwell’s commissioners. See O. Millar (ed.), The Inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods, 1649–1651 (London, 1972). 70 See P.M. Daly, Alciato in England (New York, forthcoming). 71 See P.M. Daly and B. Hooper, “John Harvey’s Carved Mantle-Piece (c. 1570): An Early Instance of the Use of Alciato Emblems in England,” in Andrea Alciato and the Emblem Tradition: Essays in Honor of Virginia Woods Callahan, ed. P.M. Daly (New York, 1989), 177–204. Reprinted in the Saffron Walden Historical Journal 3:6 (Autumn, 2003), 2–13. 72 See P.C. Bayley, “The Summer Room Carvings,” University College Recorder 3 (1959), 192–200; 4 (1959), 252–56; 5 (1960), 341–46. 73 These are reproduced in P.M. Daly, “England and the Emblem: The Cultural Context of English Emblem Books,” in The English Emblem and the Continental Tradition, ed. P.M. Daly (New York, 1988), 40–41. 74 A.R. Young, “The Emblematic Decoration of Queen Elizabeth I’s Warship the White Bear,” Emblematica 3 (1988), 45–77. 75 See His Majesty’s Royal Ship: A Critical Edition of Thomas Heywood’s “A True Description of His Majesties Royall Ship,” ed. A.R. Young (New York, 1990), reviewed by M. Bath in Review of English Studies n.s. 43 (1992), 555–57. 76 These are numbered 11 and 17 in Young’s list as published in Emblematica 3 (1988), 69–70. 77 We are indebted to Mrs. Joan Kendall in charge of the restoration of the tapestries at Hatfield House for assistance in identifying some of the emblem motifs, which in the course of time have become worn and faint. Mr. Harcourt Williams, librarian and archivist at Hatfield House, was also kind enough to send his transcriptions of the mottoes. 78 This was established independently by both A.F. Kendrick, “The Elizabethan Sheldon Tapestry Maps,” Burlington Magazine 51, 161, and E.A.B. Barnard and A.J.B. Wace, “The Sheldon Tapestry Weavers and Their Work,” Archaeologia 78 (1928), 303. 79 In the later seventeenth century, French tapestry makers wove for the king two cycles of tapestries on the subject of the Four Elements and the Four Seasons, each adorned by eight emblems. See M. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1964) (as in note 9), 334. 80 A fuller account, with juxtaposed illustrations of the tapestry emblems with their book sources, where determinable, will be found in P.M. Daly, “The Sheldon ‘Four Seasons’ Tapestries at Hatfield House: A Seventeenth-Century Instance of Significant Emblematic Decoration in the English Decorative Arts” Emblematica 14 (2005), 251–96.

30

Andrea Alciato 81 See A.M. Fredro, Scriptorum Seu Tages et Belli Notationum Selecta: Accesserunt Peristromata Regum Symbolis expresa (Frankfurt, 1660). The section dealing with the twenty tapestry emblems (reistromata), intended as a mirror of the prince, is found on pp. 251–412 in the 1685 edition. This information comes from the richly illustrated and informative catalogue of the emblem exhibition that was held in the Stift Gottweig in Lower Austria in 1977. The catalogue, which was still available in 1984, is entitled Stift Gottweig. EMBLEMATA. Zur barocken Symbolsprache. Nieder-östereich: Stift Gottweig, 1977. Fredro’s work is item no. 21. 82 M. Bath, “Emblems from Alciato in Jacobean Trencher Decorations,” Emblematica 8 (1994), 359–70. See also M. Bath and M. Jones, “Emblems and Trencher Decorations: Further Examples,” Emblematica 10:1 (1996), 205–10.

31

2 RIPA, THE TRINCIANTE Cornelia Logemann

As a form of literary and pictorial expression, personifications have circulated since antiquity but they became increasingly significant in various media throughout Europe from the late medieval period onwards. In text, image, and theatre, human figures repeatedly came to exemplify abstract concepts. Yet few works had as great an impact on the depiction of personifications as Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, which first appeared in 1593. Little is known about the author. He was born between 1555 and 1560 in Perugia. While writing the Iconologia, Ripa worked as a trinciante for Cardinal Lorenzo Salviati in Rome.1 He probably died 1622. These few known facts about Ripa stand in stark contrast to the rich contents of his book, which, with some additions, became his life’s work.2 The first edition (from 1593), dedicated to Cardinal Salviati, describes a few hundred personified abstract concepts in alphabetical order (Fig. 2.1). The author addresses his readers with an extended foreword, where he gives a detailed explanation of his purpose: he is interested in those images that signify different things as can be seen with the eyes. In the proemio (the programmatical introduction), the reader is informed as to how allegorical images should be developed, and this is followed by the main part of the work, which has the descriptions of such imagini. As a handbook for dilettantes, artists, and literati, the imagini of the Iconologia eventually appeared in countless other contexts. Individual personifications were disseminated shortly after the publication of the second edition. By the middle of the seventeenth century, translations of the text had appeared in many European languages and spurred the multiplication and dissemination of the Iconologia. It appeared in the New World and became an indispensable book for artists.3 Even today, a standing human figure having some unusual attributes in art as well as kitsch, in political cartoons as well as everyday culture, carries Ripa’s visual signature and can easily be identified as a personification. It is possible that this success was probably less due to the intellectual influence Ripa displayed in his Roman milieu than to the fortunate circumstances of his book’s reception – and the concept of allegorical personification, which offered an easier approach to the hidden meanings in paintings and other artwork than the emblematic literature of that era. For the beholder, the emblem is a complex interaction of text and image and requires more knowledge and intellectual effort than the long-established technique of personification allegory. The first edition of the Iconologia from 1593 was made up of a series of alphabetically arranged descriptions of abstract concepts that could be envisaged as personifications. Many of the figures listed there were already well established in Western visual culture but they adopted 32

Ripa, the trinciante

Figure 2.1 Title page from Cesare Ripa, Iconologia 1603 (University Library of Heidelberg).

an entirely new appearance thanks to Ripa’s description. Natura, for example as found in Alain de Lille’s (d. c. 1202) writings, appears as a foster mother referring to ancient pagan traditions in Ripa’s catalog.4 Several other figures in the Iconologia departed entirely from the medieval tradition. In his proemio, Ripa attempted to outline a system for the invention of personifications, and consequently, he changed the medieval pictorial tradition for many abstract concepts. The success of his system was due to a number of factors. Ripa received a papal privilege for the first edition, so that his creations would be safe from unlawful copying for ten years.5 After those years had passed, the edition illustrated by Lepido Faeij and released in 1603 evidently lacked the earlier work’s protection, as E. Leuschner has suggested.6 These circumstances may have contributed to the wide dissemination of that work. Another edition of the Iconologia appeared in Padua in 1611, but without the support of the original author, which, in turn, sparked the publication in 1613 of a further edition by Matteo Florimi in Siena. Soon thereafter, translations, such as the 1643 French translation by Jean Baudoin, accelerated the dissemination of Ripa’s Iconologia.7 Ripa’s Iconologia obviously addressed a serious gap. The earlier emblem books that had emerged in the course of the sixteenth century and the various print series of virtues, vices, months, and so forth resulted in a proliferation of types that, in turn, gave rise to the need for standardization or some kind of overview. The underlying cultural technology – the use of personifications, that is, anthropomorphic sign carriers – had been in use since antiquity. As a visual type they had been superior to related forms of expression, such as emblems. In this way, Ripa’s book was the culmination in the history of personifications in Western Christendom. The wide dissemination of the 33

Cornelia Logemann

Iconologia suggests that there was a need for a systematic overview of personifications throughout Europe8 – even fresco cycles of the sixteenth century used inscriptions to unveil the meaning of painted personifications, as can be seen in the series of painted personifications in the Villa d’Este. The Iconologia fundamentally transformed the use and interpretation of personifications, including the contemporary understanding of personifications from before 1593 (or 1603). In art history, the rediscovery of the Iconologia in the early twentieth century also changed the attitude toward medieval allegorical personification.9 The book came to be regarded as a pivotal work for understanding allegorical images of the past. Mâle, one of the foremost French art historians (see the essay on Mâle elsewhere in this publication), is the starting point for research on Ripa. Émile Mâle’s 1927 report, “La clef des allegories peintes et sculptés,” was the first study to show how important Ripa’s book was in the history of art.10 A few years later, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl (see the essays on Panofsky and Saxl elsewhere in this volume) began work on the “Lexikon für den Maler und den vornehmen Mann,” as it was then called, while Erna Mandowsky, a doctoral student of both men, submitted a thesis in 1939 that examined the sources and influence of Ripa’s Iconologia.11 The published work of Gerlind Werner, who had studied with Karl August Wirth in Munich, stands alongside these scholars. These studies have also been critically examined by Elizabeth McGrath, who especially emphasized Ripa’s limited intellectual opportunities. But the proemio of Iconologia contradicts the image of Ripa as trinciante.12 The Iconologia was reprinted in the 1970s and this once again spurred an interest among art historians. Ernst Gombrich had previously called attention to personifications and their meaning through an art historical analysis beginning with Cristoforo Giarda’s Icones Symbolicae.13 Except for that work, personifications were largely unnoticed until recently as they were widely considered to be a less than original category of allegory. Ripa’s work has primarily been used as a reference book. Forays in the field of literary criticism have also brought added attention to personifications.14 Ripa’s Iconologia has also been addressed in a number of recent studies. For example, Stefano Pierguidi examined the models for the Iconologia, while Sonia Maffei has studied the sources and structure of Ripa’s work.15

Ripa’s work and its sources While the first edition of the Iconologia from 1593 still had a manageable number of abstract concepts, the illustrated edition from 1603, which was naturally more popular, had 684 entries accompanied by 151 woodcuts.16 The two editions differed with respect to the orientation of their contents: in the illustrated Iconologia (1603) some of the abstract concepts, such as the different regions of Italy, the elements, the continents, the seasons, nymphs, and so forth, were pooled together. In all probability, these groupings may reflect a new way of handling personifications in the arts, as they were increasingly inserted as symmetrical arrangements into larger programs and decorative borders. Scholars have meticulously studied the possible sources, from which Ripa drew his imagini, as well as the environment in which the work was created.17 Pierio Valeriano and Andrea Alciato’s (discussed elsewhere in this volume) increasingly popular emblem book had a significant impact on the work. Yet the concept behind the Iconologia differs from that underlying the emblems and imprese, whose invention and elaboration were a principal concern to Ripa’s contemporaries. For Cesare Ripa, man was the measure of all things. From this belief he returned to late medieval personifications that had been popularized in a variety of media. This recourse to Aristotle or rather to an Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy also appears in his creation of individual figures, while the proemio mentions the four reasons: causa materialis, causa efficiens, causa formalis, and causa finalis.18 Beside this theoretical foundation, Ripa often cited his contemporaries’ pictorial inventions. The Discorso sopra la Mascherata della genealogia degli déi by Baccio Baldini is mentioned frequently, and 34

Ripa, the trinciante

appears to account for a considerable amount of Ripa’s imagery.19 During the sixteenth century, there are several approaches to allegorical personification which might have influenced Ripa’s work. Between 1541 and 1547, Cosimo Bartoli focused on Dante’s allegorical inventions,20 and Francesco Marcolini in his Sorti intitolate giardino d’i pensieri (from 1540) also offers a series of personifications.21 Ripa also mentioned Anton Francesco Doni’s Pitture several times, which, although less systematic than Iconologia, had already attempted in 1564 to describe twelve concepts with pictures. Even earlier sources played a role in the creation of the Iconologia: Ripa studied several other medieval authorities by way of Francesco Barberini’s Documenti d’Amore – that is, besides Boethius, Petrarch, Dante, who probably migrated into the Iconologia through manuals and handbooks. In his proemio Ripa emphasizes the exemplary nature of antiquity and gave priority to ancient images over modern inventions. While Ripa looked mainly to Italian art and ancient works, the eventual dissemination of his work north of the Alps also had an impact on the visual language there. Apart from iconography, the Iconologia also transformed the structure of allegorical personification, which had primarily been a literary phenomenon. The creation of personifications in the plastic arts had been altogether different – a repetitive process. Even the relatively mechanical deployment of personifications in painting is likely the result of standardization that followed Ripa’s Iconologia. It is possible to see how the engraver’s copies of ancient deities and other favored themes quickly became popular in various media at the French court in the sixteenth century. As a result, it is possible to see how ancient deities as well as virtues and vices by Italian and Dutch engravers were introduced into French art. Besides the dissemination of these visual prototypes, the short descriptions for Ripa’s imagini were also widely dispersed. The earliest influence of the Iconologia outside of Italy most likely dates to 1595 and is found in the personifications of Providence, Honor, and Vigilance on a small plate by the painter Jacque Boulvène, who was based in Toulouse.22 Jean-Claude Boyer has suggested that it is probably the earliest visual treatment of the 1593 edition of Ripa’s handbook.23 How the Iconologia was generally used when it first appeared can only be guessed at.24 The general suspicion that it was more frequently used by dilettantes and less by artists would seem to be true especially for the first edition, though decades later the Iconologia eventually became an essential component in every artist’s library.25 At the end of the sixteenth century, there certainly was a need for such a compendium, considering the overcomplex allegorical tableaux produced for entries and court festivals. Shortly before the Iconologia, the print series, which stimulated the exchange of iconography across Europe and created a seemingly endless supply of expressive possibilities, fulfilled a function similar to that of Ripa’s book. But the stimulus to create pictorial cycles was also taken up in other book projects and many of the allegorical themes were rehashed. The publication of this type of book underwent a boom with the development of the printing press. Lists of personifications or of mythological-allegorical themes were aimed at a certain target audience.26 In the preface to his Hécatomgraphie (1544), Gilles Corrozet highlighted the possibility of finding useful material there: “Chascune hystoire est d’ymage illustrée. . . . Aussy pourront ymagers et tailleurs, Painctres, brodeurs, orfévres, esmailleurs, Prendre en ce livre aulcune fantaisie” (Every story is illustrated with an image. . . . so image-makers and sculptors, painters, embroiderers, goldsmiths and enamel artists, will find inspiration in this book).27 The Prosopographia by Philippe Galle was also a synopsis of the personifications. In its afterword, that work also addresses the same target audience as Corrozet’s emblem book.28 He, too, addresses painters, sculptors, engravers, and literati, so this obviously turns into a commonplace. It is also noteworthy that, in contrast to the Iconologia, the Prosopographia contains only those personifications that were considered unusual, which is why the cardinal virtues and the liberal arts among others do not appear there. The difference between common visual allegories and those that only gradually disclosed their hidden meaning to the viewer is evident when those that predate the Iconologia are examined. At 35

Cornelia Logemann

the end of the fifteenth century, allegories by artists such as Mantegna (Virtue and Vice, British Museum, PD, pp. 1–23) and Giovanni Bellini (Four Allegories, Galleria dell-Accademia, 595 a-d) are more cryptic and enigmatic and only gradually reveal their subject matter to the viewer. The pleasure of deciphering the enigmatic pictures and, consequently, the audience’s reaction gave personifications another place in the rhetoric of images as was the case after the publication of Ripa’s Iconologia. The descriptions of personifications in allegorical literature of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries are in marked contrast to Ripa’s structured explanation of every concept and its form. The clear allocation of a body as well as its attributes enabled the viewer to quickly recognize the personification. The onus on the artist who used the Iconologia seems to have been less with inventing personifications than with implementing the known. This might be interpreted as developing out of the use of images in the counter-Reformation and the necessity to produce clear and unambiguous allegorical images.

Personifications in Europe before Ripa As a form of expression lying between text and image, personifications in Europe underwent many changes. Since the Middle Ages, only a few Latin allegorical texts are found on either side of the Alps that would have allowed the essential features of the virtues and vices to circulate. First among them was the Psychomachia by Prudentius as well as the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii by Martianus Capellas. Ripa consulted some of these works in addition to Francesco da Barberino’s Documenti d’Amore. Maffeo Barberini, later Pope Urban, evidently allowed Ripa to use a copy of the Documenti that was in his possession.29 For example, Francesco da Barberino, who reflects extensively on the interaction between semiotic forms of expression in text and image, also felt the need to create pictures.30 The complex interpretation of the twelve virtues in the Documenti, through which divine love is acquired, should, according to him, not only be explained with images but also have their meaning extended: Although not a painter by profession, with the aid of (divine) mercy the necessity of love for the illustrator of these figures has made me so; because no painter in those parts, that is, where I wrote the book, actually understood me; it can now continue following my direction and be in better shape.31 Da Barberino probably drafted the Documenti during a stay in Provence, which in turn raised the problem as to how personifications might work across language barriers. Francesco da Barberino also discussed the difficulty of creating pictures of abstract concepts.32 Even though he designed specific virtues, he also provided an overarching virtus generalis – with the knowledge and great trepidation that he would also need to create a new image, which others might not be able to do.33 It is possible to detect the influence of certain works across the main language barriers in vernacular literature. Although the visual arts have generally been assessed from the perspective of Italian allegorical texts – a tradition dominated by Dante, Petrarch, and their contemporaries – it is important to remember that the Roman de la Rose influenced Italian allegorical literature of the late Middle Ages as well. And as the allegorical pilgrimages of Guillaume de Deguileville and Insular literature from Chaucer to Peacham show, the paths of particular personifications are far more ramified than they seem at first glance. The prehistory of Ripa’s Iconologia, therefore, encounters a number of difficulties. From the outset, it would be expected that the personification would illuminate the allegory from a literary point of view. Two fundamental problems arise from this perspective: first, many of the criteria that 36

Ripa, the trinciante

had earlier developed were inappropriate for pictures – the direct transfer of particular terms from contemporary rhetoric into pictorial rhetoric only reinforced this tendency.34 Second, research has so far tended to focus on Italian art and on the production of allegories, which culminate in Lorenzetti’s frescoes in Siena or Giotto’s allegories of virtues and vices. Giotto’s personifications in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua or those on the campanile in Florence are undoubtedly important turning points in the history of pictorial personifications. But the role of local influences on many of those forms has often gone unnoticed – especially as Dante35 is often used as a source on the general use and appraisal of personifications in the Middle Ages.36 The question as to whether Dante in his Vita Nova makes a general theoretical statement on personifications, which he calls figurae, requires scrutiny and not just from a textual perspective.37 Besides the literary tradition, it is also important to consider their relationship to vision, because the figurae are not just linguistic creations but are also articulations of visual memory as well as visual experience. If we consider, for example, the unusual incarnations of the three theological virtues in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Maestà now in the Museo Civico in Massa Marittima, it is clear that the Sienese painter must have dealt with issues of presentation and mediation of allegorical pictorial content.38 If, however, the mutual dependence of different image concepts within literary tradition is factored in, it is possible to find that an entirely different perceptual mechanism may work for Italian pictorial allegories than can be applied to other parts of Europe. In these, it is possible to detect a new interest in the allegorical means of representation and with it, a contemporaneous reshaping of older personifications. In a study on the iconography of virtues and vices, Émile Mâle noted the fundamental differences between French and Italian art, which for him was due to the fact that there were far fewer personifications of virtues in French art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than in Italy.39 Mâle cited the widespread practice of using personifications of the virtues on Italian tombs, a practice that was first adopted in France by Michel Colombe in the cathedral of Nantes and which was spread by his imitators.40 Yet the designs of these personifications in art can be derived from sources other than pictorial traditions. The canons of Christian Latin literature that had developed in late antiquity, the same period of the Psychomachia, were eventually interrupted by the development of rich allegorical literature in the vernacular. The extensive descriptions of personifications in these texts are also sporadically found in images. It was felt that such dazzling figures with unusual attributes could not be depicted. During the fifteenth century, this situation changed, especially in France, with the emergence of more precious illuminated manuscripts that included unusual personifications in illuminations. At the same time in Italy, personifications were visually depicted in other media.41 In France, even long-established iconographies were reshaped and accentuated with the addition of new and unusual attributes. Émile Mâle drew attention to this practice as found in a manuscript on virtues and vices in which the four cardinal virtues were depicted in an entirely new way. This “new iconography” of cardinal virtues was not a singular phenomenon. It must have astonished viewers with the modernity of the figures’ attributes, which would have been understood through the accompanying inscriptions. It has to be born in mind that personifications were kept alive by constantly adding and inventing new figures. In this manuscript with several different treatises, the illustrated four cardinal virtues with their accompanying explanations are certainly unusual.42 One of the four female figures has the unusual attributes of bridle, glasses, windmill, and clock. The personified Temperantia explains in verse: Whoever follows the clock, considers time in everything he does. Whoever carries the bridle in his mouth, says nothing that has to do with evil. Whoever has spectacles before 37

Cornelia Logemann

his eyes, sees the things around him better. The spurs indicate that Respect teaches boys good manner, and the windmill that supports your body shows that it partakes in no excess at all.43 The appearance of these unusual attributes runs as a leitmotif throughout several cycles of illustrations, which, as Mâle has already noted, gives new garments and unusual accessories to the seven virtues and this shows the changing function of personifications for the viewer. For example, the Éthiques d’Aristote (translated by Nicole d’Oresme), which is now preserved in a midfifteenth-century illustrated manuscript in Rouen, has seven curiously garbed female figures in one miniature.44 Each of them wears a different, elaborate costume and headdress. The figures’ awkwardly oversized headgear, such as the nesting pelican on Caritas or the ship above Hope, seems to negate the laws of physics and the physical limits of the human body. They stand on plinths that also double as attributes of their essential characteristics. Neither do the bases offer the figures a firm ground, and instead they are symbolic in nature: while Caritas stands on a burning stove, Hope, with a ship balanced on her head, perches on a delicate filigree cage, home to a small bird. These features attract the viewer’s attention: not only are the figures unusual combinations of elements, but also they visually convey tremendous instability, and not without reason, as these balancing acts inscribe themselves on the viewer’s mind. These personifications were designed as imagines agentes in the truest sense, for while they remain unmoved, they, nevertheless, suggest movement. Just as Justice employs astonishing acrobatics in balancing a sword upright on her thumb, so, too, must the viewer seek and maintain a sense of balance. It is no accident that a number of text-image combinations are found in which allegorical figures are precisely explained by the author and then stabilized as it were with an accompanying miniature. Émile Mâle considered these “bizarre attributes” a welcome reinvention of the virtues, as in previous centuries, they were frequently presented to the viewer with only a bland label, and identifiable blasons, but were otherwise monotonous in appearance.45 Yet Mâle (as well as many subsequent studies) did not consider that this accumulation of virtuous props could be found in other media. Text and image are often seen as traditionally linked with each other, and this often results in an implicit impulse to search for the best forms of expression, while contemporary perception is completely lacking. At the very best, the surviving sources offer a selective or fragmented picture of medieval storytelling and the everyday handling of images. Such performative and oral interpretations of personifications may also contain simple transitional elements that mainly attempt to mediate between written and visual allegory. The revival of personifications which may have first happened in morality plays, and later in profane court festivals, has been overlooked, and yet they are an essential element for assessing the role of personifications in the late medieval and early modern imagination. The wealth of ideas influencing the form of various personifications also led to a confrontation between the textual and the visual in those authors who used fictive images in their allegorical texts. It is more difficult and more of an effort to visually represent mute poetry and poetry as thought of by Simonides of Ceos. During the Renaissance, these tendencies occasionally led to irony when it came to representing personifications. Battista Fiera’s (1469–1538) fictive dialogue Justitia Pingenda has Momus, the ancient god of mockery, while Mantegna explored the options to represent Justitia, whose design contemporaries recognized as arbitrary. Fiera also considers how creative invention is equally a literary as well as an artistic task.46 Fiera’s text clearly reflects on long traditions, while at the same time he ironically summarizes the central problems involved in creating personifications – a point already noted by medieval authors such as Guillaume de Deguileville. This ongoing invention of personifications in various media became an important 38

Ripa, the trinciante

means of expression among late medieval and early modern authors. G. Agamben has shown the important role that painted pictures played in the imagination and memory of the late Middle Ages. Such pictures were especially important when dealing with personifications.47 The creation of allegorical images in literature is repeatedly paralleled in painting and other media. In this context, D. Kelly has noted the importance of the central commentary in the widely disseminated Echecs moralisées, where the builder or painter has a full picture of his project’s final shape well before finishing it: In the objects we see made by art we perceive that the craftsman, desirous of making certain objects in a reasonable manner, first applies his intention and conceives beforehand in his mind the form of what he wishes to make. Then follows Imagination, wherein the aforesaid form is impressed and portrayed. Then the hand and chisel come, or the brush, which complete the object in conformity with the aforementioned steps. For just as the carpenter’s chisel or the painter’s brush conforms to the hand that directs it, the hand moves in accordance with the Imagination, and the Imagination in conformity with the figure or form which the principal craftsman intends.48 The processes underlying the creation of a personification in text and image are, therefore, analogous. The concept and creation of the figure occupy the creator’s imagination prior to its realization but are also something perceptible to the viewer. If personifications in literature and painting are understood as reflections of a higher, more divine knowledge, then they seem to act a posteriori the underlying concept. This analogy for the production of allegorical texts was obviously not insignificant, at least in the development of late medieval allegorical works. Michael Randall has emphasized its importance for allegorical texts from Molinet to Jean Lemaire de Belges. Referring to Thomas Aquinas and his use of painting as a metaphor, Randall describes the relationship between subject and image: Although the painting is seen first, it is preceded ontologically by its subject, and only the latter can be said to resemble the former. To say that the subject is like painting reverses the underlying ontological relationship of prior and posterior and destroys the notion of participatory analogy altogether.49 The theoretical stance of literati on images needs to be considered as well as the analogous relationships that occur in the production of painted allegories. The mental image of a concept exists before the painted picture of that concept. Since the late Middle Ages in French-speaking regions, painters and men of letters repeatedly reflected on the relationship between painting and literature, which can seem especially contentious in the case of personifications. Jean Lemaire de Belges provided a subtle and detailed portrait of the balance of power between literature and visual art in the dialogue between Nature, Rhetoric, and Painting in his Plainte du Désiré. In real life, his friendship with Jean Perréal should be viewed in this context, because, as in his other poems, he uses the topos of the new Apelles, in order to emphasize not only his admiration for the art of painting but also his commitment to it as the “sister art” of rhetoric.50 That his dialogue occurs between personifications of the arts reflects the evolution of the personification in visual culture. Jean Lemaire de Belges’s Plainte du Désiré gives us insight especially into the relative positions of literature and painting in statements made by the personifications of Paincture and Rhétorique. Painting puts Dame Rhétorique in her place with the topos of ineffability, but later Painting takes an appropriate form of expression as a mute mourning poem for Louis of Luxembourg, 39

Cornelia Logemann

at which the personified Rhetoric strikes back.51 Even if Rhetoric, as Jean Lemaire de Belges represents her, achieves a partial victory, because she convinces with greater eloquence, Painting can also display her power by mentioning her most famous practitioners in France, Flanders, and Italy. She has nourished all of them at her breast – a topos borrowed from notions of a nourishing Nature or Wisdom as foster mother.52 Referring to Apelles and Parrhasios, Jean Lemaire de Belges bridges the gap between his own day and antiquity, which was then held up as the standard for the arts. All of these various lines merge in Ripa’s Iconologia. He explains concepts through images – both described and, after 1603, depicted in woodcuts.53 Ripa’s Iconologia was also indebted to many personifications from antiquity, while those figures that had no ancient equivalents were assigned new outfits. By effectively fixing iconographies, Ripa’s imagini occasionally superseded preexisting iconographic traditions, while at the same time it also homogenized personifications that had previously been differentiated in areas north and south of the Alps.

Building the canon Francesco da Barberino had already complained in his Documenti d’Amore that while writing in Provence, he could not find a painter who could understand him. His treatise on Love, which he designates as Mater Virtutum, thus impinges on the canonical borders, with the naked Amor Divino turning out to be an unusual version of Caritas.54 Yet this shows that the personifications that had survived through the Middle Ages were not reduced to a uniform set of appearances.55 The Iconologia largely standardized these figures. A brief look at Caritas, one of the most common personifications in visual culture, demonstrates the significant impact that Ripa had on the development of personifications in general. The 1603 edition of the Iconologia describes Caritas three times and is accompanied by two woodcuts, which illustrate two of his three descriptions.56 He first describes a female figure with a baby in her arms and two small children who grasp both her arm and garment. The youngest suckles the bare-breasted female figure. As the text explains, a flame representing the brightness and intensity of love also appears over her head. Ripa gradually explains the separate components in this incarnation of Caritas. Ripa describes her robes as red, while referring to the bride in the Song of Songs. The three children are the three powers of Caritas (thereby demonstrating the superiority of Caritas over other virtues) (Fig. 2.2). Parallels for this form of Caritas can be found elsewhere, such as the monochrome design by Filippino Lippi in the Strozzi chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. It seems to have been the most influential type. While Ripa did not illustrate the second personification of Caritas, it is based on a long iconographic tradition. This one has a flaming heart in her right hand and a child on the left. These common topoi reflect the survivals of a shared textual and visual tradition. The presence of the child here can be explained as a citation from Matthew 25:40: “What you have done to the least of my people, you have done to me.” The accompanying text also refers to the flaming love of God, while Caritas’s red robe is identified with the color of blood in an allusion to Paul. Cesare Ripa offers a third possible way to picture Caritas. This final option is in the tradition of the Christian trees of virtues, which appears as an olive tree in the 1603 edition. The withered tree, which enables new growth, can be explained by the use of the image in imprese. In this passage, Ripa explicitly notes an invention by Isidoro Ruberti, who was in the service of Cardinal Salviati. Ripa explains that Ruberti, as an act of charity, sponsored the education of his nephews and other young men in Rome. This prompted the inclusion of this representation of Caritas in Ripa’s work, but it also may have been included in an effort by

40

Ripa, the trinciante

Figure 2.2 “Caritas,” from Ripa, Iconologia 1603, 64 (University Library of Heidelberg).

Ripa to get the benevolence of a potential sponsor.57 The visualization of Caritas runs against the principles that were emphasized in the preface to the Iconologia as the human body was not the center of this representation. This woodcut disappeared from subsequent editions of the work, although the description of the imprese did not. The descriptions of Caritas reflect pictorial formulas, as found mainly in Italian art, but which were also known in other areas in Europe. The descriptions move between divine and neighborly love. The heart in the hand of Caritas in Ripa’s second description can be seen in Giotto’s Caritas in the Arena chapel. Other depictions of flaming love are to be found in other media, such as in the works of Andrea Pisano and Giotto, who also broach the motif of the ignis caritatis. Ambrogio Lorenzetti had Caritas – recognized by a flaming heart in her hand – preside over other virtues in his Maestà in Massa Marittima. Apart from these pictorial references, it is also possible to imagine a set of established personifications that could be found on the stage in contemporary morality plays.

41

Cornelia Logemann

Although less frequently studied, personifications of virtues had already been widely circulated much earlier, as in the so-called Tarocchi by Mantegna (which were neither made by Mantegna nor intended as tarot cards), but which circulated in many different versions in Europe. In this didactic set of cards, Caritas appears with a pelican and a flaming heart – a concept which is probably related to French art of the fifteenth century, but which is also found in Italian compendia.58 Ripa’s Iconologia binds all these forms of expression into a canon, while his images of concepts and their systematic organization (according to the four causes mentioned in the proemio) appear to preclude alternatives. What users of the Iconologia ultimately made from this iconographic tradition in other media is another story. To what extent, for example, did personifications of Caritas in panel painting escape Ripa’s influence and acquire entirely different attributes and appetites?59 Many of the concepts pictured by Ripa have complex histories that are often hidden by the charisma and power of his work. Besides the figures that Ripa himself devised as well as those, such as Bellezza, which were created according to the prescribed directives in the proemio, personifications as forms of expression flourished especially during and after the late Middle Ages. Before Ripa, personifications had been in wide circulation throughout Europe as both text and image, and in the theater. Their inspiration and form, however, changed significantly after 1593. If the handbook predetermined their attributes, then it was the task of artists to include these abstract ideas into the local pictorial logic of their own compositions.

Notes I would like to thank Andrew Griebeler for the translation and Colum Hourihane for his helpful comments. 1 As such Ripa (a pseudonym for Giovanni Campani) was responsible for cutting the meat for Salviati’s table. The first edition of the Iconologia was published by G. Gigliotti in Rome: Cesare Ripa, Iconologia overo Descrittione dell’imagini universali cavate dall’ antichita et da altri luoghi, da Cesare Ripa, . . . Opera non meno utile che necessaria à poeti, pittori et scultori per rappresentare le vitii, virtù, affetti et passioni humane (Rome, 1593). 2 For further details about his role in Salviati’s household see C. Stefani, “Cesare Ripa ‘Trinciante’ (Un letterato alla corte del cardinal Salviati),” Atti del Convegno Sapere e/è potere. Bologna 13–15 aprile 1989, 3 vols. (Bologna, 1991), II: 257–66; C. Stefani, “Cesare Ripa: New Biographical Evidence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990), 307–12. 3 See A. Roy, “L’Iconologia de Cesare Ripa ou la description de l’allégorie,” Le texte de l’oeuvre d’art, ed. Roland Recht (Strassbourg, 1998), 33–43. 4 C. Ripa, Iconologia Overo Descrittione Di Diverse Imagini cauate dall‘antichità, et di propria inuentione (Rome, 1603), 351: “(‘Donna ignuda, con le mammelle cariche di latte, et con vn‘ auoltore in mano, come si vede in vna Medaglia d’Adriano Imperatore, essendo la Natura, come diffinisce Aristotile nel 2. della Fisica’), principio della cosa, oue ella si ritroua del moto, et della mutatione, per la quale si genera a ogni cosa corruttibile” (“Nude woman, with milk pouring from the breasts, and with a vulture in her hand as can be seen in a medal for Hadrian the imperator, being Nature as defined by Aristotle in his second book of physics”). 5 E. Leuschner, “Ripas Rom, Ripas Roma. Verfahren und Kontexte visueller Kodifikation im Jahr 1593,” Cesare Ripa und die Begriffsbilder der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. C. Logemann and M. Thimann (Berlin/Zürich, 2011), 149–65, see 159. 6 Leuschner, “Ripas Roma” (as in note 5), 160. 7 J.B. Baudoin, Iconologie où les principales choses qui peuvent tomber dans la pensée touchant les vices et les vertus sont représentées sous diverses figures (Paris, 1643). 8 See Roy, “L’iconologia” (as in note 3), with a list of the European editions of the Iconologia. 9 A. Fenech-Kroke, Giorgio Vasari: La Fabrique de l’Allégorie: Culture et Fonction de la Personnification au Cinquecento (Florence, 2011), 6–7 describes how the Iconologia fixes the rules for inventing personifications – and how even Ernst Gombrich interprets the personifications before the Iconologia through the lens of Cesare Ripa’s book.

42

Ripa, the trinciante 10 E. Mâle, “La clef des allégories peintes et sculptées au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle: I. En Italie,” Revue des deux mondes 39 (1927), 1er Mai, 106–29; “La clef des allégories peintes et sculptées au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle: II. En France,” Revue des Deux Mondes 39 (1927), 15 mai, 375–94. 11 E. Mandowsky, Ricerche intorno all’Iconologia di Cesare Ripa (Florence, 1939). 12 G. Werner, Ripa’s Iconologia: Quellen – Methoden – Ziele (Utrecht, 1977); E. McGrath, “Review of Werner, Gerlind: Ripa’s Iconologia: Quellen – Methode – Ziele, Utrecht 1977,” Art History 6 (1983), 363–68, here 366. About the proemio see T. Leinkauf, “Analysen zum Vorwort der Iconologia,” in Cesare Ripa und die Begriffsbilder der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. C. Logemann and M. Thimann (Berlin/Zurich, 2011), 23–40. 13 C. Giarda, Bibliothecae Alexandriae icones symbolicae (Milan, 1626). E.H. Gombrich, “Personification,” in Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 500–1500: Proceedings of an International Conference Held at King’s College, Cambridge, April 1969, ed. R.R. Bolgar (Cambridge, 1971), 247–57; E.H. Gombrich, “Icones Symbolicae: Die Philosophie der Symbolik und ihr Einfluß auf die Kunst,” in Das symbolische Bild. Zur Kunst der Renaissance, ed. E. Gombrich (Stuttgart, 1986), 150–232, 275–84. For allegory as visual concept see Early Modern Visual Allegory: Embodying Meaning, ed. C. Baskins and L. Rosenthal (Aldershot, 2007); Die Oberfläche der Zeiche: Zur Hermeneutik visueller Strukturen in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. U. Tarnow (Paderborn, 2014). 14 J.J. Paxson, The Poetics of Personification (Cambridge, 1994). 15 S. Pierguidi, Dare forma humana a l’honore et a la virtù: Giovanni Guerra (1544–1618) e la fortuna delle figure allegoriche da Mantegna all’Iconologia di Cesare Ripa (Rome, 2008); P. Pierguidi, “Guivanni Guerra and the Illustrations to Ripa’s Iconologia,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 61 (1999), 158–75. Cesare Ripa e gli spazi dell’allegoria: Atti del convegno, Università degli Studi di Bergamo (9–10 settembre 2009), ed. S. Maffei (Naples, 2010). 16 Werner, Ripa’s Iconologia (as in note 12), 9–10. 17 Vincenzo Cartari e le direnzioni del Mito nel Cinquecento, ed. S. Maffei (Rome, 2013); S. Maffei, “Le Fonti Negate dell’Iconologia: I contribute di Vincenzo Cartari, Domenico Delfino, Giovanni Battista Rinaldi, Eustathius Macrembolites e un soprendente apporto di Théodore de Bèze,” in Cesare Ripa e gli Spazi dell’allegoria, ed. S. Maffei (Naples, 2010); L’ “Iconologia” di Cesare Ripa: fonti letterarie e figurative dall’antichità al Rinascimento; atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Certosa di Pontignano, 3–4 maggio 2012, ed. M. Gabriele, C. Galassi, and R. Guerrini (Florence, 2013), 131–61; J. Müller, “Cesare Ripa und die Gegenreformation,” De zeventiende eeuw 11 (1995), 1, 56–66; E. Leuschner, “Cesare Ripa et les masques de l’Imitation,” in Masques, mascarades, mascarons, ed. F. Viatte, D. Cordellier, and V. Jeammet (Paris, 2014), 167–79. 18 Werner, Ripa’s Iconologia (as in note 12), 11; Leinkauf, Analysen (as in note 12), 35. Ripa, Iconologia 1603 (as in note 4) describes this topos as Man is the measure of all things, mainly focusing on Aristotle. (“Percioche, si come l’huomo tutto è misura di tutte le cose, secondo la commune opinione de Filosofi, e d’Aristotile in particolare, quasi come la definition è misura del definite, cosi medesimamente la forma accidentale, che apparisce esteriormente d’esso, può esser misura accidentale delle qualità definibili, qualinque si siano, ò dell anima nostra sola, ò di tutto il compost.”) For this anthropomorphic form in comparison to emblem books, see R. Dekoninck, “Between Fiction and Reality: The Image Body in the Early Modern Theory of the Symbol,” The Anthroporphic Lens: Anthropomorphism, Microcosmism and Analogy in Early Modern Thought and Visual Arts, ed. W. Melion, B. Rothstein, and M. Weemans (Leiden, 2015), 323–40. 19 Pierguidi, Dare forme humana (as in note 15), 81. 20 See Fenech-Kroke, Giorgio Vasari (as in note 9), 49, on Bartoli’s work entitled Ragionamenti accademici sopra alcuni luoghi difficili di Dante. 21 See Fenech-Kroke, Giorgio Vasari (as in note 9), 51–64. 22 J.C. Boyer, “Trois peintres au temps de la Ligue: Noël Gasselin, l’‘anonyme Magnin,’ Jacques Boulvène,” in Peindre en France à la Renaissance: Fontainebleau et son rayonnement, ed. F. Elsig (Milan, 2012), 107–21, here 114: (“La somme de cinquante écus à lui ordonnée pour avoir fait un grand tableau peint à l’huile où sont peints la Providence, Honneur et Vigilance, avec certains vers escrits en latin et lettres grecques expliquant l’énigme et interprétation de l’histoire peinte audit tableau, fixé et cloué sur la cheminée du consistoire des conseils [. . .]”), et au dessous d’icelle escrit les noms et surnoms des huit messieurs de Capitouls de la présente année, avec leurs armoiries et millésime, et doré le bord dudit tableau tout autour, la Ville ayant fourni l’ or (“The sum of fifty écus was given to him to have a large painting in oil executed where Providence, Honneur and Vigilance are painted, with several verses in Latin and with Greek letters explaining the obstacle and interpretation of the history painted in that tableau, attached to the chimney of the council hall”).

43

Cornelia Logemann 23 J.C. Boyer, “Boulbène, Ripa, Richeome,” Revue de l’Art 92 (1991), 42–50. Boyer also sees, however, the influence of Dutch artists, such as Marten van Heemskerck among others. 24 M. Thimann, “Cesare Ripa und die Begriffsbilder der Frühen Neuzeit. Einige Stichworte zur Einführung,” Cesare Ripa und die Begriffsbilder der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. C. Logemann and M. Thiman (Berlin/ Zürich, 2011), 9–21. 25 Thimann, “Cesare Ripa” (as in note 24), 19. Roy, “L’iconologia” (as in note 3). 26 See, for example, S. Pierguidi, “Un anonimo repertorio di personificazioni della fine del Cinquecento,” Studi Romani 53 (2005), 51–93, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, several manuscripts of Henri Baudes Dictz moraux pour mettre en tapisserie can be found in the French-speaking countries; see A. Bässler, Sprichwortbild und Sprichwortschwank: Zum illustrativen und narrativen Potential von Metaphern in der deutschsprachigen Literatur um 1500 (Berlin, 2003), 64. 27 “Chascune hystoire est d’ymage illustrée . . . Aussy pourront ymagers et tailleurs, Painctres, brodeurs, orfévres, esmailleurs, Prendre en ce livre aulcune fantaisie.” See V. Notin, “Les émailleurs limousins à la Renaissance: de l’interpretation à la composition,” Poètes et artistes: La figure du créateur en Europe au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance, ed. S. Cassagnes-Brouquet and M. Yvernault (Limoges, 2007), 339–57, here 339. 28 Philippe Galle, Cornelius Kiel, and Théodore Galle: Prosopographia, sive, Virtvtvm, animi, corporis, bonorvm externorvm, vitiorvm, et affectvvm variorvm delineation, sixteenth century. 29 Werner, Ripa’s Iconologia (as in note 12), 59. 30 F. Egidi, “Le miniature dei codici Barberiniani dei Documenti D’Amore,” L’ arte 5 (1902), 1–20 and 78–95, I documenti d’amore di Francesco da Barberino secondo i manoscritti originali, ed. F. Egidi, 4 vols. (Rome, 1905–1927). 31 Egidi, “le miniature” (as in note 30). 2: “sic dicas quod etsi non pictorem designatorem tamen figurarum ipsarum e fecit necessitas amoris gratia informante. cum nemo pictorum illarum partium ubi extitit liber fundatus me intelligeret iusto modo. Poterunt hinc et alij meis servatis principiis reducere meliora.” 32 R. Freyhan in “The Evolution of the Caritas Figure in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948), 68–86, notes that the concept of charity used by Francesco da Barberino in the Documenti was not transferable into the French-speaking regions. 33 For the difficulties of depicting the virtus generalis see C. Logemann, “Personifikation und die Stufen des Erkennens: Das Beispiel spätmittelalterlicher Tugenddarstellungen,” Die Oberfläche der Zeichen: Bildallegorien der frühen Neuzeit in Italien und die Hermeneutik visueller Strukturen, ed. U. Tarnow (Paderborn, 2015), 17–35. 34 The attempt to explain enigmatic allegories by the medieval theory of the integumentum might be difficult because the veils of allegory in literature differ considerably from visual allegory. 35 For Dante’s concepts of allegory see J. Pépin, La Tradition de l’Allégorie de Philon d’Alexandrie à Dante, Études historiques (Paris, 1987); for the visual tradition see Fenech-Kroke, Giorgio Vasari (as in note 9). 36 Some critical remarks about this focus on Dante from C. Kiening, “Personifikation: Begegnungen mit dem Fremd-Vertrauten in mittelalterlicher Literatur,” Personenbeziehungen in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. H. Brall, B. Haupt, and U. Küsters (Düsseldorf, 1994), 347–87. 37 Kiening, “Personifikation” (as in note 36), 349, refers to S.A. Barney, Allegories of History, Allegories of Love (Hamdens, 1979). Kiening interprets the theory of personification in the perspective of language – which does not correspond to medieval perception of this mode of thinking; A. Strubel, La Rose, Renard et le Graal: La littérature allégorique en France au XIIIe s (Paris, 1989), 68, differs between “plan linguistique” and “représentation picturale.” 38 S. Dale, “Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s ‘Maesta’ at Massa Marittima,” Notes in the History of Art 8:2 (1989), 6–11. For allegory in public spaces see H. Belting, “Das Bild als Text: Wandmalerei und Literatur im Zeitalter Dantes,” Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit: Die Argumentation der Bilder, ed. H. Belting and D. Blume (Munich, 1989), 23–64. 39 É. Mâle, L’art réligieux de la fin du moyen âge en France (Paris, 1908); A. Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art: From early Christian Times to the Thirteenth Century (London, 1939). For the development of the virtues and vices also see C. Hourihane (ed.), Virtue and Vice: The Personifications in the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, 2000). 40 Mâle, L’art réligieux (as in note 39), 343–52.

44

Ripa, the trinciante 41 A. Fenech Kroke, “Continuité ou rupture? Le langage de la personnification dans les arts à l’aube des temps modernes,” L’ allégorie dans l’art du Moyen Âge, ed. C. Heck (Paris, 2011), 371–86. 42 See BNF, Ms. Fr. 9186, fol. 304r, illustrating the treatise of Jean Courtecuisse on the four cardinal virtues. For the sources of this text, see H. Haselbach, Seneque des IIII vertus: La “Formula honestae vitae” de Martin de Braga (pseudo-Sénèque) traduite et glosée par Jean Courtecuisse (Bern and Frankfurt, 1975). There are several other allegorical texts that have personifications with unusual accessoires, as for example the Douze Dames de Rhetorique by Georges Chastelain or the Breviaire des Nobles by Alain Chartier and René d’Anjou. Two other important allegorical works are the Livre du Cueur d’Amours Espris or the Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance. 43 “Qui a l’orloge soy regarde/ En tous ses faicts temps garde/ Qui porte le freun en sa bouche/ Chose ne dict qui a mal touché/ Qui lunettes met a ses yeux/ Pres lui regarde sen voit mieux/ Esperans mentrent que cremeur (creinte)/ Font estre le josne home meur/ Au moulin qui le coprs soutinent/ Nul exces faire n’appartient.” See Haselbach, Seneque (as in note 42), and R. Tuve, “Notes on the Virtues and Vices,” in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26 3/4 (1963), 264–303, here 278f. See E.H. Gombrich, Icones Symbolicae (as in note 13), 168f, and Mâle, L’art réligieux (as in note 39), 335. 44 Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 2, fol. 17v, c. 1454. See J.P. Antoine, “Ancora sulle Virtù: La nuova iconografia’ e le immagini di memoria,” Prospettiva 30 (1982), 13–29. 45 Mâle, L’art réligieux (as in note 39), 336. Katzenellenbogen, Notes (as in note 39). 46 De Iusticia Pingenda. On the Painting of Justice. A Dialogue between Mantegna and Momus by Battista Fiera. The Latin Text of 1515 reprinted with a Translation, an Introduction and Notes, ed. J. Wardrop (London, 1957). For a detailed description of the representation of virtues see Michael de Massa: “De quatuor virtutibus,” especially the chapter about “Prudentia depingebatur”; see Tuve, “Notes” (as in note 43), 272, note 14. 47 G. Agamben, Stanze: La parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale (Turin, 1977). 48 See D. Kelly, Medieval Imagination: Rhetoric and the Poetry of Courtly Love (Madison, WI, 1978), 33, from a commentary of the Echecs Amoureux: “Es choses que nous veons par art faittes . . . nous veons que l‘ouvrier qui voelt aulcunnes choses raisonnablement faire entent premierement et conchoit par devant en sa pensee la fourme de la chose qu’il voelt faire. Et puis vient apres la fantasie ou la fourme dessusditte est imprimee et pourtraite. Et puis la main et la doloire apres ou le pincel qui la chose parfait en la vertu des choses dessusdittes. Car tout aussi que la doloire du carpentier ou le pincel du paintre se met a la similitude de la main qui l’adresce, et la main le remeult a la similitude de la fantasie et la fantasie oultre aussi a la similitude de la figure ou de la fourme que l‘ouvrier principal entent (Fol. 16v).” 49 M. Randall, Building Resemblance: Analogical Imagery in the Early French Renaissance (Baltimore/London, 1996), 44. 50 J. Frappier, “Jean Lemaire de Belges et les Beaux-Arts,” Actes du Cinquième Congrès International des Langues et Littératures Modernes: Les Langues et Littératures Modernes dans leurs Relations avec les Beaux-Arts (Florence, 1955), 107–14; F. Cornilliat, “Or ne mens”: Couleurs de l’éloge et du blâme chez les ‘Grands Rhétoriqueurs (Paris, 1994); U. Bergweiler, Die Allegorie im Werk von Jean Lemaire de Belges (Geneva, 1976), 172 and 182. 51 P. Eubanks, “The Limits of Renaissance Aesthetics: Jean Lemaire de Belge’s 1504 Plainte du Désiré,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 70:1 (2008), 147–55, here 147. 52 “J’ai pinceaux mille, et brosses, et outils,/Or et azur tout plein mes coquillettes;/J’ai des ouvriers tant nobles et gentils,/Esprits soudains, augus, frais et subtils;/J’ai des couleurs blanches et vermeillettes;/D’inventions j’ai pleines corbeillettes;/J’ai ce que j’ai, j’ai plus qu’il ne me faut,/Si n’ai point peur d’avoir aucun défaut./Et si je n’ai Parrhase ou Apelles/Dont le nom bruit par mémoires anciennes,/J’ai des esprits récents et nouvelets ;/Plus ennoblis par leur beaux pincelets,/Que Marmion, jadis de Valenciennes,/Ou que Fouquet, qui tant eut gloire siennes,/Ni que Poyet, Roger, Hugues de Gand,/Ou Johannes qui tant fut élegant./Besognez donc, mes nourissons modernes,/Mes beaux enfants nourris de ma mamelle,/Toi, Léonard, qui as grâces supernes,/Gentil Bellin, dont les lossont éternes,/Et Pérugin qui si bien coueleurs mêle./Et toi, Jean Hay, ta noble main chôme-elle ?/Viens voir Nature avec Jean de Paris/Pour lui donner ombrage et esperits.” (Peinture describes the number of brushes and tools, she has paste in precious colors of gold and azur and several noble workers. Instead of the famous Pharrasios and Apelles, she mentions contemporary French and Flemish artists such as Simon Marmion, Jean Fouquet, Jean Poyet, Roger van der Weyden, as well as italian artists including Gentile Bellini, Perugino or Leonardo, and again, Jean Lemaire’s friend Jean Perréal.) See P. Spaak, Jean Lemaire de Belges: sa vie, son oeuvre et ses meilleures pages (Genf, 1975, repr. 1926), 26f.

45

Cornelia Logemann 53 See Leinkauf, “Analysen” (as in note 12); this relationship might be interpreted as the inversion of ekphrasis. 54 N. Himmelmann, Ideale Nacktheit (Opladen, 1985), 40, n. 114, “Nudo l’o facto per mostrar com’anno/ Le sue vertù spiritual natura” (I have made him naked to show that his virtues are of a spiritual nature). 55 Freyhan, “Evolution” (as in note 32). 56 Ripa, Iconologia 1603 (as in note 4), 63–66. 57 Werner, Ripa’s Iconologia (as in note 12), 19. 58 Pierguidi, “un anonimo repertorio” (as in note 26), 58. 59 C. Weissert, “Personifications of Caritas as Reflexive Figures,” in Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion, ed. W. Melion and B. Ramakers (Leiden, 2016), 491–517.

46

3 ADOLPHE-NAPOLÉON DIDRON (Paris 1867–Hautvilliers 1906) Emilie Maraszak

Iconographer and archaeologist Adolphe-Napoleon Didron, or Didron the Elder as he is sometimes known, is one of the fathers of medieval archeology in France. In the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages experienced a second life that some French people have called “Renaissance” but which is also termed “revival” in England. Didron was one of the main actors in this movement, working toward the rediscovery of the period and its artistic inheritance. As an archaeologist he took an active part in conservation projects for those works that survived the Revolution. A new approach to monuments is found around this time and is recognized for its historical, aesthetic, political, and symbolic values. Didron was fully involved in national issues. His articles denounced carelessness and vandalism – the fate of many medieval works – and he spent much of his time involved in administration and consulting other figures involved in the preservation of historic monuments. Above all else, he encouraged the revival of a Christian art which reproduced the Gothic style of thirteenth-century France. This was approached through his research on Christian iconography and his work that allowed him to contribute to the restoration of medieval monuments and to apply restoration techniques to what he considered the archaeological truth. Didron had an assertive personality and was an insatiable researcher, a demanding craftsman, and a bold and determined entrepreneur. Throughout his career, he was a man criticized by contemporary archeologists and architects whose actions and mistakes he criticized in his many articles. In his obituary published in 1865, his friend Ferdinand de Guilhermy emphasized his selflessness, his dedication to his friends, and his bad temper.1

Career choices Adolphe-Napoleon Didron was born to a prominent family on March 13, 1806, in Hautvilliers, near Reims. In this provincial environment, he began classical studies in Catholic schools in Meaux firstly, and later in Reims. Didron arrived in Paris in 1826, where he received a university degree in classical literature. Graduating as an archaeologist, he furthered his studies in law, medicine, and natural history in his own leisure time. According to Guilhermy’s obituary of Didron he was fascinated early in his career by monuments, especially the cathedral of Reims, a Gothic masterpiece and the coronation site of the kings of France. While looking at this work “his mind was driven to discover the hidden meaning of the stone figures.” It was a monument which left a lasting impression on him – a monument 47

Emilie Maraszak

which he described in an article published in L’Artiste in 1841 as a “paradise of Christian art.”2 He really discovered his vocation and his passion for medieval art when he met Victor Hugo, the author of Notre-Dame de Paris, in 1831. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, and a rich relationship. Didron explained in the introduction to his Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine, published in 1845,3 that Victor Hugo was his mentor as well as his “illustre ami.” He proudly explained that he became an archaeologist thanks to the support of the writer. The rich exchange of letters between the two men was published by Didron, who did not hesitate to show this friendship in order to gain credibility and acceptance within Paris’s intellectual circles.4

A methodology for archaeological studies At the start of his career Didron established a work methodology that raised archeology to the status of a “science.” He experienced this rigorous approach on his first study trip in Normandy in 1830–1831, and used it until his death. First and foremost, he pursued as many documents and studies as existed, prior to going to his research area. For his research in Normandy, Guilhermy explained that he read the lives of the saints, the Bollandists, and studies by Mabillon, Montfaucon, and Ruinart. This initial research enabled him to plan the study trip. Didron was as great a traveler as Prosper Mérimée and Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Aside from any official mandate, and with the support of the Comité historique des Arts et Monuments and its local correspondents, his travels allowed him to observe and describe works from the Middle Ages not only in France but throughout Europe. He went to Greece in 1839, Germany in 1843, England in 1846, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and Spain in 1848, and Italy in 1848 and 1858. He considered himself an “explorer of the past,” as he wrote to Victor Hugo. During his journeys, Didron declared that the best way to get where he needed to go was by foot. As he observed the monument before him, he documented his observations in travel diaries from which extracts were published in his articles in the Annales archéologiques and elsewhere. The fact was that he did not know how to draw what he saw. As such, his descriptions were written while he studied the monument or work of art, and never a posteriori. In this long and fastidious process words were chosen for their appropriateness and specificity and replaced the visual image. Guilhermy used the expression “to photograph with words” to describe Didron’s approach. Throughout his lifetime, he was distrustful of pictures, and was rigorous when choosing an artist for images to illustrate his studies. He favored technologies such as stamping or engraving from photography (as in the Annales Archéologiques in 1853) which faithfully reproduced his observations. He also attempted to codify a descriptive scheme and frequently stressed the importance of establishing a rigorous methodology. He defined the order to be followed in observing and describing, as for example with churches and cathedrals, which were to start with the façade and to proceed to the apse. As a result, Didron was one of the pioneers in the creation of technical terms, which he laid out in his volume Iconographie chrétienne, Histoire de Dieu.5 In this book, every iconographic motif was explained so that its meaning could be understood. Subsequently, in the Annales Archéologiques he expanded many of these subjects, giving a better description and understanding of the theological meanings of these decorative programs: elements of liturgical furnishings,6 the Madonna and Child 1844,7 the Crucifixion in 1845,8 and the days of Creation.9 For him, this rigorous methodology was specifically developed to establish well-founded scientific results. Didron was not only interested in the history of the monument. He studied its geographical environment and analyzed statistics relating to monument types. The principal objective of this technique was to identify all the buildings in a specific region, such as the Marne, for example. The data relating to these studies was gathered during his own travels but also by his local contacts. His methodology in describing a monument enabled Didron to write a monograph, 48

Adolphe-Napoléon Didron

which was at this time slowly developing as a new literary genre. His study on Chartres Cathedral was commissioned by the Comité historique des Arts et Monuments10 and was one of the first such works to appear. He developed a new approach for this type of study which was part history and part description. Didron also frequently wrote the descriptive sections in iconographic studies undertaken by colleagues. This new kind of study/report was used once again by Didron in his book Monographie de Notre-Dame de Brou,11 published in 1842.

A late and limited official recognition He was renowned for his intransigence and this hindered his career. Typical was his criticism of the lack of administrative involvement in issues relating to the preservation of national monuments. This prevented him rising up in the administrative ladder. After his first journey to Normandy, Didron opposed Ludovic Vitet, the inspector of historic monuments, about the poor state of conservation of the monuments in a letter published in the review L’Européen.12 The official answer was very disappointing for him when the secretary of the inspector, and not Ludovic Vitet himself, explained that lack of funding was the reason why all national heritage could not be preserved. Offended and frustrated to see that his opinion was not more valued, in his subsequent articles Didron denounced the inspector. It may have been that Didron saw himself as a better candidate for the post, but when Ludovic Vitet was appointed general secretary to the Ministry of Trade in 1834, Prosper Mérimée, a member of the Conseil d’État, was given Vitet’s post over Didron. In 1833, François Guizot, the minister of public education, proposed to King Louis-Philippe that a commission for the “general publication of all important and still unpublished materials of the history of France”13 be established. This first commission was officially established on July 18, 1834, and a subcommittee for the publication of unpublished monuments was created on January 10, 1835. It was within this subcommittee that the history of arts developed considerably. The Ministry placed this section, which he wanted to develop into an independent commission, under his patronage. It was his successor, the count of Salvandy, who created the Comité historique des Arts et Monuments, which was first recognized in 1837. The mission of this committee was to study every French monument in order to guarantee their preservation and to develop a global history of the arts in France. Didron was actively involved as secretary to the committee. The Comité historique des Arts et Monuments was chaired by the count of Gasparin and included Victor Hugo, the architect Albert Lenoir, Prosper Mérimée, the count of Montalembert, and Ludovic Vitet as members. It also enjoyed a strong network of French correspondents both in France and abroad. From 1835, Didron had a central position in this organization, which supported archaeological research in France. He frequently spoke at and for local learned societies and was one of the best informed archaeologists on the conservation of French monuments. He produced the written records of the committee and wrote its official correspondence and reports for the Ministry of Public Education. From 1840, Didron also edited the Bulletin Archéologique and Guilhermy attributed the writing of the first four volumes of this scientific review to Didron.14 The archaeologist undertook various studies for the committee, one of the best known being an inventory of monuments in the center and south of the country. It was here that he first statistically analyzed monuments. In 1839, he was involved in the important descriptive work on Chartres Cathedral. This work is primarily associated with Jean-Baptiste Lassus, who was in charge of drawing the plans and ornamentation, with Emmanuel Amaury-Duval responsible for drawing the statuary, and with the count of Salvandy for the history of the cathedral. Didron wrote the descriptive study. After a prolonged period, research was finally abandoned and the monograph published 49

Emilie Maraszak

some thirty years later contained only pictures with some descriptions.15 Other studies followed: a report on Notre-Dame de Paris, which Didron partially published in L’Univers,16 and an inventory of monuments in the district of Reims for which Hippolyte Durand provided the drawings and Pierre Joseph Varin the historic study, published in several articles of the magazine L’Artiste in 1841.17 The succession of the Second Empire in 1852 ended his career in this official organization as Didron was finally removed from the committee for political reasons.

The founder of the Annales Archéologiques and the Librairie archéologique After his first success as editor of the Bulletin Archéologique, Didron realized that his official recognition was very limited. Supported by some colleagues and profiting from a vast network of contacts, he created a new review, the Annales Archéologiques, Encyclopédie de l’art au Moyen Âge, par les principaux artistes et archéologues, where he could freely express his point of view. He edited the first twenty-four volumes, from 1844 until his death in 1865, and saw it as an independent review – not only independent from official committees and ministries but also designed for the publication and transmission of scientific articles on medieval art. By establishing this editorial approach, Didron announced an ambitious project: “to know the whole past is to plan and prepare the future.”18 He knew that the success of the Annales Archéologiques was guaranteed since no other review could compete on equal terms. Articles in the Bulletin Archéologique were limited in size and scope, and the Revue Archéologique focused on classical antiquities. The publication was managed by the omnipresent Didron. He wrote more than half the articles, chose those he could not write, and corrected them as well. He was helped by a group of regular authors – Jean-Baptiste Lassus, Ferdinand de Guilhermy, the baron Ferdinand de Roisin, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, among others. Together, they brought a real dynamism to the research and encouraged the development of the archaeological discipline. The magazine appeared as an open forum, within which Didron expressed his passions. He often wrote polemical articles to denounce the actions and papers of his colleagues, architects or archaeologists – those who did not share his point of view and those who competed with him. In the first edition of the Annales Archéologiques, for example, he criticized Désiré Raoul-Rochette for his opinions on the lack of decoration in Gothic churches.19 This article was Didron’s first work for the Annales Archéologiques, and the first of his many protests and denunciations on the restoration of historic monuments. The Annales Archéologiques was also a forum where he could freely write and satisfy his curiosity. His themes were many and varied. Didron wrote about his main research issue – Christian iconography – as well as the preservation of historic monuments or medieval architecture in France. The review also included articles by him on music and medieval poetry,20 artists of the Middle Ages,21 Christian symbolism,22 the silversmith’s trade,23 stained-glass windows,24 and travel stories.25 Didron submitted long extracts from his diaries and found new subjects to study there. During his journey to Greece, he undertook a comparative on Greek and Latin Christian art. His travels in Italy were mentioned in more than ten articles.26 In his obituary, Didron was described as the first person to have studied Italian medieval monuments and artists, when in fact he had treated only those of antiquity and the Renaissance. While publishing the Annales Archéologiques, Didron founded a publishing house in Paris at 13 Rue Hautefeuille in 1845. This was the Librairie Archéologique and was under the direction of his brother Victor, who was unfamiliar with archaeology. Didron again created an organization, with human, material, and financial resources to work independently and publish his works, according to his own rules. From its inception, the Librairie Archéologique edited the Annales Archéologiques, and Didron’s other books, such the Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne,27 the Manuel 50

Adolphe-Napoléon Didron

des œuvres de bronze et d’orfèvrerie du Moyen Âge,28 and works on stained-glass windows29 and on the iconography of important Parisian monuments under the title Opera.30 Under the name of his brother, Didron also became the publisher of other scientific archaeologists, including the baron of Guilhermy, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Edmond de Coussemaker, the count of Vogüé, Jean-Baptiste Lassus, Jules Labarte, Alfred Darcel, Félix de Verneilh, Ferdinand de Lasteyrie, and later Édouard Didron, his nephew and heir. The Librairie Archéologique was Didron’s first successful experience in the business world.

Christian iconography The study of religious monuments, their sculpture and stained-glass, enabled Didron to understand medieval ornamental programs as conscious and reasoned compositions, which he explained thanks to medieval treaties. He saw cathedrals as the most accomplished manifestation of Christian art and analyzed their decorative programs in relation to theological programs intended to moralize, educate, and guide the believer. For him the keys to understanding these programs were to be found in the Bible and in Légende Dorée, as well as in encyclopedias, such as the Speculum Universale of Vincent de Beauvais. Didron was the first scholar to unite the study of Gothic cathedral architecture to great medieval texts to explain their construction and meaning. Using this approach, he developed an archaeological language founded in Catholic thought which was well located in the current of Christian universalism that had first appeared in the 1840s. As well as his research on monuments and art of the Christian West, Didron wanted to go back to the origins of Christianity by studying works of Greek Orthodox religion. He traveled to Greece and Turkey in 1839 with three draftsmen, Paul Durand among them. He was particularly interested in the monasteries of Meteora and Mount Athos, which became the subjects of several articles that appeared in the Annales Archéologiques from 1844 to 1861.31 For him, Mount Athos remained “the sanctuary of Greek art.” After this journey, Didron wrote the Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine,32 which was a translation of a painting manual used for centuries by Byzantine artists, to which he added his own comments. This guidebook, which was found in Greece, allowed him to confirm his observations and assumptions. These looked at the continuity of Byzantine iconography in its motifs and in the location of subjects within the church. In spite of similar themes in the Western world, images changed totally from era to era, and differed according to the region or country where they were made. He argued that, in Greece, artists were slaves to theology and their work, which would be copied by their successors, was in fact copied from painters who preceded them. Didron met Greek painters in churches and observed how easily they reproduced secular motifs thanks to memory and experience. One of them told him of the existence of a manuscript transmitted from master to pupil, the Painting Guidebook. After some difficulties, he succeeded in ordering a copy and he took pleasure in telling the story in an article of the Annales Archéologiques in 1845.33 Didron used this Byzantine painting guidebook for his research when he compared Greek and Latin iconographies in order to prove that Byzantine art did not inspire French Gothic art.

Gothic art as the golden age of Christian art Didron defined thirteenth-century and Gothic art as the golden age of medieval art. He showed that works of this period, such as the ornamental program of Chartres Cathedral, inspired by the Speculum Universale of Vincent de Beauvais, were the results of ingenious compositions. He was also proud to present this golden age as a French creation, and combined research and nationalism in his approach.34 He was very close to the neo-Catholic ideas developed by his friend Charles 51

Emilie Maraszak

de Montalembert which defined the Middle Ages from the end of twelfth to the end of thirteenth century as the golden age of Christendom and an era marked by harmony between civil and ecclesiastical societies. Gothic art was the height of Christian art between pagan antiquity and the Renaissance. Didron rejected the vision of Gothic art as a dark and disorganized art that prevailed in the Enlightenment, and continued into the nineteenth century. He emphasized the order of Gothic compositions and insisted on the ingenuity of medieval artists and their complex programs, which were adapted to the environment to create theological projects.

His opinion on restoration of monuments In addition to his scientific publications, Didron actively defended the preservation of monuments and was feared by architects who did their best to conserve and restore. He frequently denounced what he considered to be acts of vandalism and highlighted renovation projects which he firmly condemned. Didron was the leader of archaeologists in a debate between them and architects on interventionism in architectural restoration. He understood monuments to be the outcome of building campaigns that lasted several centuries, all of which worked into an organic unity. Restoration, which attempted to bring the building back to its primary state, was a destructive operation for Didron. He wrote that restoration would “destroy one half of the façade of Reims, three quarters of the façade of Saint-Denis, the nave of the cathedral of Le Mans, the choir of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”35 In his view, to complete, destroy, or alter unfinished parts in the nineteenth century was another degradation. He denounced the idea in the Annales Archéologiques in 1851. This article focused on two spires on the towers of the cathedral of Reims, which would render the monument more vulnerable than it already was.36 Instead of restoration, Didron preferred consolidation and preservation of whatever state the building was in.37 He accused Étienne-Hippolyte Godde of restoring Notre-Dame de Paris “as he wanted,” and reminded the reader of damages which the architect had caused in restoring the churches of Corbie, SaintGermain-des-Prés, and Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. Didron also criticized other figures. These included ministers who had sanctioned what he considered to be “destructions,” the inspector of historic monuments, and his friend Albert Lenoir for the construction of the National Museum for the Middle Ages that had been installed in the mansion of the abbots of Cluny (fifteenth century) and built on the ruins of the Thermal baths of Cluny. Companies which Didron subsequently founded and which were involved in restoring French monuments seem to contradict his stated ideals of preservation, but Didron always used his scientific knowledge to justify the authenticity of his creations.

Journalist, professor, and businessman Didron was a jack-of-all-trades who sometimes adopted radical perspectives. He was famous for his articles and his scientific reviews. However, apart from his archaeological research and his official position within the Comité historique des Arts et Monuments, he had several other jobs. As a young man, Didron became a professor of history, which enabled him, together with his friend Albert Lenoir, to devise an educational course at the Bibliothèque Royale. In 1838, the president of the committee, Adrien de Gasparin, wrote to the Ministry of Public Education to set up a course on Christian archaeology. Didron taught the iconographical component of this course while Lenoir gave lessons on architecture. This program was published in several articles of L’Artiste in 1839.38 Didron offered other courses in 1843. While professor at the Bibliothèque Royale in 1838, Victor Hugo appealed to Minister Salvandy to offer the post of assistant librarian 52

Adolphe-Napoléon Didron

at the Bibliothèque Royale to Didron. This job was to compile an inventory of miniatures in medieval manuscripts. As it turned out Didron never took up this post for political reasons as the curators of the department refused the decision of the ministry. When he was very young, Didron also began a career in journalism and wrote for various reviews. Once again, he defended his convictions, and created controversy. Reviews which accepted his publications generated controversy in themselves and supported debates: L’Artiste, L’Européen, Le Progrès Social, L’Univers, La Revue de Paris, La Presse, and Le Journal général de l’Instruction publique. Didron could fulfill his scientific goals when he became editor of the Bulletin Archéologique, which was the official review of the committee, as well as when he founded his own magazine, the Annales Archéologiques. This publication was Didron’s biggest editorial success, after what was a bad experience with La Liberté in 1832, a journal that stopped after only six months. Didron was also a businessman and succeeded in founding various companies. Reference has already been made to the Annales Archéologiques as well as his publishing house, the Librairie Archéologique. In 1848, he announced the foundation of a new company, the Agence Archéologique, which was to focus on the arts. This company fully benefited from technological advances. He created tools to answer existing demands for the repair and decoration of old churches, and for constructing and furnishing new churches. The Agence Archéologique was strengthened in 1849 with the creation of a factory for stained-glass windows. In this company, he was joined by Émile Thibaud, master glassmaker at Clermont-Ferrand, by Auguste Ledoux, who did the drawings, and by his nephew Édouard. As he did not know how to draw, Didron needed draftsmen to visualize his ideas and his iconographic programs. He also promoted his company, explaining its objectives and accomplishments and creating its own gallery on Rue Hautefeuille in Paris, which he defined as a “museum of archaeological industry.” It was a real showcase. The art of stained glass was considered by Didron as archetypal to Christian painting and the reproduction of ornamental elements in glass from his scientific research served his vision of Gothic art. In 1839, he took part with Lassus for the first time in the creation of stained-glass windows for the Passion window of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, which was copied from the axial stained-glass window of Sainte-Chapelle. The factory was successful and Guilhermy mentions the most important works supervised by Didron between 1851 and 1867.39 These include the great figures in the apse at Saint-Mammès of Langres, the Triumph of Christ at the Cathedral Saint-Sauveur of Aix-en-Provence, the theological virtues window at Saint-Éloi at Dunkerque, a window at Saint-Maclou church at Pontoise exposed during the World Exhibition of 1866, a Tree of Jesse window at Sainte-Anne’s chapel, Saint Eustache’s legend and the story of SaintLouis at Notre-Dame-de-Paris, and windows for the new church Saint-Vincent-de-Paul of Marseille. The company also worked for private orders, such as that for Cardinal Antonelli at Rome, or a funeral chapel for M. de Surigny near Mâcon. In spite of many orders, some disappointments arose. Didron had to compromise and accept craftsmen other than his partners for drawing and glassmaking as well as with customer’s requirements. He was able to criticize these in his articles, and it is clear that these works did not always adhere to his archaeological research. In some cases he also had to stick to the style of the buildings he had to decorate and thereby adapted iconographic programs. The stained-glass factory was followed in 1858 by a fine art bronze foundry. Didron could not apply the industrial methods he had experimented with in stained glass, because the cost of materials and number of craftsmen necessary for production were prohibitive. However, some works are referenced in his obituary, in particular the altar trapping for the chapel of the Madonna of Saint-Roch church in Paris and for the altar of Notre-Dame-la-Grande in Poitiers, as well as reliquaries for the cathedral at Nevers. 53

Emilie Maraszak

These factories, though, gave rise to a new artistic movement. Didron was seen to promote a revival of Christian art, based on archaeological knowledge. His production was based on modern and industrial technologies, as well as artistic forms and ornamental programs combined with historic truth. Didron and his vision joined the neo-Gothic movement. The aim of this movement was to regenerate architecture and decorative arts through archaeological research. He was not supported by many artists in his opinion that archaeological science guaranteed the harmony of a monument. He preferred contemporary artists because they did not know much about restoration. As an archaeologist, Didron persistently tried to prove the superiority of Gothic art of the thirteenth century. It was the Christian art of this period which he wished to revive.

His legacy Didron died on November 13, 1867, in Paris. In much the same way he controlled his publications during his lifetime, he also set about to control his posthumous image. Guilhermy refers to the fact that Didron collected everything about his life before dying. Thanks to his firm stances and opinions, he was a strong personality completely devoted to his discipline. His papers show us a man who controlled his means of communication and one who did the same for transmitting his ideas. His articles range from scientific works to essays on current events, and the defense of French monuments against vandalism and restoration. His radical positions are inclined to make us forget the scientific progress of much of his research in the fields of description and understanding the ornamental programs of cathedrals and churches. Under his direction, the Annales Archéologiques became an important review for the twenty years he wrote for it. His industrial activities allowed him to take part in and develop the revival of Christian art which in essence promoted the Gothic art of thirteenth-century France. When Catherine Brisac and Jean-Michel Léniaud40 examined his papers and his involvement in restoration work, their conclusions were negative. Didron himself would have been disappointed. If the Annales Archéologiques is accepted as a scientific review, it is obvious that Didron published only papers that shared his opinion and refused scientific debate. In the field of decorative arts, no work signed by him has come down to us. Unlike those figures whom he saw as “competitors,” which include Prosper Mérimée, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, whose work he tried to compromise, Didron was almost completely forgotten soon after his death in 1867.

Notes 1 “Le cœur de l’homme était, chez notre ami, à la hauteur du talent de l‘écrivain, de l’imagination de l’artiste. Ceux qui ne sont pas entrés dans son intimité ne pourront jamais apprécier tout ce qu’il y a eu dans cette vie de vertu, de dévouement, d’abnégation personnelle. Sous une enveloppe un peu rude peut-être, mais qui ne sied pas mal aux âmes de forte trempe, on découvrait une sensibilité exquise et la disposition la plus affectueuse à venir en aide aux misères morales ou matérielles d’autrui.” F. de Guilhermy, “Didron,” in Annales archéologiques XXV (Paris, 1865), 377–95. 2 A.-N. Didron, “Reims,” in L’Artiste VII (Paris, 1841), 161–63, 176–79, 212–14. 3 A.-N. Didron, Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine (Paris, 1845). 4 A.-N. Didron, “Lettre à M. Victor Hugo,” in Annales archéologiques II (Paris, 1845), 36–37. 5 A.-N. Didron, Iconographie chrétienne. Histoire de Dieu (Paris, 1843). 6 A.-N. Didron, “Ameublement et décoration des églises,” in Annales archéologiques IV (Paris, 1846), 1–12. A.-N. Didron, “Iconographie et ameublement d’une cathédrale,” in Annales archéologiques VIII (Paris, 1848), 315–30. 7 A.-N. Didron, “La mère et l’enfant,” in Annales archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 211–22. 8 A.-N. Didron, “Le crucifix,” in Annales archéologiques III (Paris, 1845), 357–65. 9 A.-N. Didron, “Iconographie des cathédrales (le 1er jour de la Création),” in Annales archéologiques IX (Paris, 1849), 41–57. A.-N. Didron, “Le second et le troisième jours de la Création,” in Annales

54

Adolphe-Napoléon Didron

10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

25

26

27 28 29 30 31

32

archéologiques IX (Paris, 1849), 99–111. A.-N. Didron, “Quatrième jour de la Création,” in Annales archéologiques IX (Paris, 1849), 175–84. A.-N. Didron, “Cinquième jour de la Création,” in Annales archéologiques IX (Paris, 1849), 232–37. A.-N. Didron, “Première partie du sixième jour de la Création,” in Annales archéologiques X (Paris, 1850), 339–49. A.-N. Didron, “Création de l’homme et de la femme,” in Annales archéologiques XI (Paris, 1851), 148–57. A.-N. Didron, A. Duval, and J.-B.-A. Lassus, Monographie de la cathédrale de Chartres (Paris, 1842–1856). A.-N. Didron and L. Dupasquier, Monographie de Notre-Dame de Brou (Lyon, 1842). “Je vous conjure, Monsieur, d’avoir pitié de ces beaux débris, de ces admirables ruines, de ces monuments magnifiques, et de les protéger contre le temps et les hommes.” A.-N. Didron, “Antiquités catholiques,” in L’Européen, Journal des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 1 N° 3 (Paris, December 17, 1831), 46–48. A.-N. Didron, “De la Commission des travaux historiques établie au ministère de l’Instruction publique,” Revue de Paris XLIX (Paris, 1838), 219–34. Comité historique des Arts et Monuments, Bulletin Archéologique (Paris, 1840–1841, t. I; 1842–1843, t. II; 1844–1845, t. III; 1846–1848, t. IV). A.-N. Didron, A. Duval, and J.-B.-A. Lassus, Monographie de la cathédrale de Chartres (Paris, 1842–1856). A.-N. Didron, “Feuilleton de L’Univers, Archéologie nationale, Restauration de Notre-Dame de Paris,” L’Univers 88 (Paris, October 11, 1842). A.-N. Didron, “Reims,” L’Artiste VII (Paris, 1841), 161–63, 176–79, 212–14. A.-N. Didron, “Introduction,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 2. A.-N. Didron, “Les anciens et les nouveaux archéologues,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 133–37. A.-N. Didron, “De la musique au Moyen Age,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 36–40. A.-N. Didron, “De la poésie du Moyen Age,” in Annales Archéologiques II (Paris, 1845), 36–40. A.-N. Didron, “Artistes du Moyen Age,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 77–83, 117–21. A.-N. Didron, “Symbolique chrétienne, La vie humaine,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 241–51. A.-N. Didron, “Symbolique chrétienne,” in Annales Archéologiques 8 (Paris, 1848), 1–17. A.-N. Didron, “Reliquaire byzantin,” in Annales Archéologiques II (Paris, 1845), 299–303. A.-N. Didron, “Orfèvrerie du Moyen Age (chandelier),” in Annales Archéologiques VIII (Paris, 1848), 312–15. A.-N. Didron, “Ostensoirs du Moyen Age,” in Annales Archéologiques XI (Paris, 1851), 317–25. A.-N. Didron, “Peintures sur verre,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 83–86. A.-N. Didron, “Peintures sur verre,” in Annales Archéologiques III (Paris, 1845), 166–75. A.-N. Didron, “Vitrail de l’Incarnation,” in Annales Archéologiques XII (Paris, 1852), 97–105. A.-N. Didron, “Vitrail de la Charité,” in Annales Archéologiques XIV (Paris, 1854), 217–25. A.-N. Didron, “Voyage archéologique en Grèce,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 29–36. A.-N. Didron, “Promenade en Angleterre,” in Annales Archéologiques V (Paris, 1846), 284–308. A.-N. Didron, “Huit jours en ’elgique,” in Annales Archéologiques IX (Paris, 1849), 237–40. A.-N. Didron, “Quelques jours en ’llemagne,” in Annales Archéologiques XVIII (Paris, 1858), 301–10, 313–31. A.-N. Didron, “Le Moyen Age en ’talie,” in Annales Archéologiques XIV (Paris, 1854), 341–53. A.-N. Didron, “Le Moyen Age en ’talie,” in Annales Archéologiques XV (Paris, 1855), 51–61. A.-N. Didron, “Les artistes du Moyen Age en ’talie,” in Annales Archéologiques XV (Paris, 1855), 112–22, 171–84, 365–72. A.-N. Didron, “Sienne, la chapelle du palais municipal,” in Annales Archéologiques XVI (Paris, 1856), 5–26, 281–92. A.-N. Didron, “Le dallage historié de la cathédrale de Sienne,” in Annales Archéologiques XVI (Paris, 1856), 338–60. A.-N. Didron, “Iconographie du palais ducal de Venise,” in Annales Archéologiques XVII (Paris, 1857), 69–89, 193–217. A.-N. Didron, “Mosaïques de la cathédrale d’Aoste, Evangélistes et fleuves du paradis,” in Annales Archéologiques XVII (Paris, 1857), 389–93. A.-N. Didron, Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine (Paris, 1845). A.-N. Didron, Manuel des œuvres de bronze et d’orfèvrerie du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1859). A.-N. Didron, Verrières de la Rédemption à Notre-Dame de Châlons-sur-Marne (Paris, 1863). A.-N. Didron, Iconographie de l’Opéra (Paris, 1864). A.-N. Didron, “Les Météores,” in Annales Archéologiques I (Paris, 1844), 172–79. A.-N. Didron, “Le Mont Athos,” in Annales Archéologiques IV (Paris, 1846), 69–87, 134–48, 222–38. A.-N. Didron, “Le Vatopédi du Mont Athos,” in Annales Archéologiques V (Paris, 1846), 148–66. A.-N. Didron, “Le Mont Athos et le Phalanstère,” in Annales Archéologiques VII (Paris, 1847), 41–49. A.-N. Didron, “Le Mont Athos,” in Annales Archéologiques XVIII (Paris, 1858), 72–81. A.-N. Didron, “Le couvent d’Iviron au Mont Athos,” in Annales Archéologiques XVIII (Paris, 1858), 109–25. A.-N. Didron, “Philothéou du Mont Athos,” in Annales Archéologiques XVIII (Paris, 1858), 197–206. A.-N. Didron, “Le couvent de sainte Laure au Mont Athos,” in Annales Archéologiques XIX (Paris, 1861), 27–39, 80–94, 126–37. A.-N. Didron, Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine (Paris, 1845).

55

Emilie Maraszak 33 A.-N. Didron, “Histoire du Manuel d’Iconographie chrétienne,” in Annales Archéologiques II (Paris, 1845), 23–36. 34 “Didron a retrouvé son acte de naissance (l’art gothique) sur les bords de Seine, au cœur de la France, et ce n’est certes pas pour notre pays un vain titre de gloire.” F. de Guilhermy, “Didron,” in Annales Archéologiques XXV (Paris, 1865), 380. 35 J.-M. Leniaud, Jean-Baptiste Lassus ou le temps retrouvé des cathédrales (Geneva, 1980), 80. 36 A.-N. Didron, “Mélanges et nouvelles, Les flèches de la cathédrale de Reims,” in Annales Archéologiques XI (Paris, 1851), 365–66. 37 “Je suis de ceux qui s’élèvent contre toutes les restaurations quelles qu’elles soient, aussi bien contre celle de la Sainte-Chapelle que contre celle de Saint-Denis [ . . . ] Il faut réparer les monuments et non pas les restaurer [ . . . ] La destruction s’attache sans relâche à nos monuments, aux plus importants comme aux plus humbles [ . . . ] mais la restauration, qui ne vaut guère mieux, déshonore et dénature des édifices bien plus importants encore.” A.-N. Didron, “Feuilleton de L’Univers, Archéologie nationale,” in L’Univers (Paris, August 5, 1841). 38 A.-N. Didron, “Archéologie, Programme d’un cours d’archéologie chrétienne,” in L’Artiste Série 2, 1 (Paris, 1839), 241–45, 257–60, 272–74. 39 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Nouvelles Acquisitions Françaises 6102. 40 “L’expérience d’un échec historique, l’échec d’un concept d’art chrétien et celui de son incarnation, le néogothique.” C. Brisac and J.-M. Léniaud, “Adolphe-Napoléon Didron ou les média au service de l’art chrétien,” in Revue de l’Art 77 (Paris, 1987), 33–42.

Selective bibliography Books written by Didron A.-N. Didron, Archeologie nationale, Rapport a M. de Salvandy, ministre de l’Instruction publique, sur la monographie de la cathedrale de Chartres (Paris, 1839). A.-N. Didron, Rapport sur les vitraux de Montfort-l’Amaury (Paris, 1839). A.-N. Didron and L. Dupasquier, Monographie de Notre-Dame de Brou (Lyon, 1842). A.-N. Didron, A. Duval, and J.-B.-A. Lassus, Monographie de la cathedrale de Chartres (Paris, 1842–1856). A.-N. Didron, Iconographie chretienne: Histoire de Dieu (Paris, 1843). A.-N. Didron, Manuel d’iconographie chretienne grecque et latine (Paris, 1845). A.-N. Didron, L’Archeologie en Angleterre (Paris, 1851). A.-N. Didron, Paganisme dans l’art chretien (Paris, 1853). W. Burges and A.-N. Didron, Venise: Iconographie des chapiteaux du palais Ducal (Paris, 1857). A.-N. Didron, Manuel des oeuvres de bronze et d’orfevrerie du Moyen Age (Paris, 1859). A.-N. Didron, Quelques jours en Allemagne (Paris, 1859). A.-N. Didron, Verrieres de la Redemption a Notre-Dame de Chalons-sur-Marne (Paris, 1863). A.-N. Didron, Iconographie de l’Opera (Paris, 1864).

Critical bibliography H. Nouguier, Memoire a consulter et consultation pour M. Arbanere, proprietaire de la manufacture de vitraux, a Tonneins, contre M. Didron aine, de Paris, redacteur et editeur des Annales archeologiques (Paris, 1850). F. De Guilhermy, “Didron,” in Annales archeologiques XXV (Paris, 1865) 377–395. F. Coutan, Episode d’un voyage de Didron en Normandie durant l’ete de 1831; suivi d’une lettre a M.Vitet, inspecteur general des monuments historiques (Rouen, 1906). M. Dvořak, Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art (Notre Dame, 1967). E. W. Kleinbauer, Research Guide to the History of Western Art (Chicago, 1982). V. Costa, “L’iconographie d’Adolphe Didron: choix religieux, adaptation plastique,” in Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest t. XCIII, n°4 (1986) 383–388. C. Brisac and J.-M. Leniaud, “Adolphe-Napoleon Didron ou les media au service de l’art chretien,” Revue de l’Art 77 (Paris, 1987), 33–42. J. Nayrolles, “Deux approches de l’iconographie medievale dans les annees 1840,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 128 (Paris, 1996), 201–222.

56

4 LOUIS RÉAU Daniel Russo

Louis Réau, French historian of medieval art, was born in Poitiers on January 1, 1881, and died in Paris on June 10, 1961. He studied literature at École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1900 and Russian at the National Institute of Eastern Languages and Civilizations (INALCO). He taught at the University of Paris, where he was a member of the prestigious Academy of Fine Arts, and founded the French Institute in Vienna. From 1911 to 1914, he was head of the French Institute in Saint-Petersburg. Three core interests lay at the center of all his work in medieval as well as in the general field of art history, and it is these which will be discussed in this essay. Firstly, he was particularly interested in the process of exchange and interaction between countries, especially between France and Russia, where he sought to balance Germany’s position in Central and Eastern Europe at the start of the twentieth century. His work looked at the concept of French influence as exerted in these areas by artists and architects. From the field of foreign politics, he studied the concept of “expansion culturelle,” which was one of the dominant themes of the period from 1900–1910. For him, this concept of “cultural expansion” belonged to the field of international relations. His second major contribution to the field of art history was the research he undertook on French monuments that had been destroyed but which were known to have existed; in doing this he examined natural as well as historical sites, and looked at the concept of “vandalism” as described in the Abbé Grégoire’s reports and speeches on public monuments made to the National Convention of 1794.1 Thirdly, it was as an iconographer and a historian of meaningful forms that Réau is still best known. He broke with the conventions established by Émile Mâle (discussed elsewhere in this volume) and his followers, such as Germain Bazin (1901–1990). Interestingly, Bazin, in his Histoire de l’histoire de l’art (History of the History of Art), which was published in 1986, makes no reference to any of Réau’s work.2 From the outset, it has to be admitted that Réau was not widely appreciated because of his nationalistic, Catholic, and staunchly held beliefs.3 Above all else, however, it is iconography which underpins these three lines of research undertaken by Réau. Réau was a pioneer in several respects, not least of which was his research into the field of artistic relations between France and Eastern Europe. His particular interest in the field of French cultural expansion especially in relation to art was published in several volumes.

57

Daniel Russo

Among these is his publication on German art L’art français sur le Rhin (Paris, 1908) as well as his two cultural volumes on Cologne and Saint-Petersburg, which he considered to be German towns. Neither did he neglect art and iconography in his work Peter Vischer et la sculpture franconienne du XIVe au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1909). While head of the French Institute in Russia, he taught French literature and the history of French civilization according to a program he himself had established4 and which also matched the expectations and wishes of the French Slavic scholar Paul Boyer (1864–1949), who encouraged Réau in his initiatives. Boyer was director of the School of Eastern Languages in Paris (from 1908 to 1936) and was also to found the Revue des Études Slaves (Review of Slavic Studies)5 in 1921. For Réau, the iconographical approach, as well as the broader artistic one, was part of the same process of international exchange and, above all, of French hegemony. In 1925, in a book dedicated to Paul Boyer, Réau wrote, Parmi tous les pays d’Europe qui ont été au XVIIIe siècle tributaires du génie français, aucun n’a accepté son hégémonie plus docilement que la Russie. [. . .] De même que la Russie ancienne avait été pendant de longs siècles une province de l’art byzantin, la Russie nouvelle est devenue, tout naturellement [my emphasis], une province de l’art français, Paris a été pour Pétersbourg ce que Byzance avait été pour Kiev et Moscou.6 (Of all the European countries that were dependent on eighteenth century French genius, none meekly accepted its hegemony over Russia. [. . .] Just as the old Russia had been for centuries a province of Byzantine art, the new Russia became, quite naturally [my emphasis], a province of French art, Paris became for Petersburg what Byzantium had been to Kiev and Moscow.) Between 1911 and 1914, he organized with his Russian colleagues a special exhibition on nineteenth-century French art from the artistic movement called the Mir Iskovsstva in Russia, which was published in Apollon.7 Réau’s book of 1877 on Russian architecture was the first such publication after that by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879). His Histoire de l’expansion de l’art français was published in five volumes between 1924 and 1933; in the fourth volume, which dealt with South Eastern Europe, he discussed the arts and architecture of Romania, from its beginnings to the twentieth century.8 This pioneering project dealt with entirely new areas and subjects and aimed to be not only innovative but also universal in its approach.9 When it came to the destruction and vandalism of French monuments, Réau argued for the case of “lese-beauty,” a concept he related to that of “lese-majesty”; he wrote of this in his Histoire du vandalisme: Les monuments détruits de l’art français (Paris, 1959).10 Some eleven years earlier, in 1948, he published an essay on French churches from the same perspective and also applied the same methodology in 1953 in his dictionary on technical terms in art and archeology.11 Réau’s Histoire du Vandalisme answered a gap in the field as no comparable study on this subject existed. This work aimed to be as comprehensive as possible and looked at the origins of the term; the psychology of the vandals, the chronological divisions from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, including the Huguenots, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the First Empire, the Modern Age from 1814–1914, and finally the twentieth century; he looked at the classification of monuments, as well as sites, and argued for principal as well as secondary divisions. In using such an approach he reverted to the work undertaken by naturalists, such as Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), in the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology.12 Réau classified monuments into two categories – religious and civic – and he sought to understand the motives for the vandals’ actions: in this way, he distinguished 58

Louis Réau

blameless motives from those that were disreputable. This was not a linguistic turn, as it was for André Grabar,13 but a scientific approach to the arts in their environments. In his intellectual reasoning, Réau seems to be closely related to that of the French Jesuit Charles Cahier (1802–1882), especially in his use of categorization and type. Earlier, Cahier had published Mélanges of Archeology, History and Literature (Paris, 1848–1859) in four volumes, which is an invaluable hagiographical study on the saints in religious art, their visual representation and their place in popular imagination.14 Cahier’s study is very much based on the use of categories and types, a characteristic which Réau also employed. Like Cahier, Réau also believed that all art as well as everyday objects functioned in much the same manner throughout the world – they had a kind of existential pluralism – and that it was the task of the scientist or observer to read, describe, and then interpret. In that way, iconographers needed to decipher the world. This was a common standpoint at this time, as, for example, in Étienne Souriau’s (1892–1979) philosophy on the “modes of the being of things” in society.15 Réau extended the field of iconography enormously in a series of publications which include the Dictionnaire polyglotte des termes d’art et d’architecture (1953) and more significantly the Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Iconography of Christian Art) (1955–1959; repr. 1988), a monumental synthesis. From every perspective this was a study which was the opposite of any work undertaken by Émile Mâle. Réau did not simply undertake an iconographical reading of the arts in history, but instead he placed them in the life of the forms. From that perspective his work was similar to Élie Faure’s (1873–1937) Art Medieval (1911, republished 1921, 1924, and 1926), which was the second volume in his Histoire de l’Art (1909–1927),16 as well as Henri Focillon’s (1881–1943) Vie des formes (1934). For Élie Faure, unlike Émile Mâle, there was no overriding religious nature to the Middle Ages, which he saw as a less focused period. It was a period of Christianitas, and a distinct step in the history of civilization, which was marked by group faith and collective civic responsibility: the cathedral was not the property of the Church; it did not belong to Christianity and instead it should be seen as an urban monument, the work of laymen in the city. Faure explained in “La Cathédrale et la Commune,” which was published in the Grande Revue (January 25, 1912): Le Christianisme n’a le droit de réclamer la Cathédrale qu’en revendiquant avec elle tout l’art contemporain du moment où elle apparut. Elle représentait une voix sans doute, et la plus haute et la plus pure, dans la symphonie populaire. Mais elle n’était pas toute l’architecture. [. . .] Ce qui fait la cathédrale, ce qui nous la rend sensible, c’est la logique de sa structure et le sensualisme de sa décoration. Elle apparaît par là dans son ensemble comme une insurrection des sens et de l’intelligence contre le christianisme des apôtres et des pères de l’Église et la reprise de contact du peuple avec les formes de la vie qu’ils avaient, depuis douze siècles, oubliées ou combattues.17 (Christianity did not have the right to claim the Cathedral only by also claiming responsibility for all contemporary art from the moment it appeared. It no doubt represented a voice, the highest and the purest, in the popular symphony. But it was not all architecture. [. . .] What makes the cathedral, and what makes us sensitive about it, is the logic of its structure and sensuality of its decoration. It appeared as a unified insurrection of the senses and intelligence against the Christianity of the Apostles and the Church Fathers and represented the resumption of the people’s contact with ways of life that they had forgotten or fought against for twelve centuries.) 59

Daniel Russo

Faure also counteracted Émile Mâle’s beliefs about the twelfth- and thirteenth-century cathedral as found in L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: L’art seul, according to the Council of Nicea, art belonged only to the artist, as prescribed by the Fathers, when he proposed, L’ordonnance nous indiffère, car nous savons qu’elle ne signifie pour les Pères qu’un ordre extérieur et fini, et non pas la science vivante qui équilibrait, dans le cerveau des architectes, les voûtes avec leurs supports.18 (We are indifferent about the layout, because we know that it only signifies an external and finite order for the Fathers and not the living science which balanced the vaults and their supports, in the architects’ minds.) L’ordre ne compte pas, parce que nous savons qu’il ne veut rien dire pour les Pères, seulement un ordre extérieur et fini, mais pas l’expérience vécue dans le cerveau des architects, les voûtes et leurs supports. (The Order doesn’t count, because we know that it doesn’t mean anything for the Fathers, only an external and finite order, but not the experience envisaged in the architects’ minds, the vaults and their supports.) In the endnote to his text, he made this point even clearer: Viollet-le-Duc a soutenu des idées analogues à celles qui font la matière de cet article dans son Dictionnaire d’architecture. Mais je crois apporter un certain nombre d’arguments nouveaux. Je crois surtout utile de répondre à ceux de M. Émile Mâle, qui ne cesse pas de confondre dans son livre le prétexte de l’œuvre d’art avec la nature même de la vision plastique.19 (In his Dictionary of Architecture, Viollet-le-Duc supported similar ideas to those which are the subject of this article. But I think I offer a number of new arguments. I think it especially useful to respond to those of Mr. Émile Mâle, who never ceases to confuse in his book the pretext of the artwork with the very nature of plastic vision.) Réau adopted the same stance in the Iconographie de l’art chrétien as he had in his Histoire du vandalisme in 1959. In the first volume, where he discussed the methodologies of iconography, he rejected Mâle’s idea that written documents could not be used to explain monuments or works of art. Bien au contraire pour lui (Réau): ses remarques (dans ses etudes) lui ouvraient d’autres voies de recherché sans plus aucune relation de cause à effet entre les textes et les oeuvres artistiques!20 (Quite the contrary for him [Réau]: his remarks opened up other avenues of research without any more cause-effect relationship between the texts and the artistic works!) At first, he was interested by what he called “L’appel de la vie’ or the call of life, and by what he described as “anachronisms” within the religious image, such as those which resulted from vernacular imagination in a theatrical set or in costumes. Similar to Focillon in the Art des sculpteurs romans (1931) and the Vie des Formes, Réau underlined the strength and power of aesthetic sensibilities on sacred themes in religious art. As a result, he was preoccupied with changes, distortions in forms, and their effects on the bigger visual Christian narrative as found in the Bible or the saints. He discovered four factors which for him influenced the entire process, and 60

Louis Réau

he went back to the framework Focillon had discussed in his work on medieval sculpture: these were the laws of the frame, of duality, of numbers, and of style. These factors allowed Réau to understand why certain forms disappeared or why some merged with others, as well as why some older forms were revived into a new thematic layout. Réau stated an iconographical fact when he saw that, in some cases, these changes did not affect Old Testament subjects or the iconography of the Evangelists as much as hagiographic iconography, which remained more flexible and open to change. Réau precise les légendes et le culte des Élus, et les caractéristiques des saints dans l’art. Mais il admet clairement qu’il y a des exceptions à ces régles qu’il énonce parce qu’un grand nombre des images des saints et des formes données à leurs légendes proviennent d’autres cultes et d’autres histoires, selon un mécanisme interne de diffusion.21 (Réau is more specific about the legends and the religion of The Chosen Ones, and the characteristics of saints in art. But he clearly admits that there are exceptions to these rules that he lays down because a large number of saintly images and the way their legends were molded come from other religions and other stories, and the way they were dispersed.) Réau’s publication consisted of an introductory volume, two volumes on the Bible, and three on the Saints. The introductory volume set out the grammar rules of Christian imagery in the arts for all countries and for all periods, from Early Christian art to the Middle Ages, then from the Sistine Chapel to the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, by Henri Matisse (1869–1954). The first volume highlights two major contributions from Réau to the history of Christian iconography: he firstly offers a new standpoint on what he calls “symbolism’ as well as a wider interpretation of what can be called the “forces of the human mind’ than is found in contemporary studies. Réau distinguished two symbolic concentric circles, the first of which is the scholarly foundation of the interpretation – these are the allegorical texts that can be used to read the iconography – an approach which belongs to the French nineteenth-century tradition.22 Among the allegorical texts, he highlighted bestiaries, calendars, and treatises on the liberal arts as well as those on the virtues and vices. For the external forms, and figures, he studied medieval plays, liturgical rites, sermons, and the vernacular audience. In his reading of Christian art, Réau was an encyclopedist who looked for the meaning of art as the exegesis of Christian texts, following the interpretatio Cristiana:23 he underlined the typological concordantia between the two Testaments, one sequence referring to another one, and he added further interpretations from sources such as the Histoire universelle or the bestiaries or calendars. He provides such a reading for the altarpiece by Nicolas of Verdun (1130–1205) at Klosterneuburg Monastery.24 He developed his analysis not on the analogical ground between text and image, such as Émile Mâle did, but on the intercrossed imagery extracted from a mutually shared cultural fund. Through this, he wanted to study all civilization throughout history. When he explained mysticism in the texts, in the arts, or on the stage, during the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, he did not examine the supposedly direct effects on the iconography, as Mâle did, but he studied newly configured themes and forms which were inspired by the movement that was stimulated by great visionaries, such as Suso of Constance (c. 1295–1366) and Brigitte of Sweden (1302/1303–1373), or some texts, such as the best-selling Meditations on the Life of Jesus Christ (fourteenth century). Even though this may now seem a relatively standard approach, it has to be remembered that this was an entirely new methodology in Réau’s time. In writing on the concept of “lese-beauty’ in his foreword to Histoire du vandalisme, Louis Réau noted that the historian “must be impartial but without being impassive.” His belief still echoes and will continue to do so for some time. 61

Daniel Russo

Notes 1 Abbot Henri Jean-Baptiste Grégoire (1750–1831) created the French National School of Engineering and Technology (1794) and was the first to discuss the concept of “vandalism” [when he wrote, “Pour tuer la chose”]. See Abbot Grégoire, Convention nationale: Rapport sur les inscriptions des monuments publics, session of the 22 Nivôse of the second year of the French Republic [January 10, 1794] (Paris, BNF 8° Le38. 2526); Abbot Grégoire, Convention nationale: Instruction publique. Rapport sur les destructions opérées par le vandalisme et sur les moyens de le réprimer, session of the 14 Fructidor of the second year of the French Republic [August 31, 1794] (BNF 8° Le38. 922); Abbot Grégoire, Convention nationale: Instruction publique. Second Rapport sur le vandalisme, session of the 8 Brumaire of the third year of the French Republic [October 29, 1794] (BNF 8° Le38. 1026); Abbot Grégoire, Convention nationale: Instruction publique. Troisième Rapport sur le vandalisme, session of the 24 Frimaire of the third year . . . [December 14, 1794] (BNF 8° Le38. 1097): J.-M. Leniaud, “Introduction” to the Mémoires de Grégoire, suivies de la notice historique sur Grégoire d’Hippolyte Carnot (Paris, 1989); R. Hermon-Belot, L’abbé Grégoire: La politique et la vérité (Paris, 2000), 484–85; and also 322–57; J.F. Byrnes, Priests of the French Revolution: Saints and Renegades in a New Political Era (University Park, 2014), especially chap. 1, about Sieyès and Grégoire. 2 André Grabar (1896–1990) did not reference Réau in any of his work, such as his Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins [The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Bollingen Series 35, 10] (Princeton, 1968). 3 J.F. Byrnes, Catholic and French Forever: Religious and National Identity in Modern France (University Park, 2005), especially chaps. 8 to 10. 4 L. Réau, Rapport sur le fonctionnement de l’Institut présenté au Conseil d’administration, French Institute (Saint-Petersburg, 1913, 7): “En même temps qu’un centre de recherches et de publications scientifiques, l’Institut doit être un centre d’enseignement et travailler à l’expansion de l’influence intellectuelle de la France” (As well as being a research center with scientific publications, the Institute was also to be an educational center and work toward expanding France’s intellectual influence); O. Medvedkova, “Scientifique ou intellectuel ? Louis Réau et la création de l’Institut français de Saint-Pétersbourgh,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 43 (February 2002), 411–22, 420. 5 Paul Boyer conceived the entire program in order to defend and bring fame to French culture, developing the notion of “cultural expansion,” so familiar to Réau and other teachers, such as Louis Hautecoeur (1884–1973), in the Institute in Saint-Petersburg. See P. Boyer, “Les relations scientifiques entre la France et la Russie,” Revue du Mois scientifique 172 (April 1926), 199–200. 6 L. Réau, “Les relations artistiques entre la France et la Russie,” Mélanges publiés en l’honneur de M. Paul Boyer (Paris, 1925), 118. 7 “Une exposition d’art français au XIXe siècle,” Apollon 4 (1912), 5–7; see also L. Réau, G. Lundberg and R.-A. Weigert, L’art français dans les Pays du Nord et de l’Est de l’Europe (Paris, 1932). 8 L. Réau, Histoire de l’expansion de l’art français, vol. 4, Italie, Espagne, Portugal, Roumanie (Paris, 1933); L. Réau, L’Europe française au siècle des Lumières (Paris, 1938), in the series of the “Évolution de l’humanité,” volumes which Pierre Chaunu (1923–2009) knew and read for his own work Civilisation de l’Europe des Lumières (Paris, 1971); L. Réau, L’art roumain (Paris, 1946). 9 A. Sotropa, “Louis Réau et l’Art roumain’ (1946),” Ligeia, Dossier sur l’art n° 93–96, L’Europe de l’Est’ (juill-déc. 2009), 124–29. 10 L. Reau, Histoire du vandalisme: les monuments detruits de l’art francais, 2 vols. (Paris, 1959), vol. 1: Du haut Moyen Age au XIXe siecle; vol. 2: XIXe et XXe siecles; L. Reau, Histoire du vandalisme, op. cit., M. Fleury and G.-M. Leproux dir. (Paris, 1994; reprinted 2013). 11 L. Réau, Vieilles églises de France (Paris, 1948), which was a response to Mâle’s book Rome et ses vieilles églises (Paris, 1942; Paris, 1965; Rome, 1992). Réau focused the subject on France, and not on Rome and Italy, and dealt with the same subject that Mâle had previously examined in his L’art religieux de la fin du Moyen Âge en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1908; repr. 1995), Preface, IV–V, but in a different manner. Mâle was nostalgic when he wrote, “Partout, dans les villes, dans les villages, la vieille France m’accueillait avec ce qu’elle eut de meilleur. [. . .] Ici nous attendent tant d’œuvres, tant de pensées antiques qui veulent encore nous émouvoir!” (Everywhere, in the towns, as well as in the villages, the old France welcomed me with what was best about her. [. . .] Here, we are expecting so many pieces of work, so many old thoughts that still want to move us!), but Réau was not. On Mâle’s attitude, see D. Russo, “Émile Mâle, l’art dans l’histoire,” in Émile Mâle (1862–1954): La construction de l’œuvre: Rome et l’Italie, ed. A. Vauchez (Rome, 2005), 263–64. The Dictionnaire polyglotte des termes d’art et d’archéologie (Paris, 1953) refuted Viollet-le-Duc’s own dictionary, Dictionnaire raisonné de

62

Louis Réau

12 13

14

15

16

17

18

19 20

21

l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, in ten volumes (Paris, 1854–1868), which had been published almost a century before: “polyglot” as well as “polymath” was substituted by Réau for the adjective “reasoned.” P. Taquet, Georges Cuvier: Naissance d’un génie (Paris, 2006). On Grabar, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) and the matter of language see P. Maniglier, La vie énigmatique des signes: Saussure et la naissance du structuralisme (Paris, 2006), 129–226; A. Grabar, Les voies de la création en iconographie chrétienne: Antiquité et Moyen Âge (Paris, 1979), 5–10, 133–36: the second part, which dealt with the Middle Ages, was unpublished; the first part, on antiquity, was published in 1968. See Grabar, Christian Iconography (as in note 2). Charles Cahier, Caractéristiques des saints dans l’art populaire (Paris, 1867); see also his Calendrier du temps passé (Paris, 1878). R. Hertz (1881–1915), “Saint Besse: Étude d’un culte alpestre,” in Sociologie religieuse et folklore (Paris, 1970), 110–60. See also L. Réau, “L’iconographie de Saint Augustin,” Bulletin Archeologique 4 (1952–1954), 387–91. É. Souriau, Les différents modes d’existence (Paris, 1943; Paris, 2009, with I. Stengers and B. Latour’s “Presentation”), and “Du mode de l’existence de l’œuvre à faire,” Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie 50:1, session of February 25 (1956), 4–24; see also his two books, Pensée vivante et perfection formelle (Paris, 1925) and L’instauration philosophique (Paris, 1939). É. Faure, Histoire de l’art, 5 vols. (Paris, 1909–1927): L’art antique (1910), L’art médiéval (1911), L’art renaissant (1914), L’art moderne (two books) (1921 and 1923), and L’Esprit des formes (1927) (Paris, 1976; 1985, M. Chatelain-Courtois, ed.; 2001). Quoted by M. Chatelain-Courtois, L’Esprit (as in note 16), 389; in his study Faure added, “C’est le pavé des barricades qui s’entasse entre ses nervures ardentes pour la jeter plus profond dans l’espace avec l’espoir, l’illusion, l’amour, la force guerrière qui donne et qui suit la victoire et féconde la volonté” (They are the building blocks of the barricades which pile up between its fervent ribs to bring it even further into space with the hope, the illusion, the love, the force that inspires and follows willpower). M. Chatelain-Courtois, L’Esprit (as in note 17), 389; É. Mâle, L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1898; 1948; 1993), Preface (1993, 11–25). M. Chatelain-Courtois, L’Esprit (as note 17), 397. Mâle specified the purpose of his book in the introduction: he first wanted to look at the “original characteristics of Medieval art” and, second, see how the works could be read using iconographical documents, such as Vincent de Beauvais, “Speculum majus and the Speculum Humanae,” Mâle (as in note 18), 29–71: 2, 59; he wrote, “Méthode à suivre dans l’étude de l’iconographie du Moyen Âge. Les Miroirs de Vincent de Beauvais,” 2, 61, and added, “L’œuvre se divise en quatre parties: Miroir de la nature, Miroir de la Science, Miroir de la Morale, Miroir de l’Histoire,” 2, 62–63, before concluding “Un semblable livre est donc le guide le plus sûr que nous puissions prendre pour étudier les grandes idées directrices de l’art du XIIIe siècle. Il est difficile de ne pas remarquer, entre l’économie générale du Speculum majus et le plan qui a été suivi aux porches de la cathédrale de Chartres, par exemple, des analogies frappantes” (A similar book is therefore the safest guide that we can have to study the principal guiding ideas of art from the thirteenth century. It is hard not to notice striking similarities between, for example, the general economy of the Speculum Majus and the plan that was followed in the porches of Chartres Cathedral). “Il s’agit de la citation d’Émile Mâle qui donne le plan de son travail, la division en quatre parties suivant les quatre Miroirs de Vincent de Beauvais. Et Mâle continue dans la citation que j’en fais en disant que le Miroir (en general) de Vincent de Beauvais est le livre le plus fiable quand on veut étudier les grandes idées directrices de l’art du XIIIe siècle. Et la fin de la citation porte sur la correspondence dans l’organisation générale entre le Speculum majus et l’organisation des portails de la cathédrale de Chartres” (It is the quote from Émile Mâle which gave him the outline of his work, the division into four parts following the four Mirrors of Vincent de Beauvais. And Mâle follows on in the same quote saying that the Mirror of Vincent of Beauvais is the most reliable book when one wants to study the principal guiding ideas of art from the thirteenth century. And the end of the quote refers to the connections in the general organization of the Speculum Majus and the organization of the portals of Chartres Cathedral). See L. Réau, “Du rôle des mots et des images dans la formation des légendes hagiographiques,” Mémoires de la Societe National Des Antiquaires De France 78 (1934); “L’influence de la forme sur l’iconographie dans l’art médiéval,” Journal de Psychologie normale et pathologique (June 1951), special issue on “Formes de l’art, formes de l’esprit.” On these matters, see R. Hertz, Saint Besse (as in note 14).

63

Daniel Russo 22 On this tradition see R. Recht, “L’iconologie avant Warburg: L’orientaliste Charles Clermont-Ganneau (1846–1923) et la mythologie des images,” Images re-vues hors-série 4 (2013), “Survivance d’Aby Warburg: Sens et destin d’une iconologie critique.” 23 H. Inglebert, Les Romains chrétiens face à l’histoire de Rome. Histoire, christianisme et romanités en Occident dans l’Antiquité tardive (IIIe–Ve s.) (Paris, 2000); on the encyclopedic way of studying in nineteenth-century France see Inglebert, Le Monde: L’Histoire. Essai sur les histoires universelles (Paris, 2014). 24 L. Réau, “L’iconographie du retable typologique de Klosternaeuburg,” L’Art Mosan (1953), 171–86.

64

5 ÉMILE MÂLE Kirk Ambrose

Born in 1862 to a working-class family in Bourbonnais, Émile Mâle would eventually pursue a remarkable scholarly career that offers testimony to what achievements were possible for a gifted and diligent student trained under the educational reforms instituted during the Third Republic (Fig. 5.1).1 As a teenager, the future art historian gravitated toward the writings of Victor Hugo and took up the art of painting, several examples of which survive to this day in private collections. His academic talents garnered recognition at an early age and, from 1883 to 1886, he attended the prestigious École normale supérieure in Paris. After graduation in 1886, Mâle taught rhetoric at a number of lycées across France: Saint-Étienne (1889–93), Toulouse (1895), the Lakanal in Paris (1898), and Louis-le-Grand (1899). During these years as a secondary teacher, Mâle pursued graduate studies at the Sorbonne, defending two theses in 1899: one in Latin2 and the other in French.3 The latter was based on his first book, published in the previous year. In 1906, the Sorbonne invited Mâle to teach a course on Christian art of the Middle Ages, and, six years later, hired him as their first chair of medieval art history. From 1923 to 1937, Mâle directed the École Française, Rome. After World War II, he served as curator of the Jacquemard-André museum in Chaalis. The many honors he received during his lifetime included election to the Academie des inscriptions et belles lettres (1918), election to the Academie française (1927), and the Prix Osiris from the Insitut de France (1948). Mâle died October 10, 1954, in Chaalis. From an early age Mâle took an interest in medieval art, a field that would remain at the center of his scholarly inquiries throughout his life. In a letter to his friend Joseph Texte, dated April 26, 1899, he expressed admiration for the twelfth-century porch of Autun cathedral in affecting terms. I visited Autun, a remote city off the beaten track. It is astonishing in these mountains, near the forest, to encounter the majesty of Roman monuments. The arches of the city’s two triumphal gates are moving: one senses the discernment, the law emanating from a sublime geometry. The porch of the cathedral manifests another form of sublimity that is more barbaric, but more lyrical.4 Whereas the Roman arches of this city manifest a sublime geometry, the Romanesque portal, which features a celebrated tympanum of the Last Judgment, represents another type of beauty, more barbarous and more lyrical than that found in earlier monuments. In other letters from his 65

Kirk Ambrose

Figure 5.1 Émile Mâle, c. 1928. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, EI-13 (2832).

student days, Mâle confessed that observing stained-glass windows and sculpture sustained him through dark periods in his life. This strong personal attachment to medieval art likely informed the many fervid passages found throughout his many publications, which primarily focus on explicating the iconography of works of art. Willibald Sauerländer has characterized Mâle as an “apologist” for Old French Catholicism.5 Mâle relied heavily upon theological texts to interpret works of art, which he believed offered exemplary expressions of orthodox teachings, and self-consciously developed an interpretative approach more systematic in its articulation and application than those offered by earlier iconographers, including Charles Cahiers and, most notably, Adolphe Napoléon Didron.6 At times, the elegance of Mâle’s interpretative model anticipates aspects of Erwin Panofsky’s Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism or Henri de Lubac’s synthesis of the principles of medieval exegesis.7 Yet, Mâle’s vision of art was much more than theological in its scope and he was even critical of modern historians, including Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, whom he believed regarded medieval art from a purely intellectual vantage point.8 Mâle’s vast erudition was tempered by sensitivity to the aesthetic and emotional needs of medieval audiences. Accordingly, monuments were fundamentally imbricated within communal mores, not simply visual articulations of religious doctrines. This connection to aspects of social life explained for him the reason that “Christian” art changed so dramatically over time – for if art merely illustrated Church doctrine, understood as virtually immutable, there would have been little impetus for the remarkable formal and iconographic changes that can be observed in Christian art over the centuries.9 66

Émile Mâle

The role of aesthetics in Mâle’s scholarship remains underappreciated in many assessments of his contributions, the most critical of which have tended to construe his iconographic method in rather narrow terms, as abandoning any formal analysis in favor of textually based interpretations.10 Such a characterization is understandable because Mâle was generally rather reticent about his methods, which thus have to be inferred from his texts. To this end, the following comments offer a brief overview of the principal publications of this prolific scholar with an eye to the interpretative and methodological issues they advance.

Thirteenth-century France Mâle’s first book, L’Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration, stands as his most influential and within its pages one can identify in this early work many of the concerns that would occupy him throughout his career. The book’s subtitle alludes to Didron’s 1843 Iconographie chrétienne and perhaps even nods to Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia.11 Regardless, Mâle understood iconography largely in didactic terms, arguing that thirteenth-century art clothed religious doctrine, making it accessible to a wide audience. He denied any political significance for religious art and criticized Bernard de Montfaucon for identifying the kings on Gothic portals as visual genealogies of French monarchs. Rather, Mâle metaphorically described the wealth of visual materials within cathedrals as an encyclopedia of Christian knowledge. One of his premises is that that medieval audiences, steeped in Church teachings, would have been able to “read” these artworks rather effortlessly. He never seems to have entertained the possibility that medieval viewers would have encountered difficulties in interpreting works of art, which he believed worked in terms akin to language in the conveyance of meaning.12 This “writing” adhered to mathematical principles, such as symmetry and number, that provide the foundation for the formal beauty of thirteenth-century art. The Frenchman repeatedly highlighted the artistry of monumental arts, describing them as “frozen music,” and argued that Gothic sculptors, unlike their Romanesque predecessors, were receptive to the beauty of the natural world. In order to translate the meaning of the language of Gothic art to his modern readers, Mâle drew heavily from Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum.13 This magisterial thirteenth-century scholastic text provided the source for the divisions of his iconographic inquiry – namely, the Mirror of Nature, the Mirror of Instruction, the Mirror of Morals, and the Mirror of History. Mâle’s adoption of this elegant quadripartite structure offers an adequate representation of scholastic thought that he believed undergirded thirteenth-century art. Each of the four themes is developed through a series of carefully selected case studies, which offer iconographic interpretations informed by his deep familiarity with medieval exegetical traditions and hagiographic literature. Mâle’s lengthy analysis of representations of virtues and vices within the section Mirror of Morals exemplifies his approach. He asserts at the beginning that twelfth-century theologians began to characterize the opposition of virtues and vices differently than their predecessors, who had favored the allegory of combat found in Prudentius’s Psychomachia. This shift in perspective provides the impetus for artistic changes; conversely, artistic innovations never prompt changes in theology. Significantly, for Mâle some ideas are better suited to art than others, signaling his consideration of formal issues. Honorious Augustodunensis’s conception of virtue as a ladder leading from earth to heaven, for one, is presented as a theme that is difficult to realize in the visual arts. Despite this claim, however, Mâle points to a miniature of this iconography from the Hortus Deliciarum, which he further relates to Byzantine icons, presumably the Ladder of Virtue of John Climacus. For Mâle, some theological ideas even appear better suited to specific artistic media. Representations of virtues and vices as trees, including that articulated by Hugh of St. Victor, 67

Kirk Ambrose

can be found in manuscript illuminations, but not in monumental arts. He does not explain why this theme could not be represented effectively on a relatively large scale, but appears to suggest that the relative paucity of a theme in art provides a direct index of the formal challenges that it posed for medieval artists. That thirteenth-century sculptors increasingly represented calm, enthroned virtues reigning supreme over vices signaled for Mâle a desire on the part of artists and patrons to “go deeper,” to seek representational modes that conveyed a sense of inner peace. He does not offer any textual grounding for this interpretation, but bases it solely on his analysis of works of art. In other words, his approach to the meaning of works of art not only is textual in its assessment of meaning but also can carefully weigh formal characteristics of the work of art. Mâle concludes his analysis of the virtues and vices with an examination of carved examples on the façades of Amiens, Chartres, Notre-Dame in Paris, and Reims, as well as a stained-glass window at Auxerre. He notes that although the arrangement of these twelve pairs of figures consistently begins with the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, but does not continue, as one might expect from patristic tradition, with the four cardinal virtues. Rather, designers appear to have selected pairs of virtues and vices by other criteria. Mâle cannot identify a deeper rationale or a contemporary text that mirrors such choices. He then catalogues the remaining various virtues and vices and concludes that the vitality of these images instills a sense of sympathy that facilitates their conveyance of meaning. For Mâle, thirteenth-century art represented an apogee of French culture. Doubtless there was a nationalistic aspect to this agenda, for even though the scholar repeatedly contends that any political message ultimately played a subordinate role to that of Christian thought,14 he clearly believed that France was the preeminent artistic center of Europe for most of the Middle Ages. The scholar could even be extremely antagonistic in his judgments on this score, dedicating an entire volume, for one, to the thesis that German artists contributed nothing original to the history of art: “Germany aspires to be a greatly creative people, but this fallacy must be exposed.”15 The confrontational stance of this argument can be attributed largely to contemporary events, published in 1918 at the end of World War I. The unfortunate product of anti-German sentiment of the period, Mâle’s book nevertheless foregrounds a nationalistic impulse evident in much of his scholarship. In his book on twelfth-century art, Mâle aimed to locate the origins of Romanesque sculpture in France, a view stridently criticized by Arthur Kingsley Porter, who argued in favor of a Spanish origin and argued that iconographic themes moved internationally along the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.16 If religion was the driving force behind the production of medieval art for Mâle, France represented the ideal place for this art to bloom.

Situating the thirteenth-century achievement Having identified thirteenth-century art in France as an ideal expression of Catholicism, Mâle’s next three books can be read largely as offering pre- and posthistories of this achievement. He considered the decline and fall of French Gothic art in his second book, first published in 1908, which examined the period from the fourteenth century until the Council of Trent in 1563. The endpoint is significant for the author because it marked the moment that traditional iconography came under increased scrutiny during an age of reason and doctrinal development. The preface to this volume asserts that medieval art remained exempt from political vicissitudes, but was guided by developments in Christian thought. However, the elegant schema that marked the analysis of the thirteenth century yields in this second volume to a more episodic presentation. This looser structure perhaps signals something of a declension narrative, in which late medieval artists paid increasing attention to emotion. Chapters address the rise of various “new” 68

Émile Mâle

feelings, including the rise of pathos, especially in scenes of Christ’s passion, at the end of the thirteenth century and the emergence of human tenderness, evident in many Infancy cycles. This emphasis on emotion in late medieval culture, based on careful reading of images and texts, precedes by a decade the analogous arguments of Johan Huizinga regarding the Autumn of the Middle Ages, first published in 1919.17 Rather than laying the groundwork for modernity, the sixteenth century represents for Mâle a rupture from earlier sensibilities: The Art of the Middle Ages was doomed. Its charm had lain in the preservation of the innocence of childhood, in the clear eyes of its young saints. It resembled the medieval Church itself – a faith that did not argue, but sang . . . The artist who examines, judges, criticizes, doubts, and conciliates, has already lost half his creative force. That is why the art of the Middle Ages, which expressed naïve faith and spontaneity, could not survive the critical spirit born of the Reformation.18 Mâle spent most of the remaining years of the 1910s excavating the prehistory of the French Gothic, culminating in the 1922 publication of L’Art religieux du XIIe siècle en France: Étude sur les origines de l’iconographie du Moyen Âge.19 On a literal level, the reference to origins within the title refers to the art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, from which Gothic artists directly drew to develop an art of light of the thirteenth century. Yet, according to the author, to fully understand Romanesque art one must return to the earlier arts produced in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Cappadocia, Egypt, and Syria. Mâle consistently positions France as inheriting this rich artistic tradition; the origins of the Romanesque in France trace directly to the cradle of Early Christian civilization. Throughout his book on twelfth-century art Mâle offers insights that scholars would develop in subsequent decades. Although he placed undue emphasis on the influence of Cluny and Moissac on the arts of Europe, his identification of a “monastic imprint” within Romanesque sculpture anticipated a profitable line of inquiry taken up again in earnest in the 1970s.20 As an example, Mâle vividly related medieval stories of hordes of demons assaulting the church in order to give context to the representations of demons in many monasteries. In contrast to many Enlightenment scholars, he does not denigrate monks’ fascination with the monstrous as a sign of superstitious faith fundamentally at odds with reason, for he likewise praises the intellectual achievements of twelfth-century monks, including their interest in Early Christian hagiography and their encyclopedic traditions, which laid the groundwork for thirteenth-century intellectuals and artists. In 1932 Mâle published a major study of the impact of the Council of Trent on artistic practices in France, the Low Countries, Italy, and Spain that remains one of the key publications in this field. The author notes that this geographic scope could be expanded to include Germany, Poland, and other countries that were subject to Rome, for innovation in the arts was no longer an exclusively French phenomenon, but was pan-European. While the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are mentioned in the course of this book, it is significant to note that despite the vast chronological range of his scholarship he never dedicated a study to Renaissance art. Mâle acknowledged that Italian artists of the Renaissance achieved a serenity and beauty inspired by ancient examples. Even so, the author believed that in the seventeenth century Catholicism returned to its true nature, largely prompted by the criticisms of Protestantism. As a result, Catholic art was more or less unified in its struggle to defend orthodox theology and practices, including the office of the papacy, the cults of saints and of relics, and veneration of the Virgin Mary. Mâle here emerges as a strident Church apologist, for he asserts that despite some efforts to proscribe some artistic practices, her chief role in the wake of the Council of Trent was to fashion 69

Kirk Ambrose

an art in her own image. Interestingly, he revises his earlier view that art more or less declined after the Middle Age, asserting that the seventeenth century marked another high point in the history of Christian art. One can perhaps identify here a less nationalistic view than in his earlier writings, one which more fully asserts the primacy of a universal Catholic church. Throughout his writings, Mâle presented Church doctrine as unified. Differences of theological interpretation, much less heretical views or regional traditions, rarely emerge as significant subjects for works of art, though they could serve as foil for artists and patrons to assert staunchly Catholic positions. Such is the conclusion, for one, in the author’s monograph of the architecture of the cathedral of Albi, whose “militaristic” aspects serve as a visual bulwark against the threat of the Alibigensian heresy.21

The role of beauty Mâle’s enduring sensitivity to artistic beauty emerged as a central theme in his last two major publications (a manuscript on Carolingian art was incomplete at the time of his death). The opening pages of his 1942 volume, Rome et ses vieilles églises, assert that the ancient city is best viewed in the rosy light of sunset from the summit of the Juniculum. Mentioning the paintings of Claude Lorrain, Mâle’s invocation of dusk upon a hill here tacitly evokes the imagery of Virgil’s first Eclogue, as well as Dante’s reprise in the Inferno. Direct citations of the works of Martial, Virgil, and other ancient authors populate the pages that wax poetic on the fecund plains of Latium and the grandeur of Roman art, which had learned beauty from Greek art. Christian architects and artists, in turn, absorbed this lesson. The chronologically arranged chapters center on discussions of ecclesiastical monuments from the Early Christian period down through the thirteenth century. Mâle concludes by asserting that the beauty of medieval monuments paved the way for papal commissions in the sixteenth century. A similar translation of classical notions of beauty informs the central narrative of Mâle’s 1950 La fin du paganism en Gaule et les plus anciennes basiliques chrétiennes. The author concludes that Merovingian bishops in Gaul had learned from ancient Roman monuments that it was “necessary to maintain beauty in the world.”22 This conviction translated into their commissioning churches and other ecclesiastical monuments. In both of these late publications, Mâle focuses largely on architecture, with relatively little attention given to figural arts. His approach does not appear to draw on the sophisticated architectural historical methods developed over the course of the nineteenth century, but is more impressionistic in tone. Unfortunately, the scholarly apparatus in both these works is minimal, making it difficult to ascertain the basis for his arguments. Even so, his interest in Christian places of worship complemented his long-standing interest in social aspects of art. The very forms of the buildings he studies, including their decorative motifs, emerge as embodying religious and social significance. The didactic function of figural arts, which had occupied him in earlier studies, yields to interest in how formal aspects can aid in advancing the Christian faith. In other words, in his later publications Mâle develops an approach to art that went well beyond the methods of iconography.

Legacy Mâle’s approach to the study of medieval art has exerted a profound, if contested, influence on the field. His substantial contributions, along with contemporary scholars such as Adolph Goldschmidt, Aloïs Riegl, and Wilhelm Vöge, were his pioneering efforts in establishing art history as a credible intellectual discipline. This achievement is arguably all the more remarkable as it was made without knowledge of the substantial scholarly developments in the German-speaking 70

Émile Mâle

world. Even so, there have been strident critics. Erwin Panofsky regarded Mâle’s iconographic interpretations as lacking probing historical insights and André Grabar believed that the scholar’s lack of interest in secular culture was too limiting.23 Michael Camille offered the most sustained critique in a book entitled The Gothic Idol, a confrontational stance to the first English translation of Mâle’s title, The Gothic Image.24 Camille argued that Mâle had not paid enough attention to how art functioned for thirteenth-century audiences. In particular, Camille believed that the Gothic period witnessed profound anxiety about representational arts, which can be discerned in, for example, the many images of the sin of idolatry. Indeed, a similar anxiety informs much of Gothic art, which he believed advanced an agenda that sought to suppress the “Other,” from idolaters to Jews, in an attempt to define a normative body of the faithful. Critics of Camille, in turn, have pointed out that the profusion of images throughout the thirteenth century ultimately belies any universal anxiety about art, the motivations of which are complex and multifaceted.25 Further, notwithstanding Camille’s claims, Mâle had an interest in the social function of art, if only in a limited fashion. It bears keeping in mind that the Frenchman wrote his major texts on medieval art well before, say, the anthropological and sociological approaches to history that were developed by members of the Annales School. Mâle certainly understood art in largely Christian terms. Despite this rather limited perspective, he deserves recognition as one of the pioneers of the practice of modern art history, whose attention to the theological, and to a lesser extent social, aspects of Gothic art anticipates much in the approaches practiced by many medieval art historians today. Recent studies of medieval art have been inflected by a more theoretically self-aware and historically informed approach, but the presumption that religious thought remains a central feature of medieval art is something that continues to occupy many scholars to this day. Mâle certainly was not the first to make this claim, but offered one of its most eloquent and enduring articulations.

Notes 1 A. Adam, “Les années de jeuness et de formation d’après la correspondence et les souvenirs,” in Émile Mâle (1862–1954): La construction de l’oeuvre: Rome et l’Italie (Rome, 2005), 7–20. Additional information on Mâle’s youth can be found in É.-M. Gilberte, K. Monique, and P. Antoine (ed.), Souvenirs et correspondances de jeunesse: Bourbonnais, Forez, École Normale supérieure (Nonette, 2001). 2 Quomodo Sybillas recentiores artifices repraesentaverint. 3 L’Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration. 4 “J’ai vu Autun, ville lointaine, assise loin des routes. On est étonné dans ces montagnes, près de ces bois, de rencontre la majesté Romaine. Le plein cintre de ses deux portes triomphales vous émeut – on sent le raison, la loi émanée d’une géométrie sublime – Le porche de la cathédrale a un autre genre de sublimité, plus barbare, mais plus lyrique,” in Joseph Bédier, Émile Mâle, Joseph Texte: Une amitié de jeunesse: 148 lettres inédites (1866–1900), ed. C. Gauraud and J. Irigoin (New York, 1999), 281. Late in his life, Mâle would again extol the Roman portals of Autun in La fin du paganisme en Gaule et les plus anciennes basiliques chrétiennes (Paris, 1950), 18. 5 W. Sauerländer, “Émile Mâle,” Dictionnaire critique des historiens de l’art actifs en France de la Révolution à la Première Guerre mondiale, ed. Philippe Sénechel and Claire, last modified March 2, 2009, http://www. inha.fr/fr/ressources/publications/dictionnaire-critique-des-historiens-de-l-art/male-emile.html. Similarly, A. Gajewski emphasizes Mâle’s engagement with religious thought in “Émile Mâle: L’art religieux du XIIe siècle en France: Etude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Age et sur ses sources d’inspiration, 1898,” in The Books that Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss, ed. R. Shone and J.-P. Stonard (London, 2013), 21–29. See also A. Gajewski, “Emile Mâle’s ‘L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: Etude sur l’iconographie du moyen âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration, 1898,” The Burlington Magazine 151 (June 2009), 396–99. 6 For Mâle’s debt to Didron see H. Bober, “Editor’s Forward,” in É. Mâle, Religious Art in France: The Twelfth Century: A Study of the Origins of Medieval Iconography, ed. H. Bober, trans. M. Matthews (Princeton, 1978), xiii–xvii.

71

Kirk Ambrose 7 E. Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York, 1957); H. de Lubac, Exégèse médiéval: Lesquatres sens de l’écriture, 4 vols. (Paris, 1959–1964). 8 “Rodin, interprète des cathédrales de France,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 4th ser., 11 (May 1914), 378. 9 See, for example, the pithy explication of this thesis in his “Le Témoignage de l’art chrétien,” Revue des jeunes (January 1922), 7–35. 10 E. Gombrich is particularly damning in his assessment of Mâle’s iconographic method, which he characterizes as abandoning consideration of formal concerns: Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (Chicago, 1970), 312. 11 J. Nayrolle argues that Charles Cahier and Arthurs Martin anticipate iconographic developments of Mâle and Panofsky in L’invention de l’art roman à l’époque moderne (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005), 224. 12 R. Huyghes, “Émile Mâle,” Revue des deux mondes (March 1955), 15–17. 13 V. of Beauvais, Speculum quadruplex: sive, Speculum maius, 4 vols. (Graz, 1964–65). 14 See, for example, M. Passini, La fabrique de l’art national: Le nationalism et les origins de l’histoire de l’art en France et en Allemagne 1870–1933 (Paris, 2012), 147–57. 15 “L’Allemagne avait la pretention d’être le grand peuple créateur, il faut lui montrer qu’elle se trompe,” in L’Art allemand et l’Art français du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1917), 6. 16 A. K. Porter, “Spain of Toulouse? and Other Questions,” Art Bulletin 7 (1924–25), 3–25. See the comments of J. Mann, “Romantic Identity, Nationalism, and the Understanding of the Advent of Romanesque Art in Christian Spain,” Gesta 36 (1997), 156–64; and L. Seidel, “Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883–1933),” in Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, vol. 3 (New York, 2000), 281, 283. 17 J. Huizinga, Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: studie over levens – en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden (Haarlem, 1919). 18 Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources, ed. H. Bober, trans. Marthiel Matthews (Princeton, 1986), 452. 19 É. Mâle, L’Art religieux de la fin du Moyen Âge en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1902). 20 Revived interest in the monastic significance of works of art is signaled by the 1973 double issue of Gesta, most notably L. Pressouyre, “St. Bernard to St. Francis: Monastic Ideals and Iconographic Programs in the Cloister,” Gesta 12 (1973), 71–92. 21 La Cathédrale d’Albi (Paris, 1950). 22 La fin du paganisme en Gaule et les plus anciennes basiliques chrétiennes (Paris, 1950), 327. 23 See the discussion of J. Luxford, “Émile Mâle,” in Key Writers on Art, vol. 2, ed. C. Murray (New York, 2003), 209. 24 M. Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989). 25 C. W. Bynum’s review of The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, by Michael Camille, The Art Bulletin 72 (1990), 331–32.

Principal works by Émile Mâle For a full bibliography of Mâle’s works, see Construction de l’oeuvre, 317–39.

Books L’Art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris: E. Leroux, 1898). ———. Religious Art of 13th Century France: A Study of Medieval Iconography and the Sources of Inspiration. Translated by Dora Nussey (London, 1913); rpt. as The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century (New York, 1958). ———. Religious Art in France, The Thirteenth Century: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources. Edited by Harry Bober. Translated by Marthiel Matthews (Princeton, 1984). L’Art religieux de la fin du Moyen Âge en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris: A. Colin, 1908). ———. Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources. Edited by Harry Bober. Translated by Marthiel Matthews (Princeton, 1986). L’Art allemand et l’Art français du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1917). L’Art religieux du XIIe siècle en France: Étude sur les origines de l’iconographie du Moyen Âge (Paris: A. Colin, 1922).

72

Émile Mâle ———. Religious Art in France: The Twelfth Century: A Study of the Origins of Medieval Iconography. Edited by Harry Bober. Translated by Marthiel Matthews (Princeton, 1978). Art et Artistes du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1927). ———. Art and Artists of the Middle Ages. Translated by Sylvia Stallings Lowe (Reading Ridge, CT, 1986). L’Art religieux après le Concile de Trente: Étude sur l’iconographie de la fin du XVIe siècle, du XVIIe, du XVIIIe siècles. Italie. France. Espagne. Flandres (Paris, 1932). Rome: la campagne romane et l’Ombrie (Paris, 1936). Rome et ses vieilles églises (Paris: Flammarion, 1942). ———. The Early Churches of Rome. Translated by David Buxton (Chicago, 1960). Les Heures d’Anne de Bretagne par Jean Bourdichon (Paris, 1946). Les Grandes Heures de Rohan (Paris, 1947). Notre-Dame de Chartres (Paris, 1948). La fin du paganisme en Gaule et les plus anciennes basiliques chrétiennes (Paris, 1950). La Cathédrale d’Albi (Paris, 1950); rpt. (La-Pierre-qui-Vire, 1974). Les saints compagnons du Christ (Paris, 1958).

Essays “Les Arts libéraux dans la statuaire du Moyen Âge,” Revue archéologique 4th ser., 17 (January–June 1891), 334–346. “Les Chapiteaux romans du musée de Toulouse et l’école toulousaine du XIIe siècle,” Revue archéologique 4th ser., 20 (July-December 1892), 28–35, 176–97. “La legend de la mort de Caïn, à propos d’un chapiteau de Tarbes,” Revue archéologique 4th ser., 21 (January– June 1893), 186–194. “L’Enseignement de l’histoire de l’art dans l’université,” Revue universitaire 1 (January 15, 1894), 10–20. “Les origins de la sculpture française du moyen âge,” Revue de Paris (September 1, 1895), 198–224. “Le Portail de Sainte-Anne à Notre Dame de Paris,” Revue de l’art ancien et modern 2 (October 1897), 231–246. “La Légende dorée et l’art du Moyen Âge,” Revue de l’art ancien et modern 5 (March 1899), 187–196. “Histoire de l’art: les travaux sur l’art du Moyen Âge en France depuis vingt ans,” Revue de synthèse historique (1901), 81–108. “Le style roman,” in Le musée d’art, galerie des chefs-d’oeuvre et précis de l’histoire de l’art depuis les origins jusqu’au XIXe siècle, ed. Eugène Müntz (Paris, 1902), 63–75. “Trois oeuvres nouvelles de Jean Bourdichon, peintre de Charles VIII, de Louis XII et de Françoise Ier,” Gazette de beaux-arts 3rd ser., 27 (March 1902), 185–203. “Influence de la Bible des Pauvres et du Speculum humanae salvationis sur l’art du XVe et du XVIe siècles,” Institut de France: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. Comptes rendus des séances (1903), 424. “Le Renouvellement de l’art par les ‘mystères’ à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 3rd ser., 31 (February 1904), 89–106; (March 1904), 215–230; (April 1904), 283–301; and (May 1904), 379–394. “Jean Bourdichon et son atelier,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 3rd ser., 32 (December 1904), 441–457. “L’Art français de la fin du Moyen Âge: L’apparition du pathétique,” Revue des deux mondes (October 1, 1905), 656–681. “L’Art français de la fin du Moyen Âge: L’idée de la mort et la danse macabre,” Revue des deux mondes (April 1, 1906), 647–679. “La Peinture sur verre en France,” in Histoire de l’art depuis les premiers temps chrétiens jusqu’à nos jours, ed. Michel André, vol. 2: Formation, expansion et évolution de l’art gothique (Paris, 1906), 372–396. “La Peinture murale en France au XIIIe et XIVe siècles,” in Histoire de l’art depuis les premiers temps chrétiens jusqu’à nos jours, ed. Michel André, vol. 2: Formation, expansion et évolution de l’art gothique (Paris, 1906), 401–407. “Le Portail de Senlis et son influence,” Revue de l’art ancien et modern 29 (March 1911), 161–176. “La Mosquée de Cordoue et les Églises de l’Auvergne et du Velay,” Revue de l’art ancien et modern 30 (August 1911), 81–89. “La Part de Suger dans la création de l’iconographie du Moyen Âge,” Revue de l’art ancien et modern 35 (February 1914), 91–102; (March 1914), 161–168; (April 1914), 253–262; and (May 1914), 339–349. “Rodin, interprète des cathédrales de France,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 4th ser., 11 (May 1914), 372–378. “La Cathédrale de Reims,” Revue de Paris (December 15, 1914), 294–311.

73

Kirk Ambrose “Études sur l’art allemand, I. L’Art des peuples germaniques,” Revue de Paris (July 1916), 225–248. “Études sur l’art allemand, II. L’Architecture romane,” Revue de Paris (August 1916), 489–520. “Études sur l’art allemand, III. L’Architecture gothique,” Revue de Paris (September 1916), 5–38. “Études sur l’art allemand, IV. La Sculpture,” Revue de Paris (December 1916), 505–524. “Le Château de Coucy et l’Architecture militaire du Moyen Âge,” Revue de Paris (October 15, 1917), 673–699. “L’Art du Moyen Âge et les Pèlerinages: Les routes d’Italie,” Revue de Paris (October 15, 1919), 717–754. “L’Art du Moyen Âge et les Pèlerinages: Les routes de France et d’Espagne,” Revue de Paris (February 15, 1920), 767–802. “La Cathédrale de Reims (à propos d’un livre récent) [Paul Vitry, La cathédrale de Reims],” Gazette des BeauxArts 5th ser., 3 (February 1921), 73–88. “Études sur l’art de l’époque romane: Le monde et la nature dans l’art du XIIe siècle,” Revue de Paris (June 1921), 491–513, 711–732. “Le Témoignage de l’art chrétien,” Revue des jeunes (January 1922), 7–35. “La Vie de Saint Louis dans l’art français au commencement du XIVe siècle,” in Mélanges Bertaux: Recueil de travaux, dédié à la mémoire d’Émile Bertaux (Paris, 1924), 194–204. “L’Architecture gothique du Midi de la France,” Revue des deux mondes (February 1926), 826–857. “La Décoration des grands ordres religieux au XVIIe siècle,” Revue de Paris (January 1932), 30–59. “Virgile dans l’art du Moyen Âge français,” Studi medievali 5 (1932), 325–331. “Études sur les églises romaines: L’empereur Otton III à Rome et les églises du Xe siècle,” Revue des deux mondes (September 1937), 54–82. “Le Gothique italien et les cisterciens,” Revue universelle (January-February 1942), 837–846. “Vierges romanes d’Auvergne: La Vierge d’Or de Clermont et ses répliques,” Le Point (1943), 4–10. Pèlerinage aux premiers siècles du christianisme,” Style en France 2 (1946), 3–8. “Les Origines de la cathédrale de Chartres,” Mercure de France (January 1947), 45–52. “La Fin du paganisme en Gaule: Les temples remplacés par les églises,” Revue des deux mondes (June 1948), 385–399, 597–612. “Les Baptistères de Provence et l’influence orientale,” Revue de l’Académie méditerranéenne (July 1948), 11–16. “Les Mosaïques de la Daurade à Toulouse,” in “Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire offerts à Charles Picard,” special issue, Revue archéologique 30 (1949), 682–87. “Les Sarcophages des ateliers d’Arles,” Revue des deux mondes (March 1949), 46–65. “Richesses de saint François d’Assise,” Revue française de l’élite 20 (December 1949), 32–34. “L’Art chrétien primitif et l’art byzantine,” in Histoire générale de l’art, vol. 1 (Paris, 1950), 233–283. “L’Art roman,” in Histoire générale de l’art, vol. 1 (Paris, 1950), 284–319. “L’Art gothique,” in Histoire générale de l’art, vol. 1 (Paris, 1950), 320–373.

74

6 ABY M. WARBURG Iconographer? Peter van Huisstede

Introduction Aby Moritz Warburg was a cultural historian who studied images, with the help of texts, against their historical cultural contexts. With generous help from his family he laid the foundations of what later became the “Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg” (KBW, also known as the Warburg Library) in Hamburg, Germany, and later the Warburg Institute in London. Somehow, his work has been seen as part of the discipline of iconography – the study of the content of works of art, via what is depicted. And that is why this chapter is part of the book you are reading. Although the incorporation of his work into the history of iconography is not wrong (seen in hindsight from the general perspective of the history of iconography), it is a bit superficial (seen from the perspective of Warburg’s ideas and methods) and it tends to hide some of the most original and rigorous parts of his thinking and work. This chapter may prove to be an outlier in this book, but that is because Warburg’s thoughts and work, although certainly connected to it, are outliers in the field of iconography as an art historical discipline.

Biography Born in 1866 as the eldest son of a Hamburg banker, Aby Warburg was destined, usually after taking up some apprenticeships elsewhere, to join the banking firm. He did not. It seems that he exchanged, at a young age1 this firstborn right with his younger brother Max on the condition that Max and the firm would support him financially to pursue his research goals (Fig. 6.1). This was a wise decision for all parties, because, as became clear later on, Aby Warburg did not enjoy a particularly stable psyche: his mood swings between elation and gloom were a little too extreme at times. The history of Warburg’s intellectual endeavors is related to the circumstances of his era. When Warburg studied in Bonn (with Hermann Usener, Karl Lamprecht, and Carl Justi) and in Strassbourg (Hubert Janitschek) in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Warburgs were doing very nicely. Max Warburg, as well as the other brothers, Paul and Felix, proved to be

75

Peter van Huisstede

Figure 6.1 The Warburg brothers. Aby Warburg is on the far right; his four brothers are Paul, Felix, Max, and Fritz. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute.

talented bankers, and the Warburgs, as well as other successful Jewish families, seemed to have been fully accepted as German citizens. However, the First World War (1914–1918) and its aftermath changed this Jewish emancipation dramatically. It took only two marriages to firmly establish a branch of the Warburgs in the United States of America. As Chernow records it seems that it was pure coincidence that brought Felix and Frieda Schiff (daughter of Jacob Schiff a wealthy German-Jewish banker [Kuhn, Loeb] from New York) together as man and wife (March 1895).2 In 1897 Felix became a partner in the Kuhn, Loeb bank. Aby’s brother Paul married Nina Loeb in October 1895. They lived in Hamburg at first, Paul and Max working together in the bank, but Paul moved to the United States in 1902, and joined Kuhn, Loeb. So, two of the five Warburg brothers, Felix and Paul, set up a stable banking bridge with headquarters in the United States, a move that proved important for the German firm, M. M. Warburg & Co., with Max representing Kuhn, Loeb in Germany. For the cultural and historical branch of that firm, Aby was in Germany in these difficult years, during and after the First World War. Aby, who traveled to attend Paul’s wedding in the United States, took the opportunity to make long journeys to Arizona and New Mexico, where he visited and studied Zuni and Hopi rituals.

The Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW) In 1897 Aby Warburg married a gentile woman, Mary Hertz. Together, they spent much of their time in Florence, where Warburg studied Renaissance art. Warburg kept on buying books. In the summer of 1900 he discussed the idea of developing a library with his brother Max and 76

Aby M. Warburg

continued buying copious numbers of books.3 In 1903 alone he added more than five hundred books to his collection.4 Warburg and his family, consisting of Mary, his wife, and their children – Marietta, Max, Adolph, and Frede – returned to Hamburg in 1904 and in 1909 they moved into Heilwigstrasse 114. When the number of books proved too much for the household to cope with, the Warburgs – the bankers – decided to buy Heilwigstrasse 116, thus establishing the “Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg” (KBW) as a private research library shaped by the research of a single man, Aby, in Hamburg, a city that, at that time, did not have a university.

Warburg’s mental breakdown, Warburg Redux, and ideas crossing the seas Warburg became very ill in 1918 and in 1919 he was taken into the care of the psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. Many doubted whether Aby Warburg would recover from his illness. However, in 1924 he succeeded in giving a coherent lecture at Kreuzlingen about one of his earlier research topics, the serpent ritual (a topic he had come across during his journey to the United States in 1895), thus proving to his medical staff that he was able to return home and resume his research. But during his long absence, 1918/1919–1924, much had changed, not least of which was that Hamburg now had its own university. The Warburgs had appointed Fritz Saxl (discussed elsewhere in this volume) as librarian of the KBW and the library had opened its doors as a research library. Among the scholars the KBW attracted were the philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the art historian Erwin Panofsky (discussed elsewhere in this volume). Panofsky had moved to Hamburg at the end of 1919 and in 1926 he joined the University of Hamburg as art historian. At the KBW he found not only books but books organized as a research instrument to tackle art historical questions as part of larger cultural historical contexts. Together with Saxl, Panofsky wrote a study about Dürer’s Melancholia print (1923) and in 1930 he published his study on “Hercules am Scheidewege.” Panofsky was instrumental in establishing iconography, the study of the contents of works of art to provide a cultural historical interpretation of them, through his methodological essay “Zur Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst,” which was published in 1932. It was clear then that during Warburg’s long absence, his ideas, as expressed through his research instrument, the books, and his small collection of published studies, had proved to be important. Art history was to receive a third pillar. The study of the historical meaning of the content of images came to complement the study of the formal aspects of images (“Stilkritik”) and the more philosophical study of art (“Kunsttheorie”). In 1933 the KBW was forced to move to London and became, at the end of the Second World War, part of the University of London. Bing and Saxl also moved, together with the books. Cassirer moved to Oxford, then to Sweden, and finally to the United States. In 1935 Panofsky moved to the United States to join the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The KBW had ceased to be a private research library, which meant that Warburg could not move books around anymore to organize his research. It was Fritz Saxl5 who introduced Warburg to large black screens upon which he could pin images and texts, and reshuffle them. These black screens became Warburg’s research tool during his second working period. He organized his lectures with the help of the screens and at a certain time he decided to present his earlier research in the form of an image atlas, the Mnemosyne Atlas. During the so-called Warburg redux period, Warburg closely worked together with Gertrud Bing, his research partner. With the Mnemosyne Atlas, Warburg tried to present his earlier 77

Peter van Huisstede

research in a coherent way but this proved a difficult task. When Warburg became ill in 1918 his work consisted of small detailed studies all written in German and, of course, his library, the instrument used to tackle his research questions. Warburg always had a keen methodological interest in pursuing the historical study of images and ideas, but it is not easy to understand his methodology. His ideas are hidden as small, seemingly unrelated snippets in his published works (the first period up to 1918) as well as in his unpublished lectures and the Geschaeftsbuch of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (the scientific journal kept after Warburg’s return to Hamburg in 1924, in the second period),6 but they are also present in his two large undertakings: the KBW and the Mnemosyne Atlas. Analyzing Warburg’s cultural historical methods, one cannot but notice an uncanny resemblance between them and the man he was: the swings between despair and elation, the dark side of human existence and the fight of reason to escape them, the need to establish distance to see things in a relevant perspective. These things, personal and historical, mint his work in a very personal way. This is not to say that I believe that Warburg’s ideas and work show all the signs of an unstable and isolated figure, but that we are dealing with the ideas and work of an extremely sensitive man, who used all this sensitivity to try to comprehend and describe the ideas and works of people from the past. In this sense, Warburg’s research was a personal journey, but what is often overlooked is that this journey is also characterized by scientific rigor. It is precisely that part of Warburg’s work, how he construed his historical opponents, that draws generation after generation of art historians with a more cultural historical bend of mind toward his work and especially toward his last and unfinished work, the Mnemosyne Atlas. If Warburg’s work influenced others, it needs to be realized that, should this be the case, we are looking at a very particular context in which this influence took place, a kind of extended “vacuum”: •

• •

• •

Warburg’s long period of absence from 1918/19 until 1924 during which his private research library was opened as a research institute associated with the newly established Hamburg University. Warburg’s scattered publications until 1918 written in German were published, again in German, only in 1939. The Warburg redux period from 1924 until 1929 in which he tried to present his works and ideas in a coherent way through lectures, exhibitions, and the Mnemosyne Atlas. These were all in German and, to a large extent, until recently, were unpublished material. The relocation of the KBW library and researchers inspired by it, Panofsky, Saxl, Bing and, others, to new contexts in the United Kingdom and the United States. The relatively late impact of Panofsky’s theoretical essays on iconography and iconology dating to around 1960 (1959–1962), which had been formulated as early as 1939.

Given these peculiar circumstances, it would be a little too easy to simply infer that, since Panofsky was acquainted with the KBW, and Panofsky and Warburg both used the words “iconography” and “iconology,” they both shared a common methodology and that their work can be grouped together as part of the iconographical method (in the sense of Panofsky). I don’t believe that Warburg’s work influenced other researchers, such as Panofsky for example, but that any possible influence was indirect, via the KBW, and seen passively from the perspective of Warburg’s ideas and work. Warburg’s work from his second working period (1924–1929), with an emphasis on the Mnemosyne Atlas, as well as his ideas on writing cultural history forms the second part of this essay.7 78

Aby M. Warburg

Aby Warburg as iconographer The use of the words “iconography” and “iconology” by Warburg The German historian Dieter Wuttke (see his essay on Panofsky elsewhere in this volume) compiled a list of twenty-three occurrences of the words “iconography” (four occurrences) and “iconology” (nineteen occurrences) in Warburg’s writings from 1889 until 1928.8 Wuttke found twenty-seven occurrences of the two terms in the collection of Warburg’s notes (three of “iconography” and twenty-four of “iconology”). What is more important is what Warburg meant by using these words. Wuttke argues convincingly that Warburg used the two concepts in an interchangeable manner, with iconology denoting, as an extension of iconography, the practice of studying works of art and all the available historical sources as (cultural) historical phenomena (or in his own words: “Betrachtung der Kunst unter geschichtlichen Gesichtpunkten”). But when the words “iconography” and “iconology” are seen in this broad context, they do not signal a new historical method, because, as Wuttke argues, other researchers like Wolfgang von Oettingen and Jakob Burckhardt also used this perspective (although they do not use the words “iconography” or “iconology” in their writings). This poses the question as to how precisely did Warburg construct his historical opponents given the broad context of the historical study of works of art. Warburg was well aware of the fact that from an epistemological point of view what a historian does – the whole historical process – is accidental and circumstantial when seen from what happened in the past.

Warburg’s method Warburg had a keen methodological interest in how to study images as historical phenomena. He never systemized these thoughts in the form of a publication. A more or less fixed range of methodological elements is to be found scattered throughout his work, both published and unpublished. The elements are found together for the first time in 1907 in Warburg’s publication “Francesco Sassettis letztwillige Verfügung” (The last will of Francesco Sassetti).9 These elements are as follows: • • • • •

The refusal to adhere to art historical practices of his days. The introduction of the idea of a cultural context. Within a cultural context the subject under study is psychologically or sociologically defined. Within this frame, activity is geared toward concrete historical research differentiating all that is possible within a context. The researcher realizes that, given the issues raised earlier, strictly causal arguments are aimed too high; instead the historian presents his case as plausibly as he possibly can.

Zum Bild das Wort The most important general truth used by Warburg to construct a historical opponent is the famous one: “Zum Bild das Wort” (to the image the word). Adherence to this made Warburg into such a prolific buyer of books. But it also meant that he would dig his way through Florentine archives, studying wills, diaries, and money ledgers, thus being able to track the paths traveled by people, goods, images, and ideas. 79

Peter van Huisstede

Construction Warburg, always a keen producer of drawings, graphs, schemes, and what could be called “storyboards,” realized that cultural contexts with their socio-psychological topics were constructions by the historian used to differentiate the way individuals or groups of individuals dealt with (the contents of) images in the past. For Warburg the period referred to as the Renaissance was a multidimensional semantic space in which individuals and groups of individuals, patrons and artists, had to deal with three opposing forces that could (literally) mark the words and images they made or commissioned: the practical oriental force (with the opposites of astrology and more scientifically oriented astronomy), the Italian humanistic force (that had to find its way between the Dionysian and Apollonian extremes), and the North European courtly force (realism versus idealism). Since images were carriers of the marks they were stamped with in this multidimensional space, Warburg tried to construct an inventory of these images with the Mnemosyne Atlas; both the images and texts had to be dealt with (that were stamped within their context) as well as the images and texts that were produced. Warburg formulated a title for the Atlas (at half past four in the morning): “Mnemosyne. Bilderreihen zu einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtung antikisierender Ausdrucksprägung” (which, very roughly, can be translated as “Mnemosyne. Images for a cultural historical view of classicizing expression stamping [coining]”). In Warburg’s view, words and images could be as much actors (“Engramme,” “Mneme”) in a historical context as were the persons upon whom they acted. Describing these processes as part of their cultural contexts was the task of the art historian as cultural historian.

There are no shortcuts Given the contours of the methodology sketched earlier, no shortcuts could be taken in (art) history. It is a slow, bottom-up approach: getting the texts and images that were needed, analyzing and describing the routes they traveled, working with paintings and sculptures but also with prints and book illustrations to track the appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of particular forms and motifs, often concealed as details within larger containers; analyzing and describing their place in the semantic space constructed with the help of the opposing models [“Hilfskonstruktionen”], but always doing this in such a way that individuals or groups of individuals are involved.

The context of the Mnemosyne Atlas A good perspective exists on Warburg’s undertakings during his last active period (1924–1929), due to the so-called Geschäftsbuch (“Scientific journal”) he kept with Gertrud Bing and, to a lesser extent, Fritz Saxl.10 He gave lectures and organized exhibitions, which he often prepared with the help of the “exhibition screens”: • • • • • • •

The Franz Boll lecture (1925) The Rembrandt lecture (1926) The exhibition for the so-called Orientalistentag (1926) The Ovid exhibition (1927) The exhibition for the Deutsche Museum in Munich (1927) The Hertziana lecture in Rome (1929) The so-called Dokterfeier lecture (1929)

The Geschäftsbuch records an entry by Saxl, dated 26 X 26 (October 26, 1926), about a lecture Saxl gave in Berlin. Warburg wrote, “Gehört in unseren Atlas!” (Belongs in our atlas!). 80

Aby M. Warburg

The Mnemosyne Atlas Three series of photographs of the state of the Mnemosyne Atlas are still to be found in the Warburg Institute in London, frozen moments of a project that was always changing. The first set of photographs dates from May 1928 and is often referred to as the “1–43 series” (there were forty-three screens photographed); it contained 682 objects. The second state of the Atlas that was captured is often referred to as the “penultimate series.” It consisted of seventy-one screens with 1,050 objects displayed. It was the largest series photographed because the last series, the so-called 1–79 series, consists of sixty-three screens with 971 objects displayed.11

The 1–43 series The build-up of the screens of the “1–43” series closely reflects Warburg’s research themes: • • • • •

Screens 1–4 deal with relations between Italy and Northern Europe. Screens 11–20 deal with pictorial motifs from antiquity that Renaissance artists had to deal with, the so-called Pathosformel. Screens 23–35 are devoted to astrology. Screens 36–40 address the theme of festivities. Screens 41–43 deal with works from the seventeenth century.

Bing used a similar structure for the “Gesammelte Schriften,” Warburg’s collected writings, published in 1932.12 And when Bing wrote a memo about the Warburg Institute in its new London setting in 1935 she used similar topics to prioritize new works to be acquired for the library: With regard to new acquisitions, which at times amounted to 3.000 volumes a year and should, it is hoped, keep up an average of 1.800 to 2.000, the administration is governed by two principles: The main sections (such as astrology, Italian art and literature, Florentine social history, festivals and theatre, humanism and classical scholarship, Renaissance philosophy), are kept up to date, and missing works of earlier date are supplemented. Gertrud Bing, The Warburg Institute, 1935, unpublished memo “printed for private circulation” (author’s archive). Astrology was a semantic space always present in the Atlas (Boll lecture 1925, Orientalistentag exhibition 1926). It was accompanied by the context of the “Pathosformel” (Ovid exhibition 1927) and the works from the seventeenth century (Rembrandt lecture 1926). Taken from Warburg’s earlier publications were the contexts of the relation between Italy and Northern Europe and that of festivities. But with this flexible working medium at his disposal Warburg experienced difficulties in bringing the different themes of his research together. In July 1928 Warburg writes, “Tafeln (53) aufgestellt, 979 Abb. f. Mnemosyne. Schwierigkeit: die Placierung v. Duccio” (“Screens [53] put up, 979 images for Mnemosyne. Problem: the placement of Duccio”) (25 VII–29 VII 928). The next month, Warburg notes the following: “die Anordnung d. Tafeln im Saale macht (doch) ungeahnte Schwierigkeiten innerer Art” (VI; p. 77; 15.VIII.928) (“the order of screens in the room presents, substantively, unforeseen difficulties”) (15 VIII 928). These kind of factual journal entries are interleaved with more methodological entries that touch upon topics such as “Mneme” (“Eintritt des antikis. Mneme,” “aus dem mnemischen Erbgut”) and “Symbol” (“Wesen des Symbols”). They all highlight Warburg’s hard work on the introduction of the Atlas. 81

Peter van Huisstede

In November 1928 Warburg and Bing were in Rome, with the screens, to prepare his so-called Hertziana lecture (Fig. 6.2). According to Bing, all was well: Sehr intensive Arbeit für den Vortrag in der Bibl. Hertziana am 19 I 29 resultierte in dem (in handwriting by Warburg: zunächst bei Coll. Bing nur sehr bedingt) erfreulichen Bewusstsein, dass der Atlas wirklich grosse Fortschritte gemacht hat. (Hard work for the lecture in the Hertziana library on 29 I 29 results [in handwriting by Warburg: “however just a little with my colleague Bing”] in the happy acknowledgment that the Atlas really made substantial progress.) (23 I 29) Back in Hamburg in August 1929 Warburg notes, “Atlas ganz schön” (Atlas really beautiful) (31 VIII 929). But the next day he started once again to rearrange the images on the screens: Habe angefangen, die ganze Götterwelt auszuschneiden, um sie zunächst kosmologischmonströs, tragisch-griechisch, römisch-heroisch zu ordnen als chronologisch historisches Phänomen. (Started to cut out the whole world of the gods in order to present them cosmologicalmonstrous, tragic-Greek, roman-heroic as chronologic historical phenomenon.) (1 Sept. 1929) On the opposite page, Bing expressed her doubts: “Habe bedenken, möchte aber mit Ausserung warten, bis die Anlage fertig ist” (I have my doubts but I will wait to express these until the new arrangement is finished).

Figure 6.2 Gertrud Bing, Aby Warburg (center), and Franz Alber (right) in Rome. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute.

82

Aby M. Warburg

On October 20, 1929, just a couple of days before his death on the 26th of that same month, Warburg noted the state of the Atlas: ca. 80 Gestelle mit ca. 1160 Abb. werde ca. 6 Tafeln zu Erkenntnistheorie und Praxis d. Symbolsetzung aufstellen (A, B, C, D . . .). (Some eighty screens on them about 1,160 images. I will prepare about six screens on the epistemology and practice of “symbol coining” [A, B, C, D . . . ].) (20 X 929)

Work on the last series Up to his last working days Warburg kept finding it difficult to arrange the contents of the Atlas. This was partly due to the medium he used. Although the large screens allow for easy arrangement of images, and were easy to transport whilst travelling and lecturing, they were two-dimensional (perhaps three-dimensional when the succession of screens would indicate a kind of a timeline) (Fig. 6.3). What Warburg tried to do, in enlarging the semantic space to incorporate the various

Figure 6.3 Screen 47 of the Mnemosyne Atlas, last series of the Mnemosyne Atlas.

83

Peter van Huisstede

smaller spaces, is not easily expressed in what is essentially a two-dimensional medium. To complicate things further was the problem as to how the texts that belong to the Atlas should be (re-)arranged. In essence the problem is that of possible “n” to “n” relations between what were frequently small parts or details of images and other images and texts. The more topic-oriented version of the Atlas, the 1–43 series, built around the research topics (semantic spaces) of Warburg, showed stable groups of images but required the onlooker to make relevant jumps to other screens containing similar content appearing in another space or in a group belonging to another period. On the other hand, the “chronological historical infusion” of the Atlas, added toward the end of 1929, would make it much more difficult for the onlooker to distill repeated patterns (groups of similar items) from the material. Realizing this, Warburg then started to work on the epistemological, methodological, and practical introductory screens that were not numbered, but which were marked with capital letters: A, B, and so forth. This way he tried to frame the spectators in the new ordering of the Atlas to be able to regroup the material that was now laid out in a more chronological way. What we will never know for sure is whether Warburg would be satisfied with this new arrangement. Was it possible to squeeze the various smaller semantic spaces he had studied into one large coherent group? In a way that does not seem to be a very “Warburgian” solution. Warburg’s work consisted of constructing semantic spaces with the help of polar models. Within those spaces he seemed to differentiate endlessly: an item belongs to this group but is slightly different to the other elements of this group. Somehow, this synthesis of the material of the latter part of 1929, understandable from the point of view that Warburg wanted to present the Atlas as a book, with a sequential order of screens, sidesteps the real problem, which was how to present interlocking items, both images and texts, that might be part of various and sometimes related groups.

The Mnemosyne Atlas: a laboratory for the history of images Take for example number 47:10 (all numbers refer to the publication of the last series of the Mnemosyne Atlas by Akademia Verlag [Warnke and Brink 2000]). The image depicts Tobias and the Archangel Raphael, a painting from around 1495 by Francesco Botticini. Tobias has the portrait features of the son of Raffaelo Doni, who commissioned the painting. The content of the painting, Tobias and the Archangel, is shared with some other entries on the same screen: 47:11, 47:12, 47:13, 47:14, and 47:15. The Doni family from Florence can be linked to the family tree Warburg made of the Medici/Tornabuoni family, also from Florence (A:3). Framed by screen 47, the pictorial motif of Tobias and Raphael is connected to Judith and her helper with the head of Holofernes: 47:20, 47:21, 47:22–1, 47:23, 47:24, and 47:25. Warburg wrote a small but moving piece about the youngest son of A. Strozzi, Matteo Strozzi.13 All male family members were exiled from Florence by the Medici family. And the mother was urged by one of her elder sons to send her youngest son abroad. The places the exiled male Strozzi family members visited (Barcelona, Bruges, etc.) are all indicated on the map of the Mediterranean (A:2). A closer look at the way the garments of the Archangel are depicted shows the so-called Nympha motif or bewegtes Beiwerk (“moving clothing”), which was one of Warburg’s major research themes. This motif is all over the screens of the Atlas, but here we single out 46:6, with the Nympha on the right of the fresco by Ghirlandajo for the Tornabuoni (A:3) chapel in S. Maria Novella, Florence. It is possible to draw a similar graph for 46:6 with edges to node A:3, and so forth, but also with new edges to other nodes in the Atlas (Fig. 6.4). There is also a relationship between 47:10 and the same theme on 76:1 and 76:2 by seventeenth-century Dutch artists. 84

Aby M. Warburg

Matteo de'Strozzi

Pathosformel

47:10

76:1

47:11

76:2

47:12

47:20

46:6

A:2

A:3

47:13

47:21

47:22-1

47:23

47:14

47:24

47:25

Figure 6.4 Diagram showing two small nuclei from screen 47 of the Mnemosyne Atlas. Matteo de’Strozzi refers to Warburg’s text (Warburg 1892); “Pathosformel” is an important research motif throughout his work.

Like a genetic researcher, Warburg tried to describe and document the smallest parts and the relations between these parts of the cultural historical fabric of human pictorial expression. Bottom-up, no shortcuts allowed, and with rigor. Given the number of relations, geographical diversity, and span of time Warburg had to deal with, it is not a big surprise that bringing together the results of his work always seemed to end in “dumbing down.” Both the medium of the screens and any possible book would prove to be too shallow to show the multiplicity of relations.

In conclusion Warburg’s work and ideas still inspire researchers, as they inspired researchers in the past, including Saxl, Panofsky, Klibansky, Seznec, Cassirer, Heckscher, Edgar Wind, and many others. This is made possible through the Warburg Institute, its collection of books, its photographic archive, and its publications. Even today, the project of the Mnemosyne Atlas lures researchers into its spell, thereby confronting them with that essential Warburgian cultural mission, “Embrace it in frenzy or take distance and use it in its new context.” Warburg’s research, the project of the Mnemosyne Atlas included, was very much his own personal work. That being the case, and given that particular context in which the supposed transfer of ideas of iconography and iconology supposedly took place, as outlined earlier, I do not believe that what is now known as iconography and/or iconology, based on Panofsky’s ideas, covers the important parts of Warburg’s work and ideas. Thanks to Panofsky’s influence, iconography and iconology simply became something else. 85

Peter van Huisstede

Gertrud Bing had, as his research assistant, a good view on Warburg’s work and ideas. In an essay entitled “A.M. Warburg,” published in the Italian edition of Warburg’s “Gesammelte Schriften,” written in 1964, she writes, Es ist nicht das erste Mal in der Geschichte der Forschung, dass ein Autor hinter der Fülle der Verarbeitungen und Weiterführungen seines Werkes aus dem Gesichtfeld verschwunden ist. Will man sich damit nicht begnügen, ihn nach dem Einfluss zu beurteilen, den er ausgeübt had, so muss man darangehen, durch Wiederherstellung seines Textes die Quelle neu zu erschliessen. (It is not the first time in the history of science that a researcher disappears behind the mass of adaptions or continuations of his work. If it is not enough to judge him for his influence, then one has to dive in to find the source through the reconstruction of his texts.) In this, Bing refers to one of the methodological pillars of Warburg’s cultural historical work – there are no shortcuts; one has to dig up textual sources time and again to be able to construct semantic spaces in which it is possible to document (differentiate) the actual use individuals or groups of individuals make of images (“psycho-sociological semantic spaces”). In other words, in Warburg’s methodology the human can never be removed from the equation. It is simply out of the question, and yet, this is precisely what Panofsky did when he defined his (in)famous third level of iconographical research – iconology. That said, it is fascinating to see how elements of Warburg’s work and ideas seem to have connections with later developments in other scientific areas. Gombrich grasped one of the most important parts of Warburg’s ideas when he wrote an article on the idea of semantic space used by the authors Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum.14 Warburg’s belief about the human condition, “Athen muss immer wieder aus Alexandrien erobert werden,” also resonates strongly in the important research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.15 And there is still so much more in his work that remains to be studied – ideas about collective memory, images from the past as cultural forces (“Mneme”: coined with impact), the historian as a kind of director constructing a historical opponent, the constant play with fore- and background, back- and foreground, experimenting with new media, polarity as a model to differentiate everything in between, the idea that what we call culture is a small layer of veneer underneath which are all the primitive forces, setting up socio-psychological semantic spaces filled with interlocking multidimensional graphs (the Atlas). Above all, however, there is a scientific rigor that is unheard of in art history. Take for example the small image that depicts two small details from screen 47 of the last series of the Atlas. It was generated with the Graphviz program using the so-called dot notation. Part of the structure of this file resembles the following: digraph 47 { node [shape=record]; item1 [shape=record, item2 [shape=record, item3 [shape=record, item4 [shape=record, item5 [shape=record, item6 [shape=record,

label="47:10"]; label="47:11"]; label="47:12"]; label="47:13"]; label="47:14"]; label="A:3"];

86

Aby M. Warburg

item7 [shape=record, label="47:20"]; item8 [shape=record, label="47:21"]; item9 [shape=record, label="47:22-1"]; item10 [shape=record, label="47:23"]; item11 [shape=record, label="47:24"]; item12 [shape=record, label="47:25"]; item1 -> item2; item2 -> item3; item3 -> item4; item4 -> item5; item5 -> item1; item6 -> item1; item7 -> item8; item8 -> item9; item9 -> item10; item10 -> item11; item11 -> item12; item12 -> item7; item6 -> item7; } All nodes and edges, but once visualized it is possible to construct graphs of the smallest units within the Atlas and work with them using such concepts as symmetry, interlocking, mirroring, multiple inheritance, groups, similarity, and so forth. The nodes are the images and/or texts, the arrows being what the historian describes and differentiates, having construed a historical opponent – in other words, the Mnemosyne Atlas: a laboratory for cultural history.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 8 9

10

R. Chernow, The Warburgs: A Family Saga (London, 1995), 63. Chernow, The Warburgs (as in note 1), 49. Chernow, The Warburgs (as in note 1), 117. Ibid. Private communication with Prof. Gombrich (1989). When I wrote my PhD on the Mnemosyne Atlas (University of Leiden, 1992, unpublished) I read in Gombrich’s biography of Warburg that it was Saxl who had given him the idea of the screens. Saxl served in the Austrian army during the First World War and his unit used similar screens for communication purposes. As I could not find any physical evidence for this in the archives of the Warburg Institute, I pestered Gombrich with questions about the topic. One day I got a brief note from Gombrich stating, “You ask me how I know what you can’t find in the archives? I know because Saxl told me so.” That settled it! K. Michels and C. Schoell-Glass, ‘Aby Warburg: Tagebuch Der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg Mit Einträgen von Gertrud Bing Und Fritz Saxl’. A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften (Studienausagabe), Bd. VII (Berlin, 2001). G. Bing, unpublished document, for private circulation (London, The Warburg Institute, 1935), 5. D. Wuttke, Aby M. Warburg: Ausgewählte Schriften Und Würdigungen. Saecula Spiritalia (Baden-Baden, 1979), 630–33. A.M. Warburg, “Die Erneurung Der Heidnischen Antike. Kulturwisschenschaftliche Beiträge Zur Geschichte Der Europäischen Renaissance,” Reprint Der Ausgabe Leipzig/Berlin 1932, ed. H. Bredekamp and M. Diers (Berlin, 1998), A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften (Studienausagabe), Bd. I. 1, 2. (Berlin, 1998). See Michels and Schoell-Glass (Aby Warburg) (as in note 6).

87

Peter van Huisstede 11 M. Warnke and C. Brink, “Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne.” A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften (Studienausagabe), Bd. II. 1 (Berlin, 2000). 12 Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften (as in note 9). 13 A. M. Warburg, “Matteo de’Strozzi: Ein Italienischer Kaufmanssohn Vor 500 Jahren,” Hamburger Weihnachtsbuch (1892), 236. 14 E.H. Gombrich and R. Saw, “Symposium: Art and the Language of the Emotions,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 36 (1962), 215–46. 15 D. Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York, 2011).

88

7 FRITZ SAXL Transformation and reconfiguration of pagan gods in medieval art Katia Mazzucco

“Medieval Western art was [. . .] unwilling to retain a classical prototype without destroying either its original form, or [. . .] its original meaning [. . .]. Figures which were meant to represent Orion or Andromeda no longer looked like the Orion or Andromeda of classical times [;] thus, like the unfortunate lovers in a moving picture who await their reunion, classical subject matter and classical form were separated.” E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, Classical Mythology in Medieval Art

Fritz Saxl’s most important contribution to the iconography of medieval art can be identified in his work on the problem of the “after-life” (Nachleben) of antiquity. His contribution was an art historical and typological approach which focused on how forms survived from antiquity into the visual world of medieval Christianity. From his early research on manuscript illustrations, Saxl formulated the “principle of reintegration” of classical forms and contents into the Renaissance, a theory developed while discussing the history of the classical tradition, regarding astrological illustrations in medieval manuscripts and the language of expressional gestures in art. On the one hand, this theory anticipates, in counterpart, Panofsky’s much better known “principle of disjunction” and, on the other hand, it developed out of a reinterpretation of Aby Warburg’s theory of “pathos formulae” (see the essays on Warburg and Panofsky elsewhere in this publication). Fritz Saxl (Vienna 1890–London 1948) (Fig. 7.1) studied art history and archaeology in Vienna, with Max Dvořák, Julius von Schlosser, and Franz Wickhoff, and in Berlin with Heinrich Wölfflin. In 1912 Saxl received his doctoral dissertation on Rembrandt under Dvořák,1 and in 1913 he became librarian and Aby Warburg’s personal assistant. Since then his name became – and still is – “indissolubly linked”2 with that of the Warburg Library (renamed Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg [KBW] between c. 1924 and 1933]) in Hamburg, and with the history and biography of its founder. “My core question [. . .] is the Nachleben of Antiquity in the Middle Ages,” wrote the young scholar to Warburg that very year.3 As a student, he was already cultivating his interest in the imagery of medieval astrology and the first fruit of this research was his paper on the “history of the representation of the Planets in the East and in the West” (1912).4 Thanks to Warburg’s and Franz Boll’s5 support, he undertook a long series of research missions in the most important libraries in Europe and was able to start his work on the “catalogue of astrological and 89

Katia Mazzucco

Figure 7.1 Fritz Saxl in the reading room of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg, 1926–1927, unknown photographer. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute, London.

mythological illuminated manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages”: the first two volumes of Roman and Viennese manuscripts were published in 1915 and 1927;6 the work continued with Hans Meier in London, and the posthumous volume on English manuscripts was published in 1953.7 In the introduction to the first volume of the catalogue, the young scholar makes a clear methodological statement: We are accustomed to examine the problem of the confrontation of the post-Carolingian Middle Ages with the pictorial heritage of Antiquity, so that, most of the time, we investigate the stylistic relations between works of art of the two periods. [. . .] We must not consider [the] problem under the aspect of the evolution of form only, but also under that specific medieval aspect that is the preeminent importance of the representation of content, in order to reach not a one-sided understanding of the role of the ancient visual inheritance in medieval intellectual life. The method is old and renowned: that is Iconography. [. . .] It is clear that iconographic inquiries, precisely in these fields of representation where ancient themes are illustrated, would feed our knowledge on the relationship between Antiquity and the Middle Ages more than investigating other fields of knowledge.8 The impact of Warburg’s approach on the young scholar’s work is obvious in this passage, and three critical points are obvious – points that were later to become crucial issues in the developing field of iconological studies. First, it was necessary to study the forms of representation (circles, areas, or fields of representation, Darstellungskreise) of ancient subjects (themes, antike Themen) in the manuscript tradition using classification, and through visual taxonomies. Second, he identified the Carolingian renascence as a critical moment, a watershed, not only for the history of the manuscript tradition and style but also for the history of illustrating antique themes, as was 90

Fritz Saxl

to develop in future studies on the renascences of the classics. Third, his main point assumed content as the most appropriated for understanding medieval art. This opposed a purely formal analysis, and Saxl suggested a “disjunction” between content and form, or between themes and motifs, in the art of the Middle Ages.9 In 1920 Fritz Saxl was asked to become acting director of the Warburg Library in Hamburg, while Aby Warburg was ill. According to Warburg’s wish, the library, created as a private collection, turned from 1922 into a research institute. It was aligned with the University of Hamburg, which was founded in 1921, and had attracted scholars such as Ernst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky. In those years, the library which Warburg had collected was described by Saxl as a “question-library” (Problem-Bibliothek), with questions relating to the posthumous, or afterlife, of the antique (Nachleben der Antike) being at its core.10 Saxl initiated two series of publications, collected studies (Studien) and lectures (Vorträge), in the library, and developed a new and original approach to the survival of pagan antiquity in Christian society as a “general historical discipline.”11 His essay on Dürer’s Melancholia I, written with Erwin Panofsky and published as the second volume of the Studien, developed out of his work at this time.12 In summer 1939, after many delays and interruptions, the proofs of a revised and enlarged edition of the work on Melancholia were ready, but the types were destroyed during the war. A new English and reformulated edition, this time with Raymond Klibansky, was finally published as Saturn and Melancholy (1964): the book has been described as the best example of the Warburg studies, a new science that, “differently from many other disciplines, exists, but has no name.”13 When Warburg died in 1929, Saxl became director of the Warburg Library. In the early thirties he published his work Mithras (1931),14 considered to be one of his major contributions (Fig. 7.2). The work on Melancholia was subtitled “a sources- and typological-historical research”: here both word (sources) and image (typology of ) worked together in tracing the

Figure 7.2 The Nike-Mithras type, F. Saxl, Mithras: Typengeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1931), figs. 31–36.

91

Katia Mazzucco

history of that picture. In the “typological-historical inquiries” on Mithras, the methodological approach of the history of types – such as the types of Nike killing the bull and Perseus killing Medusa and their influences on the type of Mithras’s tauroctony – is used to trace the iconography of the ancient god within the fields of archaeology and history of religion. In these years, Fritz Saxl also published two important papers and a short monograph. These were his lecture on “expressional gestures of the visual art,” presented with a special photographic exhibition for the German Society of Psychology (1932);15 the lecture on Classical Mythology in Medieval Art delivered at the Department of Fine Arts at Princeton University and published in 1933 with Erwin Panofsky;16 and the essay on “Agostino Chigi’s astrological faith,” published in Italian in 1934.17 In 1933 Saxl managed the move of the library from Hamburg to London, as he foresaw the impossibility of scholarship in Nazi Germany, especially for those institutions connected with Jewish scholars. “The last fourteen years of his life were devoted to grafting the tradition of the Warburg Institute (as it came to be called) into English intellectual life,”18 and finally in 1944 the Institute was incorporated into the University of London. Fritz Saxl was then appointed professor of the history of the classical tradition of the University of London. Since then, that has implicitly been the “name” applied to these studies; Erwin Panofsky would go on to develop “iconological studies” in the United States.19 There has been a rare, and not always clear, “synastria”20 between Warburg and Saxl, especially in their intellectual biographies. Contrary to the commonly held idea of the “devoted follower” renouncing his scholarship and shipping the Institute to safe waters, Saxl in fact never interrupted his own research.21 While director, he went back to old ideas and renewed interests, such as Rembrandt,22 and right up to the end of his life, he continued to research the Venetian Renaissance and medieval English art;23 he published many papers and short notes in the English series of the Institute, and gave a number of lectures, collected after his death and published in two volumes (1957).24 His many fields of interests and variety of approaches to the history of images are shown in this collection and in the number of its illustrations included. His work is best known through this publication as well as a later selection of his lectures:25 much of the research from the Hamburg years has received only scant attention.26

A medieval diagram emblem of a “new science” The print Melancholia I by Albrecht Dürer seems to have taken on or assumed the role of icon or daemon for iconology. A totally different kind of image is the picture generally associated with the Warburg studies: that is the diagram “Mundus–Annus–Homo,” with the schematic intersections of the four elements, the four seasons, and the four temperaments. The diagram is included in the first edition of Isidore’s De responsione mundi et de astrorum ordinatione – more commonly known under the title De natura rerum – printed at Augsburg by Günther Zainer in 1472 (Fig. 7.3).27 This graphic statement of the Middle Ages translates the doctrine of cosmic harmony into a visual instruction. The diagrammatic depiction of the microcosm-macrocosm analogy, originally introduced in Isidore’s manuscripts, was repeatedly copied in the following centuries and his De natura rerum was often given the title of “liber rotarum”: wheel schemata were used to express textual correlations graphically.28 Fritz Saxl’s interest in these diagrammatic depictions is obvious in his research on manuscript illustration, the theory of four humors, the illustrated medieval encyclopedias, and the tradition of macrocosm and microcosm in medieval pictures.29 He remarked in 1923 in a letter to Adolph Goldschmidt how Isidore could be considered the source for almost all secular imagery of the Middle Ages.30 The reproduction of the xylography from the Zainer edition became the logo of the Institute’s English publications, Studies and Lectures, and the diagram still stands above the entrance to the 92

Fritz Saxl

Figure 7.3 The Mundus–Annus–Homo diagram, Isidore’s De responsione mundi et de astrorum ordinatione, Günther Zainer Augsburg 1472; A. Schramm, Der Bilderschmuck der Frühdrucke (Leipzig, 1920), fig. 292.

Warburg Institute building in London’s Woburn Square, completed in 1958. A graphic re-elaboration of the tetragram is also found on the Warburg Library webpage; each of the four elements was assigned to one of the thematic sections of the Library: “Image” corresponds to earth (Terra); “Word” to water (Aqua); “Orientation” to air (Aer); “Action” to fire (Ignis).31 In looking at the origins of the Warburg Institute’s emblem, it first occurs in the first prospectus of the library – reopened in Thames House after the move from Hamburg. The prospectus was drafted in 1934 by Gertrud Bing, Fritz Saxl, and Edgar Wind.32 The book collection was described in the leaflet according to a tetradic system of four sections: “Religion, Natural Science, and Philosophy”; “Language and Literature”; “Fine Arts”; “Social and Political Life.” As a correlate of the book collection, and as a resource and research tool, the prospectus includes the scheme of the photographic collection, organized in two sections: “Astrological and Mythological Manuscripts” and “Iconography of Classical Subjects in Medieval and Modern Painting, Sculpture and Applied Arts, including Festivals.”33 The system of the four thematic sections of the library – and its different Aufstellungen (dispositions) during the early years and travels of the library34 – goes back to the first arrangement planned for the four stockrooms of the newly built library building in Hamburg, which was completed in 1926. Aby Warburg wrote, Reading room: reference library and journals. Stock rooms: 1. History of Art; 2. Postumous life of the Antique in Religion, Science and Education; 3. History [. . .] and history of literature; 4. Sociology, Trade, recent 93

Katia Mazzucco

political history, World War, Newspapers; 5. History of Festivals and Theatre and Dutch cultural history of the XVII century.35 The scheme also reflects the status of Warburg’s personal research – section “5” (planned to be stored on the fourth floor, with section “4”) included material for research then in progress – and highlights the mosaic nature of the question-library, organized according to themes, and accessible according to this logic. A document shows the existence of a plan for the library system as being organized into four main sections and substantially corresponds to this draft by Warburg. It dates to after 1926 and the rearrangement of the collections in the new building. Saxl can be identified as the author of this systematic arrangement, which follows Warburg’s original ideas. The document is a kind of prospectus – possibly a leaflet or panel – and shows the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg’s (KBW) specific resources, in word – the books – and image – the pictures. The prospectus is the first example of the four headwords together as a series, associated with the four sections: Image (Bild); Orientation (Orientierung); Word (Wort); Action (Handlung). This scheme was initially planned to also be the basis for classifying the Warburg image collection (Bildersammlung). It was to be the same system: Image (Bild); Word and Image (Wort und Bild); Orientation and Image (Orientierung un Bild); Action and Image (Handlung und Bild).36 As far as medieval art is specifically concerned, most of the subcategories of the system also have a thematic logic. For instance, under the category “Image,” the subcategories “Theory of Image Shaping (Theorie der Bildgestaltung),” “Literary Sources for the History of Image (Literarische Quellen zur Bildgeschichte),” and “Applied Arts (Kunstgewerbe)” include a large chronological range, and do not follow a specific stylistic periodization. Within this same main category (“Image”), two subcategories focus specifically on medieval art: “Early Christian Art (Altchristliche Kunst)” and “Miniatures (Miniaturen)” – the latter also having a special morphological value, as a genre and as an art technique, and also exhibiting a special relationship with the history of the book. Within the image collection, and specifically within the third main category “Orientation and Image,” there is a nice convergence of Warburg’s and Saxl’s interests. The subcategory “Magic Practice and Divination” includes pictures of the “Cosmos-Man (Kosmosmann),” “Images of Temperaments,” pictures of the practice of “Fortune Telling” (Epatoscopy, Wahrsageleber), of “Wonders (Monstra),” “Comets,” “Lapidaries,” and “Cards.” The following subcategory “Cosmology” includes pictures of “Ancient Gods and Myths as Heavenly Bodies (catasterization, Verstirnung),” such as “Constellations” and “Planets,” and “Images of the Planets and Their Children” and “Images of the Months.” It is possible to compare the two subcategories with the range of visual documentation collected for research on the fresco cycle in Schifanoia and on “Words and Images in the Age of Luther” by Warburg,37 and to many of the aforementioned publications by Saxl on the tradition of the astrological pictures. The tetradic scheme is also documented in a later text, again by Fritz Saxl, and drafted around 1931,38 another crucial moment in the history of the library, after its founder’s death and before the move to London. This version shows no modification in content, but a shift between the two sections “Orientation” and “Image,” resulting in the series Orientation – Image – Word – Action. The first English arrangement of the Library, as can be read in the 1934 prospectus as well as in two articles, by Gertrud Bing and Edgar Wind respectively,39 is not simply a translation of the system invented by Warburg and systematized by Saxl during the Hamburg years. It shows a different layout of the four main sections; it is different from the one originally planned in 1926, and from the variant proposed circa 1931, and from the future arrangement in the building in Woburn Square (after 1958); no mention is made of the four headwords. In the first London arrangement, the section corresponding to “Image” shifted position in the sequence of the four terms, resulting in this series: first section, “Religion, Natural Science and Philosophy” (ex Orientation); second section, “Language 94

Fritz Saxl

and Literature” (ex Word); third section, “Fine Arts” (ex Image); fourth section, “Social and Political Life” (ex Action). Furthermore, and most interesting, the system is simplified both in structure and in terminology. Many subcategories are incorporated – as for instance within the section “Fine Arts” (seven subcategories) versus Bild (seventeen subcategories). The theoretical subcategories that were first propaedeutic subcategories in each of the German main sections are suppressed – as for instance the first subcategory of the section Bild, called “Theory of the Image-Shaping / Aesthetic” (Theorie der Bildgestaltung / Aesthetik) and the first subcategory of the section Orientierung, devoted to the theory of symbols. The methodological approach is also totally different: the section Handlung, originally organized according to the three subcategories “Theoretical Basis” (theoretische Grundlage), “Historical Basis” (geschichtliche Grundlage), and “Morphology of Social Life” (Morphologie des sozialen Leben), corresponds in the 1934 arrangement to the section “Social and Political Life,” including the four subcategories “Methods of History and Sociology,” “History of Social and Political Institutions,” “Folklore and Performing Arts,” and “Forms of Social Administration and Legal and Political Theory.” “The outlines of the library [were] as a whole determined [. . .] but within these limits it [has grown] as the research work gradually [has covered] historical areas [that were] not yet represented”:40 in the course of the dialogue and adaptation to the Anglo-Saxon academic approach, the system proved to be “flexible enough to adjust to any forthcoming development of research.”41 Medieval and in particular Christian art finds a large place in this process, both in the four main sections of the book collection and in the image collections. The latter was in fact organized according to the two main categories of “Astrological and Mythological Manuscripts” and “Iconography of Classical Subjects in Medieval and Modern Painting, Sculpture and Applied Arts, including Festivals”: among the “new” subcategories was that of “Religious Iconography” (Fig. 7.4).

Figure 7.4 Photograph showing Saint Jerome, dating to the mid-fifteenth century, hand-colored woodcut, first stamped “Bibliothek Warburg/Hamburg 20/114 Heilwigstrasse” (old building of the library; before 1926), and afterwards stamped in London “The Warburg Institute” (no address; no affiliation with the University of London; 1933–1944) and catalogued according to the new section “Religious Iconography,” The Warburg Institute.

95

Katia Mazzucco

Constellations, gestures: a visual principle of reformulation In the last few decades, thanks to critical reception, translations, and recent research, Saxl’s original work on the reintegration of the classical style and iconography into the Renaissance has been widely recognized.42 A crucial question as to what distinguishes the Renaissance in respect to older revivals of antiquity was raised. In the second volume of his “catalogue of astrological and mythological illuminated manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages” Saxl discussed the iconographic tradition from antiquity, through to the end of the Middle Ages – looking at Latin and Arabic lines of transmission – that led to the Renaissance representation of constellations; he dealt with the ways the antique was revived and the special status of the “real” Renaissance of antiquity. The original classical elements of the constellation images – style and form; exactness in representing astronomical elements, such as the number and position of the stars within the scheme of the constellation; forms of the process of catasterization, or correct representation of the mythological aspects of the astronomical “bodies” – were not combined with each other, or even lost, during Middle Ages but were fully reintegrated only in the Renaissance.43 This “principle of reintegration” can be read as the counterpart to the much better-known “principle of disjunction,” developed and discussed by Erwin Panofsky in Renaissance and Renascences.44 Focusing on early revivals of classical art during the Middle Ages, such as the “Carolingian renascence,” Panosky first suggested the idea in his article “Classical Mythology in Medieval Art,” which was written with Fritz Saxl. The “principle of disjunction,” decontextualized from studies of the classical tradition, had in itself a varied history. This included reformulations and applications to different fields of study, such as the history of the art of Mesoamerican antiquity or the analysis of knowledge models in microhistory. The first reference is the review of Panofsky’s Renaissance and Renascences published by Georg Kubler in 1961, and Kubler’s article “Renascence and Disjunction in the Art of Mesoamerican Antiquity.”45 According to Kubler, the survival of ancient artistic forms after the period in which they were realized/produced does not mean that they preserved their original meaning, and, with the passing of time, different or even new forms may be attributed to ancient themes or subjects. Kubler traced the origin of the principle to a lecture by Adolf Goldschmidt on the Nachleben of ancient forms in the Middle Ages published in the first issue of the Vorträge des Bibliothek Warburg,46 and then he reassigned it to the “Life of Forms,” published in 1934 by Henry Focillon.47 The lineage traced by Kubler, and his application of the principle to Mesoamerican antiquity, drew a polygenetic map of the principle, dating to the start of the 1930s. A different theoretical perspective on the “principle of disjunction” is that of microhistory, which relates to Warburg’s studies and German image theories of the 1920s and 1930s. The narrative and vision of history and time are again at the core of the issue. In an article written about Siegfried Kracauer’s last and posthumously published book,48 Carlo Ginzburg drew attention to the connection between attentiveness to the minutiae of microhistory and the principle of disjunction,49 as quoted in Kracauer. “Emphasis on Minutiae – Close Up – Micro-analysis” is the title of a page of notes by Kracauer for his posthumous book.50 Kracauer mentioned the “principle of disjunction” as example of close-up – that is, a way of seeing, in this specific case, in detail, presented as “paradigmatic instance of micro histories” or “small-scale histories.” Photography is used by Kracauer as a paragon and it is implicitly interpreted as a “cognitive possibility,” stressed Ginzburg. In this sense and within this intellectual context, Ginzburg, in its turn, implicitly questions how far photography, as a “cognitive possibility,” can be considered a “symbolical form” as the invention of perspective in early Renaissance.51 When looking at the “principle of disjunction,” Ginzburg doesn’t quote the article on classical mythology but only 96

Fritz Saxl

refers to its broader development in Renaissance and Renascences, and summarizes it as “the difference, commonly found in medieval art, between classical subjects represented anachronistically and images from antiquity that have been Christianized.” Let us go back to Saxl and his contribution to the creation of this principle, in relation to the iconography of medieval art. Despite the vast critical bibliography on the Warburg Library, or that on the foundation of iconological studies, or the fruitful theoretical inventions of the Warburg Kreis, little attention has been given to the “disjunction principle” and Saxl’s work as librarian for the arrangement and classification of both the Warburg Bücher- and Bildersammlung. One significant trace of Saxl’s work in the systematization of the book and image collections dates to the fall of 1927. Fritz Saxl was then deputy director of the library while Warburg was in Italy visiting the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. The collection of pictures of the KBW, under the collaborative work of Saxl with Edgar Breitenbach and Franz Alber, was then in the process of classification, using a scheme that anticipated the one described in the 1934 English prospectus of the Warburg photographic collection (Astrological and Mythological Manuscripts; Iconography of Classical Subjects). There are many notes about the photographic collection dating to around 1927 which mention astrological images, mainly from manuscripts, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, reference is made to the “systematic collection” that, though not born out by any visual documents or schemes or descriptions, is still possible to visualize as an iconographic collection covering Warburg’s research material and other material of a more encyclopedic coverage.52 This is borne out by the notes and working diary of the library as well as general correspondence. This shows that the work in the image collection was inextricably connected to the visual material in Warburg’s last work, the atlas of Mnemosyne. An extract from the work in progress on pictures by Saxl and library assistants was given the title “Atlas of the Language of Gestures.” This atlas by Saxl was composed of diagrams and notes and in all probability had a display of pictures, but it has been dispersed and is currently identifiable only in a series of fragmentary documents. The first of these documents is a folder with a label annotated by Warburg “Fritz Saxl and Breitenbach, Atlas of the language of gestures, Fall 1927.”53 In August 1928, while working on his visual atlas, Warburg made some notes in the library’s working diary referring to this collection as the “Saxl-Breitenbach materials,” which were to be incorporated in Mnemosyne.54 Another document is a different folder with many pages of diagrams ascribable to Fritz Saxl and Edgar Breitenbach – to which, in fact, the work on the “systematic collection” was assigned55 – and has notes by Warburg himself.56 The horizontal diagrams, which are possible instructions for displaying pictures on a board or panel, consist of squares with annotations referring to single works of art, neatly disposed in chronological order and classified thematically in three main categories: first, pagan gods and their Nachleben, as for instance “Atlas,” “Hercules,” and “Fortuna”; second, motives and pathos formulae (Pathosformeln), such as “Abduction” (Raub), “Pursuit” (Verfolgung), “Triumph,” and “grasping the head” (Griff nach dem Kopf); third, individual figures and scenes, as for example “Ninfa” and “philosophical dialogue.” Some of these pictures, and further documentation on the work as coordinated by Saxl for the photographic collection, is documented in other folders in the photographic collection of the Warburg Institute. One of the oldest sections in the collection is in fact devoted to “Gestures.” This same classification system is described in detail by Saxl in a report written in November 1927 for Warburg, who was in Florence at the Kunsthistorisches Institut. Saxl was reporting on the work in progress in the library, and his letter deals with books, images, research missions, and the Atlas.57 This scheme should in fact be seen as Saxl’s personal interpretation of the Atlas of Mnemosyne but it is also, at the same time, inextricably connected to the general organization of the image collection in the library. It shows the first steps and early stages of the iconographic 97

Katia Mazzucco

scheme that was to be applied to the collection in London. Saxl’s three main classification groups are illuminating and reflect his interest in antique forms and their tradition in the Middle Ages: 1

2 3

The reconfiguration (Gestaltwandel) of the ancient gods as Olympians and demons in the Middle Ages and the restitution (Restitution) of their ancient forms in the Renaissance. Tradition and reception (Rezeption) of the ancient pathos formulae (Pathosformeln) in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. Transformation (Formwandel) of individual ancient figures (antiker Gestalten) into pictorial forms (Bildformen) in Middle Ages and Renaissance.58

This schematic arrangement contains both Warburg’s “pathos formulae” and Saxl’s original interpretations and formulations and, though written for the singular purpose of reporting and indexing, it is a rare example of a theoretical scheme from Saxl’s work. It is possible to read the Gestaltwandel as a process of medieval shapeshifting, reshaping, or reconfiguring ancient deities, which were later reintegrated into the Renaissance with their original forms – such as the subcategory “Fortune” and the related examples “with the wheel,” “with the cornucopia,” “with the sail,” and “with the forelock.”59 The second category can be read as a partial catalogue of Warburgian Pathosformeln schematized according to expressional gestures, such as “Mourning” and “Grasping the head.”60 In Warburg’s work the attention focuses on anachronistic or “shocking” and decontextualized occurrences of ancient formulae of pathos, and on their carsic historical paths; on the contrary, Saxl’s sentence implies a sort of uninterrupted line of tradition, with a fluid passage through centuries of reception. The third main section includes Saxl’s contribution to defining a paradigmatic figure of Warburg’s research on patterns of tradition – the “Nymph.” Also included is an attempt to identify other examples of ancient subjects which were similarly transformed into “image-forms” (Bildformen) in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Formwandel describes the transformation of ancient figures circumscribing an articulated range of themes, expressive attitudes, and formal solutions – for example, the “Nymph” as “pensive Muse” or as “Angel.” The short index to this section includes only three subcategories: individual figures such as the “Nymph” or the “Thinker,” and one single scene – namely, “Man and the Environment.” In its turn, the latter subcategory includes “Man and the Beast” (such as “Meleager’s Hunt” and “Temptations of St. Anthony”), “the Image of Rome,” and a most interesting invention by Saxl – that is, the concept of “formula” applied not to the expressions of pathos but instead to a nonfigurative genre – the “Landscape-formulae.”61 The terms Gestalt- and Formwandel hint at a sort of protean quality to ancient figures within the visual world of the Middle Ages, and not simply a failure within medieval art to attribute genuine ancient forms to ancient content. The scheme was evidently not considered complete or finished, nor was it intended as a general theoretical instruction about the dynamics of tradition. However, it may be interesting to compare the use of these classification terms to describe, and visualize, the reinventions of the ancient tradition, with the term Pseudomorphosis as suggested by Panofsky in Studies in Iconology (1939). Pseudomorphosis describes a process of hybridization of the medieval elements of an ancient figure, being reconfigured in the Middle Ages, with reintegrated classical elements from the Renaissance, resulting in a renewed figure which still has false, misunderstood, or mysterious ancient attributes. Panofsky introduced the term when referring to the figure of “Father Time” – a hybrid of the reinterpreted ancient figures of Chronos/Time and Kronos/Saturn.62 Significantly, the index drafted by Saxl arranges 98

Fritz Saxl

different subject matters according to the three main categories, and includes only a few references to style or periodization, such as that within the subcategories related to “Saturn.” The subcategories “in Ancient Shape (antikisierend),” “Medieval Costume (Verkleidung),” “Devouring Children,” and “on the dragon chariot” are included in the first main section of Gestaltwandel. The debate has other contributors that include Oswald Spengler, who first used the term Pseudomorphosis (1918, 1922), adapting it from mineralogy to explain the partial or failed integration of a young culture with an older and deep-rooted one, resulting in a distortion of natural development and of the expressive forms of the first one.63 The debate also includes Adolph Goldschmidt’s concept of the “disintegration of forms” (Formenspaltung), or the morphological dissociation and geographical separation of forms developed in places removed from their origins, and discussed in a lecture delivered at Harvard University in 1936.64 Furthermore, the concept has been contextualized in the debate on the “geography of art,” referring to the work of George Kubler on the idea of “provincial style” and Jan Białostocki’s research on artistic development in Eastern Europe.65 Finally, the last reference to Saxl’s atlas is his lecture on “expressional gestures” delivered at the Congress of Psychology in Hamburg, and for which a small photographic exhibition was arranged. Planned as a visual display of Warburg’s approach, the exhibition was possibly an exemplification of the “atlas of gestures” drafted in 1927: We have arranged here, on the walls, a number of Renaissance works of art, of whose so-called dependence from ancient works has to be kept in mind. The panels are mainly arranged so that above is displayed the ancient work of art, then its medieval conversions (Umformungen) and, finally, the restitution of the ancient formula in the art of the Renaissance.66 The text of the lecture includes a discussion on the relationships between ancient types, such as Mithras, and their conversion in medieval art, such as Samson defeating the lion according to the Mithras type, and restitution in the Renaissance of the original themes – Renaissance Mithras in his ancient form.67 The exhibition was organized in sections according to the following subjects (Fig. 7.5): “Maenad and Satyr”; “Lamentation”; “Conclamatio”; “Medusa and the Devil Grimace”; “The Tragic Mask in the Physiognomic of Schrines – The Grotesque of the Ancient Comedy in the Physiognomic of Evil”; “Death and Healing”; “Flight and Triumph”; “Round Dance of Salome”; “Glancing Upwards Inspired”; “Grasping the Head”; “Dream and Meditation”; “Gesture of Defence of the Overwhelmed Figure”; “Pursuit and Fleeing”; “Glancing Upwards in Pain.”68 Nearly all the panels had three lines of examples in each section, corresponding respectively, from top to bottom, to ancient, medieval, and Renaissance works of art. The relationship among the different works is typological, and the dynamics of copying is not examined. In the display layout, it is possible to clearly read disjunction rows (“AN[tike]” and “M[ittel]A[lter]”) and reintegration rows (“AN[tike]” and “RE[naissance]”). The lecture on “Classical Mythology in Medieval Art” was delivered in Princeton the following year, and spread even further the principle of disjunction in “classical subject matter” and “classical form” – discussed, formulated, and visualized in research rooted in the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg and in the Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar of the University of Hamburg.69 The history of the Warburg Library and Saxl’s career continues in the United Kingdom, but his role in establishing academic art historical studies in that country has not yet been properly outlined. Here Saxl, who defined himself “not a philosopher,” nor one “able to talk about the philosophy of history,” but rather a scholar attracted by “the concrete historical material,” 99

Katia Mazzucco

Figure 7.5 Photographic exhibition in the reading room of the KBW for Saxl’s lecture “The Expressional Gestures of the Visual Art,” 1931. Image courtesy of the Warburg Institute, London.

would have developed his own art historical approach to the “history of images”: “Images with a meaning peculiar to their own time and place, once created, have a magnetic power to attract other ideas into their sphere; [. . .] they can suddenly be forgotten and remembered again after centuries of oblivion.”70

Notes 1 F. Saxl, Rembrandt-Studien, unpublished dissertation, University of Vienna (1911). 2 G. Bing, “Fritz Saxl: January 8th, 1890–March 22nd, 1948,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 10 (1947); for a detailed Saxl biography and bibliography see D. McEwan, Fritz Saxl. Eine Biografie: Aby Warburgs Bibliothekar und Erster Direktor des Londoner Warburg Institutes (Vienna/Köln/Weimar, 2012). 3 Warburg Institute Archive (WIA), General Correspondence (GC), Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, 13/09/1913; see McEwan, Fritz Saxl (as in note 2), 83–84. The catalogue of the WIA is in progress, edited by C. Wedepohl; all the references should therefore be considered provisionals. The interpretation of the documents related to the “atlas of gesture” by Saxl and Breitenbach is mine (see notes 53–58). 4 F. Saxl, “Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der Planetendarstellungen im Orient und im Okzident,” Islam 3 (1912), 151–77. On Saxl’s interpretation of the planets iconography cf. D. Blume, Regenten des Himmels: Astrologische Bilder in Mittelalter und Renaissance (Berlin, 2000), 201–02. 5 F. Boll, Sphaera. Neue griechische Texte un Untersuchingen zur Geschichte der Sternbilder (Leipzig, 1903). 6 F. Saxl, Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters in römischen Bibliotheken (Heidelberg, 1915); F. Saxl, Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters der National-Bibliothek in Wien (Heidelberg, 1927). 7 F. Saxl and H. Meier, Verzeichnis astrologischer und mythologischer illustrierter Handschriften des lateinischen Mittelalters in englischen Biliotheken – Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages in English Libraries, ed. H. Bober (London, 1953). Cf. the fourth volume: P. McGurk,

100

Fritz Saxl

8 9

10

11 12

13

14 15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

32

Catalogue of Astrological and Mythological Illuminated Manuscripts of the Latin Middle Ages in Italian Libraries (other than Rome) (London, 1966). F. Saxl, Einführung, in Handschriften 1915 (as in note 6), V–VII. This point has been remarked by Salvatore Settis, who has included the first – and only – translation, though partial, of the introductory texts of Saxl, Handschtiften 1915, 1927 (as in note 6) within the selection of Saxl’s lectures he edited in 1985: F. Saxl, La fede negli astri. Dall’antichità al Rinascimento, ed. S. Settis (Turin, 1985); cf. S. Settis “Introduzione,” 35–40. F. Saxl, “Das Nachleben der Antike: Zur Einführung in die Bibliothek Warburg,” Hamburger Universitäts-Zeitung II, 11, 1920–21 (1921), 244–47; F. Saxl, “Die Bibliothek Warburg und ihr Ziel,” in Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 1, 1921–1922 (1923), 1–10. Bing, “Fritz Saxl” (as in note 2). E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, “Dürer’s ‘Melancholia I’: Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung,” Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 2 (Berlin, 1923); expanded and translated into English with the collaboration of Raymond Klibansky as Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art (London, 1964). Cf. Warburg’s interpretation of Melancholia in A. Warburg, “Heidnisch-antike Weissagung in Wort und Bild zu Luthers Zeiten,” Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberg Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1920, 26, Heidelberg 1920. R. Klein, La forme et l’intelligible (Paris, 1970), 224. Cf. the essay by Giorgio Agamben “Aby Warburg and the Nameless Science” (1975, 1984), Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans. Daniel HellerRoazen (Stanford, 1999), 89–103. F. Saxl, Mithras: Typengeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1931). F. Saxl, “Die Ausdrucksgebärden der bildenden Kunst,” Bericht über den XII. Kongreß der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Hamburg, April 12–16, 1931, Im Auftrage der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, ed. G. Kafka (Jena, 1932), 13–25; rpt. F. Saxl, Gebärde, Form, Ausdruck: zwei Untersuchungen, ed. Pablo Schneider (Zurich, 2012); cf. F. Saxl, “I gesti espressivi nell’arte figurativa,” and C. Cieri Via, “Una nota biografica all’ombra di Aby Warburg,” Annali di Critica d’arte VIII (2012), 9–23, 25–41. E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, “Classical Mythology in Medieval Art,” Metropolitan Museum Studies 4, 1932–33 (1933), 228–80; see E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, Mitologia classica nell’arte medievale, ed. C. Cieri Via (Torino, 2012). F. Saxl, La fede astrologica di Agostino Chigi (Rome, 1934). Following Warburg’s thesis on the fresco cycle by Peruzzi (c. 1511), Saxl interpreted the Loggia Farnesina ceiling as horoscope of Agostino Chigi. Bing, “Fritz Saxl” (as in note 2). E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York, 1939). G. Bing, “Fritz Saxl (1890–1948),” in Fritz Saxl: A Volume of Memorial Essays, ed. D.J. Gordon (London, 1957), 1–46 (6). Bing, “Fritz Saxl” (as in note 2) and E.H. Gombrich “Introduction,” in A Heritage of Images: A Selection of Lectures by Fritz Saxl, ed. H. Honour and J. Fleming (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1970), 10. F. Saxl, “Rembrandt’s Sacrifice of Manoah,” Studies of the Warburg Institute 9 (London, 1939). R. Wittkower and F. Saxl, British Art and the Mediterranean (New York/Oxford, 1948); F. Saxl, English Sculptures of the Twelfth Century (London, 1954). F. Saxl, Lectures, 2 vols. (London, 1957). A Heritage of Images (as in note 21). On Saxl’s inedited works cf. among the recent researches by Karin Hellwig on Saxl and Spanish art: Aby Warburg und Fritz Saxl enträtseln Velázquez: Ein spanisches Intermezzo zum Nachleben der Antike (Berlin, 2015). A. Schramm, Der Bilderschmuck der Frühdrucke, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1920), pl. 34, fig. 292. On the history of these diagrams see Isidore de Seville, “Traité de la nature,” in Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Étude Hispaniques 28, ed. J. Fontaine (Bordeaux, 1960). Saxl, Handschriften (as in note 6), “Macrocosm and Microcosm in Medieval Pictures” (1927–28), Lectures (as in note 24), vol. 1, 58–72. WIA, GC, Fritz Saxl to Adolph Goldschmidt, 06/02/1923. http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/library/maps/; The graphic re-elaboration of the emblem, with sections of the library associated with the four elements, is no longer the webpage logo of the Institute; a new logo was launched in Spring 2016. WIA I.13.3.5, The Warburg Institute: Collection of Book and Photographs, Thames House prospectus including list of resources and opening times, 1934; WIA I.13.3.5.1 draft prospectus, typescript with handwritten notes by G. Bing, F. Saxl, and E. Wind, 4 fols.

101

Katia Mazzucco 33 WIA I.13.3.5, The Warburg Institute (as in note 32); cf. G. Bing, “The Warburg Institute,” The Library Association Record 4:1 (1934), 262–66, and E. Wind, “The Warburg Institute Classification Scheme,” The Library Association Record 2:5 (1935), 193–95. In 1934 Rudolf Wittkower was responsible for the iconographic rearrangement of the photographic collection (The Warburg Institute Annual Report, 1934); cf. K. Mazzucco, “L’iconoteca Warburg di Amburgo: Documenti per una storia della Photographic Collection del Warburg Institute,” Quaderni Storici 3 (December 2012), 857–87; and K. Mazzucco, “Images on the Move: Some Notes on the Bibliothek Warburg Bildersammlung (Hamburg) and the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection (London),” Art Libraries Journal 38:4 (2013), 16–24. 34 The Aufstellungen of the Warburg Library have been largely debated; among the related bibliography see S. Settis, “Warburg continuatus: Descrizione di una biblioteca,” Quaderni storici 58 (1985), 5–38, and cf. “Nota finale,” S. Settis, Warburg continuatus. Descripcion de una biblioteca (Madrid, 2010); T. von Stockhausen, Die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg: Architektur, Einrichtung und Organisation (Hamburg, 1992); M.S. Diers, Porträt aus Büchern: Bibliothek Warburg und Warburg Institute, Hamburg-London (Hamburg, 1993); H.M. Schäfer, Die Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg: Geschichte und Persönlichkeiten der Bibliothek Warburg mit Berücksichtigung der Bibliothekslandschaft und der Stadtsituation der Freien und Hansstadt Hamburg zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 2003). 35 WIA, I.9.13.1.6.1, Description of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW), typescript, 2 fols. (cf. WIA, I.9.8.3 draft version of the text, typescript with handscript annotations by Aby Warburg, 2 fols.), f. 2: “Lesesaal: Bibliographie und Zeitschriften / In den Magazinen: / 1. Kunstgeschichte / 2. Nachleben der Antike in Religion, Wissenschaft und Bildung. / 3. Geschichte (darunter auf breiterer Grundlage Italiens Stadtkultur) und Literaturgeschichte. / 4. Soziologie, Handel, Neuere politische Geschichte, Weltkrieg und Zeitungen / 5. Geschichte des Festwesens und des Theaters; Holländische Kulturgeschichte des XVII Jahrh.” The document has no date but it is ascribable to 1926 as it described the disposition of the Library sections testified in a longitudinal section of the new building annotated by Warburg in July 1926 (WIA, I.4.8, Hamburg, Heilwigstrasse 116, plans and sections dated May 1925 with notes by Warburg dated July 1927); the text, titled “Für die Minerva 1927,” was possibly a prospectus or press release for an article composed that year and published in 1927 (P. Trommsdorff, “Der Zweite Niedersächsische Bibliotekartag,” Minerva-Zeitschrift. Nachrichten für die Gelherte Welt 3:6–7 (1927), 145–47). 36 Cf. Mazzucco (as in note 33). 37 A. Warburg, “Italienische Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Ferrara,” in L’Italia e l’arte straniera: atti del X Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell’Arte in Roma (1912), ed. A. Venturi (Rome, 1922), 179–93; Warburg, “Heidnisch-antike Weissagung in Wort und Bild zu Luthers Zeiten” (as in note 12); cf. English edition, A. Warburg, “Pagan-Antique Prophecy in Words and Images in the Age of Luther,” in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity, ed. K.W. Forster (Malibu, 1999), 597–697. Originally delivered as a lecture in 1918, the text was published in 1920 after Franz Boll’s interest and thanks to the assistance of Wilhelm Prinz and Fritz Saxl. 38 WIA, I.9.14.3, Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg: Grundriß der Bücheraufstellung und Bildersammlung, c. 1931–1932; on this document and the related bibliography, cf. Mazzucco, “L’iconoteca Warburg” (as in note 33). 39 WIA I.13.3.5, The Warburg Institute (as in note 32); cf. Bing, “The Warburg Institute,” and Wind, “The Warburg Institute Classification Scheme” (as in note 33). 40 Bing, “The Warburg Institute” (as in note 33), 5. 41 Wind, “The Warburg Institute Classification Scheme” (as in note 33), 195. 42 Cf. S. Settis, “Introduzone,” Saxl, La fede negli astri (as in note 9); R. Duits, “Reading the Stars of the Renaissance: Fritz Saxl and Astrology,” Journal of Art Historiography 5 (December 2011). 43 F. Saxl, Handschrifen 1927 (as in note 6), and cf. Panofsky and Saxl, “Classical Mythology” (as in note 16). As remarked by Rembrandt Duits (“Reading the Stars of the Renaissance,” as in note 42) Saxl’s theory on iconography of constellations, though “imperfect,” “remains the only succinct and comprehensive outline of the transmission of constellation images from Antiquity to the Renaissance published until” D. Blume, M. Haffner, and W. Metzger, Sternbilder des Mittelalters: Der gemalte Himmel zwischen Wissenschaft und Phantasie (Berlin, 2012). 44 E. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (Stockholm 1960; rev. ed. Uppsala 1965; New York, 1969); cf. early Panofsky’s paper “Renaissance and Renascences,” The Kenyon Review 2, VI (1944), 201–36. 45 G. Kubler, “Disjunction and Mutational Energy,” Art News 59:10 (February, 1961), 34, 55; G. Kubler, “Renascence and Disjunction in the Art of Mesoamerican Antiquity,” Ornament,Via III (1977), 31–39;

102

Fritz Saxl

46

47

48 49

50 51 52

53

54 55 56

57

58

59 60 61

62 63 64

rpt. Studies in Ancient American and European Art: The Collected Essays of George Kubler, ed. T.F. Reese (New Haven, 1985). A. Goldschmidt, “Das Nachleben der antiken Formen im Mittelalter,” Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg I, 1921–22 (1923), 40–50. We should keep in mind that Goldschmidt’s essay was first delivered for the Bibliothek Warburg and then published in the volume edited by Saxl; the considerations by Saxl on Isidore and medieval imagery are included in the correspondence between the two scholars regarding the lecture (cf. note 30). In this sense, cf. E. Gombrich (Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography, London, 1970), who dates the principle back to Anton Springer and to the introduction of the term Nachleben with specific reference to medieval art in his Bilder aus der Neueren Kunstgeschichte (Bonn, 1867). S. Kracauer, History: The Last Things before the Last (New York, 1965). “Particolari, primi piani, microanalisi: In margine a un libro di Siegfried Kracauer,” Paragone 54, nos. 48–50 (August–December 2003), 20–37; rpt. as a chapter of the book Il filo e le tracce: Vero, falso, finto (Milano, 2006); “Minutiae, Close-up, Microanalysis,” English translation S.R. Gilbert, Critical Inquiry 34 (Autumn 2007), 174–89. Cf. V. Breidecker, “‘Ferne Nähe’: Kracauer, Panofsky, und ‘the Warburg Tradition,’” S. Kracauer and E. Panofsky, Briefwechsel 1941–1966 (Berlin, 1996), 165–76. E. Panofsky, “Perspektive als symbolische Form,” Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, 1925, 258–330; published separately (Leipzig/Berlin, 1927); English translation Perspective as Symbolic Form (New York, 1991). WIA III.15.1.3, Tagebücher der KBW (TB), III, 14/09/1927 (A. Warburg, Tagebuch der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburg, ed. K. Michels and C. Schoell-Glass, Gesammelte Schriften – Studienausgabe VII [Berlin, 2001]); WIA GC, Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, 04/10/1927, 15/11/1927; cf. WIA Ia 1.7, Annual Report, Fritz Saxl, typescript draft with some handwritten annotations, dated November 15, 1927, 19 fols. WIA III.108.10, Folder label handwritten by Warburg: “F. Saxl (u. Breitenbach) Atlas zur Gebärdensprach, Herbst 1927.” The folder’s content relates to a different event – that is, the provisional exhibition on cosmology arranged at the KBW in September 1927 for the project in collaboration with the Deutsches Museum in Munich (cf. WIA III.100, Kosmologie: Deutsches Museum, 1927). WIA III.15.2.2, TB, V, 14/08/1928. WIA GC, Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, 15/11/1927 (as in note 52): “Was die Photographiensammlung betrifft, [. . .] hat Breitenbach die systematische Abteilung vollkommen geordnet und katalogisiert.” WIA III.108.11, Diagrams for Mnemosyne, no date. The section includes two different collections of papers, one with handwritten notes by Warburg on twenty-eight small sheets; the other, to which the Saxl-Breitenbach atlas could be referred and that can be therefore dated Fall 1927, composed of thirty-eight sheets with handwritten diagrams ascribable to Saxl and Breitenbach, and with further notes by Warburg. WIA Ia 1.7, Annual Report (as in note 52); WIA, GC, Fritz Saxl to Aby Warburg, 15/11/1927. Cf. K. Mazzucco, “(Photographic) Subject-Matter: Fritz Saxl Indexing Mnemosyne: A Stratigraphy of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection’s System,” Classifying Content: Photographic Collections and Theories of Thematic Ordering, ed. C. Franceschini and K. Mazzucco, Visual Resources 30:3 (September 2014), 201–21. WIA Ia 1.7, “Annual Report” (as in note 52), 13: “Der Atlas, wie er wirklich jetzt vorliegt, umfasst meiner Schätzung nach ungefähr 400 Bilder, die in drei Gruppen geordnet sind: 1) der Gestaltwandel der antiken Götter als Olympier und Dämonen im Mittelalter und 2) die Restitution ihrer antiken Formen in der Renaissance / 2) Tradition und Rezeption Antiker Pathosformeln im Mittelalter und Renaissance / 3) Formwandel einzelner antiker Gestalten im Bildformen im Mittelalter und Renaissance.” WIA Ia 1.7, “Annual Report” (as in note 52), 15. WIA Ia 1.7, “Annual Report” (as in note 52), 16, 17. WIA Ia 1.7, “Annual Report” (as in note 52), 18. This is not an isolated attempt: after a seminar of the KBW with the young student Ludwig Heydenreich, for which a small display of architectural material had been exhibited, Saxl took notes about “Pathos-Formeln der Architektur,” WIA III.15.1.3, TB, III, F. Saxl, 07/07/1927. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (as in note 19), 70–72. O. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 2 vols. (Munich, 1918, 1922); Decline of the West, vol. 2 (New York, 1926), 189. A. Goldschmidt, “Die Bedeutung der Formenspaltung in der Kunstentwicklung,” Independence, Convergence, and Borrowing in Institutions, Thought, and Art (Cambridge, 1937), 167–77; cf. C. Wood, “The Credulity Problem,” in Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China 1500–1800, ed. P.N. Miller and F. Loise (Ann Arbor, 2012), 149–179.

103

Katia Mazzucco 65 T. Dacosta Kauffmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago, 1988). 66 Saxl, “Ausdrucksgebärden” (as in note 15). In the draft copy of the lecture, the section with annotations for commenting on the panels is typescript on separated sheets numbered, according to the panels, A, B, C, and so forth, and later integrated in the printed version of the text; cf. WIA, Saxl Papers, 8. Ausdrucksgebärden 1930/32, two draft copies of the text, twenty-two fols. each, further inserts, seventeen photographs of the photographic exhibition. It is interesting to note that further copies of the photographs are included in the section “Gestures” of the Photographic Collection of the Warburg Institute. 67 Cf. the discussion of this subject in Saxl, Mithras (as in note 14) and in the lecture delivered in Reading in 1947: F. Saxl, “Continuity and Variations in the Meaning of Images” (1947), Lectures (as in note 24), vol. 1, 1–12. 68 WIA, Saxl Papers, Ausdrucksgebärden (as in note 66), titles of the panels in the pictures: “Mänade und Satyr / Klage / Conclamatio / Medusa und Teufelsfratze / Die Tragische Maske in der Physiognomik des Schreins–Die Groteske der Antike Komödie in der Physiognomik des Bösen / Tötung und Heilung / Flucht und Triumph / Reigen – Tanz der Salome / Seighafter und Inspirierter Aufblick / Griff nach dem Kopf / Trauer und Meditation / Abwehrgeste des Niedergeschlagenen / Verfolgung und Fliehen / Schmerzlicher Aufblick.” 69 Panofsky wrote in the first footnote of the essay, “This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered for the first time to the teaching staff and students of the Department of Fine Arts of Princeton University. It resulted, however, from the common endeavor of the two authors, who in their research were assisted by the Hamburg students of art history.” 70 Saxl, “Continuity and Variations” (as in note 67), 1, 2.

104

8 ERWIN PANOFSKY (1892–1968)* Dieter Wuttke

Life and work Academic art history became one of the leading fields of the humanities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially with regard to a scientifically guided understanding of art as art. This was due mainly to the work of scholars such as August Schmarsow, Alois Riegl, Adolph Goldschmidt, Heinrich Wölfflin, Aby M. Warburg, Wilhelm Vöge, Julius von Schlosser,1 and their followers (see the essay on Warburg elsewhere in this volume). Their precedence was because the methodology of art history was merged with that of the other humanities, especially history and philology. By 1912 Heinrich Wölfflin had become the symbolic father-figure of the internal methodology and as such had secured the autonomy of the discipline. Aby M. Warburg served the same purpose in synthesizing methods which directed academic art history toward a new horizon looking into cultural studies. In the twentieth century, academic art history was given an essential boost by the undoubtedly most talented art historian of that first generation of students, Erwin Panofsky. He had been influenced both by Wilhelm Vöge and Adolf Goldschmidt while keeping a critical distance from the formalistic approaches of Alois Riegl and especially of Heinrich Wölfflin. By late 1915, he had gradually embraced the methodology and objective concerns of Warburg. When he was forced to emigrate from Germany in 1933/34, Panofsky was considered on both sides of the Atlantic to be one of the most productive instructors and researchers of the period. This appraisal remained uncontested until his death and after. Panofsky constantly sought to promote and develop inter- and transdisciplinarity, which are still the foci and hallmarks of international research in the world of art history. Motivated by Warburg, he led the way into synthetic art and cultural science which took into consideration the history of science and aimed at bridging the gap between the “Two Cultures” – on one side the humanities and on the other natural science and mathematics.2 From the 1980s onwards, “dense description” has been propagated as the methodology of “new” art and cultural studies.3 If Vöge and Warburg were the inventors of the newly acclaimed methodology, then Panofsky provided its theoretical underlay. These ideas were then applied in fields other than art history. Panofsky’s influence initially in the United States and then in non-European countries was immense; following World War II, Europe also came under the sway. This effect extended into the 1980s and 1990s, supported all along by the translation of his works into a variety of languages. Now in the twenty-first century, despite certain criticism, his model still remains the standard. 105

Dieter Wuttke

Erwin Panofsky died in Princeton on March 14, 1968, shortly before his seventy-sixth birthday.4 It is said that the last books he asked for were the Bible and the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales. No grave marks his last resting place where one could linger and commemorate him. His ashes were placed in an urn and buried under a tree he favored on the wooded grounds of the Institute for Advanced Study. The exact location is known only to his immediate family. Is this what the author of Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (1964) would have wished?5 Definitely. If asked, he would have considered the visible monument superfluous since in his eyes the dignity of man rested on immaterial intellectuality as long as it respected human values and acted accordingly. Panofsky’s retreat from the visual and tactile world following his death corresponded exactly to the activity on which his life as a historian had been focused: envisioning life past in the mind’s eye in order to disclose the future to the humane human being. In this vein the Art Museum of Princeton University published a small commemorative booklet in 1969 entitled Erwin Panofsky in Memoriam. The small collection of essays came from a memorial service his friends held one year after his death.6 Even today the thin booklet seems the most appropriate posthumous laudation in memorial to the man. Robert A. Koch contributed an article on Lucas Cranach the Elder’s painting Venus and Cupid, which had been acquired in 1968 by the Princeton Art Museum (registration number y1968–111) and which Panofsky would not have seen. Thus the painting which Panofsky could not have seen in the flesh serves as a kind of grave good for the art historian who had been known to call out, “Goddam the originals,” which of course he meant ironically. His friends knew him as a bookman par excellence. But, of course, they knew as well that for Panofsky as for any art historian nothing counted as much as the originals, and he hunted them down when- and wherever he could. Not leaving it at just a viewing, he would encourage the application of scientific methods as seen in his efforts concerning the Ghent altarpiece. The theme of Koch’s article served as a postscript to Panofsky’s famous paper “Blind Cupid,” which he had published in his Studies in Iconology in 1939. Cranach’s presentation of perfect beauty and its stylized realization were meant as an homage to the great interpreter of artistic beauty as well as to the man of flesh and blood. The renowned Cranach scholar Jacob Rosenberg joined together elements of style analysis, interpretative research in art history, and connoisseurship in his short critical essay, and approached the work of art in the same way Panofsky had seen as necessary. As important as seeing was listening to Panofsky, not only to words but also equally to tones. Wolfgang Stechow, one of his oldest friends and highly talented musically, elucidated Panofsky’s intimate relationship to music, especially to that of Mozart. Among Panofsky’s Latin epigrams there is one on Mozart’s death, short as it is skillful: Quare, Mors, juvenem Wolfgangum praeripuisti? Ne secreta mea prodere pergat opus. (Why, death, have you carried off Wolfgang so young? [Death’s answer:] So that his work my secrets no longer reveal.) These and a number of other aspects were integrated by William S. Heckscher into an overall picture of Panofsky’s life and work in less than twenty printed pages.7 His contribution combined the masterful gift of presentation with the closest approach possible to truth through content, a reflection of the life and works of Panofsky himself. Written with the affection of an “honor” student, it mirrors the essay Panofsky dedicated to his own teacher, Wilhelm Vöge, in 1958. “Truth and Beauty” is, however, the motto of the Institute for Advanced Study,8 in which Panofsky served from 1935 to 1968, a course of thirty-three years. 106

Erwin Panofsky

Today, Panofsky critics say that there is no such thing as “disguised symbolism.” Jan Białostocki, the distinguished Polish art historian, considered its discovery in Dutch art as one of Panofsky’s lasting insights.9 No one would have reacted more calmly to the criticism than the perceiver himself. All that is valid for Panofsky’s scientific studies is valid for this discourse; he raised the level of discussion to a height previously unknown. Hardly any of these critics would be prepared to accept this or even to try to reconstruct the research context to which Panofsky had reacted. The historian Joachim Fest observed, “Was sich kritische Geschichte nennt, offenbart häufig weniger Kraft zur Unterscheidung, als zur Verdammung, und kein Respekt vor dem Stummsein der Toten macht den Anklägern die Schuldsprüche schwer.” (That which is called critical history often discloses not so much the power to discern than the wish to condemn, and the accusers having no respect for the silence of the dead are ready with their verdict.)10 A Hanoverian by birth, by blood a Prussian-Berlin Jew with a heart for Hamburg who was driven to the paradise of Princeton: this is how one could characterize him in modification of Aby M. Warburg’s own biographical formula.11 Erwin Panofsky was born on March 30, 1892, in Hannover, the son of well-to-do parents. In his forties, Panofsky’s father decided to become a man of leisure. The family moved to Berlin and the son was enrolled in the distinguished Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium, which educated and formed him in such a way that ensured his lifelong gratitude. One day, the school principal discovered that the Primus omnium was reading the magazine Simplizissimus; he threatened to demote the pupil one step down the ladder if he continued, to which Erwin replied that he should go ahead and demote him. Panofsky began to study law at Freiburg im Breisgau in the summer of 1910. However, right after the first semester, he unofficially began to study art history, and after the second semester he officially majored in it with minors in archaeology, history, and philosophy. Here, it was the attraction of the subtle and sensitive as well as artistically talented and methodically sound Wilhelm Vöge which set him onto the path of professional art history. This is where Panofsky learned that it was more important to have methods than to write about them. It was also here where he learned what methodology does not teach: methods cannot be learned from methods but rather from their practical application. Although he published the methodological essay on the unity of content and form, Meaning in the Visual Arts, in the Magazine of Art in 1951, and in 1955 the paperback of the same name with the famous methodological introduction of “Iconography and Iconology,” his favorite saying was “the discussion of methods spoils their application.” It was typical of him that from his base in the United States he did not recommend any introduction to methodology to other art experts but instead referred only to the last book of his former teacher, Wilhelm Vöge, Jörg Syrlin der Ältere und seine Bildwerke (Jörg Syrlin the Elder and His Work) (1950). This, he claimed, was perhaps the closest to the ideal of a “total history of art.”12 Only in one instance did the cleverly modest man, who otherwise ironically observed that he had written only “little books,” dare to call one of his own works an “opus magnum.” It was no coincidence that, when he introduced the concept of disguised symbolism in Early Netherlandish Painting (1953) into art historical discourse, he dedicated it to Wilhelm Vöge. This major work was developed out of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures Panofsky had given at Harvard, which was according to one of his letters an honor nearly equivalent to the Nobel Prize. His dissertation, Dürers Kunsttheorie, vornehmlich in ihrem Verhältnis zur Kunsttheorie der Italiener (Dürer’s Theory of Art, Especially in Relation to the Theory of Art of Italian Artists), was the answer to a question in a contest he won in 1913, the prize awarded by the Grimm Foundation of the University of Berlin. He received his PhD in 1914 under Vöge in Freiburg, and the dissertation was published in 1915. The book, which for a doctoral thesis at that time was uncommonly long, reveals unique talent. The factual and stylistic mastery of a topic so challenging in its interdisciplinary approach is phenomenal, and even today the work has not been superseded. What 107

Dieter Wuttke

came to light then continued to mark a life of research of more than forty years, successful in the sense of its comprehensiveness and profundity: the simultaneous mastery of mathematical, philosophical, aesthetic, art historical, historical, and philological knowledge and methods, nothing less than a seemingly effortless transdisciplinarity. It discloses a rare ability to present highly complicated phenomena in ordered clarity, breathtaking speed in output, and a highly factual as well as linguistic certitude. In his thesis, however, a long-term risk became evident: occasionally his urge to communicate his findings kept him from continuing the search for further sources and led to premature hypotheses. Since, however, Panofsky not only taught but also practiced scientific integrity, he himself would open the way for criticism and accept and integrate it in further publications. By the winter of 1914–1915 Panofsky was back in Berlin. To complete his training, he sought out the famous medievalist Adolph Goldschmidt. Apparently, though, Panofsky had quite a bit to offer Goldschmidt, who in his typically dry manner remarked, “Wenn Erwin ein Bild sieht, dann fällt ihm immer etwas ein.” (When Erwin sees a picture, something always occurs to him about it.) A fellow student, Edmund Schilling, remarked that Panofsky replied: “Sie sind das Trüffelschwein, das die Trüffeln sucht. Ich bin der Koch, der damit die guten Gerichte bereitet.” (You are the truffle pig searching for truffles, and I am the cook using them in tasty dishes.) This is a sign of how the Goldschmidt circle moderated scientific seriousness with humor and irony. This typical Berlin wit remained Panofsky’s life elixir. In Goldschmidt’s seminar he met Dora Mosse, eight years his senior, whom he married in 1916. At the end of 1915, Goldschmidt arranged Panofsky’s first visit to the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg. Here, Warburg himself introduced his research library as an Institut für Ausdruckskunde (Institute for the Study of Artistic Expression) to the students from Berlin, among whom was Hans Kauffmann, the future chair of art history in Berlin. It was here that Panofsky stepped into the magic circle of the man who must be considered the inventor of those comprehensive visual studies, now called Bildwissenschaft, and who would become after Vöge and Goldschmidt his third major influence.13 From the time of his university studies he had traveled extensively in Germany and Europe to study original works of art. Even his honeymoon through Franconia with a week’s stay in Bamberg in the summer of 1916 served as an excursion in art history. During his civilian service in 1918 he started to look for a venue where he could undertake his habilitation. He nearly went to Heidelberg or Tübingen but instead responded to an offer made by Gustav Pauli, the director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, on December 31, 1919, to come to Hamburg and to join the faculty of the newly founded university. By the summer of 1920, his habilitation on Michelangelo was finished. He had submitted a manuscript with the title Die Gestaltungsprincipien Michelangelos, besonders in ihrem Verhältnis zu denen Raffaels (The Formal Principles in Michelangelo’s Art, Especially in Relation to Those of Raphael), which was never published. A sensation occurred in June 2012, when a safe in the basement of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich which had been unopened for years revealed a revised, 334-page version of this work.14 Gustav Pauli considered Panofsky to be the most talented of the younger generation of German art historians and the only one qualified for the soon to be created chair of art history at the University of Hamburg. Since the position was only to be filled in January 1926, Panofsky had to fall back on private financial means, the occasional sale of inherited antiques, and the modest salary of a wissenschaftlicher Hilfsarbeiter (auxiliary assistant) to bridge the unpaid gap. Despite his poor financial situation and as soon as postwar conditions allowed, he began foreign travelling, looking up colleagues and dealers, viewing works of art, and researching sources. In 1924 he wrote to his wife from Amsterdam: “Es ist herrlich, für 6 Wochen Europäer zu sein” (It is wonderful to be a European for six weeks); in Paris, 1925, he exclaimed, “Es ist tatsächlich die Hauptstadt Europas” (This really is the capital of Europe). 108

Erwin Panofsky

By 1920 the couple with their two sons, Hans and Wolfgang – Hans became a meteorologist, Wolfgang a physicist and both were to be just as successful as their father – moved from Berlin to Hamburg, the city Panofsky had encountered for the first time in 1911 (or possibly some years earlier). He put down roots quickly, and whenever he recalled the thirteen years he spent there, he considered them to be the best and most productive of his life. No other town remained so close to his heart nor aroused more longing and nostalgia. It was the 1920s which he considered to be the most modern years of the century and appreciated the most. The fact that he never returned to Hamburg underlined his feelings for the irretrievable city he had to leave. He brought great enthusiasm to the new position, finding no work too menial or any task too bothersome as he established the art history department. As a teacher he was ingenious and extraordinarily charismatic. In next to no time the art history department drew the highly gifted from all over Germany to Hamburg (Fig. 8.1). When the term Hamburger Schule came into existence, this honorary title was also due to a large extent to the scientific energy emanating from the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg. Decisive for Panofsky’s further development as a researcher was the fact that he was so open to Warburg’s train of thought and found in his library the best instrument imaginable for research in art history. In Hamburg he became so involved in the library that he must have not only been considered the ideal user but also appeared to outsiders as a second Warburg and the person who was able to bring to light the immense power of the library as an instrument of research.

Figure 8.1 Panofsky and his students from Hamburg University on an excursion to Westphalia from July 16 through July 20, 1932. Panofsky is sitting on the right side with his wife Dora in a white blouse behind him. For the identification of the other figures see Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 366 (Fig. 34), and additions in Wuttke, Kumulationen (as in note 1), 33. Photo courtesy of Archive Wuttke.

109

Dieter Wuttke

Naturally a person like this, striving to integrate and open to philosophical stimulation, would focus on the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, who was in contact with the Warburg circle. Due to the stimulating influence of this circle Panofsky added typology to his studies and the new approach to a work of art called “iconography”; this extended even further his studies which had used the concept of style, historical art theory, and aesthetics as their methodology. In his monograph Imago Pietatis: Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des Schmerzensmanns und der Maria Mediatrix (1927) he not only illustrated the power of typology but also was the first to elucidate its theoretical structure. With his essay on the theory of iconography, Zur Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst (1932), he examined the close integration of art and culture using a scientific basis which is still, despite critical remarks, unsurpassed in terms of methodology. This article was so fundamental and had such far-reaching consequences that its importance for the interpretation of visual art can be compared only with Heinrich Wölfflin’s Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (1915). If today it is self-evident in philology and comparative cultural sciences that a picture accompanying a text must be integrated into the interpretation, that historians struggle for a methodological foundation when studying historical images, that from their midst a call goes out for image criticism which corresponds to textual criticism, while on the other hand art historians regard the interpretation of a text accompanying an image as self-evidently relevant, then all this must, to a great degree, be credited to Panofsky. Just like Warburg, he belongs to those prophets whose shoulders posterity may stand upon to expand its vision. The evolutionary thrust he provided to the disciplines of the humanities which interpret art is comparable for example to the discovery of the Indo-European family tree of languages and its significance for linguistics. In 1933 the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg moved to London. Even before his death, Warburg had considered transferring the library to Italy and Rome, and when the anti-Jewish terror of the Nazis commenced, the decision to leave became imperative. Panofsky, who since 1931 in his role as the library’s ambassador had already taught twice at New York University as a visiting professor and whose lectures in English on German art were highly respected, fortunately received a further invitation for 1934/35, so that the whole family risked the move to Princeton. In Hamburg, the expulsion of the teachers and the loss of the library brought about the demise of teaching and studying art history. In New York, however, Panofsky received an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, an institution he remained loyal to for the rest of his life, even though others, including Harvard, attempted to hire him. There, the Einstein of art history became a colleague as well as a friend of the great physicist Einstein. His friendship with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli was even closer. When Pauli was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945, Panofsky was chosen to deliver the institute’s congratulatory speech in which his humanistic command of wit and language and his ability to combine the natural sciences and the humanities in one dialogue honored not only the recipient but also Panofsky himself. In the field of art history, cultural relations between America and Germany had already started before World War I with among others the founding of the Germanic Museum at Harvard. In the second half of the 1920s the bonds were strengthened. Prior to Panofsky, Adolph Goldschmidt and Gustav Pauli were invited to give lectures and speeches at different universities and museums; following them came Arthur Haseloff. The College of Fine Arts at New York University had started art history summer courses for American students in Berlin and Munich. The Warburg Library responded positively to the American attention it had attracted since 1929 by inviting the art historian Paul J. Sachs of Harvard and Abraham Flexner, the well-known educational reformer, cultural politician, and later founder of the Institute for Advanced Study, for an informational trip to Germany. Since art history’s “ground work” had already been done and Panofsky’s reputation was well known in the United States, it surprised no one when he received three offers to teach there following his departure from Hamburg: from Harvard, New York, and 110

Erwin Panofsky

Chicago. Walter W. S. Cook and Richard Offner, both from New York, Paul J. Sachs of Harvard, and Charles Rufus Morey of Princeton were his tireless supporters. Just as subtly effective was the clandestine diplomat Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the young director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and especially his wife, Margaret Scolari Barr. She had studied under Panofsky in New York in the winter of 1931/32, polishing and honing his spoken and written English to the level his language skills demanded. Without her he could hardly have balanced the job offers so diplomatically until Morey came through with an invitation to the Institute for Advanced Study in the spring of 1935, which he accepted. All the American offers in 1934/35, however, would not have tempted him had there been a comparable opportunity in Great Britain which would have enabled him to use the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, now called the Warburg Institute. It was only when he gave up all hope of being able to work in Britain that Panofsky severed the emotional ties to Europe and thus freed himself for the New World. A wound remained, however, which opened whenever he dealt with the Warburg Institute. After he was naturalized in 1940 and Europe was sinking into ruins he called the new American phase of life his “expulsion into paradise.” His appointment to the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1935 confirmed his position as the leading art historian of the time. He would not have been Panofsky had he not more than fulfilled all the hopes invested in him and the demands made upon him. Collegiality and cooperation in Princeton distinguished him just as they had in Hamburg. New friendships – for example, with the graphics expert William M. Ivins, the author Booth Tarkington, and the film historian and theorist Siegfried Kracauer – were formed, new students such as Millard Meiss arrived on the scene, old friends and former colleagues and students – Walter Friedländer, Alexander Dorner, Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Hanns Swarzenski, William S. Heckscher – were helped in any way possible. In the shortest period of time imaginable the language genius had conquered English and went on to give his grateful listeners new visual insights on the treasures of the fine arts. The fact that his audience was aware of his enormous erudition and admired him for his ability to decipher the content of difficult images, celebrating him as an iconographer, pleased him but also effected ironical understatement. He was fond of iconography but he always saw content and form as a unity. This is more than evident in the aforementioned Imago Pietatis (1927) and Meaning in the Visual Arts (1951), as well as in his great works, Albrecht Dürer (1943), the first relevant presentation of Dürer in English, and his Early Netherlandish Painting of 1953. Panofsky was seen by both his proponents and adversaries to be the leading art historian of the time – a claim he never once himself made but which aroused resistance all the same. One of Panofsky’s most powerful adversaries in the United States was Francis Henry Taylor, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who labeled him a printed-word scholar, insensitive to the values of art. Following the publication of his Studies in Iconology (1939), the director was driven to remark that it was hardly a wonder when students in Germany threw themselves in despair into the arms of the National Socialists when confronted with this kind of inscrutable and useless study. Even earlier, the legendary art connoisseur Bernard Berenson, in a letter to Margaret Barr, of all people, made Panofsky the Hitler of academic art history and Charles Rufus Morey his Hindenburg. Furthermore, it must be stated that Panofsky was always very much against the isolated application of individual methods. For example, he did not approve of the plan to start a special journal for iconology, even though his favorite student, Heckscher, supported it. As in his professional field, he did not keep his political outlook, which was that of a liberal, silent, supporting Roosevelt, declining a lecture tour to California if it meant swearing the oath of loyalty, publicly opposing McCarthy, and, as an opponent of nuclear defense, calling all those involved in the 111

Dieter Wuttke

production of the neutron bomb “no better than Eichmann: efficient and obedient experts of annihilation.”15 In his lecture first given in Princeton in 1953, which was subsequently printed as In the Defense of the Ivory Tower, he defines the political responsibility of the scholar. It should be stressed that as an afterthought he produced the short essay On Movies (1936), which gave film theory a powerful, unforeseeable impulse. The occasion was the founding of the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is today one of Panofsky’s most cited and most studied works. Unfortunately, we know nothing of the cinema scripts which he wrote as a young student and scholar. In any case, he and his wife Dora always enjoyed going to the movies. Not counting those essays published on the topic of the Middles Ages in his Deutschsprachige Aufsätze,16 Panofsky made a mark for himself as a medievalist when he wrote Die deutsche Plastik des elften bis dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (The German Art of Sculpture in the Eleventh through the Thirteenth Centuries, 1924), a monograph in which stylistic analysis is the prevailing method used. One of his first lectures in Morey’s Princeton of 1931/32 was Classical Mythology in Medieval Art (printed 1933/34). This was his introduction of Warburg’s methods to American art historians in which he elucidated the “principle of disjunction,” discovered by him and propagated as a kind of scientific law. He returned to the Middle Ages during World War II when he wrote Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and Its Art Treasures, completed in 1944 and published in 1946. His fondness for Suger increased to the extent that Panofsky saw him as his alter ego (Fig. 8.2) and

Figure 8.2 Panofsky in his study at the Institute for Advanced Study, spring 1966. Panofsky’s gesture is inspired by the portrait of Abbot Suger in the abbey church of St. Denis, Paris. Photo courtesy of Archive Wuttke.

112

Erwin Panofsky

confessed in his letters written in Latin that his model was no longer Cicero but, rather, his idol, Suger. The 1951 publication of Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism has been widely criticized but lauded by paleographer Robert Marichal, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss17 and became the most printed work by Panofsky in the United States. Among his essential medieval writings were the already cited Early Netherlandish Painting and Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (1960), dealing with medieval renascences. Only recently has one domain of Panofsky’s restless activity been made accessible to public assessment, that of his correspondence. The publication of the extensive five-volume selection of his letters has filled the former void.18 Panofsky’s wife Dora, of the Berlin Mosse family, supported his scientific work after the birth of their sons, Hans (1917) and Wolfgang (1919). It was only between 1943 and 1958 that she was able to undertake her own research and publish scientific papers. Their interests merged when they coauthored a volume on the history and influence of the motif of Pandora’s box in the monograph Pandora’s Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (London, 1956). It is dedicated to the memory of Gustav Pauli, who, as noted, steered the Panofskys to Hamburg decades earlier. Dora’s unique, slightly masculine type of charm and intellectuality attracted a number of susceptible people. Colin Eisler and William S. Heckscher have confirmed this, and her correspondence with the Hamburg artist Eduard Bargheer proves that although she was frail, she could be quite fervent.19 Her life, unfortunately, was restricted from the mid-1940s due to ill health, a condition that reinforced the very close relationship she had with her husband. Dora died in October 1965. In June 1966 Panofsky married his second wife, the art historian Gerda Soergel. After the destruction caused by World War II, efforts were made to renew severed links. The Panofskys worried most about their former housekeeper, Bertel Ziegenhagen, who had devotedly cared for their sons, Hans and Wolfgang, but who had remained in Germany, his beloved and revered teacher, Wilhelm Vöge, and Dora’s sister, Martha Mosse, who had escaped from the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Through people affiliated with the occupation forces, Panofsky successfully searched for the family friend Trux Jörgensen and his former student, the archaeologist Peter Heinrich von Blanckenhagen. He generously provided them with care packages, and in the cases of Bertel and Martha with financial support. Contact from Germany and Europe was to be very sparse for several years. Full honors must go to the Freie Hansestadt Hamburg and its university as they endeavored to recall their former professor as early as April 1946, although not without pressure from the British occupation forces. The University of Leipzig also approached him in 1947 through Panofsky’s old friend, the archaeologist Bernhard Schweitzer. The Greek scholar Bruno Snell, a former neighbor on Alte Rabenstrasse 34 in Hamburg who not only had survived the Nazi dictatorship but also was able to keep the regime at a distance, also contacted the Panofskys in 1946 and was warmly thanked. Panofsky’s not entirely guiltless old friend Hermann Giesau had strived to renew his old friendship with the family from 1947 onwards, and finally succeeded. While exchange with the Warburg Institute and with researchers in Britain had never been interrupted, a more lively intercourse with the rest of Europe and Germany developed but only at the end of the 1940s. Doctoral candidates began to consult Panofsky. In 1949, the Swedish art historian Carl Nordenfalk and the German Romanist Ernst Robert Curtius became members of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The International Art Historians’ Congress in Amsterdam may well have served as a vehicle for normalizing relations in 1952. There, Panofsky once again met his acquaintance Hans Kauffmann, who had been present at his engagement party, and for the first time he met Gert von der Osten, then the director of the Landesmuseum in Hannover. Panofsky had been invited to the meeting by Jan Gerrit van Gelder and availed of the opportunity to go on to Sweden, where he gave the Gottesman Lectures in Gripsholm Castle 113

Dieter Wuttke

by invitation of the University of Uppsala. The first part of the series – and unfortunately only this – appeared in 1960 under the title Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art. At this time, a younger, international group of art historians had recognized the exemplary and stimulating potential in Panofsky’s work. It helped that in 1955 Meaning in the Visual Arts had been published in paperback, which Panofsky thus labeled his “drugstore book.” In this inexpensive form it became an academic best seller. The paperback edition of Studies in Iconology, which had initially appeared in hardback in 1939, followed in 1962. Gradually, the interruption caused by the Nazi regime and World War II to the flow of ideas was ending, and global recognition of Panofsky ensued. For the first time, German art historians who had not emigrated were invited to become members of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton: Ernst Holzinger (1950/51), Gert von der Osten (1957/58), Willibald Sauerländer (1961/62), and Egon Verheyen (1962/63). Leopold Ettlinger and Otto Pächt, émigrés until then working in London, were called to the Institute in 1956/57. Otto Pächt was later appointed to the chair of art history at his alma mater, the university of his hometown – Vienna. Panofsky congratulated him with the following lovely worded and self-revelatory note: “It is no secret that I am a split personality, half Warburgian and half Viennese, and so I am doubly glad to see that chair filled by a scholar who is, more than anyone else, within the Apostolic succession.” The first translations of Panofsky’s works into a non-English language – namely, Italian – appeared in 1951 and 1961/62, and from 1964 on, the edition of Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft, which Hariolf Oberer and Egon Verheyen had obtained, advanced the Panofsky “renaissance” in Germany. As a great favor to German art history and due to the persuasive efforts of Kurt Bauch, professor of art history at the University of Freiburg, Panofsky conceded to portray his former teacher Wilhelm Vöge in the introduction of the 1958 edition of Vöge’s collected works in German. However, the dam of reservations toward the country that he never wanted to see again only started to crumble in 1966 when he saw it as his duty to pay his respects to the parents of his second wife, Gerda, in Cologne. As soon as Panofsky had shown a willingness to travel to Germany, initiated by Kurt Bauch, his German friends acted: Herbert von Einem in Bonn, Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich in Munich, and Hans Kauffmann in Berlin extended invitations to him. Gert von der Osten, the general director of the Cologne museums, as well as Willibald Sauerländer in Freiburg also fell into line, so that in 1967 Panofsky visited Cologne, Bonn, Freiburg, and Munich. The honors accorded him culminated in Panofsky’s admission to the Order Pour le mérite, awarded in the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. Between 1936 in Utrecht and 1967 in Bonn Panofsky received many awards and honorary doctorates, and various academies and societies appointed him as a member. As much as this promoted his renown, it did not noticeably affect his research. In answering the many congratulatory letters, he rarely replied other than ironically: the first award one would receive is by chance; all following would result from that first one. There are, however, occasionally signs of unclouded joy. In 1957, on the occasion of being awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard, he was dressed in a custom-made copy of his former Hamburg academic gown (Fig. 8.3). In 1962 he retired as professor emeritus. In the same year, the same university he had started to teach in from 1931 onwards, New York University, conferred an honorary doctorate on him and praised him as “one of the greatest minds of our time” and as “perhaps the greatest living figure in the whole field of art history.” The Institute of Fine Arts persuaded him to teach there, but in the middle of December 1967, a heart attack ended his professional career. Two weeks before his seventy-sixth birthday, on March 14, 1968, he passed away. Panofsky’s nature was a composite of sharp intelligence, sparkling humor, and an abiding love of his fellow man. In kindness, humility, gratitude, patience, helpfulness, and loyalty he was just 114

Erwin Panofsky

Figure 8.3 Panofsky in his Hamburg academic gown at Harvard, 1957, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate. Photo courtesy of Archive Wuttke.

as unsurpassed as in his inconspicuous, intellectual, artistic, and linguistic abilities, which were standard setting. One may, for fear of being misunderstood, never shy away from calling him a humanist in the full sense of the word as Panofsky would have resented it. He knew no snobbishness or class conceit and was prepared to converse with anyone except barbarians. Cicero and Erasmus, Dante and Shakespeare, Jean Paul and Fontane, Abbot Suger and Alberti, Dürer and Tizian, Leonardo and Galilei, Mozart and Bach would have enjoyed the company of this vir bonus dicendi, videndi audiendique peritus just as much as Klein Erna or the “inventor” of the limerick. In 1932, after Ernst Cassirer had contributed a number of lectures and articles on the two hundredth anniversary of Goethe’s birthday, his friend Erwin Panofsky is said to have sent him a piece of kitschy Goethe soap accompanied by the following verse: Deines Geistes reine Reife Tat mir arg beschmutzten wohl. Nimm’ drum diese Goethe-Seife, Teils als Form, teils als Symbol. (Purest ripeness of your spirit Soothed my soiled torso full Take, therefore, this Goethe soap, partly form and partly symbol.) A number of his Latin epigrams exemplify his poetic gifts, such as the one already cited on the death of Mozart. A further memorable example is a deep, philosophical poem which questions 115

Dieter Wuttke

the sense of the humanists’ research. Panofsky dedicated it to his friends Herbert and Lotte von Einem, accompanying an offprint.20 Quid iuvat in nugas talem conferre laborem? Barbarus ad portas; ludere conveniat? Talia quaerere non mortalibus, optime, fas est: Quae Deus imposuit, solvere pensa decet. Psittacus atque elephas coeli sub lumine vivunt Extant heroes grammaticique simul. Quidquid fata volent, animus tamen usque manebit Aequus – et inter nos inviolata fides. (What use to struggle with uselessness? // The barbarian is right at the door; is child’s play now fitting? // To ask this, my friend, is not mortals’ right: // Fulfilling God-sent tasks is our work. // The parrot and the elephant live under heaven’s light, // heroes and scholars fare like-wise. // Whatever fate brings, equanimity should remain // and loyalty among us abide.) Occasionally one may hear art historians of both sexes stating that Panofsky is “out” and only Warburg is “in.” This verdict is applied to a person who was also quite well thought of among women in the field. Following the premature death of Fritz Saxl, the director of London’s Warburg Institute, Panofsky was offered his vacant post by Gertrud Bing, Warburg’s assistant in Hamburg and later assistant director in London. She knew of no one more qualified for the position, and when he declined, she outspokenly declared that now only the second-best would fill the position. As far as I can tell, Panofsky’s influence resulted from his power to convince and not to persuade. Although he was always ready to give lectures and to participate in discussions, not only to clearly express his liberal-humanist opinions but also to voice protest in matters of politics and to explain and publish the results of his research, he never undertook to promote himself. As a researcher and politician dealing with questions of learning and education he would never have acted aggressively as a partisan of his own concerns. From my own experience I can state that he considered himself neither sacrosanct nor beyond criticism. That is why at this point I fail to understand the continuing irrational aggression directed toward him since his death. Whether the increasing signs of a trans-Atlantic climate change in relation to the present bias against him are pointing to an about-face and a return to an objectively and historically more prudent assessment of his work remains to be seen. Perhaps the recently published Korrespondenz, which illustrates the diversity in his life and works, can promote the turn.21

Description and interpretation of works of art A thorough evaluation would overextend this article. However, over and above the points already mentioned in the preceding section, the following comments will attempt to deal with basic and differentiating aspects of the topic. If we want to understand Panofsky, we must recognize that in his definitions of iconography, iconology, and typology his focus is not on history but rather on theory.22 The applications of his theories are to be found in his papers – as opposed to his still unpublished lectures23 – which are generally free of didactic references to his theoretical statements and unconcerned with adhering strictly to his own theoretical specifications. He neither is concerned with the history of typology, iconography, and iconology nor gives any information, barring a few short 116

Erwin Panofsky

references, to the impulses he might have received from others. For typology we have his reference to archaeology but no specific evidence as to the sources he might have used. In his approach to iconography and iconology we may assume that his teachers, Vöge and Goldschmidt, stressed the practical before the theoretical.24 He hardly noticed the efforts made to establish an Internationale Gesellschaft für Ikonographische Studien between 1902 and 1909. Goldschmidt and Warburg were engaged in the process but probably did not inform their students. The discussions taking place at the Internationale Gesellschaft für Ikonographische Studien, in which the term “iconology” had already been proposed as the new methodological approach, were and still are of historical and theoretical interest today.25 The established connection to Warburg and his Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in all probability provided the greatest impulse for the birth of Panofsky’s own theory, which then filled in the theoretical gap in academic art history.26 According to his own testimony, nothing exerted greater influence on his research. Soon after he had emigrated to the United States in 1934, the Index of Christian Art in Princeton presumably served as another important source.27

Typology The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung published a series of articles on Die Zukunftsaufgaben der deutschen Wissenschaft in 1927. Panofsky contributed an article on the Probleme der Kunstgeschichte. Instead of what the title claims, he concentrated on one problem he found especially urgent – to overcome the disjunction of aesthetics and interpreting content by bringing about the conjunction of form and content when viewing a work of art. He saw the answer in typology and proposed treating a specific topic holistically so that form and content are perceived as one entity. The same year he delivered the most convincing example using the already mentioned Imago Pietatis: Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des Schmerzensmanns und der Maria Mediatrix.28 His interpretation shows the following theoretical findings: (1) the term “type” refers to the “complex unity of form and content” (komplexe Einheit von Inhalt und Form). (2) He views art objects neither by purely analyzing the form nor by purely analyzing the content iconographically but aims at artistic unities in a historical context “in which a certain content combines with a certain form to form a descriptive entity” (“in denen sich ein bestimmter Inhalt mit einer bestimmten Form zu einer anschaulichen Einheit verbindet”). Edgar Breitenbach’s book Speculum humanae salvationis: Eine typengeschichtliche Untersuchung (1930), which developed out of his 1927 dissertation in Hamburg, adopted, contrary to expectations, none of the results from Panofsky’s groundbreaking study. It was not even cited. Breitenbach used the term bildtypengeschichtliche Methode without defining it.29 This corresponds to Panofsky’s earlier use. Together with Fritz Saxl in 1923 he had written a monograph which became extremely well known and was called Dürers ‘Melencholia I’: Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung, in which he did not even mention the term typengeschichtlich. He did write on a “series of types” in the introduction to the already mentioned book Die deutsche Plastik des elften bis dreizehnten Jahrhunderts. With the book Hercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst (Hercules at the Crossroads and Other Antique Subject Matter in Art, 1930), iconography was given preference over the history of types. In the meantime, iconography had developed into a discrete method which could now be a new focal point. Only once did he later emphasize the history of type and that was in the title of ‘Melencholia’(’s) second edition. Panofsky had mainly enlarged, revised, and recast the manuscript for this second edition. His wish was to retain “quellen- und typengeschichtlich” in the subtitle so that if the book had been published in German, the title would have read: Melancholia: Eine quellen- und typengeschichtliche Untersuchung zur astrologischen Temperamentenlehre.30 117

Dieter Wuttke

Iconography and iconology Hercules am Scheidewege of 1930 was the work on which Panofsky’s reputation and renown as an iconographer are based, and “iconographic” (not iconography!) is the key word which first meets the reader’s eye in the preface.31 His intention was, he informs the reader, to “explain a number of art works iconographically” (“eine Anzahl von Kunstwerken ikonographisch zu erklären”). That these works were to represent “types of images,” and new ones at that, is a point the reader realizes only at second glance. One looks as much in vain to return to the definition of “type” as in the Imago Pietatis book as for a clear indication that “type” is defined by the aesthetic unity of form and content. He follows the premise of the Imago Pietatis treatise to deal holistically with “narrowly defined” (“eng begrenzte”) issues, all the while promoting an iconographic explanation at the expense of viewing form. He correctly declares that “a successful exegesis of content does not only come closest to historical understanding but also enriches and clarifies its aesthetics” (“dass eine gelungene Inhaltsexegese nicht nur dem historischen Verständnis zugute kommt, sondern auch dessen ästhetisches Erlebnis [. . .] bereichert und klärt”). He elucidates why the most formalistic art history has no choice but “to a great extent” undertake “content exegesis” and even take it for granted. He acknowledges the limitation of that deliberate step, one which was the basis of his success, in a letter which he sent to his former teacher Vöge on January 6, 1931: “From the beginning onwards” he had “inwardly given up trying to do justice to art and found another small corner of the great field of art history to work in, a corner where the meeting of word and image traditions can be studied by way of simultaneously applying type-historical and philological methods so that ‘iconological’ insight can be won” (er habe “auf die Versuche, der Kunst [. . .] innerlich gerecht zu werden [. . .], von Anfang an verzichtet [. . .], und eine andere, kleine Ecke des großen kunsthistorischen Arbeitsfeldes gefunden [. . .], die Ecke, wo das Zusammentreffen von Worttradition und Bildüberlieferung untersucht und durch die gleichzeitige Anwendung typengeschichtlicher und philologischer Methoden eine bestimmte Form ‘ikonologischer’ Erkenntnisse gewonnen werden kann” ).32 The appearance of the Hercules book and the probable intercession of the art historian Arthur Haseloff33 of Kiel led to an invitation which was for Panofsky the most portentous. He had been approached to give a lecture on May 20, 1931, at the Kant Society of Kiel which was published one year later under the title Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst.34 In combination with the English versions of 1939 and 1955 it made Panofsky the leading theoretician of iconography and iconology.35 As early as late fall of 1931, he had the opportunity in New York to elucidate his theories using examples. His colleague Albert M. Friend concluded enthusiastically, “That’s iconography!”36 As a farewell gesture, at the end of 1933 he held a private series of lectures in Hamburg on the same topic.37 This type of didactic engagement continued in America with such themes as “What Is Iconology?” or in the jocular variation of “Traffic Accidents in the Relation between Texts and Pictures.”38 Although Panofsky’s three-stage model of iconographic and iconological interpretation has belonged to the general knowledge of art historians for generations, a brief explanation here based on the last and final version of 1955 and stressing particular aspects is in order. According to him, when describing and interpreting works of art, three areas must be taken into consideration: the first is the “primary or natural subject matter.” This involves recognizing objects, actions, and expressive gestures which the beholder spontaneously identifies. Since, however, these will be depicted differently over time, the interpreter must take recourse to his or her knowledge of form or style history to avoid misconstruction. The second level deals with the “secondary or conventional subject matter.” The interpreter has the task of explaining the 118

Erwin Panofsky

image’s content. For this a knowledge of literary sources is a prerequisite. To avoid coming to false conclusions when linking certain visual content to certain sources, a knowledge of the history of types comes into play as a corrective, which means knowing the pictorial forms certain images have taken over time. This is the area of iconographic analysis. The third level relates to “intrinsic meaning or content” and presents the viewer with the most challenging task. The viewer has to determine both the conscious and perhaps the unconscious intentions that the artist had when creating the work. In order to reach dependable or at least evident conclusions, the interpreter will need an all-encompassing knowledge of the humanities and the sciences. This is the area of iconology. Iconology depends on synthesis, as opposed to analytic iconography. There are two noteworthy aspects to Panofsky’s theory of art interpretation: the first is that design, style, and history of type are, so to speak, de-aestheticized. They become auxiliaries serving iconography. Panofsky apparently consciously declined to develop theories which merged art interpretation and art aesthetics. He always proposed the unity of form and content, stressing that iconography and iconology formed the basis of an adequate understanding of form. Whoever wants to see how he mastered this challenge must study his practical application – that is, the holistic approach in his great monographs Albrecht Dürer (in two volumes, 1943, as single-volume edition in 1955) and Early Netherlandish Painting (1953), or in the extensive introduction to his last book, Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic (1969). The second issue is the term “iconology,” which denotes the third level of interpretation. He did not apply it either in 1932 or in 1939 in spite of the title Studies in Iconology, but included it only in the amended 1955 paperback version, Meaning in the Visual Arts.39 Only twelve years later he surprised the art world when the French translation of Studies in Iconology appeared, and he informed his readers in the introduction that if his work had been published at that time, he would have exchanged the title word “Iconology” for “Iconography.” He argued that the term “iconology” had, on the one hand, caused quite a bit of confusion and, on the other, “iconography” had taken on such significance through its use by art historians that it now encompassed the whole interpretative spectrum.40 We may take this confession as Panofsky’s expression of skepticism about methodology evident in his earlier cited dictum – “The discussion of methods spoils their application.”41 Asked what differentiated iconology from iconography, he had been wittily replying for quite a while, “Optimists will say Iconology is to Iconography as Geology is to Geography, pessimists, that it is as Astrology to Astrography.”42 It has not been possible in this short essay to depict the overwhelming impact of Panofsky’s methodology nor the responses it has evoked.43 For Günter Bandmann44 and Jan Białostocki,45 for instance, a revelation occurred.46 Among the critics, no one has found a model to replace Panofsky’s, with one exception – Roelof van Straten. He has proposed applying the term “iconology” only to those functional intentions of which the artist was unconscious.47 But since the meaning which the artist consciously employed in his work and that which he unconsciously employed often cannot be determined, a differentiation in the practice of interpretation is hardly applicable. So we should leave Panofsky’s theory, which has been extremely successful for so many years, just as it stands.

Notes * Translated from German by Jackie Plötz. 1 For information about the art historians mentioned in this chapter see the World Wide Web and the following printed works: Encyclopedia of Art, ed. J. Turner, 34 vols. (Basingstoke, 1996ff.); Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon, Von P. Betthausen, P.H. Feist und Chr. Fork unter Mitarbeit von K. Rührdanz und J. Zimmer (Stuttgart-Weimar, 2007), 2nd ed.; E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz 1910 bis 1968: Eine kommentierte Auswahl in fünf Bänden, ed. D. Wuttke (Wiesbaden, 2001–2011), vol. I: Korrespondenz 1910–1936 (2001); vol. II: Korrespondenz 1937–1949 (2003); vol. III: Korrespondenz

119

Dieter Wuttke

2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9

10 11

12 13

14

15 16

1950–1956 (2006); vol. IV: Korrespondenz 1957–1961 (2008); vol. V: Korrespondenz 1962–1968 und Nachklänge 1969–1971 (2011); bibliographic data for the aforementioned art historians easily accessible in D. Wuttke, Kumulationen: Ergänzungsband zur Erwin-Panofsky-Korrespondenz. Unter Mitarbeit von P. Schöner (Wiesbaden, 2014). This supplement volume to the Erwin Panofsky correspondence contains: corrections and additions, the most complete bibliography of Panofsky’s writings 1914 through 1969/1973 with 319 bibliographical entries, the bibliography of the reviews concerning vols. I–V, the revised bio-bibliographical list of the correspondents of all volumes (141–606), the revised index of names and subjects of all volumes (607–963). For Panofsky’s life see the Korrespondenz and Kumulationen referenced earlier; K. Michels, “Panofsky, Erwin,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 20 (Berlin, 2001), 36–38; H. Bredekamp, “Erwin Panofsky,” in Klassiker der Kunstgeschichte, vol. II, ed. U. Pfisterer (Munich, 2008), 61–75. Apart from Panofsky’s correspondence see two autobiographical essays by E. Panofsky, “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline,” and “Three Decades of Art History in the United States: Impressions of a Transplanted European,” in E. Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (Garden City, 1955, second edition, 1957; Doubleday Anchor Book A 59), 1–25 and 321–46; J. Białostocki, “Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968): Thinker, Historian, Human Being,” Simiolus 4 (1970), 68–89; H. von Einem, “Erwin Panofsky zum Gedächtnis: Bibliographie der Rezensionen zu Schriften Erwin Panofskys,” ed. R. Heidt, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 30 (1968), 7–18. I wish to thank Jackie Plötz for translating this essay, and Petra Schöner for editorial assistance and the electronic processing of the images accompanying it. See D. Wuttke, “From the Laboratory of a Cultural Historian: On Contacts between Mathematics, Science, the Humanities, and the Arts” (translation by Jackie Plötz), in Tales from the Laboratory or, Homunculus Revisited, ed. R. Görner (Munich, 2005), 11–38. See C. Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture,” in C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, 1973), 3–30. See notes 1, 6, 13, 21. All other bibliographic data for this book and all other references to Panofsky’s publications can be found in the Panofsky-Bibliography in Wuttke, Kumulationen (as in note 1). See Record of the Art Museum Princeton University, vol. XXVIII, no. 1, 1969, ed. H. Backlin-Landman. See Record of the Art Museum Princeton University (as in note 6). There is an expanded version of seven pages with additional information about publications suggested by Panofsky and the honors bestowed on him, published privately 1970, but dated 1969. See I. Lavin and M. Aronberg Lavin, Truth and Beauty at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, 2012). The study is freely available on the Internet. Białostocki, “Panofsky” (as in note 1), see 84. For a discussion on disguised symbolism see J.-B. Bedaux, The Reality of Symbols: Studies in the Iconology of Netherlandish Art 1400–1800 (The Hague, 1990), 9–53; A. Arnulf, “Das Bild als Rätsel. Zur Vorstellung der verdeckten und mehrfachen Bildbedeutung von der Antike bis zum 17. Jahrhundert,” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, N.F., 53 (2002), 103–62; see especially 113–21. J. Fest, Wege zur Geschichte (Zurich, 1992), 127–28. “Ebreo di sangue, Amburghese di cuore, d’anima Fiorentino.” See G. Bing, Aby M. Warburg (Hamburg, 1958), 32. Concerning the dictum “expulsion into paradise” see Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. IV (as in note 1), 585, and vol. V, 1001. See E. Panofsky, “Wilhelm Vöge, 16. Februar 1868–30. Dezember 1952,” in W. Vöge, Bildhauer des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1958), XXXI. See D. Wuttke, “Panofskys Warburg – Warburgs Panofsky,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte 101 (2015), 87–113. See also D. Wuttke, “Erwin Panofskys Herculesbuch nach siebenundsechzig Jahren,” in the reprint of E. Panofsky, Hercules am Scheidewege und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst (Berlin, 1997), extrapagination 1–96; D. Wuttke, “L’Hercule á la croisée des chemins d’Erwin Panofsky: l’ouvrage et son importance pour l’histoire de l’art,” in Relire Panofsky, ed. R. Recht and F. Douar (Paris, 2008), 105–47. E. Panofsky, Die Gestaltungsprincipien Michelangelos, besonders in ihrem Verhältniszu denen Raffaels, ed. Gerda Panofsky (Berlin/Boston, 2014). For Panofsky’s Habilitationsschrift see Wuttke, “Panofskys Warburg – Warburgs Panofsky” (as in note13), then note 17, for compiled sources and notes on interpretation. For a critical review see D. Wuttke in Bibliographie zur Symbolik, Ikonographie und Mythologie 47 (2014), 90–93. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. V (as in note 1), 168–69. E. Panofsky, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, ed. K. Michels and M. Warnke, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1998). In this edition the numbers 8, 14, 40, 48, 66, 84, 86, 164, and 269 listed in the Panofsky-Bibliographie of Wuttke, Kumulationen (as in note 1), are missing. A collection and publication of Panofsky’s English essays are needed.

120

Erwin Panofsky 17 E. Panofsky, Architecture gothique et pensée scolastique, précédé de l’abbé Suger de Saint-Denis. Traduction et postface de P. Bourdieu. Deuxième édition revue et corrigée (Paris, 1968); R. Marichal, “L’Écriture Latin et la psychologie des peuples,” in La XXIIe semaine de synthèse. Avec collaboration de M. Cohen et al. (Paris, 1963), 199–247, especially 234–38 and 241; C. Lévi-Strauss, “Structuralisme et critique littéraire,” Paragone (Letteratura) (1965), no. 182, 125–33. 18 Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vols. I–V (as in note 1) and the supplementary volume Wuttke, Kumulationen (as in note 1). 19 See the Korrespondenz-Nachtrag (KN) in Panofsky, Korrespondenz (as in note 1), vol. V. Among her letters to Bargheer we find one of the most touching of all letters. See vol. V, no. KN 469a. 20 Von Einem, “Panofsky zum Gedächtnis” (as in note 1), especially 11. See Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. V (as in note 1), 941, fig. 80. See the correction note to von Einem, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 31 (1969), 334. For Panofsky as a Latinist see D. Wuttke, “Latein und Kunstgeschichte. Ein Beitrag zum Methodenproblem,” in Kunst, Politik, Religion. Studien zur Kunst in Süddeutschland, Österreich, Tschechien und der Slowakei: Festschrift für Franz Matsche zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. M. Hörsch and E. Oy-Marra (Petersberg, 2000), 177–91. 21 See P. Schöner, “Autobiographie in Briefen. Die Edition der Erwin-Panofsky-Korrespondenz ist abgeschlossen. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte,” Mensch/Wissenschaft/Magie. Österreichische Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Mitteilungen 29 (2012), 197–210. The article ends with two examples from the Panofsky letters and a photo of 1958 showing Panofsky talking with the Polish art historian Jan Białostocki. 22 Thus he does not discuss, for instance, the articles by K. Mannheim, “Beiträge zur Theorie der Weltanschauungs-Interpretation,” Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 1 (1921/22), 236–74, and by G.J. Hoogewerff, “L’iconologie et son importance pour l‘étude systématique de l’art chrétien,” Rivista d’archeologia christiana (1931), 53–82, and not the book concerning the history of types by H. Cornell, Karakteriseringsproblemet i konstvetenskapen: studier och bidrag till konstbetraktandets och konstbeskrivandets utveckling (Stockholm, 1928). Panofsky quotes only that he adopted the term “Dokumentsinn” from Mannheim. See E. Panofsky, “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der Bildenden Kunst,” Logos 21 (1932), 103–19; reprinted in E. Panofsky, Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft, ed. H. Oberer and E. Verheyen (Berlin, 1985), 85–97, 3rd ed., and in Bildende Kunst als Zeichensystem 1.: Ikonographie und Ikonologie, ed. E. Kaemmerling (Cologne, 1994), 185–206, 6th ed. See the English translation and commentary by J. Elsner and K. Lorenz: E. Panofsky, “On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts,” trans. J. Elsner and K. Lorenz, Critical Inquiry 38 (2011/12), 467–82, and J. Elsner and K. Lorenz, “The Genesis of Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 38 (2011/12), 483–512. For comprehensive information see the article, praised by Panofsky, by J. Białostocki, “Iconography and Iconology,” Encyclopedia of World Art 7 (1963), 769–85 (quoting as well research articles concerning “Typenwanderung” and “Typenschöpfung”). Reliable information is also available from C. Cieri Via, Nei dettagli nascosto: Per una storia del pensiero iconologico (Rome, 1994). 23 For more information see Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 673 (letter to Walter Friedländer). 24 See Panofsky, “Wilhelm Vöge” (as in note 12), and E. Panofsky, “Goldschmidts Humor,” in Adolph Goldschmidt zum Gedächtnis, 1863–1944, ed. C.G. Heise (Hamburg, 1963), 25–32. 25 See D. Wuttke, “Unbekannte Quellen zur Geschichte der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Ikonographische Studien,” in P. Schmidt, Aby M. Warburg und die Ikonologie, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden, 1993), 47–89. 26 See Wuttke, “Panofskys Warburg – Warburgs Panofsky” (as in note 13). 27 See Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 404 (Panofsky’s first visit to the Index of Christian Art in Princeton University happened in 1931!), and Korrespondenz, vol. V (as in note 1), 216f. With respect to the greater context see C. Hourihane, “‘They Stand on His Shoulders’: Morey, Iconography, and the Index of Christian Art, Insights and Interpretations,” in Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2002), 3–16. 28 See the reprint of “Probleme der Kunstgeschichte” as in Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 957–64, and the critical note in Wuttke, Kumulationen (as in note 1), 37f. The “Imago Pietatis” article was printed first in the Festschrift für Max J. Friedländer zum 60. Geburtstage (Leipzig, 1927), 261–308. It was reprinted in E. Panofsky, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze (as in note 16), 186–233. See note 32. 29 The first to adopt Panofsky’s definition of 1927 and connect it to his essay of 1932 “Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der Bildenden Kunst” (as in note 22) seems to have been G. von der Osten. See G. von der Osten, Der Schmerzensmann: Typengeschichte eines deutschen Andachtsbildwerkes von 1300 bis 1600 (Berlin, 1935), 130f.; J. Baschet, “Inventivité et sérialité des images médiévales: Pour une approche iconographique élargie,” Annales 51 (1996), 93–133, reinvents Panofsky’s approach without knowing of Panofsky’s “Imago Pietatis” essay (as in note 28).

121

Dieter Wuttke 30 See Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. II (as in note 1), 138, with Fritz Saxl’s letter of September 2, 1938. As is well-known the book appeared only in 1964 under the title Saturn and Melancholy. The vicissitudes of its genesis are documented in Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vols. I–V (as in note 1). 31 See the afterword by D. Wuttke, “Erwin Panofskys Herculesbuch” (as in note 13). 32 Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 383. Cf. Panofsky, “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” (as in note 1), especially 17, where he as one of the tasks of the art historian describes this: “He will observe the interplay between the influences of literary sources and the effect of self-dependent representational traditions, in order to establish a history of iconographic formulae or ‘types.’” 33 On Haseloff ’s sixtieth birthday Panofsky dedicated the following article: E. Panofsky, “Der greise Philosoph am Scheidewege: Ein Beispiel für die ‘Ambivalenz’ ikonographischer Kennzeichen,” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, N.F., 9 (1932), 285–90. 34 Logos 21 (1932), 103–19; for reprints, translations, and commentaries see note 22. 35 E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York, 1939), “Introduction,” 3–17; reprint as Harper Torchbook (New York, 1962). Panofsky again does not define the term “iconology” in the main text but in the preface of the Torchbook edition, p. V, he speaks of “iconological method.” E. Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (Garden City, 1955), 2nd ed. (Garden City, 1957; Doubleday Anchor Book A 59), 26–41. This is the text in which Panofsky introduces and defines the term “iconology” for the third stage of the interpretation, in which iconological synthesis is contrasted to iconographical analysis. He gives no indication that the present text is a revised version of the text from 1939. 36 See Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 404 (letter to Fritz Saxl) and 444 (letter to Dora Panofsky). 37 See Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. I (as in note 1), 673 (letter to Walter Friedländer). 38 With respect to “What Is Iconology” see Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. II (as in note 1), 1133f. The theme of iconography/iconology, which Panofsky frequently deals with in his correspondence, cannot the least be unfolded in this short chapter. For the references see the indices to the Korrespondenz, vols. I–V, easily accessible in the collection by Wuttke, Kumulationen (as in note 1). 39 See note 35. 40 E. Panofsky, Essais d’iconologie : Thèmes humanistes dans l’art de la Renaissance. Texte traduit par C. Herbette et B. Teyssèdre, présenté et annoté par B. Teyssédre (Paris, 1967), 3–5. Panofsky’s letter to the Belgian art historian and diplomat Guy de Tervarent of February 17, 1966, printed in the Korrespondenz, vol. V (as in note 1), 794f., is relevant to this context. 41 See the indices of Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vols. IV and V (as in note 1), s.v. “Panofsky, Erwin, Dicta.” On the relationship between methods in theory and methods in application Panofsky reported in a letter to William S. Heckscher of April 7, 1960 (Korrespondenz, vol. IV, 667, as in note 1) the following: “I am just coming home from a symposium where all the young people applied the WarburgPanofsky-Heckscher methods of interpretation in such a manner that I can say only ‘Obstupui, steteruntque comae et vox faustibus haesit.’” One has to read “faucibus” instead of “faustibus”; see Virgil, Aeneid, II, 774. Panofsky is quoting a student’s joke. The translation of the quotation after Virgil is: “I was stunned, my hair stood on end and my voice remained stuck in my throat.” 42 See Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. II (as in note 1), 217, note 9 (quotation from a letter to Rudolf Wittkower). See also vol. III (as in note 1), 165 (letter to Günter Bandmann). 43 Only one example may be quoted: L. de Vries, “Iconography and Iconology in Art History: Panofsky’s Prescriptive Definition and some Art-Historical Responses to Them,” in Picturing Performance. The Iconography of the Performing Arts in Concept and Practice, ed. F.Th. Heck (Rochester, 1999), 42–64. The responses are by H. van de Waal, Chr. Tümpel, and M. Baxandall. 44 See Bandmann to Panofsky on March 23, 1962, in Panofsky, Korrespondenz, vol. V (as in note 1), 165–67. 45 See E. Panofsky, Studien zur Ikonologie der Renaissance, Mit einem Vorwort von J. Białostocki und einem Nachwort von A. Beyer (Cologne, 1997), Białostocki’s preface, 7–16, especially 12. See Białostocki, “Panofsky” (as in note 1). 46 For more, see Wuttke, “Erwin Panofskys Herculesbuch” (as in note 13). 47 See R. van Straten, Iconography, Indexing, Iconclass: A Handbook (Leiden, 1994), 21; R. van Straten, Einführung in die Ikonographie, 3rd revised ed. (Berlin, 2004), 28. Finally I should like to point only to Max Imdahl’s endeavors to replace Panofsky’s concept of iconography/iconology with the new concept of “Ikonik.” See Schmidt, Warburg und die Ikonologie (as in note 25), and recently F. Thürlemann, “Ikonographie, Ikonologie, Ikonik: Max Imdahl liest Erwin Panofsky,” in Bildtheorien: Anthropologische und kulturelle Grundlagen des Visualistic Turn, ed. K. Sach-Hombach (Frankfurt am Main, 2008), 214–34.

122

9 CHARLES RUFUS MOREY AND THE INDEX OF CHRISTIAN ART Colum Hourihane

Even though much of Charles Rufus Morey’s own scholarship has been superseded by more recent research, he is still justifiably remembered as the founder of the largest archive devoted to medieval iconography in existence: The Index of Christian Art, which is based in Princeton University and is now approaching the one hundredth anniversary of its foundation.1 He is also fondly remembered as one of the founders of the College Art Association, where his name has been given to the Charles Rufus Morey Award. This was established in 1953 and is given annually to a distinguished English language book in the history of art.2 Even though it is not widely remembered now, Morey was one of the foremost supporters of the Art Bulletin for many years. Charles Rufus Morey, or “Morey” as he was most commonly known, was born in Hastings, Michigan, in 1877 and died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1955 (Fig. 9.1). After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1899 he continued his studies at the same university for a further year before receiving his masters in classics. This was followed by a three-year fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome. While there, he further developed his allconsuming passion for Italian art and the classics. He was invited by Alan Marquand, the founder of the Department of Art and Archaeology in Princeton University, to join the developing department in 1906, having been an instructor in classics at the university since 1903.3 By 1907 he had extended the range of courses being taught in the university to include medieval art. His own scholarship focused on late antique/early medieval Italian art and its Christian context. He frequently traveled to Italy, and it was on one such visit that he stopped in Paris at an archive that had been iconographically catalogued into broad divisions, such as Portraits, Landscape, Religious Subjects, and so forth. Inspired by such a thematic approach he began to order his own personal collection of images on his return to Princeton. He immediately realized the potential of such an archive and the value of extending his own personal but limited holdings. This discovery was paralleled by what he called an interest in iconography that was found among his colleagues in the department in Princeton, among them being Albert M. Frend (who joined the department in 1921). In the broader world, this was the period when a considerable interest in iconography was developing thanks to scholars such as Didron, Warburg, and Mâle, and in many ways this was the American response. It has to be realized that this was the age when images were limited; the 35mm slide had not yet been invented and scholars were dependent on whatever they could get their hands on. Apart 123

Colum Hourihane

Figure 9.1 Charles Rufus Morey. Image courtesy of the Index of Christian Art.

from whatever had been published, Morey’s own collection of images consisted of newspaper cuttings, photographs, and calendar cuttings. His good friend Erwin Panofsky had not yet come to the nearby Institute of Advanced Study, but that did not deter Morey from realizing the value of developing an iconographically catalogued archive of early Christian art (art up to AD 700). Undeterred by the lack of interest displayed by the university in developing such a resource, which declined financial support when he approached it, he was determined to proceed with the initiative. Before the university supported it, Morey with the assistance of volunteers started the process of adding images to his own personal collection. For him, the real value of such a resource was the range of its holdings. Unlike Émile Mâle, who was content to deal with subjects and themes within medieval art on the basis of one or two works, Morey wanted as many examples of particular themes as he could collect. He wanted to see how themes and ideas developed in relation to society and culture, and this could be achieved only by amassing as many images as he could from as many contexts as was known. The volunteers initially went to the bibliographic holdings and surveyed the art historical books and journals for images that could be added to the resource. Once again it has to be remembered that art historical publications were limited, unlike 124

Charles Rufus Morey

the current situation. The paucity of publications led Morey and subsequent directors to claim every five years that they would finish the Index within ten years – a claim they abandoned when Helen Woodruff took up the directorship, realizing that what they knew about medieval art was extremely limited and did not reflect what existed in reality. Nowadays, the Index is barely able to keep up with the number of publications released every month, never mind every year. It is claimed that the Index was officially founded in 1917, at which stage the university took over official responsibility for its future, but in fact it had been going for three or four years before that. It was one of the first archives to develop standards and guidelines for cataloguing works of art, and these were published by Helen Woodruff in 1942, enabling other collections to follow the practices. These guidelines are still being used by the Index, although they have also been extended and added to over time. Perhaps a little too scholarly in approach, and more suited to the paper environment for which they were created, they are in need of being modernized and extended to reflect current terminology and methodologies. The collecting policy for images has also changed over time, and nowadays the Index has catalogued existing archives and entire collections and is no longer dependent on the published image.4 The terminus date for the Index has also changed since it was first created by Morey, and it now stands at 1550, reflecting the entire medieval period and not just the interests of the founder. It was extended to 1400 before 1955 – the year Morey died, when he acknowledged that art did exist after 1400. His main concern was that iconography became ‘loose’ towards the end of the Middle Ages and that it did not relate to the early period. The final extension happened in 2000, with the later material being added to the archive from the Morgan Library Cataloguing Project. It is hoped that this later material will continue to be added, making the Index a comprehensive source for the study of medieval iconography. While developing the Index, Morey was at the same time pursuing his own academic career. His first paper was published in 1905, but it was not until the 1920s that he began to achieve acclaim for his pioneering work with such publications as Sources in Medieval Style (1924), East Christian Manuscripts (New York, 1920), The Illuminated Manuscripts of the J. Pierpont Morgan Library (1925), The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels with M. H. Longhurst (1928), Early Latin Illustrated Manuscripts (1929), The Landevennec Gospels: A Breton Illuminated Manuscript of the Ninth Century (1929), and The Genesis of Christian Art (1931). The first of these books, Sources in Medieval Style, was applauded by Erwin Panofsky as being as significant for art historians as Kepler’s work was for astronomers. Other studies were to follow, and 1942 appears to have been particularly important, with two pivotal works appearing: Early Christian Art: Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconography in Sculpture and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century (1942) and Medieval Art (1942). Although not known for his teaching abilities, he was an excellent administrator.5 His generosity and sympathetic approach to life and people were much admired. Morey’s main strength was as a researcher and it was clearly his first love. He was far in advance of his time in the holistic approach he adopted to his work. In 1932 he published a pamphlet at his own expense on the role and function of the library under the title “A Laboratory-Library,” in which he proposed what can be considered a revolution at that time as to how the library should work. He envisaged a unified library environment centered on faculty, student, and research space. For him, the library was not to be seen as a passive bibliographic archive but an active and living space in which interaction at all levels and between all participants was necessary. While undertaking such initiatives the Index was administered by scholarly medievalists, such as Helen Woodruff, who also managed to maintain their own academic profiles. It really was thanks to Morey that the Department of Art and Archeology became the prime center for medieval studies in North America at that time. He surrounded himself with scholars whose primary interest was in that period and included Donald Drew Egbert, Ernest DeWald, Kurt Weitzmann, and Alfred H. 125

Colum Hourihane

Barr. He was also responsible for inviting Erwin Panofsky to the nearby Institute for Advanced Study – a fellow scholar with a keen interest in iconography and how it is understood. Morey and Panofsky invested considerable scholarship into trying to see how the viewer looks at a work of art and how the subject matter can be objectively externalized to enable it to be described and retrieved by others. The Index of Christian Art was to provide an ideal and fertile resource for this to be undertaken. It is still a role which it fulfills. Morey was an all-round scholar who taught not only medieval but also Renaissance and modern art and expected all his colleagues to have the same eclectic approach. His notes now preserved at Princeton show an enquiring and sensitive mind who constantly attempted to understand man’s artistic legacy. For him, iconography was not an answer in itself but simply a reflection of society’s constant changes. His motivation was to understand why these changes took place and how they were manifested in the art of the period. Iconography did not work in isolation, and it was necessary to see it in relation to form, function, style, period, and all the elements that were invested in making the work in the first place. His approach was far in advance of his colleagues. For most of his career, Morey and his wife, Sara (Frances Tupper), had a particular interest in Italian patrimony which was badly affected by World War II, and this led him to resigning his post at Princeton to become the first cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Rome (1945–1950), where he was heavily involved in repatriating works of art to their rightful owners. He acted as advisor to the Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in Europe between 1945 to 1950, and for his efforts he was awarded the Star of Italian Solidarity by the Italian government in 1952, a medal which now resides, thanks to the generosity of his daughter, in the Index of Christian Art in Princeton. He also became acting director of the American Academy during 1945–47. His energies and abilities to get things done were legendary, and he was responsible for developing and reestablishing many Italian libraries after the war and was at the forefront of developing Italian-American relations at this time. After leaving Italy he returned for a brief period to the Index of Christian Art in Princeton. Of his seventy-seven years of life, Morey was to spend thirty-nine of them at Princeton University, where he left an unrivalled legacy in the Index of Christian Art, which still occupies a premier position in medieval studies.

The Index The Index is an iconographic archive in which the subjects of works of art in eighteen different media, stretching from enamels to frescoes to wax and including manuscripts, ivories, sculpture, paintings, metalwork, and mosaics, are catalogued using a series of thesaurus-like subject headings, which number over twenty-eight thousand. Typical of such a heading is that of the Crucifixion: Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ

Crucifixion, One Crucifixion, One Crucifixion, One Crucifixion, One Crucifixion, One Crucifixion, One Crucifixion, One Crucifixion, One

Cross with Evangelist John Cross with Evangelist John and Longinus Cross with Evangelist John and Stephaton Cross with Longinus Cross with Longinus and Stephaton Cross with Longinus, Stephaton and Mary Magdalene Cross with Mary Magdalene Cross with Virgin Mary

In the paper files each subject is catalogued under a primary heading which the researcher determines and cross-references to all the secondary subjects that are also included. So, for example, the 126

Charles Rufus Morey

researcher can determine that the main subject of a work of art is Christ; Crucifixion, but that other elements, such as the sun and moon, Virgin, and Saint John, are also of interest and need to be included. There is no limit to the number of such headings that can be used and these are all cross-referenced to the main subject heading. Subject headings are also supported by a free text description (again with no limit on words) in which controlled language is used to give an overall sense of the composition and includes such features as the relationship of one element to another, as well as gestures, coloration, and so forth. Each medium was given a different color card and they number in excess of five hundred thousand – for example, an orange card indicates metalwork whereas a blue one a manuscript. Other elements, such as date, specific type of work (missal, retable, etc.), ownership, and bibliography, are also given on each card. Accompanying this first file of subject headings and descriptions there is a second file consisting of close to two hundred thousand black and white images, which are filed under medium and then location. These rephotographs enable the user to see the work described and are simply reference images and do not include significant detail. In many ways the researcher in the Index deconstructs the work of art under various subject headings but then reconstructs it photographically, and it is possible, for example, to see as many folios of a manuscript as have been published. In the past, the Index was largely dependent on published material but that approach was changed in the early 2000s, when the repository began photographing archives, libraries and collections that had not been previously photographed in their entirety (Fig. 9.2). As it presently stands the Index lies in two worlds, the analogue and the digital. Computers were introduced to the archive in 1991 when a bibliographic cataloguing module was modified

Figure 9.2 The Index of Christian Art showing the two paper files. On the right side is the subject file, consisting of the alphabetically arranged twenty-eight thousand subject headings, while on the left side is the photographic file.

127

Colum Hourihane

for the archive. The main aim was to replicate the data amassed on the cards over the previous ninety years and to preserve the structure with all its intricacies. The data structure was complex, with over 150 fields.6 A chance was also taken to bring the data recorded into more current use and fields such as School and Style were included. Even though these had been purposely excluded by Morey as being subjective and personal, they have proved to be among the most popular. The application would be of considerable benefit as it would enable the data to be rapidly searched. The cataloguing standards employed in the archive before computers were impressive and in many ways were as close to modern metadata standards as was possible. When computers were introduced it has to be remembered that emphasis was placed on the textual elements and there was no image component to the records. The immediate task was to convert the paper files, which had been amassed over the previous ninety years, to the digital platform. This was no easy task as the information was out of date and needed to be thoroughly reinvestigated. It is a task which still continues, and nowadays over half the paper files have been converted, with all of the two hundred thousand black and white images already digitized. The Index does not own the copyright on the majority of these images, but thanks to the fact that many were taken over fifty years ago they are now out of copyright. Digital enhancement has enabled good-quality reference images to be offered to the researcher. Since 2000, the Index has made a conscious effort to acquire image collections as well as their copyright. These have come from libraries and museums as well as private collections. They are also now in color and the black and white requirement that operated in the past has been abandoned. In advance of computerization there were three other fully maintained paper copies of the Index available for consultation throughout the world. This was the solution that saved researchers the need to travel long distances to consult the resource. In 1999 an Internet application to the database was made available to the scholarly world and this has extended its use enormously. By opening up the resource both electronically and through hard-copy publications it has been enriched enormously, and scholars now give to the archive on an unparalleled basis. One of the main criticisms leveled at the Index was that its emphasis was on the art of the Western world and that the East had been neglected. This, of course, also reflected scholarly interests and the main research in medieval art had always been undertaken in the West. The Index followed such initiatives and whatever had been undertaken in the Byzantine world was also included in the archive. Now, however, there is considerable research into Christian art underway in areas that were previously considered tangential. From 2000 efforts were made to redress this issue and the art of areas such as Coptic Egypt, Christian Syria, Jordan, Israel, Armenia, and so forth was catalogued. It is an issue which will be corrected over time but which will hopefully make the Index a more rounded research project. Secular art was never neglected in the archive and it was always contextualized in the broader field of medieval art. This continues unabated as it should but users need to be more aware of the coverage in the files. Given the wealth of iconographic material now available on the web, the Index is unique in what it is able to offer the researcher. Its strength has always been the scholarly approach of the cataloguers employed in the archive. They are professional art historians, and even though they all have their own particular strengths they are also able to diversify into other material. The application of computers to the Index has opened its resources to a much wider audience, but in doing so it has to be realized that its approaches need to change. In the past, the paper records were relatively limited and focused, but with the application of computers the opportunity was taken to extend the metadata enormously and the data structure now has over one hundred fields. Whereas such a structure is unrivalled, it has to be realized that it is impractical from the point of view of expediency. Given the wealth of new material that is constantly being exposed to medieval scholarship it is a project that is sure to exist for many years to come. 128

Charles Rufus Morey

Notes 1 The most comprehensive publication on the Index, although also now slightly out of date, is by H. Woodruff, The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University (Princeton, 1942). Other publications on the Index and Morey include J.R. Martin, Art Bulletin 32 (1950), 345–59; E. Panofsky, “Charles Rufus Morey,” American Philosophical Society Year Book (1955), 482–91; R. Lee, “Charles Rufus Morey: 1877–1955,” Art Bulletin 37 (December 1955), iii–vii; New York Times August 30, 1955, p. 27. Obituary, p. 485; D.F. Blair Jr., “The Morey School, A Great Medieval Scholar Lives on in Art History,” Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 15, 1957, 6–11; R. Green, “The Index of Christian Art, Great Humanistic Research Tool,” Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 1, 1963, 8–16; A. Leitch, A Princeton Companion (Princeton, 1978); W.E. Kleinbauer, Research Guide to the History of Western Art, Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2 (1982), 62–63; L. Drewer, “What Can Be Learned from the Procedures of the Index of Christian Art,” The Index of Emblem Art Symposium, ed. P.M. Daly (New York, 1990), 121–38; I. Lavin, “Iconography as a Humanistic Discipline (Iconography at the Crossroads),” Iconography at the Crossroads: Papers from the Colloquium Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 23–24 March, 1990, ed. B. Cassidy (Princeton, 1992), 33–42; B. Cassidy, “Computers and Medieval Art: the Case of the Princeton Index,” Computers and Art History 4:1 (1993), 3–16; C. Hourihane (ed.), “The Princeton Index of Christian Art,” Visual Resources: An International Journal on Images and Their Uses 13:3–4 (1998); C. Hourihane, “They Stand on His Shoulders: Morey, Iconography, and the Index of Christian Art,” in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebrations of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, 2002), 3–16; A. Hershberger, “The Medium Was the Method: Photography and Iconography at the Index of Christian Art,” in Futures Past: Thirty Years of Arts Computing, CHArt Computers and the History of Art Yearbook, Vol. 2, ed. A. Bentkowska-Kafel, T. Cashen, and H. Gardner (Bristol/Portland, 2007), 63–76; C. Hourihane, “Classifying Subject Matter in Medieval Art: The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University,” in Classifying Content: Photographic Collections and Theories of Thematic Ordering, ed. C. Franceschini and K. Mazzucco, Visual Resources: An International Journal on Images and Their Uses 30:3 (2014), 255–62. 2 See http://www.collegeart.org/awards/morey. 3 See C.H. Smyth and P. Lukehart (ed.), The Early Years of Art History in the United States (Princeton, 1993), and M.A. Lavin, The Eye of the Tiger, The Founding and Development of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 1883–1923, Princeton University (Princeton, 1983). 4 One of the first such initiatives and certainly the largest to date was the photographing and cataloguing of all the medieval manuscripts in the Morgan Library in New York. The premier repository for medieval manuscripts in North America, this project started in 2004 and was completed in 2013. 5 See Blair, “The Morey School” (as in note 1), 6. 6 Cassidy, “Computers” (as in note 1), 7.

129

10 HANS VAN DE WAAL, A PORTRAIT Edward Grasman

Hans van de Waal, born as Henri van de Waal on March 3, 1910, in Rotterdam, died on May 7, 1972, in Leiden (Fig. 10.1). His fame in the field of iconography rests on two outstanding achievements, his dissertation on the imaging of history and being the founding father of Iconclass. In publications focusing on him, especially those by Horst Gerson, Mechthild Beilmann, Roelof van Straten, and Eric Jan Sluijter, the greatest attention has been paid to these two achievements.1 In both his dissertation and his work on Iconclass, the subject of art was given a central position and both showed him to be a systematic and orderly man. Nobody can undertake a portrait of Van de Waal without paying attention to these aspects of his character. However, the following portrait will also accent other aspects of his personality, such as his religiosity, his capacity to change, and his love of craftsmanship, of which he was an idealistic promoter. In the second half of his life he focused on Jewish life, which he used in particular in his research on Rembrandt. It was at this same time that he came to appreciate modern art, which impacted his perceptions of that of the earlier periods. On July 12, 1940, when the Netherlands had been occupied by Nazi Germany for just two months, Van de Waal defended his dissertation at Leiden University, with the verdict cum laude. The dissertation, which had developed out of a paper published in 1937, examined the way Dutch history had been visually represented.2 Due to the war, it took no less than twelve years before the book was finally published, in 1952. The dissertation can be seen as a lengthy introduction to Rembrandt’s Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (Fig. 10.2) and in this it is comparable – also in the wealth of its information – to the study by Klibansky, Saxl, and Panofsky on Dürer’s Melancolia I, another book with a philological bent.3 Van de Waal demonstrated that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries typological reasoning not only comprised the Old and New Testament but also contemporary history. The inhabitants of the Republic opposing powerful Spain were compared to the first inhabitants of the Low Countries opposing Rome and the people of Israel rebelling against mighty Egypt, while William of Orange was compared with both Claudius Civilis and Gideon. The past was interpreted as symbolizing the present and the present was seen as a symbol of the future. It is likely that Joost van den Vondel’s literary works suggested this approach to him. For Vondel, typological reasoning was essential, as for example in his drama Pascha, written in 1612, in which the people of Israel symbolized Vondel’s Dutch contemporaries. Van de Waal’s main subject looked at the function of artworks, especially paintings and prints. Why did an artist, more often than not Rembrandt, choose a specific form to express specific 130

Figure 10.1 Hans van de Waal. Unknown photographer, date unknown, Leiden University Libraries.

Figure 10.2 The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis, Rembrandt (fragment, 196 × 309 cm, originally c. 550 × 550 cm), Stockholm, Royal Academy of Fine Arts (on loan to The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

Edward Grasman

content? In his dissertation, Van de Waal argued that in the Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, which was made for Amsterdam’s new town hall, Rembrandt ignored the rules of decorum. He transferred content into form without considering the representative function of the room which his painting was meant to adorn. Rembrandt had strictly followed Tacitus, who described Claudius Civilis as a one-eyed barbarian, but he should have realized that such a representation would never be acceptable to those who commissioned it, and whom Van de Waal in this way had defended.4 The subtitle of his dissertation made clear that he had chosen his method to be iconological. The goal of his beeld-leer, Dutch for “iconology,” was the study of the function of the image in a specific society, a definition that indicates close affinities with Warburg, focusing as it did on the complex processes of image formation (beeld-vorming) and image transfer (beeld-overdracht). In the English summary he stressed the semiotic connection by translating these two words as sign-formation and sign-transfer, opening fields still hardly trodden by Dutch students of early modern art.5 Notwithstanding his affinity with Warburg, Van de Waal adopted an independent position toward him. He was aware of a lecture Warburg had delivered in 1926 in which attention was paid to Rembrandt’s Claudius Civilis.6 Such was Warburg’s admiration for this picture that he had an accurate copy of it made. In this lecture Warburg maintained that penetrating art like Rembrandt’s was always likely to be defeated by “Lieferanten triumphaler Gegenwartsbejahung” (those who offer works that triumphantly affirm the present). Warburg showed little sympathy with those who had commissioned the work for the Amsterdam town hall and little understanding of the refusal of the Claudius Civilis, and in this he differed from Van de Waal. Another difference was that in Warburg’s opinion, the picture was a Rachebild expressing feelings of revenge on the part of Claudius Civilis after the killing of his brother Julius Paul, whose death had been remarked upon only in passing by Van de Waal. His reason for doing this can be inferred from a text he had already written in 1940, but which was published only in 1949. In the view of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century German authors, Rome was the enemy who had spoiled German glory, while their contemporaries in the Netherlands stressed that cooperation with the Romans by their ancestors, including Claudius Civilis, had been fruitful.7 Van de Waal’s second major claim to fame was the development of Iconclass, a refined classification of images according to their subjects (discussed elsewhere in this publication). Iconclass is the most visible result of his systematically functioning mind, but a drive toward systematization is clear in everything he undertook, even for instance in the way he constructed his papers. It is symptomatic that indexing was an important criterion in all his works, and it will come as no surprise that in this respect his dissertation is outstanding, with six registers possibly even a bit too much. The DIAL (Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries) and Iconclass, which was the large-scale successor of DIAL, occupied Van de Waal’s daily activities. From 1934 onwards he worked as an assistant in the Print Room of Leiden University. With his promotion in 1945 to the position of professor of art history at the same university he became its director. Initially, Iconclass was designed to classify the collections of the Print Room. This classification consists of nine main categories: the supernatural, nature, man, society, abstracts, history, Bible, nonclassical mythology, and finally classical mythology. In 1968, Van de Waal still believed that Iconclass would be finished within five years, but this turned out to be quite an underestimation. The project was finished only in 1985, after decades of close cooperation with the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague. One of the reasons it took much longer than expected was the later decision to add a bibliography. In the course of time Iconclass developed into a very detailed system with the advantage of being able to adapt it to the specific needs of its various users. 132

Hans van de Waal

Iconclass proves that, when needed, Van de Waal was not only a systematic man but also flexible. During the time it was being developed decisions had to be made on an ad hoc basis, a kind of pragmatism that caused some inconsistencies. However, not all inconsistencies resulted from ad hoc decisions: the main category of the Bible is not classified according to name, while both main mythological categories are; subcategories of the Old Testament are strictly classified according to chronology, while those of the New Testament are much less so. Van de Waal was responsible for the general design of Iconclass, but gradually his role became that of a distant controller of the process, with his assistants taking over many of the responsibilities involved. Van de Waal accepted his professorial position with a speech entitled Traditie en Bezieling (Tradition and inspiration).8 Many of his publications move between these two poles. In his address he remarked on two disturbing facts: in art history any question might be considered scientific except for one questioning the subject of a work of art and art history unhappily developed at a time – referring to the days of Bredius and Hofstede de Groot – when many practitioners in the sister study of literature had turned their back on philology. This discipline would have made art historians ask other kinds of questions, such as he did in his dissertation. It cannot have been much of a surprise to him that both Vogelsang and Friedländer, to whose Festschrift he had contributed in 1942, reacted rather remotely to his oration, while the most sympathetic responses came from abroad, from art historians including Panofsky, Saxl, and Stechow.9 The speech took place on 22nd March 1946, not even a year after the ending of World War II. Van de Waal had spent the wartime in the Netherlands. From the end of September 1943 to the spring of 1945 he was in Durchgangslager Westerbork, which for many was a stopover on their way to Auschwitz. Just a few months before the war started he had married in Switzerland. On December 28, 1939, he married Liliane Henriette Dufresne, who was Swiss by birth, but out of a sense of duty to the Print Room they returned to Leiden, quite aware of the dangerous situation in nearby Nazi Germany. The time he was forced to spend in Westerbork was a caesura in his life, not least because it ruined his health. It made him aware of his Jewish origins and this awareness would leave an imprint on many of his subsequent publications. However, the main thing he learnt at Westerbork was not to attach any value to possessions.10 Unlike so many others who were transported from Westerbork to the East, he was allowed because of his mixed marriage to go home before the war ended. This favor did not ease his pain when forced to come to terms with this brutal episode in his life. Unusually, his father, who was trained as a goldsmith in Germany, spoke German fluently, and never wore the Star of David, was hardly ever bothered by the Nazis. From the late 1960s Van de Waal decided to respect the Sabbath. He made it into a day of study, strictly observing its rituals, going to the synagogue on foot, and having others switch on lights for him. His intention to devote himself completely to the study of the Talmud after his retirement was prevented by his unexpected death, slightly after his sixty-second birthday. Another reason why he longed for the solitude of his study was the democratization of his beloved university. He could not cope with the criticism leveled at the institute he had created with such care. Despite this, he could always be approached by his students, whom he supported in their own free decisions, seeing them move into remarkably different directions. In Westerbork he had found some solace in Fromentin’s Les Maîtres d’autrefois (1876), which he translated and commented upon. The archive Van de Waal kept at the RKD contains the moving results of this research.11 The book was expected to appear in 1944, but just like the dissertation it took many years before it was published. It finally appeared in 1951, under the title De meesters van weleer (The masters of ere).12 The main attraction for him must surely have been that it is a book by a craftsman on his craft, and it is likely that he recognized something of himself in Fromentin, who criticized developments within the art of painting in his own time. 133

Edward Grasman

Van de Waal’s commentary on Fromentin contains a singular remark in which he qualified the importance of the subject. After noting how important a “source of secondary inspiration” the literature of the Romantic era had become for music and the visual arts, he commented, The reaction was unavoidable. One does not transfer without consequences the accent from the quintessence to side-issues and in the case of the visual arts and music the subject, the “story” remains secondary. The purely artistic qualities, resulting from the nature of the used technique, will always have to remain in the center of the artist’s attention.13 This sentence survived all the editing of his commentary on Fromentin. He was not exclusively focused on the subject and, much like Panofsky, he kept his distance from those tendencies within iconology which moved in that direction. Van de Waal’s teaching was no less systematic than his other activities. In it he further developed his beeld-leer, which revolved around three elements basic to any work of art: form, content, and function, a triangle proclaimed to be the holy writ by his students.14 He never intended to publish his beeld-leer because it had to remain a flexible instrument. No matter how fundamental the various elements were to his teaching and his research, he never defined them. “Function,” for example, at one time might refer to the use of artistic means within a work of art, at another time to the work of art in its original context. Both the commentary on Fromentin and the dissertation lacked any references to the Talmud, and it was also still absent from the preface to In Memoriam 1940–1945, which he wrote in 1952 on occasion of a stained-glass window being commissioned by Leiden University.15 An indication of his increasing interest in Judaism is offered when a comparison is made between the two versions of the DIAL from 1958 and 1968. In 1958 a category on non-Christian religions has been mentioned (category 12), but only in 1968 was this category worked out in a detailed manner, beginning with a whole series of subcategories on Jewish religion. However, this was several years after Van de Waal had already revealed his knowledge of Judaism in a paper on Rembrandt’s etchings which were meant to illustrate a book called Piedra Gloriosa by Menasseh ben Israel.16 In Van de Waal’s opinion these prints testified to Rembrandt’s esteem of the Jewish people. During the Rembrandt celebrations in 1956 he repeatedly displayed his interest in Judaism, as for example in a lecture he delivered in Leiden’s Peter’s Church, which was titled “Rembrandt and Ourselves,” in which he honored the century-old tradition of Dutch tolerance toward Jews.17 After 1956 Van de Waal’s interest in Judaism frequently showed up, most clearly perhaps in an article from 1969 on Rembrandt’s painting known as Haman in Disgrace.18 He considered the choice of an ostensibly calm moment in this particular story in the Bible as characteristic of the development Rembrandt had gone through, in relation to form as well as iconography. He identified the figures as Haman, Ahasuerus, and the chamberlain Harbonah, the old man whose presence had been a problem for all earlier interpretations. He suggested that Harbonah was Elijah in disguise and the actual subject of the picture was the intervention in this world by the hidden God. This paper not only demonstrated his great knowledge of Judaism in seventeenth-century Amsterdam but also at the same time announced a theme which would become an important topic in art history decades later, the painting of the invisible. In the review of Steps towards Rembrandt, a collection of articles by Van de Waal which he himself had helped prepare but which was published posthumously, Joos Bruyn identified the author with Rembrandt.19 Elie Wiesel defined the Talmud as “a dialogue with the living and the dead.”20 Is it too farfetched to assume that Van de Waal, while working in the silence of his 134

Hans van de Waal

study during Sabbath, identified himself with a Talmudic scholar, in dialogue not with Hillel but with Rembrandt? Van de Waal’s decision to focus on Judaism followed a period in which he seemed to have approached religion in a more general way. A lecture he delivered in 1964 during a so-called Open Veld (Open Field) meeting certainly had religious connotations, but they were not specifically Jewish.21 When he published this lecture five years later, in Delta, he almost completely ignored the religious element.22 It is possible that he did not consider it to be sufficiently scientific or maybe the editors thought so. Anyway, it was exactly this religious dimension which gave the text its rare beauty. The Open Field meetings were organized by Greet Hofmans, a religiously inspired woman who played a remarkable role in Dutch history because of her ties with Queen Juliana. It was due to the malicious way her relationship with Queen Juliana was presented in the international press that the Dutch monarchy almost came to an end. Van de Waal was asked to give a talk at the Open Field meeting on the meaning of light and dark for mankind and as to whether light existed without shadow. He began his lecture by quoting from the Old and New Testaments, and continued by illustrating problems with Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro as a visual technique. This led him to conclude first that the youthful Rembrandt tried to systematically master visual techniques in his self-portraits, a point of view later affirmed by the Rembrandt Research Project; second, the ways in which Rembrandt used chiaroscuro to suggest a dialogue as in the Disputing Scholars from Melbourne; third, the reasons why he was always moved by the Titus from Rotterdam, where the boy seems to exist on the threshold of light and dark, on the borderline of knowing and not knowing, which is so characteristic of youth; and finally about the absence, unheard of in the seventeenth century, of space in Rembrandt’s ultimate self-portrait, in Cologne. This lecture clearly shows that Van de Waal’s view of Rembrandt, certainly after the war, was imbedded in religiosity. During this same lecture he touched on photography, also in a religious context, pointing out that this art lives by converting light into dark and vice versa. With the acquisition of the Grégoire collection by the Print Room in 1953, Van de Waal became a pioneer in the Netherlands in collecting photography, both the photographs themselves and the tools used to make them. Moreover, he introduced photography as part of the art history teaching program at Leiden University, from a theoretical and practical perspective. It was through one of his mother’s kinsmen, Richard Polak, that he had become acquainted with this branch of art. In particular, he admired the skills and craftsmanship of photographers like Polak. Van de Waal’s high esteem for craftsmanship was inherited from his uncle, the portrait painter Jos Seckel, and of course from his father, whose activities he had carefully observed. In Westerbork he profited from these close observations when he was made responsible for repairing the wheelbarrows. As if to show how close to his heart craftsmanship was, the archive at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie has a piece of paper on which he wrote down, probably during the late 1960s, that had his retirement started at that moment he would concentrate on calligraphy, woodworking, or glassblowing as well as Hebrew.23 Both his sons dearly remember how much care and discernment their father gave to ensure that everything from toys to vacuum cleaners worked well. The Grégoire collection had a particular impact on him, not so much for what it contained but for what it lacked. Grégoire had considerable holdings for photographers such as Henri Berssenbrugge and Polak, but at some time Van de Waal realized that both of these, including his kinsman, were dead ends. Mistakenly, they had based their medium on painting. In 1967 Van de Waal stated his criticism explicitly in a preface to a book on Berssenbrugge, but everything suggests he had come to the same conclusion years before.24 Experimental photography, such as that 135

Edward Grasman

presented by Hajek-Halke in 1955, was an eye-opener to him. He enthusiastically commented on those photographers who had been influenced by Moholy-Nagy’s experiments in the 1920s and who no longer took painting or one of the other arts as their point of departure. Their pictures were exclusively grounded in photography itself.25 It was on these same pages in 1956 that Van de Waal revealed some reservations about perspective: “The art of the Renaissance went to such lengths in her craving for mathematical exactness, that in her imaging of this phenomenon she strove for an orthogonal projection of it which was as accurate as possible.” However, according to him, this was not the domain of photography; her domain was “the representation of the texture of matter.” One year later he wrote an introduction to an exhibition of photography held in Brussels, The Hague, and Cologne which showed abstract photographs by Pim van Os, among others. The exposition itself was called Images Inventées but the title of his introduction was “The World in Which We Live.” Van de Waal came to the conclusion that “the impeccable presentation by way of perspective” had lost terrain since the beginning of the twentieth century to “the interest in structure.” He was thinking of the nonfigurative creations of Klee and Kandinsky, which were, as he noted, no longer composed within a given framework, but might be expanded to all sides.26 In 1952 he had been critical of cubism. Making a principle of abstraction, he wrote at the time, was a dangerous decision, because it might involve crossing “the natural boundaries of the visual arts,” with the geometrical figures of cubism as the unavoidable consequence.27 Twelve years later, in 1964, he was responsible for a television program on modern art and this time his attitude toward cubists was much more positive. They combined various views of the same object in their paintings, and in doing so with impeccable instinct they anticipated technical developments, while at the same time already showing a sense of simultaneity, which would become a characteristic of later times.28 His increased appreciation of modern art had implications for his approach to earlier art, particularly Rembrandt. A paper from 1956 on the Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis neatly followed the text of his dissertation from four years earlier, and the sentence quoted here about Rembrandt’s rivalry with Leonardo and Tintoretto is almost verbatim in both: “In his zeal to equal them he struggled with formal problems of which his commissioners had not the faintest notion.” The only difference, and it seems to me to be a significant one, is that in 1956 the word “formal” had been added.29 Van de Waal’s famous article on the Syndics (Fig. 10.3) from 1956 is preceded by a motto taken from Dvorák according to which the development of modern art had opened eyes to the quality of earlier art, and it is in this same vein that the article is finished: “In as much as the art of our own day has enabled us once again to appreciate the value of composition on a flat surface, we are better able to understand certain aspects of Rembrandt’s artistry.”30 It appears that those aspects we have become more appreciative of are those formal problems he had observed in his other paper. In his article on the Syndics Van de Waal protested against psychological interpretations, arguing that the gestures of those represented were not directed at some presupposed viewer and that the picture was no snapshot either. On the contrary, Rembrandt had endeavored to suggest repose – be it a tense kind of repose – and unity within the group. It was out of the question that he might have intended to suggest an interruption from the outside. Van de Waal concluded that the unity of this group of people enclosed within a frame removed them from reality. It was precisely this element of enclosure within a frame that was challenged by Puttfarken in 2000. According to Puttfarken, Van de Waal projected upon the Syndics the kind of formal analysis Clement Greenberg had applied to contemporary American painting.31 Van de Waal was convinced that formal problems in the visual arts had to be considered primarily as problems of space. That is why he advocated systematic research on the structure of 136

Hans van de Waal

Figure 10.3 Portraits of the Syndics of the Amsterdam Clothmasters’ Guild, Rembrandt, 1662, oil on canvas, 191.5 × 279 cm, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

space suggested in Rembrandt.32 In his Open Field lecture in 1964 he expressed the opinion that Rembrandt had gained in profundity the moment he deliberately abandoned the Renaissance system of perspective, until in his final self-portrait any indication of space was absent. In that painting Rembrandt pictured himself standing on the threshold of light and dark. In the version of this lecture Van de Waal published five years later he wrote that Caravaggio had attacked the Renaissance sense of space by suggesting a movement out of the picture and in an intuitive way he was followed in this by Rembrandt, particularly in his last self-portrait. Clearly, for Van de Waal a gulf existed between the man who painted the Syndics and the man who painted this final self-portrait: in the first the frame enclosed the represented group; in the second the frame was ignored. It is possible that photography opened Van de Waal’s eyes to modern art, while modern art made him aware of certain aspects of earlier art, especially that of Rembrandt. Van de Waal never wrote a comprehensive study on Rembrandt and this was not caused by his premature death. However, the enormous insights in his Steps towards Rembrandt offer every reason for it to be seen as his third great achievement, next to his dissertation and Iconclass. The only review to appear after the publication of his dissertation was written by the historian Pieter Geyl, but it was not until 1971 that the art historian Jan Bialostocki reviewed it in an art historical magazine, The Art Bulletin.33 As it happens, Van de Waal just lived to see his dissertation, a work which he had begun thirty-four years earlier, finally reviewed in an appropriate journal. He always suffered from what he considered to be a lack of appreciation. Would his qualities have been more appreciated if he had continued to do what he did in his dissertation? It might be argued that because he kept changing his course, his dissertation was more of an ending than a beginning. It stands to reason that there are several constant factors in his oeuvre, such as an 137

Edward Grasman

interest in theatre – for example, in the article on Haman – and in ephemeral architecture – for instance, in his posthumous publication on Rembrandt’s Ecce Homo.34 However, he did not publish anything further on typologies and although he remained interested in iconographical groups, his papers specifically dealing with this topic are scarce. This phenomenon took on a central position only in Hagar in the Desert, a paper that appeared before his dissertation.35 In it, he briefly formulated a program for future research on iconographical groups in the work of Rembrandt: the appearance of angels to mortals, the ruler on his throne, and female nudity in nature. The first mentioned subject he discussed in his paper on Hagar, but he never published on the other two. However, in his 1961 article on Rembrandt’s etching of Faustus, he identified yet another iconographical group of the inspired scholar in his study, with the accurate conclusion that Rembrandt in this etching succeeded in finding a balance between interruption and concentration.36 Van de Waal did not leave behind an extensive bibliography. His combined obligations as professor in art history and director of the Print Room left him insufficient time to undertake much research. In his work with the Print Room he was involved with museum problems. His opinions regarding such institutions paralleled those on art history and he suggested a shift of attention in the museum from style to function. Van de Waal not only lacked time to publish but also seemed to have lacked the inclination. Had it been his intention to build up a large bibliography he would not have devoted that much time to the idealistic goal of developing the aesthetic and creative capacities of secondary school pupils. “What our generation lacks,” he wrote, “is the cautiousness and wisdom of the carpenter and the gardener who have learnt, while creating, to listen to their material.”37 He considered it his duty to stimulate that mental attitude, in which skillfulness and craftsmanship played such a prominent role. Craftsmanship was the subject of a paper from 1967 on the reception of a famous anecdote told by Pliny.38 Apelles visited Protogenes at Rhodes, but when he did not find him at home, he drew an extremely fine line in color on an already prepared panel. On arriving home, Protogenes identified the visitor who had drawn that line and before leaving home again, he drew an even thinner line over the earlier one, in another color. When Apelles next called and he did not find Protogenes at home, he cut the lines with an even thinner line in a third color, and hereupon Protogenes realized his defeat. The rivalry between these two famous antique painters exclusively concerned manual skill and craftsmanship and that is precisely why later commentators had such problems with it. They amplified Pliny’s story, suggesting it really was about contours or perspective. What these later writers had in common, according to Van de Waal, was “the silent and intuitive failure to acknowledge skilled workmanship as the basis of art.”39 Steps towards Rembrandt contains one text which had not been published before and consequently appeared posthumously. It is a fitting end to this portrait of Van de Waal because it again proves his affinity with craftsmanship. The text is about Rembrandt’s etching known as Le Petit Orfèvre (Fig. 10.4), which shows a metalworker carefully handling a statue of Caritas in his studio.40 The etching was no genre piece or portrait, as had been suggested, but according to Van de Waal it was the representation of a scene told in Judges 13–16, which had never been visualized before. He consistently believed that Rembrandt had a deep acquaintance with the Bible. The element on which the statue rests could not be an anvil, because – and here Van de Waal’s affinity with the craftsman becomes manifest – no craftsman would put an anvil on a workbench. It is a pedestal on which the smith is cautiously fixing his sculpture. Van de Waal not only called attention to Rembrandt’s identification with this metalworker but also convincingly argued that the etching was a combination of originality and tradition. And this of course brings us back to the speech he delivered in 1946. His final conclusion on this etching 138

Hans van de Waal

Figure 10.4 Le Petit Orfèvre, also known as The Goldsmith, Rembrandt, etching, 7.7 × 5.6 cm, first state of three (B123, 1655), Leiden University Libraries.

is that it was a true emblem of Rembrandt’s own personality. I would like to add that his paper, in its logical construction and careful speculation on Rembrandt, is no less an emblem of Van de Waal’s own personality.

Notes 1 H. Gerson, “Herdenking van Hans van den Waal (3 maart 1910–7 mei 1972),” Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Jaarboek 1972 (Amsterdam 1973), 166–80; M. Beilmann, “Hans van de Waal (1910–1972),” in Altmeister moderner Kunstgeschichte, ed. H. Dilly (Berlin, 1990), 204–19; R. van Straten, Iconography, Indexing, Iconclass: A Handbook (Leiden, 1994), 83–95; E.J. Sluijter, “Traditie en bezieling: Henri van de Waal (1910–1972),” in Kunstgeschiedenis in Nederland: Negen opstellen, ed. P. Hecht, A. Hoogenboom, and C. Stolwijk (Amsterdam, 1998), 145–68.

139

Edward Grasman 2 H. van de Waal, Drie eeuwen vaderlandsche geschied-uitbeelding 1500–1800: Een iconologische studie, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1952); “’s Lands oudste verleden in de voorstelling van Vondel en zijn tijdgenooten,” Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschift 47 (1937), 297–318. English translation in H. van de Waal and R.H. Fuchs, Steps towards Rembrandt: Collected Articles 1937–1972 (Amsterdam/London, 1974), 44–72. 3 R. Klibanski, E. Panofsky, and F. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art (New York, 1964). 4 Van de Waal, Drie eeuwen (as in note 2), I, 231–38. 5 Van de Waal, Drie eeuwen (as in note 2), I, 4 and 297. 6 P. van Huisstede, De Mnemosyne Beeldatlas van Aby M. Warburg, een laboratorium voor beeldgeschiedenis (Leiden, 1992), 126–39. 7 H. van de Waal, “Nederlands-Duitse tegenstellingen in de geschiedschrijving der Renaissance,” De Gids 112 (1949), 98–108. 8 H. van de Waal, Traditie en bezieling (Rotterdam/Antwerp, 1946). 9 Archive H. van de Waal, Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, 0625, box 3 and Van Straten, Iconography (as in note 1), 32–33; H. van de Waal, “De zoons van Cornelis Engelbrechtsz. of Jan de Cock, alias ‘Jan van Leyen’? Een kleine bijdrage tot een groot probleem,” in Aan Max J. Friedländer 1867–5 juni – 1942, ed. H.E. van Gelder (The Hague, 1942), 37–39. 10 Archive Van de Waal (as in note 9), box 3, folder Rotary. 11 Archive Van de Waal (as in note 9), box 2. 12 E. Fromentin and H. van de Waal, De Meesters van Weleer (Rotterdam, 1951). 13 Van de Waal, Meesters van Weleer (as in note 12), 291. 14 H. Locher, “Lévi-Strauss en de structurele bestudering van de kunst,” in Opstellen voor H. van de Waal, ed. L.D. Couprie a.o. (Amsterdam/Leiden, 1970), 113. 15 H. van de Waal, “Beschrijving der gedenkramen,” in In Memoriam 1940–1945, ed. J.H. Boeke (Leiden, 1952), 15–18. 16 H. van de Waal, “Rembrandts Radierungen zu Piedra Gloriosa,” Imprimatur, ein Jahrbuch für Bücherfreunde 12 (1954/1955), 52–61. English translation in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 113–32. 17 H. van de Waal, “Rembrandt en wij,” De Gids 119 (1956), II 40–44. English translation in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 7–12. 18 H. van de Waal, “Rembrandt and the Feast of Purim,” Oud Holland 84 (1969), 199–233. Also in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 201–46. 19 Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2); J. Bruyn in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 87 (1974), 466. 20 E. Wiesel, Wise Men and Their Tales (New York, 2003), 291. 21 Archive Van de Waal (as in note 9), box 1. 22 H. van de Waal, “Light and Dark: Rembrandt and Chiaroscuro,” Delta 12/2 (Summer 1969), 74–88. Also in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 13–27. 23 Archive Van de Waal (as in note 9), box 3, folder Rotary. 24 H. van de Waal, “Voorwoord,” in H.J. Scheffer, Portret van een fotograaf: Henri Berssenbrugge 1873–1959 (Leiden, 1967), 5–11. 25 H. van de Waal, “H. Hajek-Halke, Experimentelle Fotografie, Bonn, 1955,” Fotorama 5/11 (1956), 171–72. 26 H. van de Waal, “De wereld waarin wij leven,” in Catalogue Exposition Internationale de Photographies (Brussels/The Hague/Cologne, 1957). 27 Van de Waal, Drie eeuwen (as in note 2), 9. 28 H. van de Waal, “Moderne tijd – moderne kunst,” Openbaar Kunstbezit (TV) 2 (1964), nr. 5. 29 Drie eeuwen (as in note 2), 231; H. van de Waal, “The Iconological Background of Rembrandt’s Civilis,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 25 (1956), 22. Also in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 34. 30 H. van de Waal, “De Staalmeesters en hun legende,” Oud Holland 71 (1956), 88. English translation in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 247–92. 31 T. Puttfarken, The Discovery of Pictorial Composition: Theories of Visual Order in Painting 1400–1800 (New Haven, 2000), 12–16. 32 H. van de Waal, “De vormstructuur van het symbolisme,” De Gids 120 (1957), 329; H. van de Waal, “Rembrandt 1956,” Museum 61 (1956), 205–06. 33 P. Geyl, Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 9 (1955), 142–44; J. Bialostocki in The Art Bulletin 53 (1971), 262–65. 34 H. van de Waal, “Enige mogelijke bronnen voor Rembrandts ets Ecce Homo (1655),” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 23 (1973), 95–113. English translation in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 182–200.

140

Hans van de Waal 35 H. van de Waal, “Hagar in de woestijn door Rembrandt en zijn school,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1 (1947), 145–69. English translation in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 90–112. 36 H. van de Waal, “Rembrandt’s Faust Etching, a Socinian Document, and the Iconography of the Inspired Scholar,” Oud Holland 79 (1964), 6–48. Also in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 133–81. 37 H. van de Waal, “Creatieve vorming een landsbelang,” in Gedenkbundel studiedagen VAEVO 1908–1958 (1958), 61. 38 H. van de Waal, “The ‘Linea summae tenuitatis’ of Apelles; Pliny’s Phrase and Its Interpreters,” Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 12 (1967), 5–32. 39 Van de Waal, Linea summae tenuitatis (as in note 38), 10. 40 H. van de Waal, “Rembrandt’s Etching Le petit orfèvre: Genre Piece, Portrait or Biblical History?,” in Steps towards Rembrandt (as in note 2), 233–46.

141

11 MEYER SCHAPIRO AS ICONOGRAPHER Patricia Stirnemann

Meyer Schapiro (1904–1996) came to New York from Lithuania at the age of three, attended college and graduate school at Columbia University, and taught there throughout his career.1 As an art historian, he was a polymath: medievalist, modernist, historiographer, semiologist, and philosopher. A voracious autodidact with a prodigious memory, he also had a dab hand as an artist, translated Baudelaire, and wrote poetry himself. In his youth he taught himself German, which suddenly unlocked a whole universe of visual analysis and reasoning that was virtually unknown in the United States. To judge its effect, one need only look at the bibliography listed at the end of his article on style, published in 1953.2 Out of twenty-three books cited, nineteen are in German (with special attention to Riegl and Wöfflin), one in French (Focillon), and three in English. Eighteen of the cited works date before 1930. As a philosopher one might say that he explored the epistemology and philosophy of visual language. His exposure to each new way of looking – Riegl, Boas, semiotics, Marx, Freud, the art of the twentieth century – extended his reach into new realms of thought, which led to his resistance to any binding theoretical carapace, to a sort of humility of seeing. It is unlikely that anyone would describe Meyer Schapiro as an iconographer. If we restrict our attention to his work on medieval iconographical problems, we approach his thought piecemeal through the far end of the telescope. Our vision would be even further reduced were we to eliminate the iconography of ornament and the formal aspects of iconography. Over and over, Meyer Schapiro emphasizes that meaning is inherent in the composition and in the rendering of the formal elements and signs, and he forges new vocabularies of description in his search for the meanings of iconographies. His intricate descriptions oblige one to look repeatedly at a carving or painting, as new physical aspects, meanings, and relationships are revealed. Recognizing the tremendous breadth of his restless intellect,3 it is interesting to see how he discusses iconography, what he chooses to discuss and what he omits, rejects, or overlooks, what tools he uses in his research, the relative acceptance or correctness of his interpretations, and the responses they have generated. These last, the responses, are a clear tribute to his stimulating provocation to question, analyze, search further, and think anew. In his relatively small corpus of published papers, Schapiro examines medieval iconography in several ways. The two published papers taken from his dissertation on Moissac and his earliest articles deal mainly with a formal, visual reading of an iconography that demands a sympathetic understanding on the part of the modern spectator, a viewer who must put aside late antique 142

Meyer Schapiro

and Renaissance naturalism as aesthetic yardsticks. Beginning in the 1940s, he publishes several papers where he deciphers the content of an unusual scene or object and explains its context (e.g., Ruthwell Cross, Disappearing Christ, Mérode Altarpiece, Joseph Scenes on the Chair of Maximianus). In the 1950s and 1960s, the content is treated within the context of the study of a single object or monument that he is attempting to date and localize, in which case he is using details of the iconography as indicators within a larger argument (e.g., Castelseprio, Parma Ildefonsus, Glazier Psalter). Late in his career, he begins regrouping patterns, types, uses, and interpretations of iconography across time and space, as in the essays in Words, Script and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language, where he explores the artist’s reading of the text, themes of state and themes of action, full-face and profile as symbolic form, and writing in images. While the more purely iconographical studies are often archaeological or positivist in tone, the last papers permit the author to explore iconography and style diachronically, to develop freely the interaction of content and form and their inflected, possible readings. He published no new work after the age of seventy, returning to earlier articles or unpublished studies, which he polished and gathered together in five well-indexed volumes of selected papers.4 These in turn have now been translated into several languages. Like A. Riegl, his life’s work has become accessible worldwide only recently and posthumously. In his various approaches to medieval art, Schapiro’s style differs. The formal analyses of iconography can be voluble and emotive, while those presenting arguments concerning sources and chronology can be much more densely threaded, economical, frustratingly meagre in their illustration, and sometimes more abrupt in their transitions, conclusions, affirmations, and suggestions. The late essays, which were originally conceived as lectures or developments presented in his classes, flow rapidly as Schapiro speaks to the images and reads their many nuances. Throughout his life, Schapiro’s published work was interwoven with his teaching, which constantly added new observations and ideas to the work in print in a much freer and extraordinarily wide-ranging manner. For this reason, his students may have understood him best, notably John Plummer in his article “Insight and Outlook” and Ilene Forsyth in her articles “Narrative at Moissac, Schapiro’s Legacy” and “Word Play in the Cloister at Moissac.”5 Forsyth’s articles are particularly revealing with regard to one facet of Schapiro as an iconographer. Schapiro never published the last chapter of his thesis on the sculpture of Moissac, the one that dealt with the iconographical sources of the sculptures. Forsyth’s article on the portal at Moissac began as a master’s essay for Schapiro in 1955. As she sets the stage for providing evidence for a new and rather brilliant understanding of the sculptures of the portal and trumeau, she builds on Schapiro’s observations, but also notes the elements that he overlooked or left unqueried, such as the prominent swollen udders of the lioness on the trumeau (Fig. 11.1) or the falling idols of Heliopolis during the Flight into Egypt. She notes that Schapiro added to his reading of the sculptures in the classroom – for example, by noting the antithetical symmetry of the bed of the Virgin receiving the Magi and the bed of the dying Lazarus – without searching for further meaning. She points out his fascination with “iconographic realism” and secular imagery, but is baffled by his curious indifference to the monastic context of Moissac. She makes a fine case for identifying Lazarus’s wife with Jezebel and Luxuria; she then parallels the fall of Jezebel with the fallen idols of Heliopolis, develops new levels of meaning, and presents a contextual dating c. 1100–1115. One of the few times Schapiro went very far astray was in his article “From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos,” where, in a comparison of manuscript illumination with sculpture (which is a dubious point of departure), he attributed a change in style to indigenous artists at Silos who were reacting to changing social and economic conditions in the church and secular world. Both this article and the one on Souillac were published in 1939. Schapiro was thirty-five years old and deeply fascinated with Marxism and Freud, and these ideologies left traces in both articles. 143

Patricia Stirnemann

Figure 11.1 Detail of the trumeau at Moissac showing prominent swollen udders of the lioness. Moissac, Abbaye Saint Pierre. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane.

It took over sixty years and one of the world’s finest historians of Mozarabic and Romanesque Spain to set matters straight. In a superb study, John Williams takes Schapiro’s article to task with extraordinary perception, analyzing it point by point.6 His careful examination explains how the monks at Silos had written their own erroneous and chauvinistic history of the abbey, a history on which Schapiro had based his assumptions and Marxist reading. He then carefully itemizes the hypothetical slant, lapses in reasoning, ambiguities of language, and unsupported assertions with which Meyer Schapiro manipulates the reader rather than demonstrating a proposition. As John Williams notes, Meyer Schapiro “overturns” his own thesis twenty-five years later, but only in a footnote, in the early pages of the Parma Ildefonsus (1964): “the coexistence of the Mozarabic and Romanesque in Spain . . . is a matter of an old native style surviving for one or two generations beside a newly introduced foreign style.”7 Reading the two articles back to back is a cogent lesson in critical thought. 144

Meyer Schapiro

Schapiro often left articles aging in the barrel for decades, and it is possible that the articlemade-into-a-book on the Parma Ildefonsus was begun in the 1930s, as it shares the same captivation with the confrontation of two dissimilar styles, and toys mischievously with iconographical aspects, such as the sexual Freudian interpretation of an open door. The open door at Silos occurs above the image of the Doubting Thomas,8 while in the Parma Ildefonsus it occurs in the image of the appearance of the Virgin to Ildefonsus in a church. Schapiro, in one of his famously long footnotes (note 27), acknowledges that the scene represents the vision of Ildefonsus, and then develops the possibility of a Freudian interpretation of the open door. Walter Cahn justly questioned the sexual interpretation in his review of the book, emphasizing that the open door of the church is described in the account of the vision of Ildefonsus.9 In the chapter on the German artist in the manuscript,10 Schapiro briefly lists over a dozen iconographic and compositional details that are found in Ottonian manuscripts, giving copious and pertinent references, but no illustrations, leaving the visual quest to the reader. During World War II and in the decade that followed, Schapiro struck a new path and concentrated on a series of iconographical questions. His formal preoccupations seem to fade into the background as he hones in on the texts that inspire the artist. Many of these articles are relatively brief, nearly all are masterful, and some are of fundamental importance for historians of the Middle Ages in all fields. His study on “The Religious Meaning of the Ruthwell Cross,”11 one of five iconographic essays that appeared in rapid succession between 1942 and 1945, is illustrative of the type of problem that attracted him – an isolated, early medieval object or iconography based partly on unusual nonbiblical or para-biblical texts. What is the meaning the artist is trying to impart with an original composition, and can we retrieve it? Schapiro’s article on the Ruthwell Cross appeared at the same time as that of Fritz Saxl, with whom he corresponded at the time.12 The two articles arrive at some similar observations, but could not be more different. Saxl is traditional, giving an introduction to some of the past research and a fairly full description of the cross, followed by an analysis of the iconography, especially the figure of Christ; he then provides a comparison with the Bewcastle Cross and Mediterranean models, and a discussion of the problem of dating, all in an additive development. Typically, Schapiro begins his article as a response to another scholar’s work – namely, the fifth volume of G. Baldwin Brown’s The Arts of Early England (1921), devoted to the Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses. He immediately cuts to the chaff, the image of Christ standing on the animals, and questions the traditional identification of a “Christ triumphant.” The animals under Christ’s feet are adoring him, not trampled, and the inscription surrounding the panel speaks of the beasts recognizing Christ, cognoverunt. He underscores the unusual, nonnarrative grouping of scenes that surround it: Saints Paul and Anthony, Mary Magdalen at the feet of Christ, the Flight into Egypt, the Annunciation and Visitation, the Healing of the blind man, and the Crucifixion in the lowest panel. These have nothing to do with death or the extract from the Dream of the Rood, written in runes on the cross. He then retraces other biblical and apocryphal texts where animals recognize Christ, and the rare representations of Christ surrounded by beasts when he withdraws to the desert, an iconography that preceded the trampling versions of the post-fourth-century Church triumphant, which refer to Psalm 90/91. Schapiro then relates the desert and eremitical elements in the Christ panel to the panels of John the Baptist and the hermit saints Paul and Anthony breaking bread, notes the importance of Paul as first hermit in Anglo-Saxon calendars and martyrologies, and the modelling of Anglo-Saxon saints lives on the lives of Egyptian saints and the desert fathers, the Celtic use of the Egyptian calculation of Easter, Cuthbert and Guthlac’s power over beasts, Mary Magdalen’s thirty-year desert life recorded in the Anglo-Saxon martyrology, and so on. In short, with poetic energy and almost visionary meditation, Schapiro draws us back into the monastic seventh century and makes the integrated 145

Patricia Stirnemann

religious meaning of the scenes on the cross shine forth in their simple complexity: the spiritual withdrawal into the desert, the world of harmony with animals, and the recognition of the equitable judge and savior. Curiously, he emphasizes only the desert references as a unifying spiritual theme of the panels, overlooking the importance of the equally pervasive theme of recognition, not only in the panels of Christ, the Baptist, Annunciation, Healing of the blind man, the hermits Paul and Anthony, and Mary Magdalen anointing Christ but also in the Visitation,13 where Elizabeth “recognizes” that Mary is blessed, and of course in the Dream of the Rood inscription, where the Cross “recognizes” Christ. Finally he places the cross and its southern stylistic elements within the tensions of the political and religious context of the synod of Whitby and the Romanization of Anglo-Saxon England. He glosses on its exocentric placement in Ruthwell on the Thwaite Burn and the intentions of its institutional authors, and then evokes parallels with the Life of Saint Kertigern, apostle of Strathclyde, who is obeyed by animals and restores the sight of a blind king. He closes with the lapidary sentence “The Cross is Anglian and classic in its forms, mainly Celtic in its religious content.” The unveiled religious meaning brings to the fore yet another latent aspect of the cross – namely, the formal expressiveness of the assembly and arrangement of scenes in a very badly damaged masterpiece, themes of recognition, of spiritual withdrawal and seeing that unite the two sides of the cross and explain the ordering of the seemingly isolated narrative and nonnarrative scenes. In the article, Schapiro has turned the intellectual tables. From being an evangelist of the formal reading, he has shown his intuition and vision as a meditative apostle of the power of the word, text, and historical setting. Playing as ever on several keyboards at once, it is during this moment of intense inquiry into the liturgy, commentary, biography, and history of the first half of the Middle Ages that he writes his essay on the esthetic attitude in Romanesque art (1947).14 The 1940s were a decade in which he was ardently pursuing the question of how messages are made and received in the pre-Gothic era, incidentally showing students how to search for and interpret significant texts and images. During the same year as the article on the Ruthwell Cross, 1945, he published his brief seminal article on the Mérode Altarpiece, datable around 1425–1428, where Joseph the carpenter makes mousetraps to snare the devil at the moment of the Annunciation.15 The article had many repercussions in the following decades. Schapiro’s textual and contextual arguments were universally accepted, and scholars would provide symbolic explanations for other objects, notably the trimming ax, saw, and rod, which reflect the words of Isaiah 10:15.16 What has often been lost in later discussions is the import of Schapiro’s remarks on what this altarpiece tells us about a new relationship, if not tension, that is created between the religious message and the secular setting with the advent of northern Renaissance realism. He notes how domestic objects psychologically evoke a dichotomy of the masculine versus feminine in apparel, tools, and belongings; mice, chimneys, and open doors and windows call to mind sexual allusions; the basin and towel are metaphors for chastity and cleanliness in daily bourgeois life, and at the same time these objects transmit age-old theological and patristic symbolism: Religious thought tries to appropriate all this for itself; it seeks to stamp the freshly discovered world with its own categories, to spiritualize it and incorporate it within a scheme of other-worldly value . . . But in shaping a semblance of the real world about a religious theme of the utmost mysteriousness, like the Incarnation, the objects of the setting become significant of the unacknowledged physical realities that the religion aims to transcend . . . In accepting the realistic vision of nature, religious art runs the risk of receding to a marginal position, of becoming in turn the border element that secular reality had been . . . a secret language in the small objects.17 146

Meyer Schapiro

The language of the small objects also belongs to verbal expressions, bourgeois expressions of sexuality and purity that echo back and forth through the triptych, expressions that have now been gathered by Rose Bidler in her Dictionnaire érotique.18 In the following reading of the triptych, common sexual allusions are in italics. On the left-hand panel, in the mundane world, the young clean-faced patron wears a virile dague à couillettes, his wife clutches a string of coral beads which promises to protect infants, a horse and rider (chevaucher) is seen through the open door in the garden wall, a terrestrial foppish town messenger, perhaps Bel Accueil, announces the couple’s arrival, and a flowering rosebush (Roman de la Rose) peaks out behind the door to the house. The angel Gabriel passes through a door that has been locked with a key from the inside! But the door is visible only in the left-hand panel. The Virgin in her piety sits humbly on the footrest of the bench, reading the Bible. A liturgical book with frequent rubrics and a prayer roll are on the table. The Christ Child passes through a closed windowpane on rays of light, while on the back wall the open windows give only onto the sky and celestial clouds. The chimney is cold, not in use. The candle on the male side of the chimney has been removed. The flame of the candle on the table has been extinguished. The basin and towel symbolize purification, much like the lily in the maiolica pitcher. On the right-hand panel, the windows of the narrow rustic workshop give onto a cityscape, where couples walk toward the church, protected from the devil by the mousetrap set on a shelf outside the window of the atelier; the battens for the windows, like the door to the house, are full of nails (newly driven nails on the door, rusty old nails on the battens), evoking the expression river le clou, but there are virtually no nails in the immaculate central panel; the scattered nails on Joseph’s table evoke “compter les cloux,” to wait patiently; a trimming ax stamped with the three circles of the “scutum fidei,” a saw stamped with a cross, and a wooden rod at the feet of Joseph ask, “do we rise up against or glorify ourselves over him who uses us” – in other words, these are the tools of Joseph the carpenter or even perhaps the tools of God;19 and the aged, bearded, and chaste Joseph now only bores holes with a vilebrequin in a wooden board to make bait-traps for the devil. The characterization of each of the panels is simple, easily readable, hierarchical, colloquial, and intimate.20 Another short article on the Joseph scenes on the episcopal chair of Maximianus in Ravenna distils the architectural beauty of Schapiro’s woven thought and his search for universals in the particular.21 The details of the iconography seem nearly absent in the article; neither the number of scenes, nor their content, nor their placement on the throne is mentioned. Basic knowledge about the chair is assumed for anyone who would want to read the article. What interests him is why such an extensive cycle occurs on a sixth-century archbishop’s throne. He hones in on the texts closest to the context: the Ravennate tituli of Helpidius Rusticus (early sixth century) and sermons of the Ravennate bishop Peter Chrysologus (fifth century) which liken Joseph to Christ; the sermons of the Milanese bishop Ambrose who likens Joseph to a bishop; the laws of Justinian which assigned important civic duties to the bishop. He then sketches the religious and secular activities of Maximianus. At last he arrives at the layered meaning of the crown worn by Joseph, the modius or modiolus, which is not only a bushel crown worn by personifications of Greek cities, insuring fertility and good fortune, but also a crown of the Byzantine emperor. Binding together the iconography, texts, and context, the article closes with a very elegant and concise philosophical description of analogical interpretation, as it existed in the Christian world before the advent of realism: Since formal and final causes, to use Aristotelian language, were the chief ones, and the material and efficient causes were more and more neglected, analogy and purpose became the key concepts in explaining the world. A similarity of form, even a purely verbal one in the names of things, was already a bond between things. Necessity was 147

Patricia Stirnemann

manifested in the formal resemblances of persons, objects, and events. These equivalences, which are the ground of symbolism, are not self-evident, given directly to the eye or the mind, but, like poetic symbols, are discovered through directing concepts and requirements which change with the human situation. The discovered analogies in turn serve a hidden purpose of the divine being. Every event or stage is an announcement and a preparation of the subsequent stage. Just as the plant is latent in the seed, so Christ’s life is latent in Joseph’s, and the secular authority of the bishop is already intended in Joseph’s career. Symbolism thus includes purpose as well as analogy; the universe – nature and history – is saturated with Christian finality, everything points beyond itself to a formal system evident in the analogical structure of things, due to a divine intention working itself out in time. The predominance of analogy and purposefulness in much of mediaeval thinking is a primitive trait which we find among savage peoples and also in children and psychotics. But the mediaeval practice differs from the primitive in one important respect. The Middle Ages inherited the Greek and Roman rationality, deductive spirit and encyclopedism, the search for completeness and order of knowledge and applied these to the religious sphere with concepts largely restricted to the formal and teleological. Hence the play of analogy in Christian thought, while seemingly poetic and unconstrained, has a systematic, constructive character.22 The search for visual elements with which to create a logical argument for dating and placing was one of Schapiro’s constant preoccupations, and his imagination was ignited by the discovery of the frescoes at Castelseprio in 1944. His writings on the frescoes are threefold and include a short book review of the monograph by G. P. Bognetti and A. de Capitani d’Arzago (1950), a long review of K. Weitzmann’s monograph (1952), and a note in response to an article written by A. Grabar (1957).23 For Schapiro, the frescoes presented the problem of dating a work that comes to light in an artistic vacuum, a period in which sufficient quantities of comparative material have not survived. Were the frescoes seventh-century, as the Italians argued, or tenth-century and painted by an artist from Constantinople in the middle Byzantine period, as Kurt Weitzmann argued? Schapiro takes up Weitzmann’s arguments on style and iconography one by one, examining details of figures, motifs, arrangement, costume, and gesture over the whole range of time, from late antiquity to the tenth century and throughout the Mediterranean regions, constantly asking whether the artist is Greek or Lombard, if his brushstroke, command of perspective, and rendering of architecture, light, and shade are in continuity with the late antique past, or part of a Byzantine Renaissance reprise, as in such works as the Joshua Roll and Paris Psalter. He brings up and develops a wide spectrum of visual problems that bear on his subject – for example, the coexistence of narrative and iconic modes, the nature of copying and its effect on the resulting art, the origins of the art of the Carolingian period, how these northern artists were trained and by whom, and what models they were using. He points out the essential weaknesses of Weitzmann’s study: an oriented view and the omission of comparisons stemming from an earlier period that are uncomfortable to the argument. Schapiro canvases this earlier period as thoroughly as possible, including both extant works of art and ancient verbal descriptions and drawings of lost works. While some details in the cycle at Castelseprio are isolated, such as the Parthian crowns of the magi, for which Schapiro can find only third-century comparisons, he otherwise marshals a number of highly pertinent seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-century comparisons, placing Castelseprio in a position of precursor to the Carolingian Renaissance. In his search for datable details, he finally draws attention to two motifs that occur only from the eighth century onward, the cross-nimbus with linear nailhead light rays and the clavis on the thigh. In the end, Schapiro’s meticulous approach and late 148

Meyer Schapiro

eighth-century dating – between the two temporal extremes – have been twice vindicated: first by the discovery of a sinopia for the Flight into Egypt in the mid-eighth-century church of San Salvatore in Brescia, and second by recent radiocarbon dating of the timbers (778–952) and thermoluminescent dating of the roof tiles (c. 826) of Castelseprio. The article published in 1960 on manuscript Glazier 25, a Psalter that had recently been acquired by the Pierpont Morgan Library,24 is one of the few archaeological studies where Schapiro ventures into the thirteenth century. He recognizes and announces from the outset that the pictures preceding the Psalter are “interesting for their political meaning.” There follows a trenchant description of the iconography: first he names each of the scenes, then compares the cycle with the Amesbury Psalter and Westminster Psalter, notes the singularity of the initials, characterizes the powerful binary pairing of the six facing scenes of the cycle as “episode” versus “scene of majesty,” and at last comes to bear on the scenes of David, where an unexpected compositional comparison is drawn between the scene of Saul in bed and David playing the harp and the Benedictional of Ethelwold. He notes the quiet composure of the demented Saul, the unparalleled iconography of Saul in bed (repeated in the Beatus initial, where Saul is not crowned), illustrating I Sam. 16, 23 rather than the traditional verses of violence in Chapters 18 and 19. Schapiro then summarizes the importance of anointing in the English coronation ordo, its frequent representation in images, its absence in the Glazier Psalter, and the assertive posture of the king’s crossed legs. He explains how, early in the reign of Henry III (1216–1272), Innocent III “affirmed the dissimilarity of the anointed king to the anointed Christ” and the primacy of the Church, noting also that Saint Peter and Saint Silvester (the first popes) both receive double invocations in the litany. He also notes the close resemblance between the miniatures of Christ in Majesty in the Glazier and Westminster Psalters. Finally, stylistic comparisons lead to a dating in the 1220s. Every possible line of inquiry seems to have been explored, all data marshalled to the cause. Except one! What has been overlooked is the fact that Henry III was crowned twice, first at the age of nine at Gloucester in 1216 in the midst of the Barons’ War, and again with papal permission at Westminster on May 17, 1220.25 There was a great and costly celebration, for the second crowning was intended to reaffirm the authority of Henry, now thirteen years old. He had recently been referred to as “not a king but a boy” and the regent Hubert de Burgh had been unable to bring the barons to heel and replenish the exchequer. The day after the coronation, the barons swore to renounce their title to royal castles at the king’s will and to pay their taxes. Within this context, the miniatures of the David and Saul and the crowning of an assertive king take on increased political meaning. With regard to the composition in the Benedictional of Ethelwold, the scene is reversed. David is seated on the left side, the more sacred side of the picture, where he is designated as Saul’s successor by the angel of the Lord, while Saul, attended by a woman who lays her hands on his shoulders, is in bed on the right side, the more negative side. The artist appears to be drawing a parallel between the Davidic episode and the gentle Henry III playing the harp for his father, John, a king shown here in bed with a woman standing close and touching him, a king who was known for his libertinism during his first marriage and for having often stayed in bed until noon with his second wife, Isabelle d’Angoulême. The parallelism continues on the facing page. David was twice anointed and Henry is twice crowned. The weight of the word coronatus becomes even more layered than Schapiro has already demonstrated. The iconographic elements in the initials at Psalms 38, 52, and 101 also take on significance when seen through the eyes of the young king Henry: the fable of the stork and the fox at the head of a psalm begging for wisdom in speech; monkeys frolicking in the initial of the psalm condemning fools who renounce God and do iniquity; and finally three men exhorting God to hear their prayer, to raise them up over their enemies, to free the oppressed and prisoners. Finally, the intriguing relationship of the miniatures with the Benedictional of Ethelwold and the Westminster Psalter becomes 149

Patricia Stirnemann

clear when one realizes that Pierre de Roches, bishop of Winchester, was the tutor of Henry III and may have made the Benedictional available to the artist, just as Guillaume de Humez, abbot of Westminster, must have shown him the Psalter.26 The book Words, Script and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language appeared in 1996, the year Schapiro died.27 The book’s relatively short essays, Schapiro’s Vier letzte Lieder, express in overarching volleys his understanding of the habits of representation and the complex lives of meaningful signs in medieval art. As he reads each picture, he himself is an artist/reader looking for the artist/ reader of the picture. It is the artist/reader who conceives the image and first receives it. As each picture has its own, often variable means and meaning, generalizations flee to the woods. With the meticulousness of the medieval accessus, he parses the picture grammatically, rhetorically, materially, for its intention, use, artifex (artist), finality, role, aspect, furnishings, and for its limits. In the first part of the book, “Words and Pictures,” he is constantly posing voiced or implied questions: what is the smallest number of elements necessary for an image to be identifiable; and by extension, identifiable by whom and when and under what conditions; which elements are provided by the text and which by the artist and why; why do images change over time in the face of an unchanged text; how does the artist capture the literal sense by comparison to the metaphorical or symbolic sense; what means of expression are available to the artist at a given moment; which are unknown to him; which are spontaneous and which are learnt; what are the modes and norms of the stylistic context and how do they affect the choice of elements and their expressive force; what effect has naturalism on the rendering of typological or metaphorical interpretations; are the preoccupations of the theologians the same as those of the artist; what are the different possible readings, ancient and modern, of a complex symbolic ensemble? In the second part, “Script in Pictures,” he brings up what the Renaissance viewed as the “invasive” role of writing in pictures, showing how across history and into the art of our time words and speech and their vehicles, whether in the air, on a roll, on a codex, or on other supports, create dramatic, expressive, signifying relations through their orientation, legibility, and materiality. The core of the chapter is a stroke of genius, a refreshed reading of a familiar stranger, the evangelist portrait in the Gospels and its relation to the logos, the epicenter of the Christian religion. It prickles with acute sensibility toward the different ways the medieval artist integrates into the miniature the image of written words destined for the spectator.28 Schapiro was intrinsically fascinated by the gifted, original artist, how he creates, how he reads, how he sees, what inspires him to choose an iconography and craft its form. The intricate threading of Schapiro’s thought makes a pirouette in an interview he gave in 1994 at the age of ninety.29 The last paragraph reads, “I’m not an admirer of Warhol’s work,” Schapiro told me good-naturedly. “He was a man who worked very much in the spirit of advertising.” Then, crossing realms with his usual aplomb, he summed up Pop Art, if not civilization itself, in recondite terms. “Do you know the work of the 18th-century British poet, Edward Young? He once said that we’re born originals and die copies.” The last sentence is a show-stopper. How did Schapiro know this eighteenth-century poet-clergyman (1683–1765)? The most likely reason is that while preparing his dissertation, he visited Angouleme to study the Romanesque façade of the cathedral. Here, he would also have visited the museum and fallen upon its most arresting work, a somber and imposing nocturnal painting, almost 8 feet high (238 × 192 cm), of Edward Young carrying a shovel and the spotlit stiffened corpse of his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Temple, who, in 1736, died in Lyon on her way to Nice (Fig. 11.2). She was refused burial in the Catholic cemetery because she was a Protestant, 150

Meyer Schapiro

Figure 11.2 Edward Young carrying the corpse of his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Temple, by Pierre Antoine Auguste Vafflard. Oil, 238 × 192 cm, c. 1804, Le Musée d’Angoulême. Image courtesy of Le Musée d’Angoulême, Thiery Blas.

and Young had to bury her in the cemetery of the Swiss colony located in the Hôtel Dieu.30 It is doubtful that the museum in Angouleme provided any information about the painter, Pierre Antoine Auguste Vafflard. Vafflard exhibited the work in the salon of 1804, where he provided a handbill with the explanation “Young tenant sa fille morte sur ses bras s’écrit dans sa douleur amère: O zèle barbare et haï d’un dieu bienfaisant; ces hommes impitoyables ont refusé de 151

Patricia Stirnemann

répandre de la poussière sur une poussière.”31 The citation is from Young’s most famous poem, Night Thoughts, which was translated by Pierre Letourneur in 1769 and became the rage of the Romantic school in France, reprinted in fifty editions. Returning to Columbia University and its library, Schapiro would have found the poem Night Thoughts, the source of inspiration for Vafflard, as well as biographies of Young, and Martin William Steinke’s 1917 edition of Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition in a Letter to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison, published in 1759.32 Conjectures, which is the source of Schapiro’s quotation, is threaded with aphorisms about artistic genius: “Learning is borrowed knowledge, genius is knowledge innate.” “Rules, like crutches, are a needful aid to the lame, although an impediment to the strong.” “Born originals, how comes it to pass that we die copies? That meddling ape imitation, as soon as we come to years of indiscretion (so let me speak), snatches the pen and blots out nature’s mark of separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental individuality.”33 On the contrary, Meyer Schapiro was an original.

Notes 1 Meyer Schapiro gave all his papers to Columbia University. They are housed in the Rare Book Library and a detailed inventory is available on the web. 2 The article entitled “Style” was reprinted in 1994 in the fourth volume of his collected works: The Theory and Philosophy of Art; see note 4 ahead. 3 Meyer Schapiro’s work has been the subject of several colloquia, articles, books, and encyclopedia articles, which can be found through JSTOR, Regesta Imperii, and Kubikat. Volume 45 of the periodical Social Research, published in 1978, shortly after Schapiro’s full retirement, contains many highly perceptive articles by eminent students and colleagues. Schapiro’s wife compiled his bibliography; see L. Milgrim, Meyer Schapiro: The Bibliography (New York, 1995). Other works have appeared posthumously. 4 Romanesque Art (New York, 1977); Modern Art (New York, 1978); Late Antique, Early Christian and Medieval Art (New York, 1979); The Theory and Philosophy of Art (New York, 1994); Worldview in Painting – Art and Society (New York, 1999), all published by George Braziller. 5 Plummer, in Social Research, 45 (1978), 164–75, and Forsyth “Narrative at Moissac: Schapiro’s Legacy,” Gesta, 41, 2002, 71–93; “Word Play in the Cloister at Moissac,” in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2008), 154–78. 6 J. Williams, “Meyer Schapiro in Silos: Pursuing an Iconography of Style,” The Art Bulletin, 85 (2003), 442–68. See also O.K. Werckmeister, review of Meyer Schapiro, Romanesque Art, in Art Quarterly, n.s. 2 (1979), 211–18. 7 Williams (as in note 6), 464, and Schapiro, The Parma Ildefonsus: A Romanesque Illuminated Manuscript from Cluny and Related Works (New York, 1964), 3, note 5. In the introduction to his collected volume Romanesque Art (as in note 4) Schapiro appears conscious but unrepentant of his errors: “I’m aware of many imperfections, inconsistencies, and unclear formulations in those papers, but to correct them would require more rewriting than I can undertake now”; ix. 8 Williams (as in note 6), 452, and note 119. 9 W. Cahn, review of Parma Ildefonsus, Art Bulletin, 50 (1967), 72–75, esp. 75; the review is also noted by Williams (as in note 6), 468, note 176, 10 Carl Nordenfalk, who was the first to discuss the concurring styles in the Parma Ildefonsus, identified the German artist as Albertus of Trier, a scribe illuminator recorded in documents at Cluny: C. Nordenfalk, “Miniature ottonienne et ateliers capétiens,” Art de France, IV (1964), 44–59. 11 Schapiro, Late Antique and Early Christian (as in note 4), 150–95. 12 “The Ruthwell Cross,” JWCI, 7, 1943, 1–19. Fritz Saxl quotes a helpful letter from Schapiro in note 4, and their correspondence, 1940–1946, can be found in the Meyer Schapiro collection, Columbia University, Series II, box 165, folder 4. 13 Schapiro (as in note 12), 164. 14 The essay was reprinted as the lead article in the first volume of his selected papers: Romanesque Art (as in note 4).

152

Meyer Schapiro 15 “Muscipula Diaboli, The Symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece,” in Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art (as in note 4), 1–11. Johan Huizinga had identified the mousetrap as a trap for the devil and cited Peter Lombard’s Sentences in the 1935 Dutch edition of his book, The Waning of the Middle Ages; see E. Peters and W. Simons, “The New Huizinga and the Old Middle Ages,” Speculum, v. 74 (1999), 616. 16 See C. Minott, “The Theme of the Merode Tryptych,” Art Bulletin 51 (1969), 267–71. This work has been reproduced on countless occasions and is widely available online, as for example on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/ search/470304. 17 Schapiro, Muscipula Diaboli (as in note 15), 9–10. 18 R. Bidler, Dictionnaire érotique, ancien français, moyen français, renaissance (Montréal, 2002). See also G. di Stefano, Dictionnaire des locutions en moyen français (Montréal, 1991). 19 The patron of the altarpiece, Peter Ymbrechts, married a woman named Schrijnmakere or “cabinet maker” between 1425 and 1428. 20 For a similar example of layered reading, in this case a pictorial love story, first published in Art de l’enluminure, n° 5, in 2003 that turns out to be that of a prostitute, based on the poems of François Villon, see Das Buch der Liebenden: Histoire d’amour sans paroles. Ms. 388 du Musée Condé à Chantilly, commentary by P. Stirnemann and M. Zink to the facsimile (Simbach am Inn, 2005), 11–34 and 47–67. 21 “The Joseph scenes on the Maximianus throne in Ravenna” (1952), in Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art, New York (as in note 4), 34–47. 22 Schapiro, “The Joseph Scenes on the Maximianus Throne in Ravenna” (as in note 21), 42–43. 23 A current website for Castelseprio lists over 550 articles and books that have appeared. 24 “An Illuminated English Psalter of the Early Thirteenth Century” (1960) in Late Antique (as in note 4), 329–54. This is G. 25 and like the Merode Altarpiece, it too has been widely reproduced and images are available online; see the Morgan Library online catalogue at http://corsair.themorgan.org. 25 D. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (Los Angeles, 1990), 187 passim. 26 Benedictional of Aethelwold, London, BL, Add. 49598; Westminster Psalter, London, BL, Royal 2. A. XXII. 27 The first part of the book was initially published in M. Schapiro, Words and Pictures: On the Literal and Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text (The Hague, 1973). 28 This paragraph is taken in part from my review of the French edition (Macula) in the Bulletin du bibliophile (2002), n° 2, 373–76. 29 D. Solomon, “A Critic Turns 90: Meyer Schapiro,” The New York Times Magazine, August 14 (1994), 22–25. 30 Young paid 729 livres and 12 sols for the burial. A. Péricaud, Notes et documents pour servir à l’histoire de Lyon, sous le règne de Henri III, 1574–1589, vol. I (Lyon, 1843), 64, note 1. 31 “For oh! the cursed ungodliness of zeal! While sinful flesh relented, spirit nursed/In blind infallibility’s embrace,/The sainted spirit petrified the breast;/Denied the charity of dust, to spread/O’er dust!” (ll. 165–69). 32 Samuel Richardson is the author of the epistolary novel Sir Charles Grandison, 1753. The Steinke (1886– 1971) edition is the elegant, incisive, and highly synthetic doctoral thesis (1914, University of Illinois); it traces the English sources and German precedents and reception of Conjectures, and judges the work to be conventional, elevated in style, if somewhat inflated, and not as original as the author claims. 33 Edith J. Morely, Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition, London, 1918, p. 14, 17, 20 (available on-line at https://archive.org/details/cu31924013204155).

153

12 MICHAEL CAMILLE’S QUEER MIDDLE AGES Matthew M. Reeve

Introduction Michael Camille (1958–2002) is the most recent iconographer covered in this volume (Plate 1). Born in Keighley, Yorkshire (England), in 1958, his undergraduate and postgraduate training was undertaken at the University of Cambridge, and he spent the entirety of his subsequent academic career at the University of Chicago.1 Considered the “enfant terrible”2 of medievalist art history, his published work amounts to one of the most powerful and sustained critiques of traditional iconography published during the later twentieth century. His early work in particular, stretching between the mid 1980s through the mid 1990s, was focused to a large extent on the problematics of iconography itself. In a celebrated series of essays and monographs, Camille sought to dismantle the authority of iconography as an interpretative strategy that had dominated medievalist art history since the nineteenth century. His first book, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (1989), directly paraphrased and challenged Émile Mâle’s classic account of French high Gothic iconography, The Gothic Image (1899); his 1992 Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art offered a social and cultural revision of the boundaries of medieval art – particularly the borders of the manuscript page and the carvings on the edges of buildings – which for Camille served as metaphors for the margins of medieval life; a range of early essays, including his “Mouths and Meanings: Toward and Anti-Iconography of Medieval Art” (1993), takes on Erwin Panofsky’s iconographical work by exposing how certain works of medieval art short-circuit iconography as a mode of reading, thereby demanding different interpretative strategies for images that cannot be readily “decoded” by a Patristic text. Camille’s later work developed many of these interpretative strategies and employed them to explore and destabilize a range of key monuments, from the English Luttrell Psalter to the French Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry. Camille also published on Renaissance art, nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, and critical theory, and appeared in the media, including on NPR’s This American Life, where he, opposite Ira Glass, narrated the American medievalism of a mock dinner-tournament at Medieval Times, near Chicago.3 Like most of the figures covered in this volume, Camille’s work as an iconographer cannot easily be disentangled from his appraisal and promotion of the Middle Ages generally. Understood by many as an early proponent of the so-called New Art History in medieval art history, Camille substantially overturned an established vision for the Middle Ages in art 154

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

Plate 1 Michael Camille. Image courtesy of Stuart Michaels.

history and beyond. For W.J.T. Mitchell, the Middle Ages prior to Camille’s interventions seemed “hopelessly orthodox and stuffy, dominated by religious dogma and the archaic conventions of aristocratic romances . . . unbearably pious and obsessed with higher, more spiritual things than we modern, secular humanists could bear to contemplate.”4 Camille’s work reflected a self-conscious denial of the Platonic-scholastic vision of the Middle Ages embodied in Panofsky’s Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, of the overtly theological and liturgical image of the Gothic cathedral as a “mirror” of the medieval world advocated by Émile Mâle, and of the nationalistic and nostalgic “Merrie Old England” vision of the Middle Ages embodied in the work of his English predecessors John Harvey, Nickolaus Pevsner, John Betjman, and others.5 Camille explored what for many was a far more secular and pluralistic Middle Ages consistent with the ethical and moral sensibilities of “the literate Left” in England and North America. Every period creates the Middle Ages it needs and deserves, and Camille’s Middle Ages was politically dissenting and antihegemonic, spiritually conflicted, physically and sexually plural, violent, and aesthetically glamorous. Grounded in recent poststructuralist theory and particularly Marxist and socialist critique, Camille’s subject was alterity (or the “marginal”) during the Middle Ages in its many forms. As such, his work explored aspects of medieval art that had been largely ignored or minimized by previous interpreters and by their iconographic methods. He understood that consistently looking at the center rather than the margins signified an implicit agreement with hegemonic practices of making images in the Middle Ages and interpreting them within the terms established by religious and academic orthodoxy. His study of manuscript margins exposed iconography that denied the heteronormative canon of medievalist iconography by being bawdy, and occasionally homoerotic 155

Matthew M. Reeve

and or scatological in nature; or he applied new theoretical models borrowed from sociology and queer theory to explore canonical works (the Très Riches Heures, Bourges Cathedral) and exposed the social and sexual structures that informed them. Camille’s work offered a vision of the Middle Ages that was queer in its fullest theoretical sense: to paraphrase David Halperin, it was “at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant,” and it functioned in Cheryl Smith’s terms as “A strategy, an attitude . . . a radical questioning of social and cultural norms.”6 Before turning to explore Camille’s life and work in greater depth, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider his legacy. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto in the 1990s and a graduate student at Cambridge (until 2002), Michael Camille dominated my thought as a young person struggling to become a medievalist. His presence was still felt at Cambridge, both in the institutional memory of the department and in the physical signs Camille left behind (i.e., the many marginal doodles in books in the university library that I chanced upon as I read the same volumes decades later). Like many of my generation, I came to consider him to be a major influence upon my work, one of my own intellectual household gods. He offered a voice from the margins capable of being understood and embraced by a range of alternate modern subjectivities at the time, whether sexual, religious, ethnic, or otherwise, that also felt disenfranchised by the social and intellectual apparatus of medievalist art history and wanted to shatter the glass through which we gazed upon the period. And yet, unlike many of my friends trained contemporaneously in North America, I never met him. Camille’s untimely death in 2002 meant that my own association with him remained an imagined one. Assessing his legacy as a medievalist and iconographer is done principally on the basis of his writings. Although conference sessions have been held in his honor, they remain unpublished.7 His personal papers at the University of Chicago are not fully catalogued and have not been carefully studied.8 Unlike some other iconographers included here, we are still living through a period in which Camille’s writings and influence are shaping our discipline. Camille’s life and work are worthy of a more extended account than can be offered here; I can only hope that the present essay offers some directions for further research.

Origins Michael Camille was born in West Yorkshire to working-class parents. His father was from the Seychelles and of mixed race and his mother was Irish. Unconventional in its very makeup, the Camille family was radically and esoterically left-wing: Labour supporters, enthusiastic nudists, and antimonarchists (Michael’s father apparently threw his shoes at the television when “the Royals” appeared). As children, Michael and his sister, Michelle, were raised part-time by their grandparents as their parents struggled to support them. Superficially at least, there is little in Camille’s early life that led him to either medieval studies specifically or to academia generally. His father was apparently illiterate and the household on the council estate that he grew up in was devoid of books. Camille was the first child from his grammar school (Oakbank School in Keighley, Yorkshire) to “make it” to Oxbridge (the social significance of this transgression of class boundaries will still be more keenly understood by British rather than North American readers). He began by reading English in Part I of his undergraduate degree, which introduced him to a range of literary and social theorists that he would grapple with through his career, including Norman Bryson. In Part II he read history of art under George Henderson and JeanMichel Massing, and continued to his graduate studies alongside Paul Binski and Philip Lindley, two figures who would be leading medievalists. In putting Camille’s writings into context, I want to focus on two features from his early life and university education that emerge as key 156

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

influences on his later formation as a scholar and writer: his sexual subjectivity and his political orientations. As Madeline Caviness put it, Camille was always “out,” although little attention has been paid to his sexual and social development and to the specific ways these may have oriented his research.9 Until pubescence, Camille’s sexual identity was transsexual, a word he certainly neither knew nor used in the period. One of his earliest creative experiments with sexual images was the result of his discovery of his father’s collection of glossy soft-core pornographic magazines (which may well have been given to him by his father). With a male friend with whom Camille had a romantic friendship, he dissected and eviscerated them (two words he would often use in his scholarship) and re-formed them into “The Nipple Erection Joke Books” (complete with annotations), which he kept until the end of his life. While there is much that seems like silly, schoolboy foolery in this, here, surely, is an early example of an approach to the hegemonic authority of the image (in this case heterosexually oriented male pornography and the encoded relationship with a seemingly dominant male gaze). The literal fragmentation of the text, of the power structure, and of the text as power structure, and the exposure of its underlying ideological conditions (and those excluded by them) suggest a nascent approach to images that would remain with Camille and would color his approach to the medieval image. As Camille described it in 1994, his early imagistic sexuality was formed principally from the images in the books he signed out of his local library. Each Saturday he could sign out up to six “large glossy art books” – monographs on Michelangelo and studies of St. Sebastian – which “allowed him to escape into a private world.” The context of this quotation is undoubtedly Camille’s most confessional account of his own sexual-aesthetic position, which did not appear in his writings on medieval art, but in “The Abject Gaze and the Homosexual Body: Flandrin’s Figure d’Etude,” published in Gay and Lesbian Studies in Art History (1994). Camille notes in particular Brandt Aymar’s The Young Male Figure in Paintings, Sculptures, and Drawings from Ancient Egypt to the Present, in which he could “check out” Flandrin’s nude, among other naked classicizing bodies. Writing years later, Camille would lament, I am struck by the irony of presenting naked bodies veiled by “art” – and by the foreword, in which the author states that he has excluded discussion of the church art of the Middle Ages because then the figures were “so full draped and grotesquely figured that they lost their esthetic appeal.” My eventually becoming a specialist in medieval art might well have involved an unconscious rejection of those countless longed-for but unattainable neo-classical “art-book” bodies.10 Camille was clear that publishing this piece – far outside the bounds of medieval studies – was deeply meaningful to him because it signified a reattachment of his sexual subjectivity to his aesthetic subjectivity.11 Camille suggests that his own aesthetic orientation toward medieval art grew out of a process of de-identification with antique-derived forms: “a process that constitutes the subject by partly detaching her or him from normative ideals, even manifestly homoerotic or homosexual ones and however deeply rooted in her or his own psychic topography and trajectory.”12 Thus understood, Camille’s appraisal of the Middle Ages, the shifting of his erotic identifications from the visual cultures of the antique world to those of the Middle Ages, grew from an increasingly ambivalent view of the ideality of the male form in the antique tradition. For Camille, these images had become de-eroticized (intellectually, if not viscerally so) because, via their many replications (enumerated by Camille in his essay), they had become little more than a “consumer fetish,” a signifier that signified a detached and commodified queerness rather than an actual sexual body or act. 157

Matthew M. Reeve

But this would seem to tell only half of the story. Insofar as sexual-aesthetic self-identification is concerned, the antique tradition of bodily representation – and its Renaissance iteration that Camille would become deeply engaged with at Cambridge through the teachings of JeanMichel Massing and Paul Joannides – was too sanitized, too mimetically real, too canonically rooted (and therefore too safely enmeshed in the discourses that frequently denied its erotic potential) to allow him to explore the “kinkier” side of human sexuality via his art historical research.13 Particularly in the margins of medieval books and buildings, Camille looked for and found sodomy, scatology, intergenerational sexuality, bestiality, and an approach to representation that was prefiguratively “camp.”14 Camille’s conception of the Middle Ages as “queer” may be understood to follow a tradition of English medievalism established by homoerotically inclined writers and collectors, such as Horace Walpole (1717–97), and continued by William Beckford and others, including Thomas Wright (a fellow historian of sexuality and of the grotesque) (d. 1877);15 like Camille, these authors explored or projected sexual fantasy into a distant, medieval past, a displacement of the erotic imagination from a perceived conservative present to an imagined Middle Ages of erotic and libidinal possibility.16 An inveterate collector of ephemera on the Middle Ages, Camille’s collection of nightclub advertisements and postcards indicates that he reveled ironically in modernity’s employment of the Middle Ages as a locus for alternate sexualities (Fig. 12.1). Camille’s work may be understood as an extension of a sexual-aesthetic tradition in medieval studies in which queer scholars found their sexual, moral, and ethical subjectivity to be “normalized” within a chaotic and “queer” Middle Ages. Unsurprisingly, he was deeply interested in the medievalist productions of both Horace Walpole and William Beckford, and his notes indicate that he explored genealogies of queer proponents and collectors of medieval art, from the

Figure 12.1 Club advertisements. The Michael Camille Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago Box 14, “Picturesque Gothic” file. Image courtesy of Matthew Reeve.

158

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

Duke de Berry to Walpole, Beckford, and beyond.17 What is arguably significant about this is that, in contrast to a tradition of modern art historical writing, Camille did not seek to consistently cleave his aesthetic judgment from his own erotic, emotive, and ethical judgment. On the contrary, Camille’s appraisal of the Middle Ages and the medieval object/image were framed by conscious and unconscious preoccupations in the present. Camille’s interest in the marginal and queer is one strand – albeit a deeply subjective one of a broadly socialist agenda within much of his work. Although he appears to have been nonpartisan politically and had little interest in the actualities of contemporary party politics, Camille’s writing and research nevertheless reflect “a commitment to progressive social agendas concerning class and race.”18 As a student in the 1970s and 1980s, Camille was uniquely positioned to absorb the new socialist and Marxist art history being written at King’s College by John Barrell (The Dark Side of the Landscape, 1980), by T. J. Clark, of whom more will be said below, and by theorists of literature, such as Frederick Jameson, whose The Political Unconscious (1981) is cited on the opening page of The Gothic Idol. It is significant that Camille absorbed some of these ideas while a student at Peterhouse – famously the most conservative of Cambridge colleges – during the height of its Thatcherite hegemony, something which exacerbated the class dynamic in his later work.19 Emblematic of this is Camille’s approach to the marginal imagery of the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter: I cannot see the margins of the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter as celebrations of country life and artistic freedom, but think of them rather as signs of feudal slavery and social control that dominated those who ploughed the page as well as the fields . . . the aesthetic . . . is to my mind, as tyrannous and tainted as any hegemonic practice.20 Overturning a long tradition that considered these images to be “charming” representations of a bucolic rural life (reread through the lens of nostalgic medievalism in the Anglia Perdita tradition), for Camille they become active tools in the ideology of feudalism, beautiful signs of social repression. Yet here, as in much of Camille’s work, his socialist agenda lacks notation, or a specific theoretical source. While manifestly informed by the neo-Marxist theory of his period, his work was never consistently tethered to a particular theoretical source or stream. Yet it would be a mistake – and a typically scholastic one – to locate and look for Camille’s socialist agenda strictly in his bibliography. Typical of authors of his period, Camille’s own socialist leanings were informed as much by elite culture as by popular culture. As we have seen, his university years coincided with the height of Thatcherite Britain (Falklands War, 1982; miners’ strike, 1985); these years produced a significant wave of protest in art and popular music expressed by the punk and postpunk movements. Unsurprisingly, Camille was a fan of much of this music, and particularly the Smiths (1982–1988), who were vigorous and eloquent opponents of Thatcher. In the Smiths’ front man Morrissey, Camille found not only a remarkably articulate and beautiful man but also a queer, Northern, working-class hero whose music raged against the New Right of Margaret Thatcher and polite, middle-class monarchism (often elided in Morrissey’s commentary as “Thatcher and the royals”).21 These countercultural statements, while socialist in orientation if not in word, embody a particular brand of “soft socialism” that was at least as influential on Camille as were discourses from elite culture. If Camille’s socialist leanings were first formed in England, they were mostly expressed from America, a culture he initially claimed to be devoid of class politics. Although he would rightly retract this statement as he spent further time exploring American culture, his own recontextualization in America created the context for his most influential writings. 159

Matthew M. Reeve

Camille’s writings It is impossible to do justice to the breadth and extent of Camille’s contributions to medieval iconography, but it is possible to give some sense of their scope and their broader social and methodological agendas. Situating Camille’s work within medievalist art history, or art history more broadly, has been a challenge for commentators and critics. The speakers in the 2010 sessions at the College Art Association devoted to Camille’s work struggled to situate his work within the contours of art historical scholarship in the last quarter of the twentieth century. All agreed that, however “theoretical” Camille’s work may have been, it was essentially “without explicit theoretical warrants for [its] theoretical frameworks and goals.”22 Camille worked as an intellectual magpie, selecting theories and concepts that suited particular situations, and did not consistently adhere to a coherent tradition of analysis (or in Whitney Davis’s view, “he actually wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool pansemiotician, narratologist or ‘calligramatologist’”).23 His “distrust of theory” may well have its roots in his British training and its empiricist roots in which theory is frequently considered to “embellish” or “decorate” textual analysis, or is considered a foreign perversion (i.e., “imported” German philosophy or French poststructuralism). In other words, the “No theory please, we’re English” approach, in which specific theoretical streams or objectives (particularly when they become professional identities) are obfuscated or denied in intellectual discourse in favor of an assimilation to accepted discursive modes in British academic life, may well have inflected his writings.24 Camille’s approach to iconography in particular was also neither consistent nor systematic. Although iconography as a practice was central to much of his work, it actually served as a jumping-off point, leading to new questions and approaches. Emblematic of this is his 1991 essay “Gothic Signs and the Surplus: The Kiss on the Cathedral” (which introduced the notion of “intervisuality” to medievalist art history), in which he opens with the image of two figures embracing and kissing (Luxuria) on the west front of Amiens (Fig. 12.2).25 After evoking Émile Mâle, Camille seeks to relocate the image from an iconographical trajectory to a sexual trajectory: “When placed within the history of desire rather than the history of iconography, the Luxuria image emerges as more than a literal depiction of unlawful sexual relations outside marriage. In its lack of transcendent signifiers, it is a radically new type of representation precisely because this opens it up to a plurality of indeterminate associations,” a “surplus” of meanings apparently undetectable by iconography. Here as elsewhere, Camille wrote as a wordsmith and his own rhetorical structures are worthy of consideration as they inform his overall approach. Atypical of his generation, Camille wrote broadly and often playfully, and not all of his work was intended to be read as empirical academic prose. Employing what has been called his “strategy of inversion,”26 Camille set up a series of imagined contrasts in his writings between apparently polarized camps and positions in medievalist art history and/or in medieval culture: the “Old” and “New” Art History (a concept which seems to hold less water in our more historiographically aware present); medieval and modern – two polarities he would aim to dissolve, especially in his late writings; iconography and anti-iconography, center and margin, image and anti-image, and so on. Based not in the language of medievalist art history per se but rather in current poststructuralist criticism, these strategies were brilliantly successful in his writings, serving to expose material and methodological blind spots between two carefully articulated extremes. Camille’s first major study of medieval iconography was his 1989 study The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge University Press). Taking as its subject the theme of idol worship in later medieval art, he showed that images of idolatry represented “the other” to the dominant Christian hegemony of medieval Europe: pagans, Muslims, Jews, heretics, and homosexuals. Within Camille’s argument about later medieval idolatry was a paradox 160

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

Figure 12.2 Luxuria, Amiens West Front. Image courtesy of the Courtauld Institute of Art, James Austin Collection.

he readily acknowledged: that it coincided with the explosion of image making in the twelfth and especially thirteenth centuries, in which the cult statue or image and its miracle-working properties became commonplace. Pagan idols are imagined as being similar to yet distinct from the Christian cult image/statue, forming a rhetoric of anti-images that served as weapons against the non-Christian other. This paradox in fact formed the structure of his book, with Part I focusing on Christian attitudes toward the idols of non-Christian others, and Part 2 exploring the idols within Christianity. Extraordinary in its scope and dazzling in its range of references, The Gothic Idol terminates with a prospective look at the Renaissance transformation of the idol, and the apparent shift of meaning of ancient art from idolatrous to artful in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Donatello’s bronze David (1430s) is the Gothic idol’s “most distinguished offspring”: witnessing the revival of the pagan pedestal statue, but for overtly Christian 161

Matthew M. Reeve

ends (unlike the attached Gothic niche statue), Camille’s David is a Christian nude, albeit one that does not “stand innocent” of pagan implications. David’s power as a work of art – as an idol – lies in its complex positioning between artistic categories: civic statue or idol, heroic Christian nude (typologically understood as David as Rex Christus) or youthful fetishist in high boots with a feather tickling his inner thigh. The end point of The Gothic Idol, David had the “power to embody ideas in the body that had, for more than a millennium, been banished to the margins of discourse.”27 As Camille noted in his unpublished introduction to the French edition of the text (composed in the late 1990s), The Gothic Idol appeared contemporaneously with major texts that likewise considered medieval “images” rather than medieval “art,” including David Freedberg’s The Power of Images (1989), Jean Wirth’s L’image mediévalé: Naissance et Developpements, and a year later, Hans Belting’s Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (1990). Unlike these texts, Camille insisted on the status of medieval images as “social tools” to “define ‘us’ against ‘them,’ stemming from the Christian definition of proper images against the idols of a defunct paganism.”28 As noted, Camille sets up Émile Mâle’s classic study The Gothic Image as his own intellectual and methodological other, a kind of subjective positioning against prior authorities. At the center of Mâle’s work was an aesthetically beautiful analogy: the Gothic cathedral of the thirteenth century, with its stained-glass programs and sculpted facades, was a mirror of medieval scholastic thought as represented in Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Maius. Mâle posited a literal and indissoluble correspondence of text and image in which the art of the cathedrals was (inevitably) a plastic manifestation of its textual sources. Ordered and guided by a male authority, the art of the cathedral will “find its place and the harmony of the whole will appear.”29 Taking Mâle literally almost a century after his text was written (a convenient sleight of hand), Camille thought he “treated the cathedral as a coherent summa in stone, as it were, a form of writing.”30 Developed from his early writings on the text-image relationships in medieval and Renaissance art (informed by the teachings of Norman Bryson), Camille sought to expose “the neatly organized foundations of Mâle’s cathedral [which] will reveal ambiguous gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictory cracks in what he saw as a supremely codified whole.”31 For Camille and others of his generation who were exploring relationships between texts (intertextuality) and the “texuality” of images (images as texts), Mâle represented much that was deeply wrong about medievalist art history, and his attempt to dismantle Mâle has as much to do with the demonstrable logical flaws in his promotion of a mimetic relationship of text to image as it does with Camille’s own conception of Mâle’s pious ecclesiology and the paternalism that informed it, carrying with it “the strong whiff of incense and plainchant.”32 As more than one reviewer noted of the book, Camille uses Mâle as a straw man, a convenient foil to his own very different enterprise. Neither a revision of Mâle’s text exactly nor a comprehensive theory of the medieval image, The Gothic Idol was difficult for reviewers to characterize, although Paul Binski’s review in the Burlington Magazine captures much of the book’s spirit: “It is a polemic both for a more theorized approach to medieval art, less obviously, for an essentially secularized vision of it.”33 Arguably, Camille’s most coherent statement of iconographic method was delivered in his 1990 essay “Mouths and Meanings: Towards an Anti-Iconography of Medieval Art,” published in Princeton’s Iconography at the Crossroads volume.34 Recounting “art history’s obsession with written language” and its origins in philology, Camille here seeks to expose “the tyranny of the philological method” in medievalist art history by questioning how meaning in images could be discerned independently of a specific textual referent: Medieval images, whether in books or on walls, were, like medieval texts, dynamically delivered and performed aloud rather than absorbed in static isolation. The difficulty 162

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

for the art historian becomes one of double translation – to explore in writing, ideas that might have originated through writing like Holy Writ, but which were then mediated outside or beyond it, in rituals, prayers, sermons, but most importantly of all in images.35 Camille’s subject here is a work of art that would appear to resolutely avoid association with a specific textual source: the Romanesque ex-situ trumeau at Souillac (Fig. 12.3). A rigidly ordered composition of grappling, twisting, and writhing bodies of birds, beasts, and men in combat,

Figure 12.3 Trumeau, Souillac. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane.

163

Matthew M. Reeve

chiastically positioned upon the face of the trumeau, it seems to contain only one image readily “decoded” by a textual source: Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22). Camille proposes a reading that is based on sources “somatic rather than semantic” from within the monastic culture of twelfth-century Souillac.36 Attempting to understand the possible meanings of the battling figures within the context of “the spiritual life of the theologically trained monk,” Camille argues that its “dominant” or “theological” meaning was an exegesis of a range of ideas pertaining to spiritual struggle of good over evil – the allegory of the inner state of the monk – reflected most obviously in the Psalms.37 Beyond the dominant meaning, the trumeau’s animal imagery “articulates wider cultural metaphors of animality linked to human appetite and embodiment” beyond their purely theological sources. Camille’s “anti-iconography” allows for “the possibilities for projecting new and different words on images” toward “the rereading of a work against its ‘official’ ideological purpose which has to occur if works of art have any history at all.”38 Although providing a rich account of possible textual sources for negotiating a viewer’s understanding of the trumeau and the potential indeterminacy of its meaning, Camille comes closest to articulating the nontextual or supertextual nature of the trumeau in his closing sentence: “the Souillac relief is more like a scream rent from a human body than words written outside it, words that have made us ‘stone’ deaf, even when the stones themselves ‘cry out.’”39 Here as elsewhere in his work, Camille provides a caricature of iconography, and in this case, the iconographic methods of Erwin Panofsky. Camille’s “anti-iconography” is a brilliant intervention, although one that is not anti-iconographical in the strictest sense but rather “supericonographical,” as Jérôme Baschet has suggested.40 Although he does not make reference to it, Camille’s description of the Souillac trumeau as a work of art that, intentionally perhaps, short-circuits iconography (or textual analogues of any sort) as a guide to reading images, is grounded in earlier scholarship outside of medieval art. Most influentially, perhaps, is T. J. Clark’s celebrated account of Manet’s Olympia (surely known but not cited by Camille), a work that, as Clark shows, resisted interpretation because it could not be readily located and rationalized within available textual discourses. In this sense, the Souillac trumeau and Manet’s Olympia can deservedly be understood as “a stew of half-digested significations.”41 Arguably Camille’s most controversial book was his 1992 study Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art, published in Reaktion’s Essays in Art and Culture series. In this study he returned to territory most fully mapped by Lillian Randall in 1966.42 Focusing on a broad range of “marginalia” not only in the borders of the illuminated page, as Randall had done, but also on tapestries, ivory mirror cases, and the corbels and corners of medieval buildings, Camille employed “the edge” to explore liminality in medieval culture, as many others did in the early 1990s.43 Positioning the edge opposite to the center allowed Camille to chart a strategy in Romanesque and Gothic art in which the center of a thing, whether an illuminated page or the sanctuary of a great church, represents the dominant views of the hegemony, while the margins represent things or beings excluded or eradicated from official discourse. The book opens with a theoretical chapter staking out the politicized “edges” of medieval art and culture and then offers four short chapters (monastery, cathedral, court, city), each focused upon an individual case study. The margins offered territory to explore and articulate Camille’s own vision of the Middle Ages, and Reaktion’s essay format allowed it to be largely untethered to the scholarly apparatus of notion and citation. Emphasizing his own hybridity, he describes his approach thus: “my heteroclite combination of methodologies, aping those of literary criticism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and anthropology, as well as those of art history, is an attempt to make my method as monstrous (which means deviating from the natural order) as its subject.”44 Camille’s subjects are chosen less as representatives of the ethical and aesthetic “edges” of 164

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

medieval culture but rather of modernity: animals and animality, nudity and sexuality, scatology, and so forth. Camille’s subchapter “Courtly Crap,” for example, discusses the scatological borders of a book of hours in Trinity College, Cambridge (MS B 11.22, f. 73r) (Fig. 12.4) and in the Romance of Alexander manuscript in Oxford, Bodleian (MS Bodl. 264, f. 56r), which potentially recount a “lover’s shitty gift,” or a bequest of feces from a man to a woman.45 Camille was surely correct in suggesting that the sources for such imagery were not singularly ecclesiastical (notably in exempla, a well-mined source for marginalia46), but were found in a range of other “nonofficial” sources, including fabliaux. Citing the overtly scatological

Figure 12.4 Trinity College, Cambridge MS B 11.22, f. 73r. Image courtesy of Trinity College, Cambridge.

165

Matthew M. Reeve

c. 1200 fabliau Audigier, which, typical of its genre, inverted conventions from Romance literature, Camille glossed this imagery with reference to the fabliau’s tale of one-upmanship in which Audigier “takes on as one of his opponents an incontinent old woman, who forces him to eat three-and-a-half of her turds for breakfast, telling him ‘and then you will kiss my cunt and the crack of my ass.’” Then turning to content that would fit equally within a commentary on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Camille glosses the notion of feces as a gift in the text: “in Audigier, the hero’s mother, Rainberge, brings Count Turgibus ‘a fist full of shit, then takes some of her piss and showers him with it,’ while the couple’s dowry consists of ‘quinze estrons de chien’”47 (“fifteen pieces of dog shit”). Image on the Edge was a polarizing book in the 1990s. It deliberately avoided or subverted the conventions of medievalist art history through its “contrarian stance” toward, or “ritual of dissent” from, the language, philological, and bibliographical structure of the discipline.48 Its 201 footnotes are ordered sequentially without concern for the divisions of chapters. Closer to the French essai (a test, trail, or attempt) it was neither densely researched nor crisply written, as more than one reviewer noted. The book was rigorously critiqued in a well-known review in The Art Bulletin by Jeffrey Hamburger, which reflected a clash of methodologies and subjectivities allegorized at the time as “The Sheriff of Nottingham taking on the Robin Hood of medievalist art history.” Yet, to critique this study as an academic monograph – which in many respects it was never designed to be – gives the book more and less attention than it deserves. In retrospect, Image was experimental not for its development of iconographical method or for the introduction of new imagery or data, but as an experiment in subjectivity in medievalist art history writing. Arguably, the book sees Camille at his most personal and most comic and least connected to the conventions of his discipline. It was an attempt to reinsert an authorial subjectivity and (temporarily) overthrow the tradition of disinterested speculation – still a requisite philosophical stance in medievalist art writing. Camille’s Gothic Idol might be cited to give some sense of the direction of Image on the Edge: “Where everything is coded and strictly demarcated, the possibilities of play and subversion are much greater. The same is true for the visual arts, where precisely because of the tyranny of traditional conventions, ludic overthrow is possible.”49 Camille’s late work saw him focus on three particular areas of attention: the construction of the Middle Ages as an ideal or anti-ideal of modernity (the subject of his last book The Gargoyles of Notre Dame, published posthumously in 2009); a project on secular urban imagery of the later Middle Ages entitled Signs and Street Life in Medieval France (for which he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000);50 and images of homoeroticism in medieval art provisionally called The Stones of Sodom.51 In closing I shall focus on this final path of his research, and particularly on one of Camille’s most penetrating analyses of medieval images: his 2001 essay “‘For Our Devotion and Pleasure’: The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry,” published in Art History.52 Taking account of perhaps the first great art collector in the European tradition, Camille sought to explore the medieval accusations of sodomy leveled against the duke in light of his collecting practices. In his supple and nuanced account, Camille focused in particular on the duke’s manuscripts, notably the calendar pages of the Très Riches Heures. Turning to the inventorial January page featuring the duke in the traditional labor of feasting (Fig. 12.5), Camille argues that these images cannot be understood as a reflection of historical “reality” (an idea he developed elsewhere) but rather, citing Laplanche and Pontalis’s famous paper “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality,” as “a component of the duke’s fantasy.”53 Camille rereads what has been understood as a conventional “January page” with the labor of feasting and gift giving (albeit one up to date with fifteenth-century conventions of verisimilitude and “portraiture”) as a fictive performance (or “phantasmatic projection”) of the duke’s erotic fantasy. 166

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

Figure 12.5 January page, Très Riches Heures. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

I still recall sitting in the History of Art library at Scroope Terrace in Cambridge and reading Camille’s comment that “there is perhaps no fifteenth-century manuscript image as phallic in its imagery,” and that it comprises “a totally homosocial space,” which provided a shock of recognition that is still with me.54 Exploring this canonical image, Camille draws attention not only to the relatively obvious phallic puns – the objects worn at the waist of the fashionable youths who attend the duke – but also to the rather more complex and frankly sinister aspects of the image. Taking the place conventionally reserved for women in front of the fire screen (and particularly of the Madonna in Northern painting), the duke sits in profile surrounded by carefully articulated men and by carefully articulated objects, all seemingly coterminous parts of the duke’s broader psychology of collection and control. Drawing from 167

Matthew M. Reeve

psychoanalysis, Camille focuses on the duke’s heraldry (embroidered on a tapestry above the hearth) made up of a wounded swan and a bear. Interpreted by Millard Meiss and others to symbolize the love of a mysterious woman, Ursine (ours – bear and cygne – swan), Camille rereads the heraldry as “a more personal inventory of selfhood,” juxtaposing the large, grasping, aggressive, and masculine bear with the fleshy, white, youthful, and overtly feminine swan. This collision of age and youth, male virility and femininity, power and submission would seem to reflect the dynamics of many of the duke’s relationships, not only with “working-class” young men, including his servant Tacque-Tibaut, but also with his twelve-year-old bride, Jeanne de Boulogne. Camille’s reading is not a “queering” of the Duc de Berry, but rather something close to the opposite, an attempt to “mix up his gender into something more strange” than our modern sexual categories would allow.55 Locating the Très Riches Heures and other objects owned by the duke within the context of the history of sexuality and sexual aesthetics, Camille provides a brilliant and enlivening reading of an image arguably deadened by its serial replication.56 It will be clear from this brief account that Camille’s iconographic work reflected upon and challenged many of the conventions of his discipline, making him a fitting endpoint for this volume. Typical of the greatest medievalists, the rhetorical power of Camille’s writing drew from the author’s typological identification with the Middle Ages as a mirror of sorts of the modern present, a period of radical subjectivity, class upheaval, and social, aesthetic, and sexual play.57 He often reflected upon this, as in his well-known comparison of the cathedrals of the high Middle Ages with “the shimmering Postmodern towers of today’s corporate headquarters.”58 Camille’s Middle Ages developed in his writing as a prelude of sorts to modernity, of a messy, fractious, dissenting culture that consistently resisted or opposed hegemonic regimes, whether political, sexual, artistic, or scopic. In this, Camille positions the Middle Ages as not so much as an other to modernity but rather its evil twin. Camille often reflected upon this kinship, but never more eloquently or with greater humor than in his interview on NPR’s This American Life, which I noted in my introduction. Serving as America’s main interlocutor for the art of the Middle Ages in the 1990s, Camille commented upon one of our own medievalist fantasies, Medieval Times. Emphasizing continuities in performance – the “over the top” nature of the spectacle, its overt and self-conscious glamor, and the play upon well-worn images of the Middle Ages (the joust, the knight) and its sexual clichés (wenches and codpieces) – Camille rightly commented that it “is so very medieval.”

Notes 1 I am principally indebted to Stuart Michaels, Michael Camille’s partner during his years in Chicago, for offering me an extended interview on Michael’s life and work, and for being a wonderful host while I was in Chicago. I am also grateful to others who knew Michael Camille who answered many questions: Paul Binski, Madeline Caviness (who read and commented upon a draft of this chapter), Whitney Davis, Jongwoo Kim, Elizabeth Legge, Sherry Lindquist, W.J.T. Mitchell, Nina Rowe and Linda Seidel. Finally, I am grateful to Colum Hourihane for asking me to write it in the first place. 2 P. Crossley, “The Integrated Cathedral: Thoughts on ‘Holism’ and Gothic Architecture,” in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. E.S. Lane, E.C. Pastan, and E.M. Shortell (Farnham, 2009), 157–73, at 160. 3 For Camille’s writings, see K. Boeyes, “A Bibliography of the Writings of Michael Camille,” Gesta 41:2 (2002), 141–44. 4 W.J.T. Mitchell, Image Science: Iconology,Visual Culture and Media Aesthetics (Chicago, 2015), 3. Mitchell’s introduction is derived from his paper at College Art Association Chicago on Michael Camille (see n. 7 below). For Camille as a “New Art Historian,” see J. Harris, The New Art History: A Critical Introduction (London, 2001) 3.

168

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages 5 M. Camille “The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Merrie England,” in History Today 48:9 (1998), 13–19. Camille would comment on this in his later work: “Rethinking the Canon: Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters,” Art Bulletin, 78:2 (1996), 198–201, as “those aspects of art history that I had despised – triumphant nationalism, a purely stylistic taxonomy of objects, and a rigidly chronological system of their classification.” On nationalism in medievalist art historiography, see J. Alexander, “Medieval Art and Modern Nationalism,” Medieval Art, Recent Perspectives: A Memorial Tribute to C.R. Dodwell, ed. G.O. Crocker and T. Graham (Manchester/New York, 1998), 206–23; P. Crossley, “Anglia Perdita: English Medieval Architecture and Neo-Romanticism,” in Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander, ed. S. L’Engel and G.B. Guest (London, 1996), 471–85; R. Marks, “The Englishness of English Gothic Art?,” in C. Hourihane (ed), Gothic Art and Thought in the Later Medieval Period, (Princeton 2011), 64–89. R. Marks, Studies in the Art and Imagery of the Middle Ages (London, 2012), 1–32. 6 Cited and discussed in N. Giffney and M. O’Rourke, The Ashgate Companion to Queer Theory (Farnham, 2009), 438. 7 “Discipline on the Edge: Michael Camille and the Shifting Contours of Art History, 1985–2010,” sessions at the College Art Association Conference in Chicago (2010). I am grateful to Madeline Caviness, Whitney Davis, and Tom Mitchell for sending me their papers in this session, all of which I cite here. Perhaps the most extensive of the many obituaries published is R.S. Nelson and L. Seidel, “Michael Camille: A Memorial,” Gesta XLI:2 (2002), 137–9. 8 The Michael Camille Papers are now held at the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. At the present moment the papers have not been fully processed, so the box and file numbers cited ahead are likely to change. The Michael Camille Papers have been most carefully explored by Robert Nelson, who plans to publish a paper on them in the near future. 9 I cite here from Madeline Caviness’s unpublished paper, “Of Camille, Chameleons, and Camelot: The Shifting Politics of Medieval Studies in the 1980s and Beyond.” (See note 7.) 10 W. Davis (ed.), Gay and Lesbian Studies in Art History (New York/London, 1994), 161–88, 162. 11 Thanks to Stuart Michaels for discussing this with me. 12 I quote here from W. Davis’s unpublished response, “Losing My Religion: Michael Camille and Medieval Art History,” from the “Discipline on the Edge” sessions. (See note 7.) 13 Thanks to Stuart Michaels for discussing this with me. 14 For example, Camille, “‘For Our Devotion and Pleasure’: The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry,” Art History 24:2 (2001), 169–94, 188. 15 Thomas Wright’s The Worship of the Generative Powers during the Middle Ages of Western Europe (London, 1866) explored a range of sexual imagery and was published alongside Richard Payne Knight’s 1786 Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, upon which it was based. Wright also composed a significant early account of marginalia, A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art (London, 1875). 16 Little attention has been paid to sexual alterity in the formation of medieval art history, although considerable attention has been paid to the role of queerness in the rise of medievalist fiction. For example, G. Haggerty, Queer Gothic (Urbana/Chicago, 2006); A. Elfenbein, Romantic Genius: The Pre-History of a Homosexual Role (New York, 1999). I have touched upon these issues elsewhere in a discussion of eighteenth-century medievalism: M.M. Reeve, “Gothic Architecture, Sexuality and License at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill,” Art Bulletin XCV (2013), 411–39. 17 University of Chicago, Regenstein Library, Michael Camille Papers, Box 27, “Gay Collecting” file. This box also includes files on the collections of Horace Walpole and William Beckford. 18 Caviness, “Of Camille, Chameleons, and Camelot.” (See note 7.) 19 I am grateful to Paul Binski for this insight. See John Mullen and Giles Foden “Peterhouse Blues,” The Guardian September 10, 1999. 20 M. Camille, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England (Chicago, 1998). 21 J. Brooker, “‘Has the World Changed or Have I Changed?’, The Smiths and the Challenge of Thatcherism,” Why Pamper Life’s Complexities? Essays on the Smiths, ed. S. Campbell and C. Coulter (Manchester, 2010, 22–42). 22 Caviness, “Of Camille, Chameleons, and Camelot” (see note 7). 23 Davis, “Losing My Religion” (see note 7). 24 On these issues, I am indebted to M.A. Cheetham, Art Writing, Nation, and Cosmopolitanism in Britain: The “Englishness” of English Art Theory since the Eighteenth Century (Farnham, 2012). 25 Yale French Studies 80 (1991), 151–70. On intervisuality, see C. Karkov, Text and Picture in Anglo Saxon England: Narrative Strategies in the Junius 11 Manuscript (Cambridge, 2009), 17.

169

Matthew M. Reeve 26 J. Hamburger’s review of The Gothic Idol, in The Journal of Religion 72:1 (1992), 109. 27 M. Camille, The Gothic Idol, Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1992), 345. 28 For Camille’s Introduction, see University of Chicago, Regenstein Library, Michael Camille Papers, Box 30, “Reviews of Gothic Image” File. 29 É. Mâle, The Gothic Image, trans. Dora Nussey (London/Glasgow, 1961), 26. 30 Camille, Gothic Idol (as in note 27), xxvii. 31 Camille, Gothic Idol (as in note 27), xxvii. For Camille’s indebtedness to Bryson, see J. Harris, The New Art History: A Critical Introduction (London, 2001). 32 Crossley, “The Integrated Cathedral” (as in note 2), 160. 33 P. Binski, review of Gothic Idol in Burlington Magazine 134: 1066 (1992), 36–7 at p. 36: “It reaches the parts Mâle did not aim to reach, and thus casts doubt on postmedieval notions of what lay at the centre of medieval art.” 34 M. Camille, “Mouths and Meanings: Towards an Anti-Iconography of Medieval Art,” Iconography at the Crossroads, Index of Christian Art Occasional Papers II, ed. B. Cassidy (Princeton, 1993), 43–58. 35 “Mouths” (as in note 34), n. 3 and 44–45. 36 “Mouths” (as in note 34), 46. 37 “Mouths” (as in note 34), 51. See also K.M. Openshaw, “Weapons in the Daily Battle: Images of the Conquest of Evil in the Early Medieval Psalter,” Art Bulletin 75:1 (1993), 17–38. 38 “Mouths” (as in note 34), 52. 39 “Mouths” (as in note 34), 54. 40 J. Baschet, “Iconography beyond Iconography: Relational Meanings and Figures of Authority in the Reliefs at Souillac,” in Current Directions in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Sculpture Studies, ed. R.A. Maxwell and K. Ambrose (Turnhout, 2010), 23–46. Camille spends little energy critiquing Meyer Schapiro’s classic account of Souillac: M. Schapiro, “The Sculptures of Souillac,” in Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter, II (Cambridge, 1939), 359–87. This is undoubtedly due to Camille’s own identification with Schapiro as a medievalist-modernist and as a socialist/ Marxist. Camille charted his own kinship with Schapiro in M. Camille, “‘How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art’: Medieval, Modern, and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro,” Oxford Art Journal 17:1 (1994), 65–75. 41 T.J. Clark, “Preliminaries to a Possible Treatment of ‘Olympia’ in 1865,” Screen 21:1 (1980), 18–41, at 29. 42 L. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1966). 43 L. Patterson, “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies,” Speculum LXV (1990), 87–107; N. Kenaan-Kedar, “The Margins of Society in Marginal Romanesque Sculpture,” Gesta XX (1992), 115–24. For a recent discussion of Camille’s theories on the margins in the context of Byzantine manuscript illumination, see Roland Betancourt, “Faltering Images: failure and error in Byzantine manuscript illumination”, Word and Image 32:1 (2016), 1–20. 44 M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1992), 9. 45 K.P. Wentersdorf, “‘The Symbolic Significance of the ‘Figura Scatalogicae’ in Gothic Manuscripts,” in Word, Picture and Spectacle, ed. C. Davidson (Kalamazoo, 1984), 1–20. 46 Classically in L. Randall, “Exempla and Their Influence on Gothic Marginal Illumination,” Art Bulletin 39 (1957), 97–107. 47 Camille, Image (as in note 44), 114. 48 J. Hamburger, review of Image on the Edge in The Art Bulletin 75 (1993), 319–27. 49 Camille, Gothic Idol (as in note 27), 311. 50 Other publications related to this project include “At the Sign of the ‘Spinning Sow’: The ‘Other’ Chartres and Images of Everyday Life of the Medieval Street,” in History and Images: Toward a New Iconology, ed. A. Bolvig and P. Lindley (Turnhout, 2003), 249–76. “Signs of the City: Place, Power, and Public Fantasy in Medieval Paris,” in Medieval Practices of Space, ed. B. Hanawalt and M. Kobialka (London/Minneapolis, 2000), 1–36. 51 Other publications related to this project include “The Pose of the Queer: Dante’s Gaze, Brunetto Latini’s Body,” Queering the Middle Ages, ed. G. Burger and S.F. Kruger (Minniapolis, 2001), 57–86; “Dr. Witkowski’s Anus: French Doctors, German Homosexuals, and the Obscene in Medieval Church Art,” in Medieval Obscenities, ed. N. McDonald (York, 2006), 17–38. 52 M. Camille, ‘Devotion and Pleasure’ (as in note 14). 53 M. Camille, “Devotion and Pleasure” (as in note 14), 175. Laplanche and J.B. Pontalis, “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality,” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 49:1 (1968), 1–18. In Mirror in Parchment (as in note 20), Camille argued that its images are not accurate “portrayals” of medieval life – potted

170

Michael Camille’s Queer Middle Ages

54 55 56 57

58

portraits on the medieval page of objective, ocular “reality” – but rather “imaginary constructions and idealizations” (p. 81), and that “One of the problems of seeing images as mirrors of history is that history does not stand still long enough to get its portrait painted” (p. 67). M. Camille, “Devotion and Pleasure” (as in note 14), 174, 180. M. Camille, “Devotion and Pleasure” (as in note 14), 188. Camille had commented on this in his early work: “The Très Riches Heures: An Illuminated Manuscript in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Critical Inquiry XVII (1990), 72–107. The medieval-modern paradox in medieval studies has been recently explored in twentieth-century historiography and art practice in B. Holsinger, The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (Chicago, 2005) and A. Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (New York, 2012). Camille, Image (as in note 44), 77. See also Camille, “‘How New York Stole’” (as in note 40), 65–75.

171

PART II

Systems and cataloguing tools

13 THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF IMAGES Ralph Dekoninck

During the Middle Ages, the Church, especially in the West, never stopped wanting to classify the image as a symbol, in order to avoid as far as possible any danger of idolatry – that is, of confusion between image and model. It was therefore a matter of casting a modest veil over the materiality of the image, which was all too likely to attract the gaze of the viewer; this of course was expected to fade into the background to allow the translatio ad prototypum1 – that is, to allow the gaze to move toward the model. From this perspective, the dictum Gregorii, drawn from the famous letter of Gregory the Great to the iconoclast bishop Serenus of Marseille, was to be the doxa for more than a millennium in matters relating to the Christian imagery: “In it [painting], the illiterate read. Hence, and chiefly to the nations, a picture is instead of reading (lectione).”2 The image here plays the role of language, able to stand in for the sacred text in order to serve those who do not have access to it. We should note that it was this idea of the image which was the foundation for research in Christian iconography, and was to leave a profound impression on our understanding of the functions of the medieval image, whose principal goal was to teach Christian doctrine and to inculcate the story of Salvation.3 Our way of “naturally” interpreting images in terms of meaning is historically deeply rooted in our way of thinking.

From representation to presence Throughout the Middle Ages the image played a number of roles which research has attempted to reveal in all its complexity. The present chapter aims to give an account of the various research perspectives for images that are to be found in the field of historical anthropology. These perspectives are characterized by what might be called a critical standpoint toward iconography, a criticism that highlights what at first sight seems to escape an iconographic “reading” but which ultimately can be integrated within a broadened iconographic perspective. As a reaction to the logocentrism that sees the image as a text to be read, the pendulum has tended to swing the other way and research has shifted attention from meaning to the material presence of images. Images appear as objects endowed with a certain power,4 a feature that short-circuits the classical metaphysics of representation, whose tendency is to reduce representation to a disembodied sign or as an imitation of reality that has a symbolic or mimetic meaning. In this respect it is possible to speak of a return to presence instead of representation. This is probably a reaction to

175

Ralph Dekoninck

the increasing dematerialization of images in contemporary society, the very term “image” now tending to make us forget its material density.5 The presence of the image, especially in the Middle Ages, has never been as isolated as a work of art hanging in a museum might be (and yet is such a work really isolated, the museum itself being a frame that locates the work of art?); the image or object is always located in a specific place and within a network of other artifacts, gestures, words, sounds, smells . . . After considering the nature of the work, it is therefore necessary to go beyond its immediate frame to understand it within a network of relationships that are thus fashioned around it and because of it. In this way, the idea of the image as the object, also forming a knotwork of social actions and interactions with it being at one and the same time the object and the means.6 Turning away from iconographic and stylistic approaches, research has attempted to understand the uses and practices to which an image can give rise. From this, a body of thought on the functions of the image and on its power to bring about actions or reactions has developed.

From the material turn to the performative turn The image does not simply produce actions or reactions; it can also act. This is where it touches on the question of performance. Nobody has spoken of the performative turn – a new emphasis on what, since Alfred Gell, has also been called the agency of the image.7 While it had long been recognized that the image could arouse an emotion, an emotion which in turn was able to provoke a motion,8 such as prayer, conversion, or donation – in this respect, we may say that the image is performative insofar as it engages the spectator in a performance – it is even possible to say that images are effective only when they are performed, in the sense of the performing arts; it still remains to be understood how certain actions and intentions particular to the human being can be applied to the image. In other words, how is it possible to understand the image as agent – that is to say, as an object endowed with an ability to act and not simply as a thing to be manipulated or interpreted as a passive transporter of ideas? To put it simply, if an image can make us cry, how can it cry itself, or how can we believe that it might cry? This move from the material turn to the performative turn characterizes a series of research projects carried out in a wide variety of fields, all of which attempt to go beyond what images tell us or show us toward what they want. This echoes the title of a book by W.J.T. Mitchell,9 whose work is interested in the life of images, and above all in the “needs, desires and demands they embody”10 and what animates them; in short, this work is interested in what we want from images. Alongside Mitchell’s seminal work, a leading place must be reserved for the anthropology of art devised by Alfred Gell,11 which has inspired a series of studies, all of which examine the reasons we react to images as if they were alive. The anthropologist considers images as actors in social life, as mediators in social processes. Gell distinguishes “primary agents” – namely, human beings – from “secondary agents” – that is, the artifacts by which primary agents distribute their agency when interacting with the world. This is therefore a purely relational notion with no ontological content. Gell speaks of an “art nexus” to designate this system of actions, intended to change the world rather than encode it.12 One cannot fail to notice that this new interest in the life and performance of images, in what they do rather than what they represent, has in large part been initiated by medievalists. They were among the first to shift attention from the presence of the image-object toward the image as body,13 thus locating their research in the vast field of the anthropology of images, the idea for which grew out of the assimilation of image and human being, with image agency merging with human agency. In wishing to endow representation with presence it was all the confusion between the image and its model that attracted research attention. While breaking with a certain 176

The anthropology of images

symbolic paradigm that reduced the image to the level of a sign, this research perpetuated another paradigm that underlies the history and theory of representation: that of mimesis based on the idea of resemblance, however schematic this resemblance might be. To take up the typology of the different modalities of “Bildakt” developed by Horst Bredekamp, it is possible to speak here of “substitutive Bildakt,” which rests on a logic of substitution between image and model.14 The prototypical example of this kind of confusion is of beliefs relating to miraculous images. Images that can move, cry, speak, bleed, heal, or drive away the Devil in effect constitute the paradigm of images that act. Christian image theory called this power that animates images by the term virtus, and it was established from the outset that this power was not intrinsic to them but transmitted by divine power.15 According to Christian doctrine, this power was thought to travel from the model through the image, or else to inhabit the image temporarily according to popular beliefs, or to communicate with it through contact with holy material, especially relics, or even through a suitable ritual such as consecration. “Thus, virtus is a quality of the image, or the image is its vehicle, or it inhabits the image, or it is bestowed upon the image, or it is experienced and communicated by the image.”16

Naturalist and culturalist approaches Since the image was clearly not endowed with autonomous life and had no intrinsic power, the question of its powers naturally shifted to the question of belief in these powers, belief which can be deduced from the kinds of reaction images aroused, from the most extreme, such as adoration or destruction, to the most common, such as lighting a candle before them. Taking up a favorite idea from Marcel Mauss, an idea which he applied to magic, it might be possible to say that the efficacy of the image is the result of and not the reason for us believing in its powers.17 But what causes or supports this belief? What is acting in or through this kind of image? Two kinds of answers have been made to these questions: one naturalist, the other culturalist. The first says that belief in the power of the image is anchored in human nature, inscribed within the structures of the human mind. In this respect it has been possible to speak of a universal anthropological or even psychological characteristic. This naturalist approach encourages an enquiry with no chronological and geographical restriction into the way mankind, through its instinct for imitation, tends to attribute action or life to images. In other words, human beings have the cognitive ability to merge the image and the person or subject it resembles. The image thus derives its power essentially from the viewer, who projects on to it his or her own intentions. This is the viewpoint adopted by David Freedberg in his The Power of Images of 198918 and which he subsequently extended into the field of the neurosciences. Even if he defends himself against the criticism of having neglected the contextual elements that play a part in the living presence of images, he encourages historians and anthropologists to “develop an argument on the cognitive schemas which underlie this or that reaction and which are subject to the pressures of the context.”19 The culturalist approach consists in investigating all the contextual – that is to say, cultural – circumstances at work so that an image may become active.20 As opposed to a claimed universality, precise historical reasons are invoked, reasons that are essentially social in origin. To distinguish it from “an internalist concept of agency,” which holds that belief in the powers of the image “is triggered by factors that develop out of the interiority of the person, thoughts, desires, intentions, etc.,”21 Gell speaks of the “externalist idea” that attributes these powers to a given socioreligious context. This explains in part why a particular image becomes activated in specific circumstances. As we have seen, Gell firmly locates himself in this perspective by seeing images as actors “in a network of social relationships.” In other words, the reasons for belief are to be sought other than in the psyche of the viewer, and especially in the social forces acting through the image, which Mitchell has referred to as “ventriloquism.” 177

Ralph Dekoninck

This culturalist perspective is found in a broad swath of art historical research inspired by cultural and visual studies, in which “the image is more often than not seen as a representation, a visual construct that betrays the ideological agenda of its makers and whose content is susceptible to manipulation by its receivers.”22 Hence, it is a matter of seeing “around the edges of images in order to determine the social forces responsible for their ideological agendas’ and “of identifying the political commitments of those who make and consume them.”23 The stress is thus laid on the operators of the image, those who make it act, who make it active, and even more on those who are activated by it – that is to say, manipulated by those who are pulling the strings. On the grounds that the efficacy of an image can be measured only by the responses it arouses or provokes, reception studies largely seem to have dominated research that has adopted this culturalist point of view, which saw the image as an instrument in the service of a power or an ideology, or as the medium serving to challenge this same power.

Intrinsic image-act: the power of ornament In emphasizing the upstream (conditions of creation) and even more so the downstream (modalities of reception), both naturalist and culturalist points of view have tended to obscure the intrinsic being of the image as a factor that can activate its power. Hence the appeal from G. Bartholeyns and T. Golsenne that “In order to analyse the performance of image, we need to turn less towards the reaction of spectators than towards the image itself, in its own materiality, in the pragmatic conditions of the manifestation of its iconic power.”24 In this regard Bredekamp speaks of “intrinsiche Bildakt” (intrinsic image-act) to account for the intrinsic power of images. The presence in question here is no longer that of the referent in the image or of the forces manipulating it, but that of the image itself, and it matters little whether this is anthropomorphic.25 It is a matter of recognizing images as real actors “possessed of sovereign agency separable from their handling or their perception by people.”26 In contrast to Alfred Gell, who saw manufactured objects as a crucible of social relationships, and to Hans Belting, who investigated the relationships between iconic medium and human body,27 Bredekamp attempts to grasp a principle of life (Eigenleben) in images that can no longer be seen conceived as a direct extension of the human body or society, but as a force (Eigenkraft) emanating naturally from images themselves, a force that can act on the body as on society.28 It is possible to speak of figural forces, to use the terminology of Louis Marin,29 while Bredekamp prefers to speak of Potentia or Latenz to designate these latencies activated at a precise moment or in particular circumstances. To see the image as a force is in fact to take an interest in power as potential, in potentiality – that is to say, in the entirety of what the image is able to bring about. What then are the characteristics of this latent force, and what activates or intensifies it, what contributes to its performance and to its efficacy? “What power enables an image, when it is seen or handled, to spring out of latency into an outward effect on sensation, thinking, and action?’30 Apart from the image’s presence as object and its resemblance as body, scholarly attention has been directed mainly toward its ornamentation, a dimension that seems to have escaped the field of iconography, of meaning, and of representation.31 This new interest has also had the result of reintroducing the issue of the aesthetic dimension of images, a dimension that must not be reduced simply to the philosophical sense of beauty but to which it is necessary to restore the etymological sense relating to sensibility. The anthropology of the image and the visual studies have attempted to deconstruct the aesthetic approach to the work of art so that other modes might be considered,32 or rather other forms of reaction suppressed or sublimated by the aesthetic reaction, with the consequence that this dimension has been neglected in research. Now, the power of images can be brought back to the question of their sensible force, whatever may 178

The anthropology of images

have been thought of the split between the age of the image and the age of art or between the cult of the religious image and culture of the artistic image. “For it is perhaps, in the context of a pragmatic analysis of its means, through its aesthetic quality (its intensity of appearance), that the image, whether work of art or devotional image, can become effective.”33 These principles have been applied especially to sacred images, with special attention given to the sumptuous nature of their workmanship, the issue here being to know what role this played in belief in the powers of these images. Images reputed to be miraculous were extensively embellished, from the lavish material used to adorn them to the altarpiece, the chapel, or even the church dedicated to it, not to mention the numerous ex voto offerings surrounding it (Fig. 13.1).

Figure 13.1 Michelozzo di Bartolomeo (attr.) and Pagno di Lapo Pertigiani, tabernacle for the SS. Annunziata (c. 1340), 1448–49, Florence, SS. Annunziata.

179

Ralph Dekoninck

It was out of respect for the subject represented that they were honored with decorations – that is to say, honor was expressed in material terms. It is possible to speak of a natural willingness to adorn them as a reminder that these ordinary images have extraordinary virtues. While texts of the period emphasize the fact that this addition of beauty was not the origin of faith but a witness to it, practice partly contradicts theory by showing that it was also tangible proof of the efficacy of the cultic image. As Freedberg recognizes, decoration serves to “aesthetically differentiate,”34 its efficacy lying, among other things, in its “visual particularity.”35 But he also emphasizes the fact that this feature is not the cause of the efficacy. In fact, according to Freedberg, belief in the power of miraculous images was at the most stimulated by the ornamental “layers”: Could one say that apparently rude or plain images [. . .] work only because of the splendor in which they are housed? Apparently not. We only have to read the many accounts, often contemporary with their discovery, of how they work while they are still outside in the cold, hanging on a tree, or pathetically painted on some shabby street corner. They work before the fancy or elevated forms of enshrinement or decoration were applied to them.36 As Golsenne maintains, it is possible to say that “the efficacy of cult images is not aesthetic but ‘magical.’ Its power does not produce a feeling of beauty, or disinterested pleasure, but it acts on the body and its humours.”37 In contrast to Freedberg, however, Golsenne emphasizes the fact that for the faithful, all the decorative apparatus that exalts the image demonstrates the image’s miraculous power; for the historian-anthropologist, the power to confer miraculous value on the image is due to this decorative apparatus. Although the embellishments seem simply to honor an object of value – in reality they confer value on this object, in a relationship which is equivalent to that which links the reliquary to the relic. As Jean-Claude Schmitt has proposed, for the believer it is the relic that makes the reliquary. For the anthropologist, however, “it is the reliquary that makes the relic,” in the sense that it supplies the institutional and visual proof of the relic’s authenticity.38 This analogy between image and reliquary – which has a certain historical pertinence if we refer to the statue-reliquaries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries through which a kind of “revolution” in the Christian image was performed – has the merit of emphasizing the essential connection that links the image to its ornamentation. It is therefore possible to extrapolate and speak of the agency of precious materials used to decorate sacred images. This is the hypothesis offered by Golsenne, who writes, “The adornment does not follow the miracle but makes possible the belief that a miracle has been performed by means of such an image.”39 He adds, “a cult image is not effective, magical, on its own”; “the adornment produces this life which is lacking in the venerated image, makes it attractive; [. . .] gives it a surplus of existence.”40 But placing the accent in this way on votive adornments as the main animators of the image and activators of belief has the consequence of putting the image itself in parentheses. If it goes without saying that the image in itself has no effective power, except in belief, the aesthetic dimension should not be reduced to that of the artistic value of the image. The unsophisticated, even “primitive,” appearance of many miraculous images not only was recognized as a sign of their antiquity and therefore as proof of their sacrality (in that the origin of these images has been lost in the mists of time) but also generated a visual impact that can be likened to what anthropologists have written about African “fetishes.”41 Their immutability and rusticity, not to mention their “primitive” quality, were only intensified by the contrast with the artistic adornment that gave them life. Their artistic “poverty” takes nothing away from their aesthetic power – that is to say, the emotional impact they generated and that the sumptuous embellishments extended. 180

The anthropology of images

In the end, the question that must be answered is to see if this attention to the power of images surpasses, or even puts paid to, iconographic analysis. Rather than opposing “effects of sense” and “effects of presence,” meaning and performance, it would be preferable, as J. Baschet advocates, to consider the areas of overlap between the two: “The work does not simply transmit a meaning to be decrypted; it also produces an effect. This dimension must be integrated within an iconographic approach, since it is true that meaning offers itself through the effect produced by the work.”42 The way in which materiality affects meaning needs to be considered, and the way in which meaning is conveyed and often transformed by the force of the image, but also by the ornamental apparatus accompanying it and bringing it before the viewer, also needs to be examined. The internalist explanation (how the image becomes a space in which the human psyche is projected) and the externalist explanation (how the image comes to be socially empowered) need to be combined without forgetting their formal characteristics. In the same way, an anthropological history of resemblance and a historical sociology of performance need to be joined together. Staying with J. Baschet, it is possible to speak of “active forms and meanings”: Within such configurations, the power of the image-object depends just as much on the presence it confers on painted figures, on its ornamental superabundance, as it does on an overload of meaning whose very excess contributes to producing an effect of sacrality and to the efficacy which may thus go together with it.43

Notes 1 Basil the Great, De Spiritu Sancto, 18, 45, in PG 32, col. 149. Originally intended to clarify the relationship of the Father and Son in the Trinity, this formula was adopted by the theology of the image to describe the type of adoration owed to the latter. See G.B. Ladner, “The Concept of the Image in the Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1953), 3–34. 2 “in ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt; unde praecipue gentibus pro lectione pictura est.” Gregory the Great, Registrum Epistolarum, XI, 13, Ad Serenum Massiliensum Episcopum, in Corpus Christianorum, 140A, 874, The Letters of Gregory the Great, translated, with introduction and notes, by John R.C. Martyn (Toronto, 2004). C.M. Chazelle, “Pictures, Books and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory I’s Letters to Serenus of Marseilles,” Word & Image, 6 (1990), 138–53. L. Duggan, “Was Art Really the ‘Book of the Illiterate’?,” Word & Image 5 (1989), 227–251. J.-C. Schmitt, “Écriture et image: les avatars médiévaux du modèle grégorien,” in Théories et pratiques de l’écriture au Moyen Age, ed. E. Baumgartner and C. Marchello-Nizia (Paris, 1988), 119–28. R. Recht, “Une Bible pour illettrés? Sculpture gothique et ‘théâtre de mémoire’,” Critique 586 (1996), 188–206. M. Gougaud, “Muta praedicatio,” Revue bénédictine 42 (1930), 168–71. 3 See J. Baschet, L’iconographie médiévale (Paris, 2008); see especially the introduction “Pour en finir (vraiment) avec la Bible des illettrés,” 26–33. 4 Jérôme Baschet has chosen to speak of the “image-object” as a reminder “that images, and particularly those of the Middle Ages, are inseparable from their materiality, but also from their thing-ness, understood as the quality of being sovereign, eluding at one and the same time the representation and functionality of the object.” J. Baschet, “Images en acte et agir social,” in La Performance des images, ed. G. Bartholeyns, A. Dierkens, and T. Golsenne (Brussels, 2010), 10. 5 See K. Moxey, “Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn,” Journal of Visual Culture 7 (2008), 131–46. J. Wolff, “After Cultural Theory: The Power of Images, the Lure of Immediacy,” Journal of Visual Culture 11 (2012), 3–19. H.U. Gumbrecht, The Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (Stanford, 2003). 6 See, in particular, the actor-network theory elaborated by B. Latour: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford, 2005). 7 A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998). 8 It is possible to refer for example to the antique tradition of the imagines agentes – that is, images that were striking in their beauty, ugliness, colors, and associations.

181

Ralph Dekoninck 9 “The interpretation of images would be decentered in favor of an investigation of the authority and affect of images. This would lead back, of course, to the issue of overestimation and visual superstitions. The question for art historians in that case would be, not ‘what pictures mean?’ but ‘what do pictures want?’” W.J.T. Mitchell, “What Is Visual Culture?,” in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky’s 100th Birthday, ed. I. Lavin (Princeton, 1995), 544. 10 W.J.T. Mitchell, Cloning Terror: The War of Image, 9/11 to the Present (Chicago, 2011), xix. 11 Gell, Art and Agency (as in note 7). 12 See C. van Eck, Art, Agency and Living Presence: From the Animated Image to the Excessive Object (Leiden, 2015), 45–52. P. Descola, “La double vie des image,” in Penser l’image II: Anthropologie du visuel, ed. E. Alloa (Paris, 2015), 131–45. 13 J.-C. Schmitt, Le corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps: Essais d’anthropologie médiévale (Paris, 2001). J.-C. Schmitt, Le Corps des images: Essais sur la culture visuelle au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2002). H. Belting, An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, trans. T. Dunlap (Princeton, 2014). J. Wirth, Qu’est-ce qu’une image (Geneva, 2013), especially chapter V: “La performativité de l’image?.” 14 H. Bredekamp, Theorie des Bildakts: Über das Lebensrecht des Bildes (Berlin, 2010). 15 I would like to thank Gil Bartholeyns for letting me know of his forthcoming contribution (“The Dynamis of the Medieval Imago: An Unrecognized Topicality”) to the Dynamis of the Image: For an Archeology of Potentialities volume, the result of the research initiative cosponsored by Collège d’études mondiales and Gerda Henkel Stiftung and directed by Chiara Cappelletto et Emmanuel Alloa. 16 G. Bartholeyns, “The Dynamis of the Medieval Imago” (as in note 15). 17 M. Mauss, A General Theory of Magic (London, 2005). 18 D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago/London, 1989). 19 This quotation comes from the preface for the French translation of Le Pouvoir des images, trans. A. Girod (Paris, 1998), 5. 20 See J. Goody, in his Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fictions, Relics and Sexuality (Oxford, 1997). 21 Gell, Art and Agency (as in note 7), 126. 22 Moxey, “Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn” (as in note 5), 132. 23 Moxey, “Visual Studies and the Iconic Turn” (as in note 5), 142. 24 G. Bartholeyns and T. Golsenne, “Une théorie des actes d’images,” in La Performance des images (as in note 4), 19. 25 “It should be clear that, with its living images, its automata, and its biofacta, the Schematic Image-Act encompasses the patterns of thought and action for images that live through [human] bodies, through auto-motion, and through biological constitution. The Substitutive Image-Act, in contrast, does not evoke the living components of images; rather, it exchanges images and bodies for one another. In this way, effects are attained by direct means – sometimes deadly means in the case of destructive media.” Bredekamp, Theorie des Bildakts (as in note 14), 328, trans. B. Kitzinger in her review of the book for the CAA.reviews (September 2014) CrossRef doi:10.3202/caa.reviews.2014.103. 26 Bredekamp, Theorie des Bildakts (as in note 14), 51; B. Kitzinger (as in note 25). 27 Belting, An Anthropology of Images (as in note 13). 28 Kitzinger (as in note 25). 29 The opposition between a classical philosophy of the image as representing something and the image that makes something, which possesses a specific “force,” had already been clearly stated by Louis Marin: “Hence the attempt to grasp, by returning to the ‘originating’ question, the being of the image, not by returning it to being itself, not by making of the being of the image the pure and simple, and cognitively insufficient, or even deceptive image of being, its mimeme, but by examining its ‘virtues’, as would have been said in the past, its latent or manifest forces, in short, its efficacy, if this were even known. The being of the image, in a word, is its force.” L. Marin, Des pouvoirs de l’image: Gloses (Paris, 1992), 10. 30 Bredekamp, Theorie des Bildakts (as in note 14), 52. 31 See J.-C. Bonne, “Ornementation et répresentation,” in Les images dans l’Occident mediéval, ed. J. Baschet and P.-O. Dittmar (Turnhout, 2015), 199–212; J.-C. Bonne, “De l’ornemental dans l’art médiéval (VIIe– XIIe siècle): Le modèle insulaire,” in L’image: Fonctions et usages des images dans l’Occident médiéval, ed. J. Baschet and J.-C. Schmitt (Paris, 1997), 185–219. 32 See “Visual Culture Questionnaire,” October 77 (1996), 25–70. R. Dekoninck, “Un conflit de valeurs: L’histoire de l’art aux prises avec les Visual Studies,” in L’art en valeurs, ed. R. Dekoninck and D. Lories (Paris, 2011), 341–55. 33 Bartholeyns and Golsenne, “Une théorie des actes d’images” (as in note 24), 23.

182

The anthropology of images 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Freedberg, The Power of Images (as in note 18), 110. Freedberg, The Power of Images (as in note 18), 120. Freedberg, The Power of Images (as in note 18), 110. T. Golsenne, “Parure et culte,” in La Performance des images (as in note 24), 74. Schmitt, Le Corps des images (as in note 13), 284. Golsenne, “Parure et culte” (as in note 37), 82. Golsenne, “Parure et culte” (as in note 37), 83. M. Augé, Le Dieu objet (Paris, 1988), 30–33. J. Baschet, “Inventivité et sérialité des images médiévales: Pour une approche iconographique élargie,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 51 (1996), 106. 43 J. Baschet, “Images en acte et agir social,” in La Performance des images (as in note 24), 13.

183

14 CLASSIFYING IMAGE CONTENT IN VISUAL COLLECTIONS A selective history Chiara Franceschini The origins and reasons for iconographic classification Even though earlier attempts, many of which are discussed in this publication, had been made to look at art historical subject matter and its classification, it was not by chance that iconography, as well as its classification, first started to develop in the field of Christian art. Iconography developed as a science based on the idea of a close correspondence between image and text. In Christian cultures the text is chiefly the sacred history as told in texts such as the Bible. Although art historians have always been aware of the autonomy of the visual, the close and problematic links between a text such as the Bible and the rendering in images of the Historia Sacra provided the basis for the birth of iconography as a science. Christian authors have always shown a certain tendency to tell artists what they were supposed to do. According to this way of thinking, and highlighted by the famous dictum of Gregory the Great about the function of images as books for the illiterate, Christian iconography was conceived as a form of visible theology.1 The dependence on texts is evident in the approaches of the early iconographers. For example, Émile Mâle, who coined the term “iconography” in 1927 and later rediscovered Cesare Ripa’s Iconology, employed the medieval treatise Speculum Majus of Vincent of Beauvais to organize his book L’art réligieux de XIIIe siècle en France. As early as 1891, when trying to choose a subject for his thesis, Mâle wrote to a fellow student, “I just found a topic for my Latin dissertation: Michelangelo as a theologian. I will try to demonstrate that Michelangelo did not invent a single thing in the Sistine Chapel, but that he very closely followed Augustine’s City of God.”2 Between the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, the idea of iconography as a tendentially encyclopedic discipline that could potentially bring back images to their written sources was reflected in the endeavors to fund and organize art historical photographic collections according to subject categories. Due to practical necessities, the iconographic arrangement of these visual archives established a unique relationship between image and text. However, iconographers very soon realized that it is one thing to classify images according to the text or source which is supposed to be behind them, but it is another thing to classify images according to subject matter. In 1939, iconography was authoritatively described as “that branch of the history of art which concerns itself with the subject matter or meaning of works of art.”3 Even more interesting is the definition given thirteen years later by Creighton Gilbert, according to which iconography “tends to be simply the identifying of subject matter for cataloguing purposes.”4 184

Classifying image content

However, this “identification of subject matter for cataloguing purposes” had already led to the foundation of visual resources such as the Witt Library, the Frick Library, or the Index of Christian Art in Princeton, and was clearly not that simple. Subject matter (e.g., “Virgin and child”) is certainly a notion that is not exclusively textrelated. The subject of a picture may refer to a type, without depending on any written text; however, a subject always needs to be described in words. Accordingly, this always reestablishes a relationship with a text, even if the text now comes not before (as in the case of a source) but after the image, in the form of an accurate description of the subject itself. It was, in fact, in relation to the notion of subject that the first objections to iconographic classification were raised, as for example by Robert Klein, in his 1963 publication Thoughts of Iconography, where he states, It is not always possible to establish a non-equivocal correspondence between a figurative work and its “subject.” Consider, for instance, a painting of the 1880s representing the corner of a room, a man in an armchair reading the Journal des Débats, a mantlepiece with a Louis XV clock and a vase of flowers, a mirror on the wall, part of a window, and so on. Of all these objects, which is the “true subject” of the picture?5 Klein was dealing here with postmedieval art; but it is equally possible to wonder whether this question makes sense for medieval art as well. While attacking Panofsky’s iconology, whose preferred field seemed to be Renaissance art, Gilbert also wrote that “if the Middle Ages have a more public and standardized set of symbols, amenable to the simpler attack of iconography, later periods show a well-known tendency to loosen or dispense with associative values.”6 Certainly, iconographers dealing with the classification of Renaissance images tend to find more and more examples outside iconographic classification.7 However, the fundamental question is to what extent it is possible to use words to describe, arrange, and retrieve the content of images and that remains valid for all periods, never mind the problem of how to establish continuities and breaks between different periods in relation to iconographic classification. Beyond the focus on Christian material in the early days of iconography as a discipline, there were also other endeavors to classify images by content. The idea of using tree structures to classify image content may have developed from descriptive and classificatory systems used in botany and zoology. However, the problem with iconography (as distinct from zoography or geography) is always the need not only to describe and classify images by their morphologies but also to bring the image or object back to a text, whether that is a source or a textual description. In this sense, iconography is not merely a system for the classification of forms and types but rather a semiotic system for the classification of forms and types. Before as well as after the invention of photography, the greatest stimulus for creating iconographic systems came from scholarship and the market. Scholars and theorists dealing with the visual in art history as well as in a number of other fields, such as history, philosophy, anthropology, literary history, theology, and psychology, frequently have queries as to how a certain text or subject is depicted in art. Image collections that offered this research possibility, especially before the advent of the Internet, proved to be extremely useful for practitioners in these fields. These collections allowed the researcher to know not only how subjects were depicted in art but also where and when.8 Beyond the academic world, iconographic classification proved to be useful for a variety of different motives. At least from the sixteenth century, image buyers and sellers have often needed subject classification systems which allowed speedy retrieval (e.g., for collectors, for use in the world of advertising, or for other commercial or noncommercial enterprises). An 185

Chiara Franceschini

early example that relates to both theological and commercial needs is provided by an album, which was assembled in Rome between 1560 and 1600 by the French publisher Lafréry, and is now in Madrid. As noted by Zahira Véliz Bomford, the Madrid album, which includes more than three hundred prints, “is arranged according to iconography, with Old Testament subjects, then New Testament, followed by the Evangelists, the Fathers of the Church, Saints, devotional images, and finally post-Tridentine formulae for the seven sacraments, and so on.”9 Here, the classification works by arrangement and not by labeling; it is possible to see that this order made it easier for artists or patrons to find an authoritative depiction of a certain religious subject – authoritative because Lafréry intended to make engraved reproductions by the most famous Renaissance artists of the Historia Sacra. These were to be issued in Rome and made available to a larger public. When images became plentiful, as happened after the invention of photography, iconographic arrangement alone did not suffice to retrieve an image quickly. It was essential to have a coherent system of searchable texts (descriptions or card index). It is only very recently that web search engines are trying to move from the use of words to describe images to a different system based on image-recognition software.

The triumph of iconographic classification in the analog era The greatest impulse to iconographic classification in the art historical world coincided with the widespread use of photography as the main working media for the art historian. It was only when art historians had access to an amount of photographic images that it became necessary to devise systems of organization, which sometimes followed an iconographic principle. These collections and archives, developed by either single scholars or institutions, were all started toward the end of the nineteenth century and in the first three decades of the twentieth – that is, during the age when photography was being established as a research tool. As already mentioned, the Index of Christian Art was established at Princeton University, in 1917, initially as the personal archive of Charles Rufus Morey. This was not the only initiative in the field of medieval iconography at the time, but it soon became the most influential. Initially, the Index covered art only up to the year 700, but the scope was extended before Morey’s death to 1400.10 The Index is formed by two physical files: a text file, consisting of “over one million color-coordinated cards that are arranged under 28,000 subject headings” organized alphabetically, and a photographic file, “consisting of over 200,000 re-photographs of works of art.” The “text file” is most important for iconography: since the foundation in 1917, it not only records metadata for each image but also offers a “free-text description in which individual details of the particular work are recorded.” The vocabulary of this free-text description is consistent: it is “very much controlled as is the descriptive format in which the image is read.”11 In other words, a parallel between image and text is clearly established – the text, which was not searchable in the paper files, is meant to offer a way of reading the image as objectively as possible. The level of detail offered by the Index of Christian Art proved to be most useful in the age of computerization, when all the information on paper was converted to a digital format. In 1908, in Paris, Jacques Doucet started to collect photographic materials, covering medieval art as well. The attempt to follow scientific rules to classify Doucet’s photothèque is documented as early as 1930, thanks to the input of Clotilde Brière-Misme, a collaborator of Doucet since 1919. Under an overarching alphabetic classification of artist, the organization followed a subject classification in the following order: Bible (following the order of the books), religious allegories, saints, mythology and allegory, history, literature, portraits, figures (heads, clothed figures, etc.), genre paintings, landscapes and towns, animals, interiors with no figure, still life, and copies and 186

Classifying image content

fakes.12 Seventy thousand photographs were classified using such a structure from 1930 to 1936: the aim was to compete with “les plus parfaits organisations étrangères de ce genre,”13 which must have included the Index of Christian Art and possibly (unless the influence did not go in the other direction, which is not possible to establish at present) the archive in the Warburg Institute, in Hamburg, which was later moved to London and which was being developed at this time. From the late 1920s while in Hamburg, Aby Warburg started to work on Mnemosyne, his atlas project: one of the first occasions to present his visual approach and use of photography to fellow art historians was provided in 1927, when he gave a lecture on the Valois tapestries at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence – the same city where, about forty years earlier, he had started to collect books and photographs. Still in the late 1920s, together with Fritz Saxl and with the practical help of many young scholars and assistants, including Edgar Breitenbach, Warburg formulated a plan for both the book and the image collection of his library: this plan was systematized and recorded in a scheme by Saxl around 1930–1931.14 In 1931, Erwin Panofsky, who at the time was teaching in Hamburg and was part of the group of intellectuals in the Warburg circle, visited the Index of Christian Art for the first time.15 That same year, when writing “On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Art,” Panofsky formulated the first version of his three-level scheme for describing and interpreting works of visual art – a classificatory system which later came to be described as pre-iconography, iconography, and iconology.16 In 1933, the Warburg Library moved to London: at this point, the Index of Christian Art was a model for the reorganization of its photographic collection, which, at the time, was under the direction of Rudolf Wittkower (1901–1971). The new arrangement incorporated elements of the iconographic sections first classified by Saxl.17 Today, the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection consists of an estimated four hundred thousand photographs of works of art, mostly dating from classical antiquity to the eighteenth century. The photographs are mostly collected in folders and subfolders, corresponding to the breakdown of a theme or subject in subcategories according to different principles, sometimes referring back to a text, but other times not (e.g., “Amor” – “Allegories” – “The power of Amor” or “Old Testament” – “Genesis” – “Adam and Eve” – “Adam single figure”).18 In turn, the thematic folders are stored in filing cabinets grouped together in bays, with an indication of the main subject categories: Pre-Classical Iconography, Antiquities, Rituals, Gods and Myths, Classical Literature, Mediaeval and Later Literature, Magic and Science, Gestures, Secular Iconography, Portraits, History, Social Life, Religious Iconography, and so forth.19 Unlike the Index of Christian Art, the textual description is kept to a minimum, and the classification is entrusted not to a card index or to exhaustive textual descriptions but to the material disposition in space itself combined with minimal but essential information provided on the back of photographs. Flexible and not systematic, this organization has the advantage of stimulating “serendipity,” sometimes confronting the user with unexpected discoveries.20 Earlier enterprises, such as the Index of Christian Art and the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, influenced the organization of visual resources, which developed around the Warburg Library in Hamburg and then at the Warburg Institute in London. In turn, the thematic/iconographic approach to organizing photographic material, which was developed by succeeding generations of Warburgians, had a great impact on other projects. Thanks to Edgar Breitenbach, a strand of Warburgianism was infused into the project to classify the photographs of American life in the Depression era carried out under the Farm Security Administration at the Library of Congress from 1945.21 In the commercial field, the image bank created by Otto Bettmann in Hamburg is another interesting case. The extent to which Bettmann’s “subject eyes” were indebted to the Hamburg school is uncertain; however, with Bettmann having studied history and art history at the University of Leipzig from 1923 to 1927, it is highly probable 187

Chiara Franceschini

that he became acquainted with contemporary debates on iconography. One of his advisors, the historian of economics and culture Alfred Doren (1869–1934), was one of Aby Warburg’s close friends and colleagues.22 Although not strictly art historical, other projects from the same period are noteworthy, as they can be considered, in one way or another, to be linked or at least comparable to those developed around the school of Hamburg-London. Around 1931–1932, Henry Balfour (1863–1939), curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, created a systematic archive out of the collection of ethnographic photographs he had collected for the museum. The result was a thematic series of boxes, which were intended to provide a cross-cultural research tool. This archive raises questions about the legacy of cultural comparativism. Put in context with cognate projects – and in particular with the Warburg collection – Balfour’s classification system has been recently read within a “wider universalizing archival movement of the inter-war period.”23 A further example of this momentum is provided by the “Eranos Archiv,” the photographic collection of Jungian archetypes developed by Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881–1962) according to the system of Jungian symbolism represented in the visual arts. From 1935, she corresponded with Fritz Saxl and visited the Warburg Photographic Collection several times. The photographic archive, which grew out of Eranos meetings during the early 1930s, was established and used for traveling exhibitions. Somehow unaware of the fundamental difference in scope between her collection and the Warburg Photographic Collection, in 1955, Fröbe-Kapteyn donated her original “collection of art historical photographs for education/learning” to the Warburg Institute.24 In 1936, William Heckscher (1904–1999), a pupil of Panofsky’s, worked with Dora Panofsky (1885–1965), his first wife, on a collection of “Pathos formulae”: this rich photographic collection followed him to Utrecht, where a copy of the Index of Christian Art is preserved and where, during the 1950s, Heckscher developed an “index iconologicus.”25 In 1951, Henri van de Waal, who had been in contact with several members of the Warburg Institute since the 1930s, wrote to Gertrud Bing (1892–1964) about his work on a “iconographical index which could provide a directrix for the filling of iconographical material,” asking permission “to test (its) system at the practice of your collections to make sure that no important items have been left out.”26 This was the beginning of Iconclass – a project which has since focused on the classification of subject matter using alphanumeric taxonomies and has now became a standard for iconographic description. Iconclass, however, differs from the other projects mentioned so far because it was not initiated to arrange a collection of physical images, but was developed independently as a pure classificatory system. Although historically interconnected, these different case studies show different ways of arranging textual and visual material and data within the image archive of the analog era. There are cases of thematically organizing the archive and the card index, corresponding to a typological-topographical arrangement of the image (the Index of Christian Art). In other instances, miniature photos are attached to the card index (the Bettmann Archive). Elsewhere, it is possible to appreciate the value of a material arrangement, which corresponds spatially to the thematic logic of the system and physically acts as a visual index. Such is the case of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, where information derives directly from the photographs and their physical location, and only incidentally with the help of a card index; such is the case of the attributes of the saints, for which a partial card index is available. Sometimes the cataloguers’ ideal target was to provide a virtually comprehensive visual catalogue of all the possible images or depicted subjects of a given culture, or cultural context. For example, in the 1930s, the Warburgians set out to complete and arrange “as far and as systematically as possible” their “iconographical collection” of all the medieval and Renaissance visual 188

Classifying image content

materials related to the history of the classical tradition in religion, art, literature, and science.27 This was only one of the phases of the history of the collection and its classification system. Another telling example of the endeavor to classify and organize an entire culture through its images is provided by the American Life in the Depression Era Project, as envisioned by Edgar Breitenbach. In both cases the attempts to offer a complete visual documentation in relation to a culture go beyond textual reference and research needs: here the effort is to classify cultures through images.28 In the field of art history, the iconographic or thematic classification principle was not the only one. The standard art historical photographic archive could follow a different pattern. At the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florenz, for example, the iconographic classification was entrusted to a subject cross-reference index, while the overarching arrangement followed a typological scheme (architecture, sculpture, applied arts, painting) and, subordinately, a stylistic arrangement, such as “Romanesque,” “Gothic,” “Renaissance,” “Baroque,” and “Classicism.”29

Challenges of the digital era From a theoretical point of view, all of the examples discussed earlier are concerned with one central question: how to use language to classify and retrieve the content of images for a specific purpose. One of the central notions of classification is the concept of keyword. Willingly or not, our googlified world is dominated by the practice of looking for contents by keyword searches. Google defines its mission as follows: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”30 Of course, the realm of images is a subset of the world’s information. Still, the problem of retrieving the content of images is so complex that it has not yet been completely resolved – even by the developers and programmers of Google. At the center of this problem lies the relationship between word and image. Pattern recognition technology, though promising, is not yet fully developed, and it is still through keywords that Google Images allows users to search the web for image content. If we look back to the old, specialized analog archives of photographs mentioned earlier, we can appreciate what refined tools were developed by archivists, curators, and art historians before the digital era, and in particular before the era of the page rank algorithms which are at the heart of the Google’s domination, first of the web and then of advertising (through the practice of content-targeted advertising). As we have seen in the cases discussed, the choice of keywords depends on logic and functions of each collection. Beginning in the 1990s, the digital conversion of many analog archives, and especially those specializing in art history, has brought about further research in classifying iconographic material. Iconclass, the Index of Christian Art, the KHI Digital Photo Library, the Photo Archive of the Fondazione Federico Zeri, the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database, the Photographic Archive of Villa I Tatti, the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, the Census of Antique Art and Architecture Known to the Renaissance in Berlin (one of the most important digital enterprise for Renaissance art), and the various projects developed at the Getty Research Institute, not to mention the digital research tools currently developed by many of the world’s museums, are expanding the materials and research possibilities available to scholars in the fields of medieval and Renaissance art. Largescale projects which are useful for iconographic research include Artstor, a digital image library funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation in the late 1990s, and Wikimedia Commons. Available by subscription to many institutions for educational purposes, Artstor includes today more than 1.9 million images from many different repositories (including some of the ones listed earlier).31 All these projects offer new tools for iconographic or thematic image research, which are both rooted in their respective analog history and much more refined and useful than what Google Images is able to offer at present. 189

Chiara Franceschini

In this wider and progressively interconnected picture, where digital tools are offering new perspectives for art history,32 the question needs to be asked about the future of iconography and iconographic classification, beyond mere usefulness and practicalities. The world now has visuality at its center as has never happened before, and it is clear that image and text work in different ways and are completely different media. The classic methodology of iconography, with its strong tendency to anchor image to text, if not to a source, and to a subject matter (described either with a text or a simple textual label), needs to be rethought. The study of how types, forms, subjects, and themes migrate from one image to another and from one cultural context to another may give a historical and geographical depth to the study and understanding of images. Moving from approaches that tended to rely on textual sources, today’s art historians tend to focus more and more on the proper visual elements of art. Without sounding too paradoxical, it may be possible to say that we are today assisting in a visual turn in art history. Thanks to all the work that has already been done, as dwarfs on the shoulders of the giants of past generations, we may now attempt to focus on the study of proper visual elements and visual evidence (and not just material evidence as in the recently fashionable material turn) offered by the images themselves. For this new turn in the field of art history a new iconography with new tools is needed. The new iconographic classification by themes such as animal iconography, color, light, and music/sound as offered by this publication is certainly the first step toward it.

Notes 1 Gregory the Great, Registrum epistolarum tomus II, libri VIII–XIV, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ed. P. Ewald and L.M. Hartmann (Berlin, 1899), 195, IX, 208. 2 “Je viens de trouver le sujet de ma these latine: Michel-Ange théologien. J’essaierai de montrer qu’il n’y a dans la Sixtine aucune donnée qui soit de l’invention de Michel-Ange, et qui’il a suivi de très près la Cité de Dieu de Saint-Augustine”: G. Giustiniani, “Gli esordi critici di Emile Mâle: le tesi in latino sulle sibille,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Moyen Âge, 125/2 (2013), 585–620, esp. 585–86. 3 E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York, 1939), 3. 4 C. Gilbert, “On Subject and Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Pictures,” The Art Bulletin, 34, 3 (1952), 202–16, 202. 5 R. Klein, “Thoughts of Iconography,” in Form and Meaning: Essays on the Renaissance and Modern Art, trans. M. Jay and L. Wieseltier (New York, 1963), 143. 6 Gilbert, “Subject and Not-Subject” (as in note 4), 202. 7 Examples may be found, for example, in the Photographic Collection of the Warburg Institute. For a possible critical development of this point see A. Nagel and L. Pericolo (ed.), Subject as Aporia in Early Modern Art (Farnham, 2010). 8 Just to mention only one of the many possible examples, see M. Meiss, “Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance: The Image of St. Jerome,” in Id., The Painter’s Choice: Problems in the Interpretation of Renaissance Art (New York, 1976), 190 and 198, n. 7, where he establishes that the image of Jerome in the wilderness, which was previously supposed to be a medieval subject, is, on the contrary, “extremely rare” before 1400, since “no example is listed by the Index of Christian Art, which classifies subjects to 1400.” 9 Z. Véliz Bomford, “The Authority of Prints in Early Modern Spain,” Hispanic Research Journal 9:5 (2008), 416–36, 425. 10 C.P. Hourihane, “Classifying Subject Matter in Medieval Art: The Index of Christian Art at Princeton University,” in C. Franceschini and K. Mazzucco (eds.), “Classifying Content: Photographic Collections and Theories of Thematic Ordering,” Visual Resources 30:3 (2014), 255–62, esp. 256. Most of what follows in this paragraph is taken from the introduction to the aforementioned special issue of Visual Resources (as in note 24). 11 Hourihane, “Classifying Subject Matter in Medieval Art” (as in note 10), 258. 12 See “Le fonds photographique: La photothèque de Jacques Doucet: passé, présent, avenir,” Les Nouvelles de l’INHA 15 (June 2003), 2–5, in particular p. 4. 13 Doucet (as in note 12), p. 4.

190

Classifying image content 14 K. Mazzucco, “On the Reverse. Some Notes on Photographic Images from the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection,” Aisthesis 2 (2012), 217–32. 15 I. Ragusa, “Observation on the History of the Index,” in C. Hourihane (ed.), “The Princeton Index of Christian Art,” Visual Resources 13:3–4 (1998), 243. 16 On the development of this scheme see J. Elsner and K. Lorenz, “The Genesis of Iconology,” Critical Inquiry 38:3 (2012), 483–512. On the relations between Panofsky’s theory and the Index of Christian Art see Hourihane, “Classifying Subject Matter in Medieval Art” (as in note 10), 259. 17 K. Mazzucco, “(Photographic) Subject-Matter: Fritz Saxl Indexing Mnemosyne – A Stratigraphy of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection’s System,” in Franceschini and Mazzucco, “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 201–21. 18 A complete subject index is available at http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/photographic-collection/subject-index. 19 See the website of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection and R. Duits, “A New Resource Based on Old Principles: The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database,” in Franceschini and Mazzucco, “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 263–75, 263–66. 20 Duits, “A New Resource” (as in note 19), 266. 21 E. Sears, “American Iconography: Assessing FSA Photographs,” in Franceschini and Mazzucco, “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 239–54. 22 E. Blaschke, “The Bettmann Archive and the Commodification of Images”, in Franceschini and Mazzucco, “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 222–39, quotation on p. 230. 23 C. Morton, “Photography and the Comparative Method: The Construction of an Anthropological Archive,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18:2 (June 2012), 369–96, p. 369. 24 Franceschini and Mazzucco, “Introduction,” in Franceschini and Mazzucco “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 175–76, and R. Bernardini, “Tracce: Jung e l’Archivio di Eranos,” in Jung a Eranos: il progetto della psicologia complessa (Milan, 2011), 247–353. 25 E. Sears, “The Life and Work of Willliam S. Heckscher: Some Petit Perceptions,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 53:1 (1990), 107–34. 26 Franceschini and Mazzucco, “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 176. 27 Franceschini and Mazzucco, “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 173. 28 For a philosophical insight into this type of approach, although relating to earlier periods, see P. Giacomoni, “Classificare per immagini,” Annuario 28 (2012), 301–21. 29 U. Derkcs, “‘And because the use of the photographic device is impossible without a proper card catalog . . .’: The Typological-Stylistic Arrangement and the Subject Cross-Reference Index of the KHI’s Phototek (1897–1930s),” in Franceschini and Mazzucco “Classifying Content” (as in note 10), 181–200. 30 J. Gleick, “How Google Dominates Us,” The New York Review of Books, August 18 (2011). 31 See at http://www.artstor.org/mission. 32 See, for example, the dedicated program at the Getty Institute: http://www.getty.edu/foundation/ initiatives/current/dah/index.html.

191

15 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SUBJECT HEADINGS Sherman Clarke

The Library of Congress (LC) collection is comprehensive and universal by topic, format, language, and audience level; it serves as the national library of the United States, though it reports specifically to the US Congress. It considers itself a comprehensive public library rather than a research or special library. The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) system developed in the era of the card catalog, long before the influence of computerization and web browsing led us to think of searching by discrete terms or single words isolated from their context and function for access to resources. LCSH is universal in coverage, primarily in American English, and aims to use language that can be comprehended by a large and diverse audience.1 It is not a specialized vocabulary, though it is used by many research collections, such as the Morgan Library, Harvard University, Getty Research Institute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Terms are based on literary warrant – that is, all terms are developed because they are needed for a work being catalogued. LCSH is not a fully realized thesaurus as not all broader, narrower, and related terms are connected by references. LCSH terminology may be freely searched on the LC site at http://authorities.loc.gov. In the card catalog, it was important for a subject heading string to include all aspects of the particular topic. The subject heading may be a single word, but “string” is here being used to refer to the entire subject heading, which may consist of several words making up a main topic or concept and various subdivisions. One might have a topic subdivided by subtopic, geography, chronology, and/or form – for example, Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint – Apparitions and miracles – France – History – 19th century; Hundred Years’ War, 1339–1453 – Campaigns – France – Limousin – Exhibitions. To save typing in the card era as well as the inevitable typographical errors, there was a limit to the number of subject headings that would be applied to any particular title. It should be remembered that LCSH terms are mostly built for books, which can indeed be on specialized topics but are not generally as specific as journal articles or single images may be. They also mostly aim at access to the topical content of the book. Still, the terms can be used to describe what is depicted in a single image or work of art. The Morgan Library, for example, catalogues both its collection material and reference material in the same Corsair catalog. The search result for “Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint – Art” includes both representations of the Virgin and books about the topic. The Prints & Photographs Division of LC has developed the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM), which largely uses terms that are also in LCSH in the same form.2 Some indexes to periodicals use LCSH, modified LCSH, or LCSH-like headings for the 192

Library of Congress subject headings

particular field covered by the index.3 Most libraries use the LCSH terminology as published according to documented policies and procedures. Subject cataloguing and classification guidelines in each discipline or field of knowledge were developed by the LC subject or language team that catalogued those books, following general principles. Cataloguers at the Library of Congress were assigned and specialized in either descriptive or subject cataloguing, or in another area, such as serial publications or Dewey decimal classification, as well as being language specialists. This led to some variation in practice about subdivision order and to varying patterns in different classification schedules. Class N is the main class for the visual arts, though photography is classified in TR. Other areas which are now commonly collected by art and architecture libraries are also found outside N. City planning may be in HT or elsewhere in the social sciences; cultural geography is in G with other geography; landscape design is in SB with agriculture. Iconography, by its very nature, may fall pretty much in any class, from religion to history to the social sciences. Regardless, the subject headings used to provide access will adhere to LCSH guidelines. Until the 1970s and 1980s, most cataloguers in the United States applied LC subject headings by using the printed version (bound in red and known as the Red Books) or seeing how they appeared on cards distributed by LC. A letter to LC policy experts could provide an explanation of a particular subject heading or string. Cooperative cataloguing programs, a new edition of the Anglo-American cataloguing rules in 1979, and computerization brought many changes to the cataloguing world and the place of the Library of Congress within that world. LC certainly retained, and retains, its central role but there are strong cooperative programs, such as NACO and SACO, for name and subject cooperation respectively. As stated earlier, LCSH terminology is freely available and searchable on the LC site at http://authorities.loc.gov. LC held a subject heading workshop in the early 1980s, and the training materials for that workshop developed into the publicly available manual now known as the Subject Headings Manual. It contains general instructions for constructing subject headings, general patterns, patterns specific to particular types of headings, free-floating subdivisions, and memos (as they are called) about particular topics, such as geographic features, extinct cities, classes of persons, city sections, fine arts, buildings, pictorial works, biblical topics, religious groups, and mythological characters. The manual is now available online.4 Though aimed at cataloguers, some of the instructions may be of benefit to the researcher in determining how to search for a topic. Pattern headings are those that provide guidance on similar headings. If a subdivision or practice is established under the pattern heading, it can be applied to similar headings without explicit authorization. For example, subdivisions under Shakespeare can be applied to other authors. Subdivisions under “English language,” “French language,” and “Romance languages” can be applied to other languages and language groups. “Art, Italian” is the pattern for art headings, along with “Art, Chinese [Japanese, Korean]” for headings particular to their Asian context. Free-floating subdivisions are those that can be applied in LCSH without explicit authorization. For example, the subdivision “– History” can be applied to a wide variety of headings. Other free-floating subdivisions can be applied to types of headings, such as individual persons, classes of persons, ethnic groups, individual corporate bodies, types of corporate bodies, animals, industries, disciplines, and activities (Plate 2). A conference on subject subdivisions was held in 1991 at Airlie House in Airlie, Virginia, and is thus known as the Airlie House Conference.5 The conference built on studies of subdivisions at LC and by subcommittees of the Subject Analysis Committee (SAC), the principal committee of the American Library Association looking at subject access to library materials. Based on the studies and the conference papers and discussion, the conference made several recommendations, which began to be implemented by LC by the mid-1990s. Similar subdivisions have 193

Sherman Clarke

Plate 2 Trinity of Saint Anne with donor, Atelier of the Master of Rabenden, polychrome wood, c. 1515, Unter den Linden Museum, Colmar (89.3.1). Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. LCSH: Note: The Anne-Mary-Jesus trio is not established in LCSH. ICONOGRAPHY Anne (Mother of the Virgin Mary), Saint – Art Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint – Art Jesus Christ – Art Patrons in art Pomegranate in art HEADINGS OTHER THAN ICONOGRAPHY Sculpture, German – Germany – Munich – 16th century Polychromy – Germany – Munich – 16th century Meister von Rabenden, active 1510-1525, Studio of

been harmonized when the meaning was the same or substantially similar in intent and usage. For example, “Description” was applied to cities and other local places and “Description and travel” was applied to nations and other larger places; the subdivision for all places was conflated to “Description and travel.” Order of subdivisions was regularized so that the order is “topic – topical subdivision – geographic subdivision – chronological subdivision – form subdivision.” Form and genre were to be separately coded to differentiate them from topical information. Geographic subdivision was to be more comprehensively and consistently applied. More subject headings built on patterns were to be explicitly established. The pattern “[topic] in art” became one of the patterns which is explicitly established rather than applied in a free-floating manner. 194

Library of Congress subject headings

This is primarily because it is a phrase heading, where explicit authorization is important, versus a subdivision, where the main topic and subdivision can be authorized separately. A change to subject headings for art materials also resulted from the conference and its follow-through. Chronology had been handled in a way that resulted in two subject headings, such as “Painting, German” and “Painting, Modern – 17th-18th centuries – Germany.” This was simplified by allowing for chronological subdivision of “Painting, German,” resulting in the single string “Painting, German – 17th century” (and/or 18th century, as warranted) (Fig. 15.1). Maintenance of cataloguing records is a significant effort, though it is somewhat easier in current computerized catalogues than it was in the card catalog. The difficulty of changing cards led to reluctance in modernizing headings, which would affect potentially many thousands of cards. Since current practice in US libraries generally involves each library maintaining its own catalogues, changes in subject headings mean that catalogue records around the bibliographic world will vary in their adherence to current LCSH terminology. The central database WorldCat maintained by OCLC is regularly updated and revised based on changes in subjects and names as well as advances in machine manipulation of records and clustering of records from diverse sources. Authority vendors offer similar services to individual libraries to revise records. Still, individual library databases may vary in their currency. Geographic subdivision is now consistently applied, though the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are subdivided through first-order subdivision (state, province, constituent country) rather than nation. Early on, famous places such as Paris and London were subdivided directly. Now, all local places are subdivided indirectly through a larger geographic entity. Geographic entities larger than a nation or that straddle nations or states are subdivided directly. The only exception now to the indirect subdivision practice is Jerusalem and that is for political reasons – for example, Painting, Gothic – England – London; Architecture, Romanesque – Europe, Central; Psalters – Germany – Reichenau (Baden-Württemberg); Psalters – Macedonia (Republic); Sculpture, Romanesque – Meuse River Valley; Temples – Jerusalem; Temples, Khmer – Cambodia – Angkor (Extinct city). The form of names used in geographic subdivisions is based on the Name Authority File, which in turn is based on the cataloguing rules (now Resource Description and Access or RDA). Nonjurisdictional geographic names, such as bodies of water and regions, are established in LCSH and can be used as warranted in geographic subdivision. Based on the relevant rules and policies, most places are established in English and are the modern (current) name for the place. Chronological subdivision is fairly specific for historic periods and events but is generally not more specific than century elsewhere. The century may be preceded by the subdivision “ – History,” which can also appear without a specific period subdivision – for example, France – History – Louis IV, 936–954; Peasants – France – Social life and customs – 16th century; Peasants – Germany – History – 16th century; Pilgrims and pilgrimages – Middle East – History. Style terms such as “Gothic” are generally not subdivided by chronology but may be combined with other subject strings that include chronology – for example, Art, Gothic – France; Art, French – 14th century; Architecture, Romanesque – France – Burgundy; Architecture – France – Burgundy – History – 12th century. Note that “Art” and “Architecture” have different patterns for chronological and geographic subdivision (unfortunately). Art is specified by a national or other adjective in inverted order; the century is applied directly following any local place subdivision. Architecture may have style adjectives in inverted order but is subdivided by place and then “– History” and then the century. “Christian art and symbolism” is chronologically subdivided at an era level – for example, Christian art and symbolism – Medieval, 500–1500; Christian art and symbolism – Modern period, 1500-. A place subdivision may be inserted before the chronological subdivision – for example, Christian art and symbolism – Croatia – Dalmatia – Medieval period, 500–1500. 195

Figure 15.1 Christ being nailed to the cross, Gerhard Remsich, c. 1538–9, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (c. 276–1928). Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. LCSH: Nailing of Christ to the Cross – V&A Note: The denial and betrayal are both set up in LCSH and presumably any of the Passion steps could be established. The “wealth of domestic detail” could be noted in detail but probably would not, in practice, go as far as these examples, though the headings do show some variety in how the strings would be constructed. ICONOGRAPHY Jesus Christ – Passion – Art Holy Cross in art Carpenters in art Carpentry – Tools – Pictorial works Jerusalem – In art Saints in art HEADINGS OTHER THAN ICONOGRAPHY Glass painting and staining – Germany – Steinfeld (North Rhine-Westphalia) – 16th century Steinfeld (Premonstratensian abbey) [established by earlier cataloguing rules; current rules would probably call for Abtei Steinfeld (Steinfeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany)] Remsich, Gerhard, active 1522–1543 [he is not yet in LC/Names or ULAN]

Library of Congress subject headings

Individual works of art and names of individual artists are established in the Name Authority File. Artworks are established under the artist or title as appropriate, usually in English. Artists and artworks can be used in LCSH but are not combined with topical subject headings. Rather, they would appear in distinct subject strings and can be subdivided according to patterns and other instructions – for example, Gislebertus, active 12th century – Adaptations; Book of Kells – Fiction; Giotto, 1266?-1337. Crucifix (Padua, Italy). Subject access would be given in separate subject heading strings – for example, Sculpture, Romanesque – France – Autun; Sculpture, French – France – Autun – 12th century. Iconography is handled in a variety of ways. One principal way that LCSH deals with topical subjects is “[topic] in art” headings. Topics are generally expressed in the plural, following thesaurus standards for objects. Concepts are generally expressed in the singular. The topics or concepts are generally also established without the “. . . in art” extension for iconographic treatments – for example: Unicorns in art; Birds in art; Architecture in art; Buildings in art; Holy Cross in art; Distress (Psychology) in art. “[Topic] in art” headings are not subdivided by place or time period. Such a heading can be combined with other subject headings to cover place or time. For example, representations of flowers in Ghent-Bruges manuscripts would be covered by “Flowers in art” and headings such as “Illumination of books and manuscripts, Flemish – Belgium – Ghent – 15th century” and “Illumination of books and manuscripts, Flemish – Belgium – Bruges – 15th century.” For named entities such as corporate bodies, places, and works, the subdivision “– In art” can be applied – for example, Musée du Louvre – In art; Florence (Italy) – In art; Bible – In art. Representations of premodern persons as well as deities and mythological and legendary persons are subdivided by “– Art.” Topics that are topically subdivided can also be subdivided by “– Art” – for example, Hercules (Roman mythological character) – Art; Sebastian, Saint – Art; Holy Cross – Legends – Art. Modern (after 1400 or thereabouts) persons and families can be subdivided by “– Portraits” – for example, Marie, de Médicis, Queen, consort of Henry IV, King of France, 1573–1642 – Portraits; Medici, House of – Portraits. Other subdivisions, such as “– Family” or “– Travel,” are applied to either premodern or modern persons and can be further subdivided by “– Portraits.” “Portraits” can also be applied to classes of persons – for example, Henry II, King of England, 1133–1189 – Family – Portraits; Emperors – Rome – Family – Portraits. Places and other topics may also be subdivided by “– Pictorial works.” It should be stated that, theoretically, “Pictorial works” is about the nature of the work being catalogued, not the contents of the work. This is similar to “[topic] in art” but a book could be about dogs in art without being a “pictorial work”6 – for example, Paris (France) – Pictorial works; Africans – Pictorial works; Animals – France – Pictorial works; Architecture, Greek – Mediterranean Region – Pictorial works. Also, when a topic is already subdivided by place or other aspect, “in art” would not be appended for an iconographic treatment – for example, Birds – Ireland – Pictorial works. Subdivisions such as “– Pictorial works” are applied to all of the relevant subject heading strings on a work being catalogued. This is particularly true of genre/form terms but is also the case with some geographic and chronological subdivisions. Individual literary and other works as well as individual authors and classes of literature may be divided by “– Illustrations” – for example, Beowulf – Illustrations; Dante Alighieri, 1265– 1321. Divina commedia – Illustrations; Catholic Church. Gradual – Illustrations; Charlemagne, Emperor, 742–814 – Legends – Illustrations. For wars, the subdivision “– Art and the war” is applied to the topic – for example: Trojan War – Art and the war; Napoleonic Wars, 1800–1815 – Art and the wars. Usually when the war heading is subdivided, the subdivision “– Pictorial works” will be used instead of “Art and the war” – for example, Napoleonic Wars, 1800–1815 – Campaigns – Italy – Pictorial works (Fig. 15.2). 197

Sherman Clarke

Figure 15.2 Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, Western façade of the Abbey Church of St.-Gilles-du-Gard, c. 1120–1160. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane. LCSH: Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem - St-Gilles-du-Gard Note: The event is the essential part of the iconography. The plants, animals, and setting could also be indicated using LCSH. ICONOGRAPHY Jesus Christ – Entry into Jerusalem – Pictorial works Jerusalem – In art Palms in art Processions in art Donkeys in art HEADINGS OTHER THAN ICONOGRAPHY Relief (Sculpture), Romanesque – France – Saint-Gilles (Gard) Relief (Sculpture), French – France – Saint-Gilles (Gard) – 12th century

Despite this disparity in handling iconography, the value of LCSH or any subject heading list or thesaurus is in providing authorized forms for concepts, following guidelines. Consistency in use of authorized forms leads to collocation of material on the concept. It needs to be noted that subject analysis is, of course, subjective. Each cataloguer, even if applying the same vocabulary and using the same procedures, may end up with different subject headings. This is partly based on experience but also on point of view. That is, an art cataloguer will look with art eyes at a resource to be catalogued; a history or theology expert could see the resource differently. We library cataloguers naturally strive for objectivity and consistency in the application of subject analysis. Constructing subject heading strings is clearly somewhat complicated. With this in mind, OCLC started development of the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) project 198

Library of Congress subject headings

in conjunction with LC, SAC, and other partners.7 FAST is based on LCSH and grew out of projects OCLC had been doing with digital collections where cataloguers might be the authors of the documents or others not trained in library cataloguing. Topics and subtopics are in one facet, places in another, form in yet another, with chronology faceted separately from the others. Deconstructing the LCSH strings does mean that some words may be ambiguously matched. For example, a work on Cistercian manuscripts created in Burgundy and housed in a Paris repository could mix creation and provenance place access. Still, the ease of applying FAST headings is attractive. The potential relevance of hits from a search can be determined by the person searching. Under the influence of web browsers and a desire to broaden searches to include databases and digital collections, libraries and system vendors have developed software platforms referred to as discovery layers. Such interfaces may provide collective access to library materials, journal databases, archival finding aids, image databases, digital collections, authority files, resource vocabularies, and other materials. These are usually characterized by a single search box in which one enters words without indicating whether they represent authors, topics, publishers, or titles. That is, it is similar to web browsing. The user can, in some discovery layers, then limit the search results by particular aspects or facets, such as format, language, publication date, or subject. One-box searching can lead to false matches since the subject strings will be deconstructed into words. A string such as “Illumination of books and manuscripts, Ottonian – Byzantine influences” combines two style/culture terms with an important relationship. The ease and ubiquity of searching in a web browser, however, strongly influence library catalogue builders, and work is continually underway to make a library catalogue be smarter about holding onto the nuance of subject headings in cataloguing, not relying merely on word occurrence and proximity to determine relevance. Both FAST and discovery layers are possible and enhanced by the coding in library records. Since the late 1960s, the main standard for coding of library data has been MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloguing). It has been stretched and revised for more than forty years and may be nearing the end of its useful life. Efforts are underway to develop a new bibliographic framework that will be adhere to Semantic Web and Linked Open Data standards, allowing richer relationships between works, agents such as authors and illustrators, and subjects of various sorts as well as genres and forms. In such an environment, it might be possible to have a relationship coding that indicated that something was depicted. That thing could be a person (living or dead, or legendary or imaginary), institution, place, concept, event, work, or topic with “depiction” as the relationship between the work being catalogued and the thing depicted. LCSH subject strings were not built for such an environment. MARC does allow for inclusion of terminology from other vocabularies, such as Iconclass or the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, with the source vocabulary explicitly coded. LC, SAC, and others have been working on a separate genre/form thesaurus (LCGFT) for the past several years.8 Some areas have already been developed. This will allow more focused access and lessen the need for long strings. Presently, the headings in the record for an exhibition catalogue will each have the subdivision “– Exhibitions.” With full implementation of genre/form headings, the LCGFT term “Exhibition catalogs” would replace the subdivision on the topical headings as well as clarify that “– Exhibitions” generally stands for the catalogue of an exhibition. As with FAST and other faceted searching, it might lead to some false hits. Subject heading strings, by their nature and as practiced in LCSH, have a certain amount of redundancy within the cataloguing for a particular work. That is, each string needs to cover an aspect of the topic, and subdivisions like place and time are often relevant to more than one aspect. The subdivisions, particularly place and genre/form, may repeat in each of the strings. Work on LCGFT is promising, though it will probably be some time before the terms will fully 199

Sherman Clarke

replace the subdivisions and significant catalogue maintenance will be necessary for full implementation. In the meantime, LCSH will continue to be the principal subject heading system used by most North American libraries as well as libraries elsewhere around the world.

Notes 1 Foreign-language terms that are widely used in English are established in the foreign language – for example, Ut pictura poesis (Aesthetics); Catalogues raisonnés (used as heading as well as subdivision under individual persons). 2 For more information on TGM and to search terms, see http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/tgm/ (accessed August 20, 2015). 3 Art Source uses some headings which are the same as LCSH (Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Devotion to), mostly LCSH (Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint – Purification – In art; LCSH would be just – Art), direct order–style headings (Venetian art, rather than Art – Italy – Venice as in LCSH), and other modifications. The Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals uses LCSH-style headings along with AAT, but subdivisions are given in a different order. 4 http://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeSHM/freeshm.html (accessed August 12, 2015). 5 The Future of Subdivisions in the Library of Congress Subject Headings System: Report from the Subject Subdivisions Conference Sponsored by the Library of Congress, May 9–12, 1991 (Washington, DC, 1992). 6 The purpose of this essay is to talk about the coverage, structure, and usage of LCSH. Much has been written on ABOUT-ness and OF-ness in cataloguing of art and resources about art, and the separation is not absolute. A picture book of dogs tells us about dogs. 7 For more information on FAST, see L.M. Chan and E.T. O’Neill, FAST: Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (Santa Barbara, 2010). 8 For more information on LCGFT and to search terms: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/genreForms.html (accessed August 13, 2015).

200

16 ICONCLASS A key to collaboration in the digital humanities Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

In a speech he gave at the Royal Library of the Netherlands on September 10, 1999, Pierre Vinken, CEO of Reed-Elsevier,1 fondly remembered his conversations with Henri van de Waal some thirty years earlier. Back in those days Vinken combined his work as a neurosurgeon with his job as editor of Excerpta Medica,2 but was also engaged in art historical research.3 More specifically, Vinken recalled that in the 1960s he worked on a subject classification system for medical information, while Van de Waal was working on something similar for art history. Both he and Van de Waal were stimulated by the possibilities computers had to offer for the processing of large data collections. Their joint fascination was the underlying theory of information and knowledge organization: “we were looking for the best way to structure an index, to design a comprehensive classification, to standardize a terminology.” Vinken and Van de Waal enjoyed their conversations “like fathers who cannot stop talking about their children.” However, Vinken added, “I don’t think we could have had these discussions with many other people, because there were not many of those children around.” In the preface to the abridged edition of Iconclass, published in 1968, Van de Waal wrote, “We hope with this edition to draw attention to the possibilities of information collation and retrieval by means of computers. These possibilities have interested us ever since we started this project – almost two decades ago – but which now have become technologically possible.”4 Whatever the exact scope of this interest in information technology, which he dated back to the late 1940s, it is indeed safe to assume that Van de Waal could not discuss his ideas on this topic in depth with many colleagues in the humanities. When he mentioned his intentions to use computers for the creation of an index to the first complete edition of the Iconclass system, at a CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) conference in Paris in 1969,5 he had to defend himself to objections made by “adversaries of mechanization,” who feared “too great facility of use, danger of popularization, introduction of an inhuman factor into the humanities.” Van de Waal defended his choice by pointing out that the computer is a memory and a means of communication; it receives only what is brought to it by man; gives only answers compatible with the questions presented to it . . . it does not solve the formal essential problems in the history of art: because of this it will always be essential in these studies to have well classified series of reproductions.6 201

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

The computerized index, so Van de Waal announced at this conference, would be created on a computer “dressé par nos amis Allemands.”7 It is not clear who these German friends were, but the forty thousand concepts, sixty thousand index terms, and fifty thousand bibliographic references that composed the Iconclass system according to Van de Waal’s estimate were certainly not entered into a computer at this stage. A little later, his contact with Vinken seemed to provide Van de Waal with an opportunity to actually use computers. In 1971 Frans van der Walle, developer for Infonet, the firm that created a computer system for Excerpta Medica,8 wrote a quotation for a computerized version of Iconclass. This project would involve the computerization of the Iconclass schedules, the alphabetical index to the classification, and the Iconclass bibliography.9 The project brief contains the first attempt to describe the structure of the Iconclass system from the point of view of information science. It analyzed the properties of the system as it existed on paper, for the purpose of recreating it in a computerized form. Not surprisingly, the description of the notational structure began with a reference to the abridged edition of the Iconclass system, which formed the bulk of the Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries (DIAL).10 This DIAL was published in a single volume in 1968 and included an introduction of ten pages explaining the principles of the classification. Eventually, Infonet was not awarded a contract, and the input of Iconclass data in a computer started some seven years later, on August 16, 1978. The computer used at that time was an IBM mainframe at the Centraal Rekeninstituut (CRI) of Leiden University.11 The Infonet proposal was not implemented, and the DIAL introduction predates the first processing of Iconclass data by a decade. Still, these texts illustrate key features of the system and of Van de Waal’s ideas about its use. A few of these features shall be discussed. But first, it will be helpful to readers to summarize its basic principles even though this chapter is not intended as a general introduction to Iconclass.12

Some general principles Iconclass was conceived to address a problem that Van de Waal described as follows:13 That there is such a thing as the problem of iconographic classification is known to everybody who ever tried to get a reply on an iconographic question, as e.g.: How was the Annunciation portrayed in 17th-century Dutch painting? In an interior, in a church? With an Angel, or without? If with an Angel, is that Angel represented flying or walking, is he with wings or without? You all know that in the actual state of things it is almost impossible to get a conclusive reply to such questions which – purely iconographic as they may be – nevertheless may represent an important link in various kinds of investigations. If we could solve these problems, the results – I think – would be to the profit of art history in the largest possible sense of the word. Like all systematic classifications, the Iconclass system groups concepts into classes, each with their own members, who may again be a class, thus creating hierarchical chains of concepts. As these concepts describe the subject matter of cultural artifacts, they are often multidimensional, and the similarity between them is subjective, almost intuitive, as is illustrated by the following list of categories: 4 46 46A

Society, Civilization, Culture social and economic life, transport and communication communal life 202

Iconclass

46A1 46A2 46A3 46A4 46A5 46A6 46A7 46A8 46A9

social stratification, social groups social contrast public welfare relations between races linguistic communication societies and directory boards crowd, mob unusual manners of living primitive social structure

The location of a concept in a chain is expressed by an alphanumeric notation: the more specific a concept, the longer its notation. Therefore, a series of related subjects can be indicated by a simpler notation than any of the subdivisions. 4 46 46A 46A1 46A2 46A21 46A211 46A212 46A213

Society, Civilization, Culture social and economic life, transport and communication communal life social stratification, social groups social contrast contrast between rich and poor bad rich man, good poor man giving alms or other charity, e.g.: handing out food philanthropist . . .

Much of the system’s content – naturally – is based on the observation of images, so many concept definitions function as ready-made labels waiting to be assigned to images.14 For Van de Waal, the system’s principle resembled that of a geographical map,15 in the sense that it should try to represent the structure of a whole area, rather than identify all locations. The consistency of the structure should allow for continued subdividing, and to be of practical use, concepts should also be easily citable. Alphanumeric notations answered the second demand: complex definitions could be easily encoded and cited. The first goal – a consistent structure of the whole area – required many hours of observation, data collection, analysis, and experiment. By 1964, enough effort had been invested in this to enable Van de Waal to declare, I soon found, that all the portrayable could be reduced to a few fundamental maindivisions. I chose: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

The Supernatural Nature Man Society Abstracts

In these five main sections, which form a system, closed in itself, there is in principle a place for each possible subject.16 However, as Van de Waal also soon discovered, specific instances of many of the subjects included in these five categories could be identified in history, mythology, and literature. For example, the general subject of giving alms, found in the list just referred to as “46A212 giving alms or other 203

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

charity, e.g.: handing out food,” is also found in biblical stories – for example, “71W122 Job giving alms, relieving the poor.” Although the latter case is an instance of the alms-giving theme, it also has another dimension, as it is part of the biblical story of Job’s piety: 7 71 71W 71W1

Bible Old Testament the book of Job Job’s wealth and piety (Job 1:1–5)

71W12 the piety of Job 71W122 Job giving alms, relieving the poor As Van de Waal put it in 1964, We get as a supplement to the general sequences the following main divisions of a unique (“historical”) character: (6) (7) (8) (9)

History Bible Myths and legends, tales (with exception of class. ant.) Myths and legends, of class. ant.

In the final published form of the Iconclass system, some divisions or classes were renamed,17 and there were to be some shifts – for example, classical history moved to class 9 – but Van de Waal’s basic principle – the division between “general” and “specific” subjects – remained intact.

Designed on paper: the flexibility of the Iconclass structure There is an instructive difference between the description of the basic structure of Iconclass in the introduction to DIAL: “like any decimal classification our system can be extended from the left to the right, from main groups into an unlimited number of subdivisions,”18 and in the Infonet brief: “every classification consists of an alphanumeric code with a fixed length of 13 symbols.”19 The contradiction between “an unlimited number of subdivisions” and “a fixed length of 13 symbols” may seem a minor detail, indicative of the restrictions of many early database management systems, but it is also symptomatic for the tension between Iconclass’s very flexible organization of themes and motifs and the more rigid logic of software systems. The reason for this tension is simple: the Iconclass schedules and its system of notations20 were constructed on paper, which allowed the logic of the notational system to develop “organically,” sometimes almost on an ad hoc basis. Whether this logic would actually work in a computer was seriously tested after the notational system had been completed. Moreover, its first emanation as a computer file had the production of a static, printed system as its objective,21 so there was no real need for dynamic functionality in this first application. The human user supplied that functionality. A simple example helps to understand the issue. When the following list is examined, it will come naturally to read these lines from top to bottom: 4 46

Society, Civilization, Culture social and economic life, transport and communication 204

Iconclass

46A 46A2 46A21 46A212

communal life social contrast contrast between rich and poor giving alms or other charity, e.g.: handing out food

There may also be a little difficulty interpreting this as a group of related concepts of increasing specificity, expressed by the notations at the start of each line. However, while this can be simply read from the line starting with 46A to the next line starting with 46A2, a computer algorithm designed to allow the user to descend this hierarchy might very well trip over the fact that 46A1 is missing from this sequence. So, the translation of the paper version of Iconclass into a computer system had to deal with both aspects of the system. The notational structure had to be made totally consistent, and the instructions for its use – which were scattered over the seven printed volumes – had to be transformed into a single rule base, a “grammar” for Iconclass language. This translation was quite a complicated process, because although the repertoire of human concepts is in a sense hierarchical . . . it is nonetheless extremely different in nature from the precise and rigid way that concepts are built up systematically and strictly hierarchically in mathematics or computer science.22 By the end of the 1980s, an Iconclass datafile had been imported into several different database management systems, which resulted in divergent adaptations of the file to its new “habitats.”23 In some applications, for example, the original spacing of notations was preserved. Most algorithms would by default interpret 46 A 21 2 as a series of four “words.” In others, the spaces were removed, so 46A212 became a single “word,” requiring different algorithms. In addition to this, different database systems offered different options for the retrieval or sorting of Iconclass concepts. Initially it was thought that the creation of an authoritative machine-readable Iconclass file, accompanied by an exhaustive grammar, would reduce the risk of divergencies and dialects.24 It soon became clear that the integration of an authoritative file and a grammar into an autonomous application would be a far better solution,25 and in 1992 the first version of an Iconclass browser was published.26

Words, keywords, and cross-references The Infonet project aimed to produce printed versions of the Iconclass schedules, bibliography, and the alphabetic index. Beyond the algorithms that could produce these book pages, no further retrieval functionalities were required, although the programmers promised to take future developments into account. In particular, they foresaw “online queries, consisting of, for example, logical combinations of Iconclass codes and keywords.”27 An example of the keywords they were thinking about would be “alms,” which would retrieve circa fifteen different concepts from the system, among which: 46A212 giving alms or other charity, e.g.: handing out food 71W122 Job giving alms, relieving the poor In all, an entry vocabulary of some sixty thousand handpicked keywords was built to help locate concepts in the systematic schedules. Van de Waal, however, had more ambitious ideas about 205

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

Figure 16.1 Iconclass system volume 2–3, p. XIX: this subtle manner of ordering concepts was not supported by the data.

helping users to find concepts. The Infonet brief, the DIAL, and the general introduction to the first Iconclass volume (2–3) described an elaborate system of cross-references that he hoped would be “in itself a tool for iconographic research.”28 This sample from Volume 2–3 may not immediately betray the amount of manual preparation that would have been needed to produce this type of output. However, if examined closely it will be realized that the sort order of these concept definitions would require the manual tagging of all the words which were marked with small dots. Eventually, these ideas could not be 206

Iconclass

implemented. The Alphabetic Index, although elaborate and extremely useful, was based on the simpler principle of sorting the concepts according to their notation.

Coding of works of art with more than one subject As the DIAL was first of all a collection of photocards, ordered by subject – that is, Iconclass notation – the identification of multiple subjects in the same picture necessitated multiple prints. It was clear, therefore, to Van de Waal that “a more or less complete analysis of the numerous details within pictures could only be attempted successfully with the aid of a computer. The Iconclass system in its unabridged form can be of great use for such a task.”29 When Van de Waal wrote this, in 1968, using Iconclass in a computerized format was not yet a realistic option, and working with a limitless number of digital reproductions of works of art was not even a fantasy. Things have changed.

Iconclass, a tool in a digital world In the final part of this essay the results of some of these changes shall be examined. The point of departure shall be an image that illustrates an already mentioned concept: 46A212

giving alms or other charity, e.g.: handing out food

Figure 16.2 A man blowing his own horn while giving alms (Georgette de Montenay, Emblèmes ou devises chrestiennes [edition: Frankfurt 1619], emblem 90).

207

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

This picture of a man giving alms to a beggar is part of an emblem by the sixteenth-century Protestant author Georgette de Montenay.30 The motto Ne tibiis canatur31 and the fact that the donor is playing a trumpet while dropping a coin in the bowl show that giving alms describes only part of the subject matter. Christ’s message to “give to the needy in secrecy,” here blatantly ignored by the donor who “blows his own horn,” adds an important thematic dimension. The same Gospel chapter instructs Christians “to not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” when helping others.32 This phrase is quoted in another book of moral instruction which was also popular in the early modern period. “Mikrokosmos – Parvus Mundus,” originally by Laurentius Haechtanus and Gerard de Jode,33 shows in its fifty-eighth emblem the rich man Archilla hiding a purse under a pillow, after his initial offer to help them financially had been rejected by his destitute friends (shown in the background). The German version by Martin Meyer calls Archilla an example of a true friend. The biblical idea that the poor should be secretly helped to ensure that the act is free from self-interest is a fairly general one, as is the definition of the Iconclass concept: 73C7425 “ . . . that your alms may be in secret” ~ doctrine of Christ on possessions (Matthew 6:4) To convey this abstract Christian doctrine, a specific story from classical antiquity is used on the one hand, while on the other hand the acts of “giving” and of “trompetter” are represented in a literal, concrete form. These modest images demonstrate that Van de Waal’s distinction between “general” and “specific” subjects does not coincide with levels of abstraction, since the more specific concept definition – “giving alms or other charity, e.g.: handing out food” is found among the general subjects of Class 4 Society, Civilization, Culture. The whole purpose of using a classification or any type of controlled vocabulary, for that matter, is its capacity to create and retrieve groups. By deliberately reducing the variety of the words and phrases used for the description of what is visible, similar phenomena will be labeled in the same way. Consider the first picture. In describing the act of the donor we have used both “playing a trumpet” and “blowing his own horn.” It would be easy to imagine other variants to describe a person blowing a trumpet, horn, or other wind instruments. By using the standardized phrases from a classification instead, systematic grouping is ensured and retrieval becomes much easier – for example: 48C7352 48C7525

horn, trumpet, cornet, trombone, tuba one person playing wind instrument

It is equally easy to see that in a database that uses a classification for information retrieval, much larger groups of similar material can be retrieved just by using a shorter form of the notation. The common denominator of these two concepts is: 48C7

music

and Van de Waal took it for granted that future computer systems would have no trouble filtering all representations of the notion “music” from a bibliography or a photo archive, if they were indexed with this notation. He also foresaw that “a more or less complete analysis of the numerous details within pictures could only be attempted successfully with the aid of a computer.”34

208

Iconclass

The automatic creation of groups of shared details might lead to unexpected observations and research questions. Again, a simple example should suffice. The beggar holding up his bowl to catch the donor’s coin is obviously handicapped. His right leg is bandaged and his foot seems to be missing; he also supports himself on low crutches. He thus combines details of different levels of abstraction: he is obviously poor and he has a physical handicap. His poverty, although visualized in a very concrete way – lifting a begging bowl – is also a more abstract condition, which places him in a social group: 4 46 46A 46A1 46A15 46A151 46A1511

Society, Civilization, Culture social and economic life, transport and communication communal life social stratification, social groups the poor beggar begging bowl

It is important to realize that identifying and labelling a concrete detail such as a begging bowl in a picture automatically associate it with a more abstract concept – for example, the social group the poor. It is easy to find images where a physical handicap is used as a shorthand expression, like a default word in a visual language, for a beggar. 3 31 31A 31A4 31A41 31A415 31A4153

Human Being, Man in General man in a general biological sense the (nude) human figure; “Corpo humano” (Ripa) disabilities, deformations and monstrosities; diseases disabilities, deformations crippled crutches

The application of Iconclass thus allows easy retrieval of series of pictures combining the details found in these examples, randomly selected from a database of documents indexed with Iconclass.35 These pictures of Saint Martin offering part of his cloak to a beggar, and of a beggar with crutches and a wooden leg,36 also demonstrate that what is a detail in one picture can easily be the main theme in another one. For the creation of series, and the documentation of traditions, it is important to realize that categories are often fluid and their members may change with the context. The picture of Saint Martin and both emblem pictures simultaneously illustrate the concrete act of giving and the abstract notion of Generosity, here shown as it appears in the online Iconclass browser (Fig. 16.4). Upon closer inspection this browser screenshot tells quite a lot about the transformation over time of the Iconclass system, and also about its potential when used on the Internet. First of all, the context of every concept is immediately clear because its broader terms – its path through the hierarchy – is always shown. The keywords, originally handpicked for the alphabetic index, are shown in italics. They can be used in logical combinations to retrieve concepts. In this case, for example, the combination of giving+abstract+idea will not only retrieve the abstract concept of Generosity but also automatically exclude well over 150 biblical scenes as well as classical

209

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

Figure 16.3 (a) Saint Martin gives part of his cloak to a beggar. From Hours of Simon de Varie, Paris, c. 1455. (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek MS 74 G 37, fol. 80r).

mythology that involve an act of giving. The “see also” cross-references are fully operable, but with the present version of the browser, they have also become user-driven, which allows the community of users to enrich the system, going beyond the original ideas of Van de Waal about the role of the system.

210

Iconclass

Figure 16.3 (b) Beggar on crutches (print made by Pieter Langendijk, after a design by Pieter Barbiers I, second quarter eighteenth century).

Figure 16.4 Screenshot from the Iconclass browser – at: http://iconclass.org/rkd/55C21.

The user as collaborator and editor It is clear that Iconclass has a variety of options available to catalogue representations of “giving.” While the indexer will choose the concept(s) that will best fit the focus or the context of the documents, the focus of an end user may be different from that of the original indexer. The

211

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

default description of the scene of Saint Martin and the beggar, for example, does not mention a potential physical handicap, beggar’s attributes, or crutches: 11H(MARTIN)41 St. Martin divides his cloak (i.e. the charity of St. Martin): he is usually shown on horseback, cutting his cloak with his sword, or putting part of the cloak round the shoulders of a beggar who kneels beside him Using only this default Iconclass concept will not find pictures it has been assigned to, findable with, for example, the keyword “crutches.” Now imagine a researcher who is aware of the iconography of Saint Martin and searches for representations of that theme from a collection of images, not because he is primarily interested in the saint’s iconography, but – much broader - in the “visible signs of Poverty, like the crutches that often are the attributes of the handicapped and the old. It is not unlikely that the descriptive metadata found in a web catalogue will not explicitly mention the subject details the researcher is interested in. It would then be helpful if a web catalogue’s interface offers this researcher the possibility to tag the details he or she is interested in, with the help of the same vocabulary that was used by the cataloguer – in other words, with the help of the online Iconclass browser. For the storage and transfer of concepts from the online Iconclass system to target databases or websites, the browser has been equipped with a dedicated clipboard functionality. Dependent on the functional design of the target website, researchers can participate in the cataloguing process, creating their own layers of descriptive metadata, which they can share with their colleagues.37 Needless to say this development could not have been envisaged by Van de Waal, no matter how much of a visionary he was. Another feature of the online browser would probably have pleased Van de Waal. Every researcher who has registered as a user of the online browser also has the possibility to suggest improvements and expansions to the system in real time. One of the options that is easiest to use is that of creating additional cross-references, and the following screenshot illustrates this (Fig. 16.5). Originally, the printed Iconclass system contained a single cross-reference at 46A212 – that is, the one to 46A33 charitable works. Over time this has expanded, showing that users can indeed help to transform the system into a much more dynamic tool than could be imagined in the 1960s.

Figure 16.5 Screenshot from the Iconclass browser – at: http://iconclass.org/rkd/46A212.

212

Iconclass

To exploit its true potential, and allow others to make the most of the thousands of hours that have been invested in the system, Iconclass has been made available as Linked Open Data. This aspect of the online system is treated separately in the technical appendix at the end of this chapter. In addition there is also a special retrieval version of the Iconclass browser, which can be inserted as a plug-in to most modern websites, virtually without a programming effort.38 To make use of this service, all that is needed is a copy of the Iconclass notations that were actually used in a database and the unique identifiers – shelfmarks, inventory numbers – that identify the document or object the Iconclass concepts have been assigned to. Since this Harvester of Iconclass Metadata (HIM) acts as a web service, edits of the Iconclass browser are immediately available for the website “plugged into” the service. Typical of this is the Arkyves site, where a query is submitted that combines – in one big “OR” – all those concepts that have been discussed earlier as additional cross-references for: 46A212

giving alms or other charity, e.g.: handing out food

To conclude we quote Henri van de Waal’s wisdom one final time: We may smile at such a formule (which as a matter of fact I often do); as long as we are aware that such a system is nothing more than a tool, no harm is done. But in many instances the evolution of human knowledge has been determined by the development of our tools. And the best tools are forged by those who have become conscious of their failing.39

Technical appendix: enriching metadata using Iconclass It is all easy to use Iconclass as a tool to describe images, but this is a useless activity if there is no equivalent tool to subsequently search the resultant collection. In this section the effectiveness of the Iconclass structure and rich multilingual textual descriptions in retrieval systems will be described. When recording metadata for a given item from a collection it is sufficient to store the alphanumeric Iconclass notation. For example, here is a simplified selection of fields for an item from the Rijksmuseum collection.40 TITLE Het korporaalschap van kapitein Frans Banninck Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburch, bekend als de “Nachtwacht” (voormalige titel); Officieren en andere schutters van wijk II in Amsterdam onder leiding van kapitein Frans Banninck Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburch, bekend als de “Nachtwacht’ CREATOR schilder: Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn DATE 1642–1642 ICONCLASS 31D11222 ; 34B11 ; 45(+26) ; 45C1 ; 45D12 ; 48C7341 When a searchable index is made, the “extra” textual information for each of these codes at indexing time is retrieved. The language used to retrieve this extra textual information can be selected. Each Iconclass notation can be referenced on a HTTP URI41 containing a data representation that can be ingested by software. This is also known as “Linked Data.”42 For example, taking the first entry of the codes from the foregoing metadata record, if it is

213

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus

viewed at the address http://iconclass.org/31D11222.json, the following structured data43 are returned: "n": “31D11222,” "p": [ "3,” "31,” "31D,” "31D1,” "31D11,” "31D112,” "31D1122" ], "c": ["31D11222(+0),” "31D11222(+1),” "31D11222(+2),” "31D11222(+3),” "31D11222(+4),” "31D11222(+5),” "31D11222(+6),” "31D11222(+7),” "31D11222(+8),” "31D11222(+9),” "31D112220"], "txt": { "fr": "fille (entre toute petite et adolescente),” "en": "girl (child between toddler and youth),” "de": "Mädchen (Kind zwischen Kleinkindalter und Jugend),” "it": "ragazza (bambina tra fanciullezza e giovinezza),” "fi": "girl (child between toddler and youth)"}, "kw": { "fr": ["biologie,” "enfant,” "fille,” "petite enfance,” "vie,” "âge,” "être humain"], "en": ["age,” "biology,” "child,” "girl,” "human being,” "infancy,” "life"], "de": ["Alter,” "Biologie,” "Kind,” "Kindheit (frühe),” "Leben,” "Mädchen,” "Mensch"], "it": ["bambino/a,” "biologia,” "essere umano,” "età,” "infanzia,” "ragazza,” "vita"], "fi": ["biologia,” "elämä,” "henki,” "ihminen,” "ikä,” "lapsi,” "lapsuus,” "tyttö"]} For the “p” (path) key in the data, an ordered list of parent path notations are listed, progressively becoming broader. For each of the Iconclass codes in the metadata record to be indexed, the path key is retrieved and a set of new Iconclass codes is built for which the relevant codes are retrieved. The indexing software references the same URI for each entry in the path, automatically adding a richer collection of texts to the object being indexed. So if the cataloguer was interested in indexing the “Nachtwacht” using the German texts, the codes 31D11222 ; 34B11 ; 45(+26) ; 45C1 ; 45D12 ; 48C7341 are expanded to 3 ; 31 ; 31D ; 31D1 ; 31D11 ; 31D112 ; 31D1122 ; 31D11222 ; 34 ; 34B ; 34B1 ; 34B11 ; 4 ; 45 ; 45(+2) ; 45(+26) ; 45C ; 45C1 ; 45D ; 45D1 ; 45D12 ; 48 ; 48C ; 48C7 ; 48C73 ; 48C734 ; 48C7341 214

Iconclass

For each of these listed codes the structured representation (as described earlier) is referenced, and from the “txt” and “kw” fields the chosen language string is selected. This expansion of the codes and selection of the textual data results in this richer text string: (militärische) Fahnen und Standarten; Kind (unbestimmten Geschlechts); Fahnenträger (beim Militär); Kunst; Kriegsführung; Militär; die Künste; die Künstler; Kind zwischen Kleinkindalter und Jugend (unbestimmten Geschlechts); der Mensch (allgemein); Gesellschaft, Zivilisation, Kultur; Haustiere, die zu Hause gehalten werden; die Lebensalter des Menschen: erste Jahre; die Lebensalter des Menschen; Mädchen (Kind zwischen Kleinkindalter und Jugend); Haustiere (innerhalb und außerhalb des Hauses); Hund; Musikinstrumente; Gruppe von Musikinstrumenten; Waffen; Trommel; Schlaginstrumente; der Mensch im allgemein-biologischem Sinn; Mensch und Tier; Ausrüstung und Versorgung des Militärs; Abzeichen; Gliederung der Streitkräfte; Dienstgrade; Musik; das menschliche Leben und die Lebensalter (jung, erwachsen, alt etc.); Alter; Ausrüstung; Berufe; Biologie; Fahne; Fahnenträger; Gesellschaft; Haustier; Heeresangelegenheiten; Hund; Kind; Kindheit (frühe); Kultur; Kunst; Künstler; Leben; Mensch; Musik; Musikinstrument; Mädchen; Schlaginstrument; Standarte; Tier; Trommel (Musikinstrument); Versorgung; Waffe; Zivilisation; im Hause; innen The foregoing string is added to the indexing of the record and can be used in textual queries for that item in combination with the metadata as added by the original cataloguer. The same can be done for any of the supported Iconclass languages if there is a need to cater for various audiences. It needs to be emphasized that the cataloguer doing the description of a collection does not need to be working in the same language as the end user. This feature has been put to great use for international collections, spanning English/German/Italian/French collaborations. Enriching the metadata of an object using the Iconclass codes at indexing time means that the codes can be “hidden” from the end user and need not encumber the search process with an overly complicated user interface. All queries can be done using familiar full-text query interfaces popularized by search engines. Under the hood, the full power of enhanced precision or broader recall is still retained if needed by using the raw hierarchy of Iconclass codes in a “specialist” mode. Note that Iconclass can be effectively used to describe textual materials and not only the classic application to art historical pictorial items. The strategies outlined earlier have been used in the Arkyves database44 to also classify diverse textual collections.

Notes 1 Pierre Vinken combined a career as a neurosurgeon with a rich variety of positions in the world of libraries and publishing, probably being best known internationally as the first chairman of the board of directors of Reed-Elsevier. He also published widely in the field of art history and iconography. The memories of Vinken I quote here are to be found in his biography: P. Fentrop, Tegen het idealisme: Een biografie van Pierre Vinken (Amsterdam, 2007), 186–87. 2 The early emanation of the system of medical abstracts that is now EMBASE. See http://www.elsevier. com/solutions/embase (URI of August 2015). 3 See P.J. Vinken, “H.L. Spiegel’s Antrum Platonicum: A Contribution to the Iconology of the Heart,” Oud Holland 75, 1960, 125–42. 4 Also noted by C. Richter Sherman, in her article “Iconclass: A Historical Perspective,” Visual Resources, IV (1987), 242.

215

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus 5 H. van de Waal, Système de classification iconographique “ICONCLASS” et la collection de reproductions D.I.A.L. (Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries). A summary of the lecture was published in the series “Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – Bibliographie d’ Histoire de l’Art,” Paris, March 25–26, 1969, 187–90. 6 Van de Waal, Système de classification iconographique “ICONCLASS” (as in note 5), 187. 7 Van de Waal, Système de classification iconographique “ICONCLASS” (as in note 5), 189. 8 R.R. Blanken and P.J. Vinken, Medical Databases: Medline versus Excerpta Medica, in: E.H. Fredriksson, A Century of Scientific Publishing (Amsterdam, 2001), available as e-book at: http://ebooks.iospress.nl/ book/a-century-of-science-publishing. 9 F. van de Walle and P.L.W. Aerts, Memo 4–71–31: Globale Analyse Iconografisch Bibliografie Systeem. Unpublished typescript, dated 1971. 10 H. van de Waal, Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries: Abridged Edition of the Iconclass System (The Hague, 1968), 5–14. 11 Personal communication from Ger Duijfjes-Vellekoop, who has recorded the exact date of the first input. However, no details are recorded about the contact of Van de Waal and Guus Zoutendijk, who had been appointed in 1964 as professor of applied mathematics and director of the Centraal Rekeninstituut (CRI) in Leiden. André van de Waal kindly informed me about this, but neither he nor Leendert Couprie or Els Tholen could provide additional information. 12 The selective bibliography lists quite a number of articles that describe the system in detail. 13 H. van de Waal, Some Principles of a General Iconographical Classification, in: Actes du Cinquième Congrès International d’Esthétique / Proceeding of the Fifth International Congress of Aesthetics (Amsterdam, 1964), 728. 14 Originally, “images” were limited to physical images – (reproductions of) paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, and so forth. From the 1990s onward “images” were also understood to be the mental images evoked by texts. 15 On topography Van de Waal published “De rangschikking en catalogiseering van een topografischen atlas,” Oudheidkundig Jaarboek 9 (1940), 14–25. 16 H. van de Waal, Some Principles of a General Iconographical Classification (as in note 13), 730. 17 Class 0 (zero) was added to the computer version in the 1990s, so these are now the ten main classes:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

25

Abstract, Non-representational Art Religion and Magic Nature Human Being, Man in General Society, Civilization, Culture Abstract Ideas and Concepts History Bible Literature Classical Mythology and Ancient History

H. van de Waal, Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries (as in note 10), 5. F. van de Walle and P.L.W. Aerts, Memo 4–71–31, section 2 (as in note 9), 7. Also called “signatures” by Van de Waal. The data input that started in August 1978 resulted in the three volumes of the Alphabetic Index, which were published in 1985. D. Hofstadter and E. Sandler, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking (New York, 2013), 54. In particular the Marburger Index, the Automazione del Catalogo dei Beni Culturali, and the Witt Computer Index. See J.P.J. Brandhorst and P. van Huisstede, Report on the Iconclass Workshop, June 26–28, 1989, Special Issue of Visual Resources VIII (1992), 51–52, for references to these projects. See J.P.J. Brandhorst and P. van Huisstede, Report on the Iconclass Workshop, June 26–28, 1989, Special Issue of Visual Resources VIII (1992), i–xiv and 1–78. The final chapter of the report was called Description of Characteristic Functions of an Iconclass Retrieval System. J.P.J. Brandhorst and P. van Huisstede, “Iconclass: Recent Developments,” Visual Resources VIII (1992), 367–82.

216

Iconclass 26 The Iconclass browser was published in 1992 by the department of Computers & Humanities of Utrecht University, the University of Leiden’s Department of Art History, and the Iconclass Research and Development Group. 27 F. van de Walle and P.L.W. Aerts, Memo 4–71–31, section 6 (as in note 9), 1. 28 Iconclass system volume 2–3, p. XIX. To implement this idea would have required a very elaborate further enrichment of the data, with a lot of extra work. 29 H. van de Waal, Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries (as in note 10), 13. 30 Georgette de Montenay, Emblèmes ou devises chrestiennes, was first published in Lyons, in 1567. Ne tibiis canatur is emblem number 90. The book was republished several times in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the original French text was translated into Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, English, and Dutch. Various editions are available online, at http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/ books.php?id=FMOb and http://hdl.handle.net/10111/UIUCOCA:monumentaemblema00mont, for example. 31 http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/french/emblem.php?id=FMOa090 gives a literal translation: “Do not sound the pipes.” N.Z. Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford, 2000), p. 25, translates it as “Don’t blow your own horn.” 32 Matthew 6:2–4. 33 The illustration is found in Martin Meyer, Homo microcosmus, hoc est: parvus mundus . . . etc. (Frankfurt, Daniel Fievet, 1670), of which a digital edition is to be found at here: http://hdl.handle.net/10111/ UIUCOCA:homomicrocosmush00meye. Emblem 58 is found here: http://hdl.handle.net/10111/ EmblemRegistry:E010167. 34 H. van de Waal, Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries (as in note 10), 13. 35 The Arkyves database: http://arkyves.org. See also http://www.brill.com/products/online-resources/ arkyves. 36 Digital copy at https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/RP-P-OB-46.573. 37 These options are available on the Arkyves website. For a description of the integration of the Iconclass Clipboard and Arkyves, see http://arkyves.org/static/misc/Arkyves%20Annotate.pdf. 38 The Harvester of Iconclass Metadata (HIM) service can be seen in action at several websites at http:// www.virtuelles-kupferstichkabinett.de/?subPage=icbrowser. 39 H. van de Waal, Some Principles of a General Iconographical Classification, in: Actes du Cinquième Congrès International d’Esthétique / Proceeding of the Fifth International Congress of Aesthetics (Amsterdam, 1964), 733. 40 http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/collectie/SK-C-5: note that the Rijksmuseum publishes its caption in the original Dutch. 41 See http://iconclass.org/help/lod. 42 For more information see http://linkeddata.org. And in the case of Iconclass the data are also available under an open license, making it Linked Open Data (LOD). 43 These data are in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format (http://www.json.org), a widely used lightweight data-interchange format. The data can also be retrieved in the SKOS RDF dialect under http://iconclass.org/31D11222.rdf – see http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/intro. 44 http://arkyves.org.

Selective bibliography J. van den Berg, J.P.J. Brandhorst, J.W.J.M. Broeren, P. van Huisstede, B. Jongejan, and G.J. DuijfjesVellekoop, Iconclass Browser User’s Guide (Utrecht, 1992). J. van den Berg, and G.J. Duijfjes-Vellekoop, “Translating Iconclass and the Connectivity Concept of the Iconclass2000 Browser,” in Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 1999), 291–307. J.P.J. Brandhorst and P. van Huisstede, “Report on the Iconclass Workshop, June 26–28, 1989,” Visual Resources VIII (1992), i–xiv and 1–78. J.P.J. Brandhorst and P. van Huisstede, “Iconclass: Recent Developments,” Visual Resources VIII (1992), 367–382. A.E. Cawkell, Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Information Technology and Systems (Bowker, 1993), 132–154. (In the lemma Images Catherine Gordon describes the use of Iconclass at the Witt Library.) L. Heusinger, Ikonographie und die Iconclass – Datei, Marburger Informations-, Dokumentations- und Administrations-System (MIDAS): Handbuch (Munich, 1989), section 60, 361–424. C.R. Sherman, “Iconclass: A Historical Perspective,” Visual Resources IV (1987), 237–246.

217

Hans Brandhorst and Etienne Posthumus R. van Straten and L.D. Couprie, “Corrections of the Iconclass System,” Visual Resources V (1988), 123–134. R. van Straten, An Introduction to Iconography: Symbols, Allusions and Meaning in the Visual Arts (Documenting the Image) (Langhorne, PA, 1994), in particular chapter 7: “Iconclass: A New Method of Research in Iconography,” and the appendix, “An Overview of the Iconclass System.” C. Togneri, “Iconclass and Its Application to Primary Documents,” in Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 1999), 259–271. H. van de Waal, Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries: Abridged Edition of the Iconclass System (The Hague, 1968, 2nd edition 1971). H. van de Waal, Iconclass: An Iconographic Classification System, completed and edited by L.D. Couprie with R.H. Fuchs, E. Tholen, and G. Vellekoop (Amsterdam, 1974–1985), 17 volumes. H. van de Waal, Iconclass, edizione italiana a cura di Marco Lattanzi, Simona Ciofetta, Elena Plances (Rome, 2000), 8 volumes. www.iconclass.org: the online browser of the Iconclass system, launched on November 10, 2009. Since the launch some two thousand corrections and expansions were incorporated in the online system. H. van de Waal, “De rangschikking en catalogiseering van een topografischen atlas,” Oudheidkundig Jaarboek 9 (1940), 14–25. H. van de Waal, Propositions pour une méthode générale de classification iconographique. 2ème Congrès. Florence, September 28 – October 1, 1960 (typescript of a lecture). H. van de Waal, “Some Principles of a General Iconographical Classification,” Actes du Cinquième Congrès International d’Esthétique/Proceeding of the Fifth International Congress of Aesthetics (Amsterdam, 1964). H. van de Waal, A General System for Filing Photographs according to Their Subject Matter. Unpublished typescript of a lecture delivered in St. Gallen in August 1971.

218

PART III

Themes in medieval art

17 RELIGIOUS ICONOGRAPHY Marina Vicelja

Definition of the field, methodological considerations, and a brief historical overview Religious iconography in medieval Europe was related to Christianity, its philosophical fundaments, messages, and ideas, from the time of the emperors Constantine and Theodosius in the fourth century. It was the “Age of Faith” since the supreme authority of the Church influenced every aspect of medieval life. Visual arts were structured around the liturgical calendar and religious festivals, and were shaped by theological dogmas, treatises, and commentaries. The primary sources for this iconography are literary, the main being the Bible and apocryphal writings, as well as the texts of the Church Fathers and other prominent Christian writers. Also included are other important sourcebooks that developed later in the Middle Ages, such as Legenda aurea (The Golden Legend), written by the Genoese bishop Jacobus de Voragine around 1265, Meditationes Vitae Christi, Biblia Pauperum, and Speculum Humanae Salvationis.1 However, Christian imagery was not shaped exclusively by text; it was also influenced by mystical visions, sermons, liturgical practices, medieval drama, poetry, daily life, and the visual arts of preceding periods and cultures, primarily Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Egyptian. The Weighing of Souls, as part of the Last Judgement, in which St. Michael weighs souls based on the deeds during their life on earth, is derived from the Greek psychostasia or kerostasia, a divine determination of fate, but was also influenced by the Egyptian Weighing of the Heart, in which the dead were judged by the god Anubis.2 There are countless examples testifying to the complex origins of various motifs and dynamic changes in the representational forms and modes affected by multiple factors. This resulted in a rich corpus of images with specific and sometimes unique iconographic forms. Hence, the thirteenth-century scene of the Nativity above the main portal of the cathedral in the Dalmatian town of Trogir (Fig. 17.1) was apparently influenced by medieval theatre, visible in the theatrical display of the central scene taking place on a stage which added to its dramatic qualities and significance.3 In more than a thousand-year period covered in this essay, it is clear that all these elements changed, and this resulted in an extensive shift in context, content, style, and the methods of representation. Iconography deals not only with the identification, description, and classification of themes and subjects in art but also with assessing their significance and function within social and religious contexts, in different historical periods and different geographic areas. Much of the recent 221

Marina Vicelja

Figure 17.1 Master Radovan, Nativity, lunette above the entrance to the Cathedral of Trogir, Croatia, thirteenth century. Image courtesy of Marina Vicelja.

approach is devoted to the reception of images by medieval viewers and the reconstruction of the role and impact of images on the audience through concepts such as imitation, competition, wish for grandeur and prestige, censorship, prudishness, and political influence.4 Iconographic analysis of religious art is close to a “literary approach” to the visual arts; it is concerned with the norms and canons of representation, the thoughts, ideas, and texts from which representational conventions have arisen, symbolism, symmetry, order, and the dynamic concepts of every evolutionary stage, as well as recognizing individual creativity and invention and separating tradition from innovation. It is possible to say that medieval “artists” constructed compositions using compliant interpretation – they were logical and adequately communicated the content; they were literally visualizing, which sometimes unintentionally resulted in a misunderstanding of the meaning when texts were rigidly transferred into visual signs; or else there may have been an uncontrolled interpretation that embedded concepts and ideas with different and sometimes new meaning.5 This is especially the case in later medieval art when representations of biblical events were modeled and brought up to date using anachronisms in architecture or other scenic details, such as clothes or other accessories or elements in the image. Hans Memling situated the scene of the Crucifixion in a typical late medieval surrounding and represented Christ’s contemporaries as medieval citizens, noblemen, and common folk. These disjunctions in medieval art do not necessarily reveal the inabilities or ignorance of the medieval artist. Sometimes it was the way linear time and history in sacred events were “understood”: art configured time differently; it was its function to collapse temporal distance since religious narratives, though set up in history, contained spiritual meaning that was omni-temporal and could move an event from its real historical frame and connect it to the beholders in the present.6 One of the central issues within the field has been the relationship between text (word) and image, often engaging researchers in complicated debates about the primacy or relevancy of each format in communicating the meaning.7 The case was mostly based upon Gregory the Great’s letter to Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, in which the pope rebuked Serenus for destroying images by asserting that For what writing presents to readers, this a picture presents to the unlearned who behold, since in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow; in it the illiterate read. Hence, and chiefly to the nations, the picture is instead of reading.8 222

Religious iconography

This statement largely shaped the Western perspective on religious art as a “Bible of the illiterate” and was seldom challenged during the Middle Ages. Its importance as the means of defending art from iconoclasms throughout the centuries has been the focus of more recent studies that have revealed different layers of meaning to the original text and its latter interpretations, especially with regard to images as representing the invisible truth.9 Images have been defined in their manifold capacity: as the adornment of God’s earthly house, the symbols of Ecclesia, and the principal emblems of the universal church, as effective narratives that sustained verbal communication and endorsed education, and, most of all, in their capacity to convey and communicate meaning and messages, and to lift the mind to God. They were capable of representing spirituality through material elements, such as forms, colors, and especially light, and they have been considered active and productive more than just reproductive. The capacity to transmit messages, either in narratives or as symbols, rested on their particular mediality and their “bodies.”10 They were experienced as inseparable from their “bodies,” which, to a large extent, determined the mode of representation, the choice of content, the access to the object, and the way they were to be received (e.g., private versus public veneration).11 This did not imply just the materials and techniques of execution but also the spatial context – the place they were meant for. Within the original environment, the image constructed its identity, logic, and significance, and it was within this context that its meaning could be adequately grasped. Images were interactive with the audience, which added new perspectives to their role and power – they were venerated, adored, carried in processions, touched, kissed, approached by believers, but also criticized, violated, and destroyed in the iconoclastic periods, of which the Byzantine iconoclastic movement led in the attempts to redefine the role of images and to reduce and restrict their “power” in the religious world.12 Interest in the description and cataloguing of religious subjects is documented as early as the sixteenth century in Italy with publications that classified and briefly described themes and subjects of ancient mythology, such as Illustrium imagines by Giacomo Mazzocchi (1517), Achilles Statius’s Imagines et elogia vivorum inlustrium (1570), or Giovanni Canini’s Iconografia (1669).13 The most popular and influential was Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, published in Rome in 1593 (the first illustrated edition in 1603; discussed elsewhere in this volume), which presented allegorical personifications of figures such as virtues and vices, arts and sciences in an alphabetic order.14 Iconographic manuals largely provided rules and guidelines about what to depict and how to do it. They were more formally accepted after the Council of Trent,15 when they were composed to support the theological education of artists, to give instructions on complex dogma and truth. At the same time an interest in Christian themes appeared with the project to edit the lives of the saints that was structurally continued by Jean Bolland, who founded Acta Sanctorum, which had become the main source for the iconography of the saints. With the establishment of the Société des Bollandistes in Brussels in 1837 the intensive publication of works related to hagiography began, with important publications such as Analecta Bollandiniana, Subsidia hagiohraphica, and Martyrologium Romanum, all of which would be significant sources for saintly iconography.16 The interest in Christian subjects and art was intensified in France from the mid-nineteenth century; several important lexicons and manuals were published that opened a new direction in this iconographical research, among others A. N. Didron’s Iconographie chrétienne: Histoire de Dieu (Paris, 1843), A. N. Didron and J. Durand’s Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine (Paris, 1845), A. Crosnier’s Iconographie chrétienne (Paris, 1848), É. Mâle’s L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Age et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1898), F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq’s Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris, 1907–1953), and L. Bréhier’s L’art chrétien: Son développment iconographique des origines à nos jours (Paris, 1918). Particularly important is the work of Émile Mâle, who discussed the need for a comprehensive 223

Marina Vicelja

knowledge and understanding of images through a thorough analysis of displayed content within the framework of medieval art: In medieval art every form clothes a thought; one could say that thought works within the material and fashions it. [. . .] The art of the Middle Ages is first and foremost a sacred writing of which every artist must learn the characters. [. . .] In the art of the Middle Ages everything depicted is informed by a quickening spirit.17 Mâle introduced the analysis of medieval iconography as the visualization of theological thoughts and Christian texts that preserved the “philosophy of medieval times” and represented the foundation of artistic expression.18 His introduction of “iconography” as a hallmark of his methodology and as a core explication of medieval art established him as a founder of the “French School of iconography” as a modern and objective discipline,19 which was paralleled in Germany by scholars who developed interpretative strategies that also viewed Christian art in larger social, religious, and political contexts as well as referencing Greco-Roman art and culture. The “German School” was represented by Anton Springer, Joseph Dölger, Heinrich Detzel, Theodore Klauser, and Karl Künstle, who, with his edition Iconographie der christlichen Kunst (1926–1928), inaugurated the publishing of great reference works, such as Gertrud Schiller’s Iconographie der christlichen Kunst (1966) and Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, edited by Engelbert Kirschbaum (1968–1976). Although not as extensive as German lexicons, the six volumes of Louis Réau’s Iconographie de l’art chrétien (1955–1959) remains in my opinion the benchmark for the study of Christian iconography, despite the fact that some parts have been superseded by more recent research. The author’s endeavor to implement a new structure for cataloguing biblical and hagiographic themes, not in alphabetical order but in larger thematic clusters, produced a real compendium, which was easy to understand. It also had an important introduction that recapitulated the principal elements of iconography. Réau emphasized the importance of defining methodological approach(es) in iconography so that it would not be seen as just an auxiliary discipline, the task most intensely worked on by Erwin Panofsky and his followers. Another scholar interested in structures was Charles Rufus Morey, who founded the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University in 1917 as the institution involved in establishing ways of classifying works of art according to their iconographic themes.20 The Index has grown into the largest collection of recorded works of art of the Middle Ages, enabling researchers to explore iconography using a variety of means (an in-house structure as well as the Iconclass classification system, designed by Henri van der Waal at the University of Leiden in the early 1950s).21 Van der Waal’s enterprise was promoted by Roelof van Straten’s handbook Een inleiding in de iconografie: Enige theoretische en praktische kennis (An Introduction to Iconography; 1985), which has become an indispensable textbook for students. More recent dictionaries and manuals have been mostly dedicated to specific subjects, such as saints, medieval calendars, and eschatological themes, but the need to compile a critical reference book of iconography based on a contemporary interdisciplinary approach is recognized in Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art, edited by Helene Roberts (1998), and Dictionnaire critique d’iconographie occidentale, edited by Xavier Barral i Altet (2003). Unlike the aforementioned authors, André Grabar was not interested in creating lexicons, cataloguing subjects, or investigating their variants and provenance. Instead, he approached the subject more theoretically and searched for the creative mechanisms of images and iconographic schemes that represented theological and political ideas, as shown in his seminal work Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (1968).22 He also extended his research to Byzantine art and iconography as well as to Islamic and Jewish art, contributing to the methodological shift toward 224

Religious iconography

the general relations between East and West. This was continued in the work by many great scholars involved in Christian iconography, such as Ernst Kitzinger, Kurt Weitzmann, Richard Krautheimer, Henry Maguire, Alexei Lidov, Beat Brenk Herbert Kessler, Thomas Mathews, Viktor Elbern, Gerhart Ladner, Fabrizio Bisconti, Hans Belting, Jérôme Baschet, Jean Wirth, or Jaś Elsner – to mention just a few from the long list of scholars who dedicated their work to specific problems in Christian iconography. The poststructuralist period from the 1980s influenced research in Christian iconography as it did in other disciplines. Texts were focused on particular issues and delivered case studies or were more interested in the broader and critical analysis of the context regarding images (art) as objects-products of a specific period. Researchers were under the influence and pressure of various philosophical movements or growing disciplines, such as semiotics, anthropology, and gender studies, which resulted in reexamining the ideas of the “fathers of the discipline” in new interpretations, reshaping methodologies, and, in conclusion, the fragmented and diverse approaches, practices, and theories. Considering the vast and continually growing bibliography, it is a difficult task to write an overview of the modern and recent scholarly contribution to the field of Christian iconography in reference to the Middle Ages.

Iconographic topography – art and its context(s) Most religious art in the Middle Ages was produced for sacred spaces. Church space underwent an intricate and complex development not only in terms of its architecture but also with regard to its symbolic function, since the church was perceived not just as a building but also as a reality that achieves its purpose through interaction with its community and through the special codes by which the space was used, adorned, and understood. Church architecture has an iconography of its own – comprising the symbolic significance of the parts of a structure and the relations between inner spaces and specific religious rituals.23 It encompassed the concept of Ecclesia in the best possible way – the union of the living, the dead, and the celestial powers, governed by the cosmic order. The embellishment of churches was ruled by accurately defined principles.24 The choice of themes depended largely on the function and symbolic significance of the space they were meant for, the liturgy, and the viewer, so that the iconographic schemes (that were often repetitive and almost standardized) were strictly structuralized on the basis of the parallelism of the meaning of the “place” in the real space and spiritual sense. Therefore, the symbolic significance of up-down, south-north, east-west, right-left correlated with the theological interpretations of the terms – the good and more valuable was designed for the right, east, or south part of a building or representation, while the bad and less relevant was restricted to the left, west, or north side; the infinite, the sublime, and the spirit resided in the heavenly “above,” whereas the man and his corporeal realm dwelt in the material “below.” The line that divided the two domains was situated in the capital’s zone and architectonically corresponded with the area that mediated between the supporters (pilasters, columns, walls) and the load thrusting down upon it. A church building became a model of the universe, with the heavens hovering in the ceiling and the earth placed in the lower levels. This scheme was elaborated in the early Byzantine period upon Plotinus’s vision of the world and the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, for whom light was closely associated with God, beauty, and the good and was emanated down to earth to animate and transform inert matter into being.25 Light transformed the interior of a church into a divine dwelling space so that by using its symbolic values, as well as the construction laws, the upper parts of churches, lit by large windows, became the place for the most elevated persons or scenes of Christian iconography.26 With the introduction of the dome in early Byzantine architecture, a vertical axis was created as the foundation for the hierarchical system of 225

Marina Vicelja

Byzantine iconographic programs: in the dome Christ was represented as the holiest figure and the Ruler of All, who embraced the congregation below.27 A level below the Mother of God was depicted in the apse, followed by the narrative scenes of the life of Christ (Festival Cycle)28 in the upper zones – pendentives and vaults of the cross-arms – and by the choir of saints, often at the level of the beholder to indicate their earthly nature and good deeds that provided them a place in heaven.29 It is interesting to point up to the relation between “analogue” and “adequate” in the example of placing the evangelists on the pendentives of the dome: they represent the four fundaments of the faith, the same way the triangular constructive segments support the dome. This scheme, together with the naturalistic representations, became the framework for creating the “real presence” of the holy figures and the holy events in the church, and the innovation or changes in pictorial representations were not desirable; traditional forms ensured recognizability and logic in understanding the images. The Western tradition retained the longitudinal plan of the early Christian basilica throughout the medieval period, with the axis leading from the entrance to the apse, the singular symbolic focus of the interior. The conch of the apse acquired the utmost symbolic significance as the space for both Christ and the Virgin. The horizontal axis reenacted the passing from the west to the east, the passage of homo viator (man wanderer between two worlds) toward the source of salvation and the place of the Eucharist.30 This passage started with the transfer from the outer world to the consecrated space through the entrance, which acquired special symbolic meaning as well as appropriate iconography.31 The dominant theme on the façades and contra-façades is the triumphal eschatological vision of Christ in Majesty of the Second Coming and the Last Judgment.32 Having originated from religious narrative, these monumental representations served didactic and admonitory purposes enabling specific actions and evoking emotions, such as repentance, fear, and guilt. Following the foregoing scheme it is possible to discern the spatial disposition in a church that influenced medieval iconography, creating a specific psychological impact on the viewer. The apse contained the images referring to Christ’s sacrifice and the theme of incarnation as well as the role of the Virgin Mary as a protectress and advocate – all directing to hope and salvation, but also the tenderness and care for every believer.33 Exiting the church the upholder was presented with images of the Passion, Resurrection, heaven and hell, virtues and vices – the synthesis of the Christian doctrine and world order as a reminder for proper Christian conduct. The congruence between space and image made a strong and logical bond: themes and subjects were selected for a specific part of the church and they became an integral part of the ritual. Images were not only intended for observation but also considered “present” at the moment of liturgy.34 In the baptisteries, for example, the representation of the Baptism of Christ corresponded to the baptism of the catechumen celebrated in the space;35 the representation of the Last Supper in the refectory in monasteries had a sacramental message, but it was also viewed as a model for the Imitatio Christi.36 Pictorial programs were carefully developed and constructed but also fell within the laws of communicating message. A medieval observer possessed a far more potent imaginative sensibility heightened by rhetoric, and he could see more and beyond the displayed. The image must have seemed to him a carefully balanced mixture of realism and abstraction, expressed by a combination of the human and the divine in predominantly Christological iconography.37 If the elaborate program of the apse in the Eufrasius’s basilica in Poreč is looked at (Fig. 17.2) it is possible to discern different connotations and implications that exceed liturgical and religious messages and involve a private and political sphere.38 “Reading” the mosaic from the top down, following the central axis, it is possible to see the sequence of Christological references: Christ seated on a globe among his disciples, representing his Second Coming, is followed by the image of the Lamb in the apex of the intrados of the arch. Beneath, in the center of the 226

Religious iconography

Figure 17.2 Mosaic program in the apse of the Eufrasius’s basilica in Poreč, Croatia, sixth century. Image courtesy of R. Kosinozic.

apse vault, the enthroned Virgin holds the Child on her lap – the scene is accentuated by the presence of God’s hand with the crown of glory above the Virgin’s head. Just below the Virgin’s throne is the image of an archangel holding the orb with an inscribed cross and three concentric rings of emanating light – the sign of the Trinity and the visualization of the words in the highest zone of the composition held by Christ: Ego sum lux vera. The Hill of Golgotha with the cross, flanked by candlesticks, is found in the section of opus sectile below the mosaic level. The dominant vertical axis has its horizontal extensions in the images that are found in zones. The uppermost image of Christ is flanked by his Apostles; the medallion with the Lamb is among the medallions containing busts of the virgin-saints, while the central image with the Mother of God is flanked by three saints to her left and the patron, Saint Maurus, Bishop Eufrasius, Archdeacon Claudius, and a child named Eufraisus to her right. Bishop Eufrasius thus appeared in the favored position, to the right of the Virgin and Christ, depicted as a worthy successor to the illustrious 227

Marina Vicelja

first bishop of the town. The scenes illustrate the idea of Incarnation and the dogmatic discourse of the two natures of Christ as well as enhancing the statement of Chalcedonian orthodoxy and the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole program also confirms Eufrasius’s standing in the matter of the orthodoxy within the turbulent historic moment dominated by the schism of the Three Chapters that seriously threatened the unity of the Christian world.39 Constructed in the visual language of the Early Byzantine period, symmetry and hierarchy, the pictorial program develops descending from the upper zone, reserved for the representation of God in Glory, to the lower zones, where Christ’s human nature is represented through the acceptance of the Incarnation, Mary as Theotokos and the idea of Logos embodied in flesh to redeem the world, as suggested by the image of the cross on Golgotha just above the bishop’s throne.

Iconographic methods and thematic density Along with the laws that determined spatial significance, different times within the medieval period used different methods to transpose words and ideas into pictorial representations. The early Christian and early medieval periods used symbols and symbolic scenes, similar to pictorial language and ideograms that transmit a message to those who comprehend the meaning of the signs. Thus, the depiction of a shepherd in ecclesiastical vestments tending sheep was not perceived literally but as a symbolic representation of Christ the Good Shepherd, who “kept and protected those who believed in him” (Isaiah 40:11). The imagery of the early Christian periods consists of the language of graphic, zoomorphic, and anthropomorphic symbols (cross, anchor, dove, fish, lamb, peacock, shepherd, philosopher-teacher, fisher, orant) as well as “abbreviated” scenes (Daniel with lions, stories of Noah, Jonah and Moses, Chris’s miracles, etc.). Within this type of imagery, symbolism may have been the most theologically broad, encompassing central Christian values and ideas of the early Church.40 However, these images were ambiguous and may have had several different significations, sometimes even simultaneously. The fish, for example, could be a Christological symbol (the Greek word for fish, YXΘYΣ, is the acronym for Jesus Christ, Son of God Savior), or could refer to the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes, or, if it appears on the table in a meal scene, it could denote the funerary banquet or eschatological significance intended for the Last Supper. Early Christian art often adapted and transformed elements from “pagan art” of the contemporaneous artistic environment, transforming Orpheus or Helios into Christ, the sheep-carrying figure in the Good Shepherd, the veiled figure of pietas into the orant, and so forth. One of the main foci in the iconographic programs of the early Church was the hope of salvation and resurrection from death as promised at baptism. This was manifested in the divine figure of Christ and through his miracles, which constitute a considerable corpus in early art. The iconography of the early periods was prevalently Christological, representing an incarnated or transcendent Jesus, and the prominent episodes of his life that represent his human and divine attributes. This duality was epitomized in his portrait that was composed upon doctrinal and theological disputes as well as tradition and miraculous stories – mandilion and Veronica’s veil as “images made without hands” (acheiropoietos) – that hold special place in the history of icon painting. These sources justify the variety of Jesus’s depictions: beardless and youthful, bearded and austere – even elderly, but there is still an element of disagreement as to whether the various portrayals relate to doctrinal controversies or express specific roles. Missing among the newly constructed images of Christ were scenes of the Passion. Although a central biblical event, the Crucifixion was introduced somewhat late – not before the fifth century.41 Passion events were represented through visual metaphors, such as a cross, a wreathed Christogram, the Lamb of God, or typological Old Testament scenes, such as Abraham’s Offering of Isaac. Instead, the 228

Religious iconography

message of the victory over death, modeled on Christ’s resurrection, was very early composed in representations of the empty tomb and the Ascension42 or in the scene of the Raising of Lazarus as a prefigurement of Christ’s own resurrection. Gradually, text-based iconography and the use of narrative took over in the later period of the Middle Ages – the change began in the eleventh century and was influenced by the reform of the Church. Instead of representing the complexity of dogmatic and doctrinal symbolism, Romanesque iconography illustrated texts in a reduced mode, according to the pars pro toto (“a part for the whole”) principle. In this approach all that was mentioned in the text was presented in the image so that elements such as scenery, accessories, architectural setting, or supporting figures entered the scene as important parts of the content. Unlike Byzantine art, where figures are named by inscriptions, in Western art a new category developed – the attribute, a visual sign as part of a character which identified the person. Attributes can be general, denoting a particular category (a halo for saints, a palm branch for the martyrs, a book for the apostles), or individual, referring to a specific event from the life of the person depicted (keys for St. Peter, wheel for St. Catherine). If attributes were not entirely transposed into signs, but were interpreted as objects with a function, a grotesque image could result: St. Peter Martyr standing prudently, with his eyes open and with a knife or sword embedded in his skull. Similar combinations can also be found with saints carrying parts of their bodies while graciously gazing at the viewer. The number of attributes multiplied over time to the extent that identification is frequently difficult. This was partially generated by a growing interest in the individual stories and lives of the saints but also in nonsaintly figures (popes, bishops) and laypersons. The choice of themes was not limited and the interest was transferred from the miracles, symbolical scenes, and Old Testament stories toward the events from Christ’s life, especially the Passion cycle.43 The most important iconographic change that mirrored the innovative culture of the period was the emergence of a narrative tradition that developed a discourse whereby the world and the word could be presented and “read” as texts.44 This revitalized the concept of monumental and public art, the great programs that represented biblical themes in a storytelling manner, the introduction of new genres (daily life, medieval symbolism, mystical visions, hagiographical stories, micro- and macrocosmos, etc.), the epic, and the vernacular.45 The Gregorian Reform also influenced the development of medieval art and iconography, although the scope of its influence remains a subject of scholarly debate.46 The Gothic changed the reductive method into extensive pictorial narration, which resulted in the loss of balance between the important and the subordinate for the representation, as well as between principal and supporting characters. The amount of “information” in the images increased and one scene could develop in several successive clips. This made a considerable impression on the viewer, but was also more time-consuming and asked for more concentration in viewing the pictorial programs. Conversely, the representations were transparent and easy to comprehend, and, with the help of more elaborate technology, engaged beholders more powerfully in visual communication.47 At the same time, this period saw a demand for a more intimate involvement in spiritual matters, using images among lay folk so that a parallel world of works for private devotion developed. This influenced the language and iconography of Gothic art, especially in the iconography of saints and mystical visions. Images were used as propaganda, which developed the specific category of heraldry but also the representations of rulers and governments, decorum and courtly life, chivalric love, romance, and various forms of virtuous life. Public art became more theatrical and dramatic, with specific themes elaborated in detail, such as scenes of the Passion and the Crucifixion, which were colored with elements of suffering, pain, blood, and wounds in order to bring the beholder closer to compassio with Christ. The triumphant Romanesque Christ was supplanted by the suffering Christ, whose emphasized humanity 229

Marina Vicelja

became the object of devotion and imitation. The twelfth century based devotion and piety upon the intense emotion and sensuality which would be especially demonstrated in the role of Mary, who was transformed from Stabat Mater to Mater Dolorosa in various adaptations of the image: Pietà, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, Mother of Sorrows, and the Deposition from the Cross.48 It was the time of the resurgence of Marian devotion in the West and the East49 and her iconography was enriched with new details from the scenes of her early life and the development of the special iconographic types of the Madonna of Majesty, the Nursing Madonna (Maddona Lactans), the Virgin of Mercy, the Adoration of the Christ, and others (Fig. 17.3). In the Middle Ages death was one of the central themes, both through spiritual learning and its presence in daily, physical experience. Death was a terrifying fact but also a desired event since a new, better, eternal life was expected. Thus the main eschatological themes – the “last things” – were connected with the representation of Christ’s death and the events that followed particularly in the impressive composition of the Last Judgment. Death was perceived through the martyrdom and sacrifice of the saints since time was measured in saint’s days. However, death was also present in narrative images of the moment of dying, the deathbed scenes, the preparation for the last moment, and the instructions for a “Good Death.” It was illustrated in Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying), but also in a personified depiction as a skeletal figure triumphant in the scenes of the Danse Macabre, Triumph of Death, or Imago Mortis. The didactic anecdotal visualization of

Figure 17.3 The Virgin of Mercy (Madonna della Misericordia), Church of San Tomà, Venice, Italy, fourteenth/fifteenth century. Image courtesy of D. Descouens. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:San_Tom%C3%A0_-_Madonna_della_Misericordia_sec._XV.jpg.

230

Religious iconography

Figure 17.4 The Triumph of Death, a detail of the fresco on the façade of the Oratorio dei Disciplini, Clusone, Italy, fifteenth century. Image courtesy of E. Senza.

the living and the dead meeting was particularly popular because of the way it communicated the message of the inevitable for everyone and the necessity to focus on spiritual matters in the hope of an eternal life (Fig. 17.4).50 This short essay covers over one thousand years of building, deconstructing, and changing the “image” in the religious context of the European Middle Ages. The capacity of the image as a mechanism for recollection, contemplation, and remembrance (memento) diminished toward the end of the medieval period as the images distanced themselves from the institutional power of the Church and marked the beginning of a new period – the “era of art.”51

Notes 1 H. Van de Waal, Iconclass: An Iconographic Classification System, Bibliography 7 (Amsterdam, 1982); Helps to the Study of the Bible with a General Index, a Dictionary of Proper Names, a Concordance, and a Series of Maps (Oxford, 1881). 2 M.P. Perry, “On the Psychostasis in Christian Art,” Burlington Magazine XXII (1912–1913), 94–218. 3 Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts, ed. E. Gertsman (Aldershot, 2008). 4 M. Harisson Caviness, “Reception of Images by Medieval Viewers,” in A Companion to Medieval Art, ed. C. Rudolph (Chichester, 2010), 65–85; J. De Coo, “A Medieval Look at the Merode Annunciation,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 44, Bd., H. 2 (1981), 114–32; E. Gombrich, “Icones Symbolicae: The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thought,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948), 163–92. 5 L’Image: Fonctions et usages des images dans l’Occident médièval, Proceedings of the VI International Workshop on Medieval Society, ed. J. Bachet and J.-C. Schmitt (Paris, 1996); J. Wirth, L’Image médiévale: Naissance et développements – IVe–XVe siècle (Paris, 1989). 6 A. Nagel and C. Wood, “Intervention: Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism,” Art Bulletin 87:3 (September 2005), 402–32.

231

Marina Vicelja 7 D.R. Cartlidge and J.K. Elliott, Art and Christian Apocrypha (London, 2001); G. Cavallo, “Testo e imagine: una frontiera ambigua,” in Testo e imagine nell’alto medieoevo, XLI (Spoleto, 1992), 103–47; J. Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance,” in Simiolus 16:2/3 (1986), 150–69; E. Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scolasticism (New York, 1951); J. Daniélou, Sacramentum future: Études sur les origins de la typologie biblique (Paris, 1950). 8 Gregory the Great, Ep. 13, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, trans. J. Barmby, ser. 2, vol. 13 (Buffalo, 1898), 53–54. 9 For this argument and good bibliography see more in H.L. Kessler, “Gregory the Great and Image Theory,” in A Companion to Medieval Art (as in note 4), 151–72. 10 J. Baschet, L’iconografia medievale (Milan, 2014), 12–13. 11 Image and Christianity:Visual Media in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Bokody (Pannonhalma, 2015). 12 G. Ladner, “The Concept of Image in Greek Fathers and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1953), 1–34; Byzance et les images, ed. A. Guillou and J. Durand (Paris, 1994); The Sacred Image East and West (Illinois Byzantine Studies, 4), ed. R. Ousterhout and L. Brubaker (Urbana, 1995); L. Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm (London, 2012); Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present, ed. S. Boldrick, L. Brubaker, and R. Clay (Farnham, 2013); Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Modernity, ed. K. Kolrud and M. Prusac (Farnham, 2014). 13 A. Henkel and A. Schone, Emblemata: Hanbuch zur Sinnibildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, l967). 14 E. McGrath, “Cesare Ripa,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology, vol. 2, ed. N.T. de Grummond (Westport, 1996), 960–61; G. Werner, Ripa’s Iconologia: Quellen, Methode, Ziele (Utrecht, 1977). 15 Church councils were important ecclesiastic meetings for Christian iconography since the representatives discussed the complex relationship between religion and art(s) and often regulated norms and canons for visual arts. The Council in Trent was held between 1545 and 1563 and was one of the most important concerning visual arts, since it issued decrees that proscribed a long list of medieval representations and iconography; therefore it represents the formal end of medieval (or pre-Trident) iconography. 16 P. Peeters, “L’oeuvre des Bollandistes,” in Subsidia Hagiographica, 24 (Brussels, 1961). 17 É. Mâle, L’art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France: étude sur l’iconographie du Moyen Age et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1898) – English translation Religious Art of the Thirteenth Century in France (London/New York, 1913), vii, 1, 15. 18 G.J. Hoogewerff, “L’iconologie et son importance pour l’étude systématique de l’art chrétien,” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana VIII (1931), 60. 19 Hommages à Émile Mâle (1862–1954). La construction de l’œuvre. Rome et l’Italie. Proceedings of the Colloquium at the École française de Rome, June 17–18, 2002, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 345 (Rome, 2005). 20 C. Hourihane, “‘They Stand on His Shoulders’: Morey, Iconography, and the Index of Christian Art,” in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, 2002), 3–16. 21 R. van Straten, Iconography – Indexing – Iconclass, A Handbook (Leiden, 1994). 22 H. Maguire, “André Grabar: 1896–1990,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991), xiii–xv. 23 R. Ousterhout, “The Holy Space: Architecture and the Liturgy,” in Heaven on Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium, ed. L. Safran (University Park, 1998), 81–120; R. Krautheimer, “Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture’,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 1–33. 24 L’image medieval: Fonctions dans l’espace sacré et structuration de l’espace cultuel, ed. C. Voyer and É. Sparhubert (Turnhout, 2008); P. Piva, “Lo spazzio liturgico: architettura, arredo, iconografia (secoli IV-XII),” in L’arte medievale nel contesto (300–1300), ed. P. Piva (Milan, 2006); M.A. Lavin, The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600 (Chicago, 1990). 25 G. Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics (London, 1964), 62–91; A. Grabar, “Plotin et les origines de l’ésthétique médiévale,” Cahier archéologique 1 (1945), 15–36. 26 N. Schibille, Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience (Farnham, 2014); L. James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996). 27 R. Cormack, “Rediscovering the Christ Pantocrator at Daphni,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 71 (2008), 55–74. 28 E. Kitzinger, “Reflexions of the Feast Cycle in Byzantine Art,” Cahier archéologique 36 (1988), 51–73. 29 T.F. Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy (University Park/London, 1971).

232

Religious iconography 30 D. Méhu, “Locus, transitus, peregrination: Remarques sur la spatialité des rapports sociaux dans l’Occident medieval (XIe–XIIIe siècle),” in Construction de l’espace au Moyen Âge: practiques et representations (Paris, 2007), 275–93. 31 P. Klein, “Pogrammes eschatologiques, fonction et réception historiques des portails du XIIe siècle: Moissac-Beaulieu-Saint-Denis,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 33 (1990), 317–49; M.F. Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture: The Revival of Monumental Stone Sculpture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Ithaca, 1981). 32 P. Klein, “Entre paradis présent et jugement dernier: les programmes apocalyptiques et eschatologiques dans la porches du haut Moyen Âge,” in Avant-nefs et espaces d’accueil dans l’église entre le IVe et le XIIe siècle, Actes du colloque international du CNRS (Paris, 2002), 464–83; Y. Christe, Jugements derniers (Paris, 1999). 33 E. Thunø, The Apse Mosaic in Early Medieval Rome. Time, Network, and Repetition (Cambridge University Press, 2015); B. Brenk, The Apse, the Image and the Icon: An Historical Perspective of the Apse as a Space for Images (Wiesbaden, 2010); A.-M. Yasin, “Making Use of Paradise: Church Benefactors, Heavenly Visions, and the Late Antique Commemorative Imagination,” in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2010), 39–57. 34 P. Piva, “Lo ‘spazio liturgico’: architettura, arredo, iconografia (secoli IV-XII),” in L’arte medievale in contesto, 300–1300: Funzioni, iconografia, techniche, ed. P. Piva (Milan, 2006), 141–80; E. Palazzo, “Iconographie et liturgie dans les études médiévales aujourd’hui: un éclairage méthodologique,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 41 (1998), 65–69. 35 A.J. Wharton, “Ritual and Reconstructed Meaning: The Neonian Baptistery in Ravenna,” Art Bulletin 69:3 (1987), 358–75. 36 D. Hiller, Gender Perceptions of Florentine Last Supper Frescoes, c. 1350–1490 (Farnham, 2014); D. Rigaux, A la table du Seigneur: l’Eucharistie chez les Primitifs italiens – 1250–1497 (Paris, 1989); C.E. Gilbert, “Last Supers and Their Refectories,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, Papers from the University of Michigan Conference, ed. C.E. Trinkaus and H. Augustinus Oberman (Leiden, 1974), 371–406. 37 E. Thunø, The Apse Mosaic (as in note 33); E. Borsook, “Rhetoric or Reality: Mosaics as Expressions of a Metaphysical Idea,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenze, 4 (2000), 3–18; A. Cameron, Continuity and Change in Sixth-Century Byzantium (London, 1981). 38 A. Terry and H. Maguire, Dynamic Splendor: The Wall Mosaics in the Cathedral of Eufrassius in Poreč (University Park, 2007); M. Vicelja-Matijašić, “Christological Program in the Apse of Basilica Eufrasiana in Poreč,” Ikon 1 (2008), 91–102. 39 The Crisis of the Oikoumene, ed. C. Chazelle and C. Cubitt (Turnhout, 2007). 40 B. Kiilerich, “The State of Early Christian Iconography in Twenty-First Century,” Studies in Iconography 36 (2015), 99–134; M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York, 2000); P.C. Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (New York, 1994); T. Mathews, The Clash Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, 1993); A. Grabar, Christian Iconography: The Study of Its Origins (Princeton, 1968). 41 R. Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (Oxford, 2006); C. Chazelle, The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era (Cambridge, 2001). 42 A. Kartsonis, Anastasis: The Making of an Image (Princeton, 1986). 43 J. Wirth, L’image à l’époque romane (Paris, 1999). 44 S.G. Nichols, Romanesque Signs (New Haven/London, 1983). 45 H.L. Kessler, “A Storie sacre e spazi consacrati: la pittura narrativa nelle chiese medievali fra IV e XII secolo,” in L’arte medievale nel contesto (Milan, 2006), 435–62; S. Settis, Iconografia dell’arte italiana 1100– 1500: una linea (Turin, 1979). 46 X. Barral i Altet, “Arte medievale e la riforma gregoriana: Riflessioni su un problema storiografico,” Hortus atrium medievalium XVI (2010), 73–82; D.F. Glass, “Revisiting the ‘Gregorian Reform,’” in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2008), 200–18; D.F. Glass, The Sculpture of Reform in North Italy, ca 1095–1130: History and Patronage of Romanesque Façades (Farnham, 2010); Arte e iconografia a Roma: Dal Tardoantico alla fine del Medioevo, ed. M. Andaloro and S. Romano (Milan, 2002); M. Camille, “The Gregorian Definition Revisited: Writing and the Medieval Image,” in L’image (as in note 5), 89–107; H. Toubert, Un art dirigé: Réforme grégorienne et iconographie (Paris, 1990); E. Kitzinger, “The Gregorian Reform and the Visual Arts: A Problem of Method,” The Prothero Lecture, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 22 (1972), 87–102.

233

Marina Vicelja 47 M. Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1991); J. Wirth, L’image à l’époque gothique – 1140–1280 (Paris, 2008); J. Wirth, L’image à la fin du Moyen Âge (Paris, 2011). 48 T. Verdon, Mary in Western Art (Hudson Hills, 2005). 49 Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. M. Vassilaki (Aldershot, 2005). 50 Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. S. Oosterwijk and S. Knöll (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2011). 51 H. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, 1994), 1–16.

234

18 LITURGICAL ICONOGRAPHY Karl F. Morrison

Who has the mind of Christ? The Apostle Paul concocted a dangerous elixir for the ages in his ecstatic cry: “We have the mind of Christ” (I. Cor. 2:16). Paul’s jubilation went far beyond the discernment of long-hidden sacred lore or doctrines. He spoke convinced that a prophecy of Isaiah had been fulfilled by Christ. Isaiah had stood back in awe before God’s inscrutable wisdom: “Who has known the mind of the Lord,” Isaiah asked in wonder, “that he may instruct him?” (Isa. 40:13). But, Paul knew, Isaiah had prophesied that the power of God would “destroy the wisdom of the [worldly] wise” and undo the intelligence of the clever. The prophecy had come true, Paul declared, when the folly of the Cross put to naught the wisdom of this world. Paul himself lived to see the dangers brought into the world by the diversity and intransigent factionalism that splintered more than one of the congregations he founded. Age after age, liturgy proved to be the chalice where Paul’s vision of corporate unity – one body and one Spirit (Ephesians 4:4–6) – mingled with the yeast of human wit, for, through liturgy, the sacraments were performed and the mysteries of salvation, the mind of Christ, opened; and the invisible power of the sacraments was conveyed under signs and symbols perceived by physical senses and recognized by human minds. Through signs and symbols angels, human beings, and all creation joined in the same hymn of praise. How could human beings sing the same words with lethally variant meanings? Paul had ruled out compromise with purely human ingenuity, for, he wrote, the wisdom of God was folly to the Gentiles and a scandal to the Jews, and, he added, the wisdom of the world was folly in God’s eyes (I. Corinthians 1:21–25, 3:19). And yet, all efforts to read the mind of Christ, in reading the Bible, in liturgy, and in daily life, produced such a compromise, by grafting the sacred into the profane. The liturgy that accomplished this equilibrium of opposites was built around a central paradox at the very foundation of Christian identity. A singularly well-equipped connoisseur of Christian obscurities, Emperor Julian the Apostate (330–363, r. 361–363), captured that paradox when he wrote that Christians, admitting that they were “different from the Jews, [were still] precisely speaking, Israelites in accordance with their prophets.”1 Paul had assured Christians that they had the mind of Christ, the folly of the Cross, and that the wisdom of God was a stone, a stumbling block, in the path of the Jews. Among Latin Christians in the early medieval West, liturgical iconography, the language of symbols in worship, centered on Julian’s paradox. 235

Karl F. Morrison

Need for an identity transfer Why was the transfer of Israelite identity of such overwhelming and enduring urgency to Christians? The answer is that, thanks to what Paul called the folly of the Cross, they could not see themselves in the mirror of the Hebrew Bible, except with significant distortions. They had to construct a history of their own, incorporating Jewish history, before they could affirm that they were God’s chosen people, heirs of God’s everlasting Covenant with Abraham. They had to construct this sacred history of themselves from the initiation of the Covenant until the final consummation of God’s promises to Abraham and his seed forever. They had, not to recall, but to relive this narrative of themselves over and over in liturgy until the symbols, the types, and shadows of the promises faded away before the realities they foretold. This great narrative had as its centerpiece the story of two Israels, the Israel of the Law and the Prophets, rivalry dividing the elder brother and the Israel of the Gospel, “the younger brother,” exemplified by Esau and Jacob, twin sons of the Patriarch Isaac. How was the birthright of the elder transferred to the younger and converted into another species, and yet, in a mysterious way, both the same and the other? The Apostle Paul had sketched the outlines of this huge drama. Authentic Jews, he wrote, were not biological descendants of Abraham, sealed by circumcision of the flesh. In Christ, they were people of faith, Jews and Gentiles alike, whose hearts were circumcised. Through baptism, they had put on a new and different self. They had been “clothed with Christ.” Through and in him they were all children of God and coheirs with Christ of God’s covenant promise of life to Abraham. (See Romans chapters 2, 7; Galatians chapters 3–4.) The legitimacy of Christians’ claim to have superseded the Jews as Israel, God’s chosen people on earth, depended on vindicating the paradox, also framed by Paul, that Christ had consummated the Law of Moses and emancipated the new Israel from that Law, including obligations of circumcision, Sabbath, and diet, and from other bondage the Law entailed to sin and death. Much hinged on demonstrating that the legacy of Abraham and the Covenant promises continued without the Law of Moses. Exactly how intractable the problem was came to light in the writings of a Christian convert who had pronounced Samaritan affinities (Justin Martyr, c. 100–c. 165). Justin is known as an apologist for his new faith, eventually defending it against Roman persecutors in Rome itself. Yet earlier, he mounted a defense against persecution by Jews in his native Palestine. Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho purports to be the record of an extended debate between Justin and Trypho, a rabbi, in Ephesus (c. 130). The lines of enduring sacralized violence are already staked out in this early tract.2 At one point in the debate, Trypho expresses incredulity that the Messiah would die by crucifixion. To be sure, Scripture declares that he must suffer, Trypho added, but it seemed doubtful that he would suffer by the precise manner of death cursed in the Law: being hanged upon a tree. To the contrary, Justin responded. Everything depended on the mystery of the Cross. Justin’s explication locates the mystery of the Cross at the very center of all the great mysteries of Christ – Incarnation by the flesh of the Virgin, thus making him heir of God’s promises to Abraham, the Nativity, and Resurrection. All of them were foreshadowed by events and ceremonies of the Mosaic Law. Among the elements of Eucharistic sacrifice foreshadowed by the Law, Justin was careful to include the consecrated bread. Indeed, he taught, the Law was consummated and ended in Christ. But adhering to the letter of the Law was not keeping its spirit. Though some Christians kept the law of Moses, Justin held, the Law was not by any means the essence of saving righteousness. Before Abraham and after Moses, the righteous pleased God by faith, by circumcision not of the flesh but of the heart. While the Jews knew the words of the Law and its prescripts, they were blind to their inner sense. They had killed the prophets; they had crucified the Messiah for which they had waited many generations, bringing the biblical 236

Liturgical iconography

curse on crucifixion down not on the Crucified but on themselves. Even so, God stood ready to pardon the Jews if they repented and left aside their malice, deceit, and hardness of heart, and received graces open to them through the name of Christ. Every day, indeed, some were becoming disciples.3 In Justin Martyr’s account, conflict between Jewish brothers, the same yet other, the elder the type of latter-day Jews, and the younger that of Christians, owed its treacherous anger to the malice, hatred, and envy of the Jews. Always “idolaters and murderers of the just,” he wrote, Jews had killed the Messiah, hanging him on a gibbet “as an accursed enemy of God.” That done, they cursed Christians in their synagogues and sent messengers far and wide to defame Christ and his followers and rouse Jews to kill anyone who confessed to being a Christian, and their campaign of vilification, “bitter, dark, and unjust accusations,” had dangerously prejudiced civil authorities against Christians (Dialogue with Trypho, 16.4, 17.1, 3, 93.4, 95.2–3, 96.2, pp. 28–29, 145–147). They had faulted Christians for assigning them guilt for killing Jesus, noting that, if God the Father wished Jesus to suffer on the Cross to heal the human race, they had done no wrong by expediting the Father’s will. Other writers, more attentive than Justin Martyr to the end of the world, also retained a firmer hold on the holy calling of the Jews than he did. Some developed an analogy between the brothers Cain and Abel so as to affirm a continuing of the Covenant vocation of the Jews in the divine plan for redeeming the world. In killing Jesus, they thought, the Jews were like Cain, the jealous elder brother, who killed his innocent, younger brother, Abel. They drew the further analogy between Jesus and Abel by virtue of God’s acceptance of Abel’s blood sacrifice of an animal, and rejection of Cain’s herbal sacrifice. The analogy between Cain and the Jews in the divine plan for redemption, they argued, came in the fact that, while God cursed Cain for his fratricide and condemned him to live as a homeless wanderer without relief, he also scarred him with conspicuous physical disfigurement, marking him as taboo, to be scorned by all but never killed, cursed but on a sacred mission of witness. By the same token, they argued, divine punishment had fallen upon the Jews soon after they killed Christ. Enemies had destroyed their holy city, Jerusalem, and banished them from it, to wander as outcasts forever. There was a blessing in this curse. The loss of their homeland scattered them through all the peoples of the earth. Custodians of their sacred books, they spread to every corner of the world their witness to sacred prophecy and its fulfillment in Jesus, witness that, being hostile, was beyond criticism by unbelievers who heard it. They became heralds of the fulfillment of prophecy in Jesus and its final consummation in the Last Judgment before the throne of Christ. Fittingly, as not all nominal Christians were faithful witnesses, but fallen souls were mixed with righteous, so also among the Jews there were some true believers, like Abraham and the patriarchs Christians before Christ, and they would be gathered into the Heavenly Jerusalem and glorified with righteous Christians, as members of the true Israel. In a class of their own, Jews were neither complete outsiders, as were idolatrous pagans, nor Christians, but amphibians, the same yet other, both outsiders under the curse and bearers of blessing. They were unwitting witnesses to the truth hidden in the words they proclaimed, killers of the Messiah for whom they had longed for centuries. Enemies within the penumbra of faith, they were agents of the salvation which they knew and unwittingly both lived for and disavowed.

Development of new iconographic languages Though it has been a virtuoso sport for theologians in the premodern era and for highly specialized scholars since the nineteenth century, the subject of this chapter (liturgical iconography) has always been common property for the whole community of believers.4 Still, the dynamic of 237

Karl F. Morrison

individual and of collective lives in Christian communities fell alike under the metaphor of conversion. Conversion embraces countless divergences and radical inequalities in kind, authenticity, and effects, for, as the word “indigenation” indicates, conversion always entails inner struggles among competing allegiances, frequently between the demands of an alien religion and those of the society in which converts were born. The community of believers itself, following the way of conversion, consists of many divisions, some of which replicate the stereotype of warring brothers or, even more extreme, of distant strangers. Communication was essential to repatterning, almost cross-hybridizing, the identities of Gentile converts into those of Biblical Israelites. Two new languages evolved in the trial-and-error project: the first, the language of Latin theology, and the second, the language of symbols. Both were tools of indigenizing an alien religion, and both illustrate the multiplication of cultural filters between the cultures of origin, the host of original mentalities incorporated in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and the recipients. Nothing could have been more obvious than that the earliest filter in the chain was the series of translations of Hebrew (and Aramaic) writings into Greek, most decisively with the Septuagint translation (traditionally in Egypt under Ptolemy Philadelphus, r. 285–246 BC). In the normal course of assimilation, the cultural Hellenization of many Jews, beginning much earlier, also prepared for the assimilation of early Christian teachings and practices into the wider discourse of the Levant and Greece, and, eventually, along with the multiplication of Hellenic colonies in the western Mediterranean, into areas where Latin was the dominant cultural language. Greek writers had not only translated Hebrew and Aramaic texts into Greek. They had also reformulated the ideas they found in them to suit the very different patterns of thought they had learned from elementary schooling and advanced studies, patterns developed in Greek philosophies to suit whole systems of thought quite alien to ancient Jewish culture, and, in some essential respects, antithetic to Hebraic beliefs and doctrines about God, world, order, and the human psyche. The Greek language accommodated this transmutation. However, the Latin language had not developed in those ways. The Roman political force and rhetorician Cicero (107–43 BCE) considered it a particular claim to admiration that he had invented a vocabulary and syntax for philosophy, a Latin philosophical language. In time, Latin-speaking Christian writers, imbued with Greek systems of speculative analysis, discovered that their native language was deficient likewise in words and constructs needed to translate into Latin idioms what they found in Greek translations of Hebrew Scriptures and in Greek Scriptures. Several writers, above all the North African lawyer and apologist Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240), invented a Latin for theology. At this stage, readers of Latin Scriptures and Scripture-based texts were at least three stages of mediation removed from the original mentalities, more if the multiplicity of translations at every stage is considered. The development of a pictorial language, and therefore for visual iconography, was very much more contentious than that of a verbal idiom for interpreting Scripture, for it arose in what many Christians considered violation of God’s explicit prohibition of representational art inscribed in the Law of Moses (Exodus 20: 4), a lapse into the horrendous sin of idolatry. Yet, it also arose from general characteristics of the texts of Scriptures. Meticulously studying every syllable and word in Scripture, interpreters found a range of peculiarities, such as apparent inconsistencies, contradictions, incoherence, and even absurdities. In human writings, they could have dismissed them as signs of authorial incompetence or dishonesty. However, their conviction that God was the author of all Scripture kept them from this conclusion. Their conviction of unitary authorship brought into play their relative conviction of the perfection of God. Their conviction of God’s perfection drove them to discover God’s reason for hiding truth beneath the camouflage of error, and, indeed, to hold up to human sight the single truth pervading all Scriptural witnesses in every part. They resorted to well-established methods of analysis that transcended historical, textual, or 238

Liturgical iconography

logical analysis, that united prophecies and their fulfillments, no matter how distantly separated in time, and that displayed all peoples in one timeless dimension, like the eternity in which God lived and all things were equally present to the eyes of God. They applied methods of envisioning – analogy, allegory, typology, and symbolism – of thinking that evoked pictures in the mind. Thus, the invention of verbal language enabled iconography as a skill-set, or protocol, communicating liturgy as a science or technology, and, fundamentally, as a handmaid of theology. By contrast, the invention of visual language enabled iconography as the living spirit in liturgy. François Villon (1431–after 1463), a freewheeling denizen of Paris’s demi-monde, portrayed his mother exercising iconography in the second sense in a prayer to the Virgin Mary (Ballade pour prier Notre Dame). Haunted by a picture in her parish church of the Last Judgment, she is torn between joy inspired by the “painted paradise with its harps and lutes” and terror branded into her heart by the picture of hell, with the damned being cooked in everlasting fires. She prayed to the Virgin for help. In a little drama of the same and the other, Villon’s mother stands before her, a poor, little, old woman, an illiterate sinner whose hope is in her nullity, without resources, entirely dependent on the pity of Heaven. She beseeches the Virgin, the High Goddess, her Lady and Mistress, to intercede with her Son. Villon’s mother, as a “humble Christian,” finds herself, her identity, in the emotions broken open in her by the picture’s virtual reality. From her total investment of herself in Scripture, legend, and devotional practices she extracted haunting trauma and passionate hope for deliverance. What she felt in the static, virtual reality of the painting, she felt in the living enactments of the liturgy. All her terrors and hopes intersected in the Almighty’s offering of himself to death, repeated in “the sacrament celebrated in the Mass”: that is, in liturgy. While Villon could write on his own account that he knew everything but himself (“je connais tout forsque moi-même,” in Ballade des menus propos), he portrayed his mother in the act of realizing her identity through liturgical iconography, realizing it with certainty: “I’m no chatterbox,” he has her say (“je n’en sais jaugleresse”). It is a cameo drama of the same and the other, the announced subject of Villon’s poem. However it comes enfolded inevitably and invisibly in a greater drama on the same theme. By intense emotion, Villon’s mother seized as her own story the subject of the painting (the Last Judgment), inseparably part of a grand narrative of human existence beginning in the eternity of the Almighty (before the Creation) and returning to the same eternity in the Last Judgment and its sequel of blessedness and damnation. The greater drama, accessible to understanding, was distilled into passions of visceral joy and terror from Scripture and other documents of the faith (e.g., biographies of saints and miracle stories), all of which were testimonies to the powers sustaining, shaping, and impelling humanity toward its destiny. This greater drama framed the little one of individual identity and otherness, enacted by Villon’s mother. Through the Virgin, she claimed for herself in liturgy the same tremendous divine energy of regeneration that moved the world toward the promised new humanity, the conversion of the birthright lost by the elder Israel – the Israel of Abraham and Moses – into the specie of the younger Israel of Christ. Essential as the language of words was for communicating liturgy as a science or protocol to the learned, the pictorial language of envisioning was the universal means for communicating the living spirit in the liturgy, even to the least members of the community as a whole. Ontology recapitulated phylogeny. Visceral emotion, not erudition, was the common denominator. In the same way, following in prophetic tradition, the Apostle Paul had assured his followers that observing the Law was not individual observance of the letter of the Law by the righteous (as “the Jews” did), but its spirit, for the letter killed, while the spirit gave life to the whole body of the faithful in every member (II. Corinthians 3:6). For that reason, the small-scale transit Villon described his mother making, emotional and rational, from painting to redemption by way of liturgy – the very act of transit – was built into the placement 239

Karl F. Morrison

of pictures of the Last Judgment in countless churches through the centuries before Villon – for example, in the collection of paintings that Benedict Biscop took back from Rome to AngloSaxon England (679), to the monasteries among then-remote and recently Christianized peoples of Northumbria. He put them on the wall of the nave, where everyone who entered could see them and, even if they could not read, could judge the contents of their own hearts as virtual eyewitnesses when they had before their very eyes the benefits of the Lord’s incarnation and the terror of the Last Judgment.5 A later example, Pietro Cavallini’s fresco of the Last Judgment in Rome (Santa Caecilia in Trastevere, c. 1293), makes a link in this endemic-grassroots, intellectual, and affective iconography between Benedict Biscop and Villon’s mother and between their communities.

Who is the true Israel? A principal medieval commentator on the liturgy, Bishop William Durand of Mende (c. 1230–1296), wrote that the “office” of the Mass engaged four categories of elements: people (“in personis”), actions (“in operibus”), words (“in verbis”), and objets (“et in rebus”). Each category consisted of subcategories (e.g., “words” included prayers, song, and readings). Plainly three of these categories consisted of inert materials. Only “people” could be agents, “celebrating, ministry, and attending,” and so, in three cohorts, receiving, assimilating, and transmitting ceremonies believed to have been handed down in essence from Christ and the apostles. William Durand knew that change had quickly entered the story of the Mass. After Christ’s ascent into heaven, he wrote, the Apostles expended the “meal” instituted by Christ. The sequence of revisions continued into Durand’s own day, for, Durand himself noted, critics denounced him and other “new teachers” for intruding “new doctrines” of their own, alterations far beyond what Christ and the Apostles had instituted (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, IV.1.5–12). Durand’s conception of liturgy as a living reality had at its base an assumption that the liturgy was an organic unity, a body with different members, but one spirit. The arts differed in materials, methods, and effects, but they were united in serving the same symbolic code. Thus, the distinctions of “works” (gestures, actions, movements), “words” (prayers, singing, lessons), and “things” (ornaments, instruments, elements, presumably including works of visual and tactile arts) preserved the inherent disparities that separate kinesthetic, vocal, and mechanical arts. However, when he wrote that “each of these” was “filled with divine mysteries,” he referred to the prologue of the Rationale where he used a different nomenclature: “‘offices,’‘things,’ and ‘ornaments’ of the Church.” Whatever categorical ambiguity may have slipped into his cross-reference, what is clear through the treatise is that, diverse as the arts were in their exercise, they served one and the same iconography. This was true above all in the Eucharist, for Durand, the apex and sum of all offices. Consequently, as among the members of a tree, there could be no independent and distinct iconographies among the arts – for example, between visual art and music. Durand undertook his vast inquiry into symbolic meanings through the span of liturgy with the object of editing out what earlier generations had handed down and for which he could discover no explanation. Without divine aid, he wrote, he had no hope of achieving his goal (Rationale, prologue, 1). But liturgy would still be the dynamic interplay of performance and transformation: that is, process. Recent studies have given new perspectives on the workings and idiosyncrasies of that process.6 The character of liturgy as both the same and other in process is illustrated by what are arguably the most enduring works of liturgical iconography, and among the earliest: the designation of Sunday as the chief day of communal worship and the framing of the liturgical calendar for the church year.7 Both achievements began with the detachment of increasingly Gentile churches from their Jewish past as a second Israel, superseding the Jews as God’s chosen people and 240

Plate 1

Michael Camille. Image courtesy of Stuart Michaels.

Plate 2 Trinity of Saint Anne with donor, Atelier of the Master of Rabenden, polychrome wood, c. 1515, Unter den Linden Museum, Colmar (89.3.1). Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane.

Plate 3 Mary Magdalene, German, c. 1520–1530, Liebieghaus, Frankfurt (Inv. Nr. 2). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 4 Image of Christ, S. Appollinare in Nuovo. Ravenna, early sixth century. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 5 Carrow Psalter (Ms.W.34, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, f.27 r), English, c. 1250. Note the green crosses in the Carrying of the Cross and the Crucifixion. Illustration courtesy of Walters Art Museum, created under Creative Commons License.

Plate 6 Master of the Paradise Garden (Upper Rhenish), The Paradise Garden, c. 1420, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, HM 54. In a typical enclosed garden the Virgin is seated among flowers and the Christ Child is learning music from St. Cecilia (who has a headdress of peapods), while St. Dorothea picks cherries. Along the wall (left to right) the flowers are red roses, speedwell, betony, lychnis, stocks, iris, and hollyhock. In the grass the flowers include white lily, peony, strawberries, lilies of the valley, leucojum, cowslips, yellow wallflowers, periwinkles, daisies, and violets. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Plate 7 Transfiguration. Church of Holy Apostles, Thessaloniki, Greece. Early fourteenth century. Image courtesy of Sharon Gerstel.

Plate 8 Horses, Rochester Bestiary, southeast England, second quarter, thirteenth century. London, BL, MS Royal 12 XIII, f. 42v (detail). British Library.

Liturgical iconography

authentic heirs to God’s Covenant promises to Abraham. Sabbath observance was of a piece with other prescripts of the Mosaic Law, such as dietary prohibitions, circumcision, and rejection of the cult of images. Transposing the Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week from the Jewish Sabbath, the seventh day – thus sanctifying the day of Christ’s resurrection – took between two and four hundred years to become general practice. The first great difficulty, and the most tenacious in framing an annual liturgical calendar, similarly hinged on Christian ambivalence toward their claim to have replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people, both desirous and hostile. Were Christians bound to observe Easter according to the Mosaic rule for calculating the date of Passover, or, under the dispensation of the New Covenant should Easter always be kept on a Sunday, the day of the Resurrection? The complexities of this debate were many; they ramified through the centuries and became entangled with an immense variety of local cults and rites. At the core of much confusion was the fact that the Julian calendar followed as a common civic calendar varied ever more widely from the actual lunar calendar as computed from astronomical observations. How were believers to worship together without a common calendar? Beginning in the thirteenth century, a series of individual mathematicians turned their attention to computing the date of Easter, the golden key on which the construction of a coherent annual liturgical calendar depended. Intensive study continued at the papal court in Avignon and continued at four ecumenical councils, convened as challenges to papal authority. Few impairments of the papacy’s magisterial authority ranked with its incapacity to regulate the Church calendar, the annual cycle of worship on which all pastoral offices depend. Accordingly, the accelerating pace of reform councils carried with it urgent attempts to find some fulcrum that would move the intransigent roadblock to institutional stability. Liturgy was the incandescent center of the furnace that was the Reformation. In the wave of liturgical reforms, the papacy made constructing an astronomical and calendrical Church year the keystone of its encyclopedic and penetrating offense against the many fronts of Protestantism. The Council of Trent remitted the enormous task to the Papacy; Pope Paul V laid the groundwork for accomplishing it. Some twenty years after Trent, Pope Gregory XIII announced that the solution sought for 1,400 years had been found (1582). He was able to abolish the old calendar and proclaim a restoration of the new that permanently accommodated astronomical realities and preserved the “ancient rite of the Church” intact. Before he published his reform and made it obligatory for praying the divine office and celebrating all festivals, Gregory had been able to secure a consensus of Catholic princes and universities. He urged them to adopt the new calendar for their lands. However, his decree was repudiated as yet another papist trick through much of Protestant Europe until acceptance followed, slowly, throughout the eighteenth century. Indeed, the process of revising the liturgical calendar unmistakably continued in the series of revisions to the General Roman Calendar at the middle of the twentieth century (1954, 1955, 1960, 1969). As they surveyed the continuing history of liturgical reform, the authors of Sacrosanctum Concilium, a decree issued by the Second Vatican Council (1963), repeated several characteristics persistently recognized by their predecessor reformers as marking liturgy as the same and other in process. (1) Drawing on tradition beginning with Christ and the Apostles, they affirmed the continual “restoration” of the liturgy. (2) They affirmed two elements in the contents of the liturgy: (a) those that were divinely instituted, and (b) “those that may and ought to be dropped with the passing of time if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become unsuited to it.”8 (3) They identified two moments of testing and revision: the first, daily in the performance of liturgy, the second, at particularly critical times of revision as, for example, in Church councils. 241

Karl F. Morrison

As in daily performance, the agents of process were “the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is [. . .] the Head and His Members” (p. 6): in other words, what Durand had spoken of as three cohorts or people, celebrants, ministers, and the congregation (or witnesses). There could be no Mass, no entering into divine mysteries, without a priest celebrating and a minister for responding, nor was Christ’s mediation between God and human beings completely represented or recapitulated without the people witnessing, the reciprocal prayers of priest and people for one another united, one Body and one Spirit. In some regards, the three agents of liturgical revision were moved by quite different motives, and when with shared motives, they acted in quite different modulations. With its own alterations to the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium illustrated in action the perennial objective of deleting from the liturgy components that were no longer understood, or that no longer conformed with or served canons of faith and practice. For example, the master narrative of salvation underlying the provisions of Sacrosanctum Concilium has lost the all-pervasive conflict between Christ and Satan, the invisible warfare between mysteries of righteousness and iniquity, that struck hearts with love and terror in paintings of the Last Judgment. From the early New Testamental period onward, Satan and his demonic armies were fearful and present dangers. In Durand’s account, the order for the Eucharist is in fact the struggle and victory of the priest over the Ancient Enemy, recapitulating the battles and wars of God’s chosen people throughout sacred history in their various journeys to the promised land, whether in Israel or in Paradise. Thus, the procession to the altar is drawn up like an army in battle array against hosts of demons lurking in ambush. The celebrant sprinkles the altar, the church, and the people to exorcise “the filth of unclean spirits” as well as to “free the hearts of the faithful” and to protect the altar from evil spirits that might cluster there. When, fully vested to celebrate the Mass, he approached the altar, he went up as though armed for battle. As he received the elements offered in the Eucharist, he made the sign of the cross over each one in turn – host, water, wine, and incense – to put to flight the power of every attempt by diabolical malice against the sacrifice, and he made a further sign of the cross with incense over the consecrated elements and the altar to exorcise the evil of demonic fraud (Rationale, 4.1.43; 4.4.1–5; 4.6.14–16; 4.30.23). Sacrosanctum Concilium also illustrated how it continued a motive for reform acted upon from the earliest Christian communities, but in quite a changed social context and mode: that is, indigenation, the cross-fertilizations between Christian practice and the alien, unbelieving world in which it exists, tactics for remaining faithful while in, but not of, the world. Sacrosanctum Concilium presented this dilemma and task as characteristic of evangelism, particularly outside Europe. Still, the Council knew well the necessity to assimilate practices “of various races and peoples,” and, particularly in mission fields, how the visual and plastic arts and music “from every race and region” could be drawn into the service of the Church, provided they had been laundered and edited, “made suitable for sacred use [. . .] and truly contribute to the edification of the faithful” (I.iii.D.37–38; I.iii.D.40.3; VI.119–120; VII.123). Pope Gregory I (600/601) issued directions resembling these in principle to missionaries he had sent to Anglo-Saxon England, tactics for changing “people in bondage to idols into a church of Christ.” The missionaries were to use enticements of similarity in dissimilars. Their assaults on long-standing and cherished customs of the British people must be discreet. While they must destroy idols, they were advised to purify temples with holy water, and to set up new altars in the reconsecrated temples, being careful, with this retrofitting and rededication, to add a further safeguard against dispossessed demons with relics of the saints. They should also sanitize and consecrate the British calendar, preserving the inherited rhythm of the Britons’ ancestral celebrations 242

Liturgical iconography

while replacing festivals of sacrifice to devils with festivals of Christian martyrs.9 Even when indigenous calendars, temples, and rites were purified and consecrated, Satan and his minions were sometimes seen by the faithful besieging holy places as they whirled in frenzied, dense, black swarms of malice. Moreover, the danger that liturgy could be contaminated by superstition from popular cults and forbidden arts came from all three categories of witnesses identified by Durand as agents of liturgical revision: two clerical (celebrants and ministers) and one mixed (clerical and lay congregants). The earliest major liturgist of the Middle Ages, Agobard of Lyons (c. 779–840) lamented the justifiable disesteem in which priests were held in his day. While he defended priests against uncanonical correctives by laity, his denunciations exposed the need for correction. He distinguished four notable classes of priests: (1) those worthy of being loved because they were meritorious both in their lives and in their teaching; (2) those who were merely tolerable because they either taught well and were morally reprehensible or lived virtuously and knew too little to teach; (3) those meriting scorn, because they were both morally defective and ignorant of what they presumed to teach; and (4) those worthy only of scorn because they lived in vice and taught heresy.10 Much later, Durand issued censures of his own. The clergy, the very class of society most explicitly charged with monitoring purity of faith and order, was as liable as any other to fall into confusion of divine religion with demonic superstition. Instead of shining with the virtues communicated through the orders of worship, instead of illuminating the people with light imparted from above, the clergy was ignorant, the blind leading the blind. Most priests, Durand wrote, had no vision, much less any understanding of the sacred mysteries. For their failures, Durand threatened them with a terrible punishment at the Last Judgment (Rationale, prologue, 2). A century earlier, in the pontificate of Innocent III, one of the greatest medieval popes, Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226) had had his life-changing encounter with the crucifix of San Damiano. Spellbound, he saw the lips of the painted image of Christ Crucified move, and he heard a voice say, “Francis, go, build up my house which, as you see, is all being torn apart.”

Becoming other than one is in liturgy Liturgy was a living process, both the same and other, in continual development, and the critics and revisers of liturgy were the immense, protean company of its participating witnesses. Conversion of the birthright of the elder Israel into the specie of the younger had one great point of similarity to individual conversion, as, for example, in monastic conversion. In both, variation cross-fertilized with identity. By its very nature, liturgy creates outsiders as it creates insiders. The distinction between insider and outsiders was most distinct in the early churches, when the sacred mysteries were closed to the uninitiated, and those who had not yet been baptized were formally ushered out before performance of the sacraments and entrance into the sacred begun. Even after witnessing became less stringently restricted, liturgy continued to be revered as marking the boundaries between authentic believers and others in consecrated spaces. The liturgies in performance were themselves precincts of mysteries to which unbelievers and infidels, heretics and the excommunicate were alien, and as Christians outside Europe also might be. It also made the soul an outsider to itself. The Cistercian mystic William of St. Thierry (ca 1080–1148) pinpointed what made this problematic and liable to issue in never-ending debate. “Every man,” he wrote, “forms the Lord, his God, for himself, or sets him before himself after his own manner.” As a result, “the Lord God of All is to be adored and worshiped beneath the mask of many faces.”11 How could one even locate, much less reduce, such a nebula of metamorphoses of the self as both the same and as other? 243

Karl F. Morrison

The mixing of water and wine in the Eucharistic chalice symbolized not only Christ’s embodiment of two natures in one person but also the union of the people with Christ, the Church being incorporated in the holiness of Christ, not Christ in the blessedness the Church, for holiness could derive only from the Holy One (Durand, Rationale, IV.30.18–21). The doctrine of the indwelling Christ provided an analogous explanation of how the believers’ bodies could be both human and the dwelling-places of God, and how Christ became the inner light of their hearts and minds. In this way, with many variations, stories about individual participation in the divine by means of the sacraments became the key by which authors fitted the most intimate human changes of heart into the gigantic master narrative of the world’s salvation. In his encounter with the Christ in the crucifix at San Damiano, Francis felt himself pummeled with strange afflictions. The words he heard filled him with such joy and light that he sensed that Christ himself had spoken to him. From that hour, his heart was so wounded and melted at the memory of the Lord’s Passion that as long as he lived he carried the wounds of the Lord Jesus in his heart. He left San Damiano as another man than as he had entered. How were others similarly changed as their hearts melted into the living spirit of the liturgy, constantly reminded that that melding enacted the conversion of the birthright of the elder Israel into the specie of the younger? Biographical materials for Cuthbert (c. 634–687), Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), and Juliana of Mont Cornillion (ca 1192–1258) provide three illustrative examples.12 The main sources for us are by contemporaries of the subjects: the Venerable Bede’s prose life of Cuthbert (written after 721 from an anonymous life written c. 699–705), Eadmer’s lives of Anselm, both the biography and the account in the Historia Novorum (written simultaneously from contemporary notes before 1100 and slightly revised on several occasions thereafter), and an anonymous life of Juliana by a Cistercian in her home city, Liège (written c. 1261–1269). While, as a much younger contemporary in another monastery, Bede did not meet Cuthbert, he made it his business to work from contemporary materials, including personal testimonies from Cuthbert’s circle, which he scrupulously verified. Eadmer was in Anselm’s service from 1093 for the rest of the archbishop’s life, attending him constantly in England and during his protracted exiles in France and Italy. He worked from notes for a memoir he began collecting early, sometimes surreptitiously, and he may have broken one quite long account into the two that survive. While neither the identity of the author of Juliana’s life nor any personal connection between him and Juliana can be determined, he did know at first hand members of her circle and her circumstances. All three accounts can be trusted regarding the places liturgy had in shaping their subjects’ spiritual self-consciousness. These case studies enable us to detect three prongs of indigenation as a dynamic in play. The conflict-ridden lives of Cuthbert, Anselm of Bec, and Juliana of Mont-Cornillion are narratives of tensions in the most intimate areas of their self-consciousness. Each was pulled in three directions: first, by the prophetic identity they assimilated from cultures of the ancient Near East, which they considered the “Old Testament”; second, by the apostolic identity of an evolving humanity assimilated from Levantine writings canonized as the New Testament in the Christian Bible; third, by the prevailing norms of their own cultures. They indigenized the alien, and imagined, identities with their birth identities, in their own real times, cultures, and places. Indigenation is an individual matter. I receive my identity and am changed by receiving it, but I also change the identity I receive by adapting it as I adopt it. Thus, the social penalties for nonconformity beset Cuthbert, Anselm, and Juliana as they moved out of step with dominant behavior patterns in their societies. All were intensely conscious of being

244

Liturgical iconography

engaged, by way of their struggles in this world, in the spiritual warfare between Christ and Satan, and, indeed, of being lethally attacked by Satan and his minions. Christian iconography expressed, taught, and was modified by this three-pronged and openended dynamic. It is a study of themes and variations on a primal theme enshrined in the story of Esau and Jacob (or, alternatively, Cain and Abel), for the trauma of that rivalry was more than a story. Throughout many ages, the conflict of brothers was at the core of the essential narrative Christians told about themselves, asserting that they were different from the Jews, while they were also precisely speaking Israelites in the biblical tradition of prophecy and fulfillment. Powerful forces imposing and inculcating conformity – above all, those of liturgy – made the conflict of Esau and Jacob a symbol, and the purpose of a symbol is not to record or recall but to relive. Liturgy exercises its greatest and most lasting power to impose and inculcate narratives of conformity when it works subliminally, working on emotions in silent ways. The ways of love are among the most powerful of all. The three case studies also indicate that the threefold dynamic of indigenation engendered profound spiritual anxiety and trauma interpreted according to the great traumas of the Jewish people, above all Exodus and exile. In very different ways, the personal histories that Cuthbert and Anselm grafted into the grand narrative of the world’s creation, fall, and salvation were stories of their own indigenations into alien societies. Cuthbert found himself, with segments of his church, putting off many Celtic ways and putting on Roman replacements, exemplified by ways of computing the date of Easter. Anselm came into Anglo-Saxon England as an occupier and settler after the Norman Conquest. He found himself, as an alien, attacking what were defended as indigenous customs, including lay investiture, and replacing them with the new, continental norms of the Gregorian Reform. Both Cuthbert and Anselm were reculturalizing themselves and the churches in which they lived. Juliana consciously shaped her whole life to change with the rhythms of the liturgical year. Yet, her life story, as told by her anonymous biographer, centers on one liturgy, the veneration of the Blessed Sacrament, the communion wafer consecrated in the Eucharist. She believed that God commissioned her to compose this rite, to secure its official sanction, and to promote its dissemination. Though the office that, with collaboration, she composed has not been recovered, the indirect evidence that is known indicates that it was not a Eucharist but a rite that could be celebrated by laity, such as her own community of nuns, as well as by clergy. Cuthbert, Anselm, and Juliana alike made Jesus the liturgical point of entry and growth, but Jesus was differently modulated for each. When Cuthbert celebrated the Eucharist, Bede wrote, he could never complete the liturgy without weeping floods of tears, for, within himself, he was imitating with compunction of heart the sacrifice of Christ which he was performing. He was so overwhelmed that his voice hardly rose above a sigh.13 He was overwhelmed by paroxysms of tears when he inwardly experienced identity between the sacrifice of Jesus taking place in his hands and his own self-sacrifice. Anselm, too, “venerated the consecration of the Lord’s Body, with special fervor” (Eadmer, Life, II.65, p. 141). Yet, given Anselm’s abstract theology, it is hard to determine whether his fervor was fired more by the anguished humanity of the Crucified or by the Logos, the beauty in reason, the creative power that brought forth the universe and everything in it and made His own body in the Virgin’s womb. Juliana’s great ardor for Jesus was driven not only by such compelling loves as these but also, and especially, by the spiritual eroticism that from the eleventh century interpreters had read into the Song of Solomon. Rejecting all else, inflamed with ardor for Christ, her Bridegroom, her heart melted in the warmth of his countenance, and she yearned to die crucified by the agonies of this life for love of the Crucified (Life, II.46, p. 136).

245

Karl F. Morrison

The primal tension between Jews, the Old Israel, and Christians, the New, is by no means overt in biographical accounts of our three subjects. Certainly, it is there, not at all invisibly, in the Passion and death of Jesus, a Passion play for all seasons. But generally, with the calm assurance of what is taken for granted and seen without being noticed, “an elephant in the room,” it is there between the lines, the massive piles, the underpinnings on which the authors of those accounts constructed their narrative superstructures. It may be enough to remember that almost the entire history of medieval Jewry in England occurred between the Norman Conquest of England (1066) – or, alternatively, Anselm’s entrance as a novice into the monastery of Bec – and Juliana of Mont-Cornillon’s death (1258) – or, alternatively yet again, the expulsion of the Jews by Edward I (1290).

Spiritual anxiety Part of iconographers’ work has always been to go more or less boldly into areas of silence. That is inevitably the case whether the work has to do with the “speaking pictures” of verbal arts (poetry or prose that depends on suggestively conjuring up pictures in readers’ imaginations), or with the “mute poems” of pictorial arts. The magnificent Cloisters Cross, with its visual links between the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible and the Crucifixion, and its putative reference to Christian-Jewish conflicts in England (c. 1140), suggests much more than it says. Taken together with the contemporary life histories of Cuthbert and Anselm, Juliana’s narrative of the transactions with Christ that impelled her to compose and disseminate the liturgy of the Blessed Sacrament makes a brief notice of silence in the iconography of liturgy imperative. As decoders of symbols, modern iconographers are obliged to read with care what is unsaid in the silences between the lines of what is said. Indeed, this was also the laborious task of medieval iconographers seeking to read the mind of Jesus between the lines of Scripture, for they were convinced that God had hidden sacred mysteries from profanation by the unbelieving and unsanctified, concealing them in various symbolic verbal codes. The words of Scripture were “the oracles of God,” mysterious, fateful, and beyond the grasp of the many. Christian interpreters inclined to believe that, except for particularly holy individuals, Jews had long been, and remained, blind to the inner, spiritual truth in the sacred oracles. They could not decode what had been entrusted to them under the symbols of Law and Prophets. They also misread God’s promises of salvation. Unable to decipher the oracles conveyed by their own prophets, they could not recognize the long-awaited Messiah the prophets foretold. They had killed him, their own Messiah, and God transferred the birthright of Israel from them to the followers of Christ. As we noted, early Christian writers characterized this split in the household of faith as on the pattern of the fratricidal rivalry of the patriarch Isaac’s two sons, the elder, Esau, who recklessly abandoned his birthright, and the younger, Jacob, who snapped it up. We located this allegory of how the antipathy between Jews and Christians began as early as the second century, in a Christian apologist’s dramatic rendition of a debate between himself and Trypho, a learned rabbi (Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, c. 130). A parallel dialogue from the late eleventh century offers nothing to compare with this charge of lethal violence.14 The treatise was written by Gilbert Crispin, a fellow monk of Anselm at Bec, and a friend. Like Anselm, Gilbert was moved from Normandy to England to assist in the Normanization of the English church. Like Anselm, he received a particularly eminent position as abbot of Westminster. He dedicated his treatise to Anselm, slightly before Anselm became archbishop of Canterbury (1093). One of the most remarkable contrasts with 246

Liturgical iconography

Justin Martyr’s treatise is the absence of reference to violence on either side in dealings between Jews and Christians. Yet here again, there is something essential in the iconographic silence. Preconditions for fratricide of Jews by Christians were already present in scattered local attacks in France and the Rhineland earlier in the eleventh century. About three years after Gilbert Crispin’s dialogue was written warriors of the First Crusade left trails of massacres and forced conversions through Jewish communities along their lines of march. Their boast was to have avenged the death of Christ.15 In the time between these massacres and Juliana’s death, several lines of persecution intersected at the point at which the rivalry between Jews and Christians had begun: the incarnation of God. That was the flashpoint of the debate and the violence, the great divide between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, whether nonbelief or wrong belief. With her own experience of receiving her divine Bridegroom into her soul through contemplation of his living presence in the Eucharist, Juliana composed and promoted the Office of the Blessed Sacrament as a public ritual available to clergy and laity alike, a weapon against “the madness of certain heretics” (Life, II 15, p. 98), perhaps with the Cathars and their legacy in mind. In thanksgiving for his sanguinary and costly victory over the Cathars (1226), King Louis VII of France had commanded the bishop of Avignon to exhibit the veiled Sacrament for adoration, and such was the devotion that the ritual became continual, day and night. A wide and urgent preoccupation with the physical presence of the divine had begun to swell with Berengar’s provocative denial of the real presence, and the tide of theological disputes and legal processes etching that denial deep in Christian consciousness, and a little later with irrepressible rage and terror ignited by rumors of Jewish attacks on consecrated hosts and dark rituals of cannibalism, blasphemous parodies on eating the Body of Jesus and drinking his Blood, injected into common knowledge by blood libels.16 The connection between the persecution of Jews and the violations of the body of Christ of which they were accused was precise in France, with the bonfires of Talmuds and other Jewish writings judged to have attacked the Church, the body of Christ, or Christ himself. Occasionally, the ritual of burning was expanded to include burning of Jewish converts to Christianity who had returned to their original faith, chaining the books in which they had written their “apostasies” to their bodies to be burned together at the stake.17 Juliana’s sense of divine mission in framing and raising up the Office of the Blessed Sacrament against heretical madness was grounded in overpowering awe and consuming passion that had melted her own heart in her contemplation of Christ’s living presence, and impressed God’s glory in her soul, and that had left her speechless for long days at a time after she received communion. But her reasoning was iconographical. Its flaw had long been apparent. Gilbert Crispin indicated it in his Disputation of a Christian and a Jew, dedicated to Anselm and submitted to him for corrective review. The Jew in Crispin’s minidrama, adverting to the Biblical prohibition against painted and carved images, denounced the Christian use of devotional art. His first example was a particularly gruesome crucifix.18 The Christian responded that, if God had intended to forbid all images, he would have sinned against his own law when he commanded that figures of two cherubim be carved for the Ark of the Covenant and other images and utensils made for the Tabernacle. In themselves, figures served the same function as written words: to represent or describe. God forbade idolatry, not images. We call a cross holy, he said, but we do not adore or worship it. It has no power of itself in itself. However, the Christian continued, when a bishop blesses an image, we do reverence it not with divine honors but with honors due a likeness of the Lord’s Passion. We worship the suffering of a man assumed into God and into unity of personhood with God, but we honor the image as a likeness, not as the real God-man (153–162, pp. 50–53). 247

Karl F. Morrison

The Jew in Crispin’s Disputation had already negated the doctrine of the Incarnation built into this distinction between the image of the Crucified and the real, living, bleeding, anguished Crucified. Christians taught that, since Christ was the Messiah, he fulfilled the prophecies that the Messiah would be of the seed of Abraham. They also taught that, as a sacrificial victim, he had to be entirely sinless, spotless, and unpolluted, to make full and complete satisfaction for the sins of humankind. The Jew’s point is clear: the two requirements were mutually exclusive. By making them in tandem, Christians were doing violence to Scripture and torturing it to insist that, being made from the Virgin’s flesh, he was unpolluted by the seed of a man, while also being, through her, of Abraham’s seed (106, p. 36). Actually, the Jew’s iconographical question was unusual in its logical challenge to a vicious circle. Others addressed the whole structure of calls for a second look at basic principles of theology. Along with their communities, some Jews burned with their books in twelfth-century France paralleled some Christian sifting through individual and collective traumas, and wondering how such suffering could be visited on the righteous. Had God abandoned his people?19 Traditions developed from writings of the Church Fathers also found imponderables concerning the justice of God in the reprobation of the Jews for their disobedience. The same prophetic tradition that was read as foreseeing the vocation of the Gentiles’ tradition declared that God had made the Jews blind and deaf to truth. There was deep anxiety for all in the hiddenness and foreknowledge with which divine justice was seen in these acts of retribution, for the rationale was that, in the loss of their Temple and sacred City and the ultimate catastrophe of the Diaspora, divine Providence had used the Jews as living witnesses before the whole earth to the antiquity of the truth preached by Christians, and of their guilt in the death of Jesus, the happy crime (felix culpa) that secured the redemption of the world. There was profound disequilibrium in teaching that, at the end of time, the redeemed of the Old Israel and of the New would together enter the eternal Jerusalem as the true Israel. In every way, the adoration of Christ’s real presence, flesh, blood, and spirit, including the singing of the exultant victory songs, the Te Deum and the Magnificat, was iconographically designed to celebrate the triumph of the Christian’s affirmation over the Jew’s objection that the Christian’s basic premise was self-contradictory. But the Jew had cast a strong light into the silence where iconographers must venture. In liturgical iconography, as in other areas, not answers but only questions are perennial. The air around the Christian’s iconography was filled with noisy responses; the Jew’s iconographical question remained suspended and clear in its silence for later ages to ponder, each in its own way. There was a fateful challenge to basic assumptions on which the whole iconographic structure, verbal and visual, stood in the question, asked by Christians in speculation and by Jews at the stake, of why God ordered the world and its salvation with such suffering to his people and himself.

Notes 1 Julian the Apostate, Against the Galilaeans, in Wilmer Cave Wright (trans.), The Works of the Emperor Julian, III (Cambridge, 1953), 253A-B, 392–93. 2 On the general subject, see F.J.E. Boddens Hosang, “Attraction and Hatred: Relations between Jews and Christians in the Early Church,” in Violence in Ancient Christianity: Victims and Perpetrators, ed. A.C. Geljon and R. Oukema (Leiden, 2014). Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 125, 8–30. 3 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, in trans. Thomas B. Falls and Thomas P. Halton (Washington, 2003), Selections from The Fathers of the Church, 3, chapters 31–47, 89–108, 42–67–139–163. 4 Select bibliography (see also following notes): journals: Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft (1950–); Arte cristiana: Revista internazionale di stroria dell’arte e di arti liturgiche/An International Review of Art History and Liturgical Arts (1913–); Ephemerides Liturgicae (1887–); Les actes des colloques du Centre international d’études

248

Liturgical iconography

5

6

7 8

9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17

liturgiques (1996–); Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques (1907–); Studia Liturgica: An International Ecumenical Quarterly for Liturgical Research and Renewal (1962–); inventory of texts: E. Dekkers, Clavis Patrum Latinorum, 3rd ed. (Steenbruggen: Abbatia Sancti Petri, 1995); C. Vogel (ed.) and William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (trans.), with John K. Brooks-Leonard, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources (Washington, DC, 1986); general orientations: A.J. Chupungo (ed.), Handbook for Liturgical Studies, vol. I: Introduction to the Liturgy (Collegeville, 1997); Aimé Georges Martimort in trans. M.J. O’Connell, The Church at Prayer: An Introduction to the Liturgy, new edition, vol. I: Principles of the Liturgy (Collegeville, 1987); P. Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols within the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis (Toronto, 1984), series: Studies and Texts, 71. P. Meyvaert, “Bede and the Church Paintings at Wearmouth-Jarrow,” Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979), 63–77, reprinted in P. Meyvaert, The Art of Words: Bede and Theodulf (Aldershot, 2008), 63–77, with analysis of Bede’s account of Benedict Biscop’s pictures in Bede, Lives of the Holy Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, in ed. and trans. Christopher Grocock and I. N. Wood, Bede the Venerable, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Oxford, 2013), 9, 43–44. With the accidental and patchy survival of evidence, actual steps of transmission and development seem to be beyond recovery for many rites and ceremonies. And yet some recent studies have demonstrated how, often by slow and highly localized steps, parochial ways mutated and spread into general practice. On the Eucharist, an older, classic study is G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London, 1945). See the very general orientation in J. Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford, 1991), and Eric Palazzo (trans.) and M. Beaumont, A History of Liturgical Books from the Beginning to the Thirteenth Century (Collegeville, 1998). On baptism, see M.L. Colish, Faith, Fiction, and Force in Medieval Baptismal Debates (Washington, DC, 2014). Concerning the Romano-German Pontifical, a pivotal collection in the whole history of Church liturgy, see H. Parkes, The Making of Liturgy in the Ottonian Church: Books, Music, and Ritual in Mainz, 950–1050 (Cambridge, 2015). On rituals of dying and death, see F.S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1990), and F.S. Paxton with I. Cochelin, The Death Ritual at Cluny in the Central Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2013), series: Disciplina Monastica. See also M.C. Salisbury, The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England (Turnhout, 2015), series: Medieval Church Studies, 36. A.A. McArthur, The Evolution of the Christian Year (London, 1953). Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) Solemnly Promulgated by His Holiness, Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963 (Boston, n.d.), 11, 20, 42. The Council frequently named the enduring authority, or power, as “the spirit of the liturgy.” It was repeating a term that the theologian Romano Guardini made current, and that one leader of the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), made his own. For a full explication of the meaning of the name, see J. Ratzinger, trans. John Saward, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco, 2000). The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and trans. R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), I.25, 27 c. 2; I.30; 73–74, 80–82, 106–08. J.A. Cabaniss, Agobard of Lyons: Churchman and Critic (Syracuse, 1953), 60–62, 94–95. William of St. Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs, trans. C. Hart (Shannon, IRE, 1970), Cistercian Fathers Series, nr. 6), pref. cc. 13, 17, 11, 14. B. Colgrave, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life (New York, 1969). Eadmer, The Life of St. Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. R.W. Southern (Oxford, 1962). Eadmer, Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England: Historia Novorum in Anglia, trans. G. Bosanquet (London, 1964). Anonymous, The Life of Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, trans. Barbara Newman (Toronto, 1991). Bede’s Prose Life, c. 16, 212. Gilbert Crispin, The Works of Gilbert Crispin Abbot of Westminster, ed. A.S. Abulafia and G.R. Evans (London, 1986). On the change in the magnitude of violence, see R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987). See C.W. Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia, 2007). See S. Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton, 2002) and Trial by Fire: Burning Jewish Books (Kalamazoo, 2000), series: lectures on Medieval Judaism at Trinity University, Occasional Papers III.

249

Karl F. Morrison 18 Cf. the impact of a painting of the crucifixion on a putative thirteenth-century German Jew in Hermannus quondam Judaeus Opusculum de Conversione Sua, ed. G. Niemeyer (Weimar, 1963), series: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, QZGDM 4, cc. 2–3, pp. 75, 79. Karl F. Morrison (trans.), Conversion and Text: The Cases of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine Tsatsos (Charlottesville, 1992), 80, 82. See H. Kessler, “Shaded with Dust: Jewish Eyes on Christian Art,” in Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, ed. H. Kessler and D. Nirenberg (Philadelphia, 2011), 74–114. M. Camille, “The Idols of the Jews,” in Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, ed. Michael Camille (Cambridge, 1989), 165–94. 19 Einbinder, Beautiful Death (as in note 17), pp. 27–28, and Einbinder, No Place of Rest, 12–13, 67.

250

19 SECULAR ICONOGRAPHY Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

Secular or “worldly” iconography is by its very nature related to the world, the saeculum in the medieval Latin sense of the word, where it stands for “earthly world,” “delight in the world,” or “life of the world.”1 In the Middle Ages it has to be delimited from religious iconography, which is in many ways antagonistic to Christian iconography (and to medieval Jewish art as well, which has many points of contact with Christian iconography).2 Christian iconography has to be the necessary reference point for the definition of secular iconography, because in theory at least everything outside of it can be described as secular. Like the secular arts secular iconography is a modern concept.3 It is closely related to secularization as a decisive event in the wake of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the new order of political relations in Europe. It is also related to a clear shift in art practices toward production that was becoming increasingly detached from the patronage of the Church and religious themes and objects. If an effort is made to list the fields covered under the umbrella of secular iconography, it is clear that these fields theoretically have to include images that deal with the world as created by God, but this is a world that is transient and deals with human existence on earth, and beyond the pictures which deal explicitly with the capability of man to be saved and his part in salvific history. Strictly speaking, therefore, nearly all the subjects discussed in this publication, apart from religious iconography, should come under the remit of secular iconography. Secular iconography, like the secular arts, is a comprehensive term and, at the same time, a wide-ranging and simultaneously heterogeneous field. It is a field which lacks clearly defined literary links, unlike Christian iconography, which has the Bible as well as the legends of the saints as well as many other such texts. As such, there is no manual or lexicon for all the subjects of secular iconography.4 Research into secular iconography has tended to fragment into individual fields, according to theme, field of knowledge, genre, group of works, or period, and sometimes it has been undertaken with reference to great literary works or authors, such as Chaucer,5 or else studies have looked at the relationship of images to vernacular literature.6 The bibliography for secular art or iconography is limited and only a few references can be given for some outstanding wall paintings and tapestries as many works are still unstudied.7 Misericords and pilgrim souvenirs and secular badges now have a rich specialist literature,8 even if works such as oven tiles and biscuit molds do not always attract the attention of the art historian.9 Book illumination, as in religious iconography, is an important field that cannot be overlooked. Even in the Carolingian period, for example, copies of late classical manuscripts and their illuminations were a rich source 251

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

of material10 that increases over time.11 Particular emphasis has to be given to the genuine treasure trove of miniatures in Gothic manuscripts, which has been catalogued on a thematic basis by Randall.12 The work undertaken by Michael Camille on marginal images in a variety of media is also inspiring (see the chapter on him elsewhere in this volume).13 Unusual material – well outside of the established canon – that still remains unstudied for the period 1200 to 1500 has been documented in a fascinating publication by Malcolm Jones.14 The somewhat lurid title The Secret Middle Ages has, among other things, chapters on proverbs, the world turned upside down, narratives, gender relations, and scatology.15 This book developed from the justified feeling that many images and objects from the field of secular art had not made it into art history because they were created, as it were, in a universe parallel to that of great art with its better-known works. The fact that these unknown works sometimes came from archaeological contexts did not also help. This problem may have to do with the systematization of material that has so far been almost impossible to achieve and is perhaps not sensible.16 The variety of subjects and themes as well as the constant stream of new discoveries and neglected material gives a new dynamic to the whole field of secular iconography which unfortunately can create difficulties regarding its integration. It is not possible to cover the entire subject in the confines of this chapter, and the topics chosen are subjective and should be attributed to my long-standing preoccupation with the field of secular iconography. The relationship of secular to religious art is central to this study, and the most important question in defining secular iconography is to see whether it is possible and how sensible it is to demarcate it from religious iconography – to separate the secular from the sacred. In nineteenthand twentieth-century art history the separation of the fields was strictly adhered to. Religious art was easier to systematize and occupied the center ground, while works of secular art occupied a relatively marginal position, and still do. Works of religious art are also numerically more dominant in the earlier part of the Middle Ages. The dominance of religious works is also due to the fact that they were better preserved from one generation to the next; monumental painting and sculpture, goldsmith work, and textiles were better preserved in an ecclesiastical space and church property was more ensured of being passed from one generation to the next than similar work in castles, palaces, or upper-class town houses. Johann Michael Fritz states in his standard work on the art of Gothic goldsmithing that the ratio between profane and religious works seems to be exactly reversed in today’s tradition.17 In contemporary research a clear line between sacred and secular is barely perceptible, although the two divisions clearly existed and there certainly was an awareness of them being separate in the Middle Ages. The tendency nowadays is to look at the relatively complex interplay of both divisions – secular and sacred – which at first glance is usually scarcely visible. Alicia Walker and Amanda Luyster used such an approach in their volume Negotiating Secular and Sacred in Medieval Art:18 “Rather than performing dissections of secular and sacred organs from the anatomies of objects and buildings, scholars today allow worldly and spiritual features that were conjoined by their makers to work together as a single body.” Function and context are central in any future study of secular art. Studies such as this provide contemporary art history with a promising repertoire of methodologies to understand secular iconography.19 The interplay of secular and sacred as well as the integration of the two fields is to be the subject of this chapter and particular attention will be paid to works on the boundaries of the two divisions. Such an approach seems to me to be the best way of looking at secular iconography. The first work is the Ebstorf Map (Fig. 19.1), which was made in Northern Germany around 1300; it is a particularly detailed image of the world that is also a strange mixture of wall painting, book, devotional object, and teaching aid.20 At about 3.6 meters in height it is the largest world image of its kind. It is not a wall painting but was created as book illumination on thirty parchment 252

Secular iconography

Figure 19.1 Ebstorf Map, c. 1300, northern Germany (modern copy of the original destroyed in 1943). © Kloster Ebstorf, Klosterkammer Hannover.

sheets stitched together so that it could be rolled out on two bars. With its extensive accompanying texts, it resembles a book. According to a recent count there are around 1,500 Latin texts for eight hundred images, including five hundred representations of towns and buildings, 160 watercourses, sixty animals, and forty-five human beings and fabulous creatures in the map. While earlier images of the world were limited to small representations in manuscripts, world maps of such monumental size were first produced in the later Middle Ages. Their development was possibly connected to a move to embrace the world by the clerical elite in the later Middle Ages. The world in all its manifestations became, for groups such as the Augustinian canons of St. Victor in Paris, the Victorines, an important reference point for their teaching as an instructive tool for those seeking wisdom and God.21 Their school, which played an important role in the development of the University of Paris, had wall-sized images of the world for teaching purposes.22 It was, after all, Hugo of St. Victor (c. 1097–1141) who gave us the plan of a large and complex diagrammatic image of the world in his work De Archa Noe.23 Because the axis of the Ebstorf Map runs east-west, Paradise, situated in the Far East, appears at the very top.24 All fixed points on the map – that is, the center and the cardinal points – are 253

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

points of Christian geography. In the center of the world, Jerusalem appears as an eternal golden city with an image of the resurrected Christ. In a second representation, Christ is positively shown as the Suffering Servant of the world. His large head appears as the Vera Icon at the top toward the east on the edge of the world. His hands and feet, with the stigmata, are to be found to the north, south, and in the east. God reveals himself in the world that he has created but that is also transient and in need of salvation. Only God remains apart from those who approach and behold him and then find their way to Paradise. This is in the east and is reproduced close to his face, but does not show the Blessed but instead the beginning of salvation history from the fall of man. Many elements in this image naturally belong to secular iconography. Directly next to the image of the Resurrected Christ in heavenly Jerusalem in the center of the map is a camel, which is only slightly smaller than the city. It belongs to a whole catalogue of animals worked into the map and closely connected to the accompanying texts in the map. This makes the map a sort of bestiary, popular in the late Middle Ages (see the chapter on animal iconography elsewhere in this volume), which in this case is organized topographically. Additionally, next to the hands of Christ, in the outer regions of the world are the monsters from the remote parts of Africa; in the north there are the Amazons and cannibal people Gog and Magog, whom Alexander the Great was able to confine behind a mountain range. Ancient history is also included in the map with several other representations and Alexander the Great being named. Similarly, the contemporary world is also present in Europe’s urban landscape. This landscape makes Christian Europe look like a continent of cities, and this raises it, in quite a positive way, above the other continents with their monsters.25 In Europe there is almost a complete lack of figurative elements, apart from two lions. One stands on the pinnacle of Rome and represents the supposedly lion-shaped layout of the city. The other reproduces the famous lion statue of Henry the Lion in his castle at Brunswick. Brunswick was one of the two great cities of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the site of the Ebstorf monastery, from which the map comes. Apart from Christological elements, the map also includes many other subjects that can be subsumed under the heading of secular iconography, in particular animal iconography, or otherness, or political iconography (referring to the Brunswick Lion), scientific iconography, flowers and plants, and monster iconography, as well as representations from ancient history, such as Alexander the Great, and the Garden of the Hesperides from mythology. Whether the Ebstorf map was intended for school use or as a sort of meditation image has to remain an unanswered question. A prayer on the Vera Icon, the head of Christ at the top end of map, promises an indulgence. The extensive amount of information on the worldly objects is really unnecessary for religious purposes. So the classification of the map as purely sacred or purely secular is meaningless. It fulfills its potential and function only when the two worlds are combined and it is seen as neither. It is constructive to consider the reception of the map. In the diversity of the represented world, the viewer can get lost if he wanders in a curious fashion. Curiosity of this kind was called “curiositas” in the Middle Ages and considered to be a vice.26 Fixed points in the map that hold the viewer’s gaze are found only in the emphasized representation of Christ. The message of the map seems therefore to be that only Christ can provide any meaning to the world in all its diversity and as such also in secular matters. But the world as an image of Christ is also a legitimate object of interest for every Christian. Man’s relationship to the world in the Middle Ages, even in the religious sphere, was not a fixed concept. It stretches from acceptance as a sort of book that can lead man to God as its creator to the denial of it in the most complete form of escapism possible. But the world is always finite, deficient, in need of salvation, and focused on God. This is illustrated by the second biggest map of the Middle Ages in Hereford.27 It is sealed with the word “mors” (death) and, 254

Secular iconography

with a representation of the Last Judgment on its upper edge, it is directed even more clearly at transitory qualities and transience than the Ebstorf Map. It is significant that Christological elements are separated from secular ones by formal marking, size, and position at the outstanding points in the Ebstorf Map. This subordinates the secular to the sacred. A similar, even hierarchical, and formal designation can also be observed with the beginnings of secular wall painting. The earliest cycle of secular wall painting – the Iwein cycle, in Burg Rodenegg near Brixen in South Tyrol – may pave the way for the first independent lay culture of the Middle Ages, that of court chivalry.28 This culture dealt in poetry and imagery, and discussed how one could equally serve God and the world. The Rodenegg wall paintings show how the Arthurian knight Iwein finally wins a wife, land, and dominion after successful adventures in the forest and knightly battles at the end of many dangers and unexpected perils. If structural (frame and white background) and iconographical parallels to the Iwein cycle are looked for in contemporary wall painting, direct connections are to be found to the almost contemporary apse painting of the church of St. Jakob in Kastelaz, also in South Tyrol.29 Christ as Majestas Domini between Mary and John is to be found in the apse, above the twelve apostles, who stand under arcades. The plinth area of the apse at the bottom has numerous fabulous creatures from land and sea on either side of the altar, which is set against a white background. That the motifs are set against a white background in Rodenegg connects these wall paintings with the plinth area at Kastelaz, which forms the lowest point in apse hierarchy in Kastelaz and has fabulous creatures, also on a white background. The walls above the apse are emphasized by a colored background following their importance as the place of the saints and God. The program at Rodenegg has all the adventures of the forest shown in such a way that it can be viewed as worldly and deficient.30 The formal means like the white background are similarly reduced in the case of the Bayeux Tapestry, whose depiction of the events before and after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 stands today at the beginning of large-scale medieval narratives of contemporary history.31 In the panegyric written by Baudri de Bourgueil in honor of Adele de Blois, daughter of William I of England and victor of 1066, the poet sketches out in detail an ideal chamber for Adele.32 The conquest of England is incorporated in a world history on wall hangings around Adele’s alcove. This history begins with the Creation and proceeds via the Flood and Hebrew and Greek history to the conquest of England behind the alcove. The marble floor also has a map of the world and the ceiling is a sky of stars, planets, and signs of the zodiac. In the alcove itself Baudri arranges personifications of knowledge with representations of philosophy, medicine, and the liberal arts. The mid-twelfth-century floor of the main apse of Hildesheim Cathedral shows that the poet’s compositions are not entirely fictitious. The four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues (1 Cor 13:13) as well as the stages of life are all arranged around a central circle, showing the world and the place of man in it.33 Time, with its three faces looking at the past, present, and future, is shown at the crown of the apse. It is flanked immediately by blossoming life in the form of a beautiful young woman and death, who is emaciated and bald. The four elements – fire, air, earth, and water – are on the left and right sides. Christ’s bloodless sacrificial death can be seen on the high altar, bringing the prospect of salvation to mankind and victoriously overcoming death and breaking through the world banished to the floor with its cycles of life and death. In accordance with the pictorial setting of the apse, the Hildesheim representation of the world has a salvific perspective which Adele’s room does not, but it works with a similar conventional stock of knowledge. The earliest preserved example of secular wall painting so far discovered is in Gamburg in Taubertal, which has a cycle made before 1219 on Barbarossa’s third Crusade. Like the Bayeux Tapestry, it depicts contemporary history, while older wall paintings, such as those in the royal palaces, are known only from references.34 A contemporary example is to be found in the book 255

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

illumination of Petrus de Ebulos’s Liber ad honorem Augusti of 1194–1197.35 It shows the commonly found wheel of fortune, the turning of which illustrates the fate of the ruling elite and their constant rise and fall.36 To escape this fate, the personifications of the virtues, especially the cardinal virtues, are mobilized to enable the virtuous to break out of this fatal cycle.37 The representations of the virtues in images like the one on the floor in Hildesheim change from the religious sphere to the secular world. New subjects such as the Iwein material can be formally programmed into the hierarchies of their genre of wall painting as secular, as the comparison with Kastelaz shows. They can also in their own way highlight positive values in secular iconography independently of the use of personifications. This is clear from the early Iwein cycle (Fig. 19.2a) in Hessenhof in Schmalkalden in southern Thuringia.38 The cycle was created in the second quarter of the thirteenth century and, as at Rodenegg, it depicts Iwein winning a wife, land, and dominion. In this case, the wall paintings are found in bands across barrel vaulting, with the wedding and wedding feast strongly emphasized by their positions at the crown of the vault or in a large area on the entrance wall directly underneath the vault.39 Any visitors to the house, which was administered as the official seat of the Landgrave of Thuringia, first encountered the painted figure of a man with a welcoming drink in a door opening to their right (Fig. 19.2b). By pictorially greeting each visitor he was a symbol of the hospitality of Hessenhof and its residents. If the visitor turned around in the room to look at Iwein’s wedding banquet on the entrance wall, he immediately found more servants to the side of the married couple and their guests, serving them with food and drink, immediately above the welcoming man. In this way the visitor to Hessenhof is integrated into the act represented in the wall paintings and at the same time the hospitality of Hessenhof is associated in a distinctive way with the wedding feast of Iwein. It was only a house so well appointed that was able to provide hospitality of the level shown in these scenes. For this, the host had to have the necessary ability and knowledge and to be the undisputed master of the house, with respect to wife, children, and servants. Accordingly, the works displayed in houses such as this often show the order of the world and human life, the relationship between the sexes, generations, and classes. Persons of authority who were masters of their own house were intimately related to such works in their house. This is found especially in wall paintings and tapestries, but also on oven tiles and wooden ceilings. These conventional objects are often treated in catalogue form,40 but can also be expressed in other guises, such as illustrated proverbs.41 To be able to use these sources of knowledge and reproduce them as images was important in determining the status of the secular and the sacred elites in their environment. This can be seen in the calendars in manuscripts such as psalters and books of hours, as well as in large wall paintings where the images for each month and zodiac signs are organized as monthly cycles. Typical of this is the Torre Aquila (Eagle Tower) of the bishop’s residence in Trento, which dates to around 1400.42 The wall paintings represent knowledge of the yearly seasonal cycle as well as the time and types of human activity and at the same time reflect the ownership and pride of the patron. As in the slightly later and better-known calendar miniatures of the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry, the representations of the bishop’s own castles as well as his residence in the city of Trento serve the same purpose.43 The Torre Aquila was commissioned by an ecclesiastical prelate, the prince bishop of Trento, George of Lichtenstein, but the Très Riches Heures is the prayer book of a bibliophile member of the French royal family, Jean Duc de Berry; these two examples show, especially in the case of the latter, how these pictures negotiate between the secular and sacred spheres. Both examples contrast the life of simple country people with that of the aristocracy and the court. The courtly pleasures of the aristocracy, especially the hunt as an aristocratic privilege, had a pictorial tradition that goes back to ancient times.44 The hunting mosaics in twelfth-century garden palaces of oriental design in 256

Figure 19.2 Schmalkalden, Hessenhof: (a) view of the Iwein Rooms, north, (b) welcoming man at the entrance, both drawings by P. Weber, “Die Iweinbilder aus dem 13. Jahrhundert im Hessenhofe in Schmalkalden,” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst 12 1900–1901, 73–84, 113–20.

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

the South Italian–Sicilian Norman kingdom provided a stimulus for the depiction of these pursuits in monumental wall paintings of the later Middle Ages.45 In addition to the hunt, in which women also participated in Trento (falconry), the tournament before women and the meeting of the sexes in dance are also represented. The same combination of courtly activities and pleasures of combat, hunting, and love is described as typically Roman in the late medieval Lucretia novella of the imperial chronicle.46 Tournaments, hunting, and the common pleasures of the sexes are also found in the decoration of the so-called Tournament Hall in Rodenegg Castle near Bozen in South Tyrol.47 Instead of the snowball fight depicted in front of the Trento castle for January, the ball game is shown in Rodenegg. The use of shared patterns shows how much they have in common. They might well come from pattern books, which from the middle of the fourteenth century were clearly aimed at secular iconography.48 The Chamber of Knightly Games in the so-called West Hall, in the same complex in Runkelstein, shows the greeting of guests on the meadow in front of the castle and the game known as quintaine. This attractive tournament was played between the sexes for contact between men and women.49 These motifs are brought together with comparable ones in the famous contemporary so-called Games Tapestry (“Spieleteppich”) in the garden of Frau Minne in Nuremberg.50 The game as a meeting point for the sexes, whether it is chess or some other board game, is a common theme in secular iconography.51 The same is true of the famous Manesse Codex, the largest collection of popular lovesongs, which was gradually illuminated with author portraits in Zurich from 1300 to about 1340.52 In addition to numerous miniatures on the theme of the lovesongs there are many representations showing fighting, jousting, and hunting. If the rural population in the wall paintings of the Torre Aquila and their typical seasonal work in the field, garden, and vineyard are examined it becomes clear that these wall paintings are in line with the large collection of pictures showing human activities, human nourishment, and health that were created at the same time in the manuscripts of the Tacuinum Sanitatis in Northern Italy.53 A pleasure and joy are shown in all facets of everyday life in the catalogue-like spread of these pictures, which are conventional stocks of knowledge, which in Trento is due to the ruler. This concept of the good regime, which is found in the communes of Italy, was to lead as early as the late 1330s to the first differentiated representation of town and country in the wall painting of the “buon governo” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.54 A court counterpart to this image of human coexistence is in the Brussels Codex of the so-called Leges Palatinae, the administrative manual for the Mallorca Court. It is dominated by the activities of people of different classes, ages, and sexes and is almost contemporary with the Siena paintings.55 There are also images from the world of the court and the town hall images, such as the Nine Worthies, or the best rulers from classical antiquity, Judaism, and Christianity. Typical of these is a sculpture group that lines the walls of the Hansasaal in the town hall in Cologne, which was created about 1330.56 In Siena, the representation of the bad regime serves as the counter image to the ideal state of “buon governo.” Counter images are common in secular iconography. In the case of Ambrogio Lorenzetti their starting point is the representation of virtues and vices in the plinth area of Giotto’s decoration of the Arena Chapel.57 Counter images serve to demarcate as well as to better illustrate what is meant. At the same time they have a special visual value in their excess and intensification, which can stretch to representations along the lines of the upside-down world, examples of which will be shown later. Sometimes they offer rare glimpses into the humor of the time. Country life and its activities served as a counter image to life, appearance, and behavior among the aristocracy and at court. This is the case with the peasants who set themselves against the love poet Neidhart, who had become well-known as an enemy of the peasants and who in the 258

Secular iconography

Manesse Codex seems to be under threat from foppishly dressed peasants with distorted faces.58 In secular wall painting from the Manesse period it is possible to see the coarse and ungainly circle dance of the peasants around the first spring violet that they stole from Neidhart and his courtly society.59 The peasants with large swords, shaggy beards, and drinking vessels on their heads sometimes appear at this dance, and are often compared and contrasted with court society. This subject lives on in the cycles of peasant festivals and dances, which could also include the scatological.60 Stronger, didactic, and negative examples are the wall and façade paintings and hangings that depict the story of the Prodigal Son or the wastrel who went through his fortune in brothels. The subject became common in secular wall painting from the fourteenth century. Typical are those in Haus Fischergrube 20 in Lübeck, which date to 1330–1350.61 The subject is related to the drinking and dancing miniatures that can be seen as early as 1230 in the manuscript of the Carmina Burana.62 In particular, it is associated with the large early thirteenth-century representations of the parable that can be seen in the stained glass of French cathedrals.63 There is an emphasis on the life of the wastrel in the Prodigal Son cycle and it is depicted in detail. In this way, this subject is freed from the parable and establishes a connection with related subjects. There are scenes with anonymous wastrels, gambling away their shirts in Brandis Castle in Maienfeld in Switzerland (Fig. 19.3). These are connected to the cycle of Samson, the Biblical hero who

Figure 19.3 Maienfeld, Burg Brandis, Upper Tower, Bar Fight, first third of the fourteenth century, J. R. Rahn, “Zwei weltliche Bilderfolgen aus dem 14. Jahrhundert und 15. Jahrhundert,” Kunstdenkmäler der Schweiz. Mitteilungen der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Erhaltung historischer Denkmale, 2 (1902), 1–14.

259

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

came to grief as a result of his infatuation with Delilah.64 The decoration of a room in the town hall of San Gimignano from around 1300 has a representation of a young man being parted from his inheritance. Found in what may have been a kind of living room of the podestà of the city, it is directly above the scene of Aristotle being led astray by Phyllis, the serving girl of the wife of his pupil Alexander, and then ridden like a horse.65 The knowledge that even the strongest, most powerful, richest, and cleverest were weak with beautiful women becomes conventional wisdom in the catalogue of lovesick fools. One such catalogue is a poem illustrated with lovesick fools from Adam to Arthur and Parzival, possibly to serve conversational purposes, which was also part of the decoration of the house in Constance known as “Zur Kunkel” from the Manesse period.66 The so-called Malterer Tapestry from around 1310–1330 is a catalogue of lovesick fools from Samson and Aristotle via Virgil in the Basket to Iwein.67 Here too, as with the Prodigal Son and the wastrel, it is wisdom about human nature and its weaknesses that is displayed in the images. It is not surprising that cycles of this sort, like the one in Constance and the one from the old rectory in Ostermiething from 1470–80 (on the vault wall of the room), are found in clerical residences.68 The first Cockaigne in art history is found in Ostermiething (Fig. 19.4). It is accompanied by other scenes, such as the lion serving the donkey and the huckster robbed by the ape, which is

Figure 19.4 Ostermiething, Old Rectory, Cockaigne, wall painting around 1470/80. Image courtesy of Harald Wolter von dem Knesebeck.

260

Secular iconography

also to be found in expensive enamel works, such as on the Beaker with Apes in New York69 – examples of the didactic use of the world turned upside-down. As the war between cats and mice, which ultimately goes back to ancient models, became widespread in fifteenth-century printing,70 they in turn offer conventional wisdom about the order of the world by being able to negate it. The diffusion of the theme of the fool from the later Middle Ages, as promoted by humanist writers such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, added to this.71 The prodigal son, lovesick fool, and wastrel, world turned upside-down, and imagery of the fool mark the one who owned or commissioned these pictures. They reveal the person to be someone who knows about divinely willed order in the world, hierarchies between the sexes and the generations, and the dangers of the world, but who can handle this wisdom playfully and humorously in any conversation that would develop around such pictures and their rooms.72 Indeed such conversations may have been deliberately stimulated by these cycles or what remains of them. This can be guessed at if the typical life span of a man is arranged as going from the cradle to the grave, and is combined with cycles of people who can be named. This can be seen in the parable of the Prodigal Son from a tapestry in Marburg or in the thin marginal stripe as well as the frieze-like story of Parzival from a lost wall painting in a house in Lubeck.73 In the cycle a normal life span time is understood as the time of a human life in general. In contrast, the personal history of literary figures shows clear breaks. This contrast between a normal life and the unusual life of literary figure might have led to a productive tension that was supposed to be resolved in the conversation about this work of art. To conclude this short survey of subjects in secular iconography, reference has to be made to the Wild Men, characterized by their total body hair, who are found on numerous late medieval tapestries. They represent a counterworld to that of humans, but one that can have positive connotations.74 This shows them in their idyllic life, in a friendly countryside setting, jousting and storming the castle of love, enjoying a banquet with princesses who have been captured by them but who appear to be quite happy nevertheless. They hunt and enjoy the well-known pleasures of the court, which would in fact have been the privilege of the aristocracy. The well-known Bal des Ardents shows that in egregious sections of the French court, the king himself dressed as a Wild Man, and wanted to perform a dance. The Wild Men performed a costume dance at court, which may have been similar to the Neidhart dances that were performed at festivals by dancers dressed as peasants.75 It is possible only to speculate at the importance such living images had for secular iconography. In addition to the great illustrations of the parable of the Prodigal Son in the churches and related images of the wastrel’s life in secular iconography, court romances were being illustrated almost contemporaneously. This is a subject that will pay dividends when further examined in the development of secular narrative. In addition to the early Iwein cycles, unusual images, such as Erek, the Arthurian knight, on two diadems which were remodeled into a crown, may refer directly to festival culture.76 The original connection of the three Tristan tapestries to the women’s convent of Wienhausen is disputed;77 however, the Malterer tapestry with its lovesick fools was also made for a women’s convent. The already mentioned Burg Runkelstein was completely decorated around 1400, and will be briefly mentioned once again in this concluding section. The range of motifs and subjects found there includes almost the entire spectrum of secular iconography.78 The East Hall had a Neidhart dance, while courtly pleasures and various coats of arms can be found in the West Hall.79 Conventional wisdom is depicted in the Kaiserreihe (Emperor Series) and the Liberal Artes led by Philosophia that are found in the courtyard or the arcaded hall of the summer house. The summer house also had many other subjects, including the Nine Worthies (balcony) as well as Tristan, Wigalois, and Garel. Lancelot is another Arthurian knight found in the contemporary wall paintings of Frugarolo at Alessandria in Northern Italy.80 If properties as prominent as Burg Runkelstein make us aware of secular iconography as an outstanding part of medieval imagery, 261

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

in the same way as the well-known Bayeux Tapestry or the Ape Beaker in New York, we also have to realize that many secular objects and themes still remain unknown. This is true not only of works such as the Frugarolo wall paintings or those in Gamburg in Taubertal but also of those in historic buildings, such as the Romanesque apartment in the fortress of Salzburg, where one of the earliest pieces of secular medieval wall painting is to be found and probably shows the consecration of the archbishop of Salzburg by the emperor Friedrich II. Despite it being clearly visible and visited by thousands on an annual basis, it was decades before it was published.81 To record, reproduce, and research the known materials so that they can be contextualized is an important task. It will be necessary to see why, where, and when certain groups of themes or subjects developed and how they were or were not integrated into their cultural context. Attention will need to be given to the social groups responsible for these subjects and how secular iconography was related to vernacular literature. Issues of reception will need to be studied. The secular arts have historically been seen as minor and my comments on them can also be applied to the secular iconography: Their values are based to a certain extent on their importance in the larger developmental picture, but are also the result of their independent existence from such developments. This has to be seen both as being posited by a discipline such as art history and also as a resistance to the mainstreams of traditional art history in general. This shows what a great potential there is for the thematic research as well as for the advancement of theory in art history.82

Notes 1 The designation “profane iconography,” where “profane” ultimately has ancient roots in the sense of being before or outside the fanum (sacred area), like “profane art” or “arte profana,” is also commonly used. See A. Cutler, “Sacred and Profane: The Locus of the Political in Middle Byzantine Art,” in Arte profana e arte sacra a Bisanzio, ed. A. Iacobini and E. Zanini (Rome, 1995), 315–38, especially 317. 2 Compare the sensational discovery of profane wall paintings for Jewish clients from the first half of the fourteenth century in Haus Brunngasse 8, Zurich; see R. Böhmer, “Bogenschütze, Bauerntanz und Falkenjagd. Zur Ikonographie der Wandmalereien im Haus ‘Zum Brunnenhof in Zürich,” in Literatur und Wandmalerei I. Erscheinungsformen höfischer Kultur und ihre Träger im Mittelalter (Freiburger Colloquium 1998), ed. E.C. Lutz, J. Thali, and R. Wetzel (Tübingen, 2002), 329–64; D. Epelbaum, “Zu den Wandmalereien im Haus ‘Zum Brunnenhof,’ Zürich. Ein Beispiel jüdischer Kunst aus dem 14. Jahrhundert im Spannungsfeld zwischen Adaption und Abgrenzung,” Judaica 58 (2002), 261–80. 3 H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Secular Arts: Their Order and Importance,” From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval Art History, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2012), 66–81. 4 For an early comprehensive overview see R. von Marle, Iconographie de l’art profane au moyen âge et à la Renaissance et la décoration des demeures, vols. 1–2 (The Hague, 1931–32), of which two other volumes were planned. For the ancient subjects used in the Middle Ages, largely excluded in this chapter, see the useful work of J.D. Reid, The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300–1990s, vols. 1–2 (New York/Oxford, 1993); Mythenrezeption (Der Neue Pauly, Supplement, vol. 5), ed. M. Moog-Grünwald (Stuttgart/Weimar, 2008). 5 D.W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, 1962). 6 M. Curschmann, “Wort-Schrift-Bild. Zum Verhältnis vom volkssprachlichem Schrifttum und bildender Kunst vom 12. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert,” in Mittelalter und frühe Neuzeit: Übergänge, Umbrüche und Neuansätze, ed. W. Haug (Fortuna vitrea, vol. 16) (Tübingen, 1999), 378–470. 7 See A. Martindale, Painting the Palace: Studies in the History of Medieval Secular Painting (London, 1995); A.R. Buri and M. Stucky-Schürer, “Zahm und wild”: Basler und Straßburger Bildteppiche des 15. Jahrhunderts (Mainz, 1990); L. Weigelt, “The Art of Tapestry: Neither Minor nor Decorative,” in From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval History, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2012), 103–21. 8 For literature see M. Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (Stroud, 2002), passim. On the misericords see W. Muller, “The Art of the Misericord: Neglected and Important,” in From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval History, ed. by C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2012), 271–84, and The Elaine C. Block Database

262

Secular iconography

9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

19 20

21

22 23 24 25

26 27 28

of Medieval Misericords, which has been catalogued and digitized by the Index of Christian Art in Princeton University; see http://ica.princeton.edu/misericordia/index.php. On the pilgrim badges, see J. Koldeweij, “Notes on the Historiography and Iconography of Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges,” in From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval History, ed. by C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2012), 194–216. On biscuit molds, for example, see Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (as in note 8), 1–12. See D. Blume, “Wissenschaft und Bilder: Vermittlung antiken Wissens im Frühmittelalter,” in Karolingische und ottonische Kunst (Geschichte der bildenden Kunst in Deutschland, vol. 1, ed. B. Reudenbach (Munich, 2009), 519–35. Only the most general reference can be made to the large collection of manuscripts dealing with diverse areas of secular knowledge that can be treated individually in this chapter. L.M.C. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (California Studies in the History of Art, 4) (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1966). M. Camille, Images on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London, 1992). Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (as in note 8). Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (as in note 8), Ch. VII–IX, XI, XII. The criteria for classification in secular iconography are often determined by classical antiquity and the Renaissance; see, for example, F. Büttner and A. Gottdang, Einführung in die Ikonographie: Wege zur Deutung von Bildinhalten (Munich, 2006), 123–272, especially 127, where the categories of (1) symbolism, allegory, and personification, (2) mythology, (3) history, and (4) literature are specified. In J.B. Friedman and J.M. Wegmann, Medieval Iconography: A Research Guide (New York/London, 1998), it is the category of the natural world and medieval daily life. J.M. Fritz, Goldschmiedekunst der Gotik in Mitteleuropa (Munich, 1982). A. Walker and A. Luyster, “Introduction: Mapping the Heavens and Treading the Earth: Negotiating Secular and Sacred in Medieval Art,” in Negotiating Secular and Sacred in Medieval Art, ed. A. Walker and A. Luyster (Farnham, 2009), 1–16, especially 8. See Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Secular Arts (as in note 3), 66–81. On the following see Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Secular Arts (as in note 3), 67–69. The map is edited in Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte: Kommentierte Neuausgabe in zwei Bänden, ed. H. Kugler (Berlin, 2007). See also Ein Weltbild vor Columbus: Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, ed. H. Kugler (Weinheim, 1991); J. Wilke, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Veröffentlichungen des Institutes für Historische Landesforschung der Universität Göttingen, vol. 39) (Bielefeld, 2001); H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Neue Formen der Bildung und neue Bildformen im Vorfeld der Ebstorfer Weltkarte in Sachsen,” in Kloster und Bildung im Mittelalter, Ebstorfer Kolloquium 2004 (Studien zur Germania Sacra, vol. 28; Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, vol. 218), ed. N. Kruppa and J. Wilke (Göttingen, 2006), 231–61. The following Internet site is very helpful for a complete facsimile with notes: http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/hyperimage/EbsKart/start.html. C. Meier, “Malerei des Unsichtbaren: Über den Zusammenhang von Erkenntnistheorie und Bildstruktur im Mittelalter,” in Text und Bild, Bild und Text, DFG-Symposion 1988, ed. W. Harms (Stuttgart, 1990), 35–65; Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Neue Formen der Bildung (as in note 20), 239–42. P.G. Dalché, La “Descriptio Mappe Mundi” de Hugues de Saint-Victor, Texte inédit avec introduction et commentaire (Paris, 1988), 95–101, 133. Hugonis de Sancto Victore, De Archa Noe Libellus de formatione Arche 1–2, ed. P. Siccard (CCCM 176) (Turnhout, 2001), especially 2, Figura XI on “De Archa Noe,” XI, 4–118. On the following see Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Neue Formen der Bildung (as in note 20); Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Secular Arts (as in note 3), 67–69. See H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Der Kontinent der Städte und der Wege: Europa und seine Stellung in Welt und Weltgeschichte auf der Ebstorfer Weltkarte,” in Gründungsmythen Europas im Mittelalter, ed. M. Bernsen, M. Becher, and E. Brüggen (Gründungsmythen Europas in Literatur, Kunst und Musik, vol. 6) (Göttingen, 2013), 105–32. See Curiositas: Welterfahrung und ästhetische Neugierde in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. K. Krüger (Göttingen, 2002). P.D.A. Harvey, The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and Their Context (London, 2006). See the essay by Diarmuid Scully elsewhere in this volume. On Rodenegg see J.A. Rushing, Jr., Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts (Philadelphia, 1995), 30–90; V. Schupp and H. Szklenar, Ywain auf Schloß Rodenegg: Eine Bildergeschichte nach dem “Iwein” Hartmanns von Aue (Sigmaringen, 1996); Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Secular Arts (as in note 3), 76–81. On the evaluation from a German studies perspective, see, for example, M. Curschmann, “Wort-Schrift-Bild” (as in note 6), 378–470, especially 402ff. On the culture of court chivalry, see, for example, J. Bumke,

263

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck

29 30

31 32

33 34

35

36

37

38

39

40 41 42

43

Mäzene im Mittelalter: Die Gönner und Auftraggeber der höfischen Literatur in Deutschland 1150–1300 (Munich, 1979). On the wall paintings in Kastelaz, see U. Düriegl, Die Fabelwesen von St. Jakob in Kastelaz bei Tramin: Romanische Bilderwelt antiken und vorantiken Ursprungs (Vienna/Cologne/Weimar, 2003). Düriegl, Die Fabelwesen (as in note 29), 111, interprets the bestiary in Kastelaz as part of the world in need of salvation that also includes evil. A.M. Bonnet, Rodenegg und Schmalkalden: Untersuchungen zur Illustration einer ritterlich-höfischen Erzählung und zur Entstehung profaner Epenillustration in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 13. Jahrhunderts (tuduv-Studien, Reihe Kunstgeschichte, vol. 22) (Munich, 1986), 63, refers to the associations of Rodenegg with the plinth areas of the decoration of the sacred area and cites the wall paintings in the crypt of the cathedral at Aquileia. On the Bayeux Tapestry see J.F. Szabo and N.E. Kuefler, The Bayeux Tapestry: A Critically Annotated Bibliography (Lanham, 2015). The edition is in Baldicus Burgulianus, Carmina, ed. K. Hilbert (Editiones Heidelbergenses, vol. 19) (Heidelberg, 1979), Nr. 134. On the reconstruction of the room see C. Meckseper, “Wandmalerei im funktionalen Zusammenhang ihres architektonisch-räumlichen Orts,” in Literatur und Wandmalerei I. Erscheinungsformen höfischer Kultur und ihre Träger im Mittelalter (Freiburger Colloquium 1998), ed. E.C. Lutz, J. Thali, and R. Wetzel (Tübingen, 2002), 255–81, especially 260f., fig. 2. See T. Weigel, Schmuckfußböden des 12. Jahrhunderts aus inkrustiertem Estrichgips (Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte, vol. 67) (St. Petersberg, 2009), 79–107. Meckseper, Wandmalerei im funktionalen Zusammenhang (as in note 32), 259–60. On the wall paintings of Gamburg see H. Fabritius, “Die mittelalterlichen Wandmalereien der Gamburg,” in Burgen und Schlösser in Thüringen und seinen Nachbarländern (Munich/Berlin, 2000), ed. G. U. Groβmann, and H. H. Háffner 253–64, with partially outdated reconstructions before the clearance of the whole area; Peter Rückert, “Adelige Herrschaft und Repräsentation im Hohen Mittelalter: Literatur und Architektur im Umfeld der Grafen von Wertheim und der Herren von Gamburg,” in Wirtschaft – Gesellschaft – Mentalitäten im Mittelalter. Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Rolf Sprandel (Beiträge zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, vol. 107), ed. H.-P. Baum, R. Leng, and J. Schneider (Stuttgart, 2006), 289–306, especially 301–06. Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex 120 II; see Petrus de Ebulo, Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis, Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern: Eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, Edition und Beiträge, ed. T. Kölzer and M. Stähli, Textrevision und Übersetzung von Gereon Becht-Jördens (Sigmaringen, 1994). Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex 120 II, fol. 146r–147r; see Kölzer/Stähli, Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis (as in note 35), 238–45. In general on Fortuna see, for example, Fortuna, ed. W. Haug and B. Wachinger (Fortuna Vitrea, vol. 15) (Tübingen, 1995). See D. Blume, “Planetengötter und ein christlicher Friedensbringer als Legitimation eines Machtwechsels: Die Ausmalung der Rocca di Angera,” in Europäische Kunst um 1300, Akten des XXV. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte, Vienna 1983, vol. 6 (Vienna, 1986), 175–85, pl. 112–22. On Schmalkalden see Rushing, “Images of Adventure” (as in note 28), 91–132; R. Möller, “Untersuchungen an den Wandmalereien des Iwein-Epos Hartmanns von Aue im Hessenhof in Schmalkalden,” in Sachsen und Anhalt, Jahrbuch der historischen Kommission für Sachsen-Anhalt 19 (Festschrift für Ernst Schubert) (Weimar, 1997), 389–453. On this and the following see H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Die Bedeutung des Themenkreises ‘Haus’ in der profanen Wandmalerei des Spätmittelalters für die Genese der Genremalerei,” in Peiraikos‘ Erben: Die Genese der Genremalerei bis 1550, ed. B.U. Münch and J. Müller with the collaboration of E. Oßwald (Trierer Beiträge in den historischen Kulturwissenschaften, 14) (Wiesbaden, 2015), 267–95, colored plates 17–21. See in general Literatur und Wandmalerei II. Konventionalität und Konversation (Burgdorfer Colloquium 2001), ed. E.C. Lutz, J. Thali, and R. Wetzel (Tübingen, 2005). See Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (as in note 8), 121–43. E. Castelnuovo, I Mesi di Trento: Gli affreschi di torre Aquila e il gotico internazionale (Trento, 1986); D.E. Booton, Pictorial Seasons: A Cultural Study of the Cycle of Calendar Paintings in the Torre dell’Aquila, Phil. diss., New York University (1994); Le vie del Gotico: Il Trentino fra Trecento e Quattrocento, ed. L. Dal Prà, E. Chini, and M.B. Ottaviani (Beni Artistici e Storici del Trentino, Quaderni, 8) (Trento, 2002), Kat.-Nr. 21, 600–09 (Francesca de Gramatica). Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms. 65; see J. Longnon, Les très riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Musée Condé, Chantilly (London, 1969); M. Müller, “Das irdische Territorium als Abbild eines himmlischen: Überlegungen in den Monatsbildern in den Très Riches Heures des Herzogs von Berry,” in Bildnis, Fürst und Territorium, rev. A. Beyer (Rudolstädter Forschungen zur Residenzkultur, 2) (Munich/Berlin, 2000), 11–29.

264

Secular iconography 44 H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Aspekte der höfischen Jagd und ihrer Kritik in Bildzeugnissen des Hochmittelalters”, in Jagd und höfische Kultur im Mittelalter, Festschrift für J. Fleckenstein zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. W. Rösener (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, vol. 135) (Göttingen, 1997), 493–572; H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Bildliche Darstellungen der Jagd zwischen Antike und Mittelalter als Teil der Erinnerungskultur und Repräsentation von Eliten,” in Die Jagd der Eliten in der Erinnerungskultur von der Antike bis in die Frühe Neuzeit, ed. W. Martini (Formen der Erinnerung, vol. 3) (Göttingen, 2000), 39–78. 45 H.-R. Meier, Die normannischen Königspaläste in Palermo: Studien zur hochmittelalterlichen Residenzbaukunst (Manuskripte zur Kunstwissenschaft in der Wernerschen Verlagsgesellschaft) (Worms, 1994). 46 Die Kaiserchronik eines Regensburger Geistlichen, ed. E. Schröder (MGH Deutsche Chroniken, I, 1), 1892, v. 4415ff.; see also http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/12Jh/Kaiserchronik/ kai_ch00.html and Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Aspekte der höfischen Jagd und ihrer Kritik (as in note 44), 500. 47 Schloß Runkelstein: Die Bilderburg, exhibition cat. (Bozen, 2000), especially the chapter by K. Domanski and M. Krenn, “Die profanen Wandmalereien im Westpalas,” 51–98, especially 77–90. 48 See R.W. Scheller, Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900–ca. 1470) (Amsterdam, 1995), especially cat. nos. 17–36. 49 Domanski and Krenn, Die profanen Wandmalereien im Westpalas (as in note 47), 54–64. 50 Der Spieleteppich im Kontext profaner Wanddekoration um 1400. Beiträge des internationalen Symposions am 30. und 31. Oktober 2008 im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, ed. J. Zander-Seidel (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Wissenschaftliche Beibände zum Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, vol. 29) (Nuremberg, 2010). 51 An entire room with play scenes of this sort from the period 1364–1373 can be found, for example, in the Castello von Arco in Trentino; see Le vie del Gotico. Il Trentino fra Trecento e Quattrocento, ed. L. Dal Prà, E. Chini, and M.B. Ottaviani (Beni Artistici e Storici del Trentino, Quaderni, 8) (Trento, 2002), Cat. no. 20, 572–99 (Giovanna degli Avancini). 52 Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. Germ. 848; see Die Miniaturen der großen Heidelberger Liederhandschrift, ed. and annotated by I.F. Walther with the collaboration of G. Siebert (Frankfurt, 1988). A complete facsimile is found on the Internet at http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg848. 53 See, for example, L.C. Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis (New York, 1976); C.S. Hoeniger, “The Illuminated ‘Tacuinum sanitatis’ Manuscripts from Northern Italy ca. 1380–1400: Sources, Patrons, and the Creation of a New Pictorial Genre,” in Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550, ed. J.A. Givens, K.M. Reeds, and A. Touwaide (AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art, vol. 5) (Aldershot, 2006), 51–81. 54 Malerei und Stadtkultur in der Dantezeit: Die Argumentation der Bilder, ed. H. Belting and D. Blume (Munich 1989); M. Seidel, Dolce vita: Ambrogio Lorenzettis Porträt des Sieneser Staates (Vorträge der Aeneas-Silvius-Stiftung an der Universität Basel, vol. 33) (Basel, 1999); J. Poeschke, Wandmalerei der Giottozeit in Italien, 1280–1400 (Munich, 2003), 290–309. 55 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 9169; see H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Haus und Herrschaft in den ‘Leges Palatinae’ und in anderen Bildzeugnissen des 14. Jahrhunderts,” in Utilidad y decoro: Zeremoniell und symbolische Kommunikation in den “Leges Palatinae” König Jakobs III. von Mallorca (1337) (Trierer Beiträge on den Historischen Kulturwissenschaften, vol. 6), ed. G. Drossbach and G. Kerscher (Wiesbaden, 2013), 119–33. 56 S. Altensleben, “Politische Ethik im späten Mittelalter: Kurfürstenreime, Autoritätensprüche und Stadtregimentslehren im Kölner Rathaus,” in Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 64 (2003), 125–85. 57 On virtues and vices, see in general A. Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art (London, 1939); C. Hourihane, Virtue & Vice: The Personifications in the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, 2000). 58 Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. Germ. 848, fol. 273r; see http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg. de/diglit/cpg848/0541?sid=6aecb315413da9037a0f34e8440e26d7. 59 See Neidhartrezeption in Wort und Bild, ed. G. Blaschitz (Medium Aevum Quotidianum, special issue 10) (Krems, 2000). 60 On this see H.-J. Raupp, Bauernsatiren: Entstehung und Entwicklung des bäuerlichen Genres in der deutschen und niederländischen Kunst, ca. 1470–1570 (Niederzier, 1986). 61 On the Lübeck wall paintings, see B. Schirok, “Die Wandmalereien in der ehemaligen Johannisstr. 18 und in der Fischergrube 20,” in Ausstattungen Lübecker Wohnhäuser: Raumnutzung, Malereien und Bücher im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. M. Eickhölter and R. Hammel-Kiesow (Häuser und Höfe in Lübeck, 4) (Neumünster, 1993), 269–98, especially 288–95; see Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Secular Arts (as in note 3), 270f.

265

Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck 62 On the miniatures of the Carmina Burana, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660, see P. and D. Diemer, “‘Qui pingit florem non pingit floris odorem’: Die Illustration der Carmina Burana (Clm 4660),” Zeitschrift des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte 3 (1987), 43–75. 63 On the Prodigal Son in thirteenth-century stained glass and on the subject in general, see W. Kemp, Sermo Corporeus: The Narratives of Gothic Stained Glass (Cambridge, 1997). 64 Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Die Bedeutung des Themenkreises ‘Haus’” (as in note 39), 272–77. 65 C.J. Campell, The Game of Courting and the Art of the Commune of San Gimignano 1290–1320 (Princeton, 1997). On the widespread representation of Aristotle being ridden, see C. Hermann, Der “Gerittene Aristoteles”: Das Bildmotiv des “Gerittenen Aristoteles” und seine Bedeutung für die Aufrechterhaltung der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung vom Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts bis um 1500 (Pfaffenweiler, 1991). 66 Washington, DC, Library of Congress, Rosenwald Coll. Ms. 4, fol. 7v–8r; see M. Castelberg, “Beschädigte Bilder und Texte: Entstehung, Thematik und Funktion einer spätmittelalterlichen Tafelsammlung,” in Literatur und Wandmalerei II. Konventionalität und Konversation (Burgdorfer Colloquium 2001), ed. E.C. Lutz, J. Thali, and R. Wetzel (Tübingen, 2005), 303–33, especially figs. 42–43. On the wall paintings in the Constance ‘Zur Kunkel’ house, see W. Wunderlich, Weibsbilder al fresco: Kulturgeschichtlicher Hintergrund und literarische Tradition der Wandbilder im Konstanzer Haus “Zur Kunkel” (Constanz, 1996), especially 112–56. 67 Rushing, Images of Adventure (as in note 28), 219–44. 68 On Ostermiething see Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Die Bedeutung des Themenkreises ‘Haus’” (as in note 39), 278–90. 69 Beaker with Apes, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, Inv. no. 52–50; see B. Young, “The Monkeys and the Peddler,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 26 (1968), 441–54; Schatzkammerstücke aus der Herbstzeit des Mittelalters: Das Regensburger Emailkästchen und sein Umkreis, ed. R. Baumstark, exhibition catalogue (Munich, 1992), cat. no 13 (Renate Eikelmann). 70 For example, Gotha, Schloss Friedenstein, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. no. 40, 41 (Old Catalogue no. xyl. II, 201; see Flugblätter der Reformation und des Bauernkrieges: 50 Blätter aus der Sammlung des Schloßmuseums Gotha, ed. H. Meuche; Katalog von Ingeburg Neumeister (Leipzig, 1976), 98, pl. B 32; on this leaf and its use as model in the wall paintings of Schloß Moos in Eppan near Bozen from around 1470 and the subject in general see H. Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Zahm und wild: Thematische Spannungsverhältnisse und ihre (topographische) Organisation: Die Wandmalereien des Jagdzimmers von Schloß Moos in Eppan,” in Lutz, Thali, and Wetzel, Literatur (as in note 66), 479–519, figs. 107–17, colored plates XIV–XV, especially 492–96, figs. 110–11. 71 See, for example, Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (as in note 8), 100–20. 72 On the forms of such a conversation in the Middle Ages, see in particular E.C. Lutz, “Einleitung,” in Literatur, ed. Lutz, Thali, and Wetzel (as in note 66), 1–7. 73 On the Marburg Tapestry see Kemp, “Narratives” (as in note 63), 34–37; on the Lübeck wall painting, see Schirok, Wandmalereien (as in note 61), 269–98. 74 R. Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment and Demonology (Cambridge, 1952); Buri and Stucky-Schürer, Zahm und Wild (as in note 7). 75 See M. Curschmann, “Konventionelles aus dem Freiraum zwischen verbaler und visueller Gestaltung,” in Literatur, ed. Lutz, Thali, and Wetzel (as in note 66), 237–52, especially 237–40, pl. II. 76 J. Mühlemann, Artus in Gold: Der Erek-Zyklus auf dem Krakauer Kronenkreuz (Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte, vol. 104) (Petersberg, 2013). 77 D. Fouquet, Wort und Bild in der mittelalterlichen Tristantradition: Der älteste Tristanteppich von Kloster Wienhausen und die textile Tristanüberlieferung des Mittelalters (Philologische Studien und Quellen, vol. 62) (Berlin, 1971); S. Romeyke, “Pactum pacis – Der Tristan im Kloster Wienhausen”, in Frauen-Kloster-Kunst: Neue Forschungen zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters. Beiträge zum Internationalen Kolloquium vom 13. bis 16. Mai 2005 anlässlich der Ausstellung “Krone und Schleier,” ed. J.F. Hamburger, C. Jaeggi, S. Marti, H. Roeckelein (Turnhout, 2007), 255–64. 78 Schloß Runkelstein: Die Bilderburg, Exhibition Catalogue (Bozen, 2000). 79 On coats of arms and profane wall painting in general see H.-R. Meier and S. Sommerer, “Von der kollektiven Identität zur individuellen Ahnenprobe: Heraldik in der spätmittelalterlichen Profanraumdekoration,” in Paroles de murs: peinture murale, littérature et histoire au Moyen Âgprechende Wände, ed. E.C. Lutz (Grenoble, 2007), 167–82. 80 Le Stanze di Artù: Gli affreschi di Frugarolo e l’immaginatio cavalleresco nell’autunno del medioevo, ed. E. Castelnuovo, exhibition catalogue, Alessandria 1999 (Milan, 1999). 81 E. Lanc, “Neue religiöse und profane Monumentalmalerei der Romanik in der Festung Hohensalzburg”, in 12. Österreichischer Kunsthistorikertag,” Im Netz(werk): Kunst-Kunstgeschichte-Politik, Salzburg 2003 (Vienna, 2004), 116–23. 82 See Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, Secular Arts (as in note 3), 81.

266

20 EROTIC ICONOGRAPHY Madeline H. Caviness

Relating to Eros, the ancient Greek god of love, erotic art takes lovemaking, or an invitation to it, as its central theme; it has to do with sexual arousal, passions, and pleasures, as well as intercourse. Christian love or Caritas was constructed in opposition to this pagan carnality, known as amor in the Middle Ages.1 Erotica and obscaena are among a dwindling number of Latin words that continue to be used in the West into the twenty-first century; like medical terms, their function in modern learned discourse is largely to avoid normal vernacular descriptions of sexual activities and anatomical parts that might seem vulgar, embarrassing, or even downright obscene.2 Erotica and obscaena are categories that involve subjective judgments, though modern laws pretend that there is a community consensus about what is obscene (and therefore not protected “speech” in the United States).3 Those who disapprove of erotica may consider it pornographic or obscene, and the three are often collapsed together today in popular understanding.4 In antiquity Pornographia was associated with writings on prostitution, and came into vernacular use only in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, after the “invention of pornography” as discourse.5 The association brings to mind the erotic art used to inspire clients in the paintings and statues found in Pompeii, and these were among the first objects to be hidden from public view in the nineteenth century.6 The term pornography itself went out of use in the Middle Ages, and obscene was more likely to be used for words or representations that were judged to be blasphemous or scurrilous than for sexual content. Yet medieval writings and visual representations are redolent with erotic motifs and signs in a broad sense, occasionally with a view to encouraging propagation, more often simply titillating or arousing, and open to homosexual and heterosexual gazes and readings.7 Although “the Middle Ages” was largely constructed in the nineteenth century as a period when pious beliefs and morals dominated European societal attitudes and cultural production, medieval erotica were occasionally noticed, along with grotesques – for instance, by Champfleury.8 Late twentieth-century scholars have been rediscovering the freedoms craftsmen and donors had in representing partial or full nudity, genital sex, erotic embraces, and veiled erotic signs.9 Many new interrogations grew out of gender studies and postcolonialism, and it is difficult now to envisage the polarized criticism that greeted some of Michael Camille’s work, or the special issue of Speculum on Studying Medieval Women in 1993;10 in retrospect it is apparent that the political climate of that moment included the debate in the United States over public exhibition of the erotic photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe.11 Among numerous publications since then, 267

Madeline H. Caviness

papers from a conference held in Bamberg in 2008 debated whether there was an appreciation of erotic nudity in the medieval culture.12 And the diverse collection of articles in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, edited by Sherry Lindquist in 2011, is representative of new and ongoing interrogations of erotic art in the high and late Middle Ages.13 Representations of naked bodies can be sacred or secular, raising the question whether an erotic response would have been equally appropriate to each context. Postmedieval viewers with an appreciation of ancient statuary had expected images of the nude body to be sensual, perhaps even physically beautiful, to be called erotic.14 Adhering to this canon, in 1959 the medievalist Walter Oakeshott illustrated the ivory plaques that were incorporated into the eleventh-century ambo in Aachen as late antique examples of the pagan gods Bacchus and Venus; their inert fleshy bodies and wooden facial expressions probably had little ability to arouse except by association with mythology.15 Yet a Carolingian painting of a chained seminude Andromeda, with drapery that has slipped below her pubis, has the erotic appeal of sensuality and vulnerability (Fig. 20.1).16 The master narrative of art history maintained that the dominant representational codes for Christian art disrupted such pleasures of viewing, more or less from late antiquity to the fifteenth century, except for brief Carolingian and twelfth-century renascences.17 According to that paradigm, form rather than content is iconographic, yet it claimed the pleasure of viewing to be purely aesthetic rather than erotic. From that perspective, Romanesque art is often found

Figure 20.1 Andromeda, Aratus, Phaenomena interpreted by Claudio Germanico, Carolingian Palace School, Aachen, c. 804. Leiden University Library, Ms Voss. Lat. Q79, folio 30 v detail initial C. Photograph licensed by Leiden University Library.

268

Erotic iconography

lacking in aesthetic qualities. Some naked figures may not appear sensual enough to inspire Eros, but there is plenty of evidence in texts that the idea of nudity did, as in a ribald fabliau when a wife’s physical assets are shown off: piez & jambs, cuisses & flans, les hanches & les costez blans, les mains, les bras & les mameles,/ qu’ele avoit serres & beles,/ le blanc col & la blanche gorge. (feet and legs and flanks and thighs/ and haunches and snowy-white sides/ and hands and arms and bosoms, which/ are firm, well-rounded, ripe and rich.)18 Evocative words are cheap but visual codes are harder to come by; a modernist eye often discerned a gap between idea and artistic execution. It has not been contested, however, that by the fourteenth century, painterly techniques and representational codes allowed artists to render the sensual contours and surfaces of the body so that women bathing, or standing with a mirror like Venus, are agreed to be erotic spectacles.19 Yet despite the construction of a Greek canon in which the nude male was prominent, male bodies received little consideration in the modernist period. Occasionally, nude biblical figures measure up to the test of antiquity. A bronze casting of a lion wrestled by a male nude who has been interpreted as the biblical David (or Hercules) is now a freestanding statuette; the surface qualities of the medium and rendering of the wrestler’s buttocks and thigh muscles associate the piece with the “twelfth-century renaissance” and probable production in the south of Italy during the Hohenstaufen period.20 Among twelfth-century clerics with a taste for antiquity, an Englishman called Master Gregory confessed to having gone out of his way three times in Rome to gaze at a statue of Venus: “This statue was dedicated by the Romans to Venus in that guise in which, as it is said in the story, she showed herself naked to Paris . . . it seems rather a living being than a statue, for her nudity seems to blush . . . and I know not what magic charm it held.”21 Yet Gregory reviled the notorious spinario of Rome – the sensual bronze figure of a young man removing a thorn from his foot and thus displaying his genitals to viewers below the plinth – as a ridiculous image (simulachro) of Priapus because his genitals are too large.22 The figure had a medieval afterlife as Marcolf, a lewd rustic character associated with luxuria (lust), who tried to outwit Solomon and exposed himself to him; utterly devoid of eroticism, he is depicted on a voussoir in the south portal of Ourense Cathedral in Galicia dating from about 1200, and crouched beneath Solomon in the north transept of Chartres.23 Other Romanesque sculptors created nudes with sensual forms and surfaces, but their work may not be straightforward iteration of antique models nor can it be relegated to the domains of the obscene or the grotesque: Francisco Prado-Vilar has written on an extraordinary nude inspired by classical models of satyrs in a capital from a funerary chapel in Jaca Cathedral (dated 1105) where it was part of a program devoted to the resurrection, alongside other motifs coming from the bestiary, such as the phoenix and the lion. The classical nude, in all its beauty and somatic appeal, is revived in that case to illustrate the “corporeality” of the resurrection of the dead, and the beauty of the glorified bodies in the fullness of time, reflecting theological arguments which go back to early Christian writers, especially Augustine. The debates over the corporeality of the resurrection gained new importance in twelfth-century exegesis, in the context of the need to fight heresies that negated this aspect and argued for an exclusively spiritual existence after death.24 To an unsophisticated male or female viewer, however, the satyr might appear simply erotic; the burden always falls on the gaze, which risks accusation as lascivious or prurient. The life-size statue of Adam made c. 1250 for the south transept of Notre-Dame in Paris is an evocative example of a male nude from the thirteenth century that seems to place temptation in the way of its audience.25 Whether medieval viewers were able to counter their response to 269

Madeline H. Caviness

this statue with lessons of moral turpitude and sexual sin we cannot know, but multivalence was ubiquitous, and is aptly illustrated in a popular Middle English jingle of about 1320: Erthe took of erthe, erthe wyth wogh; Erthe other erthe to the other drough; Erthe leyde erthe in erthen through; Than hadde erthe of erthe ynough. This has been interpreted by Russell Peck on four levels: earthy copulation to overcome lovesickness, Adam’s union with Eve, which earned them the grave, mankind’s plight, which has some relief in lying in the earth, and Christ as the second Adam (“other erthe”), who redeemed mankind when he was laid in the earth. He aptly demands that we ask not what does it mean but what can it mean, without privileging any one interpretation.26 Yet nudity in art was regarded by some as guilty unless proved innocent. Giles of Rome, in his guide to good governance written in the thirteenth century, stresses that young men must renounce pleasure in women (deliz de fame) by avoiding frivolous words and the sight of ugly or evil things, such as paintings or statues of nude women.27 In order to control the viewer’s response, sculptors often provided dreadful warnings against desire. On the cathedral front in Strasbourg they added toads and slimy creatures behind the back of a personification of Worldliness to demonstrate the moral risks it brings to humankind.28 A remarkable twelfth-century figural corbel at the roofline of the apse of Santa Maria in Uncastillo appears from the front to represent a couple tenderly embracing and kissing, the young woman seated on the man’s knee.29 Yet from the left we can see a wyvern pressing against the girl’s back and inserting its tongue in her ear, transforming her into Eve or Salome (Fig. 20.2a). And behind the man’s back her foot rests lightly on a serpent that gnaws his genitals as though he is already being punished in hell; his clerical tonsure brings him into the contemporary Christian world (Fig. 20.2b). As Georges Bataille perceived, the erotic is never far

Figure 20.2 Old man and young girl kissing: (a) with wyvern to the left, (b) with serpent to the right, corbel at the roofline of the apse, Santa Maria, Uncastillo (Aragon), after 1135. Image © Antonio García Omedes.

270

Erotic iconography

from death, even in ancient art.30 Bathsheba and Susanna give license to represent erotic female nudity; yet David and the Elders sinned by gazing desiringly at their naked bodies.31 Only occasionally before about 1400 does a painter render a delicate porcelain-pale Bathsheba according to the medieval poetic ideal, with small breasts and rosebud lips.32 The nudity of Noah was taboo, and I have posited that the punishment of his voyeuristic son underlies proscriptions of “frontal male nudity” and homo-scopophilia down to the present time.33 Yet he was often represented completely exposed, from the front or the back, as if to offer an occasion to resist temptation. Here again is the conundrum of representing what should not be looked at with a desiring gaze. Yet even the Christian church had to license “the mingling of limbs” for procreation. And a medical treatise by Aldobrandino of Siena, originally written for Beatrice de Savoie in 1256, instructed highborn laypeople in an appropriate “Régime du corps” (regulation of the body); he described sexual intercourse as one of the “principaux cose dou cors sainnement maintenir” (a principal means of maintaining good health) for men, along with humoral balance and diet.34 Illustrating the text might indicate that intent to arouse sexually was a legitimate function of art, but the illustrations inspired by the text are very dull. A pedantic author portrait and scenes from creation denoting the four elements that also make up the human microcosm are a prelude to the healthy balance of these “humors.” Chapter 7 opens with an image of a couple in the missionary position, well-covered by bedclothes, though Camille has drawn attention to the veiled references to labia in the curtains “curling at the edges to form a kind of lip” and in the man’s arm that extends downwards like his hidden member (Fig. 20.3). Similar representations serve to illustrate

Figure 20.3 Intercourse for male health, Aldobrandino of Siena, Régime du corps, chapter 7, North France (probably Lille), c. 1285: London, British Library Ms Sloane 2435, folio 9 v, detail. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

271

Madeline H. Caviness

Aristotle’s De generatione and De animalibus, whereas a treatise on manners just shows a couple next to each other in bed, despite the insistence in these texts on sexual pleasure. Vernacular poetry succeeded in expressing desire and fulfillment where images failed: Anglo-Saxon and Welsh women, Trobairitz and Troubadors, the monks who composed or collected the Carmina Burana, and the German poets whose work was anthologized in the Manesse Codex provide many examples, though seldom of marital sex.35 The Manesse Codex painters avoided overt images of intercourse, instead making pictures that are redolent with possible sexual encounters, such as a bedroom scene with a seminude woman receiving her lover in the presence of her maid, or an elderly poet in a bathtub strewn with rose petals, attended by women who offer to bestow a floral wreath on him, and fan the fire with rhythmically inflated bellows (Fig. 20.4). Such veiled symbols are essential to the erotic aura of these poems; pawing horses evoke unbridled sex, and even a

Figure 20.4 Herr Jakob von Warte bathing, with female attendants, Manesse Codex, Heidelberg University Library Cod.Pal.germ. 848, folio 46 v. Photograph licensed by Heidelberg University Library.

272

Erotic iconography

tamed falcon, that faux con of the fabliaux, denotes a lover; chess is the equivalent of strip gammon, and genital sex is transferred onto the folds in a woman’s garment, bagpipes and trumpets, or a tent pole on a mirror back.36 A man reaching out to touch a woman’s face, with a gesture that has become known as a chin-chuck, is a ubiquitous iconographic code for a sexual advance, as seen in the Bayeux Embroidery and Romanesque sculpture as well as the Manesse Codex. There are a few portable erotic figurines, corresponding visually to the genre of pagan and Christian cult figures, and the hyperphallic ones may have referenced fertility, even while performing some other function. For instance, the famous lost bronze known as “Jack of Hilton” was filled with water and when he “jacked off ” on the hearth, the jet of steam served to fan the fire; the spectacle rewarded peasant farmers paying their rents at a manor in the sixteenth century, as if to license merriment and mollocking.37 Jack relates in a general way to the ancient cult of Priapus, which would have been known in the north in Roman times, but more specifically to a category of Roman figures that ridiculed hypervirility. It reminds us that erotic images can work by invoking bawdy language and jokes. Some lead-tin brooches, once either kept from public view or purified by labeling them as “pilgrim badges,” imitate Roman bell-pulls by representing winged penises; Stahuljak has traced the vicissitudes of a very large collection dredged from the River Seine in the nineteenth century.38 Some of these brooches have equally active female genitalia; one has a small vulva striding on her way, equipped with a pilgrim’s staff and hat.39 Such autonomous body parts have roles in the humorous tales known as fabliaux, where tricksters can detach dicks and cunts, or make them speak.40 A Welsh poet sends his “round black diligent prick throttled by my two balls” to his lady love instead of a letter, and drinking “horns” of blown blue glass preserved in Germany fit this description.41 It is also important to note that medieval use of Latin cunus could mean both anus and vulva, so it seems that what these words had in common was to indicate openings for sexual penetration, regardless of sexual identity (vulva is literally a door); if sexual identity was an issue, other words for the female were available, such as vagina, but this literally means a sheath (as for a sword), thus also associated with penetration rather than birthing. Vulgar words for the penis were frequently avoided, in favor of aggressive metaphors, such as sword, spear, and dagger.42 Such metaphorical uses also permeate medieval visual art, letting the viewer into erotic secrets.43 Erotic images were often for private viewing, as in the margins of manuscripts, or on the carved seats that supported clerical rumps in the choir, but they also occur on monuments that were open to the public.44 Along with freaks and devils, animals and birds, fruit and foliage, their visual chatter seems to call the viewer’s attention away from grandiose sculptural programs informed by biblical history, salvation theology, and the liturgy. Most medieval erotic art is positioned alongside apparently unrelated texts and images, and its impact on the viewer is enhanced by surprise, whether on suddenly noticing entwined naked figures in the margins of a sacred text or figures squatting to exhibit their genitals at a Romanesque roofline, on looking up at sado-erotic scenes in hell as one enters a church portal, or even encountering a disembodied arse on turning a corner on a stair down to a cathedral crypt (Figs. 20.2–20.3).45 Medieval art is interactive, and its shifting physical relationship to the viewer is part of its performativity; small three-dimensional objects like mirrors, combs, caskets, and brooches were meant to be held, carried, or worn, and larger ones invite viewing (and sometimes touching) from a variety of positions. Especially mirrors and combs, associated with women’s sensuality and lust, and often gifts to them from suitors, are redolent with erotic symbolism.46 Several interpretations have been offered for a type of brooch that sets up a vulva as if it were a precious relic; they may resonate with the Virgin genetrix, but I prefer to think they lampoon the late medieval cult of the bleeding wound of Christ.47 Isolated from his body in devotional images, as in a Bonne of Luxembourg’s Psalter and prayer book, a likely resonance of the elliptical 273

Madeline H. Caviness

wound would be with the gaping “sheela-na-gigs” that crouch to display their genitalia, and decorate the rooflines and corbels of an earlier era.48 Especially when the “wound” is carried by three unambiguous erect penises it seems to be a cunt adored by pricks. Would there be any agreement, now or then, that these images are erotic, or might they be merely ribald and scurrilous? Is the Bourges bum erotic or scatological, or both? Do sheela-na-gigs celebrate birthing, invite penetration, or repel? The sight of the female pudenda was taboo to men, and exposed buttocks and genitals have a medieval history of being apotropaic, which adds to the problem of speculating about reception.49 A couple engaged in sex play seems to provide a unique variant on the sheela-na-gig (Fig. 20.5). In this corbel stone from the Church of Kirknewton, now in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, the man and woman hold her labia open with one hand, while with the other hand she reaches for his genitals and he caresses her hair (Fig. 20.6).50 It is in the margins of thirteenth-century prayer books, however, that the most blatant full-body nudes and sexual couplings appear, apparently with slender or no theological justification other than occasional wordplay on the accompanying psalms. The manuscript collection of the Morgan Library in New York happens to house three books that have attracted attention for the blatant sexuality of some figures. “The Psalter-Hours of Ghuiluys de Boisleux” (once known as the Hours of Catherine de Courtenay, Morgan Ms. M. 730) was made in Aras for a female patron, probably just before her marriage in 1246.51 Richard Leson has explicated unique aspects of the program of the pictures: scenes of all three of David’s marriage alliances are included, with his bedding down with Bathsheba, and the long narrative cycles are complemented in the line-endings and margins on almost every page; women defending a castle from attacking knights take control by grasping their spears (phallic emblems), while couples fencing with swords, or naked and entwined so

Figure 20.5 Man and woman engaged in sex play, corbel from the Church in Kirknewton, Edinburgh, National Museum of Scotland, H. KG 33. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane.

274

Erotic iconography

their genitals touch, seem equally matched; the female patron must have felt empowered by the imagery, and the entwined man and woman smile blissfully as though they experience jouissance despite the strain on their arms, and the dog-headed serpents biting them and binding the woman’s breasts52 (Fig. 20.6); they seem in harmony with a joyful ode to Venus in the Carmina Burana that turns Alpha and Omega into orgasmic gasps: Amor tenet omnia et a et o / Amor cecus caret pudicicia, . . . /Amor regit iuvenes in gaudio, . . . / Amor capit virgines./ Venus tenet iuvenes in gaudio, . . ./ sana fit coniunctio. Quam diligo, / tuo fit imperio. / quicquid melius sit, nescio. (Love rules everything: and Aah, and Ooh, blind Love does away with modesty . . . Love rules joyous young men, Love wins over virgins . . . Venus keeps young men joyful, fit to be conjoined, as I love to be, and as you choose. I do not know what could be better.)53

Figure 20.6 Entwined male and female couple, The Psalter-Hours of Ghuiluys de Boisleux, Arras, c. 1245, Morgan Library Ms M730, folio 222 r, detail. Photo licensed by the Morgan Library & Museum.

275

Madeline H. Caviness

A many-storied tower rises above the lovers, with a boy seated cross-legged in an alcove to play a recorder and a handbell, and another standing on the battlements at the very top to sound a long horn. Wind instruments like these were considered phallic, and the clapper moving rhythmically in the bell simulated copulation.54 Two pairs of similarly entwined naked youths without visible genitalia seem to be playful jongleurs or acrobats, a topic that has been explored with good results by Elizabeth Hunt; she notes, for instance, the symbiotic role played by well-dressed patrons and nude jongleurs in order to emphasize rank and ceremony.55 In that way, more than being an erotic presence, the acrobats perform the normal function of the obscene by returning the viewer to orderly societal structures. Two fragments of a book of hours and life of Saint Margaret, part of which is in New York (Morgan Ms. M.754), have received similar attention for their marginal decoration.56 At the top of one folio is a nude couple with a man kneeling between the knees of a woman, a posture that has been interpreted by Paula Gerson and myself as cunnilingus, whereas Camille’s “queer reading” sees a man trying to reenter the womb.57 One interpretive advance made by questioning heterosexual readings has been to bring attention to the prevalence of anal iconography in this book and in the Voeux du paon (Vows of the Peacock, Morgan Ms. G.24). In M. 754, autonomous body parts include legs and buttocks, long-beaked birds peck anuses, and bare bums (including those of apes) have an ink dot surrounded by an aureole like a target, even when they are seen in side view. Dominic Leo has provided a table to quantify the obscenae in the margins of the early fourteenth-century Voeux du paon group of manuscripts, finding that all of them have numerous examples of “anal intrusion”; the aura is humorous and scatological rather than erotic.58 In many later cases, secular male patrons commissioned nudes, documented or preserved; naked or scantily clothed female bath-attendants in Wenceslas IV of Bohemia’s books seem to be a personal emblem, their nonchalant poses far outdoing the maids in the Manesse Codex (Fig. 20.4).59 Yet, as Easton pointed out, the nude bodies that such royal patrons favored, including female saints and Eve, complicate notions of a hetero-normative “male gaze”; and clothed women with the aura of prostitutes can be erotic too.60 The spectacle of the vulnerable chained Andromeda, awaiting either to have her flesh torn by a mythical beast or to be rescued by a heroic man, invokes the issue of the sado-erotic spectacle or “scopophilic sadism” (Fig. 20.1).61 Descriptions and visual images of tortured (and about to be tortured) saints, such as Agatha and Sebastian, and of the body of Christ have a similar trajectory to that of the sexual body in the late Middle Ages.62 And though churchmen tried to proscribe the aesthetic pleasure of nudity, scenes of sinners who had indulged their sexual appetites and suffered condign punishments in hell were readily available to diverse viewing communities.63 The usual suspects have contributed to our understanding of sadistic categories of representation, assisted by recent interest in the body in pain.64 This essay has barely touched on the diversity of erotic visual images made in the Middle Ages. It seems that the most outspoken erotic art was made by and for laypeople in Western Europe after about 1100, or that most scholars have focused on that era. I may not have paid sufficient attention to early Christian and Byzantine art, and that is a lacuna that should be filled. We know little about the decorations in town houses and country manors, but it is possible that the increasing secularization of art and its makers after 1200, as well as the prosperity of the middle class, made domestic wall paintings, as well as erotic trinkets and baubles, easily available, and more traces may be found. The eroticism of women’s dress has begun to enter the discussion, but male dress demands more interrogation. Whereas women’s legs seldom held the attention of medieval artists, men’s legs were shown off by tights and framed by codpieces, short tunics, and fashionable shoes; Froissart’s puritanical critique of the French knights during the Hundred Years’ War is well-known, as are the accounts of the costly and colorful garments made for aristocratic men in the fourteenth century. 276

Erotic iconography

Ultimately, there can be no clear-cut “erotic iconography”: human responses cannot be anticipated and contained; pictures of men and women in bed can leave us unmoved, but all of nature can throb with eroticism, which raises questions about the other emblems chattering on the edge and in the margins.65 The dominant culture of the Christian Middle Ages made human nudity and sexuality problematic, yet it surely could not suppress natural reactions to the sight of the Virgin’s breast, or prepubescent naked souls, let alone Noah and Bathsheba.66 The spiritual goal driving these representations may have been to train the mind to work through the carnal to higher levels of understanding, but this was surely beyond ordinary untutored viewers; even many who knew better, like Gregory in Rome, may have gazed privately at Bathsheba as though she were Venus. Andrew Taylor has reminded us that “reading the dirty bits” is normally private, but if the reader/viewer has to articulate their thoughts they become part of a different discourse.67

Notes 1 A.d. La Croix, L’érotisme au Moyen Âge: le corps, le désir et l’amour, nouv. éd. rev. et corr. (Paris, 2003), 11–30. 2 Obscaena is used in the online catalogue of the Morgan Library for obscene and erotic figures, some of which are discussed here. This is based on the terminology used in the Index of Christian Art in Princeton University. I am grateful to members of the Material Collective on Facebook who let me know some of the medieval works they consider erotic, as well as publications on the topic. I also owe deep gratitude to Francisco Prado-Vilar for discussing ideas and particulars, and to Antonio García Omedes, who permitted use of his photographs for Fig. 20.2; and many thanks to Gabriel Quick for assistance with research and editing. 3 M. Heins, Sex, Sin, and Blasphemy: A Guide to America’s Censorship Wars (New York, 1993), 168–88. 4 K. Mey, Art and Obscenity (London/New York, 2007), 5–18; L. Nead, “‘Above the Pulp-Line’: The Cultural Significance of Erotic Art,” in Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power, ed. P.C. Gibson and R. Gibson (London, 1993), 144–55, 144–47. 5 L. Hunt, The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800 (New York, 1993), 13–23; it seems the English term first appears in a dictionary in 1857, though the French was current in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Illustrated books were first to be banned. Z. Stahuljak, Pornographic Archaeology: Medicine, Medievalism, and the Invention of the French Nation (Philadelphia, 2013), 188–98, traces the nineteenth-century retraction against an “obscene” national past. Early in the twentieth century “profane” covered all categories. 6 Stahuljak, Pornographic Archaeology, 192–93 (see n. 5); L. Nead, “Bodies of Judgment: Art, Obscenity, and the Connoisseur,” in Law and the Image: The Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law, ed. C. Douzinas and L. Nead (Chicago, 1999), 203–25, 203–04; a “Cabinet of Obscene Objects” was created in the Naples museum, renamed the “Pornographic Collection” in 1860; the British Museum already had a similar annex, for Greek works considered obscene. 7 M. Easton, “‘Was It Good For You, Too?’ Medieval Erotic Art and Its Audiences,” Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 1 (September 2008), 1–30, http://differentvisions.org/issue 1PDFs/Easton.pdf. Readers might use the illustrations there as an adjunct to this article; Easton’s is also an admirably clear statement about the issues of viewing and interpreting erotic medieval art, further developed in M. Easton, “Uncovering the Meanings of Nudity in the Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry,” in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. S.C.M. Lindquist (Farnham/Burlington, 2011), 149–82. 8 J. Adeline and Champfleury, Sculptures Grotesques et Symboliques: Rouen et Environs (Rouen, 1879), whose long annotated bibliography cites “symbolisateurs” as well as the minority opinion that the sculptures had been done at the whim of the craftsmen (p. 269). For the historiography of interpretations of “grotesques” search “Weir and Jerman” in chapter 3 of M.H. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries (e-book, Medford, 2001), http://dca.lib.tufts.edu/caviness/chapter3.html. 9 Michael Camille led the way with his article “Gothic Signs and the Surplus: The Kiss on the Cathedral,” Yale French Studies, Special Issue: Contexts: Style and Values in Medieval Art and Literature (1991), 151–70, and his book Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1992).

277

Madeline H. Caviness 10 Immediately reprinted as Studying Medieval Women: Sex, Gender, Feminism, ed. N.F. Partner (Cambridge, 1993); it contained my article on the phallic imagery in the margins of the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux, and participants in the discussion panels at the Medieval Academy of America annual meeting and the International Congress on Medieval Studies in 1994 tended to be unfriendly to the project. Further studies were soon underway, however: M. Camille, “Play, Piety and Perversity in Medieval Marginal Manuscript Illumination,” in Mein ganzer Körper ist Gesicht: groteske Darstellungen in der europäischen Kunst und Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. K. Kröll and H. Steger, Rombach Wissenschaft. Reihe Litterae; Bd. 26 (Freiburg, 1994), 171–92; M. Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York, 1998), a lavishly illustrated monograph on erotic art; and Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages (Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions, vol. 4), ed. J. Ziolkowski (Leiden, 1998). 11 The so-called culture wars: R. Meyer, “The Jesse Helms Theory of Art,” October 104 (2003), 131–48. 12 “Und sie erkannten, dass sie nackt waren”: Nacktheit im Mittelalter (“And they knew that they were naked”: Nakedness in the Middle Ages), ed. S. Bießenecker et al. (Bamberg, 2008), e-book at https://opus4.kobv. de/opus4-bamberg/frontdoor/index/index/docId/144. 13 Lindquist (ed.), Meanings of Nudity (as in note 7). 14 For an outdated psychological evaluation permeated by this view of the eroticism of the female nude body, see A. Ellis, The Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior, ed. A. Abarbanel (New York, 1973), 161–64, 174, 2nd ed. At the other extreme, Bataille sees it as lovely and horrifying, always tinged with obscenity: G. Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, vol. II: The History of Eroticism (New York, 1993), 148–53. Neither mentions the erotic male body! 15 W. Oakeshott, Classical Inspiration in Medieval Art (London, 1959), Pls. 99 D and 100 A. The author uses his theme to judge medieval art against antique prototypes. 16 Oakeshott, Classical Inspiration (as in note 15), Pl. 36 B, which he contrasts with a lifeless Ottonian copy. 17 The classic statement of this thesis, which attempts to distinguish nude from naked, is K. Clark, The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art (London, 1956); some editions are titled rather ambiguously The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. This premise is critiqued by several authors in Lindquist (ed.), Meanings of Nudity (see n. 7). 18 N.E. Dubin and R.H. Bloch, The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation (New York/London, 2013), 248–51. 19 D. Wolfthal, “Sin or Sexual Pleasure? A Little-Known Nude Bather in a Flemish Book of Hours,” and P. Nuttall, “Reconsidering the Nude: Northern Tradition and Venetian Innovation,” in Meanings of Nudity, ed. Lindquist (see note 7), 279–98, 299–318; see also J.B. Friedman, “L’Iconographie de Vénus et de son miroir à la fin du Moyen Age,” in L’Erotisme au Môyen Age: études présentées au troisième colloque de l’Institut d’études médiévales: [communications présentés à l’Université de Montréal les 3 et 4 avril 1976], ed. R. Bruno (Montreal, 1977), 51–81. 20 Oakeshott, Classical Inspiration, 114, Pl. 30 D (see note 15); H. Swarzenski, Monuments of Romanesque Art: The Art of Church Treasures in North-Western Europe, 2nd ed. (London, 1967), 81, fig. 510, who shows a different view, suggested it is English. The present location of the piece, in the 1960s in the Untermeyer Collection in New York, is unknown. 21 C. Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art 300–1150: Sources and Documents, vol. 17, Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching (Toronto, 1986), 160; see also J.C. Long, “The Survival and Reception of the Classical Nude: Venus in the Middle Ages,” in Meanings of Nudity, ed. Lindquist (as in note 7), 47–64. 22 M. Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge New Art History and Criticism) (New York, 1989), 82, 85–87. 23 S. Moralejo Alvarez, “Marcolfo, el Espinario, Priapo: Un Testimonio Iconografico Gallego,” in Primera Reunion Gallega de Estudiios Clasicos: Santiago-Pontevedra, 2–4 julio 1979 (Santiago de Compostela, 1981), 331–55. In arguing with Solomon, Marcolf had exhibited his rear and genitals; the chartrain spinario, however, is not lewd. 24 F. Prado-Vilar, “Signum resurrectionis: La transfiguración de la belleza y la búsqueda de la eternidad en la escultura de Jaca,” Románico 20 (2015), 212–22. A similar but less well-supported thesis about the association of spirituality with perfected bodies is presented by K. Ambrose, “Male Nudes and Embodied Spirituality in Romanesque Sculpture,” in Meanings of Nudity, ed. Lindquist (as in note 7), 65–84. 25 M. Camille, Gothic Art Glorious Visions (Upper Saddle River, 1996), 155, fig. 13. 26 R.A. Peck, “Public Dreams and Private Myths: Perspective in Middle English Literature,” PMLA 90 (1975), 465–66. 27 Giles of Rome, Li Livres du Gouvernement des Rois: A XIIIth Century French Version of Egidio Colonna’s Treatise De Regimine Principum, trans. H.d. Gauchy (New York/London, 1899), 206–07 II/II ch. 10. 28 Camille, Glorious Visions (as in note 25), 133, fig. 95.

278

Erotic iconography 29 C. Weising, “Vision of ‘Sexuality,’ ‘Obscenity,’ or ‘Nudity’? Differences between Regions on the Examples of Corbels,” in Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme, ed. A. Classen (Berlin/New York, 2008), 325–82, fig. 6. The illustrations to her article form a useful repertory of exhibiting figures, as also those in A. Weir and J. Jerman, Images of Lust: Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches (London, 1986). 30 G. Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality, trans. M. Dalwood (San Francisco, 1986); see also L. Bonfante, “Etruscan Sexuality and Funerary Art,” in Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ed. N.B. Kampen, Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism (Cambridge, 1996), 155–69. 31 For Susanna: G. Kornbluth, “The Susanna Crystal of Lothar II: Chastity, the Church, and Royal Justice,” Gesta XXXI (1992), 25–39; K.A. Smith, “Inventing Marital Chastity: The Iconography of Susanna and the Elders in Early Christian Art,” Oxford Art Journal 16:1 (1993), 3–24. 32 H. Stahl, “Bathsheba and the Kings: The Beatus Initial in the Psalter of Saint Louis (Paris, BNF, ms lat. 10525),” in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of Its Images, ed. F.O. Büttner (Turnhout, 2004), 427–34, and Easton, “Was It Good for You, Too?” (as in note 7), 7, fig. 4; A.R. Stanton, “From Eve to Bathsheba and Beyond: Motherhood in the Queen Mary Psalter,” in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. J. Taylor and L. Smith (Toronto, 1997), 172–89. 33 M.H. Caviness, “A Son’s Gaze on Noah: Case or Cause of Viriliphobia?,” in Meanings of Nudity, ed. Lindquist (see note 7), 103–48; for the early Christian and Byzantine tradition: J.-P. Deremble, “La nudité de Noé ivre et ses relectures typologiques et iconographiques médiévales,” in Mariage et Sexualité au Moyen Âge: Accord ou crise? Colloque international de Conques, ed. M. Rouche, Cultures et Civilisations médiévales XXI (Paris, 2000), 147–55, col. pls. I-7. 34 M. Camille, “Manuscript Illumination and the Art of Copulation,” in Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. K. Lochrie, P. McCracken, and J.A. Schultz, Medieval Cultures 2 (Minneapolis, 1997), 58–90. Most of this paragraph depends on the same article. I am grateful to Jennifer Borland, who is studying all the Régime manuscripts, for pointing out that the book as a whole is applicable to both women and men, and that the other manuscripts show the couple standing by the bed. 35 Especially notable is D. Johnston, Canu maswedd yr Oesoedd Canol = Medieval Welsh Erotic Poetry (Caerdydd, 1991), 54–55; most poetic erotic encounters are with country girls in the pastourelle tradition and are barely veiled descriptions of seduction and rape. A more tender description of the lover’s body is in Carmina Burana 83, cited by Long, “Survival and Reception” (as in note 21), 53–54. 36 I.F. Walther and G. Siebert (ed.), Codex Manesse: Die Miniaturen der Großen Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Frankfurt, 1988), pls. 6, 11, 12, 20, 23, 29, 48, 51, 52, 59, 66, 80, 81, 93, 106; the falcon, though biologically female, can also connote a male lover, as in several German poems. For mirror backs see note 46 ahead. 37 J. Cherry, “Sex, Magic, and Dr. Gerald Dunning (The Fourth Gerald Dunning Memorial Lecture),” Bulletin of the Medieval Pottery Research Group 9 (1985), 13–14; M.H. Caviness, “Obscenity and Alterity: Images that Shock and Offend Us/Them, Now/Then?,” in Obscenity, ed. Ziolkowski (as in note 10), 155–75, 11–12, figs. 30, 31; a similar figure in the Society of Antiquaries, London. “Mollocking” is a term coined for the sexual antics of rural lads and wenches by S. Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm (New York, 2006), passim. 38 Stahuljak, Pornographic Archaeology (as in note 5), 188–98. 39 Many pieces are illustrated in Heilig en Profaan: Laatmiddeleeuwse insignes in cultuurhistorisch perspectief, ed. A.M. Koldeweij and A. Willemsen (Amsterdam, 1995), with vulva and winged penises in figs. 5 and 13. See also A.M. Koldeweij, “‘Shameless and Naked Images’: Obscene Badges as Parodies of Popular Devotion,” in Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles (Leiden/ Boston, 2005), 493–510; A.M. Koldeweij, “The Wearing of Significant Badges, Religious and Secular: The Social Meaning of a Behavioural Pattern,” in Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1999), 307–28. 40 For example, “Le Chevalier qui fesoit las cons parler,” “Le pescheor de Pont-sur-Seins,” and “La sorieste des estopes,” Dubin and Bloch, The Fabliaux: A New Verse Translation, 142–77, 438–51, 894–909. 41 Johnston, Canu maswedd (as in note 35), 32–35; for sixteenth-century “fallusglazen” see Koldeweij and Willemsen (ed.), Heilig en Profaan (as in note 39), 18–20, figs. 6a and b. 42 J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1982), 9–11, 19, 22, 55, 60, 88–89, 96, 104, 15–16, 224. 43 L.F. Sandler, “A Bawdy Betrothal in the Ormesby Psalter,” in A Tribute to Lotte Brand Phillip, ed. W. Clark, C. Eisler, W. Heckscher, B. Laine (New York, 1985), 154–59.

279

Madeline H. Caviness 44 “Uncovering” them is greatly aided initially by extensive studies of marginalia, such as L.M.C. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (California Studies in the History of Art; 4) (Berkeley, 1966); D. Kraus and H. Kraus, The Gothic Choirstalls of Spain (London/New York, 1986), and Elaine C. Block’s ongoing Corpus of Medieval Misericords. 45 M. Camille, “Dr. Witkowski’s Anus: French Doctors, German Homosexuals and the Obscene in Medieval Church Art,” in Medieval Obscenities, ed. N. McDonald (Woodbridge/Suffolk, 2006), 17–38, fig. 1. 46 An unusual twelfth-century German bronze mirror handle and case in the Frankfurt Museum für Kunsthandwerk are embellished with a couple kissing, standing upright, and in a bed while a harpist plays: Swarzenski, Monuments (as in note 20), 78, figs. 469 a and b, and Camille, Medieval Art of Love (as in note 10), 21, fig. 13; the figures have been variously identified as the Sponsus and Sponsa or Tristan and Iseult. For later mirrors: C.J. Campbell, “Courting, Harlotry, and the Art of Gothic Ivory Carving,” Gesta 34 (1995), 11–19; D. Wolfthal, “The Sexuality of the Medieval Comb,” in Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces, ed. E. Gertsman and J. Stevenson (Woodbridge, 2012), 176–94. For studies of the brooches and pendants known as “pilgrim badges,” see notes 38 and 39. 47 McDonald (ed.), Medieval Obscenities (as in note 45), 7, 10 n.21, who notes that Fettered Cock, the website where replicas are sold, calls this one “Pussy Litter.” Cf. M.H. Caviness, “Retomando la Iconografía Vaginal (Revisiting Vaginal Iconography),” Quintana 6 (2007), 13–37, 20–23, figs. 15–17. 48 Caviness, “Retomando” (as in note 47), 16, fig. 4; M. Bleeke, “Sheelas, Sex, and Significance in Romanesque Sculpture: The Kilpeck Corbel Series,” Studies in Iconography 26 (2005), 1–26; anon, The Sheela Na Gig Project (c. 2004 [cited December 2004]), available at http://www.sheelanagig.org. The wound of Christ and implements of the passion in Bonne of Luxembourg’s prayer book, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ms. 69.85 fol. 331r, are also reproduced in Easton, “Was It Good For You, Too?” (as in note 7), fig. 1. 49 Camille, “Witkowski’s Anus” (as in note 45), 20, 25. 50 See B. Freitag, Sheela-Na-Gigs: Unravelling an Enigma (London/New York, 2004), 120, 156 no. 160. According to the museum label the woman is giving birth. 51 R.A. Leson, “The Psalter-Hours of Ghuiluys de Boisleux,” Arte Medievale V/1 (2006), 115–30, 115. 52 See http://corsair.morganlibrary.org/icaimages/7/m730.222ra.jpg. 53 Carmina Burana, vol. 16, ed. B.K. Vollmann (Frankfurt, 1987), 298–99, no. 87. Translation by Caviness. 54 E.P. Thompson, “ et charivari: Quelques réflexions complémentaires,” in Le Charivari: actes de la table ronde organisée à Paris, 25–27 avril 1977 par l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales et le Centre national de la recherche scientifique, ed. J. Le Goff and J.C. Schmitt (Paris/New York, 1981), 273–84. 55 E.M. Hunt, “The Naked Jongleur in the Margins: Manuscript Contexts for Social Meanings,” in Meanings of Nudity, ed. Lindquist (as in note 7), 85–102. 56 J. Steinhoff, “Pregnant Pages: Marginalia in a Book of Hours (Pierpont Morgan Library, Ms. M. 754/ British Library, Ms. Add.36684),” in Between the Picture and the Word: Manuscript Studies from the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2005), 180–86. 57 P. Gerson, “Margins for Eros,” Romance Languages Annual 5 (1993), 47–51, 50, fig. 11; cf. Camille, Image on the Edge (as in note 9), 54, fig. 24, whose association of the image with the adjacent 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. 58 D. Leo, 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/Boston, 2013), 97, 108–23, 359–74. 59 Nuttall, “Reconsidering the Nude” (as in note 19), 303, fig. 11.4, and passim, for other examples. 60 Easton, “Meanings of Nudity” (as in note 7). 61 The latter is Easton’s term: Easton, “Meanings of Nudity” (as in note 7), 152. 62 For the early Christian period, see D. Frankfurter, “Martyrology and the Prurient Gaze,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (2009), 215–45. 63 R. Mills, Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (New York, 2005). 64 In addition to work, notably by Easton, already cited: A. Stones, “Nipples, Entrails, Severed Heads, and Skin: Devotional Images for Madame Marie,” in Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 1999), 48–70; M.H. Caviness, Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy, the Middle Ages Series, ed. R.M. Karras (Philadelphia, 2001), chapter 2; M. Camille, “Seductions of the Flesh: Meister Francke’s Female ‘Man’ of Sorrows,” in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter: Politisch-soziale Kontexte,Visuelle Praxis, körperliche

280

Erotic iconography Ausdrucksformen, ed. K. Schreiner and M. Müntz (Munich, 2002), 243–69; C. Schleif, “Christ Bared: Problems of Viewing and Powers of Exposing,” in Meanings of Nudity, ed. Lindquist (as in note 7), 251–78. 65 As a modern example, in the film Padre Padrone (“Father and Master,” Taviani, 1977) the rhythmic movement of his mother kneading bread inflames desire in the protagonist, as does everything he sees and hears in isolation as a shepherd until he eventually achieves climax with a sheep. 66 Pace Bynum, who has done brilliant work on the higher modes of seeing. M.R. Miles, “The Virgin’s One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious Art in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,” in The Female Body in Western Culture, ed. S.R. Suleiman (Cambridge, 1986), 193–207. 67 A. Taylor, “Reading the Dirty Bits,” in Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, ed. J. Murray and K. Eisenbichler (Toronto, 1996), 280–95.

281

21 THE ICONOGRAPHY OF NARRATIVE Anne F. Harris

Introduction How does narrative announce itself? Medieval oral tradition recorded in text positions declarative words to signal a story to their audience. Think of Beowulf ’s “Hwaet!” or the “b’reishit” (“In the beginning”) of the Bible.1 How do images do so? What are the markers that indicate narrative ways of seeing and understanding to viewers? For narrative asks much of its audience: an attentiveness, an ability to follow developments, multiple emotional registers often staged in an arc, and a commitment through from initiation to dénouement to resolution are all sought from viewers.2 This essay argues for an iconography of narrative in gesture, space, and time. These visual signs of narrativity initiate and guide their viewers through the transformative experience of medieval narrative. Whether sacred or secular, or in some combination of the two, medieval narrative was designed for transformation: of its own figures and of its audience. In delineating an iconography of narrative, this essay seeks to identify how gesture, space, and time coded images as narrative, how they made images recognizable as narrative. It is not the mere presence of these factors that renders an image a narrative one: gesture, space, and time are present in icons, the other prevalent visual mode of the Middle Ages. Rather, it is the arrangement and deployment of these three factors that create the necessary conditions of responsiveness for narrative experience. A narrative image behaves as such (moving its viewer through a story), once it is recognized and responded to as such. In what he calls “systemic narration,” Wolfgang Kemp identifies a series of relations in medieval narrative images.3 I will argue that relational dynamics within narrative image create relational dynamics with, and within, the audience. The eye moves from gesture to gesture across space and through narrative time, drawing the viewer into relationship with the image. As gestures initiate movement, as space frames changing interactions, and as time extends into performative experience and transformation, narrative makes itself known to its audience and shapes its response to figural, emotional, and moral or ethical transformation.

Historiography Narrative emerges in art history as a structural category of imagery with specific modes. The “continuous narrative” mode of imagery delineated by Franz Wickhoff, for example, displays multiple episodes within one visual space, with repeating figures.4 Providing a structural analysis 282

The iconography of narrative

of narrative, these categorizations remain helpful in terms of identifying narrative structures. There are many ways to tell a tale, and determining the narrative structure of an image cycle positioned the work of art history in resonance with that of literary criticism, with its own analyses of structures operative in narrative, while identifying the specific modes operative in visual art.5 The structural analysis of visual narrative was mostly exercised upon Christian narrative, which contains a complex theological temporality stretching from Genesis to the Apocalypse. The strong linearity of Christian time, pushing ever-forward from Genesis and pulling ever-toward the Apocalypse, shaped the structural analysis of visual narrative as a revelatory, progressive one. This strong linearity intersected with the vertical temporal structure of typology, which created narrative connections between, for example, the Old and New Testaments.6 Set apart from the analysis of Christian narrative, and much less studied, is that of secular narrative, despite being created in Christian culture.7 Pulled from Celtic or ancient Greek and Roman tales, the stories of secular narrative operate within a different temporal structure, one that often intersects with that of oral narration.8 A second historiographic trajectory of narrative begins with didacticism and is continued in contemporary discussions of interactivity. The initial argument in which narrative images functioned as a “Bible for the Poor” has been reshaped by a critique of textual adherence, and an exploration of an embodied, extratextual response by viewers.9 Texts, biblical or otherwise, are not the only determining factors in narratives images. Oral tradition, performance, and the bodily experience of viewers (from movement with the narrative, as in the Bayeux Tapestry, to empathy with the physical experience of the figures in the image, as in the Passion cycle) have become determining factors in the modern understanding of medieval narrative.10 Narrative images do not provide the full information of texts, but far from this situation being a lack, it invites a consideration of bodies, voices, and performance into the operations of medieval narrative. The “gaps” in visual narratives when these are compared with the full delineation of a narrative in text are filled in by commentary, performance, or previous knowledge. Indeed, most medieval narrative images existed more in relationship to oral tradition than to textual precision.11 Medieval visual narratives were often more a process of re-cognition than of cognition, of recognizing characters in new visual guises rather than learning about them through images. The following analysis of gesture, space, and time seeks to consider both sacred and secular narrative, and both cognitive and embodied responses.

Gesture Gesture is the initiation of visual narrative. It is a call to narrative action, a signal to the viewer for attentiveness.12 In this section, I will examine gestures of two of the most pervasive narratives in medieval imagery, one sacred, the other secular: the moment of contact of the Annunciation and the beginning of the Roman de la Rose. I have chosen two well-known narratives to highlight the role gestures had not in explaining a narrative but in initiating it. A crucial moment of any narrative is its beginning, and as medieval texts called for the attentiveness of their audiences (“Hwaet!”) so, too, medieval visual narratives called for their audiences’ full participation. While dénouement and level of detail could vary from one visual narrative to another, the opening gesture tended to be very similar from site to site. The iconography of narrative is one of repeated initiatory gestures. The initiatory gesture of narrative extends into ever-expanding space and time. Textually, the opening gesture of the Annunciation ends in the Apocalypse. In the lived experience of history and the presence of Christianity in the modern world, it has yet to end. The power of the initiatory gesture is its open-endedness, the fact that it signals an opening, never an ending. There is the potential here to think of the opening gesture as “self-perpetuating” – as having a kind of momentum that carries narrative beyond textual borders and into lived experience. Images become part of the lived experience of narrative. In their perpetuation of narrative beyond text, 283

Anne F. Harris

and in their interaction with viewers, images open up textual narrative to potentially endless interpretation and expression. Images of the Annunciation abounded in the Middle Ages. As of the fourteenth century, their most pronounced initiatory role came as the primary image for Matins in Books of Hours.13 The first of the eight canonical hours, Matins initiated the entire devotional cycle of a book of hours. The repetition of gesture was arguably daily for a devout user of this devotional tool. The daily opening of the book resonated with the daily viewing of the initiatory gesture. Narrative opening becomes devotional opening. Associated with the words “Domine labia mea” (Lord open my lips), the gesture of the Archangel Gabriel before the Virgin Mary signals silence and attentiveness, a stillness and a focus. The specific request of Matins involves the viewer in an act of prayer.14 The viewer is at once active (praying) and passive (asking God to open her lips). This combination of active and passive holds the viewer in a fixed devotional place, hovering between action and meditation. Narrative asks for the active participation of its viewers: in understanding the action, in sometimes moving physically with the image. It also leads the audience along, setting the visual terms of the narrative trajectory, establishing the pace and level of detail. Gestures contain this active/passive dynamic in being a call to action. Like the phrase beseeching God to open lips for devotional speech, the opening gesture of the Annunciation signals divine presence and its long narrative trajectory. Gabriel’s hands are engaged in a series of gestures: palm open and facing the Virgin Mary, holding long-stemmed lilies signifying her virginity, or proffering forth a scroll with the Biblical

Figure 21.1 Simone Martini, Annunciation, 1333. Tempera and gold on panel. Florence, Uffizi Gallery. Image courtesy of Scala/Minesterio per I Beni e la Attivita culturali, Art Resource, New York.

284

The iconography of narrative

text “Ave Maria gratia plena” (Hail Mary, full of grace). The physicality is at once delicate and inexorable (Fig. 21.1). Simone Martini’s Annunciation from 1333 (at the Uffizi in Florence) reveals the impact of Gabriel’s gesture on Mary: the fluttering drapery and unfurled wings of the archangel give motion and force to his gestures.15 The easy grace with which he holds the olive branch contrasts with the powerful call upwards to the dove of the Holy Spirit. The Virgin Mary swerves in a famous sway, appearing to recoil from the impact of Gabriel’s presence. But on the other side of her sway, Mary’s hands are held in gestures that precisely mirror Gabriel’s. She, too, has one hand down (fingers delicately holding a page in her book) and one hand up (protectively holding the neckline of her cloak). In her gesture mirroring the angel’s, Mary reveals her kinship with the divine. Gestures are rhetorical, and they initiate a conversation. The Annunciation is the initiation of Christ’s conversation with humanity. Its signaling by hand gestures, which are present in every Annunciation, creates an iconography of narrative initiation. The beginning of a narrative is recognized in its repeated gestures. In the case of the Annunciation, the gestures may range across a series of spaces and flora, but always the call and response between Gabriel and Mary invite that of the viewer and the event. The scale of the narrative initiated by the Annunciation gesture also varies according to the attentiveness of the audience. On this point, the iconography of narrative is open-ended, and exists in an expansive relationship to the text. While the immediate gesture of the Annunciation is described in Luke 1:26–38, the relationship of the image to the text can extend throughout the Bible until its Apocalyptic end. Similarly, the gesture of the Annunciation can initiate an entire image and devotional cycle. We have already discussed this dynamic in books of hours; it was also known to occur on the monumental scale of wall painting. Giotto’s Annunciation from around 1305 in the Scrovegni Chapel is painted on the eastern archway above the altar. The “pregnant pause” visually is the empty span of the arch, a space filled with the devotional practice that occurs at the altar.16 Gabriel’s open hand to Mary is this time met by Mary’s hand folded across her chest, her book page held by her fingers as she cradles it. The conversation initiated across the span of the arch extends throughout the entire Scrovegni Chapel, potentially, if the viewer follows the entire narrative, all the way to the Last Judgment on the western wall of the chapel. The visualization of secular narrative also operated in this expansive open-endedness, perhaps more so than Biblical narrative in that the textual tradition on which secular visual narrative was based, itself stemming so immediately from dynamic oral tradition, was hardly fixed.17 The textual instability of secular narrative, in the multiple redactions and scribal versions found in manuscript traditions, puts initiatory images in an especially powerful position: they initiate narratives without clear textual parameters. The manuscript and textual tradition of the Roman de la Rose is one of the most rich and complex of medieval secular literature.18 A man asleep in bed is the initiatory image of that textual tradition, creating the marvelous proposition of unconsciousness as a call to attention. The parameters of the unconscious, of dreams in particular, are still unknown. The entire narrative of the Roman de la Rose, save for the opening lines at the opening and the final words at the end, operates within the framework of a dream. It may seem odd to conceptualize a man asleep in bed as an initiatory gesture (Fig. 21.2), but I do so to emphasize the power of initiatory images in visual narrative. A figure need not gesture dramatically to initiate a narrative; narrative does not need a “big push” to begin. Even a sleeping figure can activate and generate a narrative of grand proportions. And so the Dreamer lies in bed in the stillest of gestures: body outstretched, arm often curved behind his head, hands completely relaxed. Many Rose manuscripts initiate their narrative with just the sleeping figure. Others will use the sleeping Dreamer as the opening image in a four-image sequence that delineates the Dreamer’s transformation into the Lover as he awakens in a bedchamber, carefully dresses, and 285

Anne F. Harris

Figure 21.2 Opening sequence, Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, 1353. Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. Fr. 178. Image courtesy of HIP/Art Resource, New York.

ventures forth into a landscape that leads him to the Garden of Love, wherein he will pursue the elusive Rose for the duration of the narrative.19 Interestingly, the first pause in the narrative is a series of anti-love allegories carved on the outside of the wall of the Garden of Love.20 But the anti-narrative image of the allegory rearing up to block the Lover will become the pro-narrative of the allegory once the Lover makes his way inside the Garden to a realm of live allegories. 286

The iconography of narrative

Sleeping Dreamers and awakening Lovers initiate many love narratives in secular literature. The Book of the Duchess by Geoffrey Chaucer is not visually expressed in an artistic tradition, but it does use initiatory images in a dream to signal the open-endedness of the iconography of narrative that I have been describing, and so I will end with it. When the Dreamer awakens to be the Lover in the Book of the Duchess, he does so in a bedchamber illuminated by two image cycles unbounded by physical constriction: the entire cycle of Troy in stained glass, and the Roman de la Rose and all of its textual glosses in a wall painting. Both of those image cycles exist without end: has the last image of the cycle of Troy been drawn? Has the last word been written on the Roman de la Rose? Images are a crucial part of the perpetuation of narrative, perhaps nowhere more powerfully than in the initiatory gestures of visual narrative. Opening images of narrative signal perpetual re-openings of narrative rather than any bounded ending, and invite viewers to participate in the perpetuation of narrative.

Space In considering space, we move into narrative. The operations of narrative in space and through space activate the physical relationship of viewer to visual narrative. Space is both a part of narrative (in the space between figures) and a framework of narrative (in the space that surrounds images). It is the element of visual narrative that asks for the physical engagement of the viewer. Whether poring over a manuscript and moving through its physicality by turning pages, or walking with the spatial stretch of the narrative sculptural frieze of Chartres Cathedral21 or the Bayeux Tapestry, space physically implicates the viewer.22 In the development of ideas, narrative’s operations across space are fundamental to its genre. As the ideas of a narrative develop, and the gestures and bodies of its protagonists change, the viewer changes as well – even if only in physical location. The most powerful narratives provoke the transformation of both the represented figures and the present viewers, and this process of transformation begins with movement in space. The physical quality of space can become the spiritual quality of transformation. The space of narrative transports viewers. I will treat two visual narratives that move (and move the viewer) across space: the Passion narrative articulated on the twelfth-century lintel of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem,23 and a fourteenth-century Tristan cycle in the Chateau of Saint-Floret in the Auvergne.24 The consideration of specific image cycles brings forward the important realization that, in the discussion of space and visual narrative, place matters as well. An interesting contrast forms here to become one of the dynamics of narrative: where initiatory gestures perpetuate narrative into the open-endedness of future interpretations and visualizations, space creates a framework for narrative hosted by place. The space of a narrative does not operate in a vacuum: viewers bring their own set of expectations to the place in which a narrative is on display. Space is the framework within which viewers’ expectations and narrative’s movement interact. The narrative lintel of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem (Fig. 21.3) presents two particularities that make the spatial operations of its narrative salient: it represents events in the place where they occurred, and it does so out of narrative order. Carved around 1149 under Frankish Crusader patronage, the narrative lintel stretches across what is now the only open doorway on the south façade entrance to the Holy Sepulcher, telling tales of the Passion narrative. A second, bricked-up doorway, is topped by a figurative lintel of wild men and mythological beasts entangled in thick, scrolling vines.25 The lintels were taken from the Holy Sepulcher in the 1930s after a fire and are now displayed flat under glass cases at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. The contrast of narrative lintel with figurative lintel makes each genre distinct, and indeed, scholars have been hard-pressed to make coherent sense of the two lintels.26 287

Anne F. Harris

Figure 21.3 Facade of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, c. 1149 (Palestine, today Israel), 1855–1860. Image courtesy of Adoc-Photos/Art Resource, New York.

The lintel initiates its narrative with the muscular gesture of the Raising of Lazarus. Three different figures strain on ropes that pull Lazarus’s body forward out of the tomb, whose abandoned cover frames the scene with the open book that Christ holds to the right of the gathering of figures, blessing the assembly, and Lazarus in particular, with this miracle. Physicality abounds: the stone figures’ thickly set bodies are draped in garments of thick-cut fabric, and are either straining with the effort of righting Lazarus’s body or struggling to overcome the stench of his tomb. The narrative moves slowly and strenuously across the visual field, with the (almost) dead weight of Lazarus. The space between the figures is very compact and itself thus slow in movement. Viewers would have come to this portal with great eagerness to enter the sacred place of the Holy Sepulcher. The arresting and “sluggish” narrative pace of Lazarus’s raising would slow the viewer down, and prolong the experience of entering. At a site that welcomed fervent pilgrims from around the world, this is quite a feat for narrative images to attempt to accomplish. At first, the interaction of the viewer is perpendicular in their seeking to enter the building beneath the lintel. But once the narrative has been seen and has had its effect on the viewer, the interaction becomes a parallel trajectory and the viewer can walk with the figures of the lintel, from left to right. Jesus meeting Mary and Martha on the Road to Bethany picks up the narrative pace: there is now more space between the figures, and the edges of Christ’s clothing flutter in a breeze which gives the space “breathing room.” Scholars had remained puzzled as to why this narrative moment, which chronologically precedes the Raising of Lazarus, should visually succeed it, until Molly Lindner’s suggestion that the images are not in visual order, but in topographical order.27 In explaining the choice to represent the narrative in topographical rather than chronological order, Lindner connects the images to the Palm Day Procession and its topographical perambulations, in 288

The iconography of narrative

which the site of Lazarus’s tomb preceded the road to Bethany. These processions were practiced by the Frankish patrons of the lintels, whose physical and religious engagement with the landscape was projected by the lintel sculpture, and may have inspired pilgrims to take on the same journey. Space is an iconographic element of narrative: it invites the movement of its viewers and frames a physical interaction with narrative. At the castle of St. Floret in Auvergne, viewers are invited to move with the space of secular narrative. Are there differences in the operations of sacred and secular narratives when it comes to space?28 With initiatory gestures, a similarity was noted in the open-endedness of narrative signaled by the gesture. Because space is related to place, and place calls to identity in different ways, distinctions in the ways that narrative calls to identity will arise. I would also argue for an epistemological distinction between what is known in the temporally and geographically distant biblical narrative and what is known in the more immediate materials of secular narrative. Finally, as ever, distinctions remain in how the iconography of religious narrative relates to the codified, authoritative text and how the iconography of secular narrative relates to an oral tradition so newly codified in text, and without the authority of sacred text. These distinctions are not mutually exclusive – and indeed commonalities remain – but, rather, point to the versatility of narrative, to its multiplicity in human experience. At St. Floret, the viewer follows the story of Tristan across the two-dimensional surface of a wall painting. The story itself wends its way from wall to wall, often operating across the corners of the room. Amanda Luyster’s work has brilliantly traced the operations of narrative at St. Floret, with an argument that details both the movements of the narrative across surfaces and the demands and invitations extended to viewers in the reading of narrative across surfaces.29 Because the images are accompanied by text pulled from the fourteenth-century poem Meliadus by Rusticien de Pisa, the images operate in conjunction with the written word. But they do not merely illustrate it. Instead, text behaves as an active presence in the images. A scroll, for example, that unfurls from a messenger describing the past deeds of the knight Branor hangs unattended to by Guinevere and her entourage, as their gazes are turned to the surface of the adjacent wall, where Branor’s feats are represented. This dynamic of narrative across space and time, as noted and analyzed by Luyster, argues for the liveliness of text and its link to oral performance in the iconography of secular narrative.30 In much the same way that a viewer could see the feats of knights through the live performances of troubadours (and imagine yet more in their mind’s eye), so Guinevere and her ladies have the images of the feats described in the messenger’s scroll unfurling before them made visible. Their being represented on the separate space of an adjacent wall signals the temporal and geographic remove of the events from those “seeing” them. Luyster’s work allows me to make a key distinction about the iconography of secular narrative: in its involvement of the viewer, the iconography of secular narrative is connected to the live performance of recitation, an enlivening of text that is distinct from that of liturgy and other performances which enliven biblical text, especially as these different kinds of performances call to the identities of their viewers. Guinevere is seen seeing the feats of Branor alluded to in the scroll in a way that is distinct from the way that, for example, saints are seen seeing mystical visions. For Guinevere, and her viewers, the texts and oral traditions from which they were pulled exist outside the realm of authority of sacred text.31 In this, the iconography of secular narrative exists in relation to words that very much hover between live performance and textual codification. Indeed, in the prizing of the spoken word as described by Michael Camille,32 the iconography of secular narrative could be called an icono-opsis: a visualization of performance. This visualization occurs across space at St. Floret, and in other secular medieval wall paintings and tapestries, in places where the courtly identity of the viewers was systemically asserted. 289

Anne F. Harris

Castles, and the banquet halls and receiving rooms within them, framed and promoted the authority and power of the knights and ladies gathered within them to both themselves and those whose place was lower in or other to the court’s hierarchy. The feats of the knight Branor could very well provoke a narration of those of the lord of St. Floret. In the dynamic of icono-opsis, visual narrative performed identity.

Time The temporal operations of visual narrative are connected to its work of transformation. An initiatory gesture will bring a viewer into an open-ended narrative, and the space and place of visual narrative can reframe the identity of the viewer. In our final analysis, we will examine how the manifestations of time and its passage in visual narrative set the stage for the transformation of the viewer. As we have seen, the iconography of narrative is one keenly aware of its viewer: initiatory gestures call out to viewers, and space signals physical interaction. Time signals transformation, both in the visual narrative and, because of its connections and interactions with the viewer, in the viewer. This transformation was not instantaneous – that kind of transformative power is reserved for miraculous images, which tend to present themselves in iconic, not narrative, form. Rather, transformation through visual narrative itself occurs over time, in repeated viewings and interactions. A discussion of time in medieval visual narrative will necessarily intersect with our previous work with gesture and space. In its temporal concerns, medieval visual narrative will continue to call out to its viewer in initiatory gestures, and it will continue to implicate its viewer physically in its spatial interactions. Through the repetition of this gestural, spatial, and temporal dynamic, the viewer is transformed. Our case studies here will be a fourteenth-century medieval ivory, whose intimate gestures and spaces inform a specifically female identity, and the eighth-century Ruthwell Cross, whose heroic gestures and spaces shape a complex and competing religious identity. In both instances, and throughout a consideration of the operations of time in medieval visual narrative, the dynamic of transformation is related to that of repetition. Even at a pilgrimage site seen only once, rituals frame repeated interactions, and images are designed to be memorable for future time. For intimate objects, the repetition is quotidian, deeply ingrained in the habits of self of the viewer. Medieval ivory combs were made for both domestic and liturgical use. Liturgical combs have their own fascinating use and history in being used in removing nits from the hair of priests in the final preparations before the performance of the Eucharistic ritual.33 A domestic comb made around 1320 in Paris, and now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, will be our focus.34 It affords us the chance to discuss the materiality of medieval narrative in a way only alluded to with the manuscript of the Roman de la Rose and quite distinct, because of the possibility of intimate touch, from narratives found in panel or wall painting and stone carving. Ivory was a vivid and sought-after material in the Middle Ages, as attested in the expansion of ivory commerce in the fourteenth century. A series of intimate ivory objects began to be made at this time: combs, mirror cases, and writing tablets most prominent among them. The softness of the material and its symbiotic relationship with its viewer/user are a primary element of the transformative power of the ivory comb. The symbiosis comes in the repeated pull of the comb through the hair of its owner, giving luster to the latter and providing needed oils to the former. The transformation here is mundane, from unkempt privacy to readiness for the public sphere, but it is significant in its repetition, in the personalization of material that is established in the repeated gesture in intimate space. Narrative is most often a public or even spectacular occasion; in the small-scale ivory material of the 290

The iconography of narrative

Figure 21.4 Medieval comb, Scenes of Courtly Love, c. 1320. Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (A.560-1910). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

domestic comb, we have an opportunity to witness the transformation of the viewer/user from its most humble beginnings. The narrative of the domestic comb (Fig. 21.4) presents itself in three parts across a broad stretch of ivory. Each scene is framed by lush, bending trees that add a sensual movement to each scene, as they bend and sway with the desiring bodies of the narrative’s protagonists. In the first scene, the young lover, legs tensely crossed, reaches over to a beloved young woman and cups her chin in his hand. Her body is relaxed, her legs in fact falling open to reveal expansive and pliant folds of cloth. The lover holds a falcon in a disciplined grip, and the beloved cradles her small squirming dog as it strains to come up into her lap. The second scene witnesses the beloved crowning her lover. He kneels as though a young knight about to receive his title, and indeed, the interweaving of courtly love with knightly courts is tight.35 In the final scene, the bodies of the two lovers draw closer and intertwine in visual echo with the leafy branches of the trees that frame them. It is now the beloved who cups the chin of her lover, and who presses her body against his in an elegant sway. The lover’s stance remains humble in his bowing before her, but the prize of her body is now within reach, and he stretches his hand toward her sex in sure anticipation. Domestic ivory combs were given as wedding gifts in the Middle Ages.36 As such, they are gifts that signal initiations into sexual congress. Time and transformation intersect dramatically in this iconography of narrative. The young bride’s identity will be radically changed when she marries and has sex with her husband. That change will also be signaled in less radical ways: in the daily use of the comb, and the repeated viewing of its narrative. The simple three-part story delineating wooing, acceptance, and union plays on a quotidian level in the intimate sphere, as 291

Anne F. Harris

well as on the public stage of the sociopolitical arrangements of medieval marriage. The transformation of the comb’s viewer and user is itself both dramatic, in the ritual moments of marriage, and long-lasting, in the transformation from virgin to sexual being, from young woman to wife, from wife to mother, and the other possible identities that awaited women in the Middle Ages. The identities of the interactors of the Ruthwell Cross are much less fixed. Carved of local sandstone, standing 18 feet tall, and erected outdoors in the eighth century, the Ruthwell Cross was moved indoors in the nineteenth century and now resides in the apse of Ruthwell church in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.37 As with any narrative, there is the time of the narrative, and the time of the narrative’s audience. The Ruthwell Cross carries two narrative modes upon its surfaces: on the broad sides, scenes from the life of Christ are framed by Latin inscriptions; on the narrower sides of the Cross, runic inscriptions frame birds intertwined with scrolling vines. Each biblical scene is a powerful moment in the larger narrative of Christ’s life: on one side, the Annunciation, the Healing of the Blind Man, Mary Magdalene Washing the Feet of Christ, and the Visitation; on the other, the Flight into Egypt, Sts. Anthony and Paul, Christ Trampling the Beasts, and John Holding the Agnus Dei. In walking around the Ruthwell Cross, the worshipper could interweave these episodes into the greater Christic narrative, making associations and connections across the scenes. It will be the vivid visual presence of the runic inscriptions, already archaic and remarkable by the time the Cross was raised, that will provide continuous narrative and its accompanying transformation. The runes carve out excerpts from the poem which has come to be known as the “Dream of the Rood,” and whose earliest written version exists in the tenth-century Vercilli Book, making this much earlier visualization of the text in stone a powerful presence. The dreamer in the poem hears the narrative of the Crucifixion from the voice of the Cross itself. In a remarkable series of narrative transformations, the Cross remembers itself as a tree at the edge of the woods; it recalls being cut down and carried by men; and, in the verses carved into the Ruthwell Cross, it vividly describes Christ’s heroic body being nailed into its wood. The transformations continue: the Cross will be gently laid down along with the body of Christ, then forgotten for hundreds of years, until it is found again and, in being dispersed in relic form, will be bedecked and bejeweled in cross reliquaries. The narrative operations of the Ruthwell Cross are complex: it is almost impossible to discern whether viewers would have experienced the runes through their own literacy or through the oral performance of another. The interplay of the scenes framed by Latin biblical inscriptions, which pointedly do not represent the Crucifixion, and the intense and bloody Crucifixion that is present in the poetic language of the runes makes the Ruthwell Cross a highly interactive and transformative experience. Repeated circumambulations of the Cross yield new connections, new narrative interactions of text and image, transforming the viewer into an interpreter of biblical and extrabiblical narrative. In the Cross’s own transformation chronicled in the “Dream of the Rood” poem, and in the transformation from Latin to runic inscriptions, and from image to text (and back again), the viewer vividly experiences the mutability of Christ’s presence – one that would have been met and amplified in Eucharistic ritual and its own transformations. Erected in a time of religious and ethnic conflict, the iconography of narrative of the Ruthwell Cross was a formidable force of transformation in its landscape.

Conclusion The iconography of narrative begins as the “image writing” of a story. Initiatory gesture, movement in space, and performance in time are the vibrant fundamentals of an iconography of narrative: they are the first elements to look for in identifying narrative as such and in considering its power to transform its viewer. All medieval images have the power to transform, and they do 292

The iconography of narrative

so within multiple formats from icons and rituals, to manuscripts and domestic devotion. Narrative does so within a physical format that calls upon a dynamic variety of materials, scales, and settings. In its ability to capture and awaken the human imagination, and be present in both text and image, narrative will continue to unfold into the open-ended perpetuity of its readers’ and viewers’ interpretations and fascinations.

Notes 1 E.B. Vitz, N.F. Regalado, and M. Lawrence (ed.), Performing Medieval Narrative (Rochester, 2005), 1–11. 2 M. Caviness, “‘The Simple Perception of Matter’ and the Representation of Narrative, ca. 1180–1280,” Gesta 30:1 (1991), 48–64. 3 W. Kemp, The Narratives of Gothic Stained Glass (Cambridge, 1997), 42–65. The relational dynamics of center and periphery, order of size, overlapping forms, and multiplicity of image panels mark systematic narration in Kemp’s semiotic analysis of narrative. 4 F. Wickhoff, Roman Art: Some of Its Principles and Their Applications to Early Christian Painting, trans. Eugenie Strong (New York, 1900); see also S. Lewis, “Narrative,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. C. Rudolph (Malden, 2008), 86–105. 5 O. Pächt, The Rise of Pictorial Narrative in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford, 1962), simultaneously makes a distinction between visual and textual narrative, and asserts the structural analytical possibility of both. 6 The most systematic example of the intersection of this linear structure with a vertical one is the Bible Moralisée. For a discussion and reproductions see G. Guest, Bible Moralisée; Codex Vindobonensis 2554, Vienna, Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (London, 1995). 7 The most prominent work of visual secular narrative remains that of R. Sherman and L.H. Loomis, Arthurian Legends in Medieval Art (London, 1938). More contemporary work includes S. Hindman, Sealed in Parchment: Rereadings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes (Chicago, 1994). 8 M. Curschmann, “Hören – Lesen – Sehen: Buch und Schriftlichkeit im Selbstverständnis der volkssprachlichen literarischen Kulture Deutschlands um 1200,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 106 (1984), 218–57. 9 M. Caviness, “Biblical Stories in Windows: Were They Bibles for the Poor?” in The Bible in the Middle Ages: Its influence on Literature and Arts, ed. B.S. Levy, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 89 (Binghampton, 1992), 103–48. 10 See my own analysis of both sacred and secular narrative in Anne Harris, “Narrative,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012), 47–60. 11 K. Starkey, Reading the Medieval Book: Word, Image, and Performance in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm (South Bend, 2004). 12 J.A. Burrow, Gestures and Looks in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge, 2008). 13 R.S. Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York, 1999). 14 For the specific text of all the Hours, see R.S. Wieck, Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New York, 2001). 15 For more on the devotional framework of Martini’s painting see A. van Dijk, “The Angelic Salutation in Early Byzantine and Medieval Annunciation Imagery,” Art Bulletin 81:3 (September 1999), 420–36. 16 For more on the devotional context of Giotto’s Scrovegni Annunciation see L. Jacobus, “Giotto’s Annunciation in the Arena Chapel,” Art Bulletin 81:1 (March 1999), 93–116. 17 P. Zumthor, Essai de poétique medievale (Paris, 2000), especially the concept of mouvance as it speaks to textual mutability and instability. 18 S. Huot, The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception, Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge, 1993). 19 Romandelarose.org. 20 S.G. Nichols, “Ekphrasis, Iconoclasm, and Desire,” Rethinking the Roman de la Rose: Text, Image, Reception, ed. K. Brownlee and S. Huot (Philadelphia, 1992), 133–66. 21 M. Fassler, “Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres,” Art Bulletin 75:3 (September 1993), 499–520. 22 O.K. Werckmeister, “The Political Ideology of the Bayeux Tapestry,” Studi Medievali 17:2 (1976), 535–95. 23 M. Lindner, “Topography and Iconography in Twelfth-Century Jerusalem,” in The Horns of Hattin, ed. B.Z. Kedar (London, 1992), 81–98.

293

Anne F. Harris 24 A. Luyster, “Time, Space, and Mind: Tristan in Three Dimensions in Fourteenth-Century France,” in Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde, ed. J. Eming, A.M. Rasmussen, and K. Starkey (Notre Dame, 2012), 148–77. 25 L.Y. Rhamani, “The Eastern Lintel of the Holy Sepulcher,” Israel Exploration Journal 26:2/3 (1976), 120–29. 26 For a different interpretation of the iconography of the lintel narrative, see N. Keenan-Kedar, “The Figurative Western Lintel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” in The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades, ed. V. Goss and C. Bornstein (Kalamazoo, 1986), 123–31. 27 Lindner, Topography (as in note 23). 28 A. Walker and A. Luyster (ed.), Negotiating Secular and Sacred Art: Christian, Muslim, Buddhist (Farnham, 2009). 29 Luyster, Time (as in note 24): “Increases the viewer’s sense of involvement in the narrative world” (155). 30 Luyster, Time (as in note 24), 162. 31 G. Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1992). 32 M. Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” Art History 8 (1985), 26–49. 33 J. Cruse, The Comb: Its History and Development (London, 2007). The standard academic volume on liturgical combs remains A.M.A. Bretagne, Quelques recherches sur les peignes liturgiques (Nancy, 1861). 34 P. Barnet (ed.), Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age (Princeton, 1997). 35 G. Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 1996). 36 Barnet, Ivory (as in note 34). 37 M. Schapiro, “The Religious Meaning of the Ruthwell Cross,” Art Bulletin 27:4 (December 1944), 232–45; É. Ó Carragáin, “The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem and Its Iconographic and Liturgical Contexts,” Peritia 6–7 (1987–88), 1–71.

294

22 POLITICAL ICONOGRAPHY AND THE EMBLEMATIC WAY OF SEEING1 György E. Szönyi

Political iconography refers to those medieval representations (both text and image) that use traditional symbols to express some political content.

The emblematic way of seeing It is helpful to start my discussion of medieval political iconography by introducing the emblematic way of seeing and thinking. The term comes from the name of the humanist genre of emblem, which came into fashion in the first half of the sixteenth century and enjoyed a spectacular career in European culture until the middle of the eighteenth. Emblems have a tripartite structure which consists of a symbolic image (pictura) sandwiched between two texts, a motto (inscriptio) and an explanatory poem (subscriptio). This structure might be completed by additional para-textual elements and the subject of the whole could deal with a variety of topics, such as moral advice, religious teaching, and natural philosophical reflection.2 Emblematic pictures drew their motifs from all spheres of life: mythological and fantastic images, natural phenomena, human parts, man-made objects, and so forth. Characteristically, emblems were gathered into collections and then published; their program either aimed for versatility (varietas delectat) or instead concentrated on a homogeneous topic, such as political ideas, religious devotion (Jesuit or Puritan emblem books), or alchemy.3 Since the subject of this essay is political iconography, it is convenient to look at an emblematic example. The history of the French emblem books started with Guillaume de la Perrière’s Le Theatre des bons engins (Paris, 1540), which was then translated by the English Thomas Combe as The Theatre of Fine Devices (London, c. 1593, 1614) (Fig. 22.1).4 The structure is very simple: the motto announces that the scepter of a king is best supported by love and fear. The picture shows a dog and a hare holding up a crown and also supporting a scepter. The poem restates this by naming the two animals, with the dog representing loyalty and the hare timidity. From this example it is possible to deduce the two most important and characteristic features of the emblem: on the one hand it employs figurative or symbolic ambiguity, meaning that the signs used do not stand for themselves but call to mind something else based on associative similarity (in this case the two animals personify two characteristics of royal subjects). On the other hand, the emblem also employs multimediality; the intentional ambiguity is communicated using more than one medium, which in this case are the visual and the verbal. 295

György E. Szönyi

Figure 22.1 Emblem XC, “Loue and feare are chiefest things,/That stablish Scepters unto kings,” Guillaume de la Perrière/Thomas Combe, A Theater of Fine Devices, London, 1614. Illustration courtesy of Google Books.

It is possible to ask how emblems relate to medieval, political iconography, since the first emblem books appeared only in the sixteenth century, well after the Middle Ages. The point is that emblems embodied and crystallized those two characteristics – figurative-symbolic ambiguity and multimediality – which had always been present in Western cultural representations but which reached their first great flowering during the medieval period, especially from the twelfth century throughout Europe. Learned humanist emblems and their popular offspring were rooted in certain late antique and medieval genres which offered symbolic interpretations in a visual-verbal presentation. Peter Daly established that Greek epigrams, later to be developed into Renaissance loci communes, classical commemorative medals (combining pictures and inscriptions), hieroglyphics, heraldry, impresas, and medieval bestiaries were forerunners of the emblem.5 To these can be added illustrated medieval “books of secrets,” such as alchemical treatises, and lapidaries, astrological, magical, and cosmological compilations. Before these genres are examined, a related question also 296

Political iconography

needs to be asked as to what the sources were for the medieval figures, symbols, allegories, and personifications. Apart from everyday experience, people were familiar with certain major systems of thought that offered images suitable for carrying conceptual ambiguities. First and foremost was the Bible, which was full of stories and parables exemplifying human nature, and which were easily applicable to political situations. The interpretation of everyday experience was seen as paralleling the Book of Nature, in which everything had multiple meanings, promising information to the attentive reader about the intentions of the Creator. Classical mythology was also interpreted by the Christians as a storehouse of moral allegories. These repositories were full of secret information inviting specialists to decipher them: theologians for Bible exegesis and natural philosophers for reading the Book of Nature, as well as mythographers to interpret pagan mythologies.6 One of the first scholars to emphasize the “emblematic mentality” of the Middle Ages was Mario Praz, who referred to the conventional symbolism found in bestiaries, lapidaries, and other collections of scientific or moralizing commonplaces.7 The complete investigation of the symbolism of medieval nature was undertaken by Albrecht Schöne and Dietrich Jöns, who, conversely, followed the suggestions of Friedrich Ohly8 regarding the intellectual meaning of certain words. As Tibor Fabiny has emphasized, this aspect of medieval symbolism developed in relation to biblical exegesis and typological thinking. The latter – having been worked out by the Church Fathers – approached the world along the binary opposites of type and antitype, shadow and reality, prophecy and fulfillment.9 It is important to remember that there were no parts of medieval, Renaissance, or Baroque life that were completely free from the emblematic way of seeing and thinking. Emblematic symbolism determined not only the logic of artistic expression but also the semiotics of everyday life. All of the decoration and ornaments of the house, the furniture, the tapestries, the jewels, and household items led the early modern person to constant interpretation.10 Apart from objects, other creative areas, such as fashion and dress,11 religious vestments and the iconography of processions and pilgrimages,12 the conventional meanings of body language and gestures,13 the symbolism of entertainment, such as tournaments and tilting, carnival, dance, and, last but not least, the rituals and ceremonies of public and social life, from court festivals and royal entries to funerals, from witch burning to public executions, were all imbued with conventional symbolism.14 All these spectacles were topped by the very complex Gesamtkunst – an expression of medieval and Renaissance theater, which combined exegetical, didactic, political, and entertaining functions. In the political world, early sixteenth-century moralities increasingly introduced political motives, which were then elevated into high drama in the history plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. High art and literature also made good use of applied emblematics. As iconographical studies have shown, medieval altarpieces and hagiographical picture cycles, as well as Michelangelo’s Medici tombs in Florence or Rafael’s frescoes in the Vatican Stanzas, were all based on complicated literary programs, or at least they followed and symbolically used elements from the Judeo-Christian and classical mythological systems.15 This technique was universal in medieval and early modern Europe, and in the Baroque centuries it became the main catalyst of ecclesiastical as well as political art from Spain to Hungary.16

Political iconography In order to relate the emblematic way of seeing and thinking to the medieval political sphere, I would like to look at royal imagery and the emergence of the political portrait (see the chapter on royal iconography elsewhere in this volume). After that I will examine heraldry as a semiotic system, the function of which was to highlight political and social identities using a uniquely 297

György E. Szönyi

symbolic approach (see the chapter on heraldic iconography elsewhere in this volume). In the last part of my survey I shall look at civic political iconography which emerged in Italy but soon became common all over the continent.

Royalty and typological symbolism As is known from Ernst Kantorowicz’s classic study,17 the Middle Ages approached rulership in a complex way, and the different interpretations – Christ-centered kingship, law-centered kingship, polity-centered kingship, and man-centered kingship – resulted in various and characteristic representations. The two most important aspects were the king’s “two bodies,” relating to body politic and body natural. Not surprisingly, the most important exemplum of medieval political iconography was the representation of rulers. The regalia had emblematic significance: the crown symbolized the indivisibility of the kingdom, the orb referred to the lands under his or her jurisdiction, the sword and scepter stood for might and legal authority (see also Joan Holladay’s chapter in this volume). Since the king’s or queen’s office was supposed to be derived from God, and she or he was seen as the deputy of the Lord on earth, the symbolic attributes often included typological elements, holy relics, groups of patron saints, or angels. Sigismund of Luxemburg (1368–1437) was one of the outstanding although controversial monarchs of the high Middle Ages. He became prince elector of Brandenburg in 1378, king of Hungary in 1387, of the Romans (Germany) in 1411, of Bohemia in 1419, of Italy in 1431, and finally Holy Roman Emperor in 1433. Obviously during this spectacular career he lived through numerous anointments and inaugurations as well as innumerable processions and celebratory pageants. Images of him are many and represent various styles, offering a good insight into the iconography of rulership. On his great seals, he sits in full majesty with his regalia, comparable to representations of maiestas Domini. To emphasize the political significance of his representations, the king is usually surrounded by the arms and badges of his lands, most spectacularly shown in Dürer’s posthumous portrait from 1512, which shows him similar to a saint (Fig. 22.2). There are

Figure 22.2 Composite picture showing Pisanello’s Portrait of Emperor Sigismund I (1433, black chalk and pen on paper, Musée du Louvre, Paris); Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of Emperor Sigismund I (1512, oil on lindenwood, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg); and Albrecht Dürer’s Emperor Maximilian I (1519, oil on lindenwood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

298

Political iconography

numerous illustrations of him in the chronicles showing him accepting the homage of vassals and electors. He is always shown with formal dignity, and notables carry the imperial regalia before him. Sigismund was also a devout person and combined politics with religion by organizing the Council of Konstanz between 1414 and 1418. In this context he was often represented as a holy prince in the center of processions.18 The typological parallel between rulers and biblical personages resulted in interesting crypto-portraits and Sigismund often took on such roles. He can be shown as King David, or as one of the three magi heading toward the Infant Jesus, or as Pilate washing his hands, or as Nicodemus taking the cross from Christ on Calvary.19 One of the most interesting crypto-portraits is from the workshop of Jan van Eyck, showing The Journey of Christ toward the Cross (1420, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest), where Sigismund is represented as the Roman captain riding behind the stumbling Jesus. Typological comparisons were not restricted to either secular leaders or biblical characters. By the Renaissance, Greco-Roman mythological heroes were also used to enhance the images of rulers and princes. Hercules, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar were often used for such comparisons.20 A typical example is A. van Leest’s woodcut of “William of Orange as Perseus” (1579).21

From heraldry to portraits One of the major political semiotic systems of the Middle Ages was heraldry. It was a multimedial code, synthesizing pictures and text. Its original purpose was to connect the individual to a family or a (professional/national) group on the basis of clearly identifiable symbolic pictures and mottoes. Heraldry goes back to medieval chivalry and it had an important role in military history as well, since it enabled differentiation among the participants of a battle who wore their insignia on their clothing and flags.22 Toward the end of the Middle Ages, heraldry went through some major changes: on the one hand the coats of arms of the nobility developed into a complicated and ornate art, mixing colored geometrical elements with animals, mythical monsters, and symbolic objects. On the other hand, it became widely used in most spheres of everyday life. Examples are found, for example, in the world of administration (coats of arms of cities, towns, and countries) and various intellectual and professional bodies (guilds, printers, freemasons, shops, and inns, etc.). Individuals were also keen on having their own insignia and these ranged from humanistically designed imprese to the small art of ex libris.23 Semiotically speaking, a heraldic device was perfectly capable of representing a person, his or her origins, family relations, rank in the social hierarchy, and alliances. In the high Middle Ages, however, it became desirable to show individual features of significant personages, and later on even commoners. This is how, after a long dormant period, portraits were revived and portrait painting emerged as an individual artistic genre. In order to combine the representation of social rank and individual features (in accordance with the notion of the king’s “two bodies”) it became the norm to add the coat of arms, which was eventually complemented with textual information, to the more or less naturalistic portraits. In this respect it is interesting to compare Dürer’s portraits of Emperors Sigismund I (1512) and Maximilian I (1519). Although the faces of the rulers are personalized and show the painter’s interest in Renaissance naturalism, Sigismund is depicted in a medieval manner, in a stiff, dignified posture, surrounded by heraldic devices and text. In contrast, Maximilian’s portrait shows a more simple man with whom the painter was well acquainted; he wears a hat and casually leans on something. Instead of an orb, the emperor holds a broken pomegranate, a symbol of the 299

György E. Szönyi

Resurrection and his own personal emblem. Maximilian’s rank is indicated only by the Habsburg coat of arms topped by the Imperial Crown. Next to it, there is an inscription enumerating the emperor’s achievements and the dates of his birth and death. In Dürer’s paintings it is possible to see the influence of both the northern international Gothic style and the Italian Renaissance that greatly contributed to the enhanced representation of individual human features as opposed to the formal characteristics. This could already be seen in Pisanello’s famous drawing of Sigismund I (1433), which depicted the emperor in profile, in a casual pose, wearing a simple dress without any headpiece, the only ornament being a badge of his own creation, the Dragon Order, pinned on his breast (Fig. 22.2). A particularly instructive example to demonstrate the interrelations of royalty, typological symbolism, and heraldry is the famous portrait of Richard II on the Wilton Diptych (1395–99; Fig. 22.3). The painting perfectly illustrates the king’s “two bodies” with an intricate symbolism. The right panel, with the Virgin Mary and infant Christ blessing the English flag, endows body politic with a cosmic and theological significance; furthermore, on the left side Richard is shown in a triple context. His crown and regalia emphasize the body politic; however, his golden garment decorated with his personal emblem – white harts – combines the body politic with references to the devout private person – that is, the body natural. His gown is also decorated with rosemary sprigs, a device of his deceased wife, thus indicating his political alliance (see also Celia Fisher’s chapter elsewhere in this volume). The public/private duality is also reflected on the outer panels, which on the left side display Richard’s arms (lilies and lions) combined with that of Edward the Confessor (golden cross with birds on a blue shield – these are attributed arms, because such devices had not yet been invented in Edward’s day in the eleventh century)24 and Richard’s own emblem, the white hart on the right. The three patron saints behind the king are John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor, and Edmund the Martyr. John was Richard’s personal patron, Edward his role model, while the third was also a canonized English king. Since Richard was born on Epiphany day, the sixth of January, the three patrons could also be interpreted as a type of the three magi heralding the birth of Christ. Thus, the political dimension of the painting was widened into a universal, Christian perspective. The heavenly gathering of angels on the other panel directed the viewer back to English politics, not only because of the national flag but also because they wear white hart badges on their robes.25

The complexities of political iconography While warfare greatly contributed to the rise of heraldic iconography, it then permeated all spheres of life. Chivalry was one important manifestation of such emblematism, with the colors, badges, and mottos of the knights in the tiltyard. But the tournament also contributed to the spectacular theatricality of the Middle Ages, a subject that greatly developed pageantry. Religious processions and royal entries were all part of this together with legal settings, ceremonial public punishments, and executions. Depictions of royal arrivals and funerals are frequently found in medieval chronicles. Images of torture and punishment proliferated in religious pictures and include calvaries, crucifixions, and lives of martyred saints. By the Renaissance these became politicized and secularized into images of wars, religious strifes, the Ottoman advance, the crimes of American Indians, and so forth. Special backdrops, such as emblematic-allegorical scaffolds, triumphal arches, and tapestries, were often created for occasions.26 By the Renaissance, complex political iconography became more and more secular, but during the Middle Ages it was strictly intertwined with religious themes and imagery. The political message was often hidden under the surface of Christian topics, such as in the Sylvester Chapel of the Basilica of the Santi Quattro Coronati in Rome. This early Christian 300

Political iconography

Figure 22.3 The Wilton Diptych (1395–99), tempera on wood, London, National Gallery. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

church was remodeled in the mid-thirteenth century by Cardinal Stefano Conti, who also added the chapel connecting the church to his palace next to it. In 1246 the chapel was decorated with frescoes, depicting Pope Sylvester I (d. 335) receiving homage from Constantine the Great and apparently given the “Donation of Constantine” (in fact a medieval forgery), according to which the emperor let the pope rule over the Western part of the empire. The political message is clear and through an intricate iconography it emphasizes the power of 301

György E. Szönyi

the Church over the Holy Roman Emperor. The chapel was consecrated by Rinaldo Conti, nephew of Pope Gregory IX, later himself Pope Alexander IV; and the commissioner, Cardinal Stefano, was the nephew of Innocent III and chief advisor of Innocent IV. All of these churchmen were sworn enemies of the Hochenstaufen and styled themselves as the supreme spiritual and secular power for all of Europe.27

Civic political iconography Religious and political pageants took place most frequently in urban environments, and according to the mechanism of gesunkenes Kulturgut, the city folk were inspired to imitate and creatively extend emblematic symbolism. Towns and their guilds acquired arms and heraldic devices, their communities created their own ritualized customs, and their public places and even private houses were decorated with religious or classical mythological scenes. It is important to remember the elaborate rituals of the Sposalizio del mare (marriage of the sea) ceremony, which was celebrated on Ascension Day from 1000 to 1798, and commemorated Venice’s sea power. From 1311 it featured a special boat, the bucintoro. The ceremony was originally political, and it later became tinted with religious features, and was finally styled as a nuptial. In 1177, Pope Alexander III, in exchange for Venice’s assistance in his struggle with Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, gave a ring to the doge and bade him to throw a similar one into the sea every year, to wed the Adriatic. Henceforth it was done with the Latin declaration “Desponsamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique domini” (We wed thee, sea, in the sign of the true and everlasting Lord).28 An even more openly political ritual was held in Florence with the election of the governing council, the Signoria and its nine priors, who were led by the Gonfalonier of Justice, to be changed every two months. The elections were elaborate, and the whole system of republicanism was dressed in iconographically charged ceremonies.29 One characteristic example showing the interrelations of beliefs and politics was the Journey of the Magi festival in Florence. This was a spectacular pageant held on Epiphany Day, and dating back to 1390; it was organized by the Compagnia (Confraternity) dei Magi. The event consisted of a procession with a number of scheduled stops, along a specified route. The procession usually started at the Piazza San Marco, where the Compagnia had its seat, and proceeded along Via Larga as far as Herod’s palace at the Battistero, before finally reaching the crib at the Duomo, where the kings offered their gifts. After this, the procession returned from where it had come, or continued on to Piazza della Signoria for the reconstruction of the Massacre of the Innocents. As the informative website for the Medici Palace states, For the families that took part, the procession gave them the opportunity to flaunt precious and elegant fabrics, garments and jewels that indicated their social standing, and often the refinement of goods that they themselves produced, purchased or sold. The feast thus assumed self-celebratory, worldly and ostentatious connotations that perpetuated the customs of courtly ceremonial and the late Gothic taste.30 No wonder the upwardly mobile Medici family saw this event as a good opportunity to enhance their public image, so eventually they dominated the confraternity and also became the main sponsors of the festival. It is not surprising, then, that the route of the procession was directed along Via Larga (today’s Via Cavour), lined with Medici residences and crowned by the monumental palace of Cosimo il Vecchio, completed by Michelozzo in 1460. To emphasize the relationship, in the same year Piero de’ Medici entrusted the painter Benozzo Gozzoli to create a 302

Political iconography

family chapel in the palace and to decorate it with frescoes representing the Journey of the Magi. The impressive mural cycle was not simply a religious artwork but also a political testament to the might of this family. Its members were represented in crypto-portraits: behind the Young King rides Piero de’ Medici and his father, Cosimo il Vecchio; among the retinue behind there is the painter himself (his red cap bears the inscription “BENOTII”), and in front of him two youths, Guliano and Lorenzo, the later “il Magnifico.”31 Since Italy had a thriving civic social life in the late medieval period, it is not surprising that the greatest allegorical political representation was created there: the frescoes of Good and Bad Government in the Council Room of the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1337–40). Upon entering the room through the door in the northern wall, the representation of bad government stretches on the left side, while the good one is on the right. Opposite, on the southern wall there is no fresco but a window letting light into the room. Upon turning around to the northern wall, there is a complex allegory centered on the royal figure of the Good Governor (in some interpretations the Common Good, or the Commune of Siena), surrounded by six female personifications of civic virtues (Peace, Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity, Temperance, and Justice) and the three theological virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity) directly above the entrance door. There are also emblems of the city of Siena and at the feet of the Governor references are made to the conquered enemies of the town. Dame Justitia sits on a throne, to the left of the Governor, under the winged Sapientia, holding her scales, from which a cord stretches to the seated Concordia, who in turn passes it to a procession of the twenty-four city counselors of Siena (Fig. 22.4). According to Frederick Hartt, the most surprising achievement is the depiction of the results of Good Government in the country and in the city. “No such comprehensive panorama of the natural world and its human inhabitants is known to us from the entire previous history of art.” Emblematic figures such as Securitas, from whom “many good things come, behold, how sweet life is,” are also found. This can be read on the elaborate inscription which explains the meaning of the allegories. The iconography of the Bad Government on the opposite wall is dominated by the enthroned devil-like Tyrant, surrounded by Pride, Avarice, Vainglory, Deceit, Treason, Cruelty, Fury, Discord, and War. The battered Justice with her scales broken lies at his feet. In the city, robbers are plundering and the countryside is devastated.32 The novelty of Lorenzetti’s murals is that he managed for the first time to translate ecclesiastical idealism into propagating civic virtue and created secular symbolism. Considering its place in the city hall, the political message is unmistakable; that is why Alios Riklin rightly called it Lorenzetti’s political summa, a pictorial counterpart to Aquinas’s theological synthesis. Andrea Campbell’s opinion is that the political program consists of “Justice, inspired by divine Wisdom, will be achieved by citizens acting in Concord and serving the Common Good.”33 Civic emblematics were not restricted to Italy and by the early Renaissance they had permeated the whole continent. A particularly interesting example is an enormous majolica stove which is found in Gdansk, decorating the Artus Court (Fig. 22.5). This spectacular building was the meeting place of local merchants who imitated the nobility by calling their gathering venue after King Arthur. Such Artus Houses existed in the Hanseatic towns from the fourteenth century. The one in Gdansk, Curia Regis Artus, was built by the St. George Brotherhood in 1350 (the building was remodeled in a Dutch Mannerist style in 1617, in the golden days of the grain trade). It also functioned as the headquarters for several fraternities associated with ship owners; one of them – coincidentally – was named after the biblical Three Kings (1483).34 The most majestic item among the Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque decorations of the Artus Court is the Great Stove, which was erected in 1545, when Catholics and Protestants in Poland engaged in religious strife. The symbolism of this enormous pottery work reflects the political 303

György E. Szönyi

Figure 22.4 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government, details (1338–40), fresco, Siena, Palazzo Pubblico.

views of the contemporary citizens, since by that time the city was Lutheran and nurtured anti-Catholic sentiments and resistance toward the then ruling king Sigismund the Old. The citizens demonstrated their wish for religious tolerance on the lower levels of the tiles, grouping portraits of monarchs regardless of their denomination (including Protestant leaders of the Schmalkalden Union, Princess Sybilla of Clivia and Berg, the Saxon elector Frederick III vis-a-vis Emperor Charles V, his brother, King Ferdinand, Louis II Jagello of Hungary, and their wives). 304

Political iconography

Figure 22.5 The Great Stove (1545), majolica, Gdansk, Artus Court. Image courtesy of Gyorgy Szönyi.

Anti-Catholic sentiments are highlighted by the sarcastic image of a monk and a nun with wine cups, referring to the clergy’s indulgence in sex and alcohol. Some moralizing tiles advertise civic virtues, such as Patience, Prudence, and Cognition.35 Last but not least, mention should be made of one of the most complex multimedial art forms that also exploited emblematic symbolism: the theater. An unprecedented development from medieval biblical mystery cycles through the emerging late Gothic political moralities,36 to the achievements of Shakespeare and his generation, in the genres of historical dramas and great tragedies, would deserve a separate chapter.37 Let it suffice to say that the motto of the Globe theater – totus mundus agit histrionem –not only expressed a Renaissance enthusiasm for life but also was rooted in John of Salisbury’s twelfth-century idea of the theatrum mundi, a symbolic political science of the Middle Ages.38 305

György E. Szönyi

Conclusions In the late fifteenth century, inspired by the secular splendor of the Renaissance and by an unfolding information revolution whose flagship was printing, emblematic symbolism became even more widespread and spectacular than before. Political displays, secular processions, and triumphal arches became more ornate, while new topics also enriched political iconography: from the excessive use of pagan mythology to the inclusion of motives from the recently discovered Americas, or reflections on the military and artistic interactions with the Arabs and the Ottomans.39 I hope that this essay demonstrated that emblems – symbolic combinations of pictures and words – created by the Renaissance humanist elite had their origins in the Middle Ages. By introducing the concept of the emblematic way of thinking and seeing it can be argued that the same representational logic was at work from late antiquity through the Baroque period. It faded away but not entirely – in the rationalism of the eighteenth century. Political ideas and situations were always ready to find symbolic expression, very often intertwined with religious-moral concerns; however, throughout the Middle Ages these became ever more secularized, increasingly propagating worldly power and civic virtues.

Notes 1 I thank Dr. Jill Bepler and the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, without whose help this essay would not have been completed. 2 The study of emblems and emblem books gained a new impetus in the 1960s and still thrives. Some seminal studies in chronological order are R. Freeman, English Emblem Books (London, 1948); Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, ed. A. Henkel and A. Schöne (Stuttgart, 1967); P.M. Daly, Literature in the Light of the Emblem (Toronto, [1979] 1998); The Emblem in Renaissance and Baroque Europe: Tradition and Variety, ed. A. Adams and A.J. Harper (Leiden, 1992); M. Bath, Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture (London, 1994); Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500–1700, ed. P.M. Daly and J. Manning (New York, 1999); Companion to Emblem Studies, ed. P.M. Daly (New York, 2008); see also the international journal Emblematica (1986–). 3 The pioneering emblem collection was Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum liber (Augsburg, 1531; Paris, 1534). See the chapter by D. Drysdall and P.M. Daly in this volume. A similar nonthematic publication was Johannes Sambucus’s Emblemata (1564), which greatly inspired Geoffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblems (London, 1586). A typical collection of political emblems was Julius W. Zincgreff ’s Emblemata ethico-politica (Frankfurt, 1619); Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (Oppenheim, 1617) dealt with alchemy; Daniel Cranmer’s Emblemata sacra (Frankfurt, 1617) was a Lutheran, while Herman Hugo’s Pia desideria (Antwerp, 1624) a Jesuit emblem book. Particularly in Holland, emblems about love and daily life were also popular (Daniel Heinsius, Emblemata amatoria, Amsterdam, 1608; Roemer Visscher, Sinnepoppoen, Amsterdam, 1614). 4 Thomas Combe, The Theater of Fine Devices Containing an Hundred Morall Emblemes (London, 1614), Emblem XC. Apart from the freely available Google book, I am quoting J. Doebler’s 1983 edition (San Marino, Huntington Library). 5 Daly, Literature in the Light of the Emblem (as in note 2), 9–42. 6 See Daly, Literature in the Light of the Emblem (as in note 2), 9–42, Some classic works: J. Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (Princeton, 1972 [1953]); G. Josipovici, The Book of God: A Response to the Bible (New Haven, 1988); N. Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (London, 1983). Recent important contributions include T. Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb: Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art, and Literature (Basingstoke, 1992); C. Brown, Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism (Stanford, 1998); The Book of Nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. K. Berkel and A. Vanderjagt (Leuven, 2005); The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science, ed. K. Killeen and P.J. Forshaw (Basingstoke, 2007); The Multiple Meaning of Scripture: The Role of Exegesis in Early-Christian and Medieval Culture, ed. I. van ‘t Spijker (Leiden, 2009); Le paysage sacré: le paysage comme exégese dans l’Europe de la premiere modernité, ed. D. Ribouillault (Florence, 2011); T.J. Furry, Allegorizing History: The Venerable Bede, Figural Exegesis, and

306

Political iconography

7 8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16 17 18

Historical Theory (Eugene, 2013); The Book of Nature and Humanity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. D. Hawkes and R.G. Neewhauser (Turnhout, 2013). M. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery (Rome, 1964), 12, 24. F. Ohly, “Vom geistigen Sinn des Wortes im Mittelalter,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Litteratur 83 (1959), 1–2. See also D. Jöns, Das Sinnen-Bild: Studien zur allegorischen Bildlichkeit bei AndreasGryphius (Stuttgart, 1966), and A. Schöne, Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock (Munich, [1964] 1968). T. Fabiny, The Lion and the Lamb (as in note 6); and “Rossz ízlés, vagy művészi érték?” in A reneszánsz szimbolizmus: Ikonográfia, emblematika, Shakespeare, ed. T. Fabiny, Gy. E. Szönyi, and J. Pál (Szeged, 1998), 21–33. See the chapter “‘Extra-Literary’ Emblematics: Painting, Tapestry, Carving, Jewellery, Funerary Monuments, Imprese” in The Modern Critical Reception of the English Emblem, ed. P. Daly and M.V. Silcox (Munich, 1991), 203–38; D. Russell, “Perceiving, Seeing and Meaning: Emblems and Some Approaches to Reading Early Modern Culture,” in Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500–1700, ed. P. Daly and J. Manning (New York, 1999), 77–92. See the numerous studies on fashion – for example, A. Bönsch, Formengeschichte europeischen Kleidung (Vienna, 2001); M.R. DeLong and P.A. Hemmis, “Historic Costume and Image: A Factor in Emblem Analysis,” in The Telling Image: Explorations in the Emblem, ed. A.L. Bagley, E.M. Griffin, and A.J. McLean (New York, 1996), 117–38; H.H. Glaser, Was Man Trug Anno 1634: Die Basler Kostümfolge (Basle, 1993). See L.K. Davidson, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Research Guide (New York, 1993); H. Belting, Bild und Kult (Munich, 1990), translated into English as Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago, 1994). On the rhetoric of the body see P. Burke, “Gesture Language in Early Modern Italy,” in Varieties of Cultural History (Cambridge, 1997); L. Enterline, The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2000); D. Grantley, The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Aldershot, 2000); M. Krobialka, This Is My Body: Representational Practices in the Early Middle Ages (Ann Arbor, 1999); C. Mueller, Redebegleitende Gesten: Kulturgeschichte, Theorie, Sprachvergleich (Berlin, 1998); J.C. Schmitt, La Raison de gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris, 1990). N. Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 152–87; R. van Dülmen, Theater of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1991 [1985]); S.Y. Edgerton, Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca, 1985); R.J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600–1987 (Oxford, 1996); I. Sz. Kristóf, “How to Make a (Legal) Pact with the Devil?” in Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology in Early Modern Europe, ed. G. Klaniczay and É. Pócs (Budapest, 2008), 165–79; M.B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London, 1999); M. Pointon, “Wearing Memory: Mourning, Jewellery and the Body,” in Trauer tragen – Trauer zeigen: Inszenierungen der Geschlechter, ed. G. Ecker (Munich, 1999), 65–83; M.C. RuggieriTricoli, Il “funeral teatro”: apparati e mausolei effimeri dal XVII al XX secolo a Palermo (Palermo, 1993). On court festivals see J.R. Mulryne and E. Goldring (ed.), Court Festivals of the European Renaissance (Aldershot, 2002), and the two-volume representative edition of J.R. Mulryne, H. Watanabe-O’Kelly, and M. Shewring (ed.), Europa Triumphans: Court Festivals in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2004). In German scholarship a new subfield has evolved since the 2000s, called “Zeremonial wissenschaft” – that is, the study of early modern ceremonies. See V. Bauer, Hofökonomie: Der Diskurs über den Fürstenhof in Zeremonialwissenschaft (Vienna, 1997), and M. Velc, Zeremonialwissenschaft im Fürstenstaat (Frankfurt, 1998). A useful thematic volume on political iconography is Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation, ed. A. Ellenius (Oxford, 1998), especially J. Chrośicki’s study “Ceremonial Space,” in this volume on (193–217). Pioneers of deciphering and interpreting of these programs were the art historians usually associated with the “Warburg School”: Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, Edgar Wind, Ernst Gombrich, Jan Białostocki, and others. See chapters elsewhere in this volume. I have published some interesting case studies by a number of colleagues. See Gy.E. Szönyi (ed.), European Iconography East & West (Leiden, 1996). E. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957). See B. Kéry, Kaiser Sigismund: Ikonographie (Vienna, 1972); J.K. Hoensch, Kaiser Sigismund: Herrscher an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit 1368–1437 (Munich, 1996); Sigismund von Luxemburg: Ein Kaiser in Europa, ed. M. Pauly and F. Reinert (Mainz, 2006). See also K. Johannesson, “The Portrait of the Prince as a Rhetorical Genre,” in Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation (as in note 14), 11–37; S. Bertelli, “Rex et Sacerdos:

307

György E. Szönyi

19

20

21 22

23

24 25 26

27

28

29

30 31 32

33

The Holiness of the King in European Civilization,” in Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation (as in note 14), 123–47. B. Kery, “Kryptoportraits oder nicht?” in Sigismund von Luxemnburg: Kaiser und Konig in Mitteleuropa 1387–1437, : Beiträge zur Herrschaft Kaiser Sigismunds und der europäischen Geschichte um 1400 :Vorträge der internationalen Tagung in Budapest vom 8.–11 Juli 1987 anlässlich der 600, ed. J. Macek, E. Marosi, and F. Seibt (Warendorf, 1994), 279–86. See the classical study of E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, “Classical Mythology in Medieval Art,” Metropolitan Museum Studies 4:2 (1933), 228–80; N.T. Burns and C.J. Reagan, “Concepts of the Hero in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” Speculum 51 (1976), 162 (review of a number of books dealing with this topic); M.M. Donato, “Hercules and David in the Early Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991), 83–98; F. Polleross, “From the Exemplum Virtutis to the Apotheosis: Hercules as an Identification Figure in Portraiture,” in Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation (as in note 14), 37–63; B. Bussman, Die Historisierung der Herrscherbilder, 1000–1200 (Cologne, 2006). Reproduced in Ut pictura politeia oder der gemalte Fürstenstaat Moritz der Gelehrte und das Bildprogramm in Eschwege, ed. H. Borggrefe, T. Fusenig, and B. Kümmel (Marburg, 2000), 12. On the basics of heraldry see F.J. Baigent and C.J. Russell, A Practical Manual of Heraldry and of Heraldic Illumination: With a Glossary of the Principal Terms (London, 1864); O. Neubecker, Heraldry: Sources, Symbols and Meaning (London, 1977); T. Woodcock, The Oxford Guide to Heraldry (Oxford, 1990); V.V. Filip, Einführung in die Heraldik (Stuttgart, 2000); P. Lovett, The British Library Companion to Calligraphy, Illumination & Heraldry: A History and Practical Guide (London, 2000); B. Bedos-Rezak, Form and Order in Medieval France: Studies in Social and Quantitative Sigillography (Aldershot, 1993). See D.S. Caldwell, The Sixteenth-Century Italian “Impresa” in Theory and Practice (New York, 2004); B. Trinca, “Albrecht’s ‘Jüngerer Titurel’: A Thirteenth-Century Precursor of the Impresa?” Emblematica 18 (2010), 195–205; Deutsche und österreichische Exlibris 1500–1599 im Britischen Museum, ed. I. O’Dell-Franke (London, 2003); M. Hopkinson, Exlibris: The Art of Bookplates (London, 2011); C. Valter, Kunstwerke im Kleinformat: deutsche Exlibris vom Ende des 15. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Nürnberg, 2014). It was Henry III (1207–72) who initiated the attribution of a golden cross on a blue shield to Saxon kings (Neubecker, Heraldry, 30, as in note 22). See Gy.E. Szönyi, “Concepts and Representations of Sovereignty on the English Renaissance Emblematic Stage,” IKON 5 (2012), 210. See the literature listed in note 14. Furthermore: W. Brückle, Civitas Terrena: Staatsrepräsentation und politischer Aristotelismus in der französischen Kunst, 1270–1380 (Berlin, 2005); E. Korsch, Bilder der Macht: Venezianische Repäsentationsstrategien beim Staatsbesuch Heinrichs III, 1574 (Berlin, 2013); F. Buttay-Jutier, Fortuna: Usages politiques d’un allégorie morale à la Renaissance (Paris, 2008); P. Schneider, “Political Iconography and the Picture Act: The Execution of Charles I in 1649,” in Pictorial Cultures and Political Iconographies, ed. U.J. Hebel (Berlin, 2011), 63–85. See a detailed iconological analysis with the historical background in T. Noll, Die Silvester-Kapelle in SS: Quatro Coronati in Rom. Ein Bildzyklus im Kampf zwischen Kaiser und Papst (Berlin, 2011). A similar study is I. Grötschke, Das Bild des Jüngsten Gerichts: Die ikonografischen Konventionen in Italien und ihre politische Aktualisierung in Florenz (Worms, 1997). See the Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff, Knight, 1496–99, ed. Malcolm Letts (London, 1946); on the festival “Bucentaur,” The Encyclopadia Britannica, ed. H. Chisholm (London, 1910), 11th ed., and M. O’Connell, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Baltimore, 2009), 17, referring to E. Crouzet-Pavan, Venice Triumphant: The Horizons of a Myth (Baltimore, 2002), and E. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981). See The “Libro cerimoniale” of the Florentine Republic by Francesco Filarete and Angelo Manfidi, ed. R.C. Trexler (Geneve, 1978); G. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977, 1997); and R.C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, NY, 1980, 1991). Mediateca di Palazzo Medici-Riccardi–Window on the Renaissance, www.palazzo-medici.it/mediateca/en/ schede.php?nome=La_festa_dei_Magi_(XV_secolo) (accessed July 23, 2015). The Museums of Florence, www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/chapel_of_the_magi.html# (accessed July 28, 2015). For a detailed description of the work see L. Schmeckebier, A New Handbook of Italian Renaissance Painting (New York, 1981), 81–85; F. Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (London, 1987), 116–19; the quotation is on page 117. A. Riklin, Lorenzettis Politische Summe (St. Gallen, 1994). See also J.B. Steinhoff, “Urban Images and Civic Identity in Medieval Sienese Painting,” and A.W. Campbell, “Iconography and Identity in a

308

Political iconography

34

35

36 37

38 39

Renaissance Republic,” both in Art as Politics in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena, ed. T.B. Smith and J.B. Steinhoff (Farnham, 2012). The quotation is on page 102. On the Artus Court see the homepage of the City Museum of Gdansk: http://www.mhmg.gda.pl/ oddzial/11/artus-court (accessed July 24, 2015). On the Hanseatic backgrounds see T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611 (Cambridge, 1991, 2002). I have not found a detailed iconographic analysis of this curious work. My summary is based on the information provided by the museum. For the artistic reconstruction of the Artus Court see T. Grzybkowska and J. Talbierska, Dwór Artusa w Gdańsku: sztuka i sztuka konserwacji (Gdansk, 2004). C. Sponsler, Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatricality in Late Medieval England (Minneapolis, 1997). See Gy.E. Szönyi, “From Image Hunting to Semiotics: Changing Attitudes toward Shakespeare’s Imagery,” in Modellierungen von Geschichte und Kultur / Modelling History and Culture, ed. J. Bernard, P. Grzybek, and G. Withalm (Vienna, 2000), 799–808; and “Concepts and Representations of Sovereignty” (as in note 25). J. Gillies, Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, 1994), 76; also F.A. Yates, Theatre of the World (London, 1969). M. Wintroub, “Civilizing the Savage and Making a King: The Royal Entry Festival of Henry II (1550),” The Sixteenth-Century Journal 29:2 (1998), 465–94; A. Greve, Die Konstruktion Amerikas: Bildpolitik in den Grand Voyages aus der Werkstatt de Bry (Böhlau, 2004); Interactions: Artistic Interchange between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2007); L. Jardin, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca, 2000).

309

23 PICTURING THE STARS – SCIENTIFIC ICONOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES Dieter Blume

Watching the stars was essential from mankind’s earliest times. Observing the regular movement of the stars was the only way to facilitate a clear orientation in time and space. But to do that it, it was necessary to impose an order on the chaotic multitude of the stars. Constellations had to be defined and named. Groups of stars were represented as figures and there always was a relatively strong correspondence between the geometric patterns of the constellations and the appearance of these figures. Astronomy was therefore possible only when images were created and used. Even though astronomy is a very specific subject, it is also a characteristic case of scientific iconography and the following article will therefore concentrate on astronomical and astrological imagery.1 Right up to the present, constellations are named after figures from Greek mythology. Before written records, the ancient Greeks defined the constellations and put the stars in a new order. Both Homer and Hesiod described these constellations.2 The Greek system of ordering the stars has surprisingly never changed and the Latin names of these constellations are still used in modern astronomy. The early fathers of the Christian church polemicized against pagan astronomy and astrology. Hieronymus (c. 327–420) called the mythological tradition of the constellations a ridiculous and ugly slandering of the magnificent sky which had been created by God.3 Attempts to define a new Christian sky were never successful. Therefore, the church had to study what was considered a pagan astronomy for measuring time for the canonical hours during the night and even more importantly to calculate the exact date of the Easter calendar. So the science of computus, which is concerned with the reckoning of time and the calculation of the calendar, was established in the early Middle Ages. The first handbook for this new science was written by the English monk Bede (672/73–735) in the monastery of Saint Paul’s in modern Jarrow around 725 and has the title “De ratione temporum.”4 Bede intentionally avoided giving any information on the single constellations or a precise description of the signs of the zodiac. Later, the emperor Charlemagne (768–814) initiated a general reform of the calendar and a renewal of the sciences, especially of astronomy. Around 810, scholars at his court in Aachen created an extensive compendium, which collected all known cosmological information as well as that on the calculation of time. This work is known today under the title “The Seven-Book-Computus” or Libri computi.5 The fifth book discusses the planets and the stars and contains a catalogue of the single stars in every constellation, but gives no further information about the figures or their mythological background. It is likely that the Carolingian scholars planned their fundamental handbook without images. It was felt that the pagan figures that illustrated 310

Picturing the stars

the ancient manuscript they used should not be reproduced and neither should they be introduced into the education of the monks in the monasteries throughout the empire. At the start of medieval astronomy it is possible to detect a hesitation or maybe even a fear to accept the pagan names of the constellations as well as images of the mythological figures. In some of the earliest manuscripts, spaces into which images from the ancient models would be placed were left empty.6 This situation changed fundamentally under Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious (814–840). During his reign, classical manuscripts were produced in considerable numbers in Aachen and are characterized by an extensive use of antique models. Around 816, in a very ambitious collaboration between scholars and artists, a fine picture book of the constellations was produced.7 This codex is not a compilation of computistical and astronomical material, but is nothing else than the textual edition of an ancient poem, the Latin translation of the Phainomena of Aratos by Germanicus.8 This text is a tentative description of the starry sky, but offers no real astronomical information. Therefore detailed commentaries on that poem existed already in ancient times. This bundle of texts, the poem as well as the commentaries, which was also known as the tradition of Aratea, is the starting point for medieval astronomy. The manuscript for Louis the Pious, however, is a real picture book. The main focus is the collection of carefully painted images and there is a strong correspondence between text and images. Every constellation occupies a fullpage miniature, which shows the mythological figure in an illusionistic manner, copying ancient painting in front of the blue sky. These images are not simply a copy of an ancient model, but represent instead a careful compilation of elements from different traditions and different models. A good example is the zodiac sign of Gemini (Fig. 23.1). The nakedness and the attribute of a

Figure 23.1 Gemini, Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Ms. Voss. Lat. Q 79, fol. 16v.

311

Dieter Blume

lyre are based on the Roman tradition of Germanicus illustrations, but the arming with lance and club as well as the presentation of separate figures who do not embrace goes back to the Greek tradition. The Carolingian painter added further details, such as the helmets crowned by a Christian cross. So the ancient twins – Castor and Pollux – appear as miles christiani or Christian warriors and this may well relate to the emperor Louis the Pious. Near the end of the codex, next to a chapter discussing the zodiac in its entirety, as well as the planets and seasons, there is a specific combination of diagram and images, which is surprising. The basic structure corresponds to the diagram from the Libri computi, in that it shows the eccentric orbits of the planets around the earth. Venus and Mercury are shown with additional orbits around the sun. This theory is described by Martinaus Capella and used to explain some of the irregularities in the orbits of these planets close to the earth.9 Detailed information, such as the time of their orbit and their specific positions on the zodiac, all coming from Pliny’s Natural History, was written along the orbit lines of the single planets. This complex diagram was then replenished with carefully painted figures in medallions. There is an image of every planet and a personification of the earth is found in the middle. The signs of the zodiac and the labors of the months are shown in the outer circle. The iconography of all these images closely follows different ancient models. This full-page miniature is a sort of map of the universe, a model of the cosmos, which contains every piece of information that was available at this time. Furthermore, the position of the planets corresponds to their positions on April 16, 816!10 This was not an accidental date; it had the full moon just before Easter and was therefore a very important date for the calculation of the liturgical calendar. In addition, the sun is near to her exaltatio – that is, astrologically a very powerful position. Jupiter standing in Gemini may have been the zodiac sign of the emperor. Here, the Carolingian astronomers painted a remarkable and positive horoscope, which must surely have related to the reign of their emperor. In the miniatures of the constellations, single stars are shown as golden rhombs in more or less the same positions they have in the figures. Astonishingly, it is possible to count more stars than in any other star catalogue of the early Middle Ages.11 So, all the relevant astronomical information is shown in the images, and not in the text, but this information is available only for someone who has a basic knowledge of astronomy. This luxurious manuscript was probably created for the emperor and impressively documents the high level of astronomy practiced in Aachen at this time. It also represents a sort of breakthrough for the images. After completing this famous codex, pictures of the constellations became an integral part of handbooks for computistical matters and were copied for all the important monasteries in the empire. A manuscript of the Libri computi was produced around 820 in the scriptorium at Aachen and has colorful images of the constellations between sections in the text. Some traces of gold remain in the miniatures and indicate that golden stars were once found in front of the illusionistic figures.12 Now, nearly every copy of the Libri computi has drawings accompanying the descriptions of the constellations. So the pagan imagery preserved in these pictures became an integral part of the scientific education of the monks. With the adoption of these images, a new interest in the mythological legends associated with these figures arose; this was still lacking in the Libri computi. The earliest such work also comes from the court in Aachen. The sophisticated manuscript with impressive miniatures of the constellations was made there soon after 830, and also has a translation of Aratos by Cicero.13 The miniatures are made according to the ancient manner of a carmen figuratum. This means that the bodies of the figures were filled with text. As this text offers mythological explanations, both the myth and the image are presented in a sort of superimposition. Obviously myth and image are mutually dependent. These images opened the door for a new preoccupation with the pagan world of the mythologically defined constellations. 312

Picturing the stars

It is possible to describe three steps in the adoption process of pagan astronomy at the Carolingian court: first, there was the elaboration of a written star catalogue under Charlemagne (c. 810); second, there was the development of the images under Louis the Pious (c. 816); and last, there was a new reading of the ancient myths (c. 830). The images are an integral part of this intellectual process and inside the books they were used to transmit specific knowledge. From the tenth century onwards it is possible to observe a shift in astronomical interests. There was no longer any focus on calendrical problems and instead there were cosmological questions. The description of the constellations with their image sequences was usually now part of the manuscripts that gathered basic material for the study of the Quadrivium, the mathematical sciences of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The monastic scholars now looked for a logical understanding of the universe as a harmonic building that was created by God. The center for these advanced studies was the abbey of Fleury in Saint Benoit-sur-Loire in France. There was an immense library in this monastery with a considerable collection of all the basic ancient texts. An impressive number of astronomical manuscripts are also connected to this abbey. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, monks from all over Europe came to Fleury to improve their knowledge. At this time, the first texts to explain the Islamic invention of the astrolabium came from Fleury. Images of the constellations also attracted new attention, as documented by a series of framed and colorful miniatures in a codex dating from 940 to 950.14 These pictures show the figures in motion and integrate some elements from the mythological stories. For example, the painter has added a big snake under Andromeda’s feet that refers to the sea monster in the myth, and this may also have been connected to Eve and the serpent from Paradise. With the help of Perseus, who of course could be a type of Christ, Andromeda resisted the sea monster and could be seen as a sort of counter image to Adam’s sinful wife. A monk from Limoges who copied these images a little later strengthened these associations and showed Andromeda completely naked, which went against the ancient tradition (Fig. 23.2).15 The picture representing an

Figure 23.2 Andromeda, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 5239, fol. 219v.

313

Dieter Blume

astronomical constellation had thus mutated into an image of female sexuality. Even if they are only simple drawings, it is clear that these illustrations could also stimulate different areas of the human imagination. The images of pagan figures in these astronomical books exerted a strong influence on the readers beyond scientific studies. In the memory of the monks who worked at Fleury these images were dispersed throughout Europe. One of the most famous abbots of Fleury was Abbo (940/45–1004), who was responsible for writing some important astronomical texts. It is possible that a manuscript with some of the basic works on astronomy was compiled for him. The pictures of the constellations are copies from one of the aforementioned Carolingian luxury manuscripts and were executed by a very talented English draftsman (Fig. 23.3). His work transformed the figures into strange, demonic beings, who in their nakedness hurry around the sky and have little wings on their heads to demonstrate their celestial origins.16 These drawings are yet another example of the creative transformation of the iconographic tradition connected with ambitious astronomical studies. In the eleventh century new compendia were compiled at different locations throughout Europe, and these attempted to systematize the growing knowledge in the fields of astronomy and cosmology. In 1056, in the monastery of Ripoll in northern Spain, the monk Oliva compiled a handbook that offered a completely new and systematic organization of the material.17 For the first time he distinguished the zodiac signs from the constellations and treated them separately as different types of illustrations. He also discussed the planets and created the first images of these wandering stars since antiquity.18 At the same time, a new commentary was written for the aforementioned poem by Germanicus at the abbey of Montecassino in Southern Italy. Like the monk Oliva in Ripoll, material from different ancient authors was used anew and this work included considerable mythological information. This important work survives as a copy from the twelfth century, with a considerable number of miniatures closely following ancient models.19 However, new elements are also to be found. At Montecassino, the figure of Eridanus, who is normally shown prostrate as a river-god, is interpreted as the falling Phaeton, who crashes into the river. The miniature shows a naked man with waving legs and arms, similar to a swimmer (Cf. Fig. 23.5). It may be that the inspiration for this new interpretation came from a relief representing the fall of Phaeton on an ancient sarcophagus. The commentary also has a chapter on the South Pole that is impossible to see from Europe, and so the ancient texts offered no information on this important astronomical feature. Using mythological information, the author tried to find concrete information on the Austronothus or Southern Pole. Combining remarks from Hyginus and Ovid he offered a picture of a hybrid monster with female upper parts and the body of a female tiger.20 This interesting detail shows the medieval monks’ scientific curiosity and demonstrates how ancient myths could offer new solutions for open questions and could expand the thought process. Throughout the Middle Ages there was a continual search for correct astronomical illustrations and different models were repeatedly balanced. Pictures of the constellations were always an integral part of the design and used to mediate astronomical knowledge. To alleviate the slightly monotonous nature of the star catalogues, the graphic quality of the images was essential for a fuller understanding. It is possible to distinguish three different functions for the images. First, they were didactic and have to be seen as an aid to memory. Second, the images often have information, such as the positions of the single stars or the figures that give the constellations their names, which is not always found in the texts. Third, the images could stimulate the painter’s imagination as much as the viewers – and this may have nothing to do with the primary task of the illustration. In twelfth-century Spain and Sicily, scholars translated scientific works from Arabic into Latin. Astronomy and astrology were the primary interests of these scholars and they opened a new field 314

Figure 23.3 Aquarius, London, British Library, Harley Ms. 2506, fol. 38v. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

Dieter Blume

of knowledge. Ptolemy’s famous work was now available in Latin. Astrology offered a theory that could explain the role of the upper parts of the cosmos in the creation of the world. The practical use of astrology and the calculation of horoscopes were, however, limited in the twelfth century and really developed only in the thirteenth century. Cathedral schools and royal courts replaced monasteries as the centers for these developments. In Sicily, scholars became acquainted with Abd al-Rahman ibn Umar al-Sufi’s book (903–986) written in Bagdad around 964. This large book by the Persian astronomer studied the fixed stars and was famous throughout the Islamic world. It has very detailed images, showing all the stars listed by Ptolemy, in their exact position and appropriately scaled to reflect their size. However, the figures look strange and have now lost their connection to the Greek myths. For the Sicilian scholars these pictures were fascinating, because they showed more stars in their exact positions than any of the other Latin sources. It was easy to compare these pictures to the detailed star catalogue by Ptolemy translated into Latin by Gerhard of Cremona. Therefore they did not translate al-Sufi’s extensive text, but instead combined the Islamic images with the Ptolemaic star catalogue and today this book is called Sufi latinus. Around 1188–89 a splendid exemplar, which is now unfortunately lost, was made for the Norman king, William II (1166–1189). The oldest surviving copy was made around 1250 in Bologna (Fig. 23.4).21 Several additions clearly show

Figure 23.4 Perseus, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms. 1036, fol. 10r.

316

Picturing the stars

that astronomers who observed the stars and undertook calculations with the astrolabe used this book on the fixed stars. The miniatures, with their strange appearance, were a sort of mediator between the abstract list of numbers, which gave the position of the single stars, and the visible constellations in the sky. It is astonishing that this spectacular book of the Sufi latinus was not more widely circulated and this may have been due to its courtly origins. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century in the Visconti court in Milan that three other copies were produced. However, the intention here was no longer astronomical, as several indices make clear; the interest had shifted to astrology and the occult sciences. One of these manuscripts from Milan was very soon brought to Prague and was used there as the model for the most luxurious book on astrology ever compiled. Apart from the Sufi latinus this work also has other important astrological texts and was made for King Wenzel (1361–1419) soon after 1400 as an unusually large format manuscript (47.2 × 34.8 cm).22 In order to read it, it is necessary to turn it around at a ninetydegree angle and look at double-pages (measuring c. 70 × 50 cm) with text and images. For over two centuries, the exoticism of the Islamic images was more or less preserved in the copies. Obviously it was the strange appearance which gave them a specific authority. The book of al-Sufi was read and translated into Catalan at the Spanish court of King Alfonso X, El Sabio (1252–1284). King Alfonso’s interests in the sciences are well known and four large books on astronomy, astrology, and magic were written for him. The Libro de las estrella fixas is a detailed discussion of the constellations and makes extensive use of al-Sufi’s work.23 Every constellation is allocated one page, with a general description on one page and a depiction of the figure in a medallion in the middle, surrounded by a description of the single stars written in a radial system. It appears as if the picture has a sort of aureole. Every page is a sophisticated synopsis of text and image similar to diagrams. The iconography of the constellations is a simplified version of the images from al-Sufi. Another center for scientific studies was in southern Italy at the court of Emperor Frederic II of Hohenstaufen (1194–1250). Here again there was a special focus on astrology, which was, at that time, a new and fascinating science that offered useful knowledge, especially for rulers. Around 1230, an astrological picture book was compiled there by Georgius Zaparus Zotorus Fendulus, who would be unknown apart from this work. It shows the signs of the zodiac together with the other constellations that rise jointly with them over the horizon – the so-called paranatellontes – and the planets in an impressive sequence of miniatures.24 Every planet can be seen in four different pictures demonstrating six different positions on the zodiac. The wandering stars are shown as rulers and kings, and in positions where they have little or no influence we see them falling from their thrones. Some attributes refer to particular areas of their activities. Venus, for example, holds a psaltery and a drinking vessel, Mercury a book, Mars a sword, and Saturn points to a grapevine. Beside the much simpler images by the monk Oliva from the eleventh century, which have been referred to earlier, these were the first depictions of planets undertaken after antiquity and employed a completely new iconography, which was developed from the long descriptions in the astrological texts that explained the influence of every single planet. It is clear that a wish existed at the court to have images of the important astrological powers for a lay audience who was interested in this new science, but who could not practice it. These miniatures were eminently suitable to promote astrology and to explain its methods in a courtly environment. More important than this little book by Georgius Fendulus, however, was the work of Michael Scotus (c. 1117–1235), who was connected with the court of Frederic II in the second part of his life.25 He wrote an extensive introduction to astrology and the natural sciences called Liber introductorius. An essential chapter is an astrological description of the sky under the title Liber de signis et imaginibus celi. This section was frequently handed down as a separate work 317

Dieter Blume

and even today it still exists in twenty-two manuscripts. It was the most successful astrological text from the entire Middle Ages. The starting point for Michael Scotus was the series of miniatures in a manuscript of the Aratos translation by Germanicus as well as the eleventh-century commentary from Montecassino, mentioned earlier. His explanations of the single constellations are like descriptions of the images from this manuscript. These images were very important for him and he took them seriously. A good example is Cassiopeia. In the twelfth-century miniature there is a red wavy line extending downwards from the figure’s left hand. This detail is found only in this single miniature and its origins are mysterious. It may represent a decorative band from the dress that was falling down in a gesture of mourning of the crying Cassiopeia. In the Latin translation of Ptolemy, Michael Scotus would have read that Cassiopeia was a woman with a wet or colored hand. He recognized a close relationship between the image and the information from the other text. Therefore he wrote that the right hand was pierced and there was a strong flow of blood similar to Christ on the cross. Even his astrological interpretation stems from this detail. He says that people born under this sign are beautiful and rich, but will suffer a sudden and violent death – and this only because of the red wavy line in the miniature of the Germanicus manuscript. Another case is Eridanus, who in the Germanicus manuscript he used as a model was shown as a swimmer paralleling the fallen Phaeton who drowned in this river. Michael Scotus wrote that Eridanus was known as a swimmer or a figure who fell into the water but could also be a sitting figure. He added the Figura sonantis canonum, a well-dressed man who played a sort of zither as an alternative image (Fig. 23.5). He described Phaeton as the son of the Sun who sat in a wagon and

Figure 23.5 Eridanus und Figura sonantis canonum, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2352, fol. 19v.

318

Picturing the stars

played this stringed instrument. In this description it is possible to recognize elements of Phaeton before and after his fall. But this may all have resulted from an error in the writing. Canopus, as the brightest star in this constellation, received special attention in most medieval descriptions of the sky and was also often visually represented in the images. In Germanicus’s twelfth-century manuscript, however, Canous appears instead of Canopus, so it may well have been that Michael Scotus read that a star named canous was located there. Canonus, however, is an Arabic musical instrument, similar to a zither, and is widely found in the southern Mediterranean countries. Michael Scotus knew it well, and so he simply put this instrument into Eridanus’s hands. By doing this he added something from his own experience as well as that of his readers. Germanicus described forty-two constellations, but Ptolemy has forty-eight. Therefore, Michael Scotus looked for a further six constellations; three of them, including the Southern Pole Austronothus, he found in other miniatures in the twelfth-century codex. The allegorical representation of the Milky Way he called the demon of the midday (demon meridianus), which referred to Psalm 90, verse 6, and posted this new constellation in the southern sky. There he also introduced a second horse, a drill and a flag. The drill and the flag obviously originate from the everyday world. Again he is looking for a strong reference to the experience of his readers. His interpretation of the planets was based on the description of the influence of these wandering stars in astrological handbooks in a manner similar to that made by Georgius Fendulus. But Michael Scotus offered significantly more detail and also distinguished the single planets. It was astrological influences and not the classical tradition that determined his vision of the celestial bodies. But he was also at pains to be clear and to find points of reference for his readers. Every planet represented a characteristic group in society. Saturn was the farmer in a simple dress. Jupiter could be a judge, bishop, or noble citizen; Mars was a warrior with modern arms, such as the crossbow. Venus was a refined, crowned lady wearing a fine dress and smelling a rose. Smelling the rose, he explained, stood for sensual joy, the fashionable coiffeur for love, and the elegant dress for the art of seduction. When representing her, it is clear that Michael Scotus was well aware that all these details were also used when representing Spring. He used an established picture type, so that meaning could be easily understood. Mercury looks like a university professor in a pulpit with books, but could also be a cleric similar to many intellectuals of his times – not least himself. All of these image types correspond to the experiential world of the readers, who could immediately get a vivid idea of the planets. Astrology in this way became firmly anchored in their store of experience. Michael Scotus planned images of the constellations and the planets which do not employ unusual or fantastic beings, but instead there were many connections to the readers’ experiences. All of the figures have modern dress and everyday tools which were well known in this period. He avoided inconsistent elements and gave every figure an astrological explanation that justified their appearance. So his Liber de signis et imaginibus celi was a popular handbook for laypeople who wanted to understand the basic outlines of the astrological system and to be provided with clear guidelines. This is probably the reason for the great success of the text and images, which were copied in the Renaissance and were finally distributed in a printed version by Erhard Ratdolt in Augsburg in 1491.26 Written in a courtly environment, Michael Scotus’s book was widely circulated in the cities of northern Italy from the second half of the thirteenth century onwards. At the beginning of the fourteenth century it was also known in Germany, England, and Bohemia.27 This work represented a dynamic shift in audience which is also characteristic of the bigger history of science in the high Middle Ages. Knowledge was first elaborated at court, promoted by a ruler or king, and was transferred in a second step to a wider audience based in the city. In such a context, knowledge was further developed and found a wider circulation. 319

Dieter Blume

Notes 1 This chapter is based on two extensive publications, which cover images of constellations from 800 to 1500. Notes here are reduced to a minimum, and for more detailed information see D. Blume, M. Haffner, and W. Metzger, Sternbilder des Mittelalters: Der gemalte Himmel zwischen Wissenschaft und Phantasie, part I 800–1200 (Berlin, 2012), and D. Blume, M. Haffner, and W. Metzger, Sternbilder des Mittelalters und der Renaissance: Der gemalte Himmel zwischen Wissenschaft und Phantasie, part II 1200–1500 (Berlin, 2016). 2 Homer, Ilias, 18, 484–90; Homer, Odyssee 5, 270–77; Hesiod, Erga, 384, 564, 597, 609, 615, 619. 3 Hieronymus, Commentarium in Amos Prophetam, Lib. II, 7/9, 274–83: “Quando autem audimus Arcturum et Oriona, non debemus sequi fabulas poetarum, et riducula ac portentosa mendacia, quibus etiam caelum infamare conantur, et mercedem stupri inter sidera collocare.” (If we hear about Arcturum and Oriona, we should not follow the fables of the poets, which tells ridiculous and ugly lies, with them they shame even the heaven and put the reward of disgrace under the stars.) 4 F. Wallis, Bede, the Reckoning of Time (Liverpool, 1999); C.W. Jones, Beda Venerabilis, De Ratione Temporum, Beda Venerabilis opera, vol. 6.2 (Turnhout, 1977). 5 A. Borst, Die karolingische Kalenderreform (Hannover, 1998), cf. also B.S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance (Leiden, 2007). 6 Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 43–51. 7 Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Ms. Voss. Lat. Q 79; see Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 53–67, Cat. Nr. 23; E. Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena: Celestial Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2013), 65–73. 8 D.B. Gain, The Aratus Ascribed to Germanicus Caesar (London, 1976); E. Maas, Commentariorum in Aratum reliquiae (Berlin, 1898, 1955). 9 Martianus Capella, De nuptiis philologiae et Mercurii, ed. A. Dick (Leipzig, 1925), VIII, 857, 879–83; Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens (as in note 5), 238–46. 10 E. Dekker, “Carolingian Planetary Observations: The Case of the Leiden Planetary Configuration,” Journal of the History of Astronomy 39 (2008), 77–90; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 61–65. 11 E. Dekker, “The Provenance of the Stars in the Leiden Aratea Picture Book,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010), 1–37. 12 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Ms. 3307; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 65–66, Cat.-Nr. 33. 13 London, British Library, Harley Ms. 647; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 68–69, Cat.-Nr. 28. 14 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 5543; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 85–87, Cat.-Nr. 44. 15 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 5239; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 96–97, Cat.-Nr. 43. 16 London, British Library, Harley Ms. 2506; copying London, British Library, Harley Ms. 647; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 91–95, Cat.-Nr. 29. 17 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Vat. Reg. lat. 123; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 100–02, Cat.-Nr. 55. 18 D. Blume, Regenten des Himmels, Astrologische Bilder in Mittelalter und Renaissance (Berlin, 2000), 15–17. 19 Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Ms. 19; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder I 800–1200 (as in note 1), 102–06, Cat.-Nr. 32. The new commentary is also known under the name “Scholia Strozziana.” 20 Hyginus (De astronomia II, 1, 5) writes that Thetys, the wife of Oceanos, refused to accept the constellation of the great bear or Callisto in the waves. So the scholar of Montecassino thought that Thetys was in opposition to the northern pole and identified her with the southern pole. Ovid (MetamorphosesXI, 243ff ) tells the story that Thetis was raped by Peleus and tries in vain to escape with some metamorphoses, among others, as a female tiger. But our scholar didn’t recognize that Thetys and Thetis are not the same person. 21 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’ Arsenal, Ms. 1036, Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder II 1200–1500 (as in note 1), Chap. 4, Cat.-Nr. 34; P. Kunitzsch, “The Astronomer Abu’l-Husayn al-Sufi and His Book on the Constellations,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften 3 (1986), 56–81. 22 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbiblothek, clm 826, Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder II 1200–1500 (as in note 1), Cat.-Nr. 38.

320

Picturing the stars 23 Rome, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Lat. 8174, Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder II 1200– 1500 (as in note 1), Cat.-Nr. 44. 24 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lt. 7330, Blume, Regenten (as in note 15), 34–46; Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder II 1200–1500 (as in note 1), Chap. 2, Cat.-Nr. 1. 25 Blume, Regenten (as in note 18), 52–69; S. Ackermann, Sternstunden am Kaiserhof, Michael Scotus und sein Buch V on den Bildern und Zeichen des Himmels (Frankfurt, 2009); Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder II 1200–1500 (as in note 1), Chap. 3. 26 Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder II 1200–1500 (as in note 1), Chap. 8, Cat.-Nr. 137. 27 Blume, Haffner, and Metzger, Sternbilder II 1200–1500 (as in note 1), Chap. 2, Cat.-Nr. 8–13.

321

24 MEDICINE’S IMAGE1 Jack Hartnell

Inside a looping illuminated letter “C,” a group of men stand before a mitered bishop (Fig. 24.1). They are not well. Their colorful robes and hoods are neatly turned out, but their skin is covered in blotchy spots, red pustules that creep across hands and faces. As a picture it is surprisingly popular, featuring in tourist pamphlets, television documentaries, and across the Internet. And it is seductively simple, labeled in most settings as a scene of plague: disease-struck victims receiving spiritual comfort before a gruesome demise. In 2012 this interpretation was considered firm enough for the initial to be the front cover of the Encyclopedia of the Black Death.2 Its diagnosis, however, is wrong. Work on the fourteenth-century Omne Bonum of James Le Palmer, where the initial resides, has made clear it heads a text on clergymen struck by leprosy, not plague.3 One stereotypically medieval disease has been effortlessly morphed into another, an elision that can be traced back to an unresearched caption by the British Library’s Images Online. Recently, a small group of medical historians have attempted to wrestle the image back into the correct tradition, issuing appeals to publishers, cataloguers, and Wikipedia editors alike.4 This vignette of Le Palmer’s leprous clergymen exemplifies a number of issues important to anyone interested in the iconography of medieval medicine. Today, we are subtly surrounded by medicine’s insistent images, from X-rays and food calorie warnings to billboards advertising the popular fictions of House or Grey’s Anatomy. Its knowledge and character are deeply intertwined with visual culture, so much so that even medieval medical illuminations speed around the web, arousing genuine interest. Conversely, images of medicine in the Middle Ages played a significantly smaller role: medical texts, objects, and spaces did not always make a systematic attempt to utilize the visual. This is not, however, to say that the twinned concerns of sickness and health were any less vital to medieval people, nor that imaging them had limited value. As with all practices stemming from the infinitely extendable subject of The Body, medieval medicine’s boundaries can be difficult to define, graded from the indisputably medical – a surgeon’s instrument or physician’s treatise – to softer evocations of disease and cure found delicately knitted into other historical practices. The very appearance of leprosy in the Omne Bonum, a wide-ranging encyclopedia covering subjects as diverse as childhood, the nature of trees, and biblical figures, makes clear medicine could be present amid a whole array of subjects and images. Likewise, the fact that today leprosy and plague are even mistakable suggests rich iconographies of both diseases. What the faulty fourteenth-century initial thus teaches is not to ignore medical imagery as either unreadably rare or fuzzy and indefinable, but instead to recognize its persistence in surprising 322

Medicine’s image

Figure 24.1 (Detail) Leprous priests receiving instruction from a bishop, from the Omne Bonum of James Le Palmer, c. 1360–75, England. London, British Library, MS Royal 6 E VI, vol. 2, fol. 301r. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

locations and its simultaneous fragility out of context. This short essay tries to do just that, putting some of medieval medicine’s visual repertoire into place. In order to make useful sense of such an expansive field, what follows focuses mostly on medical iconography in later Western Europe. This, of course, was not the only time or place that medicine and its imagery appeared in the famously “long” and (more recently) “global” Middle Ages. The diversity and proficiency of non-Western medicine meant European authors and artists often owed substantial debt to Middle Eastern, African, and Asian traditions.5 Chronologically, too, the discipline of medicine varied significantly between Roman Empire and Renaissance, shifting from a small concentration of healers to fully blown university disciplines and artisanal traditions.6 But by centering on later Western Europe, a summary of medicine’s imagery might be brought into line with the periods and locales most explored in recent work on the history of medicine. By highlighting innovative visual schemes and scenarios of medieval medicine alongside this supporting historical frame, the following essay hopes to reveal the art of medicine for a new reader. 323

Jack Hartnell

Historiographies and histories Historical interest in images of medieval medicine began in earnest at the same time as art history’s earliest iconographic enterprises. Contemporary with the emergent work of Reigl, Wölfflin, and Warburg, turn-of-the-century scholarship on the history of medicine gathered around the totemic figure of Karl Sudhoff (1853–1938). Sudhoff ’s influence on medical history cannot be overestimated, and it was in early volumes of his Leipzig-based monographic series, Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin, that a plethora of typological explorations of medieval medical images emerged.7 From this concentrated start, medico-iconographic studies ebbed and flowed. The subject only occasionally aroused the interest of famous mid-twentieth-century iconographers like Panofsky, Pächt, or Saxl, but it was taken up seriously in the 1960s and 1970s in influential works by Loren McKinney and Robert Herrlinger.8 In the fifty years since, much of this work has been extended, particularly through the near-exhaustive studies of John Murdoch and Peter Jones.9 These and other volumes suggest a new impetus for medical iconography as a field, both in print and online.10 More recently, iconographers have also crafted increasingly detailed analyses of specific traditions, either dwelling on particular bodies of medical thought (gynecology and obstetrics, surgery, heart medicine) or organizing their work instead through an artistic lens to consider particular media (metalwork, manuscripts, wall painting). This dual focus is reflective of the historical material itself, for both issues of clinical content and of media significantly warp the presence of medieval medicine’s images. Particular types of practice were more prone to illustration, and certain materials featured medical imagery much more commonly than others, two factors which combine to see manuscript traditions overwhelmingly dominate the field. As a result, chronologies of written medical traditions also matter immensely to the frequency of images. The foundations of this textual medicine are found in the authoritative corpus of the classical and Arabic worlds: Greek authors such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE) or the Hippocratic Collection (fifth to third centuries BCE), Roman writers like the influential Galen of Pergamum (c. 130–216), and later commentaries or syntheses of both sets of classical sources by Byzantine and Arabic scholars – for example, the highly respected ibn-Sīnā (c. 980–1037, known as Avicenna). Few examples attest to an extant illustrative tradition stretching back as far as the earliest of these primary texts, the survival of images among Western medicine’s early material both unusual and uneven.11 However, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries many canonical writings reentered Western traditions through translations of Arabic into Latin undertaken in the scholastic centers of Italy and Spain. In this new generation of medical texts, imagery appears to have grown to become a small but substantive feature, continuing to expand in the subsequent centuries alongside the growing scholastic debates and practical developments undertaken by medical men and women.

The medical body The human body is the primary subject of medicine, and throughout the classical and medieval periods debates on the accuracy and superiority of differing physiological traditions were common. Alongside these discussions several iconographic schemes emerged which sought to picture the foundational concepts of medieval anatomy. The first group of images uncovered by historians that express a concern for the body’s internal makeup were published by Sudhoff in 1907, naming them the Fünfbilderserie, literally the “five-picture-series.”12 His nomenclature hinged on a twelfth-century manuscript from a Benedictine monastery in Prüfening, near Regensburg, which preserved a scheme displaying five of the body’s internal systems as theorized by Galen and his followers: arteries, veins, bones, nerves, 324

Medicine’s image

and muscles.13 These figures are shown squatting and surrounded by text, each with a particular internal structure plotted onto their skin in black and red. Despite their naturalistic body shapes and faces, the anatomical detail pictured within the figures is largely schematic: organs are rendered in simple outline, thoroughfares of nerves and veins appearing as feathered lines stretching to the extremities, and tubular blocks of muscle presented flat and wavy (Fig. 24.2). Within five years of their discovery, Sudhoff had identified several other Fünfbilderserie groups, positing their origin alongside early anatomical writings of the Alexandrian schools in the first century BCE.14 Scholars still agree that the Prüfening manuscript is the earliest known example, and there is little evidence either to prove or disprove Alexandrian origins, but his original claim that the series contained only five systems has been convincingly overturned.15 Despite the dogged persistence of its fivefold moniker, closer readings of the text accompanying the figures, as well as the incorporation of a number of new examples into the group, suggest the scheme is made up of Nine-System Figures, the original five alongside a further four: the male reproductive system, a combined abdominal system (stomach, liver, belly), the female reproductive system, and a final combined cephalic system showing the brain and eyes.16 Sudhoff ’s reluctance to consider all nine as a group perhaps stemmed from the distinct pictorial treatment of these final four, not mapped onto realistic figures but instead rendered diagrammatically through abstract colored shapes adjoined by blocky lines (Fig. 24.2). Medieval medical books were often cumulative affairs comprising gatherings of different complementary or clashing texts, so it is perhaps unsurprising that these Nine-System Figures were not consistently pictured as a complete group.17 They could be shown alone or combined with other schematic iconographies from different textual anatomical traditions; for example, images of individual bodily organs – sometimes naturalistic, sometimes schematic – often shown in bold clashing colors and floating in a sea of text describing their function within the Galenic system. The liver, stomach, gallbladder, heart, or lungs were all sometimes included, as well as an almond-shaped organ more difficult to identify (perhaps the abdominal membrane) and sometimes the bones presented as a complete skeleton.18 In other cases, the Nine-System Figures appear alongside much older physiological imagery, for example material illustrating the long-standing textual traditions of gynecology and obstetrics, especially an influential Greek text known as the Gynaecia. Written in the first or second century by Soranus of Ephesus, it was known in the medieval West predominantly through its sixthcentury Latin translation by Muscio (sometimes Moschion or Mustio, a North African author about whom we know little), copies of which occasionally depict up to seventeen presentations of unborn fetuses in the womb.19 Here, a tiny man or small child is shown in place of a realistic unborn fetus, and the womb too is shown highly schematically, taking the form of either a closed roundel, a circle with a small opening to indicate the direction of delivery, or a more tangibly three-dimensional, oval vessel. Drawn in outline and only sometimes lightly colored, most often in red, some vessel-shaped wombs exhibit a particularly careful semitransparent treatment, rendered opaque as if blown from fragile glass (Fig. 24.2). In the earliest-known such series, found in a ninth-century manuscript in the Royal Library, Brussels, fetuses are shown in a variety of combinations and positions: twins, triplets, quadruplets, more complicated breach and compound births, and even a monstrous womb containing eleven children.20 A particularly vivid group of three figures also frequently accompanied the Nine-System Figures in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Germany, suggesting the easy pictorial coupling of classical works with contemporary, vernacular medical texts. In an extension of his Fünfbilderserie, Sudhoff loosely grouped together this trio as the Dreibilderserie: the Wound Man, Disease Man, and Pregnant Disease Woman.21 Their specific origins are hard to trace, but the relatively clear trajectory of the Wound Man offers a model for the Dreibilderserie’s evolution, emerging 325

Figure 24.2 Muscle Man, Male and Female Genitalia, Presentations of the Fetus in the Womb, and Pregnant Disease Woman, from the so-called Wellcome Apocalypse, a medical miscellany from c. 1420, Southern Germany. London, Wellcome Library, MS 49, fols. 37v and 38r. Image courtesy of the Wellcome Library.

Medicine’s image

around 1400 as an indexical illustration of a text on wound healing derived from the writings of the Southern German surgeon Ortolf von Baierland.22 Over the following century the striking image of a bruised and bleeding man appeared in at least twelve surgical manuscripts, before its transition into early printed surgical books saw it separated from Ortolf ’s text and used instead as a visually arresting frontispiece, heralding the surgical cures contained within.23 The Disease Man and Woman likely stem from similar surgical contexts, themselves inscribed all about their skin with short descriptions of potential diseases of the body (Fig. 24.2). Both Man and Woman appear to share common ancestry in an enigmatic image from a twelfth-century medical miscellany now in Bamburg, where a schematic figure modeled on Christ strikes a striding pose across the lower margin, overwritten with various maladies and humoral elements.24 Although the texts and labels found within the Wound Men and Disease Men and Women are not always particularly enlightening from a medical standpoint, nor necessarily placed in the actual location of a particular complaint (some read alphabetically, others from head to toe), like the Nine-System Figures they seem to function as creative rerenderings of largely textual material. Some large-scale versions of these figures still exist, drawn onto sizeable individual parchment sheets, suggesting the possibility that each or all of them might have circulated individually, acting as easy referents for surgeons and physicians to particularly valuable or familiar texts.25 Such a practical use for this textual imagery would not be out of sorts with other evidence from the period. Large-scale anatomical illustrations seem to have informed the teaching practices of at least one fourteenth-century university practitioner, the acclaimed Frenchman Henri de Mondeville.26 But the use of such images for reference or teaching turns the spotlight onto one of their major iconographic problems: verism. Modern standards of scientific illustration present literal accuracy as highly important, even as the impetus of such images, yet the foregoing figures and schemes have only slight resemblance to precise human anatomies. Judged against these post-Enlightenment standards it is easy to write off such images, concluding that their unrealistic illustration meant the books in which they are found contained “bad” anatomy. Yet, it is important to remember that such naturalism was not necessarily the function nor the goal of these types of anatomical iconography. Instead, these were images designed to elucidate text, regardless of whether that same long-standing and authoritative text was accurate. Their role was to visualize the medical theory of the age, offering either a prefatory prompt to the treatises they accompanied or stand-alone visualizations of medical information that could themselves be read like a book of the body.

Burning, bleeding, urinating, diagramming Medieval anatomical iconographies might give the impression that medical imagery functioned exclusively as textual illustration, direct visualizations of the medical word. But as Peter Jones has highlighted, text was in fact occasionally subordinated to the visual, used only secondarily to direct the extraction of medical information actually held in images.27 One of the oldest schemes of surgical illustration known to us today affirms this visual capacity of medieval medicine, a group of schematic images illustrating the technique of cautery, in which a hot poker was seared into various points of the body.28 Medieval theories of health put extreme emphasis on the alignment of the four classical humors of the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Cautery’s ultimate goal was to allow for the escape of excess essences within the body to grant it overall balance, different conditions thus requiring cautery in different places. Images of the technique highlight sites for alternative placements of the heated poker, with patients depicted in flattened outline (similar to the Nine-System Figures), bearing darkblack spots at key cautery points. Although its iconography might have once originated alongside 327

Jack Hartnell

full textual treatises – perhaps another visual output of ancient Alexandrian medicine – visual cautery instruction survives today only in treatises from the ninth century onwards, all of which display only fragmentary captions to title particular cautery scenarios. Instead of linking back to an authoritative text, medical power is invested in the black spots of the image itself; the pictures are what must be read by professionals seeking guidance in the technique.29 A more definably medieval evocation of this idea is the so-called Bloodletting Man (sometimes Phlebotomy Man), one of a group of medical figures in which the human form was utilized to plot not medicine’s texts but its actual practice. The drawing of blood was another important tool used by physicians to maintain humoral balance, and the Bloodletting Man aided practitioners by highlighting particular points on the human figure from which blood could be taken to alleviate symptoms or illnesses.30 Using a tangled series of lines, often rendered in evocative blood-red, specific veins and arteries of the body were linked to short passages of marginal text explaining which parts to bleed, when, and in what cases. Dramatic variance in the artistic quality of Bloodletting Men suggests a variation in their use. Extremely detailed, full-page figures might have served to impress the patient upon consultation, lavishly expressing a practitioner’s competency, financial success, and guild affiliation. Plainer Men, simply outlined on the pages of rougher, more practical tomes, suggest the figures also served as genuine phleboto-mnemonics, playing a functioning role as a visual aegis of medical knowledge.31 In much the same way as the Bloodletting Man, the frequently illustrated figure of the Zodiac Man could aid physicians and surgeons in the accurate timing of their work. Since the first- and second-century writings of Manilius and Ptolomy it was considered important for medical practitioners to understand melosthesia, the correspondences between the body’s parts and the stars, particularly the moon. In these figures, rather than marking points of actual medical intervention, long lines instead link parts of a male figure’s body to captions recounting the influence of the planetary movements on medical affairs.32 More commonly, these Men were figured in more fantastical and visually inventive ways, plotting the twelve figures of the zodiacal calendar directly onto human bodies to create monstrous figures, the fish of Pisces exuding from their feet, Scorpio’s scorpion at their genitals, and the twins of Gemini atop their arms, among others. In correspondence with the calendrical devices and lunar diagrams accompanying them, the image of the Zodiac Man could be read to aid the complex navigation of both celestial and human bodies. Color was also a medical detail that could be expressed more clearly in imagery than in text, an idea exemplified in the iconography of uroscopy. Understanding it to be a keen indicator of the body’s internal humoral alignment, patients’ urine was collected by practitioners and examined for its clarity, viscosity, smell, taste, and hue.33 The round-bottomed flasks associated with the practice were commonly shown lain out on tables or wheels on the page, arranged in sections depending on the urine’s tone and corresponding diagnosis. Often, specific colors were noted in accompanying labels – from black and dark reds through to golds, yellows, and greens – and frequently with corresponding colorific evocation: “pale like unreduced meat juice,” “green like a cabbage leaf,” “slightly red, like occidental saffron.” Although unable to render the urinal subtleties acknowledged in the text – transparency, viscosity, luster – the actual color visible on the page helped to direct practitioners around urine treatises, highlighting particular categories of color and solidifying the often fluctuating similes of the text. Such use of shape, form, and illustrative color again speaks to the intermittent importance of medicine’s imagery beyond text. As these uroscopy wheels suggest, much imagery found within the medieval medical sphere – both practical and theoretical – sometimes troubles modern boundaries between “illustration”

328

Medicine’s image

Figure 24.3 (Detail) Diagram of the Eye, from a medical miscellany including the “Book of Macharias on the Eye Called Salaracer or Secret of Secrets,” last quarter of the fourteenth or first quarter of the fifteenth century, England. London, British Library. MS Sloane 981, fol. 68r. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

and “diagram.” But even the diagrammatic laying out of text could be transformed in medical iconography into a more pictorially sensitive mode. One particularly evocative image of the eye, for example, shows an anatomy so schematic as to be almost completely undetectable as an illustration. Found in the so-called Book of Macharias, now in the British Library, the seven “tunics” and three “humors” of the eye are realized as a series of emanating concentric circles, placed within semicircular strips labeled for the parts of the head (Fig. 24.3).34 The core of the neat scheme is essentially diagram, but the artist has made some attempts to humanize its information into a naturalistic mode: the central circle has been transformed into a cartoonish eye, and the whole circular affair is appended by a face with the roughly sketched features of a nose, mouth, and second eye, all surmounted by a tonsured haircut. This part-illustration-partdiagram was also a common way of imaging the medieval brain. Classical authors outlined the three primary functions of the brain as locus of the soul, controller of all motor activities, and refiner of bodily spirits produced in the heart. The latter happened in a section toward the base of the brain known as the rete mirabile (marvelous net), an evocative term that often saw the organ depicted filled with hatched lines. In addition to this classical formula, early medieval authors evolved the so-called Cell Doctrine, in which the brain was split into three sections: the first cell, the sensus communis (common sense), which received information from

329

Jack Hartnell

the senses and formed it into images; the second cell, responsible for aestimativa, the refining of the sensory information through judgment and rational thought; and the third cell, memorativa, where thought was deposited as memory.35 These cells fitted well with the iconography of “brain as diagram,” and a series of linked circles was often enough to indicate the many complex systems of the mind.36 It was not just body parts that could be so diagrammed: the entirety of a human life could be neatly laid out in circles on the page. A remarkable fourteenth-century wheel at the front of the De Lisle Psalter outlines the twelve “Ages of Man” – from infans (infancy) to infirmus (sickness) and mortuus (death) – bordered by evangelist symbols and centered around a symmetrical bust of Christ.37 Similar semimedicalized, decorative diagrams even claimed to be able to predict life and death. Found in a number of Greek and Latin manuscripts, the so-called Sphere of Life and Death (sometimes the Sphere of Democritus, Pythagoras, Plato, or others) consists of a circular roundel containing an upper and lower group of numerals.38 The reader begins by assigning a numerical value to the letters of a sick individual’s name, before adding the number of the lunar day on which the person fell sick and dividing by thirty. If the resulting total is featured in the top half of the sphere, the patient will live; if in the bottom half, the patient will die. Such was the potential power of medicalized information set into decorative and diagrammatic form, and with the weight of such authority often came extreme textual detail. Diagrams of medical concepts could become so complex that their looped and linked sections grew to span entire double-folios: extensive diagrams of the humors and their different forms and interactions were common;39 simpler diagrams showing the geographical direction of the winds could be swelled through combination with the humors or elements;40 and the reliance of medicine on astrology meant that Bloodletting or Zodiac Men were frequently presented alongside cross-referenced calendrical tables or solar and lunar diagrams to guide readings of heavenly movements.41 Blurring image with text, almost as a precursor to the modern infographic, the visual played a key iconographic role in the explication of medical material.

Material medicine Like painters or sculptors, medieval medical practitioners needed both tools and raw materials when plying their craft. Medicine’s material tools find their way into the field’s artistic traditions in a number of ways, yet the actual objects of medicine have received almost no attention in comparison to the illustrated books of the trade.42 This is partly due to poor survival rates, and the limited opportunity for precise provenance that comes with unattributed metalwork. Yet illustrative traditions within surgical texts – especially the Arabic sources of Al-Zahrāwī (936–1013) and the Latin works of Roger Frugardi (fl. 1180) – suggest a rich instrumentation within the medieval surgical craft.43 The elaborate knives, saws, and cautery equipment residing in science and medical museums today are testament to the care and complex artisanship that went into the design and manufacture of such tools. Medicine’s materiality is, however, more commonly discussed through the long-standing iconographic tradition of the illustrated “herbal,” a term used as a catchall for pharmaceutics and herbalism. In reality, between the field’s Greek precursors and later Renaissance pharmacology, a number of distinct traditions can be traced.44 A sixth-century book now in Vienna preserves a text originally compiled around the year 70 by the Roman surgeon Dioscorides, in which he records the medicinal properties of several hundred plants alongside nearly four hundred detailed illustrated specimens.45 Copied around 513, it is difficult to verify if its illustrations were taken from an earlier copy of Dioscorides’s text or constitute an original scheme. Either way, from the

330

Medicine’s image

sixth-century onwards illustrative material clearly formed an important part of “materia medica,” to borrow the title of a later Latin translation of Dioscorides.46 Not all such pharmaceutical books were illustrated, but images were also found in a parallel textual tradition known as the Pseudo-Apuleius Complex, the most common early grouping of medieval materia medica texts. The content of the Complex speaks to the breadth of subjects considered under the broad heading of material medicine, including the Herbarius of the eponymous Pseudo-Apuleius, listing the medical uses and nomenclature of plants, an anonymous herbal derived from Dioscorides, and a group of more specific texts on the plant Betony, the Mulberry, and the Badger, and another treatise known as the Medicina ex quadrupedis (Medicine from quadrupeds), attributed to an unknown Roman physician, Sextus Placitus. When illustrations feature in the Complex they are as varied as the texts’ diverse topics suggest, from full-page illustrations showing herbs, roots, or leafy and flowering plants to inserted miniatures of mammals, insects, and fantastic creatures. An early example, now in the British Library (Fig. 24.4), shows the casual intermingling of these themes among Pseudo-Apuleius’s text. In the upper left, the entry for Brassica silvatica (wild cole or perhaps wild cabbage) is accompanied by a carefully considered image of the plant, complete with dark green leaves, tripartite red flowers, yellowing roots, and pinkish sprouting tubers beneath. But below and to the right of the Brassica, myth intervenes: three spine-tongued basilisks spring from the roots of the spikyleaved Basilisca (sweet basil), and two men use a dog to pluck the deadly Mandragora (Mandrake) from the ground. Alongside these classical traditions, an influx of Arabic pharmacological texts and the increased academic discussion of medicine prompted a rise in various Latin and vernacular herbals from the late twelfth century onwards. New herbal compilations – like the Salernitan Circa instans and Tractatus de herbis, or the French Livre des simples médicines – overtook the Pseudo-Apuleian Complex in popularity, bringing with them a number of changes in illustration.47 Shifting away from schematic and noncontextual images, these later treatises introduced depictions of the habitats of plants and animals, sometimes peopled with human figures in the process of sourcing or cultivating particular medicines. The growth in material found within such books provided artists with opportunities to include not only new images of plants but also a variety of scenes which imagined the origins of increasingly exotic produce. Occasionally containing fanciful and imagined histories of materia medica – from ferreting miners to walled Crusader gardens – these later books blurred the line between medicine, myth, and contemporary Romance traditions. As in the anatomical imagery discussed earlier, the issue of illustrative accuracy again flares up in these botanical depictions. The emergence of increasingly veristic herbal imagery has been vaunted by historians as evidence of a long-term quest by artisans for intellectual recognition, the picturing of nature with pinpoint accuracy seen as an official claim to the philosophical knowledge embodied within the natural world.48 Certainly this view captures visual changes in the herbal field: early illustrated objects from the corpus show little regard for botanical likeness, presenting schematic “plant portraits” whose accuracy had been contested as early as Pliny, rather than direct “plant illustrations.”49 And from this there was a distinct naturalistic evolution across herbals of the Middle Ages, despite the written content of such pharmaceutical texts remaining relatively static and certainly making no calls for a greater verism. Yet it is important to be careful not to align illustrative accuracy and medical understanding too closely. On the contrary, that herbals were not always illustrated makes clear that, at least in earlier books, imagery was not necessarily vital for their function. Such contradictions are part and parcel of the intricate and complex status of medical iconography, always fluctuating somewhere between diagrammatic knowledge and artistic imagination.

331

Figure 24.4 Entries for Brassica silvatica (wild cabbage or wild cole?), Basilisca (sweet basil), and Mandragora (Mandrake), from the Herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius in a pharmacopeial compilation, second half of the twelfth century, England. London, British Library, Harley MS 5294, fols. 42v and 43r.

Medicine’s image

Picturing patients and practitioners Medical imagery was also capable of considering medicine’s social dimension, especially in the later Middle Ages, depicting the people intimately involved in its labors. As well as providing a visual map for plotting cautery points or bloodletting locations, the body of the patient was more humanely imaged in the process of seeking cure. They commonly featured in discussions of diet and regimen, for example, a field that since Galen was thought to be governed by a classical list of factors: food and drink, air and atmosphere, motion and rest, sleep, the retention and elimination of humors (via excretion), and movements of the spirit (one’s emotion or mental state). Images accompanying several illustrated luxury health books – the Tacuinum sanitatis or Aldobrandino da Siena’s Li Livrez dou santé – give a glimpse of a specific class of sick.50 That patrons of such books could afford their often lavish decorative schemes suggests they were the preserve of the upper class, as is the inherent suggestion that the reader might have any choice over their atmospheric surroundings, quality of rest, or diet. The poorer and more generic sick tend to pepper the margins of medieval manuscripts both medical and religious, sometimes beside paragraphs describing treatment, posing with broken bones, damaged organs, or befalling accident. Iconographies of medieval hospitals also shed light on the bedridden poor. Either in too advanced a state of sickness or unable to afford their own private doctor, they are shown two to a bed and deathly pale, evoking a sense of their generalized ill health.51 Certain diseased figures are, however, easier to identify through strong iconographic traditions. Victims of plague might be identified through the presence of distinctive buboes in their armpits or groins.52 Likewise, the leprous can sometimes be picked out through their scarred or marked skin, missing extremities, or the inclusion of a clapper or bell to alert others of their arrival.53 The presence of such patients varies according to context, either shown in a specifically medical mode receiving cure or appearing in religious books during commonplace miraculous medical interventions. The Omne Bonum lepers with which this essay started (Fig. 24.1) are clearly depicted in a religious mode, the accompanying text noting their need for religious instruction from their bishop, rather than a cure, whereas three similarly posed figures gathered in a fourteenth-century marble sculpture from Provence (Fig. 24.5) are quite definitely appealing to a holy man for healing. Looking up at the smooth-skinned Saint Elzéar of Sabran, named after Lazarus for his curative powers, the three lepers smile with pockmarked faces as they strain to receive his restorative touch. Patients, high and low, can be identified in this way in the midst of particular cures, diagnoses, or operations, recognized through their individual treatments. Such clinical scenarios were also an important space for depicting medical practitioners.54 Shown in the act of providing a cure, the presence of the trained professional metonymically emblazoned medicine’s books and spaces with visual evidence of the field’s potency. For physicians this predominantly meant diagnostic acts, and they are most commonly found taking the pulse or inspecting flasks of urine for evidence of internal humoral disorders, the latter so common a trope it was even mimicked in manuscript margins.55 Mostly these are isolated instances of cure focusing more on figures than their contexts, although some images feature fully equipped dispensaries and clinics, complete with attendant physicians and queues of patients.56 Apothecaries too could be so pictured, surrounded by the medicinal trappings of their trade.57 In a different context, medieval physicians who had prized positions within academic circles were sometimes prominently shown in author-style portraits within their texts.58 Likewise, opening folios or illuminated initials in high-status medical books included illustrations of the gesticulating physician in the process of teaching, dispensing masterly knowledge ex cathedra.59 This was not, however, the preserve of the surgeon, a craft separated from physicianship for much of the Middle Ages by grades of academic distinction and social status. The supposed superiority 333

Jack Hartnell

Figure 24.5 Saint Elzéar Curing the Lepers, c. 1373, Apt (Provence). Marble. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Image courtesy of the Walters Art Museum.

of the physician meant interaction with surgeons was as rare in imagery as it was in the medical milieu of the time, but occasional iconographic traditions do show the two bound together. Images of the dissection scene, for example, emerge after anatomy’s reintroduction to Western university learning in the fourteenth century. These show both the robed physician discussing and directing proceedings from classical texts and the subservient surgeon carving up the corpse.60 When portrayed in their own context, however, outside of these academic circles, it is possible to find particularly potent images of surgeons at work, either receiving patients or frozen in action within stylized operating theatres.61 The iconography of one text highlights the surgical task with particular vivacity. In the mid-fourteenth century, the English surgeon John Arderne recorded a series of treatments he had originated and refined, including the treatment of anal fistula for which he had become exceptionally renowned. Instead of the static spaces of medicine or portrait-style images of patient and surgeon, Arderne’s fistula treatments are accompanied by whirligig clusters of continuous details that show the surgical procedure 334

Medicine’s image

actually unfolding step-by-step. That a surgeon might, by the fourteenth century, use a treatise as a space to experiment with novel illustrations of his craft provides further evidence for the significant iconographic traditions which medical imagery had slowly garnered over the preceding four centuries.62

Future directions: the medical outside medicine The outline sketched in this essay suggests only the rough shape of some of medicine’s most prominent iconographic themes. But more extensive new work is emanating from the relatively embryonic field of the medieval medical humanities which emphatically argues that medicine should not, indeed cannot, be so extracted from a broader medieval culture, in either text or image. With this has come the recognition that medicine’s most fruitful images might in fact be found in contexts which parallel, rather than intersect, medical visual traditions. Many cases discussed earlier make reference, for example, to the intertwining of medicinal concerns with religion, and it is in depictions of the life of Christ and the saints that many more images of miraculous cure, and therefore depictions of the sick, can be found.63 Literary works from across the medieval period also contain not only textual but also visual evocations of medical events: legal documents, chronicles, philosophical tracts, and romances, all are known to have medical material and bodily acts to be explored in greater detail.64 And all the while, ongoing studies more directly within the history of medicine – especially discussions around the social contexts of medicine, from physical disability to medicine’s architectural spaces – are continuing to shed light on new visual strategies used to depict the medical craft, as well as its subtle presence in a host of unexpected places.65 The task now facing iconographers of medieval medicine is to harness the power of these interdisciplinary investigations, weaving this disparate material ever tighter around a core of medical knowledge. If undertaken with care and tact, skills necessary to both medical and historical endeavors, the study of medieval medical images might be granted a healthy prognosis in years to come.

Notes 1 I am sincerely grateful to Monica H. Green (Arizona State University) for her generosity in discussing the contents of this chapter on several occasions and for sharing her own research on the subject, and to Taylor McCall (University of Cambridge) for sharing her expertise on the “Nine-System Figures.” 2 J.P. Byrne, Encyclopedia of the Black Death (Santa Barbara, 2012). 3 L.F. Sandler, Omne Bonum: A Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge (London, 1996). The book is: London, British Library, Royal MS 6.E.vi, vols. 1 and 2. 4 M.H. Green, K. Walker-Meikle, and W.P. Müller, “Diagnosis of a ‘Plague’ Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale,” Medieval Globe 1 (2014), 309–23. 5 On Islamic medicine: P.E. Pormann and E. Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh, 2007), and E. Savage-Smith “Anatomical Illustration in Arabic Manuscripts,” in Arab Painting: Text and Image in Illustrated Arabic Manuscripts, ed. Anna Contadini (Leiden, 2007), 147− 59. On Byzantium: M. Grünbart, E. Kislinger, A. Muthesius, and D. Stathakopoulos (eds.), Material Culture and Well-Being in Byzantium (400–1453) (Vienna, 2007). On China: C. Cullen and V. Lo (ed.), Medieval Chinese Medicine (New York, 2005). On Japan: A. Goble, Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan (Honolulu, 2011). Sub-Saharan African medicine remains largely undiscussed: see M.H. Green, “Taking ‘Pandemic’ Seriously: Making the Black Death Global,” Medieval Globe 1 (2014), 27–62. 6 Recent introductory studies include: N. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago, 1990); L.I. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter, and A. Wear, The Western Medical Tradition (Cambridge, 1995); M.D. Grmek (ed.), Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1999); F. Wallace, Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto, 2010); L. Demaitre, Medieval Medicine (Santa Barbara, 2013); L. Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Medieval Age (London, 2014). For

335

Jack Hartnell

7

8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15

16

17 18

19

practices by country: C. Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (Stroud, 1997); D. Jacquart, Le milieu médical en France (Geneva, 1981); K. Park, Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1985); L. García-Ballester, Medicine in a Multicultural Society: Christian, Jewish and Muslim Practitioners in the Spanish Kingdoms, 1222–1610 (Aldershot, 2001). Most notable are three volumes: Tradition und Naturbeobachtung in den Illustrationen Medizinischer Handschriften und Frühdrucke vornehmlich des 15. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1907); Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Anatomie im Mittelalter speziell der anatomischen Graphik nach Handschriften des 9. bis 15. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1908); and Beiträge zur Geschichte der Chirurgie im Mittelalter, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1914 and 1918). Similarly prolific are Sudhoff ’s contributions to the Archiv für due Geschichte der Medizin (1907–), now Sudhoffs Archiv. On Sudhoff: T. Rütten, “Karl Sudhoff and ‘the Fall’ of German Medical History,” in Locating Medical History, ed. F. Huisman and J.H. Warner (Baltimore, 2004). See also: L. Choulant, Geschichte und Bibliographie der anatomischen Abbildung (Leipzig, 1852). E. Panofsky, “Artist, Scientist, Genius: Notes on the Renaissance-Dämmerung,” in The Renaissance, ed. W.K. Ferguson (New York, 1962); O. Pächt, “Early Italian Nature Studies and the Early Calendar Landscape,” JWCI 13:1/2 (1950), 13–47; F. Saxl, “A Spiritual Encyclopaedia of the Later Middle Ages,” JWCI 5 (1942); R. Herrlinger, History of Medical Illustration (London, 1970); L.C. Mackinney, Medical Illustrations in Medieval Manuscripts (London: Wellcome, 1965). See also: P. Huard and M.D. Grmek, Mille ans de cirurgie en occident:Ve–XVe siècles (Paris, 1966). J. Murdoch, Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York, 1984); P.M. Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (London, 1998), revised from Medieval Medical Manuscripts (1984). J.A. Givens, K.M. Reeds, and A. Touwaide (ed.), Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550 (Aldershot, 2006); S. Riches and B. Bildhauer, “Cultural Representations of the Body,” in A Cultural History of the Human Body (as in note 6); H.-M. Gross, “Illustrationen in medizinischen Sammelhandschiften,” in Ein teutsch puech machen, ed. G. Keil (Wiesbaden, 1993), 172–348; K.B. Roberts and J.D.W. Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Body (Oxford, 1992); La médecine médiévale à travers les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1982. Recent online resources include University College Los Angeles’s “Index of Medieval Medical Images,” Paris Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de Santé’s “Medic@,” and digitized medieval manuscripts at the Wellcome Library, London. For example, the late-Roman herbal known as the Johnson Papyrus. London, Wellcome Library, MS 5753. K. Sudhoff, “Anatomische Zeichnungen (Schemata) aus dem 12. und 13. Jh.,” in Sudhoff, Tradition und Naturbeobachtung (as in note 7), 49–66. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm. 13002. K. Sudhoff, “Abermals eine neue Handschrift der anatomischen Fünfbilderserie,” Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 3:6 (1910), 353–68. B.H. Hill Jr., “The Fünfbilderserie and Medieval Anatomy,” PhD diss., University of North Carolina (1963); C. Maccagni, “Frammento di un Codice di Medicina del secolo XIV della Biblioteca Universitaria di Pisa,” Physis 11 (1969), 311–78; Y.V. O’Neill, “The Fünfbilderserie – A Bridge to the Unknown,” Bull. Hist. Med. 51:4 (1977), 538–49. Two key manuscripts displaying this iconographic trope are: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius, MS 190/223, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 399. The resultant nomenclature of the series is uncertain. In an ode to Sudhoff “Neunbilderserie” is sometimes used; however, given his denial of the complete nine-part series this seems inappropriate. I use the term “Nine-System Figures,” coined by Taylor McCall (University of Cambridge) in her ongoing doctoral research. On the makeup of medical books: L.E. Voigts, “Scientific and Medical Books,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), 345–402. Perhaps the grandest skeleton forms the frontispiece to a 1452 German translation of Bruno da Longoburgo’s Chirurgia Magna: London, British Library, MS Add. 21618. See: K. Sudhoff, “Das Skelett der provenzalischen Handschrift in Basel und andere mittelalterliche graphische Skelettdarstellungen als anatomische Illustrationen,” in Sudhoff, Geschichte der Anatomie (as in note 7), 29–51. Another features alongside a thirteenth-century version of the Nine-Figure Series’ anatomical text in: Dresden, Sächsiche Landesbibliothek, MS c.310, f. 57v. M.H. Green, Making Women’s Medicine Masculine (Oxford, 2008); A.E. Hanson and M.H. Green, “Soranus of Ephesus: Methodicorum princeps,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed. W. Haase and H. Temporini (1994), 968–1075, including a complete list of all manuscripts containing fetal images. For female bodies more generally: K. Park, Secrets of Women (New York, 2010).

336

Medicine’s image 20 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 3701–15. 21 On the Dreibilderserie: G. Keil, “Dreibilderserie,” Lexikon des Mittelalters, pt. 3 (1986), 1373–74. 22 On Ortolf ’s text: E. Auer and B. Schnell, “‘Der Wundenmann’: Ein traumatologisches Schema in der Tradition der ‘Wundarzenie’ des Ortolf von Baierland,” in Ein teutsch puech machen (as in note 9), 349–401. 23 For example, Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Buch der Chirurgia (Strassburg, 1497). 24 Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Msc. Med. 6, f. 142r (likely a German copy of an Italian original). The Disease Woman appears to antedate the Man, found first in a thirteenth-century Provençal manuscript now in Basel: Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, MS D.II.11. The group is most widely known through a Venetian printed book of 1491, the Fasciculus Medicinae, containing texts supposedly gathered by the little-known Württemberg physician Johannes von Kirchheim (Ketham). On the Fasciculus: T. Pesenti, Il “fasciculus medicinae” ovvero le metamorfosi del libro umanistico (Treviso, 2001); J.J. Byleybl, “Interpreting the Fasiculo Dissection Scene,” J. Hist. Med. 45 (1990), 285–316. 25 For example, the so-called Pisa Leaf (Pisa, Universitaria Biblioteca MS 735, f. 2r), or a later gathering of sheets in Copenhagen: Kongelige Bibliothek, Ms. Ny. Kgl. Saml. 84b. 26 L.C. MacKinney, “The Beginnings of Western Scientific Anatomy: New Evidence and a Revision in Interpretation of Mondeville’s Role,” Medical History 62:3 (1962), 233–39. 27 Jones, “Image, Word, and Medicine in the Middle Ages,” in Visualizing Medieval Medicine (as in note 9). 28 On cautery: Jones, Medieval Medicine (as in note 9), 77ff. 29 Among the earliest are images found in Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, MS Plut. 73.41. 30 On bloodletting: P. Gil-Sotres, “Derivation and Revulsion: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Bloodletting,” in Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. L. Garcia-Ballester, R. French, J. Arrizabalaga, and A. Cunningham (eds.) (Cambridge, 1994), 110–155; D. Krause, Aderlass und Schröpfen (Aachen, 2004). 31 Compare, for example, London, British Library, Harley MS 3719, fol. 158v-159r, with Washington, Library of Congress, Rosenwald MS 4, fols. 2a-3b. 32 Murdoch identifies the earliest Bloodletting Man in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 7028, fol. 154r. For a classic study of one Zodiac Man, see: H. Bober, “The Zodiacal Miniature of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry: Its Sources and Meaning,” JWCI 11 (1948), 1–34. 33 L. Moulinier-Brogi, L’Uroscopie au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2012). 34 London, British Library, Sloane MS 981, fol. 68. On theories of the eye and optics: D.C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976); S.C. Akbari, Seeing Through the Veil (Toronto, 2004); F. Salmón, “The Body Inferred: Knowing the Body through Dissection of Texts,” in Cultural History of the Human Body (as in note 6), 77–98. 35 E. Clarke, K. Dewhurst, and M.J. Aminoff, An Illustrated History of Brain Function, 2nd ed. (Novato, 1996), 10–48. Imaginativa and fantasia were sometimes attributed to the second cell. The processual, digestive conception of thought first appears in tenth-century Cell Doctrines. 36 Perhaps the earliest example is Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 428, fol. 50r. For a more typical brain diagram, c. 1400: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Canon Misc. 366, fol. 1v. 37 London, British Library, Arundel MS 83, fol. 126r. On the Ages of Man, see: E. Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton, 1986). 38 J. Edge, “Nomen omen: The ‘Sphere of Life and Death’ in England, c. 1200–c. 1500,” PhD diss., University of London (2015). 39 For example: Munich, Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm. 13046, fol. 39v. 40 B. Obrist, “Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology,” Speculum 72:1 (1997), 33–84. 41 On astrology: Sophie Page, Astrology in Medieval Manuscripts (Toronto, 2002); A. Akasoy, C. Burnett, and R. Yoeli-Tlalim (ed.), Astro-Medicine (Florence, 2008). 42 J. Hartnell, “Tools of the Puncture: Skin, Knife, Bone, Hand,” in Flaying in the Premodern World, ed. L. Tracey (Woodbridge, 2017) 20–50; J. Kirkup, The Evolution of Surgical Instruments (Novato, 2006); M.-V. Clin, “Surgical Instruments as Art Objects,” in Antique Tools and Instruments from the Nessi Collection (Milan, 2004), 103–14. 43 On Al-Zahrawi: M.S. Spink and G. Lewis, Albucasis on Surgery and Instruments (London, 1973). On Frugardi: H. Valls, “Studies on Roger Frugardi’s Chirurgia,” PhD diss., University of Toronto (1995). 44 M. Collins, Medieval Herbals (London, 2000); J. Stannard, Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Aldershot, 1999); K.M. Reeds, Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York, 1991); W. Prinz and A. Beyer (ed.), Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur (Wienheim, 1987). 45 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS Medicus Graecus 1.

337

Jack Hartnell 46 H. Grape-Albers, Spätantike Bilder aus der Welt des Arztes: Medizinische Bilderhandschriften der Spätantike und ihre mittelalterliche Überlieferung (Wiesbaden, 1977). 47 On the Circa instans: I. Ventura, “Un manuale di farmacologia medievale ed i suoi lettori: Il Circa instans, la sua diffusione, la sua ricezione dal XIII al XV secolo,” in La Scuola Medica Salernitana, ed. D. Jacquart and A. Paravicini Bagliani (Florence, 2004), 465–533. On the Tractatus de herbis: J. Givens, “Reading and Writing the Illustrated Tractatus de herbis, 1280–1526,” in Visualising Medieval Medicine (as in note 9), 115–45; J. Givens, “Tractatus de herbis: Images, Information and Communication Design,” Mediaevalia 29:1 (2008), 179–206. On the Livre des simples médicines: C. Opsomer, E. Roberts, and W.T. Stearn. Livre des simples médecines (Antwerp, 1980). 48 P. Smith, The Body of the Artisan (Chicago, 2004). 49 Collins, Herbals, 27 (as in note 44). 50 A. Bovey, Tacuinum Sanitatis (London, 2005); C. Hoeniger, “The Illuminated Tacuinum sanitatis Manuscripts from Northern Italy, c. 1380–1400,” in Visualizing Medieval Medicine (as in note 9), 51–82. 51 B.S. Bowers (ed.), The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice (Aldershot, 2007). For a particularly fine depiction of a hospital interior, see Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, MS Gaddi 24, fol. 247v. 52 For a recent work on Plague see Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World, inaugural double-issue of Medieval Globe (as in note 4); or a general work by C.M. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence (Kirksville, 2000). 53 On Leprosy see Luke Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine (Baltimore, 2009); or the more general work of C.M. Boeckl, Images of Leprosy (Kirksville, 2011). 54 On medical practitioners and their biographies see C.H. Talbot and E.A. Hammond, The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register (London, 1965), and a recent addenda by F. Getz, “Medical Practitioners in Medieval England,” Social History of Medicine 3:2 (1990), 245–83; E. Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au Moyen Âge, with supplement by D. Jacquart (Geneva, 1979); M.R. McVaugh, Medicine before the Plague Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285–1345 (Cambridge, 2002). 55 For an extensive late fifteenth-century series of medical authorities holding urine glasses, see Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS Cod. Pal. germ. 644, fols. 94r–108v. On such pastiches: compare, for example, the opening initial of Boulogne-sur-mer, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 197, fol. 1, showing a doctor inspecting a urine sample, with Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS Fr. 298, fol. 81r, where a seated monkey examines a pelican’s urine. Monkey physicians also feature in the stained glass of York Minster nave, a city well-known for its medical practitioners. On York’s monkeys: P. Hardwick, “The Monkeys’ Funeral in the Pilgrimage Window, York Minster,” Art History 23 (2000), 290–99. 56 For example, see Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum (1482), now London, British Library, Royal MS 15.E.ii, fol. 165. 57 For example, see London, British Library, Royal MS 15.E.ii, fol. 165, or Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Fr. 218, fol. 111r. 58 Such portraits come to prominence in the twelfth century. For early examples see Murdoch, Album of Science (as in note 9), entry no. 156. 59 For example, the elaborate frontispiece of Avicenna’s Canon, now Glasgow, Hunterian Library, Hunter 9 (S.1.9), fol. 1; or the far more sketchy fifteenth-century image of a teacher showing a skull to students in Cambridge, St. John’s College 19 (A.19), fol. 4. 60 A. Carlino, La Fabbrica del Corpo (Milan, 1994); G. Wolf-Heiddeger and A.-M. Cetto, Die anatomische Sektion in bildlicher Darstellung (Basel, 1967); Park, Secrets of Women (as in note 19). 61 For example, manuscripts of Roger Frugardi’s Cirurgia: London, British Library, Sloane MS 1977, fol. 2r; Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS 1004 (O.I.20), fol. 241v onwards. The latter contains an exceptional series of marginal images, extensively discussed in T. Hunt, The Medieval Surgery (Woodbridge, 1992). 62 On Arderne see P.M. Jones, “Sicut hic depingitur . . . John of Arderne and English Medical Illustration in the 14th and 15th Centuries,” in Die Kunst und das Studium (as in note 44), 103–26; P.M. Jones, “Staying with the Programme: Illustrated Manuscripts of John of Arderne, c. 1380–c. 1550,” in Decoration and Illustration in Medieval English Manuscripts, ed. A.S.G. Edwards (London, 2002), 204–27. 63 M. Kupfer, The Art of Healing: Painting for the Sick and the Sinner in a Medieval Town (University Park, 2003); A. Montford, Health, Sickness, Medicine and the Friars in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot, 2006); L.E. Wilson, “Miracle and Medicine: Conceptions of Medical Knowledge and Practice in Thirteenth-Century Miracle Accounts,” in Wounds in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Kirkham and C. Warr (Farnham, 2014); P. Biller and J. Ziegler (ed.), Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages (York, 2001).

338

Medicine’s image 64 W.J. Turner and S.M. Butler (ed.), Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2014); M.G. Bondio, Medical Ethics: Premodern Negotiations between Medicine and Philosophy (Stuttgart, 2014); E. Carrera (ed.), Emotions and Health, 1200–1700 (Leiden, 2013); E. Gemi-Iordanou, S. Gordon, R. Matthew, E. McInnes, and R. Pettitt (eds.), Medicine, Healing and Performance (Oxford, 2014); R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, 1990). 65 J.R. Eyler, Disability in the Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2010); P.A. Baker, K. van t’Land, and H. Nijdam (ed.), Medicine and Space (Leiden, 2011); S. Katajala-Peltomaa and S. Niiranen (ed.), Mental (Dis)order in Later Medieval Europe (Turnhout, 2014).

339

25 PATRONAGE A useful category of art historical analysis?1 Elizabeth Carson Pastan

The reviewer of a recent collection of essays expressed concern that a volume that takes patronage as its subject “might seem out of step with more contemporary turns in the study of medieval art.”2 Yet anthologies devoted to the examination of critical terms in art history have demonstrated that foundational concepts of the discipline can be fruitfully reopened.3 Moreover, recent overviews by Jill Caskey and Holly Flora have drawn attention to ‘the widening of the patronal field,’ through works that take investigative models originating in literary criticism, anthropology, and performance studies.4 In assessing the scholarship on medieval patronage, this essay will proceed by treating patronage as a field of inquiry, rather than as a fixed, necessary, or determinative structure for the creation of art, thus allowing the full interest and complexity of its study to come into view.

Who’s your daddy? At its most basic, a work of art requires only its creator. The patron – namely, a person who initiates a work of art by putting forth a concept, issuing a commission, advancing resources, or nurturing an artist’s talent – is a nonessential actor in the creative process. Nonetheless, patrons have played significant roles within many cultural settings, both singly and collectively through organizations such as the church. Indeed, art made for the church has survived at a significantly higher rate than lay commissions, and has generally occupied a more central place in the study of medieval art, as it will in this essay. Historically, patronage was a form of sponsorship, primarily male, involving the beneficial action of one dominant person toward another, whether a Roman statesman freeing his slave or a medieval churchman conferring benefices.5 True to this history, the term patronage ultimately traces its roots to the Latin word “pater” or father, and has traditionally carried connotations of a one-sided, unequal vertical alliance.6 However, patronage is no longer regarded as originating solely in the tastes and intentions of one party,7 but is viewed instead as a dynamic relationship.8 In the delightful phrasing of the fifteenth-century Italian architect Filarete: the patron is the father and the architect is the mother of a building.9 Triangulating the process further are the recipients of works of art. Particularly influential has been the impact of gift theory, drawing on the work of Marcel Mauss, with its emphasis on the recipient’s role and the networks of reciprocal relationships and expectations that extend far beyond an initial act of giving.10 Of interest in this regard are works of art that 340

Patronage

were made for women, commissions such as the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 54.1.2), in which its royal recipient played no directive role, but was nonetheless integral to the work of art conceived for her.11 Indeed, as this example illustrates, scholars interested in women have found new material in the study of patronage, not simply by supplanting male patrons with females but by considering a range of dynamics involving women.12 Patronage is thus best understood as a “catchall” term that describes the many relationships and activities that contribute to a work of art’s making and use,13 leading Madeline Caviness to call attention to “the constant blurring of boundaries among patrons, donors, recipients, and users.”14 Analysis of the terminology found in medieval texts and inscriptions reveals a similar conceptual flexibility among those who commissioned and created, authored, founded, or “made” works of medieval art.15 Modern scholars often cast words related to patronage in opposition, to convey specificity that the term does not intrinsically carry:16 a suppliant, not the donor;17 a purchaser, not the patron,18 and an owner and user, not its commissioner.19 Foreign language and hyphenated terms are also employed to add further inflection, including patronas-artist,20 and patron-concepteur versus patron-donateur,21 to name only a few. In his influential examination of contracts between Florentine artists and patrons, Michael Baxandall set aside the term “patron” because he felt that it carried too many overtones from other contexts, calling his particular subjects “clients.”22 Far more problematic than terminology, however, is the assumption that patronage is a stable or one-size-fits-all phenomenon. And this is especially acute for the study of the “Middle Ages,” which is a retrospective scholarly designation encompassing over a millennium (c. 400–1500) and many distinct cultures that were not monolithic in outlook or practice.23 The dedication page of the First Bible of Charles the Bald (Paris, BN, MS lat. 1, fol. 423r) will help elucidate issues in the study of medieval patronage. The manuscript has been attributed to the patronage of Count Vivian, a military hero who was named lay abbot of St. Martin of Tours in 843 in compensation for his services to the emperor. A miniature depicting the presentation of the large book at the far left (Fig. 25.1) is accompanied by a facing poem (fol. 422v), which says that “the picture truthfully discloses how the hero Vivian and his company” offered the book to the emperor. Together poem and miniature would seem to offer unusual evidence of the count’s involvement. However, Herbert Kessler demonstrated that Vivian not only was little engaged in the iconographic program devised by the monks at the abbey but also may in fact be undermined by it.24 Symptomatic of this history is the fact that the count is difficult to locate in the dedication miniature. As Kessler wryly remarked, “the commissioner of one of the greatest masterpieces of Carolingian art is not easily recognized in the dedication picture of the Bible that now bears his name.”25 This work, which is often referred to without any apparent irony as the “Vivian Bible,” suggests that neither textual evidence nor imagery that seems to signal “patron” should trump any conclusions that arise from detailed analysis and contextual study. The patronage of this illuminated manuscript emerges as a collaborative process involving: a named commissioner (Count Vivian), the hands-on creators of the book (the monks of Tours), and its recipient, who is implicated throughout its artistic program (Charles the Bald). In contrast, a seemingly straightforward image of donation is depicted in the frontispiece of the Liber Vitae from New Minster (London, BL, Stowe MS 944, f. 6r).26 Here Queen Emma-Ælfgifu and King Cnut, each identified by inscriptions in green and sepia that stand out from the fine pen drawing, are shown on either side of the gleaming gold cross they offer (Fig. 25.2). As Corine Schleif observed, in images like this, “the giving is forever presentized,” and, as seen in the king’s grasp of the base of the cross, the giver “does not and cannot let go.”27 The Liber Vitae, which literally means the Book of Life, is a register into which was entered the names of the brethren 341

Elizabeth Carson Pastan

Figure 25.1 Bible presented to Charles the Bald, The First Bible of Charles the Bald (Paris, BN, MS lat. 1, fol. 423r), Tours, c. 845. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

and benefactors of the abbey, and was understood to reflect the book with the names of those to be saved described in the biblical chapter of Revelation (20:12), with the queen and king thereby claiming a place in salvation. However, the frontispiece, which at first seems to provide an unmediated image of royal giving, incorporates multiple layers of meaning. For example, Elizabeth Parker read the composition as a schematic rendering of the sanctuary space of the abbey,28 thus tying the image to its liturgical use at New Minster.29 Among other resonant aspects of the page, the queen’s unusual and privileged position to the right of Christ (the viewer’s left) and her gesture toward the cross not only echo the Virgin’s above but also recall the imagery of 342

Patronage

Figure 25.2 Dedication frontispiece from the Liber Vitae of New Minster (London, BL, Stowe MS 944, f. 6r), Westminster, c. 1031. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

St. Helena’s discovery of the True Cross.30 The gifts of a veil and a crown bestowed from above onto the queen and king, respectively, hint at the reciprocal nature of their offerings. Finally, it is worth considering how the depiction of the queen and king in a manuscript presented daily on the main altar of the abbey may have served the broader purposes of New Minster in emphasizing its closeness to the crown, and thereby helping to attract further benefactors. It is images like these that led Aden Kumler to question whether representations of patrons are the causes or the effects of works of art.31 343

Elizabeth Carson Pastan

Chronology The study of patronage was reembraced by art historians in the 1970s as part of a concerted effort to set works of art in their larger context. In his address of 1971, Ernst Kitzinger, reflecting the connoisseurship focus of art historical scholarship at the time, proposed the study of patronage as a means for art historians to “build bridges” toward their colleagues in the humanities. He stated, As long as the art historian confines himself to the study of stylistic interrelationships of ateliers, schools and individual masters, and the historian to the study of the flow of political, diplomatic and military events there is scant likelihood of the two finding common ground.32 Kitzinger noted the mutual interest of the two fields in “aspirations, claims, ideologies, [and] mystiques . . . as powerful agents in the historical process.”33 Reviewing Kitzinger’s contribution at a remove of several decades, one can see that his is among a number of works that signaled a reorientation within art history.34 Similarities may be discerned between the scholarly conceptualization of the fields of patronage, on the one hand, and gender studies, on the other, as they developed in the succeeding decades. The now classic article on gender of 1986 by Joan Scott is helpful in drawing attention to methodological issues in gender studies, while at the same time allowing the art historian to consider patronage in light of this analogous field.35 Although to my knowledge these fields have not been compared before, they both share the ambitious social project of investigating broad-reaching cultural and historical phenomena. In attempting to account for the sheer variety of individual experiences and contingencies, both fields have traditionally focused on descriptive analyses and microhistories, thus as Scott argued at the time, leaving the discipline of gender studies undertheorized.36 While this is no longer the case for gender studies, to date art historians have resisted overarching narratives or universal causal explanations in the domain of patronage.37 Even Francis Haskall in his chapter, “The Mechanics of Seventeenth-Century Patronage,”38 a textured and satisfying overview focused on painters at a particular place and time, pointedly refrained from “explaining” the art in terms of its patronage.39 Moreover, like scholars of women’s history, who consciously adopted the term “gender studies” in acknowledgment that the study of women necessarily entails the study of men,40 art historians recognized that in order to understand patrons and their agency they needed to investigate artists and their contemporary valuation.41 Contesting the view that medieval art was strictly religious and symbolical, Meyer Schapiro documented a complementary “aesthetic attitude” in the individual responses of Western medieval viewers, which demonstrates “a conscious taste of the spectators for the beauty of workmanship, materials and artistic devices.”42 Another testament to the medieval appreciation of artistic skill is the recruitment of skilled lay artists, even for the illumination of medieval manuscripts, which would seem to be the natural domain of the literate clergy.43 Indeed, part of the critical reception of Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency of 1997, an anthropological study that analyzes the networks of social relations in which works of art are embedded, is that it neglects the aesthetic and experiential character of works of art.44 Rather than seeking to understand those qualities in a work of art that elicit a beholder’s response, Gell focused on the agency the art itself exerts, leading Carol van Eck to conclude that his so-called agency of art is in reality “an anthropology of the agency of objects.”45

Methods and evidence Having drawn attention to ways that the study of medieval patronage resembles historiographic trends of the later twentieth century, we turn now to distinctive characteristics of the art historical literature, including the role of textual narratives. Patrons are primarily identified in texts and 344

Patronage

inscriptions, but these seldom offer full evidence for how the work of art was conceived.46 As Peter Kidson cautioned, “since nearly all medieval documents pertaining to the arts emanated from the patronage side of the proceedings, it follows that we are liable to get from them a totally distorted impression of what actually happened.”47 Moreover, the application of written accounts to forms of visual expression is far from evident. Among the most important extant literary accounts is Abbot Suger’s description of the reconstruction and embellishment of Saint-Denis in the mid-twelfth century.48 Yet, as Larry Hoey noted, while Suger’s writings “have been like water in the desert to medieval architectural historians parched from the general aridity of contemporary building documentation,” they nonetheless leave unanswered basic questions, such as why the several parts of the abbey church built in less than a decade look so different.49 The various scholarly accounts of the rebuilding of the abbey church, with Suger appearing in some as an enlightened impresario and virtually disappearing from others, demonstrate a lack of consensus about how to portray the abbot’s role.50 Kidson also feared that Suger’s writings would inspire art historians to concentrate on documentation, “restricting their researches to just those problems and aspects of problems which are subject to documentary elucidation.”51 Insisting on the importance of the visual, both for the art historian and in understanding the artist’s role, Kidson opined, “In the last resort, however meticulous or exceptional the brief, an artistic imagination is always required to translate the patron’s verbal specification into visual forms.”52 Even in those cases where a surviving document portrays a certain ideal, medievalists are accustomed to regarding textual evidence as one aspect of a larger story. For example, the collaborative study of the later thirteenth-century Italian glass painter Antonio of Pisa overseen by Claudine Lautier and Dany Sandron showed that, in spite of the Florentine system where Italian panel painters provided the cartoons, and where written contracts spelled out the obligation of the glassmakers to follow the cartoon faithfully, a glass workshop could nonetheless make a significant impact on the visual appearance of the windows.53 The French team compared the contracts for Antonio of Pisa and his fellow glaziers, as well as Antonio’s innovative treatise on glassmaking, with the extant late thirteenth-century windows at Florence Cathedral. They demonstrated how, using the same cartoons, different glaziers nonetheless made strikingly different creations through color choices, paint handling, and border designs, as well as through the cutting of the panes of glass and the placement of the leading.54 Significantly, the study insists on the visual and material evidence of what the artist Antonio of Pisa brought to the outcome, despite his contract stipulating his indebtedness to another’s template. Another characteristic of the art historical literature is that those traditional divisions into types of patrons – namely, clerical, courtly, corporate, and private – rarely work well for medieval examples.55 There is some rationale for these categories, which may have been intended to give a comprehensive view of society and recognize different modalities of giving. In early medieval monasteries, for example, where the commissioner, author, artist, and consumer might be encompassed in one well-trained monk, patronage assumed a distinctive valence.56 However, categories of patrons can create rigid and unworkable divisions, as the example of the medieval monastery again demonstrates, since monasteries also depended on external support. This support most often took the form of gifts from lay donors that were believed to serve their givers as a “paradise purchase” and were one of the main conduits through which medieval ecclesiastical institutions grew and prospered.57 Classifying the patrons of these gifts according to the existing categories, such as private or corporate, fails to do justice to the salvific context in which the gifts were given. Likewise would the Vivian Bible and Liber Vitae (Figs. 25.1 and 25.2), works that were undertaken as part of a socially significant exchange that reinforced ties between their monasteries and the ruling elite, be designated clerical or courtly, or is it not the point that they reflect the relationship between the two realms? 345

Elizabeth Carson Pastan

Media and materiality Another noteworthy aspect of art historical analysis is the recognition that different media make distinctive claims on their makers and beholders. Cynthia Hahn posited that the “strange beauty” of jewel-encrusted reliquaries was produced in order to teach viewers how to understand relics.58 Studies focusing on materiality have also brought insights into how the choice of a given medium impacts the efficacy of a work of art, revealing a far more complex and intentional process than previously imagined.59 As Caroline Bynum insists, “the stuff of which medieval images were made was not incidental.”60 The phenomenon is wonderfully evident in Jacqueline Jung’s analysis of how visionary experiences were often portrayed in works of three-dimensional sculpture, the tactile perception of which helped to shape the religious imagination of the viewer, allowing the devotional image to communicate between the artist and the beholder, and between the viewer and God.61 Architecture has traditionally been viewed as a creative endeavor that requires exceptional resources and planning, as well as technical expertise, factors that accord it a special status in the literature on medieval patronage.62 Yet in his analysis of the mid-twelfth-century rebuilding of Laon Cathedral, undertaken with an eye to determining those initiatives that might be credited either to the cathedral chapter or to the designer, Dany Sandron demonstrated that many of the building’s most original features resulted from an exchange between the liturgical specifications that may reasonably be ascribed to the canons of the chapter, who served as its collective patrons, and design initiatives on the part of its architects.63 Sandron also cited other factors that help to explain why comparatively few names of medieval architects survive. Because ambitious structures like Laon Cathedral routinely took several generations to complete, this has the effect of downplaying the singular vision of any one architect. Moreover, in part to justify the expense involved in large-scale building, contemporaries often described medieval churches as miraculous undertakings, such as the miracle of the oxen that carried stone for Laon Cathedral mentioned by Guibert of Nogent. As Sandron reminds us, this is yet another phenomenon at odds with the mundane recognition of the actual architects, masons, and other workers who built the structure. Christopher Wilson’s analysis of the role of King Henry III in the mid-thirteenth-century rebuilding of Westminster Abbey focuses on a very different set of circumstances.64 Yet despite the presence of a named mason in Master Henry and a named patron in King Henry, a “passionate aesthete” who assumed sole financial responsibility for the reconstruction of the church, Wilson likewise views the process as fundamentally collaborative. Any proposed intervention of the king is justified in specific terms; although arguing for a number of decisions where the king weighed in personally, Wilson’s study of Westminster is not a one-sided story but one in which the creative dynamic between the two Henrys is repeatedly evoked. Another medium with implications for medieval patronage is manuscript illumination, since the coordination of text and images within a book can be helpful in gauging intent. The choice and arrangement of image programs can complement evidence provided by the calendar, the nature of the prayers selected, and dedications.65 In particular, Psalters and books of hours, which had no fixed set of images associated with them, gave substantial scope for personalization.66 This is also a domain where female patrons, recipients, and dedicatees appear prominently, not only reflecting rising rates of literacy and new modes of spirituality but also because women often assumed responsibility for the family legacy and early education, symbolized by the family Bible handed on from mother to daughter.67 Alexa Sand has argued that the earnest lay female figures found in books of hours beginning in the later thirteenth century were effective proxies for their beholders – and not only female – who could see the bodily activity of devotion in the images before them and imagine themselves experiencing prayer in the manner depicted (Fig. 25.3).68 In a miniature from a Psalter-hours now in the Morgan Library (New York, Pierpont Morgan 346

Patronage

Figure 25.3 The Visual Colophon from the Toledo Cathedral Bible moralisée (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.240, fol. 8r), Paris, c. 1220–30s. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Library, MS M.729, f. 232v) of c. 1290, the female devotee is emphasized through her large scale, which is nearly twice that of the statue of the Virgin on the adjacent altar to whom she prays. She engages the viewer because of her specificity: the exertion of her physical posture; the wimple that identifies her as a married or widowed woman of status; the large, lined golden cloak embroidered with heraldic charges in red; and the presence of her lapdog. As Sand emphasizes, this portrayal “considers the owner’s act of prayer itself worthy of a level of pictorial attention equal to that given elsewhere in the same manuscript only to sacred subjects.”69 347

Elizabeth Carson Pastan

Sand’s focus in the so-called Psalter-Hours of Yolande of Soissons is less of a “whodunnit?” than an analysis of its representational discourse.70 On the basis of cues provided by dress and heraldry, Alison Stones persuasively demonstrated that the kneeling woman is in all likelihood not Yolande of Soissons but a relative, probably her widowed stepmother Comtesse de la Table.71 This investigative work also helps to explain the condition of this formerly eponymous manuscript, which Stones argues was taken over, adapted, and completed by Yolande. Fundamentally, however, the new identification of the person who initiated the book does not alter the analyses of the visual rhetoric of the picture; rather, it enlarges upon them because the image was evidently transferrable to its new owner, who left the “portrait” unaltered and embraced the specificity it intimates as her own, adapting instead the book’s coats of arms and calendar.72

Agency The problem of agency, defined as the culturally mediated capacity of human beings to act and make choices, has already been alluded to in the discussions of patrons such as Count Vivian and King Henry III, where the presence of a named historical personage provoked questions about that person’s actual involvement in the creation of a work of art. Scholars have examined the habits of deference adopted toward the powerful, evinced in rhetorical strategies and protocols that routinely credit those further up the hierarchy for work accomplished by others. In recognition of this phenomenon, Melissa Meriam Bullard provocatively declared, “Lorenzo the Magnificent was a committee.”73 Focusing primarily on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century materials, Creighton Gilbert offered a useful summary of the three ways in which, in the absence of other documentation, scholars hypothesize the extent of patrons’ control of themes in commissioned art:74 the existence of detailed instructions to the artist, despite their general absence from contracts;75 the hypothesized learned advisor, who was more prevalent in commissions of religious art, and sometimes called for by the artist;76 and the “extra messages,” which the art historian finds and uses to support a hypothesis of the patron’s intervention. There is no doubt about where Gilbert stands when he states that “proposals claiming detailed instructions [by patrons] are often linked to others claiming second intended levels of meaning [by art historians]; perhaps the second hypothesis needs the first.”77 As Flora and others have complained, scholars have often just assumed that any named or kneeling figure depicted in a work of art was the person who paid for it,78 a situation that led Linda Safran to advocate using the descriptive term “supplicant,” rather than an interpretive one, such as “donor.”79 Indeed, the proverbial “donor” figure may be observed in a variety of media, each with its own norms and visual language. Turning to the figures at work in the bottoms of the stained-glass windows at Chartres Cathedral (where donors often appear in later examples), Jane Welch Williams argued that these workers are unlikely to represent the medieval guilds that they have routinely been interpreted to be.80 Rather, drawing on the fractious local context at the time, the socioeconomic level of many of the workers depicted, and the scant evidence for the existence of the guilds that are assumed to serve as the corporate donors of windows within Chartres at this time, Williams read the workers as representing a clerical ideal of labor in support of the church, a didactic image of how workers should behave, in marked contrast to the contemporary discord. As Michael Camille showed, medieval images like these rarely originated with the workers themselves, but reflect instead the views of those who paid.81 But even for images of those who could afford to pay, the context requires careful consideration. In a study of portal sculpture at Notre-Dame of Paris, Cecilia Gaposchkin argued that the kneeling king and queen carved on the early fourteenth-century tympanum of the Porte Rouge, who, in the absence of any substantial documentation, have simply been assumed to be donors by a process of association, are more persuasively understood as an ecclesiastical presentation of royal piety and 348

Patronage

deference.82 Far from being patrons in any traditional sense, these kneeling royals are presented in the way contemporary churchmen would have liked to see them. I have argued elsewhere that inquiry into the patronage of the Bayeux Embroidery may have initially given rise to fruitful speculations about the context for this long and narrow pictorial narrative, which, at nearly 225 feet in length and only 20 inches in height, is the largest surviving textile from the Middle Ages.83 But hypotheses that focused narrowly on the personal agency of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who is named and depicted in the textile and was an important benefactor of the abbey of Saint Augustine’s in Canterbury, which oversaw the creation of the work, subsequently became a limitation to be accommodated. Scholars engaged in increasingly fanciful speculations about Odo’s self-insertion into the pictorial narrative of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, and about the textile’s presumed display in one of his many palaces.84 In fact, every feature of the textile that has been cited as evidence that Odo of Bayeux commissioned it and controlled its narrative can be explained by accepting that it was made at the collective initiative of the monks of St. Augustine’s to tell their own story of the conquest and to serve their own purposes, when hung at the abbey itself.85 In addition, the tradition of referring to this textile as a “tapestry,” which is an inaccurate description of its material form, ultimately has the effect of assimilating it to the large triumphal secular tapestries that covered the walls of baronial halls, rather than to the embroideries favored in liturgical usage, which offered no such practical insulation. As this example suggests, questions about patronal agency benefit from examining the material evidence within a work of art.86 Noting the scarcity of contracts for manuscript illumination before the fourteenth century, Jonathan Alexander drew attention to the fascinating sketches and instructions written in the margins of manuscripts that were intended to be erased, covered over by illuminations, or cut off in binding.87 Significant numbers of these written marginal directions survive – for example, in the London volume of the Bible moralisée now divided between Oxford, Paris, and London, a three-volume twin to the exemplar now largely in Toledo Cathedral, with a final gathering in New York.88 Next to one of the historiated medallions on folio 395 of the London volume, for example, is the notation in French, “erase the baby!” where someone had evidently substituted the holy family’s Flight into Egypt for the Journey to Bethlehem, which culminated in Mary giving birth.89 Although these notes must stem from communications within the workshop producing these great tomes, they ultimately point back to the conditions of their patronage. The ability to undertake such extensive “proofreading” is evidence of the depth of financial and organizational resources available. The royal sponsoring of the Bibles moralisées is often discussed around the visual colophon from the Toledo Cathedral exemplar (in the gathering now in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.240, fol. 8r), depicting a queen and king acting in concert with a cleric and an artist (Fig. 25.4).90 The image depicts many of the agents already mentioned, including: a prominent female figure in the upper left, the queen who seems to encompass the projected commission in the interval between her open-palmed and gesticulating hands; royal backing indicated by the king at the upper right whose hand encircles a small gold sphere reminiscent of a coin or seal; a learned clerical advisor at the lower left working from a page with an inscription that John Lowden read as, “Let it be left here to paint,” a further amplification of the directions he gives;91 and a lay artist at lower right bending to a page figured with eight paired medallions, which is the composition of the other pages in the book. Clearly the artists who created these great tomes are proportionally underrepresented in this image. Indeed, because such dedication miniatures often present an idealized or interested view of the commission, the information conveyed needs to be complemented by other kinds of evidence. Added to this general caution is Lowden’s observation that this visual colophon follows the pattern established in the rest of the pictorial program, and reads from left to right and from the top down, just as the biblical scenes and their moralizations throughout the manuscript.92 349

Elizabeth Carson Pastan

Figure 25.4 Book owner kneeling in prayer, Matins of the Hours of the Virgin, Psalter-Hours “of Yolande of Soissons” (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.729, fol. 232v), Amiens, c. 1290. Image courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.

The royal sponsorship of the Bibles moralisées may in fact be better attested by the scale of the undertaking and by the record of their gifting than by this image. From the extensive archival and codicological research undertaken by Lowden, we know that there were four such tomes made in the early thirteenth century, the largest exemplar containing nearly five thousand illuminated medallions, which served as gifts to noble houses related by marriage to the Parisian court. In addition, there is the material evidence the codices themselves yield, which points to a sponsor with unlimited resources: the extensive use of gold throughout, both as ground for the figures and as pictorial enhancement; the blank folios left between miniatures to minimize colors bleeding through the page; the unusual effort to make twin copies of the work;93 and the close 350

Patronage

editorial oversight reflected in the notations in the margins of the London volume. If Lowden is right that the early fourteenth-century Holkham Bible Picture Book frontispiece with its amusing caution from the cleric to the artist, “make it well, for it will be shown to rich people,” and the artist’s proud rejoinder, “never will you see such a book,” deliberately copied and tropes the Toledo Cathedral Bible moralisée’s visual colophon, then it further calls into question the claims of images that purport to describe, or have been interpreted as describing, the circumstances of a book’s commission.94 In this brief overview of issues in the study of patronage, I have chosen well-studied works of art to suggest the great interest and complexity of the creative forces at play. In closing, however, I would like to turn to a lesser-known entry in a late medieval inventory, which is explicit about how a particular donation was intended to be used. An entry in the inventory of Bayeux Cathedral (Caen, Archives départementales de Calvados, série G, Bibiliothèque du chapitre cathedral de Bayeux, MS 199, fol. 84v-85) of 1476 refers to a set of garments and objects for the use of future bishops, given by Bishop Louis II d’Harcourt (1424–1479), who commissioned the inventory.95 The set included a miter, gold cloth for a chasuble, two tunics, gloves, a cross, a ring, and a pontifical missal, of which only the missal survives. The entry stipulates that the items were to be available to each of Louis’s successors throughout his term of office and were to be returned to the cathedral treasury in good condition. So far it resembles any standard rental arrangement; however, the entry also declares that the sum of 40 livres was to be paid by each bishop for the maintenance of the set, of which 10 livres was to be devoted to a mass in memory of Bishop d’Harcourt. Like the inventory itself, this episcopal gift both commemorates the munificence of Bishop d’Harcourt and, “paying it forward,” establishes a tradition of giving for his successors in office. As is the case for many other acts of patronage where this information might remain implicit, the performative role of the objects is as important as the objects themselves. Originating as it did in the interval after the English Occupation (1345–1450) and before the Huguenot pillaging of the cathedral (1562) that would destroy many of the works of art named in the inventory, this gift registers a poignant vote of confidence in the future. By closing with this entry, I have sought to indicate that inquiries into patronage, for all their fictions of presentation and contingencies that still elude generalization, reward us with many such insights. What is at stake is nothing less than the contextual study of works of art and the refinement of methodologies to meet that challenge.

Notes 1 See J.W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” AHR 91 (1986), 1063–75; when Scott returned to the subject in “Unanswered Questions,” AHR 113 (2008), 1422–29, she indicated that she had intended her title to be posed as a question, which I have adapted in the title of this essay. 2 E. Gatti, Review of Patronage: Power & Agency in Medieval Art, ed. C. Hourihane, Index of Christian Art Occasional Papers, 15 (University Park, 2013), for The Medieval Review, TMR14.10.07. Gatti ultimately concluded that the anthology was a “welcome surprise.” Full disclosure: I served as co-organizer for the conference behind this volume, which will be referred to as Hourihane, Patronage. 3 Critical Terms for Art History, ed. R.S. Nelson and R. Shiff (Chicago, 2003), 2nd ed.; and Studies in Iconography 33 (2012), special issue, Medieval Art History Today – Critical Terms, guest ed. N. Rowe. 4 J. Caskey, “Whodunnit? Patronage, the Canon and the Problematics of Agency in Romanesque and Gothic Art,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. C. Rudolph, Blackwell Companions to Art History (Oxford, 2006), 203–04; H. Flora, “Patronage,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012), 209; J. Caskey, “Medieval Patronage & Its Potentialities,” in Patronage, ed. Hourihane, 3–30. 5 OED, 561, at I.1.2, and II.4. 6 OED, sub “patron,” 561–62. 7 W. Cahn, “The Artist as Outlaw and Apparatchik: Freedom and Constraint in the Interpretation of Medieval Art,” in The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, ed. S.K. Scher (Providence, 1969), 1–14.

351

Elizabeth Carson Pastan 8 A. Warburg, “The Art of Portraiture and the Florentine Bourgeoisie” (1902), reprint in Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, trans. D. Britt, Getty Research Institute Texts & Documents (Los Angeles, 1999), 187–89. 9 M. Kemp, “From ‘Mimesis’ to ‘Fantasia’: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius in the Visual Arts,” Viator 7 (1977), 360. 10 M. Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls (1925; New York, 2000); discussion in J. Luxford, “The Construction of English Monastic Patronage,” in Patronage, ed. Hourihane, 51–52; B. Buettner, “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400,” AB 83 (2001), 598–625. 11 M.H. Caviness, “Patron or Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed,” Speculum 68 (1993), 333–62. Also see P. Sheingorn, “Subjection and Reception in Claude of Frances’ Book of First Prayers,” in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. E.S. Lane, E.C. Pastan, and E. Shortell (Oxford, 2009), 313–32: and the application of this “patron-recepteur” concept for a nonfemale patron in B. Zweig, “Picturing the Fallen King: Royal Patronage and the Image of Saul’s Suicide,” in Patronage, ed. Hourihane, 151–74. 12 See Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. T. Martin, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2012), and the review by K.A. Smith, “Women Are Good to Think With,” for the Journal of Art Historiography 9 (2013), 9/KAS 1–15; C. Schleif, “Seeking Patronage: Patrons and Matrons in Language, Art, and Historiography,” in Hourihane, Patronage, 206–52; and E. van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Toronto, 1999). Targeting key issues: K.L. French, “‘I Leave My Best Gown as a Vestment’: Women’s Spiritual Interests in the Late Medieval English Parish,” Magistra 4 (1998), 57–77; A. Gajewski, “The Patronage Question under Review: Queen Blanche of Castile (1188–1252) and the Architecture of the Cistercian Abbeys at Royaumont, Maubuisson, and Le Lys,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women, I: 197–244; F.J. Griffiths, The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia, 2007), esp. 108–33. 13 Flora, Patronage (as in note 4), 207. 14 M.H. Caviness, “Anchoress, Abbess, and Queen: Donors and Patrons or Intercessors and Matrons?” in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. J.H. McCash (Athens, 1995), 113. 15 L. Seidel, Legends in Limestone: Lazarus, Gislebertus, and the Cathedral of Autun (Chicago, 1999), 12–26, 63–78; Caskey, “Whodunnit,” 222–28; Caskey, “Medieval Patronage,” 23–28; Schleif, “Seeking Patronage,” 210–14; A. Kumler, “The Patron-Function,” in Patronage, ed. Hourihane, 307–10; T. Martin, “Exceptions and Assumptions: Women in Medieval Art History,” in Reassessing the Roles of Women (as in note 12), I: 2–5. 16 Besides works cited in notes 1–24, see S. Kettering, “Patronage in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies 17 (1992), 839–62; M. Garber, Patronizing the Arts (Princeton, 2008). 17 C. Maines, “Good Work, Social Ties, and the Hope for Salvation: Abbot Suger and Saint Denis,” in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. P.L. Gerson (New York, 1986), 79. 18 J. Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park, 2004), 4. 19 A. Sand, Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art (New York, 2014), 6. 20 Burke, Changing Patrons (as in note 18), 6–8. 21 B. Brenk, “Committenza,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, ed. A.M. Romanini and M. Righetti, 12 vols. (Rome, 1994), 5: 203–19. 22 M. Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford, 1972), 1. 23 Unfortunately, Byzantine examples are beyond the scope of this essay, although see R. Cormack, “‘Faceless Icons’: The Problems of Patronage in Byzantine Art,” in Patronage, ed. Hourihane, 194–205. 24 H.L. Kessler, “A Lay Abbot as Patron: Count Vivian and the First Bible of Charles the Bald,” in Committenti e Produzione Artistico-Letteraria nell’Alto Medioevo Occidentale (4–10 April 1991), Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 39 (Spoleto, 1992), 647–79. 25 Kessler, Lay Abbot (as in note 24), 650–51. Kessler suggests the bearded figure at the middle right, who regards the monks lifting the book at the left from the other side of the image. 26 S. Keynes, “The ‘Liber Vitae’ of the New Minster,” in The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester: British Library Stowe 944, ed. S. Keynes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 26 (Copenhagen, 1996), 49–92; E.C. Parker, “The Gift of the Cross in the New Minster Liber Vitae,” in Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, ed. E. Sears and T.K. Thomas (Ann Arbor, 2002), 177–86. 27 Schleif, Seeking Patronage (as in note 12), 215–17. 28 Parker, Gift (as in note 26), 178.

352

Patronage 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46

47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55

56

57 58

Keynes, Liber Vitae (as in note 26), fol. 13rv, 82–83. Parker, Gift, 179–83; Keynes, Liber Vitae, 35–36 and 79–80 on New Minster’s “great cross” with relics. Kumler, The Patron-Function (as in note 15), 296–319. E. Kitzinger, “The Gregorian Reform and the Visual Arts: A Problem of Method,” TRHS 22, 5th ser. (1972), 91. Kitzinger, The Gregorian Reform (as in note 32), 101. Compare to Michael Camille’s statement of method in idem, “Labouring for the Lord: The Ploughman and the Social Order in the Luttrell Psalter,” Art History 10 (1987), 445. R.S. Nelson, “At the Place of a Foreword: Someone Looking, Reading, and Writing,” in Critical Terms (as in note 3), xv–xvii. Scott, Gender (as in note 1). Scott, Gender (as in note 1), 1055–56. See S. Settis, Artisti e committenti fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Turin, 2010), esp. 51–81. F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque, 2nd rev. ed. (New Haven, 1980), 3–23. Haskell, Patrons and Painters (as in note 38), viii. Scott, Gender (as in note 1), 1056. J. Van Engen, “Theophilus Presbyter and Rupert of Deutz: Manual Arts and Benedictine Theology in the Twelfth Century,” Viator 11 (1980), 147–63. M. Schapiro, “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art,” (1947), reprint in idem, Romanesque Art: Selected Papers (New York, 1977), 1–27 at p 2. W. Cahn, “The Rule and the Book: Cistercian Book Illumination in Burgundy and Champagne,” in Monasticism and the Arts, ed. T.G. Verdon (Syracuse, 1984), 139–72; M. Gullick, “Professional Scribes in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century England,” English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700 7 (1998), 1–25. A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998). C. van Eck, “Living Statues: Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency, Living Presence Response and the Sublime,” Art History 33 (2010), 647. For representative examples see C.B. Kendall, The Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions (Toronto, 1998); N. Morgan, “What Are They Saying? Patrons & Their Text Scrolls in Fifteenth-Century English Art,” in Hourihane, Patronage (as in note 2), 175–93. P. Kidson, “Panofsky, Suger and St. Denis,” JWCI 50 (1987), 2. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, ed. and trans. E. Panofsky, 2nd ed. G. Panofsky-Soergel (1946; Princeton, 1979). L.R. Hoey, “A Critical Account of the State of Some Questions concerning Suger’s Architecture at Saint-Denis,” AVISTA Forum Journal 12 (1999), 12–13. For example, É. Mâle, “Enrichment of the Iconography: Suger and His Influence,” Religious Art in France: The Twelfth Century, ed. H. Bober, trans. M. Mathews (1922; Princeton, 1978), 154–86; E. Panofsky, “Introduction,” Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church, 1–37; C. Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-Denis: Abbot Suger’s Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy over Art, Princeton Essays on the Arts (Princeton, 1990); C.M. Radding and W.W. Clark, Medieval Architecture, Medieval Learning: Builders and Masters in the Age of Romanesque and Gothic (New Haven, 1992), 57–76. Kidson, Panofsky, Suger (as in note 47), 2. Kidson, Panofsky, Suger (as in note 47), 1–2. Antoine de Pise: L’art du vitrail vers 1400, ed. C. Lautier and D. Sandron, Corpus Vitrearum France, Études, 8 (Paris, 2008). Also see the foundational study of Hartmut Scholz, Entwurf und Ausführung: Werkstattpraxis in der Nürnberger Glasmalerei der Dürerzeit (Berlin, 1991). D.S. Chambers, Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance, History in Depth (Columbia, 1971); A. Martindale, The Rise of the Artist in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (New York, 1972); remarks in Settis, Artisti e committenti (as in note 37), 87. Haskell, “Patronage,” Encyclopedia of World Art 10 (New York, 1966), 120; the nature of this milieu led J.M. Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300–1540: A Patronage History (Woodbridge, 2005), to adopt the term “internal patronage.” B. Hill, “Lay Patronage and Monastic Architecture: The Norman Abbey of Savigny,” in Monasticism and the Arts, ed. T.G. Verdon (Syracuse, 1984), 173–87. C. Hahn, Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400–circa 1204 (University Park, 2012).

353

Elizabeth Carson Pastan 59 H.L. Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, Rethinking the Middle Ages, 1 (Ontario, 2004), esp. 19–43; K.E. Overbey and B.C. Tilghman, “Active Objects: An Introduction,” in Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 4 (2014), 1–9. 60 C.W. Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (Brooklyn, 2011), 28. 61 J.E. Jung, “The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of Sculpture in the Medieval Religious Imagination,” in Looking Beyond:Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, ed. C. Hourihane, Index of Christian Art Occasional Papers, 11 (University Park, 2010), 202–40. 62 Martindale, The Rise of the Artist (as in note 55), 79–96; Radding and Clark, Medieval Architecture (as in note 50), 1–8. 63 D. Sandron, “La cathédrale de Laon, la volonté du clergé, la liberté des architectes,” in L’artiste et le commanditaire aux dernier siècles du Moyen Age: XIIIe–XVIe siècles, ed. F. Joubert (Paris, 2001), 5–16. 64 C. Wilson, “Calling the Tune? The Involvement of King Henry III in the Design of the Abbey at Westminster,” JBAA 161 (2008), 59–93. 65 See K.A. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours (London, 2003), 1–47. Arguing for the public role of later medieval books, see J. Coleman, M. Cruse, and K.A. Smith, “Introduction: The Social Life of Illumination,” in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. idem (Turnhout, 2013), 1–13. 66 A. Bennett, “The Transformation of the Gothic Psalter in Thirteenth-Century France,” in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of Its Images, ed. F.O. Büttner (Turnhout, 2004), 211–21. 67 S.G. Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture” (1982), in Sisters and Works in the Middle Ages, ed. J.M. Bennett (Chicago, 1989), 135–61; and the works cited in note 12. 68 Sand, Vision, Devotion (as in note 19), 149–210. 69 Sand, Vision, Devotion (as in note 19), 181. 70 Sand, Vision, Devotion, 178–85; G. Didi-Huberman, “The Portrait, the Individual and the Singular: Remarks on the Legacy of Aby Warburg,” in The Image and the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. N. Mann and L. Syson (London, 1998), 165–88. 71 A. Stones, “The Full-Page Miniatures of the Psalter-Hours New York, PML, ms M. 729: Programme and Patron,” in The Illuminated Psalter, ed. Büttner (as in note 66), 281–307. 72 See S. Perkinson, The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France (Chicago, 2008). 73 M.M. Bullard, “Heroes and Their Workshops: Medici Patronage and the Problem of Shared Agency,” JMRS 24 (1994), 196. 74 C.E. Gilbert, “What Did the Renaissance Patron Buy?” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998), 392–95. 75 See L.F. Sandler, “Notes for the Illuminator: The Case of the Omne Bonum,” AB 71(1989), 551–64, where by examining the marginal notes left for the artist in an encyclopedia of c. 1380, Sandler demonstrates that the artist assumed an active role in formulating the images, including reading the text independently. 76 L.F. Sandler, “Jean Pucelle and the Lost Miniatures of the Belleville Breviary,” AB 66 (1984), 73–96, who argues that the preface to this early fourteenth-century Dominican breviary is not the work of a clerical advisor, as had been assumed, but of an artist. 77 Gilbert, What Did the Renaissance Patron Buy? (as in note 74), 443. 78 Flora, Patronage (as in note 4), 209. 79 L. Safran, “Deconstructing ‘Donors’ in Medieval Southern Italy,” Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 60–61 (2011–12): 135–51. Although a synonym, note the slightly different inflection in the term “suppliant” used by others, including Maines, Good Works (as in note 17). 80 J.W. Williams, Bread, Wine & Money: The Windows of the Trades at Chartres Cathedral (Chicago, 1993). 81 Camille, Labouring for the Lord (as in note 33). 82 M.C. Gaposchkin, “The King of France and the Queen of Heaven: The Iconography of the Porte Rouge of Notre-Dame of Paris,” Gesta 39 (2000), 58–72. 83 E.C. Pastan and S.D. White, “Problematizing Patronage: Odo of Bayeux and the Bayeux Tapestry,” in New Approaches to the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. M.K. Foys, K.E. Overbey, and D. Terkla (Woodbridge, 2009), 1–24; S.A. Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry, Bayeux Médiathèque Municipale: MS 1, A Sourcebook, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 9 (Turnhout, 2013), for an annotated bibliography. 84 E.C. Pastan, “Imagined Patronage: The Bayeux Embroidery and Its Interpretive History,” in Patronage, ed. Hourihane (as in note 2), 54–75.

354

Patronage 85 E.C. Pastan and S.D. White, with K. Gilbert, The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts: A Reassessment (Woodbridge, 2014). 86 Flora, Patronage (as in note 4), 210–15. 87 J.J.G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work (New Haven, 1992), 52–71. 88 J. Lowden, The Making of the Bibles Moralisées, 2 vols. (University Park, 2000), I: 154–65. 89 Lowden, Making, I: 157 (as in note 88), fig. 58. 90 Lowden, Making, I: 95–137 (as in note 88), and his color plate X. 91 Lowden, Making, I: 129 (as in note 88). 92 J. Lowden, “The Bible of Saint Louis as a Bible Moralisée,” in The Bible of Saint Louis, II: Commentary Volume, ed. R.G. Ruiz (Barcelona, 2004), 147–50. 93 Lowden, Making, I: 167–80 (as in note 88), and color plates XIX–XX. 94 J. Lowden, “The Holkham Bible Picture Book and the Bible Moralisée,” in The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends & Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. J.H. Marrow, R. Linenthal, and W. Noel (Houten, 2010), 75–83. 95 E. Deslandes, “Le trésor de l’église Notre-Dame de Bayeux, d’après les inventaires manuscripts de 1476, 1480 et 1498,” Bulletin archéologique du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques (1896), no. 104 at 377–78.

355

26 ROYAL AND IMPERIAL ICONOGRAPHY Joan A. Holladay

Kings wear crowns. Queens do too. Sometimes they hold scepters. Sometimes they sit on thrones. Royal iconography would seem to be straightforward, unproblematic, and obvious. In fact, the ways in which royals were portrayed over the centuries – their poses, the environments and situations in which they appear, the figures that accompany them – were not constant but instead reflect changing perceptions of their status, power, and proximity to God. The doyen of the study of royal iconography is Percy Ernst Schramm. His books, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit 751–1190, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, and Die Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, remain essential sources, appreciated for their encyclopedic coverage.1 They have been updated for specific monuments by Eliza Garrison,2 Thomas E. A. Dale,3 and others. To my knowledge nothing attempting a reach comparable to Schramm’s exists for any of the other countries of medieval Europe.4

Crowns, scepters, and thrones The crowns, scepters, and thrones mentioned earlier, among the earliest medieval objects that marked royal status – and indeed in some cases conferred it – are known through texts, preserved and excavated objects, and representations of such objects on seals and coins and in manuscript illuminations. They seem to go back uniformly to Roman origins. One of the sources for the medieval crown was the laurel wreath of antiquity. First worn as a sign of triumph, it later became a mark of the prince. While early Christians may have avoided it for its pagan connotations, it appears on the denier of Charlemagne (r. 768–814) (Fig. 26.1), which was modeled on a medal of Constantine (r. 306–37).5 Metal diadems seem to have had a similar trajectory, worn first by members of wider elite circles as jewelry before being understood as marks of high political status.6 The Liber pontificalis, first assembled in the fifth or sixth century, mentions votive crowns hung over the altars and elsewhere from the fourth century; functional crowns that had been worn to denote status were sometimes given as votives.7 Schramm notes that, from the end of the fifth century, Vandal rulers appear on their coins wearing diadems and that this was soon taken up by the Franks and Visigoths, and the sixth-century author Gregory of Tours in his Historia Francorum (II, ch. 38) mentions a “crown with precious gems” (regnus [sic] cum gemmis pretiosis) worn by Clovis (r. 482–511), king of the Franks, at the beginning of the sixth century.8 Not all early medieval rulers wore crowns, however. The early seventh-century 356

Royal and imperial iconography

Figure 26.1 Silver denier of Charlemagne. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques. Between 801 and 814, Mainz (?). Photo © Genevra Kornbluth.

Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo, long taken to be a royal interment,9 contains no crown, for example; a helmet with tinned copper alloy panels with animal interlace and human figures in heroic scenes seems to have served as an equivalent mark of status. Before the coronation of Edgar in 973, in fact, Anglo-Saxon kings were invested with helmets rather than crowns.10 Schramm proposes the neck ring or torque as the third source of the crown. A sign of honor given to members of the Roman army, the neck ring as a mark of status for men and women of princely rank was known in the Roman province of Germania from the early imperial period; finds date from as early as the fourth century.11 The use of the neck ring declined with the arrival of Christianity except among the Merovingians.12 The crown not only was a sign of status but also by the Carolingian period was understood as a deposit or pledge for the realm such that the physical transfer of the crown indicated the transfer of rule.13 Roman consuls, emperors, and empresses wielded scepters as signs of their power.14 A spectacular find in 2005 on the northeast slope of the Palatine hill in Rome included three scepters with glass or chalcedony balls on one or both ends; their similarity to objects portrayed on coins and in other images points to their use in civil and military rather than religious ceremonies.15 A four-sided whetstone 60 centimeters long from the Sutton Hoo burial may have had a similar function. The two ends are each decorated with four small human heads, probably of ancestors or gods; a metal base and a metal crest, a circle with the image of a stag, completed the object. Adolf Gauert sees the human heads as ancestors, including perhaps gods, and assigns them an apotropaic function; they would also mark the bearer as a member of his clan and his actions as occurring with the support of that long-standing and illustrious group.16 Using later Icelandic texts, Jacqueline Simpson associates whetstones with the thunderbolts of Thor and the power and justice of Tiwaz, the northern equivalent of Zeus or Jupiter.17 The grave of a six-year-old boy discovered under the choir of Cologne Cathedral contained a wooden scepter 20 inches long; the placement of the grave, which dated to the second quarter of the sixth century, together 357

Joan A. Holladay

with the richness of the grave goods identifies the child as a member of the Merovingian royal house.18 The Carolingian kings in the images discussed ahead carry either a long staff or a shorter scepter topped with a fleur-de-lis, an early use of the type of object that would appear in images of the French kings for centuries.19 From the time of Louis X (r. 1314–16), the seals of the kings of France show them with a long fleur-de-lis scepter in the right hand and a shorter staff topped with a hand of justice in the left. A nineteenth-century ivory hand at the Louvre (MS 85) corresponds to images of the object offered to Charles V (r. 1364–80) at his coronation, portrayed in Charles’s copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 2813, fol. 439r) and at numerous reprises in the Coronation Book made for him in 1365 (Fig. 26.2), soon after his coronation in the previous year (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. VIII, fols. 58–64r).20 The Coronation Book also portrays Charles with a distinctive scepter, which Charles had presumably commissioned and which he may have had reworked or entirely remade near the end of his reign (Paris, Musée du Louvre, MS 83).21 At the top of the staff a pomme ringed with gems bears three repoussé scenes of Charlemagne’s interactions with Saint James; a lily on top of it supports an enthroned figure of Charlemagne, crowned and bearing a cross-topped orb and a scepter. Charles’s tenuous political situation as the embattled third king of a new dynasty accounts for his attempt to link himself with the powerful early Carolingian. With the other objects used in the coronation, the hand of justice and the scepter were kept at Saint-Denis; they appear in Felibien’s 1706 prints of the cupboards in which the treasury of the abbey was stored.22 Starting under Henry III (r. 1216–72), the kings of England used a scepter, understood as the Rod of Virtue of Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–66), topped with a dove, a symbol of peace and mercy.23 Henry felt a special devotion to Edward, who had been canonized in 1161, and wall and manuscript paintings of the coronation of this king made for Henry show the saint holding

Figure 26.2 Charles V, holding the scepter and the hand of justice, kneels before Dagobert’s throne as the archbishop of Reims places the crown on his head. Coronation Book of Charles V. London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. VIII, fol. 59r. 1365, Paris. Photo © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

358

Royal and imperial iconography

the bird-headed staff. Henry’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, antiking of Germany (r. 1257–72), gave “a gold crown, . . . a scepter, and a gilt orb” to the palace chapel at Aachen for use in the coronation ceremony; there is some disagreement about whether a silver gilt staff with a bird still in the treasury there is Richard’s gift.24 Schramm dates the folding X-shaped throne in the form known as the sella curulis to Republican Rome; its use continued under the empire.25 The earliest representation of an enthroned Germanic ruler, which seems to derive from Byzantine images, appears on a gilded plate from a helmet at the Bargello in Florence (inv. no. 681). The Lombard Agilulf (r. 591–615) is portrayed among symmetrically arranged standing figures; the two outermost each carry a crown, suggesting this as a scene of coronation.26 The throne now in the Musée des monnaies, médailles et antiques of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris has long been associated with King Dagobert (r. 623–39). It came from the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, where Dagobert had built the first large church, but Schramm argues on the basis of the material and technique – cast bronze, originally gilded – and the other gifts to the abbey by Charles the Bald, that it may be a Carolingian object brought from Aachen to the abbey near Paris by that ninth-century king (r. 840–77) and emperor (r. 875–77) and perhaps renovated by his artists as well.27 Abbot Suger, writing just before the middle of the twelfth century, situates the throne in the coronation ceremony: “On it, as ancient tradition relates, the kings of the Franks, after having taken the reins of government, used to sit in order to receive, for the first time, the homage of their nobles.”28 The gilded ivory throne of King Solomon described in 3 Kings 10:18–20 served as the model for the throne of the Byzantine emperor.29 Six places in documents from the first two decades of Charlemagne’s rule indicate that he saw enthronement as constitutive of the office of king;30 a white marble throne on the west side of the upper story of his new palace chapel at Aachen, opposite the altar once dedicated to the Savior at the east, has traditionally been associated with him.31 Six steps recall the Solomonic model.32 The marble pieces for both throne and steps were spolia, repurposed probably from architectural structures in Rome and Ravenna.33 A chamber under the seat presumably housed relics, perhaps the Saint Stephen purse reliquary now in Vienna (Schatzkammer, Inv. Nr. XIII 26).34 Widukind of Corvey records the coronation of Otto I at Aachen in 936 (emperor 962–73): after the sword, belt, chlamys, and scepter were presented to the new king, he was anointed and crowned. Then the bishops led the king to the throne; once he was seated he “could see everyone and could, himself, be seen by all who were in attendance.”35 A similar sequence of events – presentation of regalia, anointing, crowning, and enthroning – was followed for the many coronations of German kings carried out at Aachen over the next centuries and used elsewhere as well.36 At Aachen the unique and divinely ordained status of the new king in his realm conveyed by the ceremony was reinforced by the relics under the throne and his intermediate position in the gallery between the earth below and the mosaic image of heaven at the end of time in the dome above. A cast bronze throne commissioned by Edward I for the abbey church at Westminster was started in 1297, and then abandoned; a gilded wood version was completed and installed in 1300.37 A special openwork compartment below the seat held the Stone of Scone, on which the Scottish kings had been installed; Edward had captured the stone in 1296. The incorporation of the stone into the chair made Edward’s claim to Scotland – and that of all subsequent kings of England – easily visible.

Other royal symbols Other signs of royal status are also noted at an early date. A seal of Childerich (d. 481) shows that the Merovingian king wore his hair long; his successors continued to do so until they were deposed in 751. Theodorich, king of the Ostrogoths from 493 to 526, is also said to have 359

Joan A. Holladay

eschewed the crown that other princes wore in favor of the one nature had given him, his long hair.38 The seal of the Visigothic king Alarich II (r. 484–507) indicates that he distinguished himself from his subjects by his bowl-shaped haircut. That the materials of these early seal rings with kings’ images – Alarich’s is sapphire and Theodorich’s amethyst – were reserved for rulers indicates that certain gems and/or colors also carried royal connotations. Seal rings themselves were signs of power and were worn and used by royal women as well as men.39 Armillae, wide bands worn around the upper arm in the late antique to mark military honors, became a sign of nobility, and then, no later than the time of Conrad II (r. 1124–39), insignia reserved for the king alone.40 Charlemagne’s daughters wore armillae, suggesting that they were still a mark of men and women of high status in the ninth century, but Guthred (r. 883–95), king of Northumbria, was invested with armillae and Odo, the Robertian who ruled as king of West Francia for a decade starting in 888, requisitioned them from Saint-Denis with the crown and other objects needed to establish his kingship.41 A bejeweled fragment in the cathedral treasury at Hildesheim from about 1000 and the matched pair of about 1175–80 with champlevé enamel scenes of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, now split between the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg (KG 1239) and the Louvre in Paris (OA 8261), testify to the range of decorative possibilities for this type of object.42 Carol Neuman de Vegvar has proposed that drinking horns, found in the mound burial at Sutton Hoo and elsewhere, may also have been a kind of regalia, “the physical vehicle of the establishment of binding alliances and social bonds.”43 The numbers of preserved objects, images, and texts put us on firmer ground with respect to royal iconography in the Carolingian period. Charlemagne’s revival of the Roman Empire consisted not only of reusing and adapting Roman architectural forms, but also of painting styles, paleography, and technologies like cast bronze. Representations of the emperor himself – as on the denier mentioned earlier – hark back to Roman coins and medals with the profile portrait, the laurel wreath, and the title Imp[erator] Aug[ustus]. One of the most striking objects associated with the Carolingian court is the cast bronze equestrian figure of a king, now at the Louvre (OA 8260).44 In his left hand, the crowned king holds an orb, a symbol of the universe and of the extent of royal power and later one of the imperial insignia; his right probably held a cylindrical object, perhaps a sword handle. Measuring only 25 centimeters in height, the work is clearly modeled on over-life-size ancient equestrian figures, like the one still preserved of Marcus Aurelius, which was thought to represent Constantine in the Middle Ages.45 The composition and pose of both horse and rider are similar in the two works, although the Carolingian bronze moves away from the naturalism of the Roman work, abstracting and softening all the forms. The identity of the king represented is uncertain: the figure resembles Einhard’s description of Charlemagne and other images of that ruler, like that on the silver denier, but it was made in an era before the expectation of veristic portraiture. Complicating the matter further is the way in which representations of Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Bald were fashioned to look like those of his grandfather in an effort at claiming legitimacy and establishing political continuity.46 More typical of the representations of Carolingian kings are the images in contemporary manuscripts, and they reveal a great deal about conceptions of royal power. The First Bible of Charles the Bald was one of a series of great Bibles produced at the scriptorium at the abbey of Saint-Martin at Tours.47 It was given to Charles during a royal visit to the abbey at the end of 845, an event depicted on the last page of the manuscript (fol. 423r). Charles sits on a draped, high-backed throne at the center of the page. He wears a Bügelkrone, the crown topped with an arch running from ear to ear and another that extends back from the forehead, and he holds a long staff in his left hand. A courtier wearing a narrow diadem stands at each side of the throne and next to him an armed guard. Forming a circle in front of the throne are the canons of Saint-Martin’s; two of them at the far left of the image offer a large manuscript to the king, who 360

Royal and imperial iconography

gestures at it with his right hand. Despite the attempt to arrange the figures in a three-dimensional space, the base of the king’s throne and the feet of his courtiers and guards are located in the clouds, denoting his otherworldly status, and the whole takes place under a baldachin draped with a white cloth; above this space the hand of God reaches down to grant divine approval to the proceedings. From the spandrels outside the arch, two female figures in half-length offer crowns.48 In a subtle analysis of the image and the accompanying poetry, especially the lengthy poem at the beginning of the manuscript and the verses on the two folios that immediately precede the presentation image, Paul Dutton and Herbert Kessler have pointed out the combined didactic and panegyric character of the manuscript. The Bible is recommended to the king as a handbook for good, just kingship, which should include protection of the rights and immunities of the abbey. At the end of the book, the presentation image portrays the king as a “perfected ruler.”49 Referred to as David, as his grandfather had been, Charles is likened to that Old Testament king in both word and image. On folio 215v, David is represented flanked by two guards and surrounded by four musicians. The figures stand on cloud bands in a mandorla against a blue ground that evokes the heavens. Female personifications of the cardinal virtues in half-length occupy the spandrels. David bears the same features as the figure of Charles the Bald at the end of the manuscript and wears a similar crown. David’s nakedness proposes humility to Charles, who by the end of the book has become “fully Davidian and fully just.”50 The First Bible of Charles the Bald was a gift to the king from the canons at Saint-Martin’s, so the image of the ruler, the first of a number of depictions of Charles the Bald, reflects their wishes, but two roughly contemporary manuscripts of slightly later date usually considered to have been produced at the emperor’s behest take up the representation of the king in the First Bible, repeating and developing the iconography of the ruler. In the Gospel book known as the Codex aureus of St. Emmeram (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000, fol. 5v), the emperor, now much bigger than the surrounding figures, sits under an elaborately decorated, three-dimensional baldachin from which the hand of God projects downwards to convey divine approbation and protection (Fig. 26.3). Charles’s throne is high-backed and bejeweled; a swag of cloth, presumably a cloth of honor, is arranged behind his head. The king again wears a Bügelkrone, now inset with gems; the borders of his mantle and the sleeves and hem of his robe are also bejeweled. A guard stands at each side of the throne. Behind each military attendant stands a female personification indicating Charles’s rule over the reunified territories of his father and grandfather: Francia and Gotia are crowned and bear horns of plenty. Angels again occupy the upper spandrels. The scene, which is too often reproduced by itself, gains in both richness and specificity when considered with that on the facing page (fol. 6r). Here, in a dramatic circular composition, the twenty-four elders of Revelation 4:10–11 lift up off their seats and offer their crowns to the lamb at their center. The subject and its circular arrangement recall the mosaic decoration in the dome of Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen.51 Charles sits on the manuscript spread as he would have sat on the throne of his grandfather in the second story of the octagonal chapel, enjoying privileged visual access to the vision of heaven at the end of time in the dome above his head. A closely related image in the Bible of San Paolo fuori le mura in Rome also shows the large-scale emperor enthroned, again under an elaborate draped baldachin.52 He wears similar bejeweled clothing and crown and is accompanied by four symmetrically arranged attendants: two guards at his right and two women at his left. The woman closest to the emperor in the richly embroidered veil represents his wife.53 Above the throne four haloed female figures personify virtues that allow and characterize his good government. Flanking the virtues, two angels guarantee heavenly protection for the king. The poem inscribed at the bottom of the page describes the various elements of the picture and relates them to Charles’s effective rule and his role as defender of the church.54 That the composition resembles that of the frontispiece 361

Figure 26.3a Charles the Bald seated on his throne looks into the heavens. Codex aureus of St. Emmeram. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, Clm 14000, fol. 5v. 870, Court School of Charles the Bald (location unknown). Photo: courtesy of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München.

Royal and imperial iconography

Figure 26.3b The twenty-four elders adore the lamb. Codex aureus of St. Emmeram. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München, Clm 14000, fol. 6r. 870, Court School of Charles the Bald (location unknown). Photo: courtesy of Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München.

to Proverbs on folio 188v, where Solomon sits in a similar pose under a baldachin and is also accompanied by symmetrically arranged attendants, links the living king to the biblical model of wisdom.55 The rigidly symmetrical construction of the image, hierarchic scaling, mix of symbolic and historical figures, and architectural framework and costume suggest earlier Byzantine objects, like the so-called Missouriam of Theodosius, a large silver plate from 388 (Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia). 363

Joan A. Holladay

The two manuscripts share their large size, elaborate decoration, and the inclusion of accompanying text in gold letters on a ground of imperial purple.56 That the two Bibles were both created about 870, although at different sites where books for the king were produced, suggests a concerted effort to use imagery to construe the king’s roles in his kingdom and in the entirety of God’s creation in all time. Charles may have given the Bible to Pope John VIII at the time of his coronation as emperor on Christmas in 875.57 The lavishly illustrated work not only would have been an appropriate gift but also would have served to advertise Charles’s understanding of his position to the pontiff. The Codex aureus may have been given or left to the royal abbey at Saint-Denis; it was later in the possession of Arnulf of Carinthia, king of East Francia (r. 887–99), who gave it to the monastery of St. Emmeram at Regensburg about 893.58 The small equestrian king holds an orb in his left hand, and Charles the Bald in the Bible of San Paolo and in his Psalter (fol. 3v) holds a large flat disk that must be interpreted in a similar fashion.59 A symbol of the world, and of dominion over it, and as such often an attribute of Christ, the “supreme imperial model,”60 the orb would become a nearly omnipresent attribute of the ruler from the Ottonian period onwards. Deriving, again, from Roman precedents, an orb is held by each of the two corulers on the Missourium of Theodosius and by an empress on an early sixth-century Byzantine ivory in the Bargello in Florence. This latter is topped by a cross, and it is in this form that the orb will appear with great regularity in the images of Ottonian and later emperors on seals and coins and in manuscripts, although orbs inscribed with crosses and simple spheres also appear. The cross-topped orbs found among the grave goods buried with the German kings Henry III (r. 1028–56; emperor 1046–56), Lothar III (r. 1125–37; emperor 1133–37), Frederick II (r. 1212–50; emperor 1220–50), and Sigismund (r. 1411–37; emperor 1433–37) and the Bohemian king Rudolf I (r. 1306–7) were typically made of baser materials than the example in gold and jewels from about 1200 preserved among the imperial regalia in Vienna (Schatzkammer, Inv. Nr. XIII 2) (Fig. 26.4).61 The Bügelkrone that Charles the Bald wears in all three of the manuscript illuminations discussed earlier also deserves some comment here as it will serve as perhaps the most recognizable of the imperial insignia for the rest of the Middle Ages. Perhaps an idea of Charlemagne’s, this particular form seems to have derived from the royal helmet, and in such early examples as Charlemagne’s bull and a Carolingian ivory in Florence it is difficult to distinguish between the two.62 Manuscript images of Lothar I (co-emperor with his father from 817, then alone 840–55) in the Lothar Gospels (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 266, fol. 1v) and Charles the Bald in the First Bible of Charles the Bald, both about 850, clearly show the headgear as a crown. The double arches, intended to stabilize a functioning helmet against blows, quickly gave way to a single one, which extended back from the forehead. The Bügelkrone also identifies the Ottonian emperors, who appear in manuscript illuminations similar to those of their Carolingian predecessors. In fact, the image of Henry II (king 1002–24; emperor 1014–24) enthroned on folio 11v of his Sacramentary (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4456) is closely modeled on that of Charles the Bald in the Codex aureus, although two additional provinces carry similar laden horns in the upper spandrels. On the preceding page, however, Christ crowns the standing king, holding the crown by the arch as he places it on Henry’s head, while angels swoop in from the upper corners to hand the king the royal insignia, the lance and the sword. Christ is also shown at the moment of placing oversized circular crowns on the heads of Henry and his wife Kunigunde in the Pericopes of Henry II (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4452, fol. 2r). Similar divine approval and the accompanying otherworldly status of the emperor are made evident in the extraordinary image of Otto III (king 983–1002; emperor 996–1002) in the Liuthar Gospels (Aachen, Cathedral Treasury), painted about the time of Otto’s coronation at Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen in 983 and perhaps presented to 364

Royal and imperial iconography

Figure 26.4 Imperial insignia, including, at left, the Bügelkrone (second half of the tenth century with cross from the early eleventh and arch from the reign of Konrad II [1024–39]); at right, the imperial orb (c. 1200), and diagonally across the front, the imperial sword in its scabbard (middle third of the eleventh century). Vienna, Imperial Treasury. Photo courtesy of KHM-Museumsverband.

the church on that occasion. On folio 16r Otto sits on a throne supported by Terra, a personification of the Earth; the gold ground and the overlarge hand of God that extends from the upper reaches of the image to crown him mark his location between heaven and earth. Two courtiers stand beside and slightly below the throne, and at the bottom of the image, two military and two ecclesiastical dignitaries. The image “reproduces an idealized political hierarchy.”63 Images in which God or his divine representative is physically present to crown the king may depend on Byzantine precedents. An ivory knob known as the scepter of Leo VI (r. 886–912), traditionally taken as the head of a scepter but more recently thought to be a handle for a box to hold the crown of the Byzantine emperor, shows, on one side, the Virgin flanked by the emperor and the archangel Gabriel, both holding the orb and scepter (Berlin, Museum für Spätantike und Byzantinische Kunst).64 The queen of heaven has her hand on the earthly ruler’s crown. A Constantinopolitan ivory from 945–49, now at the Musée des monnaies, médailles et antiques 365

Joan A. Holladay

in Paris, shows the emperor Romanos (r. 945–63) and the empress Eudokia (d. 949) standing on either side of Christ, who places crowns on their heads. The marriage of the Byzantine princess Theophanu to Otto II (king 961–83; emperor 967–83) in 972 brought objects like this one to the west, and an ivory representing Christ crowning Otto and Theophanu in a similar fashion, now at the Musée national du moyen âge in Paris, repeats closely the composition and details of the slightly earlier Byzantine object. Other Ottonian objects portray the king humbling himself before Christ; on the Basel antependium, probably a gift of Henry II to Basel cathedral in 1019 (Paris, Musée national du moyen âge, Cl. 2350), and in the Codex aureus of Henry III (king 1028–56; emperor 1046–56), the king and queen prostrate themselves before a Christ in dramatically larger scale (Escorial, Cod. vit. 17, fol. 2v). The Bügelkrone, the orb topped with a cross, and other objects, including the Coronation Gospels, the purse reliquary of Saint Stephen, the Holy Lance, reliquary crosses, and numerous articles of highly decorated ceremonial clothing, make up the imperial regalia, preserved today in the Treasury in Vienna.65 That these objects, most of them gifts from past kings, played specific roles in the coronation ceremony indicates that they were perceived to confer royal status. The efforts of Charles IV (king of Bohemia 1347–78; German king 1346–78; emperor 1355–78) to acquire them from the recalcitrant heirs of the dead antiking Louis of Bavaria (r. 1314–47, emperor 1328–47) indicate their importance for the legitimacy of the king, as does Charles’s decision to build a special site to store and protect them, the chapel of the Holy Cross at the remote hilltop castle of Karlštejn outside Prague. The scabbard of the imperial sword (Vienna, Schatzkammer, Inv. Nr. XIII 17), dated in the middle third of the eleventh century, establishes the pattern for the official portrayal of single standing rulers: fourteen images in low relief showing crowned kings carrying scepters and orbs prefigure the depiction of the antiking Rudolf of Swabia on his tomb in Merseburg cathedral, dated about the time of his death in 1080.66 This cast bronze tomb, one of the very earliest with a life-size effigy, establishes a type for royal gisants that would be used for centuries; the stone tomb for Rudolf of Hapsburg (r. 1273–91) in Speyer Cathedral is just one example.67 French tombs for members of the royal family vary this form slightly. The sixteen tomb effigies installed for long-dead members of the Merovingian, Carolingian, and Capetian dynasties at Saint-Denis in 1263–64 and the tombs for the last five kings of the Capetian dynasty and two of their queens sculpted between 1271 and about 1328 showed them holding a scepter in one hand and looping the fingers of the other through the cord of their mantle (Fig. 26.5).68 Despite differences in style, these effigies and other sculptures of kings from about this date, such as the standing figure of Saint Louis from Mainneville, dated about 1305–8, and the image of the youngest magus from the Adoration on the choir screen at Notre-Dame in Paris from the second quarter of the fourteenth century,69 suggest that the iconography of the French king in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries also included an ideal head type marked by a broad forehead, strong jaw line, knobby chin, and slightly wavy chin-length hair with short bangs. At least by the twelfth century royal women distinguished their public faces from those of their husbands and sons by employing differently shaped seals, using innovative tomb types, and choosing burial at sites they had founded and where they were likely to get more attention in the form of prayers than at Saint-Denis.70

Royal narratives In the eleventh century kings started to appear in narratives that justified their status by their deeds. The embroidery commonly known as the Bayeux Tapestry, made soon after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, shows the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings, including Edward the Confessor sending his emissary Harold to William of Normandy and receiving him 366

Figure 26.5 Tomb of Philip III, king of France (r. 1271–85), at Saint-Denis. 1297–1307, Paris. Photo courtesy of Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.

Joan A. Holladay

at Westminster on his return and the king’s death. An illustrated manuscript of Peter of Eboli’s Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis, dated between 1195 and 1197 (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod.120.II), describes Henry VI’s conquest of Sicily, which he claimed through his wife; she also plays a significant role in both text and image.71 The picture cycle known as Kaiser Heinrichs Romfahrt (Koblenz, Landeshauptarchiv, MS 1 C 1) describes the election and the coronation in Aachen of Henry VII (king 1308–13; emperor 1312–13) and his queen Margaret of Brabant, their trip to Rome, and the imperial coronation in half-page scenes with short Latin rubrics.72 Two manuscripts, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS 1346, from the mid-thirteenth century, and the 1365 Coronation Book of Charles V, discussed earlier, describe in detail the steps taken to anoint, crown, and install the king of France; the latter also includes a series of scenes describing the coronation of the queen.73 The many manuscripts of the Grandes Chroniques de France produced between about 1275 and 1500 show the kings of France in battle, at their coronations and weddings, pronouncing on legal matters, meeting with their counterparts, and with saints in visions.74 The genealogical structure of these chronicle manuscripts, in which the narrative of one king’s reign is followed by that of his successor, is given explicit form in the many royal genealogies created at this time. In the Grand’ Salle at the palace in Paris, built between about 1308 and 1311, life-size sculptures of the kings of France beginning with the mythical Pharamond stood against the piers on the perimeter and down the center of the room, explaining the legitimate descent of the ruling king, whose sculpted image was added to the cycle after his death, and providing dynastic legitimacy and historical approbation for the official deeds of the living ruler carried out on the floor below.75 Charles IV of Bohemia, who had lived in Paris as a youth between 1323 and 1330, adapted this model in a painted cycle of about 1355 that portrayed his ancestors from Noah through Charlemagne, the Carolingians, and the dukes of Luxembourg, including his grandfather Henry VII, in a similar reception space at Karlštejn castle.76 Genealogies in manuscripts and on rolls look more like modern family trees. Between 1240 and 1253 Matthew Paris included two pages of royal genealogy among the maps and other supplementary materials intended to help in the reading of his Chronica majora (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, fols. ivv and viiir-v and MS 16, fols. vr-v).77 A group of more than twenty rolls departing from Matthew’s schema is preserved from the second half of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; at least some of them were intended to explain the English kings’ claim to Scotland.78 Subtler means were also used to convey royal status. The bust-length portrait on panel identified by its inscription as John the Good, king of France from 1350 to 1364, has long been considered one of the first examples of independent portraiture – defined as physiognomic mapping of the facial features – since antiquity in the West. The king wears no crown, nor does he carry any other obvious attribute marking his royal status. Stephen Perkinson has shown in a subtle and convincing analysis, however, that many of the “representational strategies” used in the image work together to convey the station of the figure represented.79 Among them he includes the profile view, its use on medals, cameos, and coins going back to ancient Rome, and the way that it creates distance between subject and viewer; the gold ground and its traditional reference to a sacral space; the inscription, particularly its resemblance to that on John’s personal seal; and, yes, realism as one possibility for symbolic representation, one that was appreciated for its novelty at this date. The conjunction of these features may suggest a different viewing context than the other, more official images examined here and an educated audience more intimately connected to the king. The more obvious devices had a long life. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s 1806 portrait of Napoleon (Paris, Hôtel des Invalides, Musée de l’Armée, inv. no. 4; Ea 89/1) depicts the emperor seated frontally in the manner of the Carolingian rulers in their Bibles and Psalters. He holds the clearly recognizable scepter and hand of justice of Charles V, their use claiming his place in the centuries-long line of legitimate French rulers. 368

Royal and imperial iconography

Notes A grant from the Sherry Smith Fund of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas helped with the purchase of photographs for this article. 1 P.E. Schramm, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit, vol. 1: Bis zur Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts (751–1152), 2: Tafeln, Die Entwicklung des menschlichen Bildnisses, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1928); P.E. Schramm, Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit 751–1190, Neuauflage unter Mitarbeit von P. Berghaus, N. Gussone und F. Mütherich, ed. F. Mütherich (Munich, 1983); P.E. Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik: Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis zum sechzehnten Jahrhundert, 3 vols., Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vols. 13/1–3 (Stuttgart, 1954–55); P.E. Schramm and F. Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, vol. 1: Ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschichte von Karl dem Großen bis Friedrich II. 768–1250, Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in München, vol. 2 (Munich, 1962; 2nd expanded edition 1981); P.E. Schramm and H. Fillitz in Zusammenarbeit with F. Mütherich, Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, vol. 2: Ein Beitrag zur Herrschergeschichte von Rudolf I. bis Maximilian I. 1273–1519, Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte in München, vol. 7 (Munich, 1978). Less well known but still important in this regard are P.E. Schramm, Die zeitgenössischen Bildnisse Karls des Grossen: Mit einem Anhang über die Metallbullen der Karolinger (Leipzig, 1928); and P.E. Schramm, Sphaira, Globus, Reichsapfel: Wanderung und Wandlung eines Herrschaftszeichens von Caesar bis zu Elisabeth II.; Ein Beitrag zum “Nachleben” der Antike (Leipzig, 1958). 2 E. Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture: The Artistic Patronage of Otto III and Henry II (Aldershot, 2012). 3 T.E.A. Dale, “The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture: The Tomb of Rudolf von Schwaben in Merseburg,” Speculum 77 (2002), 707–43. 4 A number of works deal with the images of single kings. See, for example, G.S. Wright, “The Tomb of Saint Louis,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971), 65–82, especially 77–80, for consistency in images of Saint Louis after his canonization in 1297, and I. Rosario, Art and Propaganda: Charles IV of Bohemia, 1346–1378 (Woodbridge, 2000), for the images of that ruler. 5 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 2:380. 6 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 1:128. 7 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 1:135 and 378–79. 8 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 1:137 and 2:379. 9 The British Museum website reiterates the frequent proposals that this may have been the burial site of Raedwald (d. c. 625) or one of his successors as king of East Anglia: whoever was buried here “was of exceptional status, enjoyed immense personal wealth and – more than likely – wielded great power”; http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/articles/w/who_was_buried_at_sutton_hoo.aspx (accessed January 5, 2015). 10 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 2:392. 11 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 1:154–62. 12 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 1:163. 13 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 2:386–87. 14 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 1:205 and 263–64. 15 C. Panella, “Insegne imperiali di Massenzio,” in Costantino 313 d.C: L’editto di Milano e il tempo della tolleranza (Milan, 2012), 195–97, nos. 37–41. On the basis of the find site near the Curiae Veteris, a sanctuary associated with Romulus, the stratigraphy, and the preciousness of the materials and quality of the work, Panella has associated the scepters and the lances with which they were found with Maxentius (r. 306–12), who may have buried them before the battle of the Milvian Bridge in October 312. 16 A. Gauert, “Das Szepter von Sutton Hoo,” in Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 1:275–78. 17 J. Simpson, “The King’s Whetstone,” Antiquity 53 (1979), 96–101. 18 J. Werner, “Frankish Royal Tombs in the Cathedrals of Cologne and Saint-Denis,” Antiquity 38 (1964), 206–07. 19 Charles the Bald and Lothar carry the long staff in the First Bible of Charles the Bald (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 1, fol. 423r) and the Lothar Psalter (BNF, MS lat. 266, fol. 1v), respectively, and Charles carries the scepter in the Psalter of Charles the Bald (BNF, MS lat. 1152, fol. 3v). 20 On these two manuscripts, see, respectively, A.D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1274–1422 (Berkeley, 1991), Part III and pp. 244–48; and C.F. O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent: The Coronation Book of Charles V of France (British Library, Ms. Cotton Tiberus B.VIII) (London/ Turnhout, 2000).

369

Joan A. Holladay 21 D. Gaborit-Chopin, “Sceptre de Charles V dit ‘de Charlemagne,’” in Le trésor de Saint-Denis, ed. D. Alcouffe (Paris, 1991), 264–71, no. 57. 22 M. Félibien, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de Saint-Denys en France (Paris, 1706), pls. I and IV, respectively. 23 P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power (New Haven, 1995), 84. 24 Binski, Westminster Abbey, 84, feels that it is. See, however, E.G. Grimme, Der Aachener Domschatz, Aachener Kunstblätter 42, 2nd ed. (1973), 76, no. 51. 25 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 1:317. 26 Die Langobarden: Das Ende der Völkerwanderung (Bonn, 2008), 375, no. 186; M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986), 289–93. 27 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 1:326–31. D. Gaborit-Chopin, “Trône de Dagobert,” in Le trésor de Saint-Denis (as in note 21), 63–68, no. 5, discusses the dates of the different parts of the throne, including reworking under Abbot Suger (r. 1122–51) and by the goldsmith Master Gossoyn in 1294–96. She comes down strongly in favor of the throne as a Carolingian work with later additions and renovations. 28 E. Panofsky (ed. and trans.), Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, 2nd ed. by G. Panofsky-Soergel (Princeton, 1979), 73. 29 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 1:339. 30 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 1:336. 31 C. Horch, “Königstuhl – Kaiserthron – Reliquiar: Forschungsgeschichte der Aachener sedes imperiales,” Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 213 (2010), 84 and 94, points out that the first indication of a throne in this position dates to the Ottonian period and the first concrete association of the throne with Charlemagne is twelfth-century. The seat of the throne was wood, understood to come from Noah’s ark; J. Buchkremer, Dom zu Aachen: Beiträge zur Baugeschichte, vol. 2: Vom Königstuhl und seiner Umgebung (Aachen, 1941), 12. It has been dated dendrochronologically to the period between 750 and 824, but a wooden dowel that holds the throne together is tenth-century; Horch, “Königstuhl,” 87. S. Schütte, “Der Aachener Thron,” in Krönungen: Könige in Aachen – Geschichte und Mythos, ed. M. Kramp (Mainz, 2000), 1:219, points out that advances in dendrochronological technique have rendered the Carolingian date of the seat untenable but cites other evidence for a Carolingian date for the throne on pages 214, 216, and 220; see also Buchkremer, 37. 32 The rounded back of the throne at Aachen, which also recalls the description of Solomon’s throne, is the result of a recutting after 1804. 33 H. Appuhn, “Zum Thron Karls des Grossen,” Aachener Kunstblätter 24–25 (1962–63): 127. 34 Buchkremer, Dom zu Aachen (as in note 31), 31–32. The 1999 discovery in the throne of a small copper gilt nail, of the type that would have been used to fasten metal plates to the wood core of a reliquary, provides support for Buchkremer’s thesis; see Schütte, “Der Aachener Thron” (as in note 31), 218 and 220. 35 Widukind of Corvey, Deeds of the Saxons, ed. B.S. Bachrach and D.S. Bachrach (Washington, DC, 2014), 64. 36 See, for example, the events described in the Coronation Book of Charles V of France; O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent (as in note 20). 37 W. Rodwell, The Coronation Chair and Stone of Scone: History, Archaeology and Conservation (Oxford/ Oakville, CT, 2013), 36–39. The stone was returned to Scotland in 1996. 38 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 1:213–22 and 2:384–85. 39 For the ring found in the grave of Queen Arnegunde at Saint-Denis, see Werner (as in note 18), 214. 40 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 2:537–38 and 544. 41 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 2:540–42. 42 On the former, see Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim, ed. P. Barnet, M. Brandt, and G. Lutz (New York, 2014), 88–89, no. 31. It has been repurposed as a crown for the reliquary bust of Saint Oswald (DS 23); Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen, 2:544–45. On the latter, see Die Zeit der Staufer: Geschichte – Kunst – Kultur, ed. R. Haussherr (Stuttgart, 1977), 1: no. 541; and R. Kahsnitz, “Armillae aus dem Umkreis Friedrich Barbarossas,” Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums (1979), 7–46. See also Die Zeit der Staufer, 1: no. 540, for documentation on a lost pair from the imperial treasury. Both these enamel pairs, from the Rhine-Meuse area, are associated with Frederick Barbarossa (r. 1152–90); the preserved pair has been suggested as a gift from the emperor to the Grand Duke of Vladimir-Suzdal, Andrey Bogolyubsky (r. 1154–74). 43 C. Neuman de Vegvar, “The Sutton Hoo Horns as Regalia,” in Sutton Hoo: Fifty Years After, ed. R. Farrell and C. Neuman de Vegvar, American Early Medieval Studies, vol. 2 (Oxford, OH, 1992), 66. 44 D. Gaborit-Chopin, La statuette équestre de Charlemagne, Collection Solo, vol. 13 (Paris, 1999).

370

Royal and imperial iconography 45 On the Carolingian use of not just any Roman forms but especially those associated with early Christian Rome of the fourth and fifth centuries, see R. Krautheimer, “The Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture,” Art Bulletin 24 (1942), 1–38. 46 W.J. Diebold, “Nos quoque morem illius imitari cupientes: Charles the Bald’s Evocation and Imitation of Charlemagne,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 75 (1993), 271–300; Gaborit-Chopin, La statuette équestre (as in note 44), 29–36. See, however, N. Girardin, “Charles le Chauve et les objets ‘de Charlemagne,’” in Charlemagne et les objets: Des thésaurisations carolingiennes aux constructions mémorielles, ed. P. Cordez, L’Atelier, vol. 5 (Bern, 2012), 115–34. 47 The manuscript measures 495 x 345 mm (19 1/2 × 13 1/2 in.). It is also known as the Vivian Bible, but Dutton and Kessler argue against associating the manuscript with the count and lay abbot Vivian, who probably wasn’t appointed by the king until the very visit at which the manuscript was given to him; P.E. Dutton and H.L. Kessler, The Poetry and Paintings of the First Bible of Charles the Bald, Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts (Ann Arbor, 1997), 34–35. 48 Dutton and Kessler, The Poetry and Paintings (as in note 47), 81, identify these figures as virtues; see, however, W. Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait of Charles the Bald in the S. Paolo Bible,” Art Bulletin 76 (1994), 11, note 27. 49 Dutton and Kessler, The Poetry and Paintings (as in note 47), 91. 50 Dutton and Kessler, The Poetry and Paintings, 97–99. 51 H. Schnitzler, “Das Kuppelmosaik der Aachener Pfalzkapelle,” Aachener Kunstblätter 29 (1964), 39, has proposed that the manuscript page reproduces the mosaic directly and that the twenty-four elders originally adored the lamb rather than the figure of the seated Christ that appears in the nineteenth-century version of the Carolingian mosaic now in situ. Diebold, “Nos quoque morem illius imitari cupientes” (as in note 46): 276, note 14, is skeptical, citing H. Schrade, “Zum Kuppelmosaik der Pfalzkapelle und zum Theoderich-Denkmal in Aachen,” Aachener Kunstblätter 30 (1965), 25–28, and W. Grape, “Karolingische Kunst und Ikonoklasmus,” Aachener Kunstblätter 45 (1974), 54–55, and noting that Schnitzler’s logic in arguing this point is circular. 52 Like that in the First Bible of Charles the Bald, this image was originally at the end of the book, fol. 337v; it is now fol. 1r; see Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait” (as in note 48), 6, who cites H. Schade, “Untersuchungen zu der karolingischen Bilderbibel zu St. Paul vor den Mauern in Rom,” PhD diss., Universität München (1954), 10. 53 Presumably his second wife, Richilde, whom he married in 870; F. Mütherich, “Carolingian Manuscript Illumination in Rheims,” in The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David, ed. K. van der Horst, W. Noel, and W.C.M. Wüstefeld (Westrenen, 1996), 106. 54 Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait” (as in note 48), 9, and Mütherich, “Carolingian Manuscript Illumination” (as in note 53), 318, publish slightly divergent translations of the text. 55 Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait” (as in note 48), 12, cites Schade, “Zum Kuppelmosaik” (as in note 51), 15–19. Diebold, 12–15, develops the idea that the similarities of these two images to numerous other ruler images in the manuscript help the book, both the images and the text of the Bible, to function as a mirror of princes. 56 The Codex aureus measures 42 × 33 cm (16 1/2 × 13 in.), the Bible of San Paolo 448 × 345 mm (17 1/2 by 13 1/2 in.). The former is ascribed to the so-called Court School, although the location of this group of scribes and artists is not known. The latter was made at Reims. 57 Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait” (as in note 48), 16, proposes that Hincmar, archbishop of Reims from 845 until 882, may have commissioned the manuscript, perhaps as a gift for Charles. The manuscript was given to San Paolo during the reign of Pope Gregory VII (1073–85). 58 K. Dachs and E. Klemm, Thesaurus librorum: 425 Jahre Bayerische Staatsbibliothek; Ausstellung München 18. August–1. Oktober 1983 (Munich, 1983), 32, no. 7. 59 An inscription on fol. 172r dates the Psalter during the lifetime of Charles’s wife Hermintrude, 842–69. H.L. Kessler, The Illustrated Bibles from Tours, Studies in Manuscript Illumination, vol. 7 (Princeton, 1977), 138, suggests, following J. Gaehde, “The Painters of the Carolingian Bible Manuscript of San Paolo fuori le mura in Rome,” PhD diss., New York University (1963), 1:130, that the orb in the San Paolo Bible may be a “late addition.” On the difficulties in deciphering and interpreting the monogram on the disk in the San Paolo Bible, see Diebold, “The Ruler Portrait” (as in note 48), 8, note 7. 60 Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art (as in note 2), 64. 61 See, respectively, Schramm, Sphaira, Globus, Reichsapfel (as in note 1), figs. 61a and b, 79, 81c, 89a, and 76–77. 62 Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen (as in note 1), 2:397.

371

Joan A. Holladay 63 Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art (as in note 2), 49. 64 K. Corrigan, “The Ivory Scepter of Leo VI: A Statement of Post-Iconoclastic Imperial Ideology,” Art Bulletin 60 (1978), 407–16; A. Cutler, The Hand of the Master: Craftsmanship, Ivory, and Society in Byzantium (9th–11th Centuries) (Princeton, 1994), 200–01; A. Cutler and J.-M. Spieser, Byzance médiévale: 700–1204, L’univers des formes, vol. 41 (Paris, 1996), 120 and 126 and fig. 97. The object measures about 10 × 10 × 2 cm. 65 Schramm, Denkmale (as in note 1), 1: nos. 13, 24, 62, 67, 145, 159, 180–83, 194, 197, 199, and 200–01. 66 See Schramm, Denkmale 1: nos. 159 and 162, respectively. On the tomb of Rudolf of Swabia, see also Dale, “The Individual” (as in note 3), and B. Hinz, Das Grabdenkmal Rudolfs von Schwaben: Monument der Propaganda und Paradigma der Gattung, kunststück (Frankfurt, 1996). 67 Ill. in Schramm, Denkmale (as in note 1), 2: no. 1. 68 Ill. in A. Erlande-Brandenburg, Le roi est mort: Étude sur les funérailles, les sépultures et les tombeaux des rois de France jusqu’à la fin du XIIIe siècle, Bibliothèque de la Société Française d’Archéologie, vol. 7 (Geneva, 1975), figs. 131–55 and 157–59; G. Schmidt, Gotische Bildwerke und ihre Meister (Vienna, 1992), 2: figs. 34, 42, 50, and 58; and E.A.R. Brown, Saint-Denis: La basilique, Le ciel et la pierre, vol. 6 (SaintLéger-Vauban, 2001), fig. 127. 69 Ill. respectively in P.-Y. Le Pogam and C. Vivet-Peclet (ed.), Saint Louis (Paris, 2014), fig. 27, and D. Gillerman, The Clôture of Notre-Dame and Its Role in the Fourteenth-Century Choir, Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts (New York, 1977), fig. 13. 70 K. Nolan, Queens in Stone and Silver: The Creation of a Visual Imagery of Queenship in Capetian France, New Middle Ages (New York, 2009). 71 Petrus de Ebulo, Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis: Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern; Eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, ed. T. Kölzer und M. Stähli, trans. G. Becht-Jördens (Sigmaringen, 1994). 72 F.-J. Heyen, Kaiser Heinrichs Romfahrt: Die Bilderchronik von Kaiser Heinrich VII. und Kurfürst Balduin von Luxemburg (1308–1313) (Boppard am Rhein, 1965); V. Kessel, “Il manoscritto del ‘Viaggio a Roma’ dell’imperatore Enrico VII,” in Il viaggio di Enrico VII in Italia, ed. M. Tosti-Croce, Le grandi opere (Città di Castello, 1993), 13–27. 73 J. Le Goff, É. Palazzo, J.-C. Bonne, and M.-N. Colette, Le sacre royale à l’époque de saint Louis d’après le manuscrit 1346 de la BNF (Paris, 2001); C.R. Sherman, “The Queen in Charles V’s Coronation Book: Jeanne de Bourbon and the Ordo Ad Reginam Benedicendam,” Viator 8 (1977), 255–97; and O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent (as in note 20). 74 Hedeman, The Royal Image (as in note 20). 75 U. Bennert, “Art et propagande politique sous Philippe IV le Bel: Le cycle des rois de France dans la Grand’ Salle du Palais de la Cité,” Revue de l’art 97 (1992), 46–59; and J.A. Holladay, “Kings, Notaries, and Merchants: Audience and Image in the Grand’ Salle of the Palace at Paris,” in Ritual, Images, and Daily Life: The Medieval Perspective, ed. G. Jaritz, Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft, vol. 39 (Vienna, 2012), 75–93. 76 Rosario, Art and Propaganda (as in note 4), 27–30. 77 The folio numbers given here correspond to the new foliation of some five years ago; in older publications these folios are cited as iiir-v. 78 J.A. Holladay, “Charting the Past: Visual Configurations of Myth and History and the English Claim to Scotland,” in Representing History, 900–1300: Art, Music, History, ed. R.A. Maxwell (University Park, 2010), 115–32. 79 S. Perkinson, The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France (Chicago, 2009).

372

27 THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ARCHITECTURE Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

The house of God is “the pillar and ground of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). The Bible, with its many allusions to the symbolic meaning of buildings, lays the basis for the iconographic interpretation of medieval architecture. Christian authors such as Hrabanus Maurus (c. 780–856), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), Abbot Suger (c. 1081–1151), and Durandus (c. 1230–1296) compiled ideas concerning the symbolism of churches and their parts for their contemporaries. Modern readings of medieval architectural iconography have been developed by historians of art, such as Richard Krautheimer, Otto von Simson, Erwin Panofsky, and John Onians; historians of liturgy, such as Margot Fassler; and historians of aesthetics, such as Umberto Eco. Two major topics emerge from these studies: how medieval authors understood architecture, and how modern scholars identify significance in medieval buildings. Furthermore, there are differing approaches to the iconography of architecture: one is to identify the significance of each part of a building; the other is to identify qualities that characterize groups of related buildings. Krautheimer pointed out that medieval authors did not write about the technical aspects of buildings; rather, they were interested in the religious or symbolic qualities of architecture.1 He emphatically asserted that “any medieval structure was meant to convey a meaning which transcends the visual pattern of the structure”; hence, the study of a building’s symbolic content is as important as the study of its formal or technical elements.2 One of the most important functions of a church building, or of any religious art, is how it allows the visitor to experience God.3 By the fourth century, the Apostolic Constitutions had already introduced a symbolic reading of the Church by using the simile of a ship.4 Bishops were told that they are like the commanders of a great ship, and that the church building should be long, with its head to the east, like a ship – hence the term “nave” for the extended part of the building. But the systematic explication of the mystical significance of architecture was initiated by Hrabanus Maurus’s De universo (842–847).5 The ninth-century encyclopedia became one of “the intellectual foundations of the Middle Ages” and had tremendous impact upon medieval architecture.6 Developing the straightforward definitions of architecture and its parts offered by Isidore of Seville in his Etymologies (c. 600–625), Hrabanus Maurus added symbolic readings to his compilation of definitions, “so that the diligent reader might find, placed together in this work, both their particular nature, according to history, and their spiritual meaning, according to mystical understanding.”7 For example, a city, civitas, is defined by Isidore as “a multitude of people united by a bond of community”; Hrabanus Maurus specifies that “When a city or town is understood in a good 373

Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

way, it signifies the holy Church or a faithful soul. . . . When ‘city’ is used in a negative way, it signifies spiritual Babylon, that is, the city of the devil.”8 For Isidore, the suburbs are the buildings that surround a city; for Hrabanus Maurus, they are catechumens, who are comparable to suburbs insofar as they may begin to experience the city of God.9 Vici are neighborhoods with no walls that may be part of a city or beyond one, according to Isidore, and are interpreted by Hrabanus Maurus as the locations of pagans, out of contact with the people of God.10 Whereas walls and ramparts are defined by Isidore as defense for a city, Hrabanus Maurus describes walls as gatherings of righteous people, or the Lord himself protecting the Church everywhere, or even as divine scripture.11 A castrum (fortress) or castellum (castle), located in a high place, is where men live with angels, according to Hrabanus Maurus.12 Several definitions for buildings and their parts are applicable to elements of church architecture. A house, domus, may be the dwelling of one family, but is comparable in concept to a city as the residence of one population, or the world as the domicile of the human race, according to Isidore.13 For Hrabanus Maurus, the house built by Solomon signifies the Church, which, in its length, expresses the patience of the church in adversity, and, in its width, expresses charity to not only those friendly to God but also those inimical people who will eventually be converted. Its altitude expresses the hope of future retributions which make it possible to see the good God has done on earth.14 In addition, he states that the house of our Lord may be the Church, the celestial Jerusalem, or the hearts or bodies of the faithful.15 A similar definition is given to “court” (aula), a spacious dwelling enclosed by four colonnades, according to Isidore, that may signify the Church or the habitat of the Holy Spirit, according to Hrabanus Maurus. An atrium, another spacious structure, this one flanked by three colonnades, is Christianized as signifying not only the Church but also the entrance of the faithful.16 The definition of thalamus, bedroom or wedding chamber, is amplified to include the womb of the Virgin Mary, in which human nature was joined to the divine.17 Isidore explains “pavement” as that which is flattened beneath our feet, to which Hrabanus Maurus adds that by “pavement” we understand humility.18 It is notable that the later encyclopedia of Hrabanus Maurus does not add anything to the simple definition by Isidore of “basilica”: originally described as the dwelling of a king, the term came to describe the place where worship and sacrifices are offered to God, the king of all.19 The discussion of “temple” by Isidore, and then Hrabanus Maurus, is enlightening insofar as understanding the orientation of most Christian churches.20 Both authors record that, on the one hand, a temple is a spacious building, and that, on the other, the term is applied to places for contemplation, counsel, and prayer. They state that the front of the building faces east, so that whoever might pray would face in that direction. To achieve this orientation for a Christian congregation, many churches came to place the altar to the east of a church, with the primary entrance to the west, effectively directing the churchgoer to face eastward. Because Hrabanus Maurus’s work is such a fundamental resource for the iconography of architecture, it is worth dwelling upon his ideas further. He adds anthropomorphic qualities to his definition of “temple,” describing it as both the body of the Lord, or the gathering of holy people. The concept follows Paul’s words in 1 Cor 3:16–17: “You are the temple of God and . . . the Spirit of God dwells in you.”21 Developing the architectural image, Hrabanus Maurus states that Christ became a temple of God by the assumption of humanity, and that he is the chief corner stone on which the temple stands (Eph 2:20); its foundations are the apostles and prophets. Hrabanus Maurus provides several related interpretations of “foundation,” including that, allegorically, the foundation is Christ, or his catholic faith, over which the Church was constructed. Abbot Suger (c. 1081–1151), in recording the reconstruction of the Church of Saint-Denis, calls upon the same metaphor for foundation, using the words of Paul in 1 Cor. 3:11: “For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid; which is Christ Jesus.”22 374

The iconography of architecture

In Hrabanus Maurus’s discussion of entrances, he interprets faith as a “fore-court” since it is before the stairs and door of a church; faith makes it possible to enter the door of celestial life.23 The “portal” or “door” (porta) is given special attention by the Carolingian author, whereas for Isidore, a portal is simply the place at which something may be carried in or out of a space.24 As described by Hrabanus Maurus, a portal is the instrument of transition to celestial life; it is fundamental to the concept of passing into a state of grace. The whole structure of the portico designates the faithful people of that time; the “door in the portico” expresses teachers, who spread open for others the light of life and the door for entering to the Lord. Durandus, in his thirteenth-century treatise Rationale Divinorum Officium, stated that his purpose was to define what was universal in church ritual, not what was specific to particular places.25 While much of his discussion of the structure of a church reflects the words of Isidore of Seville and Hrabanus Maurus, his emphasis is on what he understood as the reasons for the variations of meaning in the terminology. The word “church” (ecclesia), he writes, has two meanings: the physical structure, and the gathering of the faithful.26 He expands the concept of the gathering to define “church” as a “city, because of the communion of her holy citizens, being defended by the munitions of the Scriptures, whereby heretics are kept off.”27 The material church, he explains, is constructed from various stones, and the spiritual Church, of various men. The larger stones placed at the corners are those whose lives are holier than others, and who retain the weaker elements.28 Durandus then lists alternate terms in Greek and Latin (synagoga, congregatio, House of God, Body of Christ, and basilica) to explore the range of possible meaning. The material, earthly, church, he writes, symbolizes the Church in heaven. In discussing why the altar is oriented to the east, Durandus explains that we should pray facing east because Christ is the eternal light of salvation.29 No element of a building is left without interpretation. The lime, sand, and water that form cement are charity and good works bound together by the Holy Spirit.30 According to Durandus, the arrangement of a church corresponds to the arrangement of the human body.31 This concept had a long life and was illustrated by Francesco di Giorgio (1470–1506) in his treatise on architecture in the fifteenth century (Fig. 27.1).32 According to Durandus, the apse with the altar represents the head; the transepts, hands and arms; the nave, the rest of the body. Durandus includes the view of Richard of Saint-Victor that the parts of the church reflect the spiritual state of the faithful: the apse, the smallest, represents virgins, fewer in number than the rest; the chancel, those who are continent; and the nave, the largest, represents the most numerous group, the married. The four walls of the church are the doctrines of the four Evangelists.33 The height is courage; the length, fortitude; the breadth, charity. Height may also be understood as hope for retribution. In fact, he assigns various meanings to some parts of buildings, perhaps a reflection of his having collected information from various sources. He goes on to list the foundations as faith; the roof, charity; the four walls, the four cardinal virtues; the windows, cheerful hospitality and charitable tenderness.34 The choir is so-named because of the chanting of the clergy.35 The sacristy, where priests robe before coming into public view, is identified with the womb of the Virgin, from where Christ was born into the world.36 Crypts are identified with hermits.37 The porch, or porta, as well as the actual door of the church is Christ, through whom one enters Heaven.38 Towers signify priests and prelates of the Church, and their pinnacles, their heavenly aspirations.39 The glass windows that keep out wind and rain but admit light are both scripture and the senses of the body.40 Piers and columns are identified as the bishops and doctors who sustain the Church with doctrine.41 The pavement is described as the foundation of faith, as the poor in spirit, and as the multitude whose labor supports the Church.42 Church beams and the vaults are the preachers who sustain the Church spiritually.43 The rail that separates the altar from the choir corresponds to the separation of the celestial from the terrestrial.44 Roof tiles protect the church from paynim, nonbelievers such as Jews and Muslims.45 375

Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

Figure 27.1 Francesco di Giorgio. Ground plan of a church corresponding to the proportions of the human figure. MS. Ashb. 361, c. 10v. Image courtesy of Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence.

The cloister receives more extended treatment. Identified as the celestial paradise wherein the clergy live together, the cloister separates them from the laity.46 It is also identified as a contemplative state in which the soul is separated from carnal thoughts and meditates only on the celestial.47 The four sides of the cloister are interpreted by Durandus as contempt of self, contempt of the world, love of God, and love of our neighbor. Each of these sides has a row of columns, the bases of which are patience. The structures around the cloister garth are also given symbolic readings. The chapter house is the secret of the heart; the refectory, love of meditation; the cellar is scripture; and the dormitory, a clear conscience.48 The garden is characterized as the collection of virtues; the well as God’s heavenly gifts. Modern scholars describe the meanings not only of parts of buildings but also of larger groups of related structures. One study, by John Onians, examined the significance of columns and piers, but goes beyond identifying them as prophets and apostles to an examination of the ways in which they are employed.49 He points out that, in contrast to the consistent repetition 376

The iconography of architecture

of capitals and shafts in pagan temples, Christian architecture of the fourth century employed a variety of column types in a single monument. Nevertheless, a great deal of logic went into their positioning. For example, at S. Agnese fuori le mura (625–628), in Rome, the nave capitals are chiefly Corinthian, with the exception of the two carrying the triumphal arch, which are Composite.50 In like manner, the gallery capitals are Ionic, except for those at the triumphal arch. The variations express the capitals’ functions in their different locations; thus, they are signifiers of their functions. The idea that columns in medieval architecture represent human figures occurs frequently in the writings of medieval authors. To some extent, this is a legacy from Vitruvius (c. 80–70 BC – after AD 15), who compared the architectural orders to the bodies of men and women.51 More importantly, the Bible, especially the New Testament, is filled with architectural imagery; for example, the apostles are described as columns in Galatians 2:9 (Jacobus, et Cephas, et Joannes, qui videbantur columnae esse). Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians (2:20–22), provides an image of the Church “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, In whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord.” Galatians 2:9 may lie behind Hrabanus Maurus’s interpretation of columns as standing for the apostles, discussed earlier.52 In addition, he must have known the biblical description of the Temple of Solomon (II Par. 3:17), in which the two columns before the Temple were named Iachin and Boaz.53 The concept of the anthropomorphic column had far-reaching consequences in medieval architecture. Before the rise of monumental sculpture, the anthropomorphic column was frequently given life with painted or mosaic decoration. Byzantine churches, such as those in Thessalonika or Bethlehem, had images of saints on the columns within. Often, such figures were painted around the apse, as at San Clemente of Tahull in Spain. Once monumental sculpture began to develop, c. 1100, cloister piers were carved with reliefs of the Apostles, making them the literal supports of the monastic structure at Moissac.54 The use of piers, in this case, reflected the apostles, “strong in faith and works and contemplation,” described by Hrabanus Maurus.55 It may have been Hrabanus Maurus’s conception of the column as human figure that led to Abbot Suger’s creation of statue columns for the façade of his church of Saint-Denis in the 1140s.56 Following the encyclopedist, the undecorated columns around the apse of Saint-Denis were conceived by Abbot Suger as the twelve apostles and prophets.57 Drawing on another source, Suger paraphrased John the Evangelist in the inscriptions on the portal of Saint-Denis, writing that Christ was “the true door” – an image also employed by Hrabanus Maurus.58 The significance of church portals has been extensively studied in light of the concept of Christ as the door. Calvin Kendall pointed out that portals with the function of directing the visitor usually place an image or symbol of Christ on the vertical axis of the door.59 Margot Fassler focused on the liturgical function of the portal as the ceremonial entrance to the church.60 Perhaps the function and meaning of the portal are even better explored than the meanings of other parts of the church interior. Apart from identifying the significance of parts of buildings, the iconography of architecture includes the study of groups of buildings that share design elements derived from an earlier important structure. These could be designated as copies, but Krautheimer, who first addressed the iconography of medieval architecture, pointed out that they are not exactly copies in the modern sense of the word.61 Rather, before the thirteenth century, in order to evoke a venerable prototype, architects would select distinctive elements of the model and apply them to other buildings in various ways. A modern viewer might not perceive the connection between such models and copies were it not for medieval texts which discuss how one building is based upon another. For example, the tenth-century Miracula S. Maximi reports that the church at Germigny-des-Prés was built like the palace chapel at Aachen (both completed in 805).62 As Krautheimer noted, these 377

Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

two buildings look quite different from each other to a modern eye. The palace chapel at Aachen is a domed octagonal structure with a sixteen-sided ambulatory and a gallery on the interior. The church at Germigny-des-Prés was originally square, with a central tower and barrel vaulted cross arms with domed corner bays. Apparently, they were comparable because they were both centrally planned, crowned by a central tower, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In order to identify the shared features of model and copy, Krautheimer focused on a distinctive group of buildings: those derived from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Anastasis (Resurrection) Rotunda, rose over the site of Christ’s tomb, and was in use by 350.63 The large domed rotunda interior was surrounded by an ambulatory, and had a three-story elevation with another arcaded gallery at the second story (Fig. 27.2). Three apsidioles were added to the ambulatory in the seventh century. The original circular design was traditional for late antique tombs, particularly imperial mausolea and heroa.64 Furthermore, the choice of a circular plan may have been influenced by the idea that a circle was a symbol of virtue.65 Buildings derived from the Anastasis Rotunda were constructed throughout Europe from the fifth through the nineteenth centuries, so significant was its image. For example, the funerary chapel of St. Michael in Fulda, constructed by Abbot Eigil between 820 and 822, recalls the Rotunda in its arrangement of an altar surrounded by a circle of columns and an ambulatory. At the center is a structure emulating the tomb of Christ. To make the connection clear, the altar bears an inscription referring to Christ’s tomb: “Hoc altare deo dedicatum est maxime Christo/ Cuius hic tumulus nostra sepulcra juvat” (This altar is dedicated to Christ the Lord highest, whose tomb benefits our sepulchers).66 The verses were written by the architectural theoretician

Figure 27.2 Anastasis Rotunda, Jerusalem, interior. Image courtesy of C. and E. V. del Álamo.

378

The iconography of architecture

Hrabanus Maurus, who most likely contributed to the sophisticated design. In turn, Abbot Eigil recorded that the circle symbolized the Church which never ends, and the hope of future life.67 Another example of derivation from the Anastasis Rotunda, not extant but known through documents and excavations, was located at the Busdorf convent at Paderborn.68 Bishop Meinwerk sent Abbot Wino of Helmershausen to Jerusalem to measure the Rotunda in order to build that copy, consecrated in 1036. The Rotunda at Lanleff, near Caen, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Cambridge are also included by Krautheimer as known copies of the Jerusalem Rotunda, and such copies are often located in cemeteries, reflecting the memorial function of the original. The features that identify these as copies are the round, or in rare instances polygonal, structure, the ambulatory separated from the central space by columns, the arcaded gallery, the central structure that houses a chapel, and the dedication to the Holy Sepulchre. These features may be said to constitute the iconography of the Holy Sepulchre, but they do not necessarily appear together in every case. Not included in Krautheimer’s survey, but identified by Roger Stalley, is an example found in Spain.69 On a rocky ledge outside of Segovia, the Church of La Vera Cruz, the true cross, was originally dedicated as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Fig. 27.3). The location outside the city and on rocks corresponds to the location of Calvary outside the original city limits of Jerusalem. Designed and situated to evoke the Anastasis Rotunda, its construction is attributed to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, although this is not documented. Consecrated in 1208, the twelve-sided building encloses a two-story structure at its core. Within the upper story is a chapel where religious services take place. All these features were most likely chosen because the church housed a relic of the True Cross.70 A different iconography informs the palace chapel of Charlemagne in Aachen. Unlike St. Michael in Fulda, a burial chapel for clerics, the Aachen chapel was intended for the burial of a king. The palace chapel was said to be built “after the model of the most wise Solomon” according to Bishop Notger of Liège (972–1008).71 A model more accessible to us is in Ravenna, which Charlemagne visited at least two times, the first in 787 when the palace chapel was

Figure 27.3 Church of La Vera Cruz, Segovia, interior. Image courtesy of C. and E. V. del Álamo.

379

Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

begun.72 San Vitale was particularly interesting to Charlemagne because of its own status as a chapel linked with a palace. For the emperor, it was not only the visual recreation of San Vitale in Ravenna that was important but also the use of the very materials from which it was built. They carried with them the aura of Justinian’s empire. With the permission of Pope Hadrian I, Charlemagne removed marble columns, mosaics, and even an equestrian statue from Ravenna and sent them to Aachen. The structural features shared by both imperial chapels are the polygonal ground plan, domed and octagonal central space, an ambulatory at ground level and a gallery above, a projecting apse at the east, a towered entrance porch, and an atrium.73 A key distinction between buildings inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and those inspired by San Vitale lies in their shape. Almost all buildings invoking the church in Jerusalem are round, whereas those invoking Ravenna are polygonal, an iconography, even if unarticulated.74 San Vitale was not the only centrally planned palatine chapel in Italy at the time of Charlemagne. Additional examples are the eighth-century Church of Santa Sofia in Benevento, built for Duke Arechi II, and the nonextant seventh-century Church of Santa Maria in Pertica (Pavia), founded by Queen Rodelinda.75 Both have ambulatories defined by columns around the central core, as does San Vitale. Most likely, the regal, iconographic implication of the centrally planned church did not escape the notice of Charlemagne or of Odo of Metz, who built Charlemagne’s chapel. Included in the groups of buildings derived from the Anastasis Rotunda are baptisteries.76 In Krautheimer’s opinion, the traditional explanation that baptisteries derive from Roman baths is inadequate because the round rooms in bath houses usually served as either steam baths or cloakrooms, neither of which contained water basins, as a baptistery should. He also points out that the oldest baptisteries known, such as the one at Dura-Europos (231), were rectilinear.77 It is only after the mid-fourth century that circular or octagonal baptisteries eventually become the norm – that is, after the Anastasis Rotunda was in use. The iconography associated with a funerary monument was transferable to a baptistery because, theologically, one’s former self dies during baptism, while a new, Christian self is born (Romans 6:3).78 The concept was expressed in church ritual by performing baptisms on Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection. In the Orthodox Baptistery at Ravenna, the fifth-century mosaic decoration represents paradisal foliage and saints carrying the crown of martyrdom below the dome’s image of John the Baptist christening his cousin. Furthermore, numerous baptisteries were constructed in or near cemeteries, including those at the Cathedral of Aquilea; Johanneskirche at the Cathedral of Worms (not extant); and San Giovanni, the cathedral baptistery in Florence. The Florentine baptistery housed at least three burials, two bishops and the Anitpope John XXIII (d. 1419).79 In the Piazza del Duomo of Pisa, also a burial ground, the baptistery is one of the closest copies of the Anastasis Rotunda known, with its circular shape and interior surrounded by an ambulatory and gallery.80 It is notable that many baptisteries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries include galleries even though galleries in baptisteries had no liturgical or practical function. Krautheimer suggests that their purpose must have been, in part, to evoke the Anastasis. They are iconographic. There is yet one more type of structure to consider in the category of centrally planned buildings: the cruciform mausoleum. The first of this kind may have been Constantine’s Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, although this is far from certain.81 Justinian and his architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus reconstructed the church in the form of a cross in 536. Whether a rotunda or a cruciform church in the fourth century, Constantine was buried under the central dome flanked by shrines to the apostles on either side, a visualization of his desire to be seen as the thirteenth apostle. In Ravenna, Galla Placidia’s chapel, c. 425, followed the typology of a cruciform mausoleum, now identified as an imperial format, but modified by a slightly longer nave.82 This plan was typical of martyrs’ chapels in the area of Milan, capital of 380

The iconography of architecture

the Western Roman Empire at the time, and therefore the Milanese detail in itself signified both the imperial and the memorial. What has not been explored as thoroughly as the iconography of the centrally planned church is the iconography of the longitudinal basilica. This may be, in part, because it is so universal as a church plan. The pre-Christian basilica was a secular building that served as a law court and place of business.83 It was characterized by the nave, a large rectangular space; side aisles; and an apse, a semicircular or squared space located at one end or sometimes both.84 In imperial basilicas, the emperor would sit in the apse.85 Less prestigious basilicas emulated the practice by placing sculptured images of the emperor in the apse where judges held court. As a building associated with the cult of the emperor and also made for large gatherings, the basilica was a convenient model for Christian churches. In fact, basilican churches carried over some iconographic features from their model. Most notably, the Christian apse is decorated with paintings or mosaics depicting the Lord, one of whose functions was as judge in the afterlife. More worldly lords developed their own form of architectural symbolism in their castles and fortresses “where men live with angels.”86 Walled towns, whether situated in high places or near a well-traveled road, often incorporated a castle, church, and residences within the bailey.87 The very function of the walls, defensive, could symbolize divine protection of the Church, as proposed by Hrabanus Maurus.88 But they, and the seigneurial castles within, also express the obligation of the castellan to protect the local population, a secularization of God’s function described in Psalm 17:3: “The Lord is my firmament, my refuge.” Sometimes, the walls literally become “gatherings of righteous people,” as he put it, in cities with “hanging houses” such as Frías, Spain (Fig. 27.4). Although the primary function of a castle was residential, the protective, military function was expressed through the construction of towers and battlements, an iconography of power. During the late Middle Ages, castles evolved from defensive to symbolic architecture,

Figure 27.4 Castle and town of Frías (Burgos). Image courtesy of C. and E. V. del Álamo.

381

Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo

palaces rather than fortresses.89 Eventually, many of the symbolic aspects of castle architecture were adapted to express the power of a civic government, as in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. It is notable that details such as the open arcade on the ground floor and the tower derive not only from local communal palaces but also from bishops’ palaces. In terms of scholarship, there is a gender gap in castle studies, as Coulton noted, for most such studies are written by men.90 The representation of architecture in other media often conveys more than the setting for a scene. These artworks sometimes seem informed by the iconography laid out by Hrabanus Maurus. For example, the concept of a city as “people united by a bond of community” is expressed in objects such as the altar frontal from Santo Domingo de Silos, or the architectural canopies in choir stalls.91 Here, the bond of the apostles is visualized by the cityscape behind them. Much the same concept may account for the architectural decoration in capital friezes, such as that of the west façade of Chartres Cathedral. The delicate microarchitecture of reliquaries and ivory carvings of the Virgin, as well as the larger tabernacles, was intended to signify the Church as guardian of the sacred.92 In the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance, artists broaden the iconography of architecture by drawing distinctions between Romanesque and Gothic.93 Romanesque expresses the old, the pre-Christian world. In the Belleville Breviary of 1324–1326, Jean Pucelle represents the figure of Synagoga standing next to the wreckage of a building with rounded Romanesque windows beneath the calendar of December.94 In the Bladelin altarpiece of c. 1450, Rogier van der Weyden set the Nativity in a crumbling stable with rounded Romanesque windows, an expression of the birth of a new era.95 On the other hand, the miraculous vision of the Madonna in a Church, by Jan van Eyck, c. 1438–1440, depicts the Virgin and Child in luminous Gothic architecture, symbolic of the new era.96 What seems clear from these images is that not only the makers of the art but also a good part of their audience understood the conceptual significance of architecture.

Notes 1 R. Krautheimer, “Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture,’” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 1–33. 2 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 20; see also P. Crossley, “Medieval Architecture and Its Meaning: The Limits of Iconography,” Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1019 (February 1988), 116–21, esp. 121. 3 U. Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, 1959, trans. H. Bredin (New Haven/London, 1986), 15. 4 The Apostolic Constitutions, vol. 7, ed. J. Donaldson, A. Roberts, A. Cleveland Coxe, and Ante-Nicene Fathers, trans. J. Donaldson (Buffalo, 1886), 2, 57. 5 Hrabanus Maurus, De Universo: The Peculiar Properties of Words and Their Mystical Significance, trans. P. Throop, 2 vols. (Charlotte, 2009) (hereafter referred to as Throop); in Latin in Pat. Lat. 111. 6 J. Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton, 1988), 74–76. 7 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), vol. 1, v. 8 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:2,1, in Isidore of Seville, Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. J.A. Beach, S.A. Barney, and O. Berghof (Cambridge/New York, 2002) (hereafter referred to as Beach et al.) 305; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 63. 9 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:2,16 in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 379; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 63. 10 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:2,16 in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 306; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 64. 11 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:2,17–18, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 306; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 65. 12 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:2,13, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 306; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 64. 13 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:3,1, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 309. See also F. Ohly, “Haus als Metapher,” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 13 (1986), 905–1063.

382

The iconography of architecture 14 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 80–81. 15 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 71. 16 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:3,4, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 308; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 71. 17 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:3,4, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 308; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 72. 18 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 19:10, 25, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 379; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 14:23, in Throop (as in note 5), 86. 19 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 19:10, 25, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 310; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 14:23, in Throop (as in note 3), 74. 20 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:4,7, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 309; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 14:23, in Throop (as in note 5), 80. 21 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 14:23, in Throop (as in note 5), 80. 22 Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, 1946, ed. and trans. Erwin Panofsky (Princeton, 1979), 88–89, 2nd ed. 23 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 81. 24 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 15:2,22, in Beach et al. (as in note 8), 306; Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 14:23, in Throop (as in note 5), 82; M.E. Fassler, “Liturgy and Sacred History in the Twelfth-Century Tympana at Chartres,” The Art Bulletin 75:3 (September 1993), 499–520. 25 William Durandus, “Proeme,” no. 16, in William Durandus, Churches and Church Ornaments: Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, ed. John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb (New York, 1893), 10. 26 Durandus, Churches 1, 1 (as in note 25), 12. 27 Durandus, Churches 1, 4 (as in note 25), 13. 28 Durandus, Churches 1, 9 (as in note 25), 17. 29 Durandus, Churches 1, 8; Appendix B (as in note 25), 16, 177–79. 30 Durandus, Churches 1, 10 (as in note 25), 17–18. 31 Durandus, Churches 1, 14 (as in note 25), 19–20. 32 Trattato di architettura militare e civile, di idrostatica, geometria e prospettiva, libri di mulini e macchine, trattato di fortificazione e macchine militari di Leonardo da Vinci, MS 361, c. 10 b, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence; published as: Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Trattato Di Architettura Civile e Militare, ed. Cesare Saluzzo (Turin, 1841). The text in question is Book 4, chapter 4, p. 229. Although the treatise is attributed to Leonardo in the title, the treatise is by Francesco di Giorgio, who was both architect and painter. 33 Durandus, Churches 1, 15 (as in note 25), 20. 34 Durandus, Churches 1, 16–17 (as in note 25), 20. 35 Durandus, Churches 1, 18 (as in note 25), 21. 36 Durandus, Churches 1, 38 (as in note 25), 27. 37 Durandus, Churches 1, 19 (as in note 25), 22. 38 Durandus, Churches 1, 20,26 (as in note 25), 22, 24. See also Fassler, “Liturgy and Sacred History” (as in note 25). 39 Durandus, Churches 1, 21 (as in note 25), 22. 40 Durandus, Churches 1, 24 (as in note 25), 23. 41 Durandus, Churches 1, 27 (as in note 25), 24. 42 Durandus, Churches 1, 28 (as in note 25), 24–25. 43 Durandus, Churches 1, 31 (as in note 25), 25. 44 Durandus, Churches 1, 31 (as in note 25). 45 Durandus, Churches 1, 36, 42 (as in note 25), 27, 29. 46 Durandus, Churches 1, 42 (as in note 25), 29. 47 In addition to Durandus: C. Whitehead, “Making a Cloister of the Soul in Medieval Religious Treatises,” Medium Aevum 47:1 (1998), 1–29. 48 Durandus, Churches 1, 43 (as in note 25), 30. 49 Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), esp. chapter 6, “The Column in the Christian Middle Ages,” 74–90. 50 Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 65–66. 51 Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, book 4:1, 6–7, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (Cambridge/London, 1914), 103–04. See also Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 34. 52 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 14:23, in Throop, vol. 2 (as in note 5), 88. “the columns [which stand for the apostles] stood in the portico before the doors of the Temple.”

383

Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo 53 Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 75, cites R. Kreusch, “Kirche, Atrium und Portikus der Aachener Pfalz,” Karl der Grosse 3 (1965), 478. 54 L. Pressouyre, “St. Bernard to St. Francis: Monastic ideals and Iconographic Programs in the Cloister,” Gesta 12 (1973), 71–92, esp. 74–76; I.H. Forsyth, “The Vita Apostolica and Romanesque Sculpture: Some Preliminary Observations,” Gesta 25:1 (1986), 75–82; E. Valdez del Álamo, “The Populated Porch: Figures and Foliage in Spanish Sculpture Before the Pórtico de la Gloria,” in Santiago de Compostela: Pilgerarchitektur und Bildliche Repräsentation in Neuer Perspektive/ Pilgrims Architecture and Pictorial Concepts in a New Perspective, ed. K. Rheidt and B. Nicolai (Bern/Berlin/Brussels/Frankfurt/New York/ Oxford/Vienna, 2015), 199–211, esp. 201. Some of the foregoing material is derived from this article. 55 Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in Throop (as in note 5), 88; cited by Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 85. 56 Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 88. 57 Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 86. 58 Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 75, 88. The portal inscription reads: “the work/Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights,/ To the True Light where Christ is the [T]rue [D]oor.” See P.L. Gerson, “Suger as Iconographer,” in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. P.L. Gerson (New York, 1986), 186. 59 C. Kendall, The Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions (Toronto/Buffalo/ London, 1998), 68. 60 M.E. Fassler, “Liturgy and Sacred History” (as in note 24); idem, Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and the Arts (New Haven, 2010). 61 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 2–3, 20. See also J.H. Shaffer, “Recreating the Past: Aachen and the Problem of the Architectural Copy,” PhD diss., Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University (1992). 62 J.v. Schlosser, Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der Karolingischen Kunst, Quellenschriften für Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttechnik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, n.F., vol. 4 (Vienna, 1892), no. 682, cited by Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 2; see also 15–16. 63 Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 1965, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1975), 77. 64 Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (as in note 63), 66. 65 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 9. 66 Hrabanus Maurus, “Tituli et inscriptiones: Altarium Basilicae S. Salvatoris Fuldensis, 43: In caemeterio fratrum in Ecclesia sancti Michaelis, in primo altare” in Pat. Lat. 112: 1624–1625; cited erroneously by Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 4, note 1. 67 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 9. 68 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 4. 69 R. Stalley, Early Medieval Architecture, Oxford History of Art (Oxford/New York, 1999), 78. 70 The relic was recently translated to another location for safety, as there have been numerous attempts to steal it. 71 Notger, in G. Bandmann, “Die Vorbilder der Aachener Pfalzkapelle,” Karl der Grosse, vol. 3, 1965, 452, cited by Onians, Bearers of Meaning (as in note 6), 76. 72 A. Ranaldi and P. Novara, “Carlo Magno, Ravenna e Aquisgrana,” in Karl der Grosse: Orte der Macht (Dresden, 2014), 118–22, esp. 118; “Charlemagne, Italy and Ravenna,” Imperiituro: Renovatio Imperii: Ravenna Nell’Europa Ottoniana = Ravenna in Ottonian Europe, exh. cat., ed. M.P. Guermandi and S. Urbini (Bologna, 2014), 114–21, esp. 114, 118; W.E. Kleinbauer, “Charlemagne’s Palace Chapel at Aachen and Its Copies,” Gesta 4 (Spring 1965), 2–11, esp. 3. 73 Kleinbauer, “Charlemagne’s Palace Chapel” (as in note 72), 3. 74 Kleinbauer, “Charlemagne’s Palace Chapel” (as in note 72), 6. 75 A. Ranaldi and P. Novara, “Carlo Magno” (as in note 72), 118. 76 R. Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 21. 77 R. Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 22. 78 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 26–28, 30–31; see also Anita S. Stauffer, “The Font as Symbol: A Place for Burial, Birth and Bath,” Liturgy 5:4 (1986), 50–57. 79 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 30. 80 Krautheimer, “Iconography” (as in note 1), 31–32. 81 Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (as in note 63), 72–73, and comments in notes 4 and 6 on 489; J. Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, Oxford History of Art (Oxford/New York, 1998), 164–65; in addition: Constantine of Rhodes, On Constantinople and the Church of the Holy

384

The iconography of architecture

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Apostles: With a New Edition of the Greek Text by Ioannis Vassis, ed. L. James (Burlington, 2012), which I have not yet seen. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (as in note 63), 193. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (as in note 63), 42. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (as in note 63), 43, 98–99. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (as in note 63), 42. C.L.H. Coulson, “Structural Symbolism in Medieval Castle Architecture,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 132 (1979), 73–90; see note 12. C.L.H. Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society: Fortresses in England, France, and Ireland in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford/New York, 2003), 252. See note 11. N. Coldstream, Medieval Architecture, Oxford History of Art (Oxford, 2002), 165–73. Coulson, Castles (as in note 87), 5. The Art of Medieval Spain A.D. 500–1200 (New York, 1993), 277–79. Coldstream, Medieval Architecture (as in note 89), 162–65. E. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Characteristics, 1953, 2 vols. (New York/Evanston/ San Francisco/London, 1971), 1: 134–40, esp. 134–5. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (as in note 93), 2, fig. 11, pl. 5. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (as in note 93), 2, fig. 337, pl. 198. Oil on oak panel, 31 × 14 cm (12.25 × 5.5 in), Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, in Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (as in note 93), 2, pl. 109, fig. 236.

385

28 HERALDIC IMAGERY, DEFINITION, AND PRINCIPLES Laurent Hablot

At the start of the twelfth century, a new system of emblematic signage which is now called heraldry is first found among the original high Carolingian aristocracy of the northeast quarter of Europe. It must have been clear from the outset that the use of these signs promised a bright future. The motifs, devices, or “connaissances” in Anglo-Norman, based on highly colored simple patterns, were applied to different pieces of military equipment and became, from the 1140s onwards, a unique identifier for all the major Western family lines and those related to them. These motifs were probably based on older emblematic practices, which are still not fully understood. In the twelfth century, however, they certainly met the specific needs of the newly structured feudal society which was developing. In the early thirteenth century, signs of identity, kinship, or authority were needed and “arms” or “coat of arms” became the preferred means of emblematic representation for territorial princes. Seals and literary sources show that emblems are first found on symbolically important pieces of feudal authority and military uniform, such as the banner or the horse covering, or on any of the other material trappings of lordship or the manor. It was not long before such signs came to be found on specific pieces of military equipment, such as the shield, which was used by all who fought from the horse, especially the new military and social elite. It is likely that the use of heraldic emblems increased thanks to the many large tournaments in northern France, which were the meeting point for Western nobility. It is also likely that large-scale military endeavors, such as the Crusades, encouraged the spread of these motifs throughout Western society. By the middle of the thirteenth century almost all the elite of Western society had coats of arms. The use of arms was restricted on the medieval battlefield and it was mainly the heads of armies and lords who could fight under their heraldic signs, around which gathered their troops. Other visual signs and sounds, such as scarves and war cries, made opponents stand out. As such, it was mainly in tournaments that coats of arms served as symbols of personal identity. It was in a civil context that arms became signs of lordly authority, and were adopted by all who claimed them: the lords or domini were the first to use such signs, but noncombatants, both male and female, whether ladies, bishops, or simply rich citizens, all used them. Corporations ranging from religious communities, abbeys, and chapters to secular groups from the cities to the guilds all had their own signs. By the end of the thirteenth century, a large part of the European population had coats of arms, and these were seen as a standard means of social identity. Their use was no longer restricted to the nobility. 386

Heraldic imagery

Emblems are ubiquitous in medieval visual culture and not only do they identify but also they organize and prioritize space. Arms, attached to public buildings, fortifications, places of worship, on the inside as well as the exterior, in public spaces as well as in the private domain, on public or personal property, can all be used to identify and describe. Heraldry has now become a key element in the vocabulary of ornament and has been such from 1250 onwards for most of the Western world. This expansion in the use of the heraldic image contradicts its original elite social function and its political-legal values, and has led to the development of fringe elements who have tried to single out particular motifs and to individualize coats of arms still further. Heraldic shields could be extended by adding a warrior, with a helmet and crest. From the early fourteenth century, kings and princes added a crown as a material symbol of their sovereign authority. Supporters (characters, animals, plants, or objects) were sometimes added and are shown holding the shield on both sides. Text, such as the battle cry or the cri d’armes, could be added above the shield and, from the mid-fourteenth century onwards, a set of new emblematic signs, the badge, not only competes with but also completes this expansion. Although most of these heraldic components were in place by the end of the twelfth century, it is clear that their origins are much older. Even if it is possible to find individual iconographic elements in older silks or oriental ivories, it is still not possible to identify older heraldic systems among the barbarian kingdoms or the Carolingian culture which could have inspired this new system of identification. Probably not created ex nihilo, the heraldic image has to be seen as a product of the Roman period. Heraldry has all the key elements of that style, including the hieratic stylization of the figures, the prioritization of the idea over form, the love of repetitive geometric patterns, the use of vivid and saturated colors, which are ordered according to specific rules, a horror vacui, the use of levels and planes, and a fixed hierarchy of proportions. Even today, these basic principles still control the development of any heraldic design and contribute to the uniqueness of these images, especially their graphic consistency and semiotic relevance. It is still surprising to see how quickly and how consistently heraldry was adopted throughout Europe in just a few decades. It followed rigorous rules with equal success everywhere and has to be seen as a reflection of medieval Western culture. By rigorously sticking to the principles of construction, its ability to adapt to the emblematic needs of its users throughout time and space was ensured. Even if this kind of image is a relatively simple composition, colored, and more often than not enclosed within a shield, it can still be a relatively complex creation. The compositions always follow a limited number of rules that determine the proportions used, the use of colors, the stylization of the figures, and the placement of the various elements. This is what is called the blazon in modern terminology. Conformity in these compositions, in what could be a limitless field of possibilities, guarantees its success. From the signaletic’s point of view, heraldry is semiologically discursive and has an astonishing mnemonic capacity. The coat of arms is therefore a performative image. A specific vocabulary existed to describe coats of arms, and this was based on French-Roman terms, even when used in England. This vernacular vocabulary – the so-called language of blazon – was used from the late twelfth century to describe the image and constantly developed. In the Middle Ages there is no other type of image that has such a vocabulary except perhaps textiles and furs. When this vocabulary was used to describe a coat of arms, it was not necessary to draw it. For example, in the tournament, the heraldic description was often shouted instead of actually showing the shield with the coat of arms. In the Middle Ages, the coat of arms had to change to answer heraldic demands. The main requirement was to emblematically distinguish members of a group, all of whom came under the same heraldic sign, without affecting the common image. Therefore, in most European countries, 387

Laurent Hablot

different branches of the same family kept the same arms, but new members introduced modifications, which were indicted by color inversion or the addition of a border, band, or small elements, such as a label (specific heraldic charge), star, or crescent. From the fourteenth century onwards, the heraldic emblem became a sign not only of the individual but also of his family or fiefdom, and this sometimes led to several distinct coats of arms being appended to the same shield. These were governed according to relatively standardized rules, relating to ownership, kinship, or feudal service. A bride, for example, usually had a shield parti per pale – that is, vertically divided into two parts – having the husband’s arms on the left and those of her father to the right. The husband of an heiress can add those of his father in law to his own arms in what is called a quartered combination – that means it is divided into four parts – each of which contains duplicate coat of arms. But many other combined forms existed. At the end of the fifteenth century, the use of combined arms with several quarters became a genealogical or political tool and a means of social representation for the European high nobility (in fact, to have several arms in the same shield was a way of showing all the families you were linked with), especially if they were prestigious. Some princes used the combined arms to show the arms of the kingdoms they pretended to own. These combined coats of arms may look somewhat confused, but they show heraldic iconography at its maximum use and potential. The arms of Jeanne de Laval (1433–1498), wife of King René of Anjou, which are attached to one of her manuscripts, illustrate some of these governing principles (Fig. 28.1).1 In this crowned coat of arms, Jeanne de Laval is effectively shown as Duchess of Anjou and Queen of Naples and Jerusalem, along with her husband. Here, the arms of her husband are combined with those of her father in a relatively sophisticated combination.

Figure 28.1 Jeanne de Laval’s coat of arms showing a marshalling of arms. Represented are the six arms of her husband, René d’Anjou, as well as her own coat of arms, together with four different coats of arms. Next to the crowned shield – she is queen of Sicily – her badge of two linked turtledoves is symbolic of eternal love and fidelity. Jeanne de Laval Psalter, Poitiers, Médiathèque François Mitterrand, Ms. 41, f. 22r. Image courtesy of the Médiathèque François Mitterand, Poitiers.

388

Heraldic imagery

Every one of the ten coats of arms painted here follows the rules of heraldic composition and is relatively simple. The left half has René of Anjou’s coat of arms of seven parts, which he started using in 1443. This shows – from the top – his three kingdoms of Hungary (Barry of eight gules and argent), Naples (France a label gules), and Jerusalem (Argent, a cross potent between four plain crosslets or); at the bottom, on the left side there are the arms of the duchies of Anjou (France a border gules), Bar (Azure crusily fitchy, two barbels addorsed or), and the Kingdom of Aragon (Or four pallets gules). On the right side, Jeanne de Laval’s family’s coat of arms consisting of the Montmorency-Laval (Or a cross gules charged with five scallops argent between twelve eagles azur) and those of her grandmother from the royal family (France and Evreux: France a bend componny argent and gules) are found. In the middle, the arms of the lordship of Vitré (gules a lion argent crowned or) are represented. This heraldic coat of arms also speaks to us about the culture of those who saw it and who must have been able to identify and recognize the symbols of the Duke and Duchess of Anjou, and to understand all the information embedded in the details of these different coats of arms.

Para-heraldic signs The para-heraldic systems that developed from the middle of the thirteenth century answered some formal and functional needs within heraldry. Crests that adorn the tops of helmets identified arms shared among a family group. Here, the arms were represented in a freer and looser manner, without the stylistic or chromatic constraints that usually governed heraldry. They are usually accompanied by motifs not commonly found elsewhere in the heraldic repertoire, including fantastic or evil figures, as well as other fanciful compositions. Some of these crests indicated membership of a particular knightly fraternity, but only a few of them really existed. Most of the crests shown in iconographic sources, such as armorials, existed only as drawings or in verbal descriptions, and were occasionally used to decorate heraldic works. Supporters, figures which sometimes support the heraldic shield, fulfilled the same purpose and were yet another feature used to individualize a shared coat of arms. Some of the supporters have a symbolic or emblematic meaning but most of them are simply part of the general evolution in heraldic aesthetics. Here, it is possible to find wild men, bridesmaids, or angels, all taken from the medieval imagination and each having symbolic meaning. The use of heraldic mottoes is more complex. The ritual and legal purpose of cries in medieval society is well known. Among the many kinds of exclamations or declarations, some were used in armed conflicts, battles, tournaments, or civil wars and these were the war cries. These vocal declarations were seen as a means of recognition on the battlefield and some of them were used over time and space, from the Norman armies at Hastings to the companies of the late Middle Ages. Typical of such a motto is “Montjoie!” which was shouted aloud by the French, and heard as early as the battle of Mortemer in 1054 but still used at the end of the fifteenth century. Paralleling these collective war cries, the heraldic system produced territorial or heraldic cries or mottoes as a way of vocally transmitting the political, legal, or military identity of the owner of the arms. These cries were inspired and based on themes associated with the fiefdom and could include the name of the land, the family name, the banner, the patron saint, or specific military actions relating to the family. During the Hundred Years War, the two types of cries – the war and the heraldic – coexisted on the battlefield. Some of those cries were linked to other types of signs, such as crosses, or to specific cults as,

389

Laurent Hablot

in England, where St. George’s cross and the cry for the royal armies are united. At the end of the Middle Ages, these national cries continued to be formally used. At the same time, heraldic representations of sovereigns or lesser lords used the war cry around the shield as a claim to military and lordly prerogatives.

Badges or heraldic devices Badges developed in much the same way as crests or supporters, but they gradually established their own emblematic system that developed in the princely courts of the later Middle Ages, the Hundred Years War, and the national and international conflicts that resulted. Even though badges are related to the heraldic system, with which they have close ties, they are nevertheless separate as regards function and purpose. They complement rather than compete with arms, and can be seen to fill a number of gaps or deficiencies in heraldry itself. These identity signs, which could be freely chosen by a prince, were as much a symbol that referred to his person as one which expressed his ideals. They allowed him to mark or identify his property instead of entering into representation. Heraldic devices were also signs of power that the prince could share with his carefully chosen faithful servants but badges were mostly political and military signs. Transmitting a real message, they allowed propaganda to be shared and identified the opponents in political and civil conflicts. Whether deployed on standards, or displayed on clothes or liveries, they also can be seen to have structured the battlefield. From the formal point of view, the badge is a figurative sign and employs an iconography of animals, plants, or objects, which are often in color, and realistically represented according to the canons of the Gothic style. They illustrate the tastes of the time for plants, or exotic or fantastic animals which were ignored by formal heraldry, which used more technical tools or religious symbols. These motifs were often accompanied by short sentences that are called “mottoes” (French le mot). Sometimes, this motto does nothing more than describe the symbolic content of the emblem, but it can also act as a fully fledged emblem in itself and can be associated with other badges. These figures, badges, and mottoes frequently have colors that are different to those used in heraldry. Sometimes these colors make up the field on which the badges are depicted, and have their own emblematic and symbolic meaning. Such colors were used to color flags – especially standards, liveries, and uniforms – and to convey the dominant colors of the badge’s owner. These three elements are sometimes supplemented by letters that can be monogrammed and have the name or initials of the main figure or those of the husband and wife, or else a combination of words or numbers whose enigmatic meaning is often impossible to unravel. Besides their emblematic purpose, which unites figures to specific users, these heraldic devices can also have their own symbolic and often polysemic meaning whose interpretation stems from the courtly culture of the late Middle Ages and reflects the knowledge of the designer, user, and reader. A typical example is the testone of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1466 d. 1476) (Fig. 28.2). This consists of his arms surmounted by his crest representing the Biscia – a monstrous snake spitting a man – as well as a monogram of GZM and the tizzone badge, a flaming stick from which two buckets hang. This emblem was adopted by Gian Galeazzo Visconti around 1390, and symbolizes the contrasting water and fire. Temperance is also shown – for example, by the horse bit of Charles VIII or the salamander in flames which spews water on Francis I. The device of the

390

Heraldic imagery

Figure 28.2 The testone of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1466 d. 1476) shows his portrait (the name of this coin means portrait). His arms are surmounted by his crest showing the Biscia – a monstrous snake spitting at a man – as well as his monogram GZM and the tizzone badge, of a flaming stick from which two buckets hang, a possible symbol of temperance. Image courtesy of www.cgb.fr.

two turtles of Jeanne de Laval (Fig. 28.1), which are linked by their neck, expresses the virtue of fidelity as found in the bestiaries. From the late fourteenth century, most European rulers used this new way of representing identity and exploited its personal as well as its collective potential. Signs, which were used originally to unite a small group of faithful companions, were gradually shared by all those known to the prince in livery companies. The most formal and best known of these badges and livery companies were the so-called orders of chivalry. Besides the Order of the Garter or that of the Golden Fleece, there were many other livery companies, orders, emprises – all with their own and flexible heraldic device. In themselves, badges contrasted with official, feudal, and military heraldry. Sources refer to these as “shield of peace” to describe signs carrying badges as distinct from coats of arms. Many princes also adopted several of these badges, which they frequently changed throughout their lifetime. The use of badges was not restricted to princes or ladies, and many courtiers and court officials also adopted these emblematic practices.

One picture, several styles Despite what is clearly a complex evolution, heraldic images traversed centuries and styles. Created in Roman time, the heraldic image invades the scene in the early thirteenth century and flourished in the Gothic period. It became an essential element in the decorative vocabulary, even with the risk of losing some of its emblematic meaning. Heraldry penetrated unexpected spaces, including books, liturgical dishes, and sacred spaces, in which it developed all its semiotic and symbolic potential, revealing itself to be eminently flexible. Stylistic evolution in the Gothic period as well as in the Trecento and Quattrocento, however, significantly

391

Laurent Hablot

disrupted this harmonious picture. From the beginning of the fourteenth century heraldic imagery was at odds with developments in realism, chromaticism, perspective, and the figurative dimensions of contemporary images. It was regenerated, however, with the arrival of the international Gothic style, which supported the development of heraldic devices. Heraldic imagery continued to be used throughout the Renaissance with no loss of style and a minimal change in form. In the Renaissance the coat of arms is found alongside garlands of flowers and putti, but it does not lose its graphic and emblematic details. It integrates the ornamental vocabulary of the Renaissance by simply adopting new forms. Instead of the classic shield, other possibilities existed, such as the almond shield a l’antique, or the pelta – the shield born by the Amazons formed of a floriated crescent – or the testa di cavallo, a shield formed as a horse armor chamfer. As such, heraldry can be seen as contributing significantly to the decorative vocabulary of medieval art right up to the late sixteenth century. Examples are found throughout Europe, as for instance in the so-called Manueline style of late fifteenth-century Portugal or in the Baroque interpretations of the Pontifical emblems from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The use of heraldry in the postmedieval period ensured its survival right up to the present. The coat of arms did not remain a static image but shifted and evolved over time in response to stylistic canons while still keeping some of its Roman characteristics. With these changes, the performativity of the coat of arms increased and it assumed an identity of its own – an image within an image. With simple colors, no perspective, and stylized figures, it stands apart in Renaissance art – it stands on its own.

Current research For over thirty years research undertaken by Michel Pastoureau2 has promoted and encouraged the study of heraldry and made it into an academic science supported by new approaches and underpinned by the historical sciences and anthropology. With his global vision, based on solid erudition, Professor Pastoureau has redefined the subject; his followers have similarly extended our knowledge. His research into the subject was the first to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the material. For fifteen years French scholars have led this research and have gradually been followed by the rest of Europe. Numerous studies are now totally dedicated to heraldry, and these have been undertaken by collaborative projects between historical societies dedicated to heraldic scholarship and universities. Nowadays, the discipline seems to be sufficiently open and welcoming to interest historians and even art historians! Nonspecialists, devoid of all scholarly preconceptions, have upset some of the conventional and accepted approaches and yielded significant results. This new research was particularly encouraged by approaches found in other fields, such as those in the field of mentalities and sensibilities, as well as Professor Pastoureau’s research on animals and colors. Although not limited to heraldry, these studies have attempted to expand heraldic research to include medieval social and cultural practices. It is also important to remember recent heraldic research by historians working on the history of kinship or the nobility in medieval and modern society.3 There has also been an increasing interest by manuscript scholars as well as those interested in monumental decoration, such as François Avril and Francis Salet.4 Similarly, recent work by Hans Belting5 on the links between the portrait and the coat of arms is part of this renewed interest in heraldry. Despite the absence of a university chair for the study of heraldry, the scientific recognition of the discipline, the international dimensions of research, and the sheer dynamism of heraldic studies all guarantee a high visibility and bright future for the subject. 392

Heraldic imagery

Research Despite this interest, some important issues in the field of medieval heraldry have been somewhat neglected. Questions such as the precise functions of the images, the arrangements for sharing and structuring coats of arms, the reception and legibility of heraldic signs, and the performance of the emblem have still not been fully analyzed.

In absentia In the Middle Ages, the coat of arms acted as an emblematic projection of its bearer; it was in effect an imago of the bearer.6 It was the human substitute for the lord where he was either invisible or else when he was absent. This ontological capacity was similar to that of the seal. Seals frequently carried the bearer’s coat of arms. When not used on a seal, the coat of arms brought the symbolic value of the seal with it. They worked in unison in making the bearer present when he was not. The staging of these signs, the rules and strategies governing the display of heraldry, and the principles of lateralization in the heraldic shield also highlight their ability to make real the presence of the user in absentia.7 As such, the heraldic shield could exist for the person using it, as well as instead of him. It could convey the virtual presence of the owner, it could be crowned in much the same way as his head,8 and it could be honored by a canopy, wear a necklace of the order of chivalry,9 be dressed in mourning, or be tried and defamed in absentia (Fig. 28.3).10 Allowing for these added dimensions, the heraldic image could also be seen as the main iconography of the donor kneeling in front of his patron, God, or the blessed Virgin and as such having important eschatological functions.

Figure 28.3 Donatello’s heraldic work on a gravestone in the church Santa Maria in Aracoeli at Roma. The artist used imagery from antiquity as well as the imago clipeata – a portrait of the deceased carried by two winged genii – here represented as two angels carrying the dead person’s coat of arms in an almond shield typical of the renaissance. Rome, Santa Maria in Aracoeli church. Image courtesy of Laurent Hablot.

393

Figure 28.4 Scene showing the dedication of a book, the Paradis de la Reine Sibylle. Here, the book is presented by the author, Antoine de La Sale, to his protector, the duchess Agnese de Bourbon. Both writer and princess are represented by their coats of arms, showing the ability of the signs to represent the figures in absentia. Chantilly, Bibliothèque des archives et du château de Chantilly, Ms. 653, f. 1r. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque des archives et du château de Chantilly.

Heraldic imagery

One emblem, many functions To review the military functions of a coat of arms it is necessary to explore many questions on the other uses of these signs. In the Middle Ages, numerous tensions centered on the expression of the individual, and our modern perception of identity. It seems to have been up to the users of heraldic signs to convey seemingly opposite concepts, such as the individual or the group, male primogeniture or the significance of maternal ancestry,11 or the concept of the family as against the familiar. Yet the very richness of this system allows all these concepts to be resolved, including the ability of the shield to accommodate many pieces of heraldic information by juxtaposing, superimposing, and fusing images. Much research on the social associations and uses of heraldry still remains to be undertaken. When the whole field of heraldry was upgraded to the level of a science in the 1970s in what was clearly an ideological period, it was argued that everyone wore a coat of arms in the Middle Ages. The coat of arms, although accessible to all, is first and foremost a symbol of the elite and those who have them are indicated as belonging to such a group. Ignoring this concept can lead only to misunderstanding the functions of the heraldic emblem and to risking misinterpretation.

Emblematic and symbolic By emphasizing the mainly emblematic nature of the coat of arms, contemporary research has partly obscured its symbolic function,12 which is more than obvious in any discourse on the object. If the coat of arms is not understood as an accumulation of symbolic figures, it is more than certain that the symbolic value of the selected figures was crucial when the emblem was created. This is more than obvious in the way crosses, lions, eagles, and crescents have their own symbolic meaning that cannot be ignored. The very choice of the shield as the preferred framework for any heraldic emblem is also highly symbolic and refers to both the chivalrous and lordly social identity as much as to the moral and religious dimensions of the sign.13 Frequently in the Middle Ages, the “memory” or purpose behind creation can be forgotten very quickly as the emblematic function is often the highest priority, but it is not uncommon that a posteriori interpretations have been used to make sense of certain coats of arms. By the end of the thirteenth century these “heraldic legends” had multiplied and were used to consolidate the legendary fame of a particular house or to lay the foundation for many myths surrounding them and thus contribute to the sanctification of sovereign power.15 Analysis of the badge system has specifically highlighted the importance of the symbolic dimensions of medieval emblematics in the later Middle Ages. Similar studies on crests and supporters would likewise add to our knowledge.

The heraldic image As this essay has shown, the heraldic image is an image apart. In addition to its mnemonic qualities, it has the amazing ability to be able to remain a virtual image that does not need to be figured to exist. This particular dimension enlightens our perception of the Middle Ages’ visual imagination. If our knowledge of the coat of arms as an image has advanced significantly, many questions still remain, especially relating to the composition and structure of heraldic images rather than our perception of them. Heralds, long considered the “gatekeepers,” now see their role as supervisors of the system. But we still do not know who made these images. What knowledge were they based on? What standards were used? Who controlled this knowledge? What is the place of 395

Laurent Hablot

heraldry in medieval visual culture? Can we know how many coat of arms an ordinary individual had in the Middle Ages? Historians are now trying to understand the heraldic environment – what it really was and what a person from the Middle Ages would make of it. It is obvious that some knowledge of heraldry was necessary for everyday life – for example, a citizen of early fourteenth-century Florence would know or recognize at least a hundred coats of arms – town, district, businesses, neighbors, relatives, etc. – just to understand his environment. Nowadays, scholars are interested in the place of heraldry in visual culture and to fully understand this, it is necessary for us to explore and understand heraldic signs in all their locations – from the church to the city wall, the city hall, the castle, the house etc. These signs are similar to painted armorials and are more than deserving of our attention. Iconographic evidence as well as princely and municipal accounts confirms the importance that political powers gave to this type of image, until late in the sixteenth century. Recent work on court artists emphasizes the critical investment that these painters and sculptors had in the production of heraldic images.15 This subject has never been properly investigated. Who were these heraldic artists? What was their training? What were their innovations? Artists from Colard de Laon to Donatello, Pisanello, Barthélemy d’Eyck, Jean Malouel, and Jean Fouquet were just some of the great artists who produced heraldic images. Several of them, such as Jean Malouel or the famous Limbourg brothers, are known to have been trained in family workshops specializing in heraldry and to have come to the more figurative styles for which they are better known from the world of heraldry. This is a subject which has yet to be analyzed, but it reveals the interest that the princes gave to the emblematic image. How were these stereotypical images processed by the artist? What makes one heraldic image superior to another? How did the artists integrate stylistic innovations of their period? What flexibility was permitted in the treatment of these emblems? Of course art historians have also not neglected the flowering of heraldry happening in the same period as the first great treatises of Alberti, Vasari, and their followers appeared. Serious consideration has yet to be given to the forms and functions of the heraldic emblem, which fill a theoretical framework left almost empty since Bartolo da Sassoferrato’s treatise De Insigniis et Armis first appeared in 1358. This has to be seen as the first treatise on the legal and graphic practices in heraldry. In his Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani, written in 1550, Vasari also returned to some issues relating to heraldic representations, their composition, and their functions in contemporary art. In this spiritual period it is not surprising that heraldry also incurred the interests of a number of clerics who saw the coat of arms invading sacred space, and really saturating it from the late fifteenth century.16 Great figures in the history of the Church, such as St. Charles Borromeo, were quick to denounce these signs of vanity. They enlivened the debate considerably and had firm opinions that determined the relationships between stylistic developments and the coat of arms and in many ways defined the place of heraldry in Baroque art.

Marginal systems Marginal emblematic elements, which are usually difficult to understand, have long been regarded by heraldic specialists with some disdain and seen as resulting from the collateral effects of medieval creativity. They have often been overlooked or neglected. The crest, the supporters, the cries, mottoes and badges, emblematic colors, chiffers, and letters still remain in terrae incognitae. The veil of understanding is slowly being raised, but it is clear that these details can inform us significantly about medieval sensitivities as well as the relationship of society to the image.17 396

Heraldic imagery

Analyzing different emblematic systems which were used in the medieval period allows us in retrospect to see the mechanisms governing or controlling how and why the various elements, such as coats of arms, crests, and badges, were used. As part of the intellectual and visual culture of the time, they answered social and political needs as expressions of competing identities, whether of the individual or the group.

The digital future We must now hope that new technologies, especially those offered by the application of computers to the study of heraldry, will produce important discoveries. This has so far been neglected partly because of the disappointing results from early attempts to process heraldic data using computers. The temptation to use a global approach, producing information disconnected from spatial and temporal contexts (however essential for interpreting the data), may partly explain the failure of older studies. Nowadays, the large volume of dated and well-documented information,18 the cross-reading of sources and media which is enabled by computers, and the wealth of information on the Internet promise significantly useful results for the future, especially in the field of image recognition and the study of heraldic relationships, which offer new paths for research.

Notes 1 Jeanne de Laval Psaltar, Poitiers, Médiathèque François Mitterrand, Ms. 41, fol. 22. 2 Among his many books and articles see especially M. Pastoureau, Traité d’héraldique (Paris, 1979, reissued 2007) and L’art héraldique au Moyen Age (Paris, 2009). 3 D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London, 1992); J. Morsel, “La construction sociale des identités dans l’aristocratie franconienne aux XIVe et XVe siècles: individuation ou identification?” in L’individu au Moyen Âge: Individuation et individualisation avant la modernité, ed. B.-M. Bedos Rezak and Dominique Iogna-Prat, (Paris, 2005), 79–99 and 320–21. 4 For example, F. Salet, “Histoire et héraldique: la succession de Bourgogne de 1361,” in Mélanges René Crozet (Poitiers, 1966), 1307–16; F. Avril, “Le livre des Merveilles, manuscrit français 2810 de la bibliothèque nationale,” in Marco Polo, Le livre des Merveilles, Tournai, ed. F. Avril, M.-T. Gousset, and M.-H. Tesnière (Paris, 1999), 197–223. 5 H. Belting, “Le portrait médiéval et le portrait autonome: Une question,” in Le portrait individuel, réflexions autour d’une forme de représentation XIIIe–XVe siècles, ed. D. Olariu (Berne, 2009), 123–36, especially 128–29, from the same author “Kap. 5 Wappen und Poträt. Zwei Medien des Körpers,” Bild-Anthopologie: Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft (Munich, 2001), 115–42. 6 B.-M. Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago: Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Visualizing the Middle Ages 3) (Leiden, 2010). 7 In trying to understand the coat of arms, the blazon, one has to consider the point of view of the holder of the shield and not the reader. The description always begins in the upper left corner: the dexter in heraldry; in reality this is the right side of the knight standing behind his shield. On the subject see L. Hablot, “Aux origines de la dextre héraldique: Ecu armorié et latéralisation au Moyen Age,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 56e année (July–September 2013), 281–94. 8 The appearance of the crown on the king’s coat of arms has not yet attracted the attention of political researchers. We don’t yet know the symbolic and political meanings that these representations had in France in the late Middle Ages, especially in conflicts between the French monarchy and principalities, such as Anjou or Brittany. On the subject see M. Jones, “‘En son habit royal’: le duc de Bretagne et son image vers la fin du Moyen Age,” in Représentation, pouvoir et royauté à la fin du Moyen Age, ed. J. Blanchard (Paris, 1995), 253–78. 9 On this question and the larger subject of the relationship of portrait, coat of arms, and badges see S. Slaniska, “La fonction distinctive des ordres et du portrait noble dans les sociétés de cour (XIVe–XVIIe siècles),” in Signes et couleurs des identités politiques du Moyen Age à nos jours, ed. D. Aurell, M. Aurell, C. Mnigand, J. Grévy, L. Hablot and C. Girbea (Rennes, 2008), 313–32.

397

Laurent Hablot 10 See L. Hablot, “‘Sens dessubz dessous’: Le Blason de la trahison au Moyen Age,” in La trahison au Moyen Age: De la monstruosité au crime politique (Ve–XVe siècle), ed. M. Billoré and M. Soria (Rennes, 2009), 331–47. 11 See D. Crouch, “The Historian, Lineage and Heraldry, 1050–1250,” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. P. Coss and M. Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), 17–37; D. Crouch, The Birth of Nobility: Constructing Aristocracy in England and France, 900–1300 (London/New York, 2005), 156–62; J.-L. Chassel, “Le nom et les armes: la matrilinéarité dans la parenté aristocratique du second Moyen Âge” (Droit et cultures, t. 64), 2012; online: http://droitcultures.revues.org/2849. 12 An “emblem” is a sign designating a person (e.g., the fleur-de-lis for the king of France); a “symbol” is a sign meaning an idea or a concept (e.g., the cross for faith). 13 See L. Hablot, “Entre pratique militaire et symbolique du pouvoir, l’écu armorié au XIIe siècle,” in Estudos de Heràldica medieval, ed. M. Metelo de Seixas and M. de Lurdes Rosa (Lisbon, 2012), 143–65. 14 See L. Hablot, “Sacralisation of the Royal Coats of Arms in Europe in the Middle Ages,” Political Theology in Medieval modern Europe. Discourses, Rites, and Representations, ed. M. Herrero, J. Aurell and A. Miceli (Turnhout, 2017). 15 A colloquium held in Poitiers in 2010, Heraldic Painters in the Middle Ages, discussed this issue and will soon be published. 16 See M. Michael, “The Privilege of ‘Proximity’: Towards a Re-definition of the Function of Armorials,” Journal of Medieval History 23:1 (March 1997), 55–74, and L. Hablot, “L’héraldisation du sacré aux XIIe–XIIIe siècles, une mise en scène de la religion chevaleresque?” in Chevalerie et christianisme aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. M. Aurell (Rennes, 2011), 211–33. 17 I tried to understand some of them in my doctoral thesis “La devise, mise en signe du prince, mise en scène du pouvoir” (University of Poitiers, December 2001) as well as in some articles, such as “Cris de guerre et d’armes: Formes et fonctions de l’emblème sonore médiéval,” in Les paysages sonores du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, ed. L. Hablot and L. Vissière (Rennes, PUR, 2016) 157–171; “Masque de guerre et don des armes: Les échanges de cimiers, une pratique chevaleresque à la fin du Moyen Age,” in Armes et Jeux militaires dans l’imaginaire. XIIe–XVe siècles, ed. C. Girbea Classique Garnier (Paris, 2016) 241–268. 18 As found at the University of Poitiers project ARMMA (Armorial Monumental du Moyen Age), which collects in a database all documents relating to medieval heraldry found in Poitou.

398

29 MEDIEVAL MAPS AND DIAGRAMS Diarmuid Scully

I Recent decades have witnessed a transformation in our understanding of medieval maps and diagrams. Once viewed as interesting curiosities or the products of obscurantism, ignorance, and superstition, they are now recognized as sophisticated artifacts tackling issues of fundamental concern to medieval society, most notably concepts of time and space, interconnections between the human and the divine, and the nature of creation in all its forms.1 These issues are prominent in the single greatest map to survive from the medieval West: the Hereford mappa mundi (world map), made circa 1300 in England (Fig. 29.1).2 This map contains an iconographic program of exceptional richness and subtlety; it offers a unique resource for the exploration of medieval mapping and diagrammatic traditions, and it will be discussed here in the context of other medieval maps and diagrams and their classical and Judaeo-Christian inheritance. The map’s treatment of Ireland will be given close attention, as an example of how research into the representation of individual countries and regions may further our understanding of the mapmaker’s objectives.

II Medieval sources generally use the Latin terms mappa, carta, and descriptio for maps, and pictura and figura for diagrams.3 It is impossible to make a neat distinction between the concerns of medieval maps and diagrams. Maps were interested not only in physical and human geography but also in every branch of knowledge; a number of important map types appear in diagrammatic form. Diagrams were used to facilitate the understanding of complex information about matters including the human body, human relationships, the world’s climates, winds and tides, the calculation of time, and the structure of the cosmos as a whole.4 Byrhtferth’s diagram, located in an early twelfth-century English manuscript principally focused on computistical issues, is indicative of medieval diagrams’ didactic potential. This diagram maps the universe from microcosm to macrocosm. The signs of the zodiac, the four elements, and the principal winds appear around its outer edges, linked to information about equinoxes, solstices, the seasons, and the ages of man; at the center, the initials of the cardinal directions in Greek spell out the name of the first human being, “Adam.”5

399

Diarmuid Scully

Figure 29.1 The known world of Europe, Asia, and Africa and its islands, surrounded by ocean. Hereford mappa mundi, circa 1300. Photo courtesy of the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust and the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral.

The spiritual concerns of Byrhtferth’s diagram are mirrored in medieval world maps. The term mappae mundi (singular: mappa mundi; literally, “cloth of the world”) describes medieval maps of the known world comprising Africa, Asia, and Europe.6 These maps are oriented on an east-west axis; our word “orientation” comes from the Latin “oriens,” meaning “east.” The Latin phrase for the known world – the orbis terrarum or circle of lands – reflects classical and medieval conceptions of that landmass as a gigantic world-island surrounded by ocean.7 In their simplest form, medieval world maps appear as T-O diagrams. Ocean forms the “O,” a circle encompassing 400

Medieval maps and diagrams

a tripartite world. The “T” reflects the division of that world: Asia appears above the bar of the “T,” with Europe below on the left and Africa on the right. Diagrammatic T-O maps often list the sons of Noah and align them with the different parts of the world: Shem with Asia, Ham with Africa, and Japheth with Europe. The maps’ orientation, structure, and inclusion of Noah’s sons indicate that they are far more than neutral representations of space and history. The world’s eastward orientation is a reminder of the rising sun, symbolizing Christ and the promise of resurrection, its tripartite structure recalls the Trinity, with the “T” also suggesting a tau-shaped cross and Christ’s crucifixion, while the reference to Noah’s sons affirms the biblical statement that all peoples are descended from these men (Gen 9:18–19). Medieval maps of the entire planet, depicting its climate zones, put maps of the known world into a further theological perspective. Zonal maps follow ancient sources in dividing the Earth into five climate zones on a north-south axis: two frozen, uninhabitable zones at the Arctic and Antarctic, a burning, uninhabitable zone around the Equator, and two temperate, habitable zones on either side of the Equator.8 The ancients speculated on the existence of unknown peoples in the southern habitable zone, but medieval Christian authorities insisted that this was impossible. Scripture proclaimed that salvation would reach everyone; no missionaries could cross the burning Equator, and therefore no people could live in that southern zone. Moreover, scripture located Noah’s sons in the northern habitable zone alone, and showed that they were the descendants of Adam and Eve, for whom God created Eden in the furthest parts of Asia. If any beings existed outside the orbis terrarum, they could not be human beings, since they could not be descended from Adam or Noah.9 Cosmological map diagrams locate the Earth within its ultimate theological and spatial context. Appropriating Greco-Roman ideas, they depict the round, not flat, Earth at the center of the universe, with the sun, moon, and planets revolving around it within fixed spheres, and the fixed stars and the signs of the zodiac beyond them. God, the prime mover, or his angels in the highest heaven are depicted holding this universe in place.10 Manuscript illustrations of the moment of creation emphasize the harmony implied here; for example, the early thirteenth-century Bible Moralisée depicts Christ as creator with a compass, measuring out the universe and imposing order on chaos (cf. Prov 8: 26–30; Isa 44:13).11 The meaning of a universe created by a rational God may be explored by human beings made in his image and likeness (reason is one of the essential defining characteristics of humanity in medieval thought). Marcia Kupfer considers the cartographical implications of this approach to creation in relation to the Ebstorf mappa mundi from Germany, which is approximately contemporary and iconographically comparable with the Hereford map.12 Citing Rom 1:20 and 1 Cor 13:12, she locates the Ebstorf map within a medieval tradition where “pictorial images, things of human artifice, might serve as vehicles by which the embodied soul ascended from and through divine reflections in the Creation to attain a foretaste of the visio Dei [vision of God].”13 This interpretation of the Ebstorf map may also be applied to the Hereford mappa mundi.

III The Hereford map is drawn on a single calfskin, pentagonal in shape and measuring 5 feet, 2 inches by 4 feet, 4 inches (1.59 meters by 1.34 meters). The earliest surviving descriptions and visual representations of the map, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, depict it enclosed within a wooden triptych that shows Mary with the archangel Gabriel at the Annunciation.14 Employing the traditional eastward orientation, the map displays the tripartite known world and its islands, circled by ocean; Asia is at the top, Africa on the right, Europe on the left. Jerusalem is at the center of the map and the world. The map displays the orbis terrarum hugging 401

Diarmuid Scully

the Mediterranean and surrounded by ocean and its islands, most prominently Britain and Ireland and their adjacent islands in the extreme northwest, in the lower left corner. The map acts as a universal visual library. It offers a glorious celebration of life. It teems with activity; multiple time periods appear at once in texts and images that provide information, ideas, and suggestions concerning world history, geography and topography, the winds, real and imagined peoples, monsters, birds, animals, fish, trees, and plants. The mapmaker is not concerned with the accurate depiction of physical space, as we would understand it. A navigator could not use the Hereford map to guide his ship along a coastline, for example, and the size of particular regions on the map often reflects their spiritual, cultural, and political significance rather than their actual dimensions; the Holy Land is a dominant presence for that reason. In contrast, an earlier English map, the eleventh-century Cotton mappa mundi, very likely inspired by an imperial Roman map, visualizes the received understanding of the actual appearance of the coasts and contours of the orbis terrarum.15 Small-scale medieval architectural or diagrammatic plans also indicate a concern for accuracy, most notably the ninth-century plan of the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland, which owes much to Roman surveying techniques.16 Furthermore, later medieval portolan charts of the Mediterranean, delineating its coastlines, are strikingly accurate to a modern eye.17 The Hereford map’s representation of the world, then, is a matter of choice and not a failure to comprehend geographical reality. The map’s circle of the known world is contained within a pictorial framework that provides vital theological and political-ideological commentary and contextualization. At the apex of the map, the framework displays the Second Coming, with Christ in judgment, angels leading the saved to the open gates of the New Jerusalem, and demons dragging the damned toward a devouring hell-mouth. This vision of eternity in every sense frames the map’s vision of the orbis terrarum. The mapmaker creates the illusion that his map of the world is pinned to the pictorial framework by four thongs containing letters that spell out “MORS” (death). At the framework’s lower right corner, a mounted huntsman, his boy, and his dog leave the world behind; the accompanying inscription comments: “passe avaunt” (go ahead). In the opposite corner, immediately outside the map’s representation of Ireland, the Roman emperor Augustus orders three surveyors to measure the whole world; an inscription dates this order to the time of Christ’s birth recorded in Luke 2:1, and the wording of the order recalls Christ’s command to go out to the whole world and preach to all peoples, with its accompanying promise that he will be with his disciples until the end of time (Matt. 28:19–20; Mark 16:15–16). Augustus appears as a composite pope-emperor; there is a cross on his imperial tiara. The combined message of these images and inscriptions is that the gospel will be preached to the ends of the earth, Christ will return to judge the living and the dead, and the faithful will be saved and live eternally in heaven (Fig. 29.2).18 Other mappae mundi use different framing imagery to convey related ideas about God’s providential care for his people and creation. The Ebstorf map, which measures some 12 feet in diameter, depicts the world itself as the body of Christ, suggestive of the Eucharistic host, with his head at the east, at the top of the map, flanked by the apocalyptic letters alpha and omega (Rev 22:13), his hands at the extreme north and south and his feet at the Pillars of Hercules or Straits of Gibraltar at the world’s western limits. The map thereby provides a visual restatement of scriptural promises that we are all members of Christ’s body (1 Cor 12:27; Rom 12:5) and that salvation encompasses the whole world. The tiny and exquisite thirteenth-century Psalter map, from England, takes another approach. It shows Christ in majesty outside and above the easternmost part of the world, blessing the delicately illustrated orbis terrarum and holding a T-O map/orb, flanked by two angels, while two wyverns or dragons, symbolizing the powers of evil, cringe outside the map below the Straits of Gibraltar. The message of Christ’s benevolent rule over his people and triumph over their adversaries is supported by another map overleaf. There, 402

Medieval maps and diagrams

Figure 29.2 The Roman emperor Augustus orders the measurement of the world. He is placed next to Ireland at the northwestern ends of the earth. Hereford mappa mundi, circa 1300. Photo courtesy of the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust and the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral.

flanked by four angels, Christ stands behind – and holds up – a diagrammatic T-O map again evocative of a Eucharistic host, which lists the world’s chief places; he crushes two wyverns in a visual allusion to Ps 90 (91):13, “thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon.”19

IV An inscription on the Hereford map’s pictorial framework requests prayers to Jesus in godhead that he may give joy in heaven to its author, Richard of Haldingham or Sleaford.20 The framework’s Last Judgment scene continues the intercessory and salvific theme; it depicts the Virgin Mary appealing to Christ on behalf of those who made her their way to salvation. If the map 403

Diarmuid Scully

and its enclosing wooden triptych displaying Mary and Gabriel at the Annunciation were associated from the beginning in Hereford Cathedral, then the theme of salvation was proclaimed all the more powerfully, since Christians believed that Christ’s incarnation heralded universal redemption.21 The map’s request for prayers is addressed to all “who hear or read or see” it (oyront, ou lirrant, ou veront), suggesting that its maker envisaged an audience beyond a learned elite who could read its Latin and Anglo-Norman French inscriptions; his work seems intended for active, immersive, and inclusive encounters with people also looking at its images and exchanging ideas or listening to the views of experts on text and image alike. The Hereford map might, then, be experienced on different levels, depending on its audience’s level of knowledge and understanding. It was intended to delight and teach; the Ebstorf world map’s self-description is apposite: “It offers to readers no small utility, to wayfarers direction and the pleasure of the most pleasing sight of things along the way.”22 Legends on the Hereford map define it as an estorie (a history or narrative) and identify the late Roman providential historian Orosius as its chief authority. The map’s dominant visual narrative continues and elaborates Orosius’s account of authority and salvation progressing from east to west, with the Christian Roman Empire presiding over global evangelization and enjoying God’s unique favor.23 Directly below the pictorial framework’s representation of the Second Coming, the opening of heaven’s gates, and the end of history, the map displays the Garden of Eden – an earthly prefiguration of heaven – in the furthest East and traces the beginnings of human history from Adam’s and Eve’s expulsion into a fallen world after the serpent deceived them. They are depicted alongside Cynocephali, dog-heads with human bodies, labeled as giants on the map. Like the Psalter, Ebstorf, fragmentary Duchy of Cornwall, and other mappae mundi, the Hereford map is fascinated by the strange or monstrous races described by Pliny, Solinus, Isidore, and other classical and postclassical sources.24 Their cartographical presence provides delight and celebrates God’s care for diverse humanity; if they exist and are human (defined as rational, mortal, and descended from Adam and Eve; their physical appearance is irrelevant), then they are destined to be evangelized and offered salvation.25 Below Eden, a structure representing “the extremely ancient city of Enos” (Enos, civitas antiquissima) has sinister implications, literally as well as spiritually; from the viewer’s perspective, it is located to the left (in Latin, sinister) of the first humans and the Cynocephali. This city was built by Adam and Eve’s first son, Cain, who became the first murderer when he killed his brother Abel; banished by God, he built this city and named it after his own son (Gen 4:17). The great theologian Augustine, who inspired Orosius’s history and whose image appears prominently on the Hereford map, identified Cain’s city with the earthly City of Man, corrupt and destined for death, in contrast with the City of God, which the pilgrim Church on earth will reach in heaven at the end of time.26 Moving westward and following an imagined straight line from the heavenly Jerusalem, Eden, and Enos, the viewer’s eye is drawn to the single largest image on the Hereford map: Babylon and the Tower of Babel, from which a serpent-like dragon emerges, mirroring the serpent displayed in the map’s image of Eden.27 God destroyed the Tower, which men built to challenge him, and he punished their presumption with the division of languages (Gen 11:1–9). In patristic exegesis, following scripture, Babylon (“Confusion”) appears as the ultimate symbol of pride, paganism, and human evil, a true heir to Cain’s city; Augustine comments that it is an appropriate symbol for the city of the earthborn.28 Further west again and directly below Babylon, the map locates Jerusalem, surmounted by an image of Christ on the Cross, at the center of the world and its own center too.29 The map shows Jerusalem as a circle containing a series of circles, a symbol of perfection microcosmically reflecting the circle of the world itself. Here God “wrought salvation in the midst of the earth” 404

Medieval maps and diagrams

(Ps. 73 [74]:12), indicated by the crucified Christ, whom scripture presents as the second Adam, overcoming death through his own sacrifice (1 Cor 15:21–22). The curse of Babel was reversed in Jerusalem (“Vision of Peace”) at Pentecost, when Christ’s disciples received the gift of tongues (Acts 2), a foreshadowing of Christian unity on earth and the unity that humanity will enjoy with God and his angels in heaven, as depicted in the pictorial framework.30 The gift of tongues at Pentecost meant that the disciples could fulfill Christ’s command to go and convert all peoples, alluded to in the map’s representation of Augustus ordering the measurement of the world, and thus advance the inauguration of the New Jerusalem.31 Moving west from Jerusalem via Rome to the limits of the known world and out into ocean, the map ultimately traces the extension of salvation to Ireland under the spiritual guidance of Augustus’s spiritual and temporal successors: the bishops of Rome.

V The Hereford map reflects classical and medieval traditions when it depicts Ireland as one of the world’s largest islands and part of an archipelago physically dominated by Britain. Orosius’s outline of world geography is its key source here.32 The map describes the western shores of the Iberian peninsula as “Terminus Europe” (the limits of Europe). Locating Ireland beyond the Pillars of Hercules, it indicates that the island lies at the absolute limits of the habitable earth. This gives Ireland immense symbolic importance. The map depicts Hibernia (Ireland) very close to Britain, with Spain to the southwest. In Ireland, it shows and names the rivers Bann and Shannon (Fluvius Bande; Fluvius Schene) and also shows two mountain ranges. It names the northern part of the island: Ulvestria (Ulster). The map identifies two peoples in the south: the Luceni and the Velabri. It names four cities, each represented by an architectural device: Dublin, Bangor, Armagh, and Kildare. The last three of these cities are holy places, associated with saints. The map makes this explicit in the case of Armagh and Kildare, naming them as the cities of St. Patrick and St. Brigit respectively. The map displays Ireland in several time periods at once. It shows Ireland as Orosius understood it in the early fifth century, before its conversion to Christianity; he is its source for the Luceni and Velabri. The map also locates Ireland in the Golden Age, extending from its conversion until the Viking era (fifth to late eighth centuries): Armagh, Kildare, and Bangor still existed in the fourteenth century but their names and associations evoke the much earlier island of saints and scholars. And the map shows Ireland as it was c. 1300, when Dublin was its biggest city and the center of English authority; the English crown claimed legitimate rule over Ireland and had been engaged in its conquest since the late twelfth century. The map’s representation of Ireland mirrors its representation of England, Scotland, Wales, and Western Europe as a whole: a landscape dominated by cities and natural features – rivers and mountains. This is normative civilization, from a Western medieval perspective. But this representation makes Ireland exceptional when viewed in the context of the Hereford map as a totality. Consider the map’s treatment of other remote, peripheral oceanic locations. Like the Ebstorf, Psalter, and fragmentary Duchy of Cornwall world maps, the Hereford map situates monsters and marvels in these places. In the northeast – Scythia – it shows the evil monstrous races, cannibals, Cain’s kin, and the apocalyptic peoples of Gog and Magog. In the southeast – the Indies – not far from the Cynocephali, the map depicts dragons on Taphana (Taprobane/Sri Lanka), which directly faces Ireland at the opposite ends of the earth. In the far south – Africa – the map represents most of the world’s physically divergent monstrous races, such as headless men with eyes and mouths in their shoulders and chests, and marvels like the fatally poisonous basilisk. In contrast, there are no marvels or monsters in the Hereford map’s Ireland. Yet Ireland was closely associated with marvels in the medieval imagination. Fra Mauro’s mid-fifteenth-century 405

Diarmuid Scully

Venetian mappa mundi, for example, somewhat skeptically emphasizes Ireland’s marvels – including water that changes wood to iron and stone – and links them with Eastern wonders before referring the reader to Solinus, among others, as an authority on marvelous and monstrous issues.33 Solinus (circa AD 200), is one of the Hereford map’s vital sources on wonders, but he has no role in its representation of Ireland. Emphasizing Ireland’s remoteness, Solinus depicts the Irish as inhuman in their customs, inhospitable, and warlike, smearing the blood of their victims on their own faces, and unable to distinguish right from wrong; they live on an island with no snakes and few birds.34 By the early fourteenth century, a new version of this hostile classical image of Ireland dominated English and continental European discourse about the island. The Hereford map rejects this image and projects an entirely positive view of Ireland, based on ideas that first emerged when the Irish became Christian. Early medieval authorities proclaimed that Christianity abolished Irish barbarism; Walafrid Strabo declared that the reports of Solinus and others were obsolete now that Christ’s faith shone upon the Irish and where sin abounded, grace more exceedingly abounded (Rom 5:20).35 This positive image receded in the twelfth century, when authorities in the dominant territories of Christian Europe began to apply the term “barbarian” to fellow Christians in less developed, peripheral European regions.36 Bernard of Clairvaux played a vital role in reviving classical stereotypes concerning the Irish in this period. His mid-twelfth-century Life of the Irish ecclesiastical reformer Archbishop Malachy of Armagh dramatizes Malachy’s achievements by depicting the unreformed Irish as violent, chaotic, and immoral: Christians in name, but pagans in action.37 For Bernard, Irish rejection of a progressive urban architecture symbolized their barbarism. When Malachy proposed to build a stone oratory at Bangor, he met opposition from ignorant people who declared themselves Irish, not French (“Scoti sumus, non Galli”) and expected him to build a traditional wooden structure.38 But Malachy reformed the people, built the stone oratory, and reestablished Bangor as a true Christian city: a miniature of his reform of all Ireland. Bernard’s treatment of Irish barbarism informed Gerald of Wales’s depiction of Ireland in the Topographia Hibernica (Topography of Ireland), which first appeared in 1188.39 This work is perhaps the single most influential and controversial book ever written about Ireland. Gerald had close links with Hereford and sent a copy of the Topographia to its cathedral chapter.40 His representation of Ireland and the Irish shaped texts, maps, and other visual sources concerning Ireland until at least the seventeenth century, but it did not determine the Hereford map’s vision of the island.41 Gerald and his family, Marcher Lords from Wales, were closely involved in the English conquest of Ireland. He dedicated the Topographia to King Henry II, who claimed sovereignty over the island. The Topographia is a courtly entertainment, a book of wonders, but it is also a justification of the conquest as a civilizing mission. Gerald calls Ireland “the furthest island of the West” (Insularum occidentalium hec ultima).42 His understanding of its location is replicated on a map of Europe illustrating a circa 1200 manuscript of the Topographia (MS 700 in the National Library of Ireland); there is nothing beyond Ireland except ocean and the map’s own margins.43 Drawing on traditions about the wonders of the East, Gerald uses Ireland’s remoteness to depict it as the most marvelous land in the West, where Nature indulges herself in hidden, freakish behavior.44 The Topographia’s text and its manuscripts’ marginal illustrations depict an unnatural natural world there, in part caused by Irish sinfulness.45 Gerald claims that bestiality is a particular Irish vice, and describes a cow giving birth to a mancalf in the mountains near Glendalough.46 Irish marvels comment on the consequences of such depravity: a talking wolf-man says that the English conquest was sent by God to punish the Irish.47 A fish with gold teeth serves as a portent of that conquest.48 Gerald presents the Irish as a handsome and naturally gifted people, but perversely backward, savage, and semipagan or worse. They are “a woodland and inhospitable people” ( gens silvestris, 406

Medieval maps and diagrams

gens inhospita; the reference to their inhospitality alludes to Solinus), who have rejected the usual human progression from woods to settled agriculture and finally to cities.49 Gerald says that the woodland-dwelling Irish are literally barbarous, and his emphasis on their long, uncultivated hair and beards, matching their uncultivated minds and countryside, supports that statement. Cassiodorus, summing up ancient ethnographical stereotypes, explains that the Latin term barbarus comes from barba (beard) and rus (countryside).50 Rejection of urban life is a key barbarian characteristic. Gerald states that the Irish do not live in towns and have no interest in citizenship, a rejection of civilization itself since a citizen – civis – is one who lives in a civitas, a community in the sense of a city: hence our word “civilization.”51 Paradoxically, the map illustrating the Topographia in MS 700 supports Gerald’s representation of the Irish as barbarous by depicting an urban landscape in Ireland. It shows Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, and Limerick. In Gerald’s day, they were centers of English colonial administration and commerce, and he emphasizes they were originally built by the Ostmen (Vikings), because the innately lazy Irish refused to engage in trade and build cities themselves.52 The Hereford map offers an entirely different vision of Ireland. It emphatically identifies Ireland’s four cities as cities: Civitas Divelin; Civitas Bencur; Arhmaca, Civitas Sancti Patricii; Celdara, Civitas Sancte Brigide. Use of the term civitas affirms Irish civilization. Bangor, Armagh, and Kildare were ethnically Irish foundations, associated with the great saints of the Golden Age and, in the case of Armagh and Bangor, the twelfth-century reform movement too. By specifying that these places, as well as colonial Dublin, are cities, the map counters hostile stereotypes of the Irish and integrates the island’s Irish and English colonial communities; it presents Ireland as a united, harmonious, and civilized Christian country. The map’s selection of Bangor, Armagh, and Kildare has further significance. Their founders and rulers were associated with papal Rome, the guarantor of orthodoxy and Christian unity. Armagh, the primatial see of all Ireland, was foremost among them in its romanitas. Armagh traditions claim that the See was founded by the national apostle, St. Patrick; they depict it as an Irish Rome, sanctified by the relics of Peter and Paul and other martyrs, and the hagiographer Tírechán attributes this saying to the saint: “church of the Irish – no – of the Romans” (Aeclessia Scotorum immo Romanorum).53 St. Brigit’s hagiographers also promoted Kildare as a mirror of Rome; in a vision, Brigit heard Mass at the tombs of Peter and Paul and afterwards sent experts to Rome so that she could reproduce the Roman liturgy in Kildare.54 The early medieval Irish emphasized that their faith was Roman from its beginnings. St. Columbanus, who founded Bangor, assured the early seventh-century papacy that the Irish, living at world’s edge, were the disciples of Peter and Paul and maintained the Catholic faith unbroken “as it was delivered by you first.”55 Bernard recalls Columbanus when he says that Bangor, before the Vikings, was “a very holy place highly productive of saints” (Locus vere sanctus fecundusque sanctorum), with daughter houses across Ireland and Scotland. From Bangor, Columbanus went to “our Gaullish parts” and founded Luxeil, where God’s praises were sung without interruption. Reestablishing Bangor, Malachy was “replanting paradise.”56 Bernard writes that Malachy effectively reevangelized Ireland and restored its romanitas through liturgy, law, and architecture, so that “today one could apply to that people what God says through his prophet: ‘Those who were not my people hitherto, are now my people’ [1 Pet 2:10; cf. Hos 2:24]” (ut hodie illi genti conveniat quod Dominus per prophetam dicit: “Qui ante non populus meus, nunc populus meus”). Bernard here implicitly aligns Malachy with Patrick, his ultimate predecessor as archbishop of Armagh, who applied the same quotation to his Irish converts’ abandonment of barbarous paganism.57 Read in the context of these sources, the Hereford map’s depiction of Ireland – no monsters, no barbarians, an urban landscape dominated by holy cities – replicates an Irish narrative of continuing evangelization and integration into the universal Church centered in papal Rome. 407

Diarmuid Scully

The map locates English rule over Ireland within this narrative. The papal decree Laudabiliter provided the legal basis for English rule. Pope Adrian IV granted Ireland to Henry II in the 1150s to “reveal the truth of the Christian faith to unlearned and savage peoples” (ad declarandam indoctis et rudibus populis Christiane fidei veritatem); his authority to make this grant came from the Donation of Constantine (not revealed as a forgery until the fifteenth century), which described the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine granting the West, including “the islands,” to the papacy.58 In a commentary beneath a plan of Rome on his Chronica Maiora’s itinerary map (c. 1250), Matthew Paris explains that papal Rome succeeded imperial Rome, and Rome is now capital of the world because it is the capital of Christendom. He cites a Latin motto – also used by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II – that bears witness to its continuing dominion: “Rome, head of the world, holds the bridle of the spherical earth” (Roma caput mundi tenet orbis frena rotundi).59 The Hereford map quotes the same phrase next to its own image of Rome and shares Matthew’s sense of the city’s spiritual and temporal imperium. Locating the composite pope-emperor figure of Augustus in the pictorial framework next to Ireland and Britain, the map indicates Ireland’s place in papal Rome’s spiritual empire. The map’s combined depiction of Augustus, Ireland, and the wider archipelago further indicates that English rule over Ireland, legitimized by the papacy as successor of the Roman Empire, completes Ireland’s conversion, reform, and renewal, begun by Patrick, Brigit, Columbanus, and Malachy. Patristic and medieval authorities interpreted Ireland’s and the archipelago’s conversion as the fulfillment of scriptural prophesies concerning the extension of salvation to the gentiles at the ends of the earth, thus heralding the end-times.60 The Hereford map inherits and develops this eschatological and apocalyptic vision. Ireland’s complete integration into Christendom symbolizes the fulfillment of Christ’s command to convert all peoples and the whole world, to which the map alludes in its representation of Augustus. The pictorial framework at the apex of the map, directly above Augustus and the western limits of the orbis terrarum, displays the end of history that will ultimately follow: the Second Coming and the New Jerusalem (Fig. 29.3).

Figure 29.3 The Last Judgment. Hereford mappa mundi, circa 1300. Photo courtesy of the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust and the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral.

408

Medieval maps and diagrams

Notes 1 Explorations of medieval maps and diagrams include D. Woodward, “Reality, Symbolism, Time, and Space in Medieval World-Maps,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75 (1985), 510–21; J.B. Harley and D. Woodward (ed.), The History of Cartography.Volume 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago, 1987); M. Kupfer, “Medieval World-Maps: Embedded Images, Interpretative Frameworks,” Word and Image 10 (1994), 262–86; B. Obrist, “Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology,” Speculum 72 (1997), 33–84; E. Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Map-Makers Viewed Their World (London, 1997); E. Edson and E. Savage-Smith, Medieval Views of the Cosmos (Oxford, 2005); E. Edson, The World Map 1300–1492: The Persistence of Tradition (Santa Fe, NM, 2007); P. Barber, “Medieval Maps of the World,” in The Hereford Map: Medieval World-Maps and Their Context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), 1–44; A.S. Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (New York/London, 2006). 2 S.D. Westrem (ed.), The Hereford Map: A Transcription and Translation of the Legends with Commentary (Turnhout, 2001). The specialist literature includes N. Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge, 2001; P.D.A. Harvey, Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World-Map, 2nd ed. (Hereford, 2002); Harvey (ed.), The Hereford Map (as in note 1). 3 Edson, Mapping Time and Space (as in note 1), 2; Edson observes that carta and descriptio may also refer to documents and textual descriptions. 4 Edson, Mapping Time and Space (as in note 1), 36–96; Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought (as in note 2), 7–48. 5 MS 17, fol. 7v, St. John’s College Library, Oxford; The Calendar and the Cloister: Oxford, St. John’s College MS17. 2007. McGill University Library. Digital Collections Program. http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/ ms-17 (accessed August 28, 2015). 6 A. Scafi, “Defining Mappaemundi,” in The Hereford Map, ed. Harvey (as in note 1), 345–54. 7 Pliny, Historia Naturalis 3:1; Isidore, De Natura Rerum 48:2; Bede, De Natura Rerum 48:2. 8 Virgil, Georgica, 1.233–34 provides a much-quoted summary of the tradition. Zonal maps are often described as “Macrobian,” since many illustrate manuscripts of the Macrobius’s late antique commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (The Dream of Scipio). 9 A. Hiatt, Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600 (Chicago, 2008); A. Scafi, Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth (London, 2006); E. Wajntraub and J. Wajntraub, “Noah and His Family on Medieval Maps,” in The Hereford Map, ed. Harvey (as in note 1), 381–88. 10 Thus, Matfré Ermengar of Béziers, Breviari d’Amour, MS Yates Thompson 31, fol. 66, British Library, London (late fourteenth century), with four angels flanking the universe. 11 Codex Vindobonensis 2554, fol. 1v, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (1220s). 12 H. Kugler (ed.), Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Berlin, 2007), 2 vols; scholars must rely on facsimiles of the map: the original was destroyed in World War II. 13 M. Kupfer, “Reflections in the Ebstorf Map: Cartography, Theology and Delectio Speculationis,” in Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600, ed. K.D. Lilley (Cambridge, 2013), 103; “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom. 1:20); “For now we see through a glass [per speculum] darkly; but then face to face.” 14 M. Bailey, “The Discovery of the Lost Mappa Mundi Panel: Hereford’s Map in a Medieval Altarpiece?” in The Hereford Map, ed. Harvey (as in note 1), 79–93. 15 P. McGurk, D.N. Dumville, M.R. Godden, and A. Knock (ed.), An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Miscellany: British Library Cotton Tiberius B.V., Part 1 (Copenhagen, 1983), fol. 56v. On the Greco-Roman cartographical tradition: O.A.W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (London, 1985). 16 W. Horn and E. Born (ed.), The Plan of St. Gall, 3 vols. (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1979). 17 R.W. Unger, Ships on Maps: Pictures of Power in Renaissance Europe (Basingstoke, 2010), 37–61. 18 D. Scully, “Augustus, Rome, Britain and Ireland on the Hereford Mappa Mundi: Imperium and Salvation,” Peregrinations 4 (2013), 107–33; http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu (accessed September 1, 2015). 19 Psalter Map, Additional MS 28681, fol. 9r and fol. 9v, British Library, London. 20 His identity is discussed in Harvey, Mappa Mundi (as in note 2), 7–10. 21 On the map’s medieval placement, see D. Terkla, “The Original Placement of the Hereford Mappa Mundi,” Imago Mundi 56 (2004), 131–51; T. de Wesselow, “Locating the Hereford Mappa Mundi,” Imago Mundi 65 (2013), 180–206. 22 “que scilicet non parvam prestat legentibus utilitatem, viantibus directionem rerumque viarum gratissime speculationis dilectionem,” Kupfer, “Reflections in the Ebstorf Map” (as in note 13), 102.

409

Diarmuid Scully 23 Historiarum Adversus Paganos Libri Septem: M.-P. Arnaud-Lindet (ed. and trans.), Orose: Histoire (Contre les Päiens), 3 vols. (Paris, 1990–91), hereafter abbreviated as Hist; S. McKenzie, “The Westward Progression of History on Medieval Mappaemundi: an Investigation of the Evidence,” in The Hereford World Map, ed. Harvey (as in note 1), 335–44. 24 J.B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (New York, 1981); Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought (as in note 2), 141–64; Mittman, Maps and Monsters (as in note 1); C. Van Duzer, “Hic sunt Dracones: The Geography and Cartography of Monsters” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. A.S. Mittman and P.J. Dendle (Farnham, 2012), 387–435. For the fragmentary Duchy of Cornwall Map: Duchy of Cornwall Office, London, Maps and Plans 1. 25 See Augustine’s discussion in De Civitate Dei 16.8; B. Dombert and A. Kolb (ed.), CCSL 47–48 (Turnhout, 1955); hereafter DCD. 26 DCD 15.1. 27 Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought (as in note 2), 187–88; 208–09. 28 DCD 16.17. 29 A.-D. von den Brincken, “Jerusalem on Medieval Mappaemundi,” in The Hereford World Map, ed. Harvey (as in note 1), 355–79. 30 Details in the map’s image of the earthly Jerusalem evoke the foursquare New Jerusalem of Rev 21:16; Westrem (ed.), The Hereford Map (as in note 2), 166. 31 Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought (as in note 2), 206–15, where the Hereford map is compared with other medieval maps and visualizations of the Pentecostal mission. 32 Hist. 1.2, 75–82 (Ireland within the entire British-Irish archipelago). 33 P. Falchetta (ed.), Fra Mauro’s World Map, with a Commentary and Transcription of the Inscriptions, translated from the Italian by J. Scott (Turnhout, 2006), 578–79. 34 T. Mommsen (ed.), Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium 22 (Berlin, 1895). Solinus’s view of the Irish is representative: J.F. Killeen, “Ireland in the Greek and Roman Writers,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 76C (1976), 207–15; P. Freeman, Ireland and the Classical World (Austin, 2001). 35 B. Krusch (ed.), Vita Galli, prologus, MGH SRM 4 (Hanover, 1902). 36 W.R. Jones, “The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 13 (1971), 376–407; R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales (Oxford, 1982), 130–46. 37 Vita Sancti Malachiae in J. Leclercq, H.M. Rochais, and C.H. Talbot (ed.), Sancti Bernardi opera, 8 vols. (Rome, 1957–1977), iii (1963), hereafter VM; D. Scully, “Ireland and the Irish in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Vita Malachiae; Representation and Context,” in Reform and Renewal: Ireland and Europe in the Twelfth Century, ed. D. Bracken and D.Ó. Riaín-Raedel (Dublin, 2006), 239–56. 38 VM XXVIII.61. 39 Topographia Hibernica in J.F. Dimnock (ed.), Giraldi Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernica et Expugnatio Hibernica, vol. 5 of Giraldi Cambrensis Opera (London, 1867), in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, 8 vols., Rolls Series; hereafter TH. 40 D. Birkholz, “Hereford Maps, Hereford Lives: Biography and Cartography in an English Cathedral City,” in Mapping Medieval Geographies, ed. Lilley (as in note 13), 225–49. 41 On Gerald’s reception: H. Morgan, “Giraldus Cambrensis and the Tudor Conquest of Ireland,” in Political Ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641, ed. H. Morgan (Dublin, 1999), 22–44. 42 TH 1.1. 43 MS 700, fol. 48r, National Library of Ireland, Dublin. 44 TH praefatio secunda. 45 A. Murphy, “Ad remotissimas occidentis insulas: Gerald and the Irish,” in A. Murphy, But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us: Ireland, Colonialism, and Renaissance Literature (Lexington, 1999), 33–59; M.P. Brown, “The Marvels of the West: Giraldus Cambrensis and the Role of the Author in the Development of Marginal Illustration,” in Decoration and Illustration in Medieval English Manuscripts, ed. A.S.G. Edwards (London, 2002), 34–59; pls 1–2; A.S. Mittman, “The Other Close at Hand: Gerald of Wales and the Marvels of the West,” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. B. Bildhauer and R. Mills (Cardiff, 2003), 97–112. 46 TH 2.21. 47 TH 2.19. 48 TH 2.10. 49 TH 3.10. 50 Expositio in psalmum cxiii, M. Adriaen (ed.), CCSL 98 (Turnhout, 1958), 1029. 51 TH 3.10. 52 TH 3.43.

410

Medieval maps and diagrams 53 Dicta Patricii 4 in Tírechán’s Collectanea; Collectanea II.3 claims that Armagh possesses the relics of Peter and Paul, Stephen and Laurence; L. Bieler (ed.), The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh SLH 10 (Dublin, 1979). 54 Acta Sanctorum, Februarii tomus I, Cap. XV; S. Connolly, “Vita Prima Sanctae Brigidae: Background and Historical Value,” JRSAI 119 (1989), 5–49: 41. 55 Ep. 5 in G.S.M. Walker (ed.), Sancti Columbani Opera, SLH 2 (Dublin, 1957). 56 VM VI.12; cf. Gen 2.8. 57 VM VIII.17; Patrick, Confessio 40–41. 58 M.P. Sheehy (ed.), Pontificia Hibernica: Medieval Papal Chancery Documents concerning Ireland, 640–1261, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1962), 15–16. 59 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 26, fol. 3r (itinerary from Pontremoli to Apulia); S. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris (London, 1987), 344, 505, n. 49; see also Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 16, fol. 126 and Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 77–81; D.K. Connelly, The Maps of Matthew Paris: Medieval Journeys through Space, Time and Liturgy (Woodbridge, 2009), 109–27. 60 T.M. Charles-Edwards, “Palladius, Prosper and Leo the Great: Mission and Primatial Authority,” in Saint Patrick, A.D. 493–1993, ed. D. Dumville (Woodbridge, 1993), 1–12; D. Bracken, “Rome and the Isles: Ireland, England and the Rhetoric of Orthodoxy,” in Anglo-Saxon/Irish Relations before the Vikings, ed. J. Graham-Campbell and M. Ryan (Oxford, 2009), 75–97; J. O’Reilly, “Islands and Idols at the Ends of the Earth: Exegesis and Conversion in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica,” in Bède le Vénérable: Entre Tradition et Posterité. The Venerable Bede: Tradition and Posterity, ed. S. Lebecq, M. Perrin, and O. Szerwiniack (Lille, 2005), 119–45; O’Reilly, “The Multitude of Isles and the Corner-Stone: Topography, Exegesis, and the Identity of the Angli in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica,” in Anglo-Saxon Traces, ed. J. Roberts and L. Webster (Tempe, 2011), 201–27.

411

30 THE ICONOGRAPHY OF GENDER Sherry C. M. Lindquist

The relevant entry for “gender” in the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones.”1 In insisting on this binary, the dictionary lags behind social media sites like Facebook, which provides a custom option for users who do not feel the fifty-eight choices offered provide adequate terms to describe their gender identities. That “gender” might define a fluid aspect of identity constructed and performed by the individual in relationship to social expectations and pressures is a new use for a word whose previous primary meaning is associated with grammatical declensions.2 Joan Scott’s argument that “gender” is a useful category of historical analysis has inspired countless studies that nuance our understanding of subjectivities and societies.3 Some scholars have worried that the concept of gender may be contributing to the replacement of one distorting, universalizing, transhistorical narrative with another in which the history of gender “looks very much the same no matter which century or culture is examined.”4 In considering the gendered implications of medieval iconography, it is important, therefore, to heed Scott’s own prescription for using the tool critically: The “language of gender” cannot be codified in dictionaries, nor can its meanings be easily assumed or translated. It doesn’t reduce to some known quantity of masculine or feminine, male or female. It’s precisely the particular meanings that need to be teased out of the materials we examine.5 Gendered readings of visual materials destabilize traditional interpretations, but they themselves are also unstable; they shift according to how ideologies of gender factor into the multiple identities of various viewers at different times.6 Furthermore, possessing layered and sometimes contradictory meanings is a quality of the visual and the source of its power. As Mary Sheriff astutely observes, “no matter how open to interpretation, no matter how overdetermined is the text, the visual image is a little more so.”7 It is impossible to isolate an “iconography of gender” in medieval art; rather, we gain a richer perspective on medieval iconography every time we interrogate a visual product in light of how it may impose, construct, complicate, subvert, and/or enable resistance to gender identities for both individuals and communities. The legacy of Christianity as the hegemonic religion of medieval Western Europe continues to shape discourse about gender, and part of it is embedded in the visual products from the 412

The iconography of gender

period. From its origins, the tenets and practices of the faith were unclear, fluid, and inconsistent with regard to gender. Paul wrote in the Letter to the Galatians that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). Accordingly, Gregory of Tours endorsed a vision of heaven filled with “a throng of people, neither men nor women.”8 Nevertheless, early Christian writings make clear that the egalitarianism that may pertain in heaven was not to be applied to human relationships on earth.9 Influenced by Aristotle, Christian thinkers generally accepted that the female body was cold and wet in contrast to the male body, which was hot and dry.10 Based on this misunderstanding of biology, antique thinkers asserted that the female body was not capable of generative power and was fit only to serve as a passive incubator of offspring. The Aristotelian characterization of the female vessel as feeble and passive was a given for many Christian thinkers, who particularly associated female bodies with the weaknesses of the flesh. The doctrine was debated, but a dominant conclusion was that man was made in God’s image – body and soul – and woman was like God in soul only.11 This rationale was used to explain the subordination of women to men in the earthly realm, where human souls are subject to the limitations of human bodies. Jesus was incarnate as male, the reasoning went, and so only men could be priests. This intellectual scaffolding was and is used to justify excluding women from leadership roles in the church and discriminating against them in myriad other ways. The unjust gendered asymmetry, however, proves to be a difficulty. St. Jerome, who is notorious for his misogyny, but who also maintained important and complicated relationships with holy women throughout his long life, suggested that a woman might overcome her enslavement to a defective body: “As long as woman is for birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, she will cease to be a woman and will be called a man.”12 The idea that the only way a woman can truly serve Christ is to abjure what were considered female aspects of herself cannot but devalue women; nonetheless, it also betrays Jerome’s desire to find a way out of a restrictive binary that seemed to exclude the holy women of whom he approved. According to Jerome, voluntary virginity sets one apart, and as Sarah Salih, Jacqueline Murray, and others show, virginity was a surprisingly fungible status in the Middle Ages that constituted a “third” or alternative gender to aspire to.13 Like other gendered identities, virginity required constant, vigilant performance of a socially expected role. Sworn virgins, like monks and nuns, used imagery to perform and project a gender role that cannot be reduced to a biological sex or to a heterosexual norm. A capital at the abbey church of La Madeleine, Vézelay, depicting the trial of St. Eugenia illustrates how images of bodies operated in the performance of virginity for the religious (Fig. 30.1). The Life of St. Eugenia tells the story of a pious woman who assumes a male identity and enters a monastery where she eventually becomes abbot. The capital illustrates the dramatic moment when Abbot “Eugenius” reveals her breasts in order to prove she cannot have raped a local woman, who, spurned by the abbot, spitefully accused “him.” The capital, as Kirk Ambrose points out, mixes gender cues by showing a tonsured monk with breasts, suggesting that the iconography of the nude female body might signify innocence, even in the context of male monasticism.14 It is telling, however, that Eugenia/us is situated between stock, unambiguously gendered characters: the conniving temptress and the wise judge. The contrast between the dressed and sinful accuser and the undressed and righteous Eugenia no doubt called to mind for medieval viewers the first temptress, Eve, whose prelapsarian innocence is signified by her nudity and whose clothing is understood as a sign of sin and shame.15 The drama of virtue and vindication on the capital creates an alternative narrative for the viewer to the Genesis tale of sin, shame, and death sentence meted out by the divine Judge. The positive outcome is effected by the immaculate character of the religious virgin, with whom the sculpture encourages the monks 413

Sherry C. M. Lindquist

Figure 30.1 Trial of Eugenia, c. 1120. North aisle of the nave, La Madeleine, Vézelay. Image courtesy of Nick Havholm.

to identify – an operation of identification that both subverts and reinforces the male/female binary, just as Jerome’s theory that a woman can more perfectly serve Christ by metaphorically becoming male at once reinforces the subjection of women in Christianity and makes a (limited) space of religious privilege for them. The meaning of this sculpture, which was quite accessible in the aisle of the nave of a pilgrimage church, shifts when one imagines its import to a wide range of potential viewers: layman or woman, novice or a monk, male abbot or female servant, all with potentially heterogeneous desires and subjectivities. We read it differently according to the contexts we interrogate, whether in diachronic or synchronic relationships to other sculptures in this church or neighboring churches, to the texts the monks might have been reading, to the liturgy, and/or to the historical events and social structures operant at the time they were made or viewed. The contrast between female sinner and virgin fueled a rich and complicated iconographic relationship between Eve and Mary in medieval art, with consequences for constructing gendered social roles. Artists staged tales from Genesis using strategies like manipulating the pace of the narrative, the relationship of the figures of God, Eve, Adam, and the Serpent, and the 414

The iconography of gender

depiction of the first couple’s flesh and genitalia, all of which pictorialized varying levels of Eve’s second-class status, carnal nature, and blame for the Fall. Adam Cohen and Anne Derbes show that the visualization of this episode at St. Michael’s, Hildesheim, is a pointed criticism of seductive, disobedient women that conformed with both the patron Bishop Bernward’s ideas about monastic reform and his exasperation with the imperial abbess Sophia of nearby Gandersheim, who repeatedly thwarted his ambitions.16 In Venice, a similar message was conveyed in the most prominent communal symbol – the cupola mosaics of St. Marco – which emphasized Eve’s difference from Adam, the weakness of her flesh, her guilt, and her lack of repentance.17 Such public, negative representations of Eve’s nature theorized a male/female binary that served patriarchal rationalizations for subordinating women in hegemonic structures. And yet, the prevalence of such negative visual readings did not preclude alternative interpretations with the potential to destabilize. One example is an illustration supervised by the multitalented abbess Hildegard of Bingen for a manuscript recording her visions: Scivias (Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs. I, fol. 2r; Fig. 30.2). In it she praised Eve, the “mother of all living,” and has her represented emerging from Adam’s side as a glittering cloud of pulsing stars, while a satanic serpent emerges menacingly from a nearby “hideous mist.”18 This dramatic departure from familiar iconographic conventions startles the viewer into reappraising the misogynistic narrative, even while it accepts its premises. Adam’s nude, flesh-toned body is associable with representations of Christ in the manuscript, whereas Eve’s ethereal appearance draws comparisons to the glittering golden bodies of Ecclesia/Mary, and even God (cf. fols. 41v, 115v). Hildegard’s emphasis on the association of the mother of humankind with the mother of Christ offered a more positive lens through which to view women in Christian terms, especially since the parallel was understood as an important factor in salvation history. The role of Eve and the Virgin Mary as mothers was to be celebrated because they made necessary and possible, respectively, the Incarnation. Since the body of Mary and the body of a priest were both vessels that could miraculously produce the flesh of Christ, it was possible to conceive of Mary as a priest, and indeed she might be represented with priestly qualities in some medieval art.19 The increasingly theological and iconographic centrality of the Virgin, however, did not necessarily translate into social gains for women.20 Marina Warner famously argued that Mary’s exceptionalism created an unattainable ideal that excluded women from being able to identify with her or leverage her status to their advantage in their everyday lives.21 Images of Mary, however, are so pervasive and so varied that a single interpretive model is inadequate for understanding their implications in the history of gender.22 Carolyn Walker Bynum’s groundbreaking work demonstrates, in fact, that women’s social role as food-providers – especially as breastfeeding mothers – inclined them to identify with a figure as exceptional as the Virgin: Christ, whose body also nourished the faithful through the Eucharistic sacrament.23 This affinity found validation in exegetical writings that metaphorically feminized Christ in explorations of the meanings of his Incarnation in the flesh: how he suffered to compensate for the first sin, as women were condemned to suffer in childbirth; how he nurtured the faithful with the fluids of his body – his blood – as women did with their milk.24 Bynum draws our attention to late medieval images in which Christ’s side wound is anatomically analogous to a breast, and he is even shown expressing blood with the same gesture given to images of Mary expressing breast milk. Others have identified images in which Christ’s wound resembles a vagina.25 Such apparent inversions have many valances that must be considered in light of a larger medieval imaginary. Representations of a priestly Mary or feminized Christ that seem to blur gender assignments operated alongside representations that insisted on the female-flesh/ male-spirit binary. These include representations in which the female body is figured as inferior or even monstrous, but also images that heroicized hypermasculine bodies.26 Leo Steinberg has 415

Figure 30.2 Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, Vision I, c. 1175. Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, MS I, fol. 2r (original lost in 1945). Photo © Rheinisches Bildarchiv.

The iconography of gender

drawn attention to a category of medieval and Renaissance images that emphasizes the masculinity, especially the genitalia, of Christ, testifying to and insisting on his male sex.27 Steinberg and Bynum have argued about the implications of seemingly opposed visual conventions that show Christ as man and mother, but both agree that the images were meant to be theological meditations on Christ’s Incarnation, that it is anachronistic or wrongheaded to imagine the potential sexualization of Christ’s body by hypothetical medieval viewers.28 Bynum argues that the body brought up issues of nourishment, suffering, and resurrection for medieval people rather than sexuality, which she believes is a modern preoccupation. And yet images emphasizing the maleness of the virgin Christ must have addressed the uneasy status of virgin clerics operating in a broader culture that valued male sexual potency. Mocking representations of St. Joseph and visual attempts to recast him as the head of his earthly family suggest anxiety about the subordinate role of this husband cuckolded by God.29 While Bynum is right to point out that the significance of the gendered body is culturally determined, the extent to which she minimizes sexuality as a factor in the medieval worldview is inevitably dependent upon the hegemonic sources permitted and preserved by the Church.30 If evidence of sexual responses is difficult to recover, it is not nonexistent.31 The exuberant sexual language of female mystics and nuns may have theological implications, but that does not mean we should refuse to acknowledge their apparent delight in imagining union with Christ in a literal, physical sense.32 In fact, some medieval texts show authorities worried that viewers were having what they thought were inappropriate sexual responses to devotional imagery.33 Martha Easton has theorized that violent martyrdom scenes in medieval art were designed to elicit a “sado-erotic” response, one that destabilized the viewers’ gendered subject position by providing opportunities for them to shift their identification between the male torturer and the passive, often female martyr. Socially expected sexual roles and desires inflect the construction of gender, and medieval images – sometimes the same image – both modeled acceptable attitudes and enabled transgressions. The unique scene of flagellants in the Belles Heures (New York, The Cloisters, MS. 54.1.1, fol. 74v; Fig. 30.3), for example, offered Duke John of Berry (1340–1416) a scene of heroic masculinist devotion with which to identify: it featured members of a flagellant movement exclusively for men, whose paraliturgical practices and voluntary bloodshed engendered comparisons to priests and even to Christ.34 As such it flattered Berry’s masculinity in the face of attacks by political enemies that capitalized on his alleged sexual relationships to young men, including, plausibly, Paul Limbourg, one of the illuminators responsible for the Belles Heures. The sexual undertones of the miniature are evident from the way in which a central figure grasps his groin and holds a phallic whip handle, while two of the figures fall to their knees and present their exposed backs to their brethren. Since flagellation was a punishment prescribed for sexual sins, the duke confronts a scene that reminds him of his (potential) transgressions, and, in the context of the broader penitential emphasis in the manuscript, urges him to repent in order to claim the kind of sanctified worldly power available to the purged – like the flagellants pictured.35 The manuscript was a mechanism that allowed the duke both to indulge his desire and to construct a dominant masculine gender identity in the face of the threat his sexual appetites may have posed to his claim. This case, in which we have some unusual documentary knowledge of the principals, draws our attention to viewers whose sexual desires and/or behavior may not have conformed to hegemonic Christian notions of what was “natural,” whose sexuality destabilized gendered expectations. Any medieval image might be read against the grain in order to gain insight into the ideological structures of exclusion, and such “queer” readings enrich our knowledge of the past and our relationship to it.36 Gender operates in concert with other “identity machines” – not only sexuality but also race, class, ethnicity, and creed – which affect real bodies in the real world.37 One way that images 417

Sherry C. M. Lindquist

Figure 30.3 Herman, Jean, and Paul de Limbourg, Flagellants, The Belles Heures of John, Duke of Berry, 1405–1408/09. New York, The Cloisters Collection 1954, MS. 54.1.1, fol. 74v. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/collections.

shored up the hegemony of powerful men, for example, was to denigrate disenfranchised groups, to suggest for them an alternative and lesser masculine state, or “third gender,” as Madeleine Caviness suggests occurs in the Bayeux Embroidery, where, through positioning, gestures and dress, the vanquished Saxons are depicted as an inferior category of men.38 Images of the poor also show them as separate and inferior according to gendered criteria.39 Scholars have also noted a contrast between the representations of male and female Jews that both reinforces commonly held gender stereotypes and denigrates and demonizes Jews in general. Artists seem to reserve 418

The iconography of gender

exaggerated features like hooked noses and other negative visuals to the male Jew, interpreting women as more malleable, passive, and convertible, not to mention exotic and sexually available.40 Images of Jews in medieval art and literature undoubtedly fueled repression of and violence against Jews in medieval Europe. They were also an important part of the medieval imaginary even in places where Jews had been expelled for hundreds of years.41 Christians used the idea of the Jew and Jewess to address aspects of their own identities, and the way they gendered these images operated in medieval constructions of both the other and the self. As is the case with concepts of “self ” in modernity and postmodernity, one cannot pin down a singular concept of a medieval “sense of self ” or the precise role that notions of gender played in formulating it at any given time.42 Issues of identity that gendered images addressed were contested and in flux. A brief consideration of images of the soul, for example, demonstrates the way in which such iconography offered opportunities for viewers to consolidate or subvert gendered identities.43 Egalitarian theories about the nature of the soul put forth by some church fathers discussed earlier were, perhaps, at the root of the gender-neutral homunculus representing the soul, common in medieval art, whose genitalia is nondescript and irrelevant. And yet, there was a strong medieval impulse to insist that one retained for eternity one’s gender, class, vocation, and other aspects of earthly identity that seemed located in the body. Carolyn Walker Bynum elucidates the medieval “concern for material and structural continuity,” persistent “even where it seemed almost to require philosophical incoherence, theological equivocation, or aesthetic offensiveness.”44 For example, a fourteenth-century representation of the story of Dives and Lazarus shows the beggar and the rich man at the moment of their deaths (Dijon, Bibl. Mun. MS 525, fol. 131v; Fig. 30.4). In spite of being saved, the homunculus representing Lazarus’s soul is marked by the sores that are also visible on his corpse below; it is gendered male with a prominent penis that extends all the way down to the knees. This unusual rendering asserts the continuing existence of one’s own gendered body in the afterlife, which might have been reassuring to those invested in their gendered earthly identity, except that it implies that they will retain

Figure 30.4 Deaths of Dives and Lazarus, Compilation of Literary Texts, France, 1355–62. Dijon, Bibl. Mun. MS 525, fol. 131v. Image courtesy of IHRT.

419

Sherry C. M. Lindquist

disfigurements acquired while living. Lazarus came to be linked with leprosy in the Middle Ages, and leprosy with sexual sin, an association that the soul’s giant phallus here seems to confirm.45 The artist has altered the narrative from Luke 16:19–31 to make it Christ Himself, rather than angels, who takes charge of Lazarus’s soul as it leaves his body. Christ’s expression betrays shock or even revulsion as he gingerly receives the pockmarked and well-endowed soul. Perhaps His sideways glance and grimace are meant to convey dismay at the ravages that Lazarus endured. Perhaps we are to imagine that this is a transitional moment before Lazarus’s soul is cleansed of its frightful earthly residue. It may be, also, that Christ’s expression mirrored and justified the viewer’s own revulsion with lepers, with the poor – the underclass with whom the owner of the book may not have wished to identify. Lazarus’s prominent genitalia may have been a distancing mechanism mitigating the critical message of the parable for the comfortable book-owning class.46 The presence of a prodigious phallus in medieval art was typically a negative marker for the demonic, the poor, and other beings designated as evil or inferior.47 If representing oversized male genitalia on a soul may have lessened the inclination for identification for male viewers, representing souls with female genitalia did not necessarily exclude them. Because the word for soul in Latin, anima, is feminine, and because the soul was to take the inferior or feminine role in its marriage to Christ, medieval representations of the soul encouraged men to identify with souls pictured in feminine bodies. This is the case in a fifteenth-century English book of hours (London, British Library, Harley MS 2887, fol. 69v; Fig. 30.5): in spite of the stomach’s fleshiness – a marker of female attractiveness in the Middle Ages – and apparent lack of penis, the soul pictured is most likely male.48 Here the marker of gender identification is hair rather than genitalia. The close-cropped bowl cut is likely male, since incontestably female souls are shown with breasts and hair flowing below their shoulders.49 Apparently female souls

Figure 30.5 Commendation of the Soul, “The Hours of the Earls of Ormond,” London, before 1467. British Library, Harley MS 2887, fol. 97v. © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

420

The iconography of gender

can be interpreted as personifications of souls, animae with whom both male and female viewers might identify. Male haircuts operated to exclude identification by female viewers more than unambiguously female bodies might have excluded male identification. These complicated examples are among thousands of representations of souls that join many other iconographic puzzles accompanying a new landscape of lay devotion in the later Middle Ages. The souls that go on journeys to heaven and hell, dispute with their bodies, or act out their nuptial relationships with Christ testify to the fluid terms of gender identification in the Middle Ages. Identifiable individual souls, like the figures that Dante encounters, which are imaged to match their earthly body’s gender, are the exception rather than the rule.50 The state of dress or undress of the soul – in no way a consistent semiotic system in medieval art – nevertheless indexes the degree to which their owners and/or creators envisioned gender as part of their eternal core identity.51 There are male bodies in dialogue with their own souls imaged as female, which permits males in particular to imagine their essence encompassing male and female aspects.52 Eroticized versions of the soul doubled as fantasy objects for both male and female viewers whose contemplation enabled a complicated form of self-love.53 Markers of sex difference in representations of souls (or lack thereof) thus offered fertile opportunities for diverse viewers to wrestle with issues of gender identity. The soul is, of course, just one of a great number of iconographic motifs that explicitly or implicitly embed ideas about gender. These include hermaphroditic hybrids; domestic scenes; anatomical diagrams; heraldic displays; gendered monsters, demons, and animals; personifications – among many others that have only begun to receive attention by scholars concerned with parsing their gendered implications. Every body imaged in medieval art has the potential to unlock and enrich our knowledge of the way medieval selfhood was gendered, as well the consequences of this ideological operation in the social arena. Reading medieval iconography through the lens of gender thus opens avenues of research and reveals new perspectives, which must challenge and revise our understanding of medieval art and society as well as its lasting impact on ourselves.

Notes 1 For further analysis of the eccentricities of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of “gender,” see S. Lindquist, “Gender,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012), 113–30. For historiographic surveys of the application of the concept of gender to medieval art, see B. Kurmann-Schwarz, “Gender and Medieval Art,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe (Malden, 2006), 128–58; and M. Caviness, “Feminism, Gender Studies and Medieval Studies,” Diogenes 57 (2010), 409–16. 2 The classic study is J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, 1990). For an overview of the development of Butler’s thought and its influence, see M. Lloyd, “Judith Butler,” in Encyclopedia of Political Thought, ed. M.W. Gibbons (Chichester, 2015), 409–16. 3 J. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91/5 (1986), 1053–75. Scott’s article is one of the most cited historical essays of its time according to A. Shephard and G. Walker, “Gender, Change and Periodisation,” Gender & History 20:3 (2008), 453–62, 455. For recent forums on its legacy, see “Revisiting ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,’” American Historical Review 113:5 (2008), 1344–429; and J. Butler and E. Weed, The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism (Bloomington, 2011). 4 A. Shepard and G. Walker, “Gender, Change and Periodisation,” Gender & History 20:3 (2008), 453–62, 456. See also E. L’Estrange and A. More, Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe: Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600–1530 (Burlington, 2011), esp. 4–5. 5 J. Scott, “Gender: Still a Useful Category of Analysis?” Diogenes 57:7 (2010), 7–14, 13. 6 See J. Butler, who writes that “gender” is the “mechanism by which notions of masculine and feminine are produced and naturalized, but gender might very well also be the apparatus by which such terms are deconstructed and denaturalized”; “Regulation,” in Critical Terms for the Study of Gender, ed. C.R. Stimpson and G.H. Herdt (Chicago, 2014), 411–27, 413. See S. Lindquist, “Gender” (as in note 1), for a demonstration of how a range of gendered meanings is possible in a single work.

421

Sherry C. M. Lindquist 7 M.D. Sheriff, “Seeing beyond the Norm: Interpreting Gender in the Visual Arts,” in The Question of Gender (as in note 3), 161–86, 170. 8 As cited in J. Murray, “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?” in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, ed. L.M. Bitel and F. Lifshitz (Philadelphia, 2008), 34–51, p. 50. 9 For further discussion and additional bibliography, see D. Elliott, “Flesh and Spirit: The Female Body,” in Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition C. 1100–C. 1500, ed. A.J. Minnis and R. Voaden (Turnhout/Belgium, 2010), 13–46. 10 J. Cadden, The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Natural Philosophy, and Culture (Cambridge/New York, 1993), 178. 11 See E.A. Matter, “Undebated Debate: Gender and the Image of God in Medieval Theology,” in Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. T.S. Fenster and C.A. Lees (New York, 2002), 41–55. 12 Jerome, Commentary to the Ephesians, 16, as cited in Murray, “One Flesh” (as in note 8), 42. For discussion and additional bibliography, see M.R. Miles, “‘Becoming Male’: Women Martyrs and Ascetics,” in Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston, 1989), 53–77. J.T. Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, Ca. 500–1100 (Chicago, 1998); D. Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200–1500, 1st ed., The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, 2012). 13 Murray, “One Flesh, Two Sexes” (as in note 8); S. Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge/Rochester, 2001). R. Evans, S. Salih, and A. Bernau, Medieval Virginities (Toronto/Buffalo, 2003). 14 K. Ambrose, “Male Nudes and Embodied Spirituality in Romanesque Sculpture,” in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. S.C.M. Lindquist (Farnham/Burlington, 2012), 65–83, 75–76; and his The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay: The Art of Monastic Viewing (Toronto, 2006), 39–44. 15 For discussion of contrasting sanctified nudity with lascivious clothed figures in medieval art, see M. Easton, “Uncovering the Meanings of Nudity in the Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry,” in The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, ed. S.C.M. Lindquist (Farnham/Burlington, 2012), 149–81. 16 A. Cohen and A. Derbes, “Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim,” Gesta 40 (2001), 19–38. 17 For an analysis of the cupola mosaics of San Marco, Venice, in this light see P.H. Jolly, Made in God’s Image?: Eve and Adam in the Genesis Mosaics at San Marco,Venice (Berkeley, 1997). 18 For a thorough art historical analysis of the images in Hildegard of Bingen’s visionary text Scivias, see L.E. Saurma-Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen im “Liber Scivias” der Hildegard von Bingen: die Wucht der Vision und die Ordnung eer Bilder (Wiesbaden, 1998). See also M.H. Caviness, “‘To See, Hear, and Know All at Once’: Hildegard of Bingen as a Creative Artist,” in Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, ed. B. Newman (1998), 110–24. On Hildegard’s theology, see B. Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (Berkeley, 1997). 19 See A.L. Clark, “The Priesthood of the Virgin Mary: Gender Trouble in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 18:1 (2002), 5–24; and P.Y. Cardile, “Mary as Priest: Mary’s Sacerdotal Position in the Visual Arts,” Arte Cristiana 72 (1984), 199–208. 20 An early and still useful treatment of this question is P.S. Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago, 1985). 21 M. Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 1976). 22 This diversity is on display in M. Rubin’s Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven, 2009). For studies arguing for the positive consequences of certain images of the Eve/Mary opposition, see B. Williamson, “The Virgin Lactans as Second Eve: Image of the Salvatrix,” Studies in Iconography 19 (1998), 105–38; and A. Dunlop, “Flesh and the Feminine: Early-Renaissance Images of the Madonna with Eve at Her Feet,” Oxford Art Journal 25:2 (2002), 129–47. 23 C.W. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987). 24 C.W. Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982). 25 M. Easton, “The Wound of Christ, the Mouth of Hell: Appropriations and Inversions of Female Anatomy in the Later Middle Ages,” in Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Studies for Jonathan J.G. Alexander, ed. G.B. Guest, E. Inglis, and S. L’Engle (London, 2006), 395–409; F. Lewis, “The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response,” in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. L. Smith and J.H.M. Taylor (Toronto, 1996), 204–29. 26 On the female body as monstrous, see M.R. Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston, 1989), esp. 160–63; J. Ruda, “Satan’s Body: Religion and Gender Parody in Late Medieval Italy,” Viator 37 (2006), 319–50; and J.J. Paxson, “The Nether-Faced Devil and the Allegory of Parturition,” Studies in Iconography 19 (1998), 130–76.

422

The iconography of gender 27 L. Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (Chicago, 1996). 28 C.W. Bynum, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg,” Renaissance Quarterly 39:3 (1986), 399–439; Steinberg responds to Bynum in the revised version of his Sexuality of Christ (as in note 27), 364–89. 29 For discussion, see P. Sheingorn, “Joseph the Carpenter’s Failure at Familial Discipline,” in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebrations of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art., ed. C. Hourihane (2002), 156–67; P. Sheingorn, “‘Illustris Patriarcha Joseph’: Jean Gerson, Representations of Saint Joseph, and Imagining Community among Churchmen in the Fifteenth Century,” in Visions of Community in the Pre-Modern World, ed. N. Howe (Notre Dame, 2002), 75–108. C. Hahn, “Joseph Will Perfect, Mary Enlighten, and Jesus Save Thee’: The Holy Family as Marriage Model in the Merode Triptych,” Art Bulletin 68:1 (1986), 54–66. 30 Visual sources in lay contexts have much more to reveal on this point; see, for example, R.C. Trexler, “Gendering Jesus Crucified,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. B. Cassiday (Princeton, 1993), 107–20. 31 See my discussion of the problem in “Visualizing Female Sexuality in Medieval Cultures,” Different Visions 5 (2014), 1–24. 32 Jeffrey Hamburger’s work, groundbreaking in drawing our attention to the art of the female religious, aligns with Bynum’s view that its sexual implications are mostly irrelevant to its medieval significance; see, for example, his Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley, 1997), 218–19, 222. 33 R.C. Trexler, “Gendering Jesus Crucified,” (as in note 30). 34 For an examination of this miniature in its larger manuscript and historical contexts, see S. Lindquist, “Masculinist Devotion: Flaying and Flagellation in the Belles Heures,” Flaying in the Premodern World: Practice and Representation, ed. L. Tracy (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2016), pp. 174–207. See also M. Camille, “‘For Our Devotion and Pleasure’: The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de Berry Art History,” Art History 24 (2001), 169–94. 35 This operation resembles the function of sexualized images in the cloister as mechanism of and testimony to the struggles of monks against corporeal desire as described by T. Dale, “The Nude at Moissac: Vision, Phantasia, and the Experience of Romanesque Sculpture,” in Current Perspectives in Romanesque Sculpture Studies, ed. K. Ambrose and R. Maxwell (Turnhout, 2011), 61–76. 36 See K. Whittington, “Queer,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012), 157–68; and R. Mills, Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2014). 37 On this useful construct, see J.J. Cohen, Medieval Identity Machines (Minneapolis, 2003). 38 M. Caviness, “Anglo-Saxon Women, Norman Knights and a ‘Third Sex’ in the Bayeux Embroidery,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations, ed. M.K. Foys, K.E. Overbey, and D. Terkla (Woodbridge/ Rochester, 2009), 84–118. 39 There have been few art historical studies that examine the intersection of gender and the poor, but see K. Dimitrova, “Class, Sex, and the Other: The Representation of Peasants in a Set of Late Medieval Tapestries,” Viator 38:2 (2007), 85–125. Literary and historical studies suggest that this is fertile ground for research; see S.A. Farmer, “The Beggar’s Body: Intersections of Gender and Social Status in High Medieval Paris,” in Monks & Nuns, Saints & Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society: Essays in Honor of Lester K. Little, ed. S.A. Farmer and B.H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, 2000), 153–71; and P.H. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford, 1999), 157–73. 40 S. Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (New York, 2014), 201–37. See also C.A. Bradbury, “Picturing Maternal Anxiety in the Miracle of the Jew of Bourges,” Medieval Feminist Forum 47:2 (2012), 34–56. For the implications of Jewish biblical characters and abstractions such as Synagoga, see N. Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge/New York, 2011), esp. 40–81; and H. Abramson, “A Ready Hatred: Depictions of the Jewish Woman in Medieval Antisemitic Art and Caricature,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 62 (1996), 1–18. 41 J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, 1999). 42 For discussion of the concept of “self ” in the Middle Ages, see R. Ganze, “The Medieval Sense of Self,” in Misconceptions about the Middle Ages, ed. S.J. Harris and B.L. Grigsby (New York, 2008), 102–16. 43 There is no comprehensive study of souls in medieval art, but see M. Barasch, “The Departing Soul: The Long Life of a Medieval Creation,” Artibus et Historiae 26:52 (2005), 13–28. 44 C.W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), 11.

423

Sherry C. M. Lindquist 45 For an exploration of the intersection of the iconography of gender, sexuality, leprosy, and the poor, see E. Gertsman, “Si Grant Ardor: Transgression and Transformation in the Pühavaimu Altarpiece,” Different Visions 5 (2014), 1–30. 46 An early owner of this compilation of literary texts is identified inside the back cover as “Jehan Regnault, demeurent a Dijon.” For a description of the manuscript and additional bibliography, see G.M. Cropp, “Les Manuscrits du Livre de Boece de Consolacion,” Revue d’histoire des textes 12 (1985), 263–352, esp. 280–82. 47 On oversized genitals as indexes of difference and monstrosity, see D. Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Montreal, 1996), 160; and S. Salih, “The Medieval Looks Back,” in Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, ed. E. Campbell and R. Mills (New York, 2004), 223–31. 48 A description and additional bibliography on this manuscript are available at the British Library’s website: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_50001. 49 For an example of a female soul with these characteristics, see a Flemish book of hours made for the English market, c. 1470, NYC, Morgan Library, MS M.93 fol. 125v, described at http://ica.themorgan. org/manuscript/page/22/77343. 50 As evident in an illustrated version of the Divine Comedy in London, British Library, Egerton 943. Even so, the operation is not necessarily straightforward; see J. Schnapp, “Dante’s Sexual Solecisms: Gender and Genre in the Commedia,” in The New Medievalism, ed. M.S. Brownlee, K. Brownlee, and S.G. Nichols (Baltimore, 1991), 201–25. 51 For a case in which souls in hell and limbo are shown naked while souls in purgatory and heaven are shown clothed, see a copy of the Speculum humanae salvationis, France, c. 1470–80, Marseille, Bibl. Mun. MS 89, fol. 28v. 52 See, for example, an illustration of Jean Gerson’s Spiritual Poverty, Bruges, mid-fifteenth century, Paris, BnF, MS 190, fol. 1r, discussed in S.C.M. Lindquist, “Luxuriating in Poverty and Philosophy: Some Unusual Nudes in the Manuscripts of Louis of Bruges,” in Staging the Court of Burgundy, ed. A.v. Oosterwijk (Turnhout, 2013), 325–34. 53 See, for example, an illumination by Loiset Liedet of the Soul Personified as a Woman in Dialog with Her Heart, illustrating Le Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance by René of Anjou, Hesdin, before 1468, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 165, fol. 31r.

424

31 FEMINIST ART HISTORY AND MEDIEVAL ICONOGRAPHY Martha Easton

Simply defined, the standard definition of feminism is the advocacy for the social, economic, and political rights of women to ensure that they are guaranteed equal status with men.1 The word in English is derived from the French féminisme, first used in a very particular historical moment, during the social unrest in late nineteenth-century France when women struggled to promote their rights.2 Feminist approaches to art history became popular in conjunction with the large-scale shift in awareness and activism surrounding women’s issues in the 1970s, and art historians used feminist theory to interrogate the ideological construction of gender, and in particular, the way that women have been underrepresented as active makers of art, and objectified as passive subjects. The concept of feminist iconography is probably most appropriately applied to modern artists, particularly beginning in the 1970s, who created works to highlight contemporary social and political causes, and these artists were and are, by and large, female.3 On occasion, these contemporary artists took their inspiration from the medieval past; Judy Chicago’s iconic Dinner Party invited a number of medieval women to the dinner table, including Brigit, Theodora, Hrotsvit, Trotula, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, Petronilla de Meath, Christine de Pizan, and Isabella d’Este, among the other women Chicago and her researchers felt had been left out of a male-constructed history.4 Other feminist artists were inspired by medieval art; Nancy Spero created a Rockette-style kickline of interlocked Kilpeck sheela-na-gigs as a way of reclaiming and defusing the sexualized and monstrous female nude.5 In this sense, it is more difficult to think of medieval iconography that is specifically feminist in nature that intentionally promoted the cause of women’s equality or concerns. Rather, it is probably more useful to analyze the way that scholars have employed feminist theory to interrogate the iconography of medieval art. The use of feminist theory as a tool to analyze medieval visual culture has followed a trajectory, with shifts in attention and interest. Like feminist art historians who focused on post-Renaissance periods, early feminist scholarship on medieval art made an attempt to recover forgotten female artists, inspired by Linda Nochlin’s groundbreaking article, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”6 Nochlin’s title was deliberately facetious, and while she explored the social and cultural barriers that barred women from artistic success (particularly in the nineteenth century, the inability of women to study the live nude model), some scholars took her title as a challenge. This was more productive for artists from later periods; the identification of artists is notoriously elusive in medieval art history, and therefore the association of particular bodies of work with particular 425

Martha Easton

figures is necessarily based on stylistic analysis, which in itself has fallen out of favor as a method of scholarly inquiry. Nevertheless, the recovery of female artists from the Middle Ages was one of the first feminist-inspired projects, although not all participants in this enterprise would necessarily identify themselves as feminist scholars.7 Iconography is sometimes seen as a fruitful diagnostic tool in determining authorship, with the idea that female artists might have been drawn to particular sorts of subjects, such as images of female saints, or women in general, although this sort of assumption, both for female producers and consumers of art, has more recently been called into question. There are many obstacles to determining the role of women in the creation of images. We sometimes have textual evidence of women’s involvement with the arts, but no actual objects; perhaps the most famous example of this is Christine de Pizan’s description of the manuscript illuminator Anastaise, whom she praises for her beautiful manuscript borders and miniature backgrounds;8 it should be noted that Anastaise’s marginalized status as a female illuminator extends to the areas of the manuscript she is responsible for painting. We also have examples where the objects themselves are the sole remaining evidence of female authorship. While determining the so-called self-portrait is tricky in medieval art, it has been tempting to identify the woman swinging from the initial “Q” with the name “Claricia” inscribed above her head, in the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century South German Psalter now in the Walters Art Museum, as the artist of the image and others in the manuscript.9 If we read the image as reflecting reality, which is a problematic thing to do, Claricia’s dress suggests that she might be a lay student at a convent, and convents in general seem to be a place for female creators of all kinds – writers, textile workers, and illuminators; often the objects created by nuns were for their own devotional use.10 One of the most well-known examples of a female religious author/creator is Hildegard of Bingen, and scholars have attempted to determine how much control she had over the illustration of her works.11 The same can be said for Christine de Pizan herself; while she is often pictured in author portraits in manuscripts of her own texts, it is not clear how much, if any, control she had over the decoration of these manuscripts, or her own self-image. The initial focus on the recovery of female artists from the Middle Ages relatively quickly changed to investigations of medieval representations of women, and the way that such images served as vehicles to examine attitudes toward women. It is in the depiction of medieval women, and in the reception of these images, that we can best think about feminist interpretations of medieval iconography. Feminist historians of medieval art have been influenced by theories of the gaze, as formulated in particular by film critic Laura Mulvey, and the way that images of women both reflect and reinscribe cultural norms. There are a number of essential sources that consider the ways that women were imaged in medieval art, and they are a useful place to understand both the variety and the codification of medieval depictions of women.12 One of the earliest publications to consider the way particular themes illuminate the construction of gender roles in medieval society focused on Eve and Mary as dichotomous antitypes,13 and these two figures often function as vehicles to explore medieval attitudes toward women.14 Other biblical and holy figures have inspired feminist interpretations, often because they serve as models for medieval women of proper behavior both in and out of the church.15 Mary Magdalene, in her role as penitent sinner, shares the qualities of both Eve and Mary, and thus she is a popular figure both in medieval iconography and in feminist contextualizations of the ideological work performed by such images.16 Binary oppositions are common constructions in medieval art, apparent not only in biblical models but also in the personifications of the virtues and vices,17 and even in the spatial location of donors in altarpieces.18 Feminist scholars have also focused on images of women depicted in the roles they occupied in medieval society – as queens,19 as wives, and as mothers.20 Often feminist analyses of medieval iconography pressure interpretations to move beyond the obvious, to understand that there might be multiple ways of understanding an image, and thus 426

Feminist art history

images themselves not only reflect but also help to construct social mores and cultural assumptions. For example, images of female martyrs are not just figures of devotion to be admired for their faith and sacrifice; depending on their presentation, context, and audience, they may also be spectacles of sado-erotic titillation.21 The body has been a popular theme, as has more recently nudity, sexuality, eroticism, and obscenity;22 whereas an earlier art history imagined that the most well-known examples of medieval art had religious or devotional intentions at their heart, with the assumption that such images were fundamentally straightforward and unproblematic in their object/viewer interaction, more recent work has muddied these essentialist views and posited more nuanced ways that images might be consumed. Feminist scholars have also done the fundamental work of bringing once overlooked works of art into the center of scholarship, and thus manuscript marginalia,23 misericords,24 sheela-na-gigs,25 secular ivories, and other such objects have drawn increasing attention.26 Feminist scholars have focused their attention on the art of Western Europe, and primarily on the art of the central and later Middle Ages; there has been comparatively little work done on early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic art, although there are some exceptions.27 On the other hand, there are a number of publications in these areas on the gender fluidity apparent in early representations of Christ;28 for example, the baptism scenes in the Orthodox and Arian baptisteries in Ravenna are remarkably similar, except that the figure of Christ in the latter is represented with a softly voluptuous body, even with the suggestion of breasts. The maternal, feminine, and sexualized characteristics of Christ,29 and the masculinization of both religious and secular women,30 have also been topics explored by art historians and other medievalists interested in the ideological construction of gender in both text and image. In more recent years, the focus of feminist art historians has shifted yet again, perhaps as a reaction against earlier scholarship that understood medieval images of women as primarily embodying negative stereotypes of women typical of a fundamentally patriarchal society. Therefore, a great deal of more recent work has centered on the positive agency of women. The idea of women as “makers” of art has been reconfigured to consider the numerous ways that medieval women were involved in the production of art and architecture, not simply as artists but also as patrons, donors, owners, and users; an important contribution has used the word “maker” in its title.31 Scholars have focused on the way women commissioned and/or consumed objects, such as seals,32 stained-glass windows,33 ivories (both devotional and decorative),34 and, especially, illuminated manuscripts.35 The iconography of self-representation factors in such explorations, particularly in images of women with the objects that they either commissioned, owned, or used. There has been particular interest in the images of women with books, and Books of Hours, above all, were the manuscripts most likely for women to use and pass on to other family members.36 Images of women holding books contained within the books themselves have been interpreted as “portraits” of the owners, as serving as models of devotional practice, and perhaps even as vehicles of self-representation.37 How did women respond to objects that were not constructed or commissioned by them, but even so were created for their consumption? By way of a brief case study I would like to consider how women might have reacted to images of so-called courtly love on ivory objects. The trade in ivory was brisk in the later Middle Ages, and many objects were produced with both religious and secular themes, particularly in fourteenth-century Paris. While ivories have received a growing amount of scholarly attention in recent years, most scholarship has focused on items used in personal devotion, such as statuettes of the Virgin and Child, or plaques depicting the scenes from the Passion or the Coronation of the Virgin. With a few important exceptions,38 there has not been as much interest in secular ivories, although the establishment of the Gothic Ivories database will make further research much more efficient.39 Similarly, while the textual traditions 427

Martha Easton

of courtly love have been a source of great scholarly interest, there has not been as much work on the depiction of courtly love themes in art. The vast majority of courtly love scenes appear on items that were used by women: combs, gravoirs (or hair parters), caskets, and other objects associated with the toilette. By far the greatest number of surviving secular ivories from the fourteenth century is mirror backs; a polished metal disc would have been placed on the other side, but there are few that survive intact from the Middle Ages. It is thought that often these items were gifts presented by men to women, and thus it seems significant that so many of these images were placed on mirrors – women gaze into a mirror and see themselves reflected in the scene, much as do the personifications of Vanity, thereby participating in their own objectification as sight and sexual goal. At first glance these romantic encounters look like fairly innocuous scenes of couples engaged in sedate flirtations. The growing popularity of courtly love poetry and images of secular romance during the later Middle Ages has sometimes been characterized as indicating positive changes in the status of women, at least in part connected to the rise of the cult of the Virgin Mary. The codification of chivalry is often seen as religious homage to Mary transferred to a secular realm, in which the knight kneels before his lady and proclaims her superiority and his undying allegiance. However, an examination of some of the images of courtly love produced during the later Middle Ages suggests a different interpretation. Particularly when these images are examined in conjunction with medieval texts, such as romances, poetry, and fabliaux, it becomes clear that many of them are visualized sexual metaphors. Rather than proclaiming the superiority of the female sex, much of the standard iconography conflates adoration and eroticism, with allusions to seduction and illicit love, often with underlying hints of deceit, violence, and even rape.40 One of the most common motifs in the courtly love canon is that of the crowned lover; usually the man kneels before his lady while she places a round circlet, or chaplet, on his head. Rather than serving as an innocuous symbol of the confirmation of love, the crowning of a lover perhaps connotes the sex act itself. This is more explicit in a mirror case in which the scenes take place in a castle setting (Fig. 31.1). The man kneels to accept his crown, and then hastens to follow his lady as she points up the stairs, where by implication the couple will indulge in further

Figure 31.1 Mirror cover: Scenes of lovers, 1340–60, Ivory, 0.7 × diam. 9 cm (1/4 × 3 9/16 in.) Gift of Mrs. Albert E. McVitty. Princeton University Art Museum, (y1954-61). Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane.

428

Feminist art history

erotic pleasures. The chaplet itself, with its suggestively round shape, is likely a visual metaphor for the female genitalia, joining an array of such motifs used in medieval images and literature, with small, furry animals, such as squirrels, rabbits, and mice, perhaps the most familiar.41 Couples playing chess are also popular themes on courtly love mirrors; the game in progress is not just the game of chess but also the game of love. In one example, the attendant standing behind the woman holds a chaplet, and the one behind the man holds a falcon, which along with other hunting motifs connotes romantic pursuit, underscoring what is really in play here (Fig. 31.2).42 More pointed are the vulvic drapery folds of the woman’s garment43 and the phallic pole grasped by the man, while the parted curtains above the scene are suggestive both of bed curtains and, even more explicitly, of female anatomy.44 Some ivories depict a God of Love tossing arrows from his treetop perch; in one, the arrows of the God of Love in juxtaposition with the chaplet and the falcon create a conglomeration of suggestive imagery and emphasize the aggressive nature of the sexuality portrayed here (Fig. 31.3).

Figure 31.2 Mirror cover: Chess Game, fourteenth century, Paris, France. Paris, Musée du Louvre. Image courtesy of Colum Hourihane.

Figure 31.3 Mirror cover: The God of Love and a Couple, 1300–1320, Paris, France. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.© Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

429

Martha Easton

Figure 31.4 Mirror cover: Pairs of Lovers, fourteenth century, France. Photo © Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels.

Another French mirror shows two pairs of lovers engaged in amorous embraces flanking a central pair; they appear to be making some sort of pledge on a sword, but the weapon is in the shape of an enormous phallus (Fig. 31.4). In fact, in many Old French fabliaux, a common euphemism for the sex act is “battre” or to beat, and many graphic descriptions of sexual liaisons include metaphors of violence.45 The fabliaux often portray women as ready and eager for sex, generally fully complicit in a sexual activity even if it is forced, or means cuckolding a husband. A woman may be deceived initially by the seducer, but she is usually pleased to participate fully in the ensuing act. The famous story in Boccaccio’s Decameron of the young, beautiful, and sexually innocent girl Alibech (Day 3, Tenth Story) has a similar trajectory; she leaves her home and material possessions behind in order that she may better “serve God” and she comes upon the cell of a young religious hermit named Rustico, who cannot battle his temptation to seduce her. He convinces her that she is the means of his salvation, if only she will let him put his “devil” into her “hell,” which they do so many times that finally Rustico begs to be left in peace. The use of ivory objects for scenes of courtly love is particularly suggestive, since the material properties of ivory itself can underscore the way the resistance of women to sexual overtures was understood in medieval culture. It is said that authentic ivory warms to the touch the longer it is held, in a manner consistent with the way women were described in medieval literature as compliant and complicit in their own seductions, with any initial hesitation quickly turning into insatiable desire. The focus on violence and aggression in lovemaking, often encouraged or at least tolerated by women, is illustrated in the extremely popular motif of the Castle of Love, which appears in manuscripts as well as in a large number of ivory caskets and mirror cases. The standard depiction includes a fortress attacked by knights and ineffectively defended by women throwing roses 430

Feminist art history

Figure 31.5 Roundel with scenes of the attack on the Castle of Love, c. 1320–40, Paris, France, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 2003.

(Fig. 31.5). It is not difficult to see that the castle is really a substitute for the female body, an edifice waiting, even wanting, to be penetrated, particularly since roses could be used as poetic substitutes for female genitalia, and thus the women are throwing themselves, so to speak, at their male invaders. As I have discussed elsewhere,46 the literary passage most closely aligned to the visual image of the siege of the Castle of Love takes place in the conclusion of the Roman de la Rose, the most popular work in French of the late Middle Ages. When the protagonist Amant succeeds in his pursuit and seduction of the Rose, the final act is described as a relentless attack on an ivory tower, just as the mirror backs and other objects with the Castle of Love depict a building populated by defenseless women and overwhelmed by heavily armed men. And so how did women react to these courtly love scenes, which seem to represent the world of seduction and sex ordered through male eyes but consumed by their own? In our search to recover the meaning of images, it is often just as difficult to understand audience reception as it is artistic intention. But at the same time that these “courtly love” ivories were produced in vast numbers, there was a recognizable voice of resistance. Christine de Pizan, although born in 1365 in Venice, lived most of her life in Paris, the center of ivory production. She is of course famous for her writings which extolled the virtues of women, and she was often responding in direct opposition to prevailing attitudes of the time. As one of the main correspondents in the famous Quarrel of the Roman de la Rose, she disparaged the work for its immorality and antifemale speeches. Even more significantly, she wrote The Book of the City of Ladies, defending women against misogynist attacks by men; in the book, Christine as narrator is visited by three crowned ladies, Reason, Rectitude, and Justice, who instruct her how to build the City of Ladies, populated by virtuous women culled from history (just as six hundred years later, Judy Chicago invites 431

Martha Easton

them to her dinner party, and includes Christine herself among their number). All three women carry attributes, and that of Lady Reason is a mirror, but here, the combination of mirror and woman is not indicative of vice, or a passive sight to be enjoyed by men, but rather a vehicle of personal awareness rather than vain self-involvement. Christine’s examination of good women is a reworking of Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, in which he writes about famous pagan women from history – notable contemporary women he considered too few to mention, and women in religious history were excluded as he felt they did not act in accordance with human nature. One of Christine’s innovations was her insistence that only virtuous women be included, both pagan and Christian, and that they be allowed into her City on the basis of their own merits rather than by a comparison of their deeds to those of men. The motif of the City of Ladies alludes to Augustine’s City of God, but it is likely that it is also in response to these common images of the Castle of Love, particularly since Christine’s City seems to invert the trope of the building containing ineffectual women, and reverse the motif of the female body as a penetrable structure highlighted in the very literary work that Christine so passionately denounced. Lady Reason assures Christine that “this City, which you will found with our help, will never be destroyed, nor will it ever fall . . . Although it will be stormed by numerous assaults, it will never be taken or conquered.”47 Christine specifically addresses the issue of rape in the Book of the City of Ladies. She tells Rectitude, “I am . . . troubled and grieved when men argue that many women want to be raped and that it does not bother them at all to be raped by men even when they verbally protest.” Rectitude answers, “Rest assured dear friend, chaste ladies who live honestly take absolutely no pleasure in being raped. Indeed, rape is the greatest possible sorrow for them.”48 Christine’s City populated by virtuous women is transformed into a castle of female intellectual capability rather than an easily overwhelmed edifice/orifice, and she reappropriates the mirror and the castle as objects of female power and agency rather than passivity and penetration. Christine’s writings are an impassioned response to misogynist works such as the Roman de la Rose, and to the encoded world of courtly love visualized in medieval secular ivories. In a later work, The Book of the Three Virtues, Christine specifically addresses the hypocrisy and deceitfulness inherent within the art of courtly love, and warns women to beware the pitfalls of illicit romance.49 It is difficult to know if her opinions were widely shared, or if other women were socialized to accept the roles they were expected to play. Based on the condition of the ivory objects that survive (the detached mirror backs, the broken comb teeth), we know that they were heavily used. Since Christine lived in Paris and was a writer for several dukes at the court, she probably saw these ivory combs, caskets, and mirrors, and one wonders what she might have made of them. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that she owned such an item herself. It is deeply satisfying to find a passionate advocate for women speaking up for herself. Feminist scholars of the Middle Ages have also highlighted Marie de France; one of the few female authors of romantic poetry, in some of her famous lais she seems to upend constructions of gender, with female protagonists who pursue and save their men, rather than the other way around. But the popularity of such figures in our time may underscore how unusual they were in their own – women like Christine, or Eleanor of Aquitaine, or Hildegard of Bingen, or Margery Kempe, or Joan of Arc, are restudied and reimagined over and over again. In the recently published Oxford Handbook on Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (which sadly includes almost no art historical scholarship), E. Jane Burns suggests that in the courtly world, agency is not in fact rigidly binary, but rather fluctuates depending on subject positions that are not necessarily tied to gender;50 however, it could be said that the idea of agency itself may be masculinized and privileged. Feminist theory in general, once seen as either radical, inconsequential, or, above all, anachronistic for the study of medieval art, and therefore dismissed and marginalized (as were many 432

Feminist art history

of the objects that feminist scholars of medieval art studied), is now rich enough to have its own historiography and works of reference. Recent articles by Marian Bleeke, Jennifer Borland, and Rachel Dressler have traced the way that feminist scholarship has impacted the study of medieval visual culture.51 Students and scholars who are interested in feminist theory, or in images that are ripe for critical analyses informed by feminism and gender theory, have a number of resources at their disposal. The massive Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret Schaus, provides short entries, with accompanying essential bibliography, on a large variety of topics.52 Schaus is also the editor of the ever-expanding database Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index, which recently began including images along with its bibliographic citations and helpful abstracts of books, articles, and book reviews.53 And yet, as I discussed in my article “Feminism,” written for the special issue of Studies in Iconography devoted to critical terms in medieval art history,54 feminism as a methodological tool seems to have fallen out of fashion and other theoretical approaches have risen to take its place. Yet even these new strategies for analyzing images connect to feminism in some way. For example, the more recent material turn in medieval art history, with its emphasis on the pleasure inherent in the sight and touch of the physical object, creates a focus on the tangible and embodied image that becomes a pseudo-erotic encounter with the object under study, emulating in some sense the lure that the female body was believed to possess for its medieval (and modern) viewers.55 In addition, the focus on the agency of the inanimate object is perhaps inspired by the way feminist artists and art historians have given a voice to medieval women, by problematizing their representation, and recognizing their power as people who made, used, donated, commissioned, looked at, and responded to medieval art.

Notes 1 Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/69192?redirectedFrom=feminism#eid. 2 See the discussion in C.G. Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany, 1984). 3 N. Broude and M.D. Garrard (ed.), The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact (New York, 1994). 4 For more on The Dinner Party, see Amelia Jones, “The ‘Sexual Politics’ of The Dinner Party: A Critical Context,” in Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art after Postmodernism, ed. N. Broude and M.D. Garrard (Berkeley, 2005), 409–33. 5 See J. Withers, “Nancy Spero’s American-Born Sheela-na-gig,” Feminist Studies 17 (1991), 51–56. 6 L. Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Art News 69 (January 1971), 22–39, 67–71. 7 One of the earliest publications on medieval women artists was D. Miner, Anastaise and Her Sisters: Women Artists of the Middle Ages (Baltimore, 1974), which was derived from an earlier lecture. See also C. Havice, “Women and the Production of Art in the Middle Ages: The Significance of Context,” in Double Vision: Perspectives on Gender and the Visual Arts,” ed. N.H. Bluestone (Cranbury, 1995), 67–94; and A.W. Carr, “Women Artists in the Middle Ages: ‘The Dark Is Light Enough,’” in Dictionary of Women Artists, ed. Delia Gaze (London/Chicago, 1997), 3–21. 8 Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. E.J. Richards (New York, 1982, 1998), 85 (I.41.4). 9 The Claricia Psalter, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W. 26, fol. 64r. See L. Ross, Artists of the Middle Ages (Westport, 2003), 141. 10 J. Frings and J. Gerehow, Krone un Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern (Munich, 2005); J. Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York, 1998); and J. Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of A Medieval Convent (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1997). 11 Madeline Caviness has several publications on Hildegard; see especially M. Caviness, “Hildegard as the Designer of the Illustrations to Her Works,” in Hildegard of Bingen: The Context of Her Thought and Art, ed. C. Burnett and P. Dronke (London, 1998), 29–63. 12 M. Bleeke, J. Borland, R. Dressler, M. Easton, and E. L’Estrange, “Artistic Representation: Women and/ in Visual Culture,” in A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, ed. K.M. Phillips (London, 2013), 179–213; J.L. Carroll and A.G. Stewart, Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in

433

Martha Easton

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

Medieval and Modern Europe (Burlington, 2003); M. Caviness, Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy (Philadelphia, 2001); C. Grössinger, Picturing Women in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (Manchester/New York, 1997); S. Smith, The Power of Women: A Topos in Medieval Art and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995); and C. Frugoni, “The Imagined Woman,” trans. C. Botsford, in A History of Women: Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. C. Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge, 1992), 336–422. H. Kraus, “Eve and Mary: Conflicting Images of Medieval Women,” in Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, ed. N. Broude and M.D. Garrard (New York, 1982), 78–99. The article was originally published in 1967. For Eve, see especially M. Meyer, “Eve’s Nudity: A Sign of Shame or Precursor of Christological Economy,” in Between Judaism and Christianity: Art Historical Essays in Honor of Elisheva (Elizabeth) Revel Neher, ed. K. Kogman-Appel and M. Meyer (Leiden/Boston, 2009), 243–58; A.S. Cohen and A. Derbes, “Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim,” Gesta 40:1 (2001), 19–38; B. Williamson, “The Virgin ‘Lactans’ as Second Eve: Image of the ‘Salvatrix,’” Studies in Iconography 19 (1998), 105–38; and P.H. Jolly, Made in God’s Image? Eve and Adam in the Genesis Mosaics at San Marco, Venice (Berkeley, 1997). For Mary, see especially E. Gertsman, Worlds Within: Opening the Medieval Shrine Madonna (University Park, 2015); M. Katz (ed.), Divine Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in the Visual Arts (Oxford, 2001); M. Vassilaki (ed.), Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium (London, 2001); A. Neff, “The Pain of Compassio: Mary’s Labor at the Foot of the Cross,” Art Bulletin 80:2 (1998), 254–73; M. Miles, “The Virgin’s One Bare Breast: Nudity, Gender, and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,” in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, ed. N. Broude and M.D. Garrard (New York, 1992), 27–37; P.S. Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago, 1985); and I. Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculpture of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, 1972). A.A. Jordan, “Material Girls: Judith, Esther, Narrative Modes and Models of Queenship in the Windows of the Ste.-Chapelle,” Word and Image 15:4 (1999), 337–50; G.B. Guest, “Picturing Women in the First Bible Moralisée,” in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2002), 106–30; J.A. Holladay, “Relics, Reliquaries, and Religious Women: Visualizing the Holy Virgins of Cologne,” Studies in Iconography 18 (1997), 67–118; and K. Ashley and P. Sheingorn, Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens, 1990). P.H. Jolly, Picturing the “Pregnant Magdalene in Northern Art, 1430–1550: Addressing and Undressing the Sinner-Saint (Burlington, 2014); M.E. Carrasco, “The Imagery of the Magdalen in Christina of Markyate’s Psalter (St. Alban’s Psalter),” Gesta 38:1 (1999), 67–80; and S. Haskins, Susan, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (London, 1993). N. Rowe, “Rethinking Ecclesia and Synagoga in the Thirteenth Century,” in Gothic Art and Thought in the Later Medieval Period: Essays in Honor of Willibald Sauerländer, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2011), 264–91; and C. Karkov, “Broken Bodies and Singing Tongues: Gender and Voice in the Cambridge, Corpus Christi 23 ‘Psychomachia,’” Anglo-Saxon England 30 (2001), 115–36. C. Schleif, “Men on the Right – Women on the Left: (A)symmetrical Spaces and Gendered Places,” in Women’s Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church, ed. V.C. Raguin and S. Stanbury (Albany, 2005), 207–49. K. Nolan, Queens in Stone and Silver: The Creation of a Visual Imagery of Queenship in Capetian France (New York, 2009); and T. Martin, The Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain (Leiden/Boston, 2006). C.J. Brown, “Grief, Rape, and Suicide as Consolation of the Queen: Ambivalent Images of Female Rulers in the Books of Anne de Bretagne,” Journal of the Early Book Society 4 (2001), 172–201. E. L’Estrange, Elizabeth, Holy Motherhood: Gender Dynasty and Visual Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 2008); G.M. Gibson, “Scene and Obscene: Seeing and Performing Late Medieval Childbirth,” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29:1 (1999), 7–24; A.R. Stanton, “From Eve to Bathsheba and Beyond: Motherhood in the Queen Mary Psalter,” in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. J.M. Taylor and L. Smith (London/Toronto, 1996), 172–89; P. Sheingorn, “The Wise Mother: The Image of Saint Anne Teaching the Virgin Mary” Gesta 32:1 (1993), 69–80; and R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarian Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, 1990). J. Borland, “Violence on Vellum: Saint Margaret’s Transgressive Body and Its Audience,” in Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe: Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600–1530, ed. E. L’Estrange and A. More (Aldershot, 2011), 67–88; L.A. Callahan, “The Torture of Saint Apollonia:

434

Feminist art history

22

23

24 25

26 27

28 29

30

31 32 33 34

35

Deconstructing Fouquet’s Martyrdom Stage,” Studies in Iconography 16 (1994), 119–38; M. Easton, “Saint Agatha and the Sanctification of Sexual Violence,” Studies in Iconography 16 (1994), 83–118. See, for example, S. Lindquist and M. Meyers (ed.), “Female Sexualities,” Different Visions 5 (2014), http:// differentvisions.org/issue-five/; S. Lindquist (ed.), The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art (London, 2012); M. Easton, “Was It Good For You, Too? Medieval Erotic Art and Its Audiences,” Different Visions 1 (2008), http://differentvisions.org/one.html; M.H. Caviness, “Retomando la Iconografia Vaginal/ Revisiting Vaginal Iconography,” Quintana: Revista do Departmento de Historia da Arte, Universidade Santiago de Compostela 6 (2007), 13–37; T. Kren, “Looking at Louis XII’s Bathsheba,” in A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII, ed. T. Kren and M. Evans (Los Angeles, 2005), 43–61; and M. Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York, 1998); and J.M. Ziolkowski, Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages (Leiden/Boston, 1998). J.J.G. Alexander, “Chastity, Love, and Marriage in the Margins of the Wharncliffe Hours,” in Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage: In Honor of Margaret M. Manion, ed. B.J. Muir (Exeter, 2002), 201–20; M. Caviness, “Patron or Matron: A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed,” Speculum 68:2 (1993), 333–62; and L.F. Sandler, “A Bawdy Betrothal in the Ormesby Psalter,” in A Tribute to Lotte Brand Philip, ed. W. Clark, C. Eisler, W. Heckscher, and B. Lane (New York, 1985), 154–59. E.C. Block, “Half Angel-Half Beast: Images of Women on Misericords,” Reinardus 5 (1992), 17–34. M. Bleeke, “Sheelas, Sex, and Significance in Romanesque Sculpture: The Kilpeck Corbel Series,” Studies in Iconography 27 (2006), 1–26; B. Freitag, Sheela-na-gigs: Unravelling an Enigma (London/New York, 2004); C. Karkov, “Sheela-na-gigs and Other Unruly Women: Images of Land and Gender in Medieval Ireland,” in From Ireland Coming: Irish Art from the Early Christian to the Late Gothic Period and Its European Context, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2001), 313–31; A. Weir and J. Jerman, Images of Lust: Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches (London, 1986); J. Andersen, The Witch on the Wall: Medieval Erotic Sculpture in the British Isles (Copenhagen, 1977). A basic overview of marginal material is M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1992). T. Gouma-Peterson, A.-M. Talbot, and N. Aschenbrenner, Bibliography on Gender in Byzantium, http:// www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/resources/bibliography-on-gender-in-byzantium#c2=all&b_ start=0; F. Leoni and M. Natif (ed.), Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art (London, 2013); M. Meyer, An Obscure Portrait: Imaging Women’s Reality in Byzantine Art (London, 2009); I. Kalavrezou, Byzantine Women and Their World (New Haven/London, 2003); A. McClanan, Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire (New York, 2002); D.F. Ruggles (ed.), Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies (Albany, 2000); and L. James (ed.), Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium (London/New York, 1997). T. Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton, 1999); and R. Jensen, “The Femininity of Christ in Early Christian Iconography,” Studia Patristica 29 (1995), 269–82. M. Camille, “Seductions of the Flesh: Meister Francke’s Female ‘Man’ of Sorrows,” in Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter, ed. K. Schreiner and M. Müntz (Munich, 2002), 243–69; R.C. Trexler, “Gendering Jesus Crucified,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. B. Cassidy (Princeton, 1993), 107–20; and C.W. Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1982). M. Easton, “‘Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?’ Transforming and Transcending Gender in the Lives of Female Saints,” in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. E.S. Lane, E.C. Pastan, and E.M. Shortell (Burlington, 2009), 333–47. T. Martin (ed.), Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2012). See also J.H. McCash, The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Athens, 1996). B. Bedoz-Rezak, “Women, Seals and Power in Medieval France, 1150–1350,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Erler and M. Kowaleski (Athens, 1988), 61–82. C. Schleif and V. Schier, Katerina’s Windows: Donation and Devotion, Art and Music, as Heard and Seen through the Writings of a Birgittine Nun (University Park, 2009). C. Schleif, “St. Hedwig’s Personal Ivory Madonna: Women’s Agency and the Powers of Possessing Portable Figures,” in The Four Modes of Seeing: Approaches to Medieval Imagery in Honor of Madeline Harrison Caviness, ed. E.S. Lane, E.C. Pastan, and E.M. Shortell (London, 2009), 382–403. P. Sheingorn, “Subjection and Reception in Claude of France’s Book of First Prayers,” in The Four Modes of Seeing (as in note 30), 333–47; A. Stones, “Nipples, Entrails, Severed Heads, and Skin: Devotional Images for Madame Marie,” in Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 1999), 47–70; and J. Holladay, “The Education

435

Martha Easton

36 37

38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55

of Jeanne d’Evreux: Personal Piety and Dynastic Salvation in Her Book of Hours at the Cloisters,” Art History 17 (1994), 585–611. Taylor and Smith, Women and the Book (as in note 20); and S.G. Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture,” Signs 7 (1982), 742–68. Several representative examples include A. Sand, Vision, Devotion, and Self-Representation in Late Medieval Art (Cambridge, 2014); K.A. Smith, The Taymouth Hours and the Construction of the Self (London/Toronto, 2012); and A. Bennett, “Making Literate Laywomen Visible: Text and Image in French and Flemish Books of Hours, 1220–1320,” in Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces, ed. E. Gertsman and J. Stevenson (Suffolk, 2012), 125–58. D. Wolfthal, “The Sexuality of the Medieval Comb,” in Gertsman and Stevenson, Thresholds (as in note 37), 176–94; A. Sand, “The Fairest of Them All: Reflections on Some Fourteenth-Century Mirrors,” in Push Me, Pull You: Interaction, Imagination and Devotional Practices in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, ed. S. Blick and L. Gelfand (Leiden, 2011), 529–99; E. L’Estrange, “Gazing at Gawain: Reconsidering Tournaments, Courtly Love, and the Lady Who Looks,” Medieval Feminist Forum 44:2 (2008), 74–96; S. Smith, “The Gothic Mirror and the Female Gaze, in Saints, Sinners, and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. J.L. Carroll and A.G. Stewart (Burlington, 2003), 73–93; and C.J. Campbell, “Courting, Harlotry and the Art of Gothic Ivory Carving,” Gesta 34:1 (1995), 11–19. http://www.gothicivories.courtauld.ac.uk. D. Wolfthal, Images of Rape: The “Heroic” Tradition and Its Alternatives (Cambridge/New York), 1999. Sandler, “Bawdy Bethrothal” (as in note 23). M. Friedman, “The Falcon and the Hunt: Symbolic Love Imagery in Medieval and Renaissance Art,” in Poetics of Love in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts, ed. M. Lazar and N.J. Lacy (Fairfax, 1989), 157–75. Caviness, “Patron or Matron” (as in note 23), 40. M. Camille, “Manuscript Illumination and the Art of Copulation,” in Constructing Medieval Sexuality, ed. K. Lochrie, P. McCracken, and J.A. Schulz (Minneapolis, 1997), 62. See T.D. Cooke, The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study of Their Comic Climax (Columbia, 1978), 147. For violence in the fabliaux in general, see L. Tracy, “The Uses of Torture and Violence in the Fabliaux: When Comedy Crosses the Line,” Florigelium 23:2 (2006), 143–68. M. Easton, “The Wound of Christ, the Mouth of Hell: Appropriations and Inversions of Female Anatomy in the Later Middle Ages,” in Tributes to Jonathan J.G. Alexander: The Making and Meaning of Illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, Art and Architecture, ed. S. L’Engle and G.B. Guest (London/ Turnhout, 2006), 404–05. Christine de Pizan, City of Ladies (as in note 8), 11 (I.4.3). Christine de Pizan, City of Ladies (as in note 8), 160–61 (II.44.1). Christine de Pizan, A Medieval Woman’s Mirror of Honor: The Treasury of the City of Ladies, trans. C.C. Willard (New York, 1989), 135–39. E.J. Burns, “Performing Courtliness,” Oxford Handbook on Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, ed. J.M. Bennett and R.M. Karras (Oxford, 2013), 396–411. M. Bleeke, “Feminist Approaches to Medieval Visual Culture: An Introduction,” Medieval Feminist Forum 44 (2008), 49–52; J. Borland, “The Immediacy of Objects: Reassessing the Contribution of Art History to Feminist Medieval Studies,” Medieval Feminist Forum 44 (2008), 53–73; and R. Dressler, “Continuing the Discourse: Feminist Scholarship and the Study of Medieval Visual Culture,” Medieval Feminist Forum 43 (2007), 15–34. M. Schaus (ed.), Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (New York, 2006). Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index, http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/Feminae/default.aspx. M. Easton, “Feminism,” Studies in Iconography 30 (2012), 99–112. See, for example, J. Borland, “Unruly Reading: The Consuming Role of Touch in the Experience of a Medieval Manuscript,” in Scraped, Stroked and Bound: Materially Engaged Readings of Medieval Manuscripts, ed. J. Wilcox (Turnhout, 2013), 97–114; the essays in K.E. Overbey and B.C. Tilghman (ed.), “Active Objects,” special issue of Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 4 (2014), www. differentvisions.org; and the essays in M.M. Williams and K.A. Overbey (ed.), Transparent Things: A Cabinet (Brooklyn, 2013).

436

32 THE ICONOGRAPHY OF COLOR Andreas Petzold

Introduction Color iconography may be understood as the capacity of colors when found in specific artistic contexts to have meanings, interpretations, or associations attached to them. For example, Mary Magdalene is frequently represented from the twelfth century onwards in a saturated red garment, usually her outer garment. An early example of this convention can be seen in the scene representing Mary Magdalene announcing Christ’s resurrection in the St. Albans Psalter (p. 51) made in England in the early twelfth century.1 From the late twelfth century, the convention becomes more commonplace. It even extended to polychromed wooden sculpture, as can be seen in an early sixteenth-century German sculpture in the Liebighaus in Frankfurt (Plate 3).2 From the eleventh century the cult of Mary Magdalene developed to an unprecedented degree, as is reflected in an important sermon attributed to Odo of Cluny, which emphasizes her unlimited capacity for love.3 Neither this text nor any other known to me elucidates the practice of representing Mary Magdalene in red, but of the cluster of associations attached to red in textual sources of the time, the one which would fit most closely with the way Mary Magdalene is characterized in this sermon and by later commentators is divine love, “caritas,” one of the three theological virtues.4 The use of the color red can also be read at another level relating to social practices of the time, as garments dyed in red at this time, usually from madder or kermes, would have been very expensive and were the prerogative of the wealthy or royalty. The use of red could thus function as a signifier of wealth, reinforcing the characterization of Mary Magdalene at this period in the exegetical literature as of aristocratic parentage. In the case of the illustration in the St. Albans Psalter, it has also been pointed out that the gesture that Mary Magdalene makes is one of preaching and that she is represented in the active rather than contemplative life.5 Charitable acts as expressions of divine love were seen as part of the active life that could also bear witness to Christian faith as much as contemplative prayer, further reinforcing the link between caritas and the color red. The link with the active life is further emphasized by placing the figure of Mary Magdalene against a green background, as opposed to the blue background used for the apostles.6 In this case the use of color may also raise gender issues, with woman associated with the earth and nature. If this seems like overinterpretation it should be borne in mind that the type of prefatory illustrations found in the St. Albans Psalter were intended as aids for devotion and private reflection. 437

Plate 3 Mary Magdalene, German, c. 1520–1530, Liebieghaus, Frankfurt (Inv. Nr. 2). Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The iconography of color

Garments are the most obvious but not the only attribute of a figure which may have significance from the standpoint of color. Physical attributes, such as the color of the hair, skin, and eyes of figures, may also be significant. These natural colors of the body are as susceptible to artistic fabrication as manufactured colors used in material culture. Ruth Mellinkoff has, for example, demonstrated how from the late twelfth century Judas is frequently represented with red hair, for which there is no basis in the Bible and which had anti-Semitic associations at the time.7 The designation of red hair demonstrates the lack of linguistic precision in color classification (to be discussed later) as red hair is not red but more orange in hue. Heather Pulliam has drawn attention to the piercing green irises used in the depiction of the eyes of St. John in his portrait in the Lindisfarne Gospels in comparison with the pale bluish-green of the other evangelists’ eyes, and draws attention to a contemporary source which associates the green emerald specifically with John.8 According to one popular legend current from the early Middle Ages the eyes of Christ were green, but in the later Middle Ages green eyes tend to have nefarious associations.9 What little has been written on color in medieval art has rarely discussed iconographic conventions such as these but has taken as its starting point textual sources of the time which discuss color symbolism.10 As valuable as this may be, it needs to be correlated with the observations on color in works of art. Two pioneering scholars who have made major contributions to the study of color in the medieval period, especially from the conceptual and methodological standpoint, are John Gage and Michel Pastoureau.11 Both of these scholars have approached the subject from an interdisciplinary standpoint, treating color as a historical and culturally relativistic phenomenon, and taking into account assumptions, writings, and social practices of the time. Gage has in particular drawn on more recent linguistic theory, especially the work of Berlin and Kay on color classification and lexicalization, and Pastoureau on anthropology and social history, and much of what I say here has been informed by their work. One of the distinguishing features of Pastoureau’s approach is the primacy he assigns to textiles and the dyeing industry, one of the most important industries in the Middle Ages. The notion of a fixed canon of color iconography operating in the period discussed in this survey, extending from the early Christian period to the late Middle Ages and encompassing both Byzantine and Western art, is one that has not been taken up by art historians, nor is it supported by observation. Colors for the most part seem to be used from the standpoint of meaning in an arbitrary manner. Given the huge span both chronologically and geographically covered, this is not entirely surprising and much of what I say here will be generalized. Even in the specific case of Mary Magdalene discussed earlier, red is not the only color with which she is represented, with green from the fourteenth century another distinct favorite. For Byzantine art the notion has been firmly rejected, though there are obvious instances of color iconographic usages in it, such as the use of purple, which will be discussed in the second section.12 In the West in the later Middle Ages, especially in northern Europe, a more standardized use of color iconography emerges, though this is by no means systematic. One also needs to bear in mind that other factors and constraints may be at play in the way color is used, such as the availability of materials, aesthetic and technical considerations, the internal syntax of color relationships within the pictorial image, and regional variations.13 Nevertheless, having taken into account these factors, it does seem that figures are frequently represented in colors which both are consistent with and contribute to their characterization at the time and within the context they are represented, and thus that color may in certain circumstances function as a bearer of meaning just as much as gesture and figure type. From the late twelfth century, for example, the three main colors that are used in the representation of Judas, yellow (discussed in the second section), saturated red, and dark green, or a combination of all of these, can have negative associations attached 439

Andreas Petzold

to them which are consistent with and reinforce his perfidious and anti-Semitic characterization at the time. In traditional iconographic analysis a visual feature is usually elucidated by means of the written text to which it relates and textual sources which relate to this. But in the case of color there is no textual source that survives or is recorded which might function as an iconographic guide to the way that colors are deployed in art, so that interpretations have to be inferred from related textual sources.14 Much of the imagery in Christian art is of course based on the Bible, which contains sporadic references to color, especially in relation to fabrics and precious gems. Of particular significance from the standpoint of color are the Books of Exodus (in which particular emphasis is given to the colors of the curtains of the tabernacle and those of the garments worn by the high priest) and Revelation, especially the description of the twelve precious stones that form the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem (21: 19–21), the color in the case of each of which is discussed by later commentators and invested with moral or mystical significance. These Biblical references, however, present problems in terms of the translation of the language of the text in which they were originally written into the language used in later standard textual recensions.15 I have restricted myself here to the Latin vulgate. How references such as these may be interpreted visually can be seen in the Crucifixion miniature in the mid-twelfth-century Stammheim Missal (a missal was a book used in the celebration of the Mass), at the base of which the prophet Isaiah holds a scroll with an inscription on it, derived from the Book of Isaiah 63: 2–3, on which are written the words “Quare rubrum est vestimentum?” (Why is your robe red?).16 To this the young man, who is center stage and in the act of trampling grapes, replies, “I have trodden the winepress alone.” Within Christian exegesis these verses were interpreted as Christ washing away the sins of the world with his blood and a prefiguration of the Passion. The artist has interpreted the term “rubrum” by representing the youth in a wine-red mantle, a reference both to Christ’s sacrifice by the spilling of his blood and to the Eucharist in the performance of which a missal would have been used. Colors are also associated with the liturgy and the liturgical year, such as white for the Ascension, and these distinctions become increasingly codified from the twelfth century.17 Two German philologists have compiled a lexicon of references to color terms, starting with those in the Bible, and then looking at those from later sources from the early Christian period up to the thirteenth century.18 In the early medieval period, they demonstrate that the interpretation of colors is principally confined to encyclopedic texts, and to patristic and exegetical works. From the twelfth century and beyond, this base was expanded to include new types of textual sources, such as the visions of female mystics, of whom the most famous was Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1173), whose work was illustrated in her lifetime and incorporates significant color imagery, and later, new types of secular literature, such as German courtly love poetry.19 New specialized codes of color imagery also evolve, of which the most important was that of heraldry, and colors are frequently arranged into sets relating to specific attributes20 – for example, a color set relating to the virtues, with white, green, and red associated respectively with faith, hope, and charity, the three theological virtues. This color triad can be seen reflected in art – for example, in the allegorical figures of faith, hope, and charity in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Maesta altarpiece in Massa Marittima, where it even extends to the steps upon which they are seated.21 One practical factor that has made the question of color and its meaning difficult to explore is that until recently the majority of images of medieval art were rarely reproduced in color. Even when reproduced in color they were rarely of a high quality, and even today with advances in color technology the discrepancy between the colored reproduction and the original can be very great. This lacuna of colored reproductions was particularly marked in manuscript illumination, so that a manuscript of such major importance as the Stammheim Missal was known, before its 440

The iconography of color

acquisition by the Getty Museum, only in black and white reproductions found in specialized publications. This situation has, however, been considerably rectified in the last two decades by the greater availability of publications with color reproductions and, more importantly, by ambitious digitization programs, especially of manuscript holdings.22 Another factor which needs to be taken into account is the way in which colors have deteriorated or their appearance has been modified over the course of time, or, especially in the case of stained glass, the way that later restoration has intervened. In this connection, the study of color in illuminated manuscripts, where the pigments have remained relatively stable and are for the most part true to how they were when first painted, is particularly valuable. Another methodological issue which needs to be taken into account when interpreting colors is that of their linguistic classification and lexicalization, which are relative to different cultures and periods. The eye is able to discriminate between far more colors than there are terms in any language to describe them, and the terms used to designate them may be variable between languages. To quote John Gage, “the identification of a color in a given array is a conscious and verbalized act, and that is thus dependent upon the available color language.”23 The area of the spectrum designated by color terms in one language such as modern English may not necessarily exactly correspond to that found in similar terms used in other languages. Conversely, one would expect the mental picture which a person had of a particular color to correspond to the meaning which that color had at the time. Nor are color terms fixed but they develop over time – the color term “orange,” for example, emerged only in the fifteenth century in Old French, and yet one of the most common colors found in medieval art is an orange, one produced from the pigment red lead. Would that have been identified at the time by its pigment name or by the abstract color term “red”? Gage has emphasized that in modern color terminology priority is given to the hue of a color, whereas in earlier systems of color classification (as in the case of those in the early medieval period, such as Latin, ancient Greek, and Anglo-Saxon) greater emphasis was placed on other aspects of color, especially its light-dark axis, or may refer to an attribute other than hue, such as luster, surface texture, or facture, or the material which embodies the hue.24 The Latin color term “purpureus,” for example, appears to have encompassed areas of the spectrum which today would be described as red and violet (and this appears to be reflected in how this color was used in art), but can also refer to a fabric.25 In general, saturated colors appear to have been valorized in the medieval period, and very pale or dark ones tend to have a negative interpretation attached to them. As we enter into the later Middle Ages, with increasing predominance given to vernacular languages, more emphasis appears to have been given to a hue-based conception of color.26

Analysis of specific colors Given the size of the topic, I have restricted my observations on color iconography to a discussion of only five colors: purple, red, blue, green, and yellow. In each case, I have outlined the main associations attached to these colors, and briefly traced how these are reflected in art. As can be seen, a broad range of interpretations may be attached to these colors, both positive and negative, and these may change over the course of time. It also can be seen that in interpreting colors in art it is essential to take into account both the physical and cultural context in which they occur. To quote Meyer Schapiro, “there is never exclusively one symbolic meaning attached to a color, for in every concrete situation, the color or colors are not only outer surfaces, but also expressions of the situation itself.”27 Colors are also frequently arranged in pairs (yellow for Synagogue, for example, is frequently paired with red for Ecclesia), or the variation in the color of the garments of the principal dramatis personae within an array of images in a narrative sequence, such as a 441

Andreas Petzold

Marian or Christological one, may have significance.28 In all the scenes, for instance, to do with the resurrection in the late tenth-century Codex Egberti (Trier, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. 24), Christ is represented in a green outer mantle, in contrast to the earlier scenes, where he is represented in purple.29

Purple In the early Christian and Byzantine period, purple was the prestige color, and its association was primarily with power and heaven, but it was also seen as a sign of sinful luxury and worldliness.30 Bede, for example, characterizes the purple of the amethyst as emblematic of heaven.31 In religion, it was associated with both the Incarnation and Christ’s passion. Its prestige was inherited from antiquity and related to the practice of clothing emperors in garments dyed in Tyrian purple. This practice was taken up by the Byzantine emperors, as can be seen in the famous pendant mosaics of Emperor Justinian and his empress Theodora, made in the sixth century, in the church of S. Vitale in Ravenna, and was emulated c. 1000 by Holy Roman Emperor Otto III.32 The practice was grafted onto representations of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and by the sixth century had become widespread. Examples can be seen in the sixth-century mosaics in the church of S. Appollinare in Nuovo in Ravenna, where Christ is represented wearing a purple garment with gold clavi (Plate 4), and in a sumptuously illustrated late ninth-century manuscript of the Homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, where Christ is similarly clothed.33 This last example is particularly interesting as the manuscript was personally made for the Byzantine emperor Basil I, so that the clothing of Christ and the Virgin Mary in purple may suggest the association between Christian and temporal power. In 431, at the Council of Ephesus, representations of the Virgin Mary dressed in purple were first officially allowed. A factor in the adoption of purple in representations of the Virgin Mary may have been an early Christian apocryphal text, the Protoevangelium of James, in which it is described how Mary was one of the pure virgins who were chosen to help spin the curtain for the temple and that she was allocated the task of spinning the “true purple and the scarlet” threads.34 According to the text, when Gabriel entered Mary’s home to announce the Incarnation, she was in the act of spinning the purple wool. Later Byzantine commentators interpreted the scarlet and especially the purple as alluding to the royal lineage of the Virgin back to the house of David. The purple yarn has also been linked with the Incarnation.35 By the sixth century the practice of representing the Virgin Mary in purple had become ubiquitous, as can be seen, for example, in the Ascension image in the Syrian Rabbula Gospels, completed in 586.36 The practice of representing Christ and the Virgin Mary in purple was taken up in Western art and is particularly evident in Christological cycles in Ottonian manuscript illumination of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. These Ottonian codices were frequently commissioned by Holy Roman emperors; thus, again the use of purple reinforces the association between Christ and the endorsement of temporal power. An earlier example can be seen in the eighth-century Insular Book of Kells in the image representing the Virgin and Child (Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I, fol. 7v), where the Virgin is represented in purple, and this appears to directly reflect Byzantine sources.37 By the late twelfth century, the prestige of purple had been eclipsed by that of blue, though it is still a marked feature in the garments of Christ and the Virgin Mary, especially in the stained glass of the period. There may be a syntactical reason for this due to the widespread use of saturated blue glass for the backgrounds in twelfth- and thirteenth-century glass, especially that made in northern France. In two twelfth-century Western sources, purple is clearly associated with regality. In a sermon on the Assumption of the Virgin attributed to Hugh of St. Victor, it is stated 442

The iconography of color

Plate 4 Image of Christ, S. Appollinare in Nuovo. Ravenna, early sixth century. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

that the Virgin Mary was dressed in purple at her Assumption as “purple signifies royal dignity.”38 In his treatise, the Sacred Mystery of the Altar, Pope Innocent III stated that “purple signifies royal dignity and papal power.”39 By the end of the Middle Ages, according to Michel Pastoureau, purple had been devalorized and had become associated with penance and affliction or, even, treachery.40 In spite of this Christ is frequently dressed in a greyish-purple garment in illustrated cycles of his life in northern European manuscript illumination and stained glass of the period.41

Red The principle associations of red are with blood and fire.42 On the positive side, red was linked with Christ’s passion and sacrifice (and hence the Eucharist), the fire of the Holy Spirit, and divine love, and on the negative, with sin, judgment, and hellfire. In Western art, Mary 443

Andreas Petzold

Magdalene from the twelfth century and St. John the Evangelist from at least the eleventh are frequently represented in red, probably intended in this context as a signifier of divine love, as is also the personification of the Church (Ecclesia). From the fourteenth century, the convention was to represent seraphims in red, whose function was to adore God, and cherubims, who were associated with knowledge, in blue.43 In the West, monarchs were, with the exception of the French kings, dressed at their coronations in red, and it may be that this practice informs the representation in this color of King David and of Christ in scenes to do with the resurrection.44 In the Stammheim Missal, for example, in one of the earliest representations of Christ’s resurrection in art, Christ is represented in a bright red mantle combined with a green undergarment.45 In Byzantine thought, red is associated with the earthly, and it may be this idea which informs the practice of representing Eve in the Anastasis scene in bright red.46 Blue is traditionally seen as the color of the Virgin Mary (as will be discussed ahead), but there is a distinct group of images in which the Virgin Mary’s primary color is red. Early examples can be seen in the twelfth century in the Hunterian Psalter, but it becomes commonplace only in the fifteenth century in Flemish and Dutch art.47 A late example of it can be seen in Geertgen tot Sint Jans’s Glorification of the Virgin in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. In the twelfth century St. Bernard of Clairvaux in a sermon on the Virgin Mary compares her to a rose, and equates the white rose with her virginity, and the red with her charity or divine love: Mary was a white rose by reason of her virginity, a red rose by reason of her charity; white in her body, red in her soul; white in cultivating virtue, red in treading down vice; white in purifying affection, red in mortifying the flesh; white in loving God, red in having compassion on her neighbor.48 It may be that it is this idea which informs her representation in red. Red also has a negative aspect to it. The primary associations are again with blood and fire. The Old Testament figure Cain, the first murderer who slayed his brother, is frequently represented in red.49 The associations with hellfire and judgment frequently underlie the use of red in Last Judgment scenes; Christ as supreme Judge is frequently represented in a red mantle, as can be seen in Stefan Lochner’s Last Judgment panel in the Wallraf Richartz Museum in Cologne.50

Blue The primary associations of blue were with the celestial, the spiritual, and the heavenly. Michel Pastoureau has demonstrated how in the twelfth century in northern Europe the color blue was valorized, supplanting purple as the prestige color.51 This blue characteristically is saturated and has a dark tone to it, to which appropriately the name royal blue has been given. This development can be seen reflected in the saturated blue backgrounds found in the stained glass of the period, to which Abbot Suger gave the name sapphire glass, the increasing use of blue for the mantle of Christ, and to an even greater extent that of the Virgin Mary with whom the color has become virtually synonymous, and in the adoption by the French kings of blue in the thirteenth century for their coronation garments and regal dress and as the color for the background of their coat of arms. In explaining this development, one practical factor may have been the greater availability of high-quality ultramarine, the only source of which was a mine in Badakshan in present-day Afghanistan, which has an intense blue color to it. Another factor was the equating of blue with divine light by 444

The iconography of color

theologians and churchmen, such as Abbot Suger, under the influence of Pseudo-Dionysus’s light aesthetic. Prior to the twelfth century in Western art, the Virgin Mary is represented in a variety of colors, though Michel Pastoureau has noted a predominance of dark colors, which he regards as appropriate for her activity of mourning.52 In Byzantine art, there is greater standardization with purple and, from the eleventh century, increasingly though not exclusively blue as the favored color for her, as can be seen in the eleventh-century mosaic of the crucifixion at Daphni, and it may be that Western artists adopted the convention from a Byzantine source, given the prestige of Byzantine art at the time. The increasing rise in the cult of the Virgin Mary in the West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the adoption of blue as the primary color for her dress must have in turn further promoted the status of the color and may be one factor in explaining its adoption by the French kings. From the thirteenth century, new procedures in the dyeing of cloth using woad enabled the manufacture of more colorfast and saturated blue clothes, and these became fashionable among the elite, rivaling red clothes in their popularity.53 Blue may also have a negative aspect to it, and it can be used in the representation of fallen angels, demons, and pagan effigies. In the scene representing Christ as shepherd separating the sheep from the goats in an early sixth-century mosaic from the church of Sant Appollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, for example, the angel to the left of Christ associated with the goats and the damned is, contrary to what one might expect, represented entirely in blue, and that to his right associated with the sheep and the blessed in red.54 Within the color theory of the period, blue would have been seen as a dark color and in elemental codes was usually associated with air. In the thirteenth century, it is recorded how the merchants in Thuringia in Germany who dealt in madder used in the dyeing of red cloth petitioned the stained-glass painters to include blue devils in their windows to discredit their rivals who dealt in woad used in the dyeing of the increasingly popular blue clothes.55 It may be this factor that informs the presence of blue demons in the late fifteenth-century Last Judgment window at Fairford in England.

Green Green was associated with faith, immortality, paradise, hope, and eternity, and these associations are reflected in its use in artistic contexts. It is frequently used for one of the garments of St. John the Evangelist, where it is a sign of faith, usually in combination with red, and from the fourteenth century occasionally used in representations of Mary Magdalene. It may also be used as the color of the cross, where it may function as a reference to Christ’s resurrection (Plate 5). In the twelfth century, there was a change in the status of green, which is reflected in a statement of Hugh of St. Victor, who praises it as “beautiful beyond any color” and describes it as “an image of future resurrection.”56 Paul Thoby in discussing the green crosses (edged in red) in the twelfth-century Passion window at Chartres has suggested that the green is a reference to a passage in Luke (23, 31), where Christ states, “For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dead.”57 He connects this verse with the liturgy of the time, noting that an antiphon based on this passage was used in the Adoration of the Cross during the Good Friday liturgy: “O crux, viride lignum, quia in te pependit Redemptor gentium” (O, crucifix of green wood, because on you the Redeemer of the gentiles hung). Michael Camille has further connected the color green with the liturgical performance of the time as enacted at Amiens on the Feast of St. Firmin, when the exterior and interior of the cathedral were bedecked with flowers and greenery in memory of a miracle in which the saint had caused the trees to blossom in the midst of winter.58 445

Andreas Petzold

Plate 5 Carrow Psalter (Ms.W.34, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, f.27 r), English, c. 1250. Note the green crosses in the Carrying of the Cross and the Crucifixion. Illustration courtesy of Walters Art Museum, created under Creative Commons License.

Green also had negative associations attached to it. Green demons first emerge in the midtwelfth century in northern European art, as can be seen in the representation of hell’s mouth in the Winchester Psalter, where all the figures, both the damned and the demonic, are represented entirely in green.59 Michel Pastoureau has suggested that their emergence may reflect anti-Islamic sentiment at the time as green was particularly valorized within Islamic culture, an idea that is reinforced by the fact that the banners that would have confronted the Christian Crusader knights when encountering their Islamic adversaries were green in color.60 446

The iconography of color

Yellow On the positive side, yellow may be used in Byzantine and early medieval Western art as a substitute for gold. Pseudo-Dionysius in the Celestial Hierarchy praises it for its resemblance to gold.61 It is often used in representations of St. Peter for his outer mantle. A late example of this can be seen in an early fourteenth-century icon of St. Peter from Constantinople in the British Museum, probably painted by that great artist known as the Master of the Chora, where St. Peter has a yellow mantle with a blue undergarment.62 But from the twelfth century in the West, yellow had increasingly negative associations attached to it, when it began to be used to distinguish Judas, in representations of Synagogue, and for other figures who had negative associations attached to them. It may be significant that of the two ancestors in the cycle of windows representing the ancestors of Christ from Canterbury recently exhibited at the Ancestors of Christ exhibition, the two which had nefarious characters, Lamech and Thara, are both represented in yellow mantles combined with pointed red Jewish hats, the only two figures to be so depicted.63 This portrayal should be seen in the context of increasing anti-Semitism in England at the time. The most memorable example of Judas represented in yellow is in the image of the Betrayal in Giotto’s Arena Chapel, where he is dressed entirely in yellow, and it is very common in German late medieval art.64 This convention has anti-Semitic associations attached to it and relates to a social practice at the time in the dress regulations that were enforced on Jews. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, it was stipulated that Jews had to distinguish themselves by means of their dress. The nature of this distinction was not specified, but at an early date it came increasingly to take the form of a badge, most commonly, though not exclusively, yellow in color. Yellow was also used to distinguish other marginalized groups, such as prostitutes, heretics, and felons. It is used, for example, for the seated, abject figure of the philosopher Averroes, whose writings were regarded as heretical by the Dominicans, in the mid-fourteenth-century wall painting of the Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas in the chapter house at Santa Maria Novella, a doctrinal manifesto of Dominican ideology.

Conclusion It is curious that many associations attached to colors in the medieval period have resonances in our own time, a chilling reminder of which is the yellow badges which Jewish people were forced to wear in the Nazi period. With the increasing availability of color reproductions of medieval art, it is inevitable that questions relating to color and its meaning will come more to the fore. Certain of the difficulties encountered in exploring these questions have been discussed here, but the following are intended as ideas for future research. There is a need for a more systematic survey of color iconographic conventions, tracing genealogies and patterns of dissemination, and for more analysis of the factors underlying their use. One line of research which might be pursued, following the lead provided by Michel Pastoureau and for Venetian art in the Renaissance period by Paul Hills, is to explore further the connections between the visual art and material culture of the period, especially fabrics and jewelry.65 This might be productively pursued, for example, in relation to Byzantine art, with its rich tradition of silks. Another potentially fruitful line of research, based on the foundation provided by Meier and Suntrup’s seminal work, is to explore further, and in more detail than has been possible here, the interrelationships between textual sources and visual art.66 Links in relation to color between liturgy, performance, and the wider environment in which medieval art functioned, such as the Mass in relation to altarpieces or liturgical books, could also be explored.67 Above all the chromophobic mind-set 447

Andreas Petzold

which has so characterized the practice of Anglo-American medieval art history needs to change and eyes to be opened to color.

Short bibliography General P. Dronke, “Tradition and Innovation in Medieval Western Color-Imagery,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 41 (1972), 51–108. J. Gage, “Colour in History: Relative and Absolute,” Art History 1:1 (1978), 104–30. J. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London, 1993). J. Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (London, 1999). C. Meier and R. Suntrup, Lexikon der Farbenbedeutungen Im Mittelalter. CD-ROM (Cologne, 2011). S. Panayotova (ed), Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, (London, 2016). M. Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton, 2001). M. Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton, 2009). M. Pastoureau, The Colours of Our Memories (Cambridge, 2012). M. Pastoureau, Green: The History of a Color (Princeton, 2014). H. Pulliam, “Color,” Medieval Art History Today – Critical Terms (a Special Issue of) Studies in Iconography 33 (2012), 3–14. Colour: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. S. Panayotova (London, 2016)

Byzantine A. Hermann, “Farbe,” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum: Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt, ed. G. Schöllgen (Stuttgart, 1969), vol. 7, 358–447. L. James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996). K. Wessel, “Farbensymbolik,” in Reallexikon zur Byzantinischen Kunst, ed. M. Restle and K. Wessel (Stuttgart, 1971), 524–33.

Insular G. Henderson, “The Colour Purple: A Late-Antique Phenomenon and Its Anglo-Saxon Reflexes,” in Vision and Image in Early Christian England, ed. G. Henderson (Cambridge, 1999), 122–35. H. Pulliam, “Looking to Byzantium: Light, Color, and Cloth in the Book of Kells’ Virgin and Child Page,” in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought in the Early Medieval Period, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2011), 59–78. H. Pulliam, “Eyes of Light: Colour in the Lindisfarne Gospels,” in Newcastle and Northumberland Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art, ed. J. Ashbee and J. Luxford (Leeds, 2013), 36.

Romanesque S. Bolman, “De Coloribus; the Meanings of Color in Beatus Manuscripts,” Gesta 38 (1999). A. Petzold, “‘Of the Significance of Colours’: The Iconography of Colour in Romanesque and Early Gothic Book Illumination,” in Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 1999), 125–34.

Late medieval M. Lisner, “Farbgebung und Farbikonographie in Giottos Arenafresken,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz (1985), 1–78. M. Lisner, “Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in Giottos Arenafresken Farbgebung und Farbikonographie,” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte (1990), 309–75. R. Mellinkoff, “Judas’ Red Hair and the Jews,” Journal of Jewish Art 9 (1982), 31–46. R. Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1993).

448

The iconography of color

Notes 1 Dombibliothek, Hildesheim, Ms St. Godehard 1, 51. For colored illustration see “The St. Albans Psalter Project, Kings College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland,” https://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/ english/commentary/page051.shtml (accessed August 10, 2015). 2 On polychromy in medieval sculpture see V. Brinkmann, Circumlitio: The Polychromy of Antique and Medieval Sculpture (Munich, 2010). 3 On Mary Magdalene see K.L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2000). 4 On this see C. Meier and R. Suntrup, Lexikon der Farbenbedeutungen im Mittelalter (Cologne, 2011), 674–79. Currently this publication is available only as a CD-ROM but is due to be published in book form in 2016. On the depiction of Mary Magdalene see also R. Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, vol. 1 (Berkeley, 1993), 55–56, and for examples of Mary Magdalene represented in red see vol. 2, II.26, VI.46, XI.10, and XI.13. She does not comment specifically on the color red, but does draw attention to the practice of representing Mary Magdalene in ornate or brightly colored clothing, which she links to Mary Magdalene’s earlier supposed occupation as a prostitute. Mellinkoff tends to draw her examples primarily from the late Middle Ages and the northern Renaissance. See also M. Lisner, “Farbgebung und Farbikonographie in Giottos Arenafresken,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz (1985), 43 and note 114, where she discusses Italian examples. 5 Jansen, The Making of the Magdalene (as in note 3), 265. 6 The Carthusian monk Adam of Dryburgh in the twelfth century in his treatise On the Tripartite Tabernacle used the language of Luke 10.38–42 to distinguish lay and clerical life. He equates the contemplative life pursued by clerics with the color blue, and the active pursued by laymen with the color green (see De tripartito tabernaculo, Migne PL 198, 727. “Color etenim sapphirinus, qui coelo similis est, coelestam et contemplativam vitam designat clericorum; viridis vero, qui terrae est, terrenam, et activam vitam laicorum.” 7 R. Mellinkoff, “Judas’ Red Hair and the Jews,” Journal of Jewish Art 9 (1982), 31–46. The question of skin color is too large to go into here, but for preliminary observations see M. Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton, 2009), 79–86. 8 H. Pulliam, “Eyes of Light: Colour in the Lindisfarne Gospels,” in Newcastle and Northumberland Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art, ed. J. Ashbee and J. Luxford (Leeds, 2013), 58. 9 J.R. Puértolas, “Leyendas Cristianas Primitivas En Las Obras De Fray Íñigo De Mendoza,” Hispanic Review 38 (1970), 376–77. On the nefarious associations attached to green eyes see M. Pastoureau, Green: The History of a Color (Princeton, 2014), 99. 10 Exemplary of this approach is G. Haupt, Die Farbensymbolik in der sakralen Kunst des abendländischen Mittelalters (Dresden, 1941), and P. Dronke, “Tradition and Innovation in Medieval Western ColorImagery,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 41 (1972), 51–108. 11 For Gage in relation to the questions raised here see most importantly J. Gage, “Colour in History: Relative and Absolute,” Art History 1:1 (1978); J. Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London, 1993); and J. Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (London, 1999). Michel Pastoureau’s works on color are numerous and the majority are in French. For a representative example of his approach in English see M. Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton, 2001). 12 See K. Wessel, “Farbensymbolik,” in Reallexikon zur Byzantinischen Kunst, vol. 2, ed. M. Restle and K Wessel (Stuttgart, 1971), 529. “Von einem symbolisch interpretierten Farbkanon im Sinne der Kunst des abendländischen MAs . . . kann nicht der Rede sein.” See also L. James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996), 102–05, who concurs in this. One area that would be interesting to examine further is the relationship between color in Byzantine art and the fabrics of the period, especially the purple silks. On this see A. Muthesius, Byzantine Silk Weaving: AD 400 to AD 1200 (Vienna, 1997). Another important contribution to color iconography in early Christian and Byzantine art is A. Hermann, “Farbe,” in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum: Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinandersetzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt, vol. 7, ed. G. Schöllgen (Stuttgart, 1969), 358–447. 13 For some color syntactical relationships see Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 1 (as in note 4), 38–43. She comments on the following principles: the isolation principle, the shape and drape principle, and the color contrast principle. 14 The Mount Athos Handbook occasionally specifies the colors figures should be represented in but these correspond to those specified in the Bible (P. Hetherington [ed. and trans.], The Painter’s Manual

449

Andreas Petzold

15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28

29 30 31 32

33 34

35 36

of Dionysius of Fourna [London, 1974]). Another interesting area to investigate is that of stage directions in liturgical plays. The late fifteenth-century Donaueschinger Passion play, for example, contains stage directions specifying in which colors actors should be dressed, which it has been demonstrated correspond to those used in German painting of the period. On this see R. Toepfer, “Das Leiden Christi in Farbe: Zur Funktion der Bühneanweisungen im Donaueschinger Passionspiel,” in Farbe im Mittelalter: Materialität – Medialität – Semantik, vol. 2, ed. I. Bennewitz and A. Schindler (Berlin, 2011), 767–80. On this see Pastoureau, Green (as in note 9), 36–39. See also F. Jacquesson, “La chasse aux couleurs: à travers la Patrologie latine,” in Histoire et géographie de la couleur: faits de langue et systèmes de communication, ed. P. Dollfus, F. Jacquesson, and M. Pastoureau (Paris, 2008), available online at http://lacito.vjf.cnrs. fr/programmes-partenariat/couleur/index.htm. See also S. Bolman, “De Coloribus: The Meanings of Color in Beatus Manuscripts,” Gesta 38 (1999), 22–34. She demonstrates how the color bands in the Beatus Commentaries on the Apocalypse serve mnemonic functions related to the key descriptive words in the text. For a discussion of this miniature see E.C. Teviotdale, The Stammheim Missal (Los Angeles, 2001), 65. See also P. Carmassi, “Purpurismum in Martyrio,” in Farbe im Mittelalter: Materialität – Medialität – Semantik (as in note 14), vol. 1, 258, who relates it to the work of Hrabanus Maurus. R. Kroos and F. Kobler, “Farbe (Liturgisch),” in Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. 7 (1981), 54–139. Meier and Suntrup (as in note 4). On this see C. Meier, “Die Bedeutung der Farben im Werk Hildegards von Bingen,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 6 (1972), 245–355. On this see the relevant chapter in this book and on color in heraldry see M. Pastoureau, Traité d’héraldique (Paris, 1993), 101ff. Gage, Colour and Culture (as in note 11), pl. 56. I have wherever possible provided links to relevant sites. Gage, Colour and Meaning (as in note 11), 52. Gage, Colour and Meaning (as in note 11), 68. J. André, Étude sur les termes de Couleur dans la langue Latine (Paris, 1949), 102. See also James, Light and Colour, 50 and n. 15 (as in note 12), for a discussion of the Greek term for purple. See also C.R. Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester, 1982), 145–50. Dodwell suggests that the term purpura may refer to shot silk taffeta. For a recent study of color classification and lexicalization which discusses the medieval period see W.J. Jones, German Colour Terms: A Study in Their Historical Evolution from Earliest Times to the Present (Amsterdam, 2013). M. Schapiro, Words and Pictures: On the Literal and the Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text (The Hague, 1973), 47. On Synagogue as yellow and Ecclesia as red see Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 1 (as in note 4), 48–51, and for illustrations vol. 2, II.33–37. For a discussion of the use of color iconography in relation to a narrative cycle, specifically the Arena chapel, see M. Lisner, “Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in Giottos Arenafresken Farbgebung und Farbikonographie,” Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte (1990), 309–375. G. Franz, Der Egbert-Codex: das Leben Jesu: Ein Höhepunkt der Buchmalerei vor 1000 Jahren: Handschrift 24 der Stadtbibliothek Trier (Darmstadt, 2005). James, Light and Colour, 104 and 139 (as in note 12). On purple in general see La porpora: realtà e immaginario di un colore simbolico, ed. O. Longo (Venice, 1998). Bede, Bede: Commentary on Revelation (Liverpool, 2013), 276. A. Muthesius, “The Role of Byzantine Silks in the Ottonian Empire,” in Byzanz und das Abendland im 10. und 11 Jahrhundert, ed. E. Konstantinou (Cologne, 1997), 314: “Otto III customarily appeared on Easter Monday at St. Appolinarius in Classe, in purple silk embroidered with gold.” Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale, Ms.Grec. 510. For images of these see http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/ rechercheExperte.jsp (accessed August 10, 2015). M. Evangelatou, “The Purple Thread of the Flesh: The Theological Connotations of a Narrative Iconographic Element in Byzantine Images of the Annunciation,” in Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium. Studies Presented to Robin Cormack, ed. A. Eastmond and L. James (Aldershot, 2003), 261–79. Evangelatou, Icon and Word (as in note 34), 261. Florence, Laurentian Library, cod. Plut. 1, 56, fol. 13v. For colored illustration see K. Weitzmann, Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination (London, 1977), 36.

450

The iconography of color 37 On the use of purple in Insular manuscript illumination see G. Henderson, “The Colour Purple: A Late-Antique Phenomenon and its Anglo-Saxon Reflexes,” in Vision and Image in Early Christian England, ed. G. Henderson (Cambridge, 1999), 122–35. On the use of purple in the Virgin and child image in the Book of Kells see H. Pulliam, “Looking to Byzantium: Light, Color, and Cloth in the Book of Kells’ Virgin and Child Page,” in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought in the Early Medieval Period, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2011), 59–78. 38 Hugh of Saint-Victor, “De Assumptione Beatae Virginis Sermo,” Migne PL 177: 1025. “Purpura regale significat dignitatem. Beata itaque Virgo Marie purpura fuit, quae super omnes sanctos regali dignitate velut domina mundi et regina coeli effulsit.” 39 Innocent III, De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, Migne PL 217: 786. “Per purpuram regiae dignitatis significatur pontificalis potestas.” 40 M. Pastoureau, The Colours of Our Memories (Cambridge, 2012), 141. 41 For examples see Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 2 (as in note 4). 42 On this see M. Pastoureau, “Ceci est mon sang: Le christianisme médiéval et la couleur rouge,” in Le Pressoir mystique: Actes du colloque de recloses, ed. D. Alexandre-Bidon (Paris, 1990), 43–56, and Meier and Suntrup, Lexikon der Farbenbedeutungen Im Mittelalter, 640–704 (as in note 4). 43 On this see E. Kirschbaum, “L’angelo rosso e l’angelo turchino,” Rivista di archeologia cristiana 19 (1940), 209–49. See also A. Petzold, “‘His Face Like Lightning’: Colour as Signifier in representations of the Holy Women at the Tomb,” Arte medievale 2 (1992), 149–55. 44 An example of this is the Coronation mantle of Roger II in Vienna. 45 Fol. 111 and for colored illustration Teviotdale, The Stammheim Missal, 84 (as in note 16). For a late example see the Ottheinrich Bible, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 8010 (2), fol. 44r, http:// daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00026283/images/index.html?id=00026283&groesser= &fip=ewqxsxdsydenwwqrseayasdasfsdr&no=5&seite=7. He is also represented in a bright red mantle in the crowning of thorns (fol. 68) in contrast to the other scenes where he is represented in purple. 46 See Wessel, “Farbensymbolik” in Reallexikon zur Byzantinischen Kunst, vol. 2 (as in note 12), 530. 47 Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 229, fol.14 and 17v. Images of these can be seen at http://special. lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/psalter/psalterindex.html (accessed August 10, 2015). 48 Bernard of Clairvaux, “Item De Beata Maria Virgine Sermo,” Migne PL 184, 1020. 49 Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Othernes, vol. 1 (as in note 4), 47–48. 50 M. Linares, “Kunst Und Kultur Im Mittelalter Farbschemata und Farbsymbole,” in Farbe im Mittelalter: Materialität – Medialität – Semantik (as in note 14), vol. 1, 305. 51 Pastoureau, Blue (as in note 11). It may be that Pastoureau has overstated his case (for which see H. Pulliam, “Color,” in Medieval Art History Today – Critical Terms, a Special Issue of Studies in Iconography (2012), 5. Nevertheless, Pastoureau’s basic scheme of developments in color remains convincing, though the detailed analysis needs to be refined more. 52 Pastoureau, Black (as in note 7), 60. 53 Pastoureau, Blue (as in note 11), 62. 54 Kirschbaum, “L’angelo rosso e l’angelo turchino” (as in note 43), 209–48. 55 Pastoureau, Blue (as in note 11), 64. 56 Dronke, “Tradition and Innovation in Medieval Western Color-Imagery” (as in note 10), 84. 57 P. Thoby, Le Crucifix, Des Origines Au Concile de Trente: Étude inconographique (Nantes, 1959), 120. For colored illustration of windows at Chartres see The Corpus of Medieval Narrative Art, http://www.medi evalart.org.uk/Chartres/051_pages/Chartres_Bay051_Panel07.htm (accessed August 11, 2015). 58 M. Camille, Gothic Art: Visions and Revelations of the Medieval World (London, 1996), 136. Space does not make it possible to discuss the interesting question of the iconography of color in architecture of the time. Barbara Deimling had drawn attention, for example, to the red doors in church buildings in Germany, which were associated with the judiciary; B. Deimling, “Medieval Church Portals and Their Importance in the History of Law,” in Romanesque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, ed. R. Toman (Cologne, 2004), 324–25. There has been considerable new research on polychromy in architecture, for which see Farbe im Mittelalter: Materialität – Medialität – Semantik (as in note 14). 59 London, British Library, Cotton Ms Nero C IV, fol.39r. For colored illustration see British Library Digitised Manuscripts, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_nero_c_iv (accessed August 11, 2015). 60 Pastoureau, Green (as in note 9), 91. 61 The Celestial Hierarchy, 15.7. Pseudo-Dionysius, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works (London, 1987), 188.

451

Andreas Petzold 62 British Museum, M&ME 1983, 0401, 1. For colored reproduction see http://www.britishmuseum.org/ research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=34990001& objectId=60247&partId=1 (accessed August 11, 2015). See also on the convention of representing St. Peter in a yellow outer garment Lisner (as in note 28), “Die Gewandfarben Der Apostel in Giottos Arenafresken Farbgebung und Farbikonographie,” especially 314. 63 J. Weaver, The Ancestors of Christ Windows at Canterbury Cathedral (Los Angeles, 2013), 52 and 62 for illustrations. 64 Mellinkoff, Outcasts, vol. 1 (as in note 4), 51–52, and vol. 2, fig.II.38 for colored illustration. See also A. Petzold, “‘Of the Significance of Colours’: The Iconography of Colour in Romanesque and Early Gothic Book Illumination,” in Image and Belief: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 1999), 131–33. 65 P. Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, and Glass, 1250–1550 (New Haven, 1999). 66 Meier and Suntrup, Lexikon der Farbenbedeutungen Im Mittelalter (as in note 4). 67 For an attempt to do so in relation to a liturgical manuscript see J.C. Bonne, “Rituel de la couleur: Fonctionnement et usage des images dans la sacramentaire de Limoges,” in Image et Signification, ed. D. Ponna (Paris, 1983), 129–39.

452

33 FLOWERS AND PLANTS, THE LIVING ICONOGRAPHY Celia Fisher

Leaves and flowers are such a natural form of decoration that it is easy to ignore their significance; but like the acanthus, which adorned Corinthian columns in classical times, and in the fifteenth century became the dominant leaf pattern in illuminated manuscripts, there is usually a good story attached. According to legend, the Greek architect Callimachus adopted this motif after he saw acanthus growing from under a gravestone (or a basket placed on a gravestone), full of vigorous new life, and was doubly inspired by the beauty of its form and its resurrection symbolism. From the eleventh century acanthus leaves were reworked in Romanesque and then Gothic styles, often twisted to frame people and monsters, but they were not specifically associated in Christian art with resurrection, and their reappearance in the margins of manuscripts seems purely decorative. On the other hand, pomegranate fruits did retain the primeval aura of sacrifice and rebirth suggested by the seeds surrounded in sticky red juice. In classical mythology they were integral to the story of Persephone’s captivity in the Underworld and her springtime rituals of return. Since they were also sanctified by Old Testament references, like the Song of Solomon (4.13, 6.7, et al.), pomegranates were accepted as a Christian symbol of resurrection, though their appearances were rare, as were the fruits themselves. In the Hours of Margaret of Orleans (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, lat 1156B), created around 1430, seeds like drops of blood burst from the fruits around a miniature of the Crucifixion (f.139), and in the tapestry of the Hunt of the Unicorn (New York, Cloisters Museum) the risen unicorn lies under a pomegranate tree, with the red seeds spilling over his flanks. However, when Dürer portrayed Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian holding a pomegranate (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, GG_825), it spoke more of worldly power. The seeds had come to represent the dominions of the church over which he exercised a disputed control. Pomegranates were also the emblematic fruit of Granada, a key kingdom of reunited Spain to which Maximilian (and Henry VIII) were linked by marriage and therefore inclined to use its emblems. Heraldry was often based on wordplay. The Romans had called pomegranates Mala punica (Carthaginian apples), but this evolved into the later Latin name Punica granatum (many seeded) and hence the etymological link with Granada. Plants offer all these possibilities, from their classical and biblical heritage to the connotations of their names, together with their uses and their appearance – a rich compendium of complicated, fascinating, and all too often speculative clues to their appearance in medieval art. In order to read the message contained in an artistic depiction of a plant it is necessary to recognize the plant. Foremost in chronology and significance, grapevines appeared on the walls 453

Celia Fisher

of the Christian catacombs of Rome, representing the communion wine and the sacrificial blood of Christ, and recalling inspirational biblical sayings, such as “I am the true vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5). In medieval devotional texts it became customary for the large decorative capital letters marking the beginnings of chapters or prayers to be decorated with tendrils of vines. These could be embellished with gold leaf or color and gradually they spread until they surrounded the text on all four sides, giving their name vignette to the frameworks of foliage design and vignetteur to its practitioners (although other leaves, especially ivy, started to appear and also tiny flowers, not to mention marginal figures and drolleries). It was possibly from decorations in books – appearing as early as the tenth century and increasingly in the eleventh and twelfth – that leaf carvings in churches derived. In Romanesque churches these sprouting branches remained stylized, but in the great Gothic cathedrals of the thirteenth century they were often astonishingly realistic, springing from an expertise that originated with the stonemasons of northern France – Chartres, Reims, and, in Paris, Ste. Chapelle and parts of Notre-Dame – then rapidly influencing Germany (e.g., Naumberg and Bamberg cathedrals) and England, starting with the chapter houses of Southwell and York (Fig. 33.1). Among these leaves there are vines in plenty with bunches of grapes, and also ivy with their tighter clusters of berries. Evergreen plants like ivy were endowed with an aura of immortality suitable for religious festivals and buildings. The Jewish feast of tabernacles and the Roman Saturnalia both offered precedents for constructing leafy shrines for sacred rites, which the Christian church reluctantly transferred to the calendar for Christmas with the words templa ornantur (let the church be decorated). Ivy was first associated with vines because they were both sacred to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine – “ivy his winter crown, the vine his crown in summer,” as if ivy were the evergreen equivalent to vines. In northern Europe holly and ivy were paired and in certain carols they retained a pre-Christian sense of a midwinter contest between light and dark. But holly does not appear in church carvings, perhaps because it remained too pagan. In a fourteenth-century English poem it was the attribute of the Green Knight, who challenged Sir Gawain to a beheading contest. Other leaves which might seem equally pre-Christian in their associations were sanctified in line with the wisdom of church teachings that mystic symbols were better adapted than repressed. Thus oak leaves and acorns became one of the most widespread of thirteenth-century leaf carvings, sacred to the fierce Norse gods, to Druids, and to the chief god of the Greek and Roman pantheon, Zeus/Jupiter, because the whispering leaves of the sacred oak of Dodona was his oracle. Oak also appeared in the Old Testament as a tree where God might make his will known to such heroes as Joshua and Gideon. Occasionally the more authentic holm oak of the Mediterranean regions (which resembles holly and is evergreen) featured in carvings, but it was generally replaced by the familiar leaves of the European oak. Rivaling oak in carved popularity, hawthorn, the May tree, was gathered to honor the goddess of spring (for the Romans this was Flora), but in the Christian calendar the month and the tree were rededicated to the Virgin Mary and branches were brought inside for protection (it was only with the Reformation that this practice was declared unlucky). For good measure the red berries were linked with drops of Christ’s redeeming blood and the thorns with the crown of thorns. More tenuously hawthorn was described as Joseph’s staff, but whether this was Joseph who won the hand of the Virgin by planting his stick in the ground, which immediately flowered, or Joseph of Arimathea arriving in Glastonbury is seldom relevant. It was probably the protective aspect of oak and hawthorn that was of paramount importance, especially in their frequent appearance surrounding the head of the Green Man, that puzzling and ubiquitous creature whose purpose was usually apotropaic – to ward off evil spirits. In 1235 several versions of a foliate head appeared in a book of architectural sketches by the master mason Villard de Honnecourt (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Ms. Fr. 19093), who called it tete de feuilles, but without explanation. Two other protective leaves that 454

Flowers and plants

Figure 33.1 Leaf carvings in the Chapter House of Southwell Minster, England, c. 1300. Cinquefoil leaves and flowers, believed to have magical powers associated with the number five, hence the Latin name potentilla. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

often appear in leaf carvings are from herbaceous plants, not trees. Artemisia (which when rendered in wood or stone can be mistaken for acanthus) was dedicated to Artemis, the goddess of hunting, and a fierce guardian of chastity. Together with various related plants of the daisy family, which have a sharp insect-repellent smell, artemisia has been used by our ancestors worldwide to protect people, their homes, and their dead – both in practical ways to ward off insect predation and in more esoteric ways to preserve the body for the afterlife. The other powerfully protective leaf from a little plant was potentilla or cinquefoil, a small-flowered member of the rose family with five lobes to its leaves and five petals (which has been mistaken sometimes in carvings for a buttercup, a plant that has no place and no meaning in medieval art). The number five was a medieval symbol of great power – as in the pentagon, a five-sided fort – and it was Christianized 455

Celia Fisher

as an emblem of the Virgin. The pentangle would be placed on the shields of crusaders and it also became associated with the five wounds of Christ. Another herbaceous plant that appears surprisingly frequently in medieval church carving is white bryony, a climbing plant with tightly twisting tendrils, red berries (again), and perhaps most importantly a forked root that was widely used as a substitute for mandrake. Mandrake was a fertility drug, approved by its use in the Old Testament when Jacob and Rachel conceived Joseph with mandrake roots tucked under the bed (Genesis 30). To what extent the stonemasons, or the patrons who oversaw their work, knew all this plant lore is endlessly debatable and symbolism will always range from obvious to dubious. Another explanation for the widespread popularity of all these particular leaves is that they are deeply lobed and therefore create wonderful patterns that are harmonious but varied. One other leaf that fits this theory should be mentioned – indeed sometimes it outnumbers all the others: maple, which can be identified when its characteristic winged seeds are carved alongside. Perhaps they seemed airborne like little angels. But the generally accepted explanation is that maples belong to the acer family, like the oriental plane and sycamore. Since the latter are Middle Eastern and did not grow in medieval Europe, although they may have been known, maple provided an indigenous substitute. Their attribute was that they grow beside springs of water and could therefore symbolize the waters of salvation, and more apocryphally the story of the Flight into Egypt, where the Holy family was refreshed by a miraculous spring gushing out under a “sycamore” tree. Strictly speaking the sycamore of Egypt is a species of fig, but botanical exactitude might not deter the search for biblical symbolism in this instance. The realism of carved leaves was a thirteenth-century phenomenon which faded back into stylization all too soon, but meanwhile in illuminated manuscripts the impulse toward accurate representation was growing, especially in Italy. In certain luxury editions of herbals the illustrations departed from the classical prototypes, which had been rendered lifeless and often unrecognizable by centuries of copying. This movement started in the medical schools of Salerno, near Naples, and was exemplified in a text by the leading physician Platearius, generally known by its opening words Circa Instans. It was based as usual on Dioscorides, a first-century Roman doctor who wrote Materia Medica, but also registered the input of Arabic expertise in botany and medicine. The oldest surviving copy of Circa Instans (London, British Library, Egerton 747) dates from c. 1300 and includes some illustrations that spring to life across the page, including coincidentally white bryony (f.16v). A hundred years later, when the center of medical excellence had moved north to Padua, the Carrara Herbal (London, British Library, Egerton 2020), the Venetian Rinio Herbal (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Cod. Lat. VI 59), and the Belluno Herbal (London, British Library, Add. 41623) – which included plants indigenous to the Venetian Alps – all demonstrated an urge to display plants to maximum advantage as well as realistically. These works, like all illuminated manuscripts, were for wealthy patrons, but the botanical knowledge they contained was widely known and integral to the symbolism of plants – especially where it related to the doctrine of signatures, whereby the appearance of a plant bore a clue to the affliction it treated. At the same time, toward the end of the fourteenth century, a curious Italian manuscript was created for the Cocharelli family of Genoa, a Treatise on Vices (London, British Library, Egerton 3781) for the moral instruction of children. The margins were adorned with gourds, olives, vines, and roses weighed down by gigantic crickets, caterpillars, spiders, and scorpions, no doubt to reinforce graphically the message of the text. In Lombardy too there was a move toward naturalistic plant motifs in manuscript border decoration, seen first in the work of Pietro da Pavia. Then around 1410 his associate Michelino da Besozzo created a prayer book for a patron in Milan or Venice (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, mss 944) in which the miniatures and 456

Flowers and plants

their facing text pages have exquisite repeat patterns of a single flower. But only once is there an obvious symbolic link with the miniature – a dramatic and grief-stricken Entombment (f. 24v-25) surrounded by broad bean flowers. Beans have been associated with death rites since preclassical times, and subsequently they appeared occasionally in paintings of the Last Supper. Meanwhile in France, under the patronage of the king’s brother, Jean Duke of Berry, some of the earliest recognizable flowers were also appearing in manuscript borders, possibly under the guidance of Italian illuminators. But it was in the duke’s Tres Riches Heures (Chantilly, Musee Conde), created by the Netherlandish Limbourg Brothers before 1416, that a uniquely interesting flower border appeared. The miniature of Christ feeding the five thousand with loaves and fishes (f. 168v) is surrounded by larkspurs with the correct feathery leaves and buds like little fish. The Latin name for larkspur, delphinium, is derived from dolphin because of the fish-like shape of the buds (which the artist has emphasized), giving a direct link with the miniature and probably also with the cryptic name of Christ. Another decorative and meaningful flower study from these early decades of the fifteenth century was produced by an anonymous Dutch master (called the Master of the Morgan Infancy Cycle, after a manuscript in the Morgan Library New York and his unusual miniatures depicting the childhood of Christ). In one of his prayer books (London, British Library, Add. 50005) the border decorations include penwork sketches of real plants, the loveliest of which is a pea surrounding the text opposite the Nativity scene (f.23r). The stems curve abundantly, the flowers are white with flopping petals like folded linen, and one flower grows into the center of the gilded initial. The splitting peapods are washed with shades of green to emphasize the circular peas. Here is an obvious but one-off delight in the patterns to be found in nature, as if peas in some particular way celebrated the birth of Christ. The same phenomenon occurs again in the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (New York, Morgan 917&945), created during the 1440s by a Dutch illuminator. Around a miniature of three angels singing of the birth of Christ (f.11r), pea pods lie interspersed with pink flowers, and stems that appear to pierce the page. This trompe l’oeil plant, enlarged out of all proportion to the figures it frames, was a precursor to the 1470s, when many different flowers featured in the borders of manuscripts looked as if they had been plucked from their stems and scattered across the golden and colored borders that surround the pages. Their realism was enhanced by the shadows they cast and insects alighted as if they had been tricked by the artist’s skill. These decorative borders were mainly associated with Books of Hours produced in the southern Netherlands, especially Ghent and Bruges – hence their grouping as Ghent Bruges Hours (Fig. 33.2). The scattering of flowers reflected ceremonial occasions when images of the Virgin, or patron saints, were carried in procession. In February, Candlemas, the Purification of the Virgin, called for white flowers, and in northern Europe, leucojums (snowflakes) were more in evidence than snowdrops – which are native only to Eastern Europe and Turkey. Leucojums do appear in some manuscript borders but more especially in fifteenth-century paintings of the Virgin by German masters. In springtime, to mark the Annunciation (Lady Day in March) violets would be scattered in honor of the Virgin. It has been suggested that their gently drooping flowers reflected her humility; their purplish color the mourning she would endure (or if white, her purity); their sweet smell, like all scented flowers, conveyed the invisible essence of spirituality. And in May, Pentecost was a festival of summer flowers often culminating in the release of a profusion of petals from on high to represent the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The ceremony is depicted in the Hours of Margaret of Orleans where the border around the Pentecost miniature (f.146r) shows angels at the top of the page scattering roses, pinks, violets, daisies, columbines, and stocks toward tiny ladies, who are gathering them into baskets at the bottom of the page. These are some of the most frequently recurring flowers in late medieval manuscripts and paintings, roses above all. 457

Figure 33.2 The Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, Flemish, c. 1470, Oxford Bodleian Library, ms Douce 210-220, f. 133. The miniature showing the Nativity is attributed to the Master of Mary of Burgundy; the flower-strewn borders were added a little later, but their origins have been associated with his work. It was typical of the Ghent-Bruges Hours that the flowers were arranged in patterns; here red roses and red double daisies were interspersed with white daisies, stocks, and a pea flower, alternating with blue speedwell, borage, cornflower, columbine, and heartsease. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Flowers and plants

Although roses have always been associated with earthly lovers, and with the passions of Venus, the medieval church judiciously absorbed them into Christian iconography. White roses became symbols of purity, red roses of redeeming blood, and both colors, together with the green of their leaves, also represented the three cardinal virtues faith, hope, and love. Other meanings accrued; one of the favorite descriptions of the Virgin was rosa sine spina (a rose without a thorn), which may also explain the appearance in fifteenth-century paintings of rose-like flowers without thorns, especially peonies but also hollyhocks. In Dante’s Paradiso (Canto 30) heaven was envisaged as a white rose with the blessed resting in the petals and the golden glory of God at the center – and the great rose windows of medieval cathedrals reflected a comparable concept. Like roses, pinks and carnations also offer various interpretations. Their Latin name, dianthus, meant flower of God. Carnation may derive from coronation since it was traditionally used in headdresses and garlands for ceremonial occasions; but the name carnation evolved alongside the Latin carnus for flesh, used to describe the color of the flower, and also offering a punning reference to the Incarnation – “and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) – which would explain the frequent appearances of a pink held out toward the Christ Child in fifteenth-century paintings. Pinks were also thought to resemble nails, their German name negelblum meant nail-flower, and this led to an association with the nails with which Christ was crucified, especially when three appear in a painting. Daisies were virginal and might also appear alongside important female patron saints, like Barbara, Catherine, and more especially Margaret, since the French marguerite made them her namesake (it also means pearl). Alternatively their Latin name, bellis, linked them with the Roman goddess of war, and they were among herbs like plantain, cinquefoil, mallow, mullein, and marigold that were used to heal wounds. All these plants appear in fifteenth-century paintings, and in certain narrative contexts their medicinal value might be part of their message. Columbines, which commonly share the same mournful purple/blue of violets, were often painted to reflect the color of the Virgin’s mantle and their French name ancolie signified melancholy. But as well as being associated with the grief of the Virgin (and in certain works the bereavement of a patron) columbines were seen to resemble birds. The name columbine linked them with the dove of the Holy Spirit, the Latin aquilegia with an eagle soaring toward heaven like a spirit ascending. Last, but not least in terms of their frequent use by artists, stocks are members of the plant family named cruciferae because they have four petals in the form of a cross, giving an obvious link with Christ’s crucifixion. The Wilton Diptych (London, National Gallery, NG4451), created in the 1390s for Richard II, is one of the earliest paintings to depict flowers (roses, violets, and daisies) scattered at the feet of the Virgin as she held her Child. But the painting also contains more unusual plants, including ferns and rosemary, which were personal emblems of his dead queen, Anne of Bohemia. Rosemary was carried at weddings and funerals as a flower of fidelity and remembrance. But if plants in paintings had several attributes, so much the better, and the white flowers of rosemary were said to be tinged with blue because the Virgin hung her blue robe over a rosemary bush to dry in the sun. An alternative way to display symbolic flowers was inaugurated in 1311, when Duccio of Siena placed a vase of white lilies in the center foreground of an Annunciation scene (London, National Gallery, The Maesta, NG1139). In the Middle Ages cultivated lilies were always white (Virgil first called them Lilium candidum; Madonna lily was a Victorian naming). Their luminosity was enhanced by the shining golden stamens, and their strong scent added an apt metaphor for the spiritual mystery of conceiving a child through a purely religious experience. By the same token white roses, jasmine, and lilies of the valley also appear in religious paintings. In 1475 the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes both revised and reinforced the familiar usages when he placed two vases of flowers before a Nativity scene, known as the Portinari altarpiece, after the Florentine banker who commissioned it (Florence, Uffizi). There 459

Celia Fisher

are two white irises conveying the message of purity (they were also the emblematic flower of Florence), while the lily alongside them is orange-red – this is Lilium bulbiferum, which had recently been brought into cultivation from its alpine habitat – and presumably in this context its reddish tones represented Christ’s blood. The other flowers are columbines, three pinks, and scattered purple and white violets. There is also one purple iris, the more familiar color, which reflected the nearby robe of the kneeling Virgin, perhaps indicating her royal status in heaven as well as her earthly grief. Like roses and lilies, irises bore much symbolism. They were also royal, being the original fleur de lys of France, and then England. Their common name was sword lily on account of the shape of the long, pointed leaves (the Latin gladiolus has now officially passed to a different plant). It was said that at the Crucifixion sorrow pierced the Virgin’s heart like a sword, an image occasionally used by artists, but the subtlest use of sword imagery occurs in the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestry, where the risen unicorn sits inside a fenced sanctuary and the gate is guarded by a large iris, like the angel with a fiery sword at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. In classical mythology Iris was the messenger of the gods, and her symbol was the rainbow as well as the flower. In the Old Testament God’s reassurance to Noah after the flood was pledged in a rainbow. During the fifteenth century artists started to use irises in the context of divine visions or messages – for instance, when the Master of Mary of Burgundy painted her portrait at a church window with a vision of the Virgin and Child (Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1857 f.14v); when Gerard David painted yellow irises at the waterside in the Baptism of Christ (Bruges, Groeninge Museum, 0000.GRO0035.I-0039.I); when Botticelli in the Primavera painted an iris at the feet of Chloris as she transformed into the goddess Flora (Florence, Uffizi, 1890 no. 8360). A garden setting offered the maximum opportunity for depicting symbolic plants, while the garden itself reflected the earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden, and, since a typical medieval garden was an enclosed space, the analogy of the hortus conclusus, which was another description of the Virgin applied. In the 1390s, contemporary with the Wilton Diptych, the Flemish painter Melchior Broederlam produced the Dijon Altarpiece for the Duke of Burgundy (Dijon, Musee des Beaux Arts). In the Annunciation wing he created an early association of the Virgin with a lily in a vase, plus a tiny walled garden, a rose hedge, and flowery grass – which seems unusually to include a nettle, perhaps a reminder of worldly tribulation. Indeed plants could be threatening. Thistles in paintings of the Christ Child represented the crown of thorns, and in paintings of saints like John the Baptist in the wilderness they spoke of temptation and hardship. Poppies were associated with battlefields, in the Middle Ages as now, and made a spectacular appearance in Bartolome Bermejo’s St. Michael vanquishing the devil (London, National Gallery, NG6553), painted c. 1468, at the time when Christian Spain was still fighting the Moors. But to return to the garden, early in the fifteenth century both Jan van Eyck and Robert Campin created influential prototypes of the Virgin and Child in little paradise gardens, while van Eyck’s Altarpiece of the Adoration of the Lamb, completed in 1432 (Ghent, St. Bavo Cathedral), transformed the grassy setting and the flowers to a huge scale. He even introduced palms, exotic trees with strong biblical associations, but hard for northern European artists to depict. Van Eyck must have seen palm trees when he joined an embassy sent by Philip the Good to Portugal, but normally his compatriots, when representing Christ’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, or the Holy Family resting beneath a palm tree, showed dates sprouting from the branches like cones on a pine tree. In Italian frescoes the flowery grass of paradise had appeared even earlier. In 1365 the Dominican chapel of Santa Maria Novella in Florence showed the blessed dancing among fruit-laden trees and meadows full of flowers (Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer evoked similar scenes), although it was not until the fifteenth century that most painted flowers became identifiable. Among the most frequent to appear in the grass were little wild strawberries, which since they 460

Flowers and plants

have no thorns, rind, pips, or stones were taken to symbolize the pure sweetness of the Virgin – although they might also represent drops of Christ’s blood; and the trifoliate leaves of strawberries related them to the Trinity – a feature they shared with clover, the prototype of a trefoil. Another Trinity flower was wild viola or heartsease, sporting three colors – purple, yellow, and white – and appearing almost as often as violets in flowery grass and manuscript borders. Alongside daisies and marigolds (miniature sunflowers because they open and close according to sunlight), dandelions were featured in paintings (though never in manuscript borders), and perhaps at the feet of the Virgin feeding her Child; the white latex from their stems was miraculously reminiscent of her milk. One of the finest paintings of a paradise garden, dated around 1420, and lending its name to an anonymous German master (Frankfurt, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, HM 54) (Plate 6), also included wallflowers (an alternative to stocks, being cruciform) and cowslips. Since cowslips were nicknamed key flowers, Our Lady’s keys, or key of heaven they served to emphasize that this garden was a subliminal place between earth and heaven. And it seems obvious that by this stage artists were making sketches of flowers from nature, although it was only later in the century that Dürer and Leonardo produced surviving studies that can be related to their paintings.

Plate 6 Master of the Paradise Garden (Upper Rhenish), The Paradise Garden, c. 1420, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, HM 54. In a typical enclosed garden the Virgin is seated among flowers and the Christ Child is learning music from St. Cecilia (who has a headdress of peapods), while St. Dorothea picks cherries. Along the wall (left to right) the flowers are red roses, speedwell, betony, lychnis, stocks, iris, and hollyhock. In the grass the flowers include white lily, peony, strawberries, lilies of the valley, leucojum, cowslips, yellow wallflowers, periwinkles, daisies, and violets. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

461

Celia Fisher

The floweriest of all medieval scenes are in fifteenth-century Flemish tapestries, known as verdures to contemporaries and as millefleurs since. Here too the flowers created a paradise setting, while their numbers and variety suggest their purpose was mainly decorative, although several had romantic connotations, like heartsease (their French name pensees/pansies meant thoughts) and also pinks – because both had a lively secular existence as love tokens. This was also true of blue flowers, since blue was the color of constancy. Periwinkles – the name derived from Latin pervinca, meaning to bind, and inspired by their tendrils – might twine hearts together like love knots. Forget-me-nots had names with similar meanings in other European languages, and they were held like pinks in fifteenth-century portraits, possibly signifying betrothal. Bright blue speedwells, cornflowers, and borage may have been regarded as offering the same message, but they were evidently being used for color patterning, both in manuscript borders and against the rich red background of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries (Paris, Musee Cluny, Cl. 10831–10834). Incidentally this red background meant that white pinks and columbines displayed to best advantage, and here they provide an early record of color variation in cultivated flowers. However the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries definitely used flowers and fruit (the iris and pomegranate have already been mentioned) to convey symbolic meanings. The unicorn was an allegory of Christ’s death and resurrection, but folklore lurked beneath the surface, especially with the risen unicorn. The orchid growing up against its white flanks was widely used as an aphrodisiac (the two tuberous roots were likened to testicles and by the doctrine of signatures were considered efficacious); the church, however, had reclaimed orchids by explaining that the brown stains on their leaves came from drops of Christ’s blood as an orchid grew under the cross. The wild arum beneath the unicorn’s hoof represented another source of aphrodisiac powders, and all its folk names alluded to the sexy purple spadix poking like a penis from the green spathe. This seems to carry resurrection symbolism into unwonted areas, certainly more pagan than Christian. This mixed heritage of meanings rendered plant symbolism ambiguous, sometimes even in a religious painting. Apples on a tree plucked by Eve, let alone Venus, represented temptation. The Virgin, known as the new Eve, was believed to offer apples of redemption, which absorbed their earlier danger. But in paintings of the Virgin and Child by the Venetian artist Carlo Crivelli (active 1457–93) there are also quinces, peaches, pears, nuts, and cucumbers. All or none might have seductive qualities. For instance, Crivelli’s cucumber has been interpreted as bitter and misshapen to represent sin and particularly lust, but the Bible casts no such slur on cucumbers. They are recorded as the simple luxury for which the Israelites yearned after two years wandering in the desert (Numbers 11:5). They might even be linked to the gourd which grew up and sheltered Jonah outside the walls of Nineveh (Jonah 4:6) and, since he survived being in the belly of the whale, his gourd became another symbol of resurrection. In other fifteenth-century paintings, the oranges and lemons that appear were definitely bitter (sweet oranges had not reached Europe in the Middle Ages) and as such they were sometimes placed before the Christ Child, cut across with a knife as a symbol of his sacrifice (much as red fruits – cherries, redcurrants, and strawberries – were also depicted in this context). But in Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini portrait (London, National Gallery, NG186) oranges represented a luxury fruit, source of scents and flavorings; and a lemon tree, linguistically confused at some point with the biblical cedar tree, was a symbol of the Virgin. Rarest of all fruits to appear in late medieval art, a banana plant (though admittedly not a banana) featured alongside an Annunciation by Fra Angelico (Madrid, Prado, P00015) in the scene of Adam and Eve expelled from Eden. Bananas are Asiatic fruit; it was fabled that Alexander the Great sought wisdom from the wise men of India who ate bananas, and in Arabic folklore bananas grew in Eden – which was presumably the information Fra Angelico had gleaned, sheltered though he was within the walls of San Marco in Florence. 462

Flowers and plants

At what point did flowers and fruit cease to be medieval and become Renaissance? Certainly Botticelli, Leonardo, and Dürer were Renaissance artists, but the significance of the flowers they portrayed still lay in their traditional meanings. When Botticelli painted The Birth of Venus (Florence, Uffizi, 1890 no. 878) circa 1480 it was fashionable in humanist circles to create a synthesis between Christianity and the classical writings they so admired. Even Venus could be regarded as one of the prototypes of the Virgin since both manifested heavenly love, and at the moment of her birth from the waves Venus was indeed still virginal. Botticelli scattered roses in her honor, and the robe that her attendant hurried to fling around her was embroidered with virginal daisies. There may also be a protective element (already mentioned in relation to artemisia). Members of the daisy family had healing and insect-repellent qualities that once linked them to the immortals of the ancient Near East and were inherited by the classical world. Tansy, in Latin tanacetum and in Greek athanasia, means immortal; parthenium, meaning virgin, the specific name of feverfew, especially linked the plant with the virgin goddess Athene, to whom the Parthenon was dedicated. The cornflowers, with which Botticelli decorated the gown of Venus’s attendant, were named centaurea in honor of the centaur Cheiron, who according to legend explained the properties of plants to the Greeks, and as a result often appeared galloping across the pages of medieval herbals. Botticelli’s Primavera also featured Venus, this time fully clothed and presiding over the springtime regeneration of her garden of love, with white roses scattered at her feet, the grass carpeted in flowers, and an orange grove substituted for her golden apples. To her right Mercury reaches up to pierce the clouds for a shower and tiny cress flowers fall across his boot as if they represent the god’s own seed. Flames of love start from Cupid’s arrow and form patterns on Mercury’s cloak, down toward the lychnis and verbascum at his feet. Both plants have soft furry leaves that were used as lamp wicks and were therefore lying ready to kindle. To Venus’s left the nymph Chloris is being transformed by the embrace of Zephyr into Flora the goddess of spring, her robe embroidered with pinks, flower of the gods. Other prominent flowers are more puzzling: the euphorbia under the Graces’ dancing feet, a green hellebore and a coltsfoot beneath Venus – were they intended for purging melancholy humors? All of which serves only to suggest that the attributes of plants, real or imagined, were wide-ranging and this chapter can only touch on the subject, its sources, and a few examples. If it stimulates more research it has served its purpose, and to this end a list of further reading, rather than footnotes, has been added.

Further reading A. Coates, Flowers and Their Histories (London, 1956). M. Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Tradition (London, 2000). P. Coremans et al., “L’Agneau Mystique al laboratoire,” Les Primitifs Flamands III, Contributions 2 (Brussels, 1953). C. Eisler, The Prayerbook of Michelino da Besozzo (New York, 1981). W. Emboden, Leonardo da Vinci on Plants and Gardens (London, 1987). C. Fisher, Flowers in Medieval Manuscripts (London, 2004). C. Fisher, The Medieval Flower Book (London, 2007). C. Fisher, Flowers of the Renaissance (London, 2011). M. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (New York, 1976). M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal (London, 1931: repr 1976). J. Harvey, Medieval Gardens (London, 1981). R. Koch, “Flower Symbolism in the Portinari Altarpiece,” Art Bulletin 46 (1964), 70–77. R. Koch, “Martin Schongauer’s Dragon Tree,” Print Review 5 (1976), 115–119. E. Konig, Les Heures de Marguerite d’Orleans (Paris, 1991).

463

Celia Fisher M. Levi d’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1980). E. MacDougall, Medieval Gardens, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture IX (Washington, DC, 1986). N. Pevsner, The Leaves of Southwell (London, 1945). J. Plummer, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves (London 1966). M. Tisdall, The Flowers of Exeter (Plymouth, 2004). D. Turner, The Hastings Hours (London, 1983). J. Williamson, The Oak King, the Holly King and the Unicorn (New York, 1980).

464

34 THE ICONOGRAPHY OF LIGHT Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren

The Old and New Testaments are full of references to light – both natural and artificial. Light is equated with the word of God, the truth, and the good. Light is associated with armor (Rom 13:12), guidance (Ps 119:130), and life (Eph 5:14). Light chases away darkness (2 Sam 22:29; Ps 18:28; Is 42:5–7, 16; Lk 11:33–35; Jn 1:3–5; Jn 3:18–20; Jn 12:35; Rom 13:12). It signifies the presence of God (Ex 34:29–35; Ps 89:15; Jn 9:5) and even embodies or represents God himself (Jn 8:12; Jn 1:5–7). Light is related to fire (Neh 9:11–13) and lamps (Ps 18:28; 2 Sam 22:29; Mt 5:13–16; Lk 11:33–35). Biblical references to light entered into liturgical texts and hymns from an early date, even forming part of the Nicene Creed (“Light of Light . . .”), proclaiming and reinforcing the belief that the divine was manifested in light itself. Considering the frequent mention of light in the Bible and in service books, it is not surprising that light features prominently in the liturgical and paraliturgical texts that generated images and guided the faithful in the reception of imagery. Philosophical writings concerning light symbolism – particularly those by Neoplatonists like Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite – found a place in the work of many medieval theologians. In time, these philosophical notions influenced both the design of ecclesiastical architecture and the symbolism of Christian art. For medieval men and women, shining light, which mystically descended from the sky to penetrate darkness, bridged the divide between heaven and earth and purified the soul of sin.

Ecclesiastical architecture From an early date in Christian history, church buildings were conceived and perceived as containers of light, actualizing the symbolic value of illumination. The sixth-century Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was designed to maximize the effects of light – as the manifestation not only of God’s Word but also of his Wisdom, a related concept enshrined in the very name of the church. Luminosity was integral to the symbolic meaning of the church. The sparkling tessellated mosaics,1 gleaming marble revetments and pavements,2 reflective silver furnishings, and liturgical paraphernalia,3 when touched by the sun’s penetrating rays or stroked by the flickering lights of hundreds of lamps, created an impression of divine immanence and transcendence. Beyond the illumination of Hagia Sophia, which has generated long-term scholarly interest,4 church inscriptions, ekphrastic texts, and material remains provide ample evidence that the symbolic 465

Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren

value of light – filtered through theological and Neoplatonic writings – stimulated the design of church architecture and its decoration throughout the early Byzantine world – from Mount Sinai to Ravenna.5 Early writings on the symbolic importance of light played a role in architectural design and monumental decoration in later Byzantine periods as well. In the main church of the monastery of Hosios Loukas, built and decorated in the first half of the eleventh century, light animated the sacred figures in the vaults and squinches, reflected off the polished surfaces of the marble wall revetment, and demarcated a path to the heavenly sanctuary, which extends from the altar table to the west end of the nave (Fig. 34.1).6 Rays of light, usually invisible to the eye, were broken

Figure 34.1 View to apse with light penetrating nave at 10:00 a.m. in July 2015, Katholikon, Monastery of Hosios Loukas, Greece, early eleventh century. Image courtesy of Sharon Gerstel.

466

The iconography of light

up by the shapes of window apertures and were revealed, either touching wall surfaces and furnishings or descending through shimmering dust and the smoke of incense. Within the church, light played a role in the conception and apprehension of monumental images. In the Koimesis Church, Daphni, light falls at the center of a squinch containing the Annunciation, incorporating the natural phenomenon as a component of the iconography, equal, if not superior, to the flanking representations of the Virgin and Archangel. Certain aspects of ornament may also have been related to light. From the twelfth century, many Byzantine and Serbian churches were decorated on the interior and exterior with small radiating discs, an enigmatic motif that some scholars have associated with divine light.7 In a sense, these are reminiscent of the burnished circles in the gold backgrounds of several icons from Mount Sinai, whose function was to enhance the radiant qualities of the painted panel. The discs also recall the golden haloes that surround the heads of sacred figures, a practice that had its origins in ancient art. In addition to circular forms, radiant friezes executed in brick or in paint are widespread in architecture and art and may have also been connected to light symbolism.8 In Western Europe, care was also taken in the design of churches to control and showcase the effects of interior lighting. For example, in Romanesque pilgrimage churches, such as Santiago de Compostela, St. Sernin in Toulouse, or Ste. Foy in Conques, whereas the lofty interior spaces of nave and transept received only the limited light that filtered inward through side aisles and tribunes, the choirs were flooded with direct illumination from the clerestory windows and the lantern towers over the crossing. This emphasis on light effects not only drew the attention of pilgrims and worshipers to the main altar and liturgical stage but also created a shimmering aura when the descending rays reflected off the burnished surfaces of reliquary shrines. As Romanesque transformed into Gothic, the design of churches reached higher levels of luminosity through the replacement of stone walls with vast expanses of glowing stained glass, an effect that was made possible by streamlining and focusing support systems away from walls and onto piers and buttresses.9 This influential design development seems to have been initiated by Suger of Saint-Denis (abbot 1122–1151), who began reconstructing the church of the royal abbey during the 1130s. As in Romanesque pilgrimage churches, the lighting effects were concentrated on the monks’ liturgical choir, which also housed the glistening reliquary of the patron saint, visited on feast days by throngs of pilgrims. This eastern part of Suger’s church (Fig. 34.2), enveloped by a luminous, undulating stained-glass membrane, was dedicated in 1144,10 and the survival of the abbot’s own text documenting the architectural project, its funding, and its dedication11, leaves no doubt as to the grounding of this innovative design in Neoplatonic light symbolism, for the divine presence. Inscribed on the bronze doors that he commissioned for the new church, Suger declared, Bright is the noble work; but being nobly bright, the work should lighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, to the True Light, where Christ is the true door, in what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material and, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former subversion.12 He also credits the stained-glass windows with creating this new light, describing the choir as “a circular string of chapels by which the whole would shine with the wonderful and uninterrupted light of most luminous windows, pervading the interior beauty.”13 Erwin Panofsky proposed that the source for Suger’s interest in showcasing light through stained glass in his new church was to be found in the writing of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite – believed in the twelfth century 467

Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren

Figure 34.2 Interior of the ambulatory of the choir, Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, France, 1140–1144. Image courtesy of Stephen Gardner.

at Saint-Denis to be the same person as the patron saint of the abbey itself.14 Recently scholars have challenged Panofsky’s proposal of a Pseudo-Dionysian source,15 but the Neoplatonic identification of God with light clearly stands behind the reconception of the church enclosure as luminous walls of colored glass.16 A major shift occurred in the design of Gothic glazings a century after Suger’s innovative project. The new system – which seems to have developed in the area around Paris – highlighted colorless, “grisaille” glass into which were inserted bands or panels of colored glass, creating an effect quite different from the deeply saturated full-color windows featured in Suger’s choir and the Gothic cathedral glazings that had followed in its wake. This led to a dramatic increase in the amount of light that actually entered into architectural spaces. Earlier Gothic windows had created glowing walls, but they did not transmit as much light into the interior as did the new grisaille frameworks for the presentation of full-color figures and scenes. Meredith Lillich has proposed that this change was rooted in Parisian theological shifts, specifically in a thirteenth-century reconsideration of the work of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite through the lens of Augustinian Neoplatonism, which led to a new understanding of light symbolism, one that emphasized the clarity of divine light (as in grisaille windows) over the unapproachable 468

The iconography of light

mystery of divine gloom (which she associates with twelfth- and early thirteenth-century fullcolor windows).17 Because of their orientation and the manipulation of fenestration, church buildings throughout the Middle Ages, in the East as well as the West, highlight the role of light as the manifestation of God. Oriented toward the east, the rays of the rising sun entered the church through its eastern windows in the early morning, coinciding with the celebration of the Mass. In the early fourteenth-century monastic church of the Virgin Hodegetria in Mystras, the sun’s rays move slowly across the altar, beginning at 7:45 a.m. The entire table is bathed in light at 10:20, gradually illuminating and then shining brightly over the altar through the course of the liturgy. Within half an hour, with the dismissal of the faithful, the table is left in shadow.18 The illumination of the altar was also significant in Western Europe and points to common beliefs in the manifestation of God through light. In Visigothic Spain, a horseshoe arch divided the nave and the choir, where the small window that pierced the eastern curve of the apse allowed a strong beam of light to touch the altar table, penetrating the darkness to illuminate the space of the sacrifice.19 In Romanesque churches in Ireland – for example, at Cormac’s Chapel at Cashel (1134) – large angled windows pierced the north and south walls of the rectangular altar niche, illuminating both the table surface and the celebrant.20 At the mid-twelfth-century Cistercian church of Fontenay in France, light flooded into the sanctuary over the main altar through eleven huge windows cut into the flat eastern wall, whereas only filtered light reached the main space of the nave.21 The highlighting of the altar, and indeed the entire church sanctuary, manifested the presence of the Divine, a presence activated during the Eucharistic rite. Given the ritual and symbolic importance of the altar, architects took pains to frame the space around it.22 In many Byzantine churches, the apertures in the church walls – openings through which light penetrates the building – are framed by tetragrams – four abbreviated words whose first letters are painted to either side of crosses. One of the most frequent tetragrams is ΦΧΦΠ, the abbreviation of “Φῶς Χριστοῦ φαίνει πᾶσιν” (The light of Christ illuminates all), a phrase used in the liturgy – particularly in the Presanctified liturgy – and in monastic offices.23 The placement of the tetragram on the window and doorjambs of Byzantine churches is significant, as is its representation above the altar table, in niches used to prepare the offerings, or on the reverse side of icons intended for installation in the icon screen.24 In the church of the Virgin Peribleptos in Ohrid (1294/5) the tetragram is located above the central window of the sanctuary where the light streaming into the sanctuary manifested the light of Christ (Fig. 34.3); in the church of St. John the Baptist in the Lips Monastery in Constantinople, built between 1282 and 1304, the letters are carved into the mullion capitals of the central apse.25 The tetragram ΦΧΦΠ is also frequently found in Byzantine manuscripts, often coupled with another common formula, ΙC ΧC ΝΙ ΚΑ, “Jesus Christ conquers.”26 Found at the end of columns and elsewhere, these scribal additions may refer to enlightenment as knowledge, but may also express the hope for salvation. Clay lamps and objects of personal use from the earliest Christian centuries are also marked with the tetragram ΦΧΦΠ,27 indicating the longevity of this abbreviated phrase. The tetragrams are linked to ceremonies of initiation and to the lychnikon (Vespers), a service in which the lighting of the lamp at dusk symbolized Christ illuminating the sin-darkened world. Standing before the sanctuary gates at Vespers, the clergy intoned the Phos hilaron (Lumen Hilare), one of the oldest hymns of Church.28 The hymn begins, “O Joyful Light of the holy glory of the immortal, heavenly, holy blessed Father, O Jesus Christ. Having come to the setting of the sun, having beheld the evening light, we hymn the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God!” An emphasis on light is found in other liturgical hours as well.29 Within the Orthodox Church, hymns and liturgical texts elucidated the meaning of illumination for the faithful. A series of short hymns sung at Orthros (Matins) during Lent 469

Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren

Figure 34.3 Apse with tetragram over central window, Church of the Virgin Peribleptos (St. Clement), Ohrid, Macedonia, 1295. Image courtesy of Sharon Gerstel.

called the Exaposteilarion, but often referred to as the Photagogika (Hymns of Light),30 ask for salvation, speaking of light as purifying the soul: “Lord, you who brought forth the light, purify my soul of all sin.” The rising light of the day is thus linked to the light of Christ, for which the eyes of one’s soul need to be purified. Connections between the lighting of the evening lamp and the symbol of Christ as the light of the world would have been inescapable to anyone holding lamps or candles as the hymn was sung. Like natural light, artificial light was also given symbolic meaning. The orchestrated lighting of candles, lamps, and polykandela also responded to symbolic meanings of liturgical texts and theological concepts. According to St. Jerome, when the Gospel was read in Eastern churches,

470

The iconography of light

“lights are kindled as the only illumination, not merely to dispel the darkness but also to show a sign of rejoicing while the sun is still shining: and so that under the sign of corporeal light, that light may be set forth of which we read in the Psalms.”31 In medieval Byzantium, the darkened church interior was the site of dramatic lighting by candles and chandeliers.32 Monastic foundation documents describe with precision the types of lighting, the placement of lamps, and the occasions for illumination.33 Lamps were used at rites of Baptism, over tombs, in front of shrines, and in the presence of icons.34 At the moment of Christ’s resurrection, light pours out of the sanctuary into the darkened church, moving from one candle to another until the entire building is mystically illuminated.35 One type of Byzantine lamp – the choros – provided an astonishing burst of light as the large chandelier was spun at the apex of the Easter vigil, a ceremonial use of light that had a transformative effect on those gathered in darkness below.36 Art historians have closely examined church inventories to understand the importance that such light-bearing objects held for donors, from the most humble to the most regal.37 In the West, no prayer is more closely associated with the symbolic power of light than the Exultet, which was chanted in the darkened church at the apex of the Resurrection service. According to the Beneventan rite, the deacon proclaimed “Lumen Christi” three times before the evocative words were sung and the Paschal candle was lit. This moment is captured in a series of southern Italian parchment rolls, which contain both the lengthy text and illustrations of ritual practice.38 The celebratory chant associates light with the expulsion of darkness and the triumph of Christ over death: This therefore is the night which purged the shadows of sin with a column of light. This is the night which through all the world for those who believe in Christ, who are separated from the vices of the world and the darkness of sin, restores them today to grace and unites them to holiness.39 Surviving Paschal candlesticks – monumental in scale and fashioned from precious metal and marble – are frequently decorated with scenes from the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, linking them directly to the words of the Easter service and to the ritual illumination of the church interior.40 Mirroring ritual actions and settings, medieval paintings frequently include representations of candlesticks and lamps. Pairs of elaborate candlesticks are represented to either side of the apse in St. Panteleimon, Nerezi (1164), flanking representations of the Communion of the Apostles and the concelebrating bishops; in the ossuary of the Bačkovo Monastery, painted candles divide concelebrants and the eastern window. These candles symbolize illumination – both actual and metaphorical.41 In the main church of Hosios Loukas, two large painted candlesticks form part of the program of a funerary chapel. Their representation has been linked both to the metaphysical experience of divine light by the deceased and to the ritual use of light in commemorative services.42 Large candlesticks, each with a lit candle, accompany the painted representation of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste in the south aisle of the Acheiropoietos basilica in Thessalonike. Dated c. 1230, the paintings have been viewed recently as a memorial to the soldiers who died at the Battle of Klokotnitsa, on March 9, 1230, the Feast of the Forty Martyrs.43 In the nighttime settings for narrative episodes that take place in churches or chapels, candles or lamps find prominent places in Western medieval art as well, not only to signify the time of the action but also to signal the special nature of a sacred space. Often overlooked as components of ornament, representations of lamps, candles, and candelabra appear to be a significant part of church decoration, imaginatively spotlighting ritual settings and invoking collective memory.

471

Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren

Pictorial representation It is impossible to divorce the reading of images from the image-rich prayers chanted before them and, occasionally, written on them. The central-most image of the Byzantine church was the Pantokrator, the half-length image of Christ that looked down at the faithful from the apex of the dome. He is encircled by a colorful border of rainbow-like hues, “leaning and gazing out as though through the rim of heaven.”44 Beams of light entering the church through the dome enhanced the importance of the symbolic space. The connection to light is made clear in the text that Christ holds in his left hand. In Karanlık Kilise, an eleventh-century church in Cappadocia, his open Gospel book reads, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). This text is also found on the band encircling the Pantokrator in the Church of Mary of the Admiral in Palermo and on many Byzantine icons representing the Pantokrator, including the mosaics above the so-called royal doors – the thresholds between the dimly lit narthex and the more brightly illuminated nave – in Hagia Sophia and Hosios Loukas. An image of transformation, Christ illuminates the faithful and leads them to light. In several fourteenth-century churches located in Macedonia and Kosovo, the heavenly band that surrounds Christ is extended outward to form jagged rays.45 The beams of light that penetrated the church interior are mirrored in the representation of rays descending from heaven within several scenes of the Christological cycle, occasional episodes within hagiographic narrative, and in images of evangelists and prophets in the process of composition. In images of theophany – corresponding to major church feasts – the rays often descend from an arc symbolizing heaven or directly from the hand of God. This is particularly notable in scenes of the Annunciation, Nativity, and Baptism of Christ, where beams of light emerging from the arc of heaven symbolize the divine light emanating from God. In Byzantine scenes of the Annunciation the rays descend diagonally, touching the Virgin Mary as she spins thread for the Temple veil. From the twelfth century, Byzantine painters increasingly incorporate references to the Holy Spirit in the Annunciation, including the dove, but even images of Christ and the Ancient of Days.46 In one of the most striking representations of this scene, the late twelfth-century Annunciation icon from Mount Sinai, the ray is interrupted by the image of a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, framed within a reflective circle scored into the gold surface of the icon. Painted in a thin gold line and barely visible against the Virgin’s chest is an image of the Christ Child framed in a medallion, visualizing the Incarnation of the Logos.47 From the thirteenth century in many churches in Lakonia, Greece, between the Virgin and Archangel is the small Christ Child, who is connected by a vertical ray to the Ancient of Days at the top of the composition. The child is surrounded by circular lines, which, according to one church inscription, must be identified as Gideon’s bedewed fleece (Jg 6:37–38; Ps 71:6), a type of the Virgin.48 In Western medieval art, an aged figure of God the Father is often shown dispatching the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, to Mary, and occasionally the dove travels toward the Virgin down beams of light. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a tiny Christ Child, often with a cross-headed staff slung over his shoulder, slides down the descending beams as if headed for the womb of the Virgin herself (e.g., the Workshop of the Master of Flémalle’s Mérode Altarpiece in The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). In Nicholas of Verdun’s Klosterneuburg Altar of 1181, neither a dove nor a Christ Child appears, but beams of light project from Gabriel’s hands into the eyes of the Virgin to signal the moment of the Incarnation (Fig. 34.4). The Nativity is also represented in Byzantine art with rays of light descending from heaven into the cave. The rays frequently touch the infant Christ, either the halo around his head or his chest. In many representations of the scene, a star is depicted in the middle of the rays. As in other scenes illustrating major church feasts, the representation responds to prayers chanted during the service: 472

The iconography of light

Figure 34.4 Nicholas of Verdun, Annunciation to the Virgin, Klosterneuburg Altarpiece, 1181. Sammlungen des Stiftes, Losterneuberg, Austria. Photo courtesy of Art Resource.

“Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the light of wisdom! For by it, those who worshiped the stars were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness and to know Thee, the Orient from on high. O Lord, glory to Thee!” In one of the most interesting developments of the use of light in Western representations of the Nativity, beginning in the fourteenth century and continuing into the fifteenth (e.g., fifteenth-century Nativities by the Workshop of the Master of Flémalle in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon and by Geertgen tot Sint Jans in the National Gallery, London), light emanates from the Christ Child himself, a motif that has been linked to the visions of the fourteenth-century St. Brigitta (Bridget) of Sweden (c. 1303–1373).49 Like the scene of Annunciation, the representation of Christ’s Baptism also features rays of light (either as a single beam or divided rays) descending from the arc of heaven, a semicircle often populated with angels and, on occasion, even a throne.50 The rays frequently emanate from the hand of God and are interrupted by a dove. Together, the hand, dove, and form of Christ manifest the Trinity, whose revelation is celebrated in the Orthodox feast of Theophany (Vision of God), celebrated on January 6. The celebration is called the “feast of lights” because of the 473

Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren

revelation of the Trinity, but the name also refers to the faithful’s spiritual illumination through Baptism on this day. The liturgy for this Church feast makes repeated use of symbolic language, calling Christ the “true Light.”51 The Christological scene most closely associated with light in Byzantine art is the Transfiguration, which was described as a feast of light from an early time. In early representations, such as the monumental image in the apse of the Sinai monastery, Christ’s whitened robes signify the purity of the light, as the radiant Christ stands between created man and the uncreated God. Images of the Transfiguration in Byzantium follow a similar formula; Christ, clad in white robes, is framed by a round or oval mandorla. Changes in the shape of the mandorla from the thirteenth century have given rise to scholarly speculation that the image was connected with spiritual practices known as hesychasm.52 Examples of this enhanced mandorla – formed of overlapping geometrical forms and emitting numerous rays – can be found in manuscripts,53 liturgical textiles,54 and monumental painting of the late Byzantine period (Plate 7).55 Followers of hesychasm

Plate 7 Transfiguration. Church of Holy Apostles, Thessaloniki, Greece. Early fourteenth century. Image courtesy of Sharon Gerstel.

474

The iconography of light

sought to participate through repetition of the Jesus prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”)56 in the uncreated light of the Godhead (the energy of God), the light in which Christ was transfigured at Mount Tabor in the presence of his disciples. Images of the Transfiguration are rare in Western medieval art,57 but they do appear in works where the influence of Byzantium may be at play. For example, in the Floreffe Bible (London, British Library MS Add. 17737–8), a Mosan work of the mid-twelfth century, and the French Ingeborg Psalter of c. 1200 (Chantilly, Musée Condé MS 9), prominent beams of light emanate from the body of the transfigured Jesus, and in the Psalter, the representation of his face is gilt, a physical manifestation of his glowing state with actual reflected light. In both Byzantine and Western art, rays descending from heaven or from the hand of God are also found in scenes of revelation, and are often associated with evangelists, prophets, or sacred authors who are divinely inspired in composition. The descending rays link cognition with divine light and Holy Scripture, or visionary writings with divine wisdom. Even in cases where the heavenly rays are not represented, sacred authors are often illuminated by lamps or unseen sources, inspired as much by biblical descriptions of light as by the physical requirements for written composition. The absence of light, within church decoration and pictorial scenes, is often associated with representations of hell and damnation. In Byzantine scenes of the Anastasis, Hades is represented as a chasm of darkness. In stark contrast, Christ, who reaches out to grasp the forearms of Adam and Eve, is vested in brilliant white robes and is often surrounded by a gleaming white mandorla. Compartmentalized scenes of sinners in Byzantine churches, too, are often set against a black ground – equating light or its absence with the state of the soul’s salvation. In Western Last Judgments (e.g., William de Brailles Psalter, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 330, fol. 3r; Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Western Wall), the realm of the blessed is often set against gold ground or ethereal blue, whereas the home of the eternally damned is a blackened, lightless void.

Notes 1 L. James, Light and Colour in Byzantine Art (Oxford, 1996); E. Borsook, “Rhetoric or Reality: Mosaics as Expressions of a Metaphysical Idea,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz 44 (2000), 2–18. 2 On the reflective qualities of polished marble, see F. Barry, “The House of the Rising Sun: Luminosity and Sacrality from Domus to Ecclesia,” in Hierotopy of Light and Fire in the Culture of the Byzantine World, ed. A. Lidov (Moscow, 2013), 82–104. 3 H. Hunter-Crawley, “The Cross of Light: Experiencing Divine Presence in Byzantine Syria,” in Experiencing Byzantium, Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011, ed. C. Nesbitt and M. Jackson (Farnham, 2013), 175–93. 4 N. Schibille, Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience (Farnham, 2014); B. Pentcheva, “Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics,” Gesta 50 (2011), 93–111. 5 R.S. Nelson, “Where God Walked and Monks Pray,” in Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai (Los Angeles, 2006), 1–38; E. Swift and A. Alwis, “The Role of Late Antique Art in Early Christian Worship: A Reconsideration of the Iconography of the ‘Starry Sky’ in the ‘Mausoleum’ of Galla Placidia,” Papers of the British School at Rome 78 (2010), 193–217. 6 H. Maguire, “Heaven on Earth: Neoplatonism in the Churches of Greece,” in Viewing Greece: Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean, ed. S. Gerstel (Turnhout, 2016), 53–65. 7 J. Trkulja, “Divine Revelation Performed: Symbolic and Spatial Aspects in the Decoration of Byzantine Churches,” in Spatial Icons: Performativity in Byzantium and Medieval Russia, ed. A. Lidov (Moscow, 2011), 213–46; E. Schwartz, “The Whirling Disc: A Possible Connection between Medieval Balkan Frescoes and Byzantine Icons,” Zograf 8 (1977), 24–29. 8 S. Ćurčić, “Divine Light: Constructing the Immaterial in Byzantine Art and Architecture,” in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, ed. B. Wescoat and R. Ousterhout (Cambridge, 2012), 307–37.

475

Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren 9 Scholars have often noted and cited the relationship between fully glazed Gothic churches and the biblical description of the Heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:18–21). For an overview of the spiritual associations conveyed by stained glass within the Gothic church, see L. Grodecki, “Fonctions spirituelles,” in M. Aubert , A. Chastel, L. Grodecki, J.-J. Gruber, J. Lafond, F. Mathey, J. Taralon, and J. Verrier, Le vitrail français (Paris, 1958), 39–45; and L. Grodecki and C. Brisac, Le vitrail gothique (Fribourg, 1977), 11–18. 10 S.M. Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis from Its Beginnings to the Death of Suger, 475–1151 (New Haven, 1987). 11 E. Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, ed. G. Panofsky-Soergel (Princeton, 1979), 2nd ed. The first edition of Panofsky’s book appeared in 1944. 12 Panofsky, Abbot Suger (as in note 11), 46–49. 13 Panofsky, Abbot Suger (as in note 11), 100–01. 14 Panofsky, Abbot Suger (as in note 11), 18–26. 15 P. Kidson, “Panofsky, Suger, and St. Denis,” JWCI 50 (1987), 1–17; C. Rudolph, Artistic Change at SaintDenis: Abbot Suger’s Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy over Art (Princeton, 1990); L. Grant, Abbot Suger of St.-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France (London, 1998), 265–71. 16 For example, Suger says, “When out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God – the loveliness of the many colored stones has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.” Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 62–65. 17 M.P. Lillich, “Monastic Stained Glass: Patronage and Style,” in Monasticism and the Arts, ed. T.G. Verdon (Syracuse, 1984), 222–36; eadem, The Armor of Light: Stained Glass in Western France, 1250–1325 (Berkeley, 1994), 6–8. 18 Light measurements taken by S. Gerstel in July 2015. See also I. Potamianos, Το Φως στην Βυζαντινή Εκκλησία (Thessaloniki, 2000). 19 J.D. Dodds, Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain (University Park, 1990), 20. 20 T.Ó. Carragáin, Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual and Memory (New Haven, 2010), 177. 21 Presumably these windows, if they were glazed, would have been filled with the light-transmitting grisaille that was favored in Cistercian churches at this time. See Lillich, “Monastic Stained Glass,” 218–22. 22 Jorge Rodrigues has argued that in Western Romanesque architecture, not only were the controlled effects of interior lighting used to spotlight features of the sanctuary but also the gradual illumination of the Western portal that took place as sunlight arrived from that direction late in the day spotlighted the sculptural program, which had until that point been cloaked by the shadow cast under an arching hood over the recessed main doorway. See “Light and Colour in Portuguese Romanesque Churches: The Shaping of Space,” https://institutodehistoriadaarte.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/rodrigues-jorge-2015-light-andcolour-in-portuguese-romanesque-churches-the-shaping-of-space-ashgate-pending-publication.pdf. 23 R. Jordan, The Synaxarion of the Monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis: March-August, the Movable Cycle, Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, 6.6 (Belfast, 2005), 370–71, 468–71; J. Mateos, Le typicon de la Grande Église: Ms. Sainte-Croix no. 40, Xe siècle, I, Le cycle des douze mois, Orientalia christiana analecta, 165 (Rome, 1962), 246–47. For the Presanctified liturgy, see P. Trempelas, Αἱ τρεῖς λειτουργίαι κατὰ τοὺς ἐν Ἀθήναις κώδικας (Athens, 1935), 206. 24 S. Gerstel, “An Alternate View of the Late Byzantine Sanctuary Screen,” in Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, ed. S. Gerstel (Washington, DC, 2006), 146–47; G. Babić, “La décoration en fresques des clôtures de choeur,” Zbornik za likovne umetnosti 11 (1975), 3–49. 25 S. Gerstel, Beholding the Sacred Mysteries: Programs of the Byzantine Sanctuary, College Art Association Monograph on the Fine Arts LVI (Seattle, 1999), 101, fig. 42; T. Macridy, “The Monastery of Lips (Fenari Isa Camii) at Istanbul,” DOP 18 (1964), 267, fig. 59. 26 See, for example, the deluxe twelfth-century copy of the select homilies of Gregory of Nazianzen, Sinai. gr. 339, fols. 73, 197 (K. Weitzmann and G. Galavaris, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai, The Illuminated Manuscripts, vol. 1 [Princeton, 1990], figs. 583, 585). 27 See, for example, S. Loffreda, Lucerne bizantine in Terra Santa con iscrizioni in Greco, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Maior 35 (Jerusalem, 1989); S. Loffreda, “Ancora sulle lucerne bizantine con iscrizioni,” Liber Annuus 42 (1992), 313–29.

476

The iconography of light 28 P. Planck, Phos hilaron: Christushymnus und Lichtdanksagung der frühen Christenheit (Bonn, 2001). 29 R. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, 1986), 273–91, 348–52. 30 Τριῴδιον Κατανυκτικόν (Athens, 2003), 1014–20. 31 Jerome, Contra Vigilantium 1 in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, XXIII: 360–61. 32 C. Nesbitt, “Shaping the Sacred: Light and the Experience of Worship in Middle Byzantine Churches,” BMGS 36 (2012), 139–60. 33 L. Theis, “Lampen, Leuchten, Licht,” in Byzanz, das Licht aus dem Osten: Kult und Alltag im Byzantinischen Reich vom 4 bis 15 Jahrhundert, Katalog der Ausstellung im Erzbischöflichen Diözesanmuseum, ed. C. Stiegmann (Paderborn, 2001), 53–64. 34 G. Galavaris, “Some Aspects of Symbolic Use of Lights in the Eastern Church: Candles, Lamps and Ostrich Eggs,” BMGS 4 (1978), 69–78. For experiential aspects of illumination, see B. Pentcheva, “The Performative Icon,” AB 88 (2006), 631–55. 35 In the late fourth century, the pilgrim Egeria describes a similar ceremony for Vespers. See J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (Oxford, 1971), 143. 36 B. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park, 2010), 153–54. 37 For an inventory written on a fifth-century ostrakon from Egypt, see D. Montserrat, “Early Byzantine Church Lighting: A New Text,” Orientalia, n.s. 64 (1995), 430–44. For the lavish lamps listed in the Liber Pontificalis, see H. Geertman, “L’illuminazione della basilica paleocristiana secondo il Liber Pontificalis,” Rivista di archaeologia cristiana 64 (1998), 135–60. 38 N. Zchomelidse, Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy (University Park, 2014), 34–71. 39 For the text, see T. Kelly, The Exultet in Southern Italy (New York, 1996), 36. 40 Zchomelidse, Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity, 108–37 (with collected bibliography). 41 I. Sinkević, The Church of St. Panteleimon at Nerezi: Architecture, Programme, Patronage (Wiesbaden, 2000), 31–32; E. Bakalova, V. Kolarova, P. Popov, and C.V. Todorov, The Ossuary of the Bachkovo Monastery (Plovdiv, 2003), fig. 46. 42 D. Kotoula, “‘With Respect to the Lavishness of the Illumination’: The Dramaturgy of Light in the Burial Chapel of the Monastic Founder,” in Hierotopy of Light and Fire in the Culture of the Byzantine World, ed. A. Lidov (Moscow, 2013), 185–99. 43 L. Fundić, “Art and Political Ideology in the State of Epiros during the Reign of Theodore Doukas (r. 1215–1230),” Βυζαντινά Σύμμεικτα 23 (2013), 239–40. 44 G. Downey, “Nikolaos Mesarites: Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 47 (1957), 869. 45 T. Papamastorakis, Ο διάκοσμος του τρούλου των ναών της Παλαιολόγειας περιόδου στη Βαλκανική χερσόνησο και την Κύπρο (Athens, 2001), 77–78. 46 J. Lafontaine-Dosogne, “L’évolution du programme decoratif des églises de 1071 á 1261,” in Actes du XVe Congres international d’études byzantines, I (Athens, 1976), 287–329. 47 K. Weitzmann, “Eine spätkomnenische Verkündigungsikone des Sinai und die zweite byzantinische Welle des 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Festschrift für Herbert von Einem, ed. G. von der Osten and G. Kauffmann (Berlin, 1965), 299–312; A. Weyl-Carr, “Icon with the Annunciation,” in The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843–1261, exh. cat. (New York, 1997), 374, cat. no. 246. 48 N. Drandakis, “Πόκος ἢ νεφέλη; Ἀσυνήθιστη λεπτομέρεια τῆς παραστάσεως τοῦ Εὐαγγελισμοῦ στὴ Βυζαντινὴ εἰκονογραφία,” Ἐπιστημονική Ἐπετηρίς τῆς Θεολογικῆς Σχολῆς τοῦ Πανεπιστημίου Ἀθηνῶν 26 (1977–1978), 258–68; A. Euthymiou, “Ευαγγελισμοός-Πόκος. Η Ταυτοποίηση μιας εικονογραφικής λεπτομέρειας παραστάσεων του θέματος στην περιοχή της Λακωνίας,” Abstracts of the 30ο Συμπόσιο ΧΑΕ (Athens, 2010), 39–40. The inscription in the Old Monastery at Vrontamas, which will be published by Ms. Euthymiou, is taken from Psalm 71: “He shall come down as rain upon a fleece” (καταβήσεται ὡς ὑετὸς ἐπὶ πόκον). For the use of this image in the feast of the Annunciation, see Mother Mary and Archimandrite K. Ware, The Festal Menaion (New Canaan, 1998), 451, 462. 49 The foundational work on this connection is M. Meiss, “Light as Form and Symbol,” AB 27 (1945), 175–81. See also E. Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character (Cambridge, 1953), esp. 126, n. 5; and G. Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art I (Greenwich, 1971), 78–79. 50 For the empty throne, see the Gospels of John II Komnenos (Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb. Gr. 2), fol. 109v, dated 1119–43. 51 The Festal Menaion, 382.

477

Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Michael W. Cothren 52 A. Louth, “Light, Vision, and Religious Experience in Byzantium,” in The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience, ed. M. Kapstein (Chicago, 2004), 85–103. 53 I. Drpić, “Art, Hesychasm, and Visual Exegesis: Parisinus Graecus 1242 Revisited,” DOP 62 (2008), 217–47. 54 W.T. Woodfin, The Embodied Icon: Liturgical Vestments and Sacramental Power in Byzantium (Oxford, 2012), 77–79. 55 See, for example, Holy Apostles in Thessaloniki: Ch. Bakirtzis (ed.), Mosaics of Thessaloniki (Athens, 2012), 337. 56 K. Ware, The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford, 1977). 57 F. Boespflug, “Sur la Transfiguration dans l’art médiéval d’Occident (IXe–XIVe siècle),” in Symbolisme et experience de la lumière dans les grandes religions, ed. J. Ries and C.-M. Ternes (Turnhout, 2002), 199–223.

478

35 THE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF MUSIC AND SOUND Susan Boynton

Introduction: the iconography of music Music iconography focuses on the depiction of instruments and musicians in the visual arts, including the analysis, description, and cataloguing of images. The field was developed more recently than other areas of iconography; the last half of the twentieth century saw many of the foundational publications and the institutional organization of the field.1 The Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) was founded as a collaborative association in 1971 and the Research Center for Music Iconography (RCMI) at City University in New York was established by Barry S. Brooke in 1984. Much of the scholarship in the field of musical iconography has appeared in either the RIdIM journal, Imago Musicae, or the RCMI journal, Music in Art. While the broader field of music iconography addresses the entire history of music from antiquity to the present day, for the purposes of this chapter, the medieval iconography of music and sound is limited to the centuries between late antiquity and circa 1500. Depictions of music can be useful sources of information on the performance of music and the construction of instruments, and much research on the medieval iconography of music has interpreted images of music as records for practical music-making. However, visual representations of music often employ symbolism that conveys a range of extramusical meanings.2 In some of the first critical studies of iconography for this period, James McKinnon and Emanuel Winternitz both pointed out the subtlety of signification in musical images.3 In recent decades art historians have moved beyond the iconographic framework to consider musical representations in an expanding range of contexts.

Overview of the subject Representations of music-making are found in all visual media. The best-known examples are found in painting and sculpture, but there are also some notable examples in tapestry and stained glass, particularly in the late Middle Ages. The earliest medieval Western representations of music-making and depictions of instruments are the images of King David, either alone with his harp (and sometimes with bells) or with other musicians, often in Psalter frontispieces. Illuminated Psalters are the richest single source for musical iconography in the Latin West during the early Middle Ages.4 Islamic art of the same period includes numerous depictions of wind 479

Susan Boynton

instruments, usually identified as oliphants (horns made from elephant ivory); from the thirteenth century onward, trumpets and ouds are more common.5 By the twelfth century, the depiction of music permeated all the arts in a wider range of contexts and took on more complex meanings. The thirteenth century saw a proliferation of musical representations both secular and sacred, of all sizes, and on practically every type of object and surface; this ubiquity continued and even increased in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this period, music-making began to be depicted on the carved undersides (misericords) of the seats in wooden choir stalls.6 Although choir stalls existed earlier as ecclesiastical furnishings, the representation of musical scenes on the misericords seems to have begun in the fourteenth century, with the stalls of Cologne Cathedral (1308/11) among the earliest extant examples.7 As Frédéric Billiet has pointed out, although the stalls “were conceived as simple, folding seats for the performance of psalmody, they became part of an enclosed musical space in the choir that was used to keep the chanting isolated from the noise of pilgrims and other clerical activities.”8 Most of the extant choir stalls with misericords are from the fifteenth century and later, but they are valuable sources for musical iconography and portray instruments as they existed in the Middle Ages as well. Depictions of the liberal arts sometimes include a personification of Music, with a famous example being the twelfth-century sculpture of Musica playing bells on a voussoir of the south portal on the west facade of Chartres Cathedral. In a thirteenth-century musical manuscript produced in Paris (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, F. 29, fol. 29r), Boethius’s tripartite division of music is visualized as three registers of double compartments. In the left compartment of each register stands the personified figure of Music pointing to one of the three categories of music described by Boethius in his De Institutione Musica: musica mundana (the music of the spheres, represented by an image of the cosmos), musica humana (the music produced by the human body, rendered as a group of singers), and musica instrumentalis (music that is sounded by instruments, represented by a fiddle player). Musical ratios and proportions, which were the substance of the liberal art of music among the numerical sciences of the quadrivium, influenced the design of some images that are not explicitly musical. Isabelle Marchesin has demonstrated that the proportions of many Psalter frontispieces in the early Middle Ages are based on the numerical principles set forth in music theory treatises.9 According to Owen Wright, the numerical ratios of music may be related to the design of some visual elements in Islamic art, but he considers the relationship between music and art in Islamic art “both mysterious and problematic.”10 Some musical compositions share an underlying numerical design with a building or a work of art. In the best-known example, the proportions from the biblical description of Solomon’s Temple influenced both the design of the dome of Florence Cathedral and the structure of the motet that was sung at the dedication of the cathedral in 1439.11

The representation of instruments in medieval art For most of the medieval period almost no instrumental music survives, not because it was unusual but rather because it was not customarily written down. Instrumentalists were omnipresent, both indoors and outdoors, and were particularly prominent on festive occasions, such as banquets and processions. Instruments played alone and in groups accompanied dancing and, to varying degrees, singing. An instrument could function as a symbolic attribute simply to indicate that a figure was a musician. In addition, some instruments had figurative associations, such as the harp, which was the common attribute of King David.12 Generally speaking, images of instruments had a range of meanings, with multiple layers of symbolism in religious contexts.

480

Music and sound

Many representations of instruments in sacred art are based on a verse from Psalm 150: “Praise him with sound of trumpet: praise him with psaltery and harp. Praise him with timbrel and choir: praise him with strings and organs. Praise him on high sounding cymbals.” The instruments mentioned in this text are frequently represented together, as seen in the right leaf of a diptych with the Coronation of the Virgin from late fourteenth-century Venice (Fig. 35.1). However, as in Trecento paintings, the combination of instruments played by the angels in this scene is fictive; louder instruments, such as trumpet and cymbals, would not have been played at the same time as the quieter ones, such as harp and fiddle.13 The image is a figurative representation of angelic praise. Later depictions of angel concerts likewise employ equally symbolic combinations of instruments.14 Images of angels playing instruments become much more frequent beginning in the fourteenth century. Examples from the period 1280–1300 include angels on the columns

Figure 35.1 Right leaf of a diptych with The Coronation of the Virgin and Angel Musicians. Venice (?), late fourteenth century. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1971. www. metmuseum.org.

481

Susan Boynton

in the choir of Cologne Cathedral,15 and in the Beaupré Antiphonary now at the Walters Art Museum (MS W.759, fol. 2r; Fig. 35.2). Bowed and plucked strings – vielles, rebecs, harps, and psalteries – proliferate in depictions of the Elders of the Apocalypse on Romanesque church portals.16 In churches on the Iberian peninsula, the elders often hold frame drums.17 The depictions of the elders playing stringed instruments are based on verses from Revelations 5:8–9: “the four and twenty ancients fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints: And they sung a new canticle.” As a result of the presence of elders with instruments on the façade of Saint-Denis, this iconographic element became common in Gothic churches (including in the thirteenth-century stained glass of Chartres Cathedral).

Figure 35.2 Angel Musicians. Beaupré Antiphonary (Volume I), fol. 2r. Walters Art Museum MS W.759. Gift of the William R. Hearst Foundation, 1957.

482

Music and sound

In addition to images of instruments that illustrated verses from the Bible, some depictions of instruments were influenced by theology and biblical exegesis. One of the capitals from the hemicycle of the third abbey church at Cluny (dedicated in 1095) depicts musicians playing instruments, along with inscriptions referring to the church modes employed in plainchant.18 One face presents what may be the earliest northern European image of a lute. Another face shows an instrument that combines features of a lyre and a harp, which is an unrealistic depiction of an instrument, but may be intended to be a purely symbolic amalgam of diverse forms.19 Following the interpretations of patristic writers, such as Augustine and Cassiodorus, Sébastien Biay argues that the stringed instruments on the Cluny capital represent Christ’s body.20 Stringed instruments depicted in the Oppenheimer Siddur, a small Jewish prayer book of the fifteenth century, are expressions of a similar vein of mystical theology in the Jewish tradition.21 Some images of instruments have an implicitly exegetical meaning that must be deduced from context. For instance, an early depiction of a fiddle appears on an ivory plaque from the reliquary of San Millan de la Cogolla in northern Spain (second half of the eleventh century), in which the shepherd saint Emilianus blows a horn as he guards sheep (Fig. 35.3).22 The Christological subtext of this image is clear from the inscription on the ivory carving, “the future shepherd of men was a shepherd of sheep” (FUTURIS PASTOR HOMIN[U]M ERAT P[A]ST[OR] OVIUM), which is taken from the Vita of Saint Emilianus by Braulio of Saragossa. The small fiddle hanging

Figure 35.3 Ivory plaque with scenes from the life of Saint Emilianus, from the reliquary of San Millan de la Cogolla. Master Engelram and his son Redolfo, c. 1060–80. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1987. www.metmuseum.org.

483

Susan Boynton

from the saint’s shoulder illustrates the continuation of this passage in the Vita, which states that the saint took a harp (cithara) with him to the sheep’s pasture, probably an allusion to the biblical description of King David playing a harp while he watched his flock.23 The stringed instrument in the ivory probably illustrates the reference to the harp (cithara) in the hagiographical text; categories of plucked and bowed strings were sometimes conflated. At the same time, the horn blown by Emilianus represents his identity as a shepherd. Horns had a variety of associations, including the hunt and dancing in addition to war. As Richard Brilliant has pointed out, the very image of a man lifting a horn to his lips effectively evokes the instrument’s powerful sound.24 In Jewish tradition, the sounding of the shofar heralds the new year. In the Christian Book of Revelations, the trumpet has an apocalyptic connotation. Announcement and celebration may be implied by the horn-blowing and tambourine figures in the upper corners of the Doubting Thomas relief in the cloister at the abbey of Silos, although these figures have sometimes been interpreted as secular entertainers.25 Wind instruments were commonly represented in scenes of banqueting, processions, and secular festivities in which heralds played trumpets. In one of the capitals from the cloister at St. Michel de Cuxa that are now at the Cloisters Museum, the depiction of a naked, dancing horn player evokes the secular music performed by medieval entertainers.26 Thomas Dale has suggested that the appearance of the dancers on the capital refers to the bodily distortion associated with lust, which was a quality ascribed to secular entertainers; in a monastic cloister, the image would have the effect of reminding a reflective monk of the evils of the world he had left.27 The musical instruments and musicians in Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (also called the Arena Chapel), which were completed around 1305, are deployed to moralizing effect.28 Furthermore, according to Eleonora Beck, Giotto’s depiction of trumpets in this fresco cycle shows the influence of ancient art and alludes to the use of trumpets in processions and theatrical pageants.29 Representations of minstrels are particularly common beginning in the thirteenth century, but they do exist earlier.30 Illustrated tonaries from what is now southwestern France produced in the second half of the eleventh century show entertainers dancing, juggling, and fiddling alongside the notation for chants and for melodic formulae for singing the psalms.31 In the later Middle Ages the presence of secular musicians in the visual arts increased along with the growing professionalization of musical performance. Many images of musicians represent and articulate their social position in the cities and courts they inhabited.32 The representation of musicians as an element of court culture continued into the early modern period with the illustration of Indo-Persian manuscripts in Mughal India.33 In late medieval Europe, as in the Renaissance, the musicians of a court were considered an extension of the identity of their noble patron. The fusion of the courtly and the sacred is the underlying message in the illustrated manuscripts of the Cantigas de Santa María associated with Alfonso X of Leon and Castile. For instance, Cantiga 100, one of the decadal songs in praise of the Virgin Mary, is illustrated by an angel concert with Arab instruments (including the rabab, ‘oud, and qanum).34 In the Codice rico, the distinction between vocal and instrumental music is explicitly thematized in the illustration of the prologue, where Alfonso X (“El Sabio”) sits enthroned with a group of instrumentalists on one side, and on the other, a group of tonsured, evidently clerical singers. Both groups have scribes in front of them, apparently taking dictation from the king.35 In this image telescoping composition, transmission, and performance, the king is depicted as producing the music – the songs – that are preserved in the manuscript. The composition seems to be a figurative rather than a literal representation of his agency, for the Cantigas were probably compiled by a group of musicians and poets at the court. Alfonso’s creative activity is here representative of the broader self-fashioning of his image.36 The illuminated manuscripts of 484

Music and sound

the Cantigas depict a variety of instruments, encompassing the full range of sounds known in the multicultural Iberian peninsula.37 These images are intriguingly vivid but they do not prove that instruments were used in the performance of the Cantigas; indeed, there is very little evidence to suggest that the Cantigas were performed in the Middle Ages at all. However, the depictions of instruments in the manuscripts are among the most extensive sources of musical iconography from the period.

Depictions of singers Singers were not consistently depicted with open mouths until the later Middle Ages; more often, the liturgical office of a singer was indicated by his vestment or by the book he held. One rather exceptional example is the conflation of the Entry into Jerusalem with a Palm Sunday procession in the twelfth-century lintel from San Leonardo al Frigido, now at the Cloisters. In addition to the representation of figures with open mouths, the scene includes diminutive figures illustrating the texts of the two antiphons sung during the blessing of the palms, Pueri Hebreorum vestimenta (“The children of the Hebrews spread their garments in the road”) and Pueri Hebreorum portantes (“The children of the Hebrews bore palm branches”).38 From the thirteenth century onward, Psalm 96 (“Sing to the Lord a New Song”) was frequently illustrated in Psalters by a group of singers at a lectern, as in Fig. 35.4.39 The proliferation

Figure 35.4 Three Singers at a Lectern, from the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg, Duchess of Normandy (Paris, before 1349), folio 146v. Attributed to Jean Le Noir (French, active 1331–75) and Workshop. New York, Metropolitan Museum, The Cloisters Collection, 1969. www.metmuseum.org.

485

Susan Boynton

of such scenes in the later Middle Ages is a visual reflection on the increasing reliance on chant books in the performance of the Divine Office, which had been performed almost entirely from memory in earlier centuries. Here the numerous birds in the margins seem to call attention to the parallel between human and animal song, a juxtaposition that is only highlighted by the rather realistic eagle on the lectern. A choir of singers could also represent the theological meaning of a particular liturgical occasion and the music sung on that day. For instance, in the Codex Gisle from around 1300, the initial letter for the first chant at the third Mass on Christmas Day is illustrated by a Nativity scene with the angelic choir singing above while the choir of nuns stands below. The nuns’ mouths are closed; the significance of the singing is implicit in the juxtaposition of the two choirs. One of the nuns, possibly the choirmistress, points to the words of the sequence for Mass on the Vigil of Christmas. This sequence contains the words of the angels at the Annunciation to the Shepherds, “Gloria in excelsis Deo” (Glory be to God on high), which appear in the banderole held by the angels in the upper register of the illumination. The image effectively visualizes the sequence text that links the angelic and earthly choirs.40 In the fifteenth century, the depiction of singers became more realistic, and they were more often shown with open mouths, as seen in the Cantoria that Luca della Robbia sculpted in 1431–38 for Florence Cathedral (now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). The verisimilitude of this striking image is comparable to that of the Ghent Altarpiece panel portraying a group of singing angels.41 Realism was also employed even when singers were represented not as distinct individuals but more homogeneously as members of a group, as in the Gradual of the Olivetan Benedictines produced in Lombardy (probably Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto di Baggio?) around 1439–1447.42 Perhaps increasing emphasis on the individual identities of singers can be correlated with the growing awareness of their value as highly skilled professionals in the courts and churches of the fifteenth century and later.

Mythological, demonic, and grotesque Many medieval representations of musical performance are fantastical. Ancient mythology is not one of the most important sources for musical iconography; images of famous musicians from antiquity, such as Orpheus and Amphion, were comparatively rare in the Middle Ages, and sirens, although common in medieval art, are not usually represented as musicians. The supernatural in musical images most often takes the form of angelic or demonic musicians; grotesque imagery usually employs animals, monsters, or other nonhuman figures.43 Starting in the twelfth century, monstrous musicians proliferate. In the frontispiece of the St. Remigius Psalter, a twelfth-century triple Psalter from Reims, the contrast between sacred and secular music is indicated by David and his musicians in the top half of the page, while a drum-playing demon flanked by dancers, jugglers, a horn player, and a vielle player occupy the lower register.44 As in the Psalter-hours of Bonne of Luxembourg, playful depictions of musical scenes in the margins of medieval manuscripts can be grotesque and even obscene (by implication, if not explicitly). Likewise, Madeleine Caviness and Emma Dillon have argued that the musical scenes in the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux were intended to shape the young queen’s viewing and reading experience.45 The symbolic character of representations of animal and demoniac musicians is often interpreted by art historians as moralizing or apotropaic.46 In choir stalls, representations of musical disorder presented a contrast with the orderly conduct that was supposed to reign in the choir.47 As an element of the grotesque, in the late Middle Ages the musical macabre was most directly expressed by the visual motif of the Dance of Death.48

486

Music and sound

Musical notation Musical notation in Western Europe developed by the ninth century. The earliest neumes did not always indicate precise pitches but rather functioned as representations of musical direction.49 Neumatic notations that varied by region remained the norm until the twelfth century, when the system of “square notation” (composed of combinations of black squares) began to replace the more graphic neumes, and became generalized in most of Europe in the thirteenth century. Musical notation appears in liturgical chant manuscripts and also, beginning in the thirteenth century, manuscripts of secular music.50 The illuminations in music manuscripts constitute an additional layer of representation that interacts with the music on the page. In her analysis of the thirteenth-century Montpellier Codex, Emma Dillon has argued that the “book’s shapes, decorations, and order of its contents prompt the reader to a meditative engagement with its music.”51 The neumes in the Codex Gisle and some other luxury chant manuscripts are painted in blue, red, or gold to mark the melodies of feasts that merit a special degree of solemnity.52 Illustrations that include inscriptions of chant texts make for an especially close intertwining of text and image in the manuscripts from the Dominican convent of Paradies bei Soest.53 Even in a nonmusical manuscript containing the prayers of Anselm, the inscription of chants with their neumes vividly evokes the sung liturgy.54 Manuscripts from Florence Cathedral showcase the identities of the home institution and its patrons in parallel with the markers of Florentine identity in their musicoliturgical contents.55 In some narrative works, musical notation illustrates the description of musical performance or composition, complementing the illuminations accompanying the text. For instance, in some manuscripts of the works of Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377) musical notation punctuates narrative and functions as a second layer of illustration. In the lengthy narrative poetic dits, music and image are more closely integrated than in the Roman de Fauvel manuscript with musical interpolations. A manuscript of the Remède de Fortune from the middle of the fourteenth century transmits the musical notation for the songs that are part of the narrative framework, with depictions of the poet-protagonist, the Lover, composing or singing songs, along with the songs themselves. The Lover is shown composing with a scroll and dancing in a group; in the introduction to a dance-song known as a virelai, the caption describes the Lover as singing it to his lady (Paris, BnF fr. 1586, fol. 51r). The dance-song, performed in a circle by a group holding hands, visually represents the circular, repeating musical structure of the dance-song. As a visual representation of music, musical notation is a form of visual art portraying sound.56 Notation’s quality as a visual medium is manifested to varying extents in medieval music manuscripts. In the later Middle Ages, certain idiosyncratic examples of musical notation are unusually self-referential: these are literally “picture songs,” graphic scores in which the musical notation outlines the shape of a symbolic object, such as a heart, a harp, or a labyrinth.57 Some late medieval panel paintings include the musical notation for known compositions of chant or vocal polyphony. In a few panels of the early fifteenth century, angels hold scrolls with musical notation without any visualization of music-making: the notation itself stands in for the sound of music. A Marian antiphon is depicted on the scroll encircling the Virgin and Child in Taddeo di Bartolo’s Virgin and Child with Angels, now in the Fogg Museum at Harvard.58 Angels hold scrolls with musical notation also in three panels by Gentile da Fabriano (now at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria at Perugia, and the Metropolitan Museum). The musical angels in other panels by Gentile play the “soft” or “sweet” instruments in a combination broadly suggestive of the celestial sound of paradise.59

487

Susan Boynton

Nonmusical sound Since the 1970s, sound (as distinct from music) has become the focus of a new interdisciplinary field loosely defined as sound studies.60 As scholars of historical sound studies turn to the Middle Ages and early modern period, the visualization of nonmusical sound in the art of the Middle Ages has recently emerged as a new area of research. Noise, defined as a category of sound in contradistinction to music, is famously depicted in the illustrated manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel (Paris, BNF MS f.fr. 146, fol. 34r, c. 1317) in the form of the charivari (a folk ritual in which townspeople noisily disrupt a married couple’s first night). Alongside the text and music of songs accompanying the ritual, the illuminations depict, and the narrative describes in detail, the instruments and other objects used to produce a nonmusical racket.61 Dillon has also pointed out the “noisiness” created by the illuminations on the pages of prayer books.62 In the monumental arts, nonmusical sound can be found in scenes of the Last Judgment, as in the relief on the fourteenth-century façade of Orvieto Cathedral, clearly depicting the full-throated cries of the damned.63 Sculpture, although mute, can evoke the sounds that were heard in the viewer’s lived environment.64 Visual art also can evoke sound indirectly through the depiction of the listening subject. The most detailed study of this mode of representation addresses listening to the sounds of nature in Chinese art of the eleventh through fifteenth centuries.65 The iconography of listening has been analyzed in Psalter illustration of the early Middle Ages.66 Hearing in relation to sight has been explored by historians of art and architecture seeking to understand the nature of medieval devotion as a multisensory experience.67 Future research in the iconography of music and sound could continue to explore the performativity of the page and the visualization of the voice.68 Another subject that merits further attention is the visual representation of silence and the soundscape.69

Notes 1 R.L. Kendrick, “Iconography,” in The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture, ed. T. Shephard and A. Leonard (New York/London, 2014), 43–49. 2 A. Buckley, “Music Iconography and the Semiotics of Visual Representation,” Music in Art 23 (1998), 510. 3 J.W. McKinnon, “Iconography,” in Musicology in the 1980s, ed. D.K. Holoman and C.V. Palisca (New York, 1982), 79–93; “Representations of the Mass in Medieval and Renaissance Art,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 30 (1978), 21–52; and Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art: Studies in Musical Iconology (New Haven, 1979). 4 K. Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byzantine Psalters (Cambridge/New York, 1992); T. Seebass, Musikdarstellung und Psalterillustration im früheren Mittelalter: Studien ausgehend von einer Ikonologie der Handschrift Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Fonds Latin 1118, 2 vols. (Bern, 1973). 5 A. Shalem with M. Glaser, Die mittelalterlichen Olifante (Berlin, 2014), vol. 1, 186–90; A. Shiloah, “Musical Scenes in Arabic Iconography,” Music in Art 33 (2008), 283–300. 6 On the historiography of misericords, see W. Muller, “The Art of the Misericord: Neglected and Important,” in From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval Art History, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton/ University Park, 2012), 271–84. 7 On the choir stalls at Cologne, see B.R. Tammen, Musik und Bild im Chorraum mittelalterlicher Kirchen 1100–1500 (Berlin, 2000), 176–220. 8 F. Billiet, “Choir-Stall Carvings: A Major Source for the Study of Medieval Musical Iconography,” in From Minor to Major (as in note 6), 285–94, at 287. 9 I. Marchesin, L’image organum: la représentation de la musique dans les psautiers médiévaux 800–1200 (Turnhout, 2000); Marchesin, “Temps et espaces dans le frontispice du Psautier de la Première Bible de Charles le Chauve,” Die Methodik der Bildinterpretation / Les méthodes d’interprétation de l’image: Deutschfranzösische Kolloquien 1998–2000, vol. 2 (Göttingen, 2002), 317–53.

488

Music and sound 10 O. Wright, “The Sight of Sound,” Muqarnas 21 (2004), 359–71, at 368. 11 M. Trachtenberg, “Architecture and Music Reunited: A New Reading of Dufay’s Nuper Rosarum Flores and the Cathedral of Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly (2001), 740–75; and C. Wright, “Dufay’s ‘Nuper rosarum flores,’ King Solomon’s Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 47 (1994), 395–441. 12 C. Hourihane (ed.), King David in the Index of Christian Art (Princeton, 2002). 13 J. María-Salvador González and C. Perpiña García, “‘Exaltata super choros angelorum’: Musical Elements in the Iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin in the Italian Trecento Painting,” Music in Art 39 (2014), 61–86. 14 K. Meyer-Baer, Music of the Spheres and the Dance of Death: Studies in Musical Iconology (New York, 1984), 130–87; and E. Winternitz, “On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century: A Critical Approach to Realism and Symbolism in Sacred Painting,” Musical Quarterly 49 (1963), 450–63. 15 Tammen, Musik und Bild (as in note 7), 39–75. 16 C. Homo-Lechner, “L’instrumentarium du Porche de la Gloire à SaintJacques de Compostelle: Étude sur la fantaisie et la réalité dans l’art du 12e siècle,” in Los instrumentos del Pórtico de la Gloria: su reconstrucción y la música de su tiempo, ed. J. López-Calo, 2 vols. (La Corun~a, 1993), vol. 2, 513–34. 17 M. Molina, “In Tympano Rex Noster Tympanizavit: Frame Drums as Messianic Symbols in Medieval Spanish Representations of the Twenty-Four Elders of the Apocalypse,” Music in Art 32 (2007), 93–101. 18 K.T. Ambrose, “Visual Poetics of the Cluny Hemicycle Capital Inscriptions,” Word & Image 20 (2004), 155–64; I. Marchesin, “Les chapiteaux de la musique de Cluny: une figuration du lien musical,” in Les représentations de la musique au Moyen Âge : Actes du colloque du musée de la Musique (2–3 avril 2004), ed. M. Clouzot and C. Laloue (Paris, 2005), 84–90. 19 M. Jullian, “La lyre dans l’art roman: transmission et diffusion par l’image d’un modèle antique à l’époque romane,” Cahiers de Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa 37 (2006), 57. 20 S. Biay, “Building a Church with Music: The Plainchant Capitals at Cluny, c. 1100,” in Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound, ed. S. Boynton and D.J. Reilly (Turnhout, 2015), 231–34. 21 S. Wijsman, “Silent Sounds: Musical Iconography in a Fifteenth-Century Jewish Prayer Book,” in Resounding Images (as in note 20), 313–33. 22 On this ivory see J. Harris, “Scenes from the Life of Saint Aemilian,” in The Art of Medieval Spain, a.d. 500–1200 (New York, 1994), 262–63, cat. 125c. 23 For a translation of the Vita see Lives of the Visigothic Fathers, Translated Texts for Historians 26, trans. A.T. Fear (Liverpool, 1997), 21. 24 R. Brilliant, “Making Sounds Visible in the Bayeux Tapestry,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations, ed. M.K. Foys, K.E. Overby, and D. Terkia (Rochester/New York, 2009), 71–84. 25 E. Valdez del Álamo, Palace of the Mind: The Cloister of Silos and Spanish Sculpture of the Twelfth Century (Turnhout, 2012), 122–25; Valdez del Álamo, “Touch Me, See Me: The Emmaeus and Thomas Reliefs in the Cloister of Silos,” in Spanish Medieval Art: Recent Studies (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 346), ed. C. Hourihane (Tempe/Princeton, 2007), 35–64. 26 Capital from St.-Michel-de-Cuxa, 1130–40. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1925. 27 T.E.A. Dale, “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities and Phantasms in the Romanesque Cloister of St. Michel de Cuxa,” Art Bulletin 83 (2001), 412–14 and fig. 67. 28 E.M. Beck, “Justice and Music in Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel Frescoes,” Music in Art 24 (2004), 38–51. 29 E.M. Beck, Giotto’s Harmony: Music and Art in Padua at the Crossroads of the Renaissance (Florence, 2005), 143–46, 163–66. 30 M. Clouzot, Le jongleur: mémoire de l’image au Moyen Age: figures, figurations et musicalité dans les manuscrits enluminés (1200–1330) (Bern/New York, 2011). 31 London, British Library, Harley 4951, gradual from Toulouse, last quarter of the eleventh century or first quarter of the twelfth century; Paris, BNF MS lat. 1118. See J.-C. Bonne and E.H. Aubert, “Quand voir fait chanter. Images et neumes dans le tonaire du ms. BnF latin 1118: entre performance et performativité,” La performance des images, ed. A. Dierkens, G. Bartholeyns, and T. Golsenne (Brussels, 2010), 225–40. 32 M. Clouzot, Images de musiciens (1350–1500): Typologie, figurations et pratiques sociales (Turnhout/Tours, 2007). 33 B. Wade, Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India (Chicago/ London, 1998). 34 San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio, Ms. T11 (Codice rico), late thirteenth century or c. 1300, fol. 145r.

489

Susan Boynton 35 San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Real Biblioteca del Monasterio, Ms. T11, fol. 5r. 36 J.F. O’Callaghan, “Image and Reality: The King Creates His Kingdom,” in Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance, ed. R.I. Burns (Philadelphia, 1990), 14–32. 37 M. del Rosario Álvarez Martínez, “Los instrumentos musicales en los códices alfonsinos: su tipología, su uso y su origen. Algunos problemas iconográficos,” Revista de musicología 10 (1987), 67–104. 38 G.C. Mann, “Encounter: The San Leonardo al Frigido Portal at The Cloisters,” Gesta 53 (2014), 13. 39 C. Page, “An English Motet of the 14th Century in Performance: Two Contemporary Images,” Early Music 25 (1997), 714, 17–24, 26–29, 31–32. 40 For a full facsimile of the Codex Gisle see Der Codex Gisle: das goldene Graduale der Gisela von Kerssenbrock (Luzern, 2015). On the depiction of the sequence for the Nativity in the Codex Gisle see J. Oliver, Singing with Angels: Liturgy, Music, and Art in the Gradual of Gisela von Kerssenbrock (Turnhout, 2007), 107; L. Kruckenberg, “Neumatizing the Sequence: Special Performances of Sequences in the Central Middle Ages,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59 (2006), 267–72. 41 D. Freedberg, “Choirs of Praise: Some Aspects of Action Understanding in Fifteenth-Century Painting and Sculpture,” in Medieval Renaissance Baroque: A Cat’s Cradle for Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, ed. D.A. Levine and J. Freiberg (New York, 2010), 64–81. 42 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS 1184, fol. 9v. 43 R. Hammerstein, Diabolus in musica: Studien zur Ikonographie der Musik im Mittelalter, Neue Heidelberger Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 6 (Bern, 1974). 44 Cambridge, St. John’s College B.18, fol. 1r. I. Marchesin, L’Image Organum (as in note 9), 24, 26, 87, 89, 95–97, 244 (ill. 54). 45 M.H. Caviness, “Patron or Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade Mecum for Her Marriage Bed,” Speculum 68 (1993), 333–62; E. Dillon, The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260–1330 (New York, 2012), 243–62. 46 Vézelay, La Madeleine, nave capital, first half of the twelfth century. 47 F. Billiet, “Diabolus in musica dans les stalles médiévales: significations du désordre musical,” in Profane Imagery in Marginal Arts of the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2009), 315–38. 48 E. Gertsman, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages: Image, Text, Performance, Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); K. Meyer-Baer, Music of the Spheres (as in note 14), 291–319. 49 S. Rankin, “On the Treatment of Pitch in Early Music Writing,” Early Music History 30 (2011), 105–75. 50 For general overviews of musical notation in medieval manuscripts see N. Bell, Music in Medieval Manuscripts (Toronto/Buffalo, 2001); O. Cullin, L’image musique (Paris, 2006). 51 Dillon, The Sense of Sound (as in note 45), 296–319, at 305. 52 J. Oliver, “Singing a Blue Note on a Red Letter Day: The Art of Easter in Some North German Convents,” in Femmes, art et religion au Moyen Âge, ed. J.-C. Schmitt (Strasbourg/Colmar, 2004), 115–30. 53 J.F. Hamburger, “Inscribing the Word – Illuminating the Sequence: Epithets in Honor of John the Evangelist in the Graduals from Paradies bei Soest,” in Leaves from Paradise: The Cult of John the Evangelist at the Dominican Convent of Paradies bei Soest (Houghton Library Studies 2), ed. J.F. Hamburger (Cambridge, 2008), 161–213; M.E. Fassler and J.F. Hamburger, “The Desert in Paradise: A Newly Discovered Office for John the Baptist from Paradies bei Soest and Its Place in the Dominican Liturgy,” in Resounding Images (as in note 20), 251–79. 54 M. Curschmann, “Integrating Anselm: Pictures and the Liturgy in a Twelfth-Century Manuscript of the ‘Orationes sive Meditationes,’” in Resounding Images (as in note 20), 295–312. 55 M. Tacconi, Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology 12 (Cambridge, 2005). 56 T.F. Kelly, “Picturing Sound in Medieval Manuscripts,” in Quod Ore Cantas Corde Credas: Studi in onore di Giacomo Baroffio Dahnk, ed. L. Scappaticci (Vatican City, 2013), 415–26. 57 On these songs see particularly E.E. Leach, Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca/London, 2007), 114–19; D. Melini, “Music in Iconography in the Visconti Codices,” Music in Art 37 (2012), 45–56; A. Stone and Y. Plumley, “Introduction,” in Codex Chantilly: Bibliothèque du château de Chantilly, Ms. 564: Facsimilé, ed. A. Stone and Y. Plumley (Turnhout, 2008), 112–15. 58 S.M. Kraaz, “Music for the Queen of Heaven in Early Fifteenth-Century Italian Paintings,” Music in Art 39 (2014), figs. 3 and 7. 59 F. Billiet, “Entendre le concert céleste dans oeuvres de Gentile,” in Il mondo cortese di Gentile da Fabriano e l’immaginario musicale: La cultura musicale e artistica nel Quattrocento europeo e la sua riscoperta in epoca moderna e contemporanea, ed. M. Lacchè (Rome, 2008), 104–27.

490

Music and sound 60 On sound studies, see particularly Keywords in Sound, ed. D. Novak and M. Sakakeeny (Durham, 2015); and The Sound Studies Reader, ed. J. Sterne (London/New York, 2012). 61 E. Dillon, Medieval Music-Making and the Roman de Fauvel (Cambridge, 2002), 105–14; Dillon, The Sense of Sound (as in note 45), 93–128. 62 Dillon, The Sense of Sound (as in note 45), 186–242. 63 M. Shoaf, “The Voice in Relief: Sculpture and Surplus Vocality at the Rise of Naturalism,” in Resounding Images (as in note 20), 31–45. 64 E. Valdez del Álamo, “Hearing the Image at Santo Domingo de Silos,” in Resounding Images (as in note 20), 71–90. 65 S.E. Nelson, “Picturing Listening: The Sight of Sound in Chinese Painting,” Archives of Asian Art 51 (1998), 30–55. 66 E. Sears, “The Iconography of Auditory Perception in the Early Middle Ages: On Psalm Illustration and Psalm Exegesis,” in The Second Sense: Studies in Hearing and Musical Judgment from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 22), ed. C. Burnett, M. Fend, and P. Gouk (London, 1991), 19–38. 67 C. Bruzelius, “Hearing Is Believing: Clarissan Architecture, ca. 1213–1340,” Gesta 31 (1992), 83–91; B. Pentcheva, “Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics,” Gesta 50 (2011), 51–69; B. Williamson, “Sensory Experience in Medieval Devotion: Sound and Vision, Invisibility and Silence,” Speculum 88 (2013), 1–43. 68 See, for instance, M. Cruse, “Pictorial Polyphony: Image, Voice, and Social Life in the Roman d’Alexandre (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264),” in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. Coleman, M. Cruse, and K.A. Smith (Turnhout, 2013), 371–402. 69 S. Bonde and C. Maines, “Performing Silence and Regulating Sound: The Monastic Soundscape of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes,” in Resounding Images (as in note 20), 47–70; F. Prado-Vilar, “Silentium: El silencio cósmico como imagen en la Edad Media y la Modernidad,” Revista de poética medieval 27 (2013), 21–43.

491

36 THE OTHER IN THE MIDDLE AGES Difference, identity, and iconography Pamela A. Patton

To be Other in the medieval world was to inhabit a welter of social, cultural, geographical, and somatic variation far untidier than the classic Lacanian binary that underlies the term’s modern usage in art history. For the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the Other was a conceptual abstraction grounded in the individual mind, a by-product marking the borders of the newly awakened Self.1 In the collective sense more familiar to art historians, influenced by cultural theorists such as Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, cultural Others of various kinds functioned similarly to delimit a communally conceived Self.2 This broadened notion of Otherness, in which the articulation of what one’s culture or community is not articulates what it desires to be, offers an appealing lens through which to scrutinize medieval understandings and constructions of identity. The Self-Other model poses risks for historians of culture: as Paul Freedman and others have pointed out, its potential to flatten out differences among medieval communities into sweeping oppositions of “us” and “them” can blunt scholarly understanding of the diversity internal to these categories, camouflaging the ways in which local variation and contextual factors might have refined any given culture’s sense of both its Others and itself.3 Yet employed thoughtfully, the concept of the Other could be argued to achieve just the opposite, since it assumes that medieval notions of identity were self-generated, autonomous, and above all flexible. In this sense, it applies especially well to the study of medieval iconography, a system that relied on a similar manipulation of familiar yet multivalent visual signs to articulate the perceived characteristics of, and relationships between, its subjects. Whom medieval artists presented as Others depended foremost on their own sense of what was familiar or foreign, whether in appearance, behavior, language, dress, foodways, or religious practices. And what counted as familiar could vary greatly within the wide cultural sphere addressed by the present volume, which embraces both Western and Eastern Europe, including the multiethnic, multicultural communities of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Scandinavian north, from the fall of Rome until the early modern era. Amid this sea of cultures and peoples, difference was relative: a pale blond northerner might have seemed as much an Other to an early medieval Roman like Gregory the Great, who purportedly expressed wonderment at the sight of enslaved Angles in his home city, as the African features of the sculpted Saint Maurice at the cathedral of Magdeburg would have to his Germanic thirteenth-century viewers.4 492

The Other in the Middle Ages

Certain peoples and communities stood firmly enough outside the world of normative European Christendom to qualify conclusively as Other: these included several loosely defined ethnic groups, such as Ethiopians and Mongols (often called “Tartars”), as well as confessional Others, such as Jews, Muslims, pagans, and Christian heretics.5 Less often depicted, but still often perceived as Other, were people whose behavior or physical status disqualified them from membership in their dominant culture, including such “proximate Others” as prostitutes, homosexuals, lepers, and the disabled.6 Two further categories that might have been seen as Other are addressed by other contributors to this volume: women, the enduring exception to a masculinist medieval norm, and the hybrids and monsters that many believed to inhabit the margins of the civilized world.7 The iconography employed in representing these outgroups was inconsistent and often contextually driven, encompassing a broad vocabulary of motifs that could be deployed, combined, and amended to suit the particularities of its subject and viewership. Somatic signs were among the most powerful of these. They set others apart through dark or unnaturally colored skin; wild, tangled, or curly hair; enlarged or undersized facial features; unusual stature or bodily proportions; gender-crossing attributes, such as a beard worn by a woman; or even hybridized animal parts, such as the horns occasionally given to Jews or the hooves and tails displayed by the unfortunate hybrids in Gerald of Wales’s Topographia Hibernica.8 Closely associated with the body was costume, another primary means of displaying difference: Others might be identified by elaborate, oddly colored, or unusually shaped hats; bright, gaudy, or dramatically patterned clothing; partial or total nudity; or accessories that implied a lack of civilization or morality, such as a club or a moneybag. Multiple signs often worked in concert, as they do in the extraordinary scribal caricature of the moneylender Salamó Vidal that was doodled by an idle scribe on the cover of a fourteenthcentury liber iudeorum from the Catalan town of Vic in 1334–1340 (Fig. 36.1). Salamó’s hunched back, goatlike beard, stupendous nose, and skewed eyes, along with his long robe and preposterously ornamented hat, signal his status as an outsider while also trading on the long-held medieval equation of physical imperfections with a sinful nature – in this case, Salamó’s role as Vic’s most powerful and detested usurer.9 In this, it exemplifies the multivalency of such signs, which could both identify and comment on the depicted Other. Medieval Others could also be set apart by visual references to their exotic or unacceptable cultural behaviors, such as the worship of idols, the practice of cannibalism, or the inappropriate and/or sexualized display of body parts. The depiction of Jews clustered in worship around a cat on an altar in the Parisian Moralized Bibles, as Sara Lipton has shown, casts them as heretical outsiders to the Christian faith, while the Tartars feasting on human limbs in a carnage-strewn wasteland by the scribe-artist Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora leave little doubt of their Otherness (Fig. 36.2).10 Context was critical to the reading of such images, since similar signs often could carry either positive or negative connotations. The near-nudity and crude loincloths of the possessed men healed by Christ in the Canterbury Psalter clearly denote their uncivilized madness, while the same features in an image of John the Baptist imply his asceticism and piety.11 Indeed, very few signs of Otherness were especially fixed in meaning: whereas for much of medieval Europe, certain constellations of features did become traditional to some Others – the shaggy beards, large noses, and pointed hats of Jews or the turbans and dark skin often assigned to Muslims – these well-worn formulae never achieved complete consistency even in the most culturally stable European centers.12 Indeed, in some they were totally absent: in early Byzantine iconography, Jewish figures were commonly identified by prayer shawls or tefillin rather than by exaggerated physiognomy, while in the Mediterranean and the Christian East, images of Muslims 493

Figure 36.1 Scribal doodle of Salamó Vidal on the cover of a liber iudeorum from 1334–1340 (Arxiu i Biblioteca Episcopal de Vic, Arxiu de la Cúria Fumada, núm. 4603). Photo courtesy of Arxiu i Biblioteca Episcopal de Vic, reproduced by permission.

Figure 36.2 Matthew Paris, Tartars eating human flesh, from the Chronica Majora (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 16), fol. 167r. Photo reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

The Other in the Middle Ages

often displayed a wider and more naturalistic range of skin color, facial type, and costume than was typical in northern Europe.13 Signs of Otherness were not just variable; they were also surprisingly transferable. The cannibalistic Tartars just mentioned share features with multiple Others: their large noses and pointed hats resonate with those often deployed in depictions of Jews, while the seated figure munching on a human leg recalls shorthand depictions of various monstrous races.14 Similarly, whereas Ethiopians were nearly always depicted with dark skin, many Muslims and even occasionally Jews sometimes also were portrayed as dark-complexioned, a practice that traded on the potential of depicted dark skin to connote foreignness, sinfulness, and even diabolism.15 How such signs were understood by their artistic makers and viewers thus depended on the expectations and experience of both. The flexibility and responsiveness of such iconography attest to the rhetorical power it held: more than merely identifying members of specific social out-groups, images of Others adapted and repositioned their subjects to suit the viewers and ideologies surrounding them. Because of this, they speak simultaneously to the local perception and understanding of the various Others whom medieval artists chose to portray; the values, social patterns, and concepts of identity by which their iconography was shaped and surrounded; and the centrality of the visual in articulating, as well as reflecting, such ideals.

Historiography Scholarship on what might be called the “iconography of Otherness” – although its originators would hardly have put it in those terms – is nearly as old as the study of iconography itself: as early as 1898, Émile Mâle referred to the “cone-shaped cap” of the Jews as just one of the codelike signs that he saw as central to Gothic image-making.16 His focus on the potential of iconographic signs to aid in the identification and classification of Others, rather than on an analysis of their meaning, set the tone for much work on the topic until the revolution in iconographic studies initiated by the Warburg School toward the mid-twentieth century, which emphasized the reading of such elements as expressive of contextually grounded attitudes or ideals. Jews were the first Others to be closely scrutinized in these new terms, a phenomenon partly prompted by concerns about anti-Semitism during and following the Second World War. Pioneering articles on the subject by the historian Cecil Roth, followed by books by Joshua Trachtenberg and Bernhard Blumenkranz, emphasized the pejorative connotations of many visual signs commonly used in depicting Jews, such as an exaggerated nose, a pointed hat, a Jewish badge, or a moneybag, as reflective of the Jews’ progressively worsening status in central and late medieval European society and, implicitly, to the development of modern anti-Semitism.17 Another comparatively early subject of study was the medieval iconography of black and African figures, perhaps also prompted by modern social concerns in the United States during the 1970s. Coinciding with similar work on Greek and Roman art,18 the study of black figures in the Middle Ages was catalyzed by the 1979 publication of the multivolume Image of the Black in Western Art, sponsored by the Menil Foundation.19 Drawing upon the Foundation’s extensive photographic archive of the same name, the Image of the Black volumes aimed to catalogue and assess how people of African descent had been represented in Western art of all eras. The body of imagery assembled in its two volumes on the Middle Ages formed a critical repository for the more focused studies that would follow, such as those by Paul Kaplan and Guda Suckale-Redlefsen.20 By the late 1980s, these two lines of inquiry had established a foundation not only for research on the depiction of Jews and black figures but also for future study of other out-groups. To this 495

Pamela A. Patton

point, such work tended to privilege breadth over depth, giving priority to the collection and presentation of previously unknown iconographic motifs rather than to the tightly contextualized analysis that would become typical of iconographic studies in later decades. This breadth was in fact quite critical, given the dearth of prior scholarship and near-total lack of image catalogues devoted to medieval depictions of any out-group at this date. The resulting work offered access to substantial numbers of images as well as a general cultural framework against which to understand them. The late 1980s and 1990s witnessed a groundswell of interest in the study of minorities and out-groups by medievalists in many disciplines, as exemplified by historians like John Boswell, R. I. Moore, and Jeffrey Richards. This multidisciplinary scholarship helped to validate the study of medieval out-groups as a field in its own right while paving the way for fresh methodological approaches.21 Among the most important of these was the postcolonial work inspired by Edward Said’s watershed book Orientalism (1978).22 Said’s use of the Self-Other binary to frame an oppositional cultural relationship between East and West in the modern era offered scholars in multiple disciplines a potent model for analysis of similarly segregated medieval societies. Among art historians, the earliest and boldest embrace of this approach was made by Michael Camille, whose Gothic Idol (1989) employed medieval depictions of idolatry as a lens for decoding contemporaneous attitudes to the Muslims, Jews, and other groups who stood most proximately outside the bounds of normative European Christian society.23 Three years later, Camille’s Image on the Edge (1992) further explored the question by examining the potential of marginal visual spaces to reveal self-created boundaries between the dominant cultures of Western medieval Christendom and the out-groups that stood at their social margins.24 In keeping with Lacan’s model, Camille’s analysis framed an understanding of the Other as a result of the dominant community’s collective effort to define itself through the pictorial rejection of undesirable peoples and groups, whose deformation, discoloration, and literal displacement made visible the boundaries between them. Camille’s understanding of medieval out-groups as visual foils to a communal self-image had a sustained impact on subsequent scholarship. While some scholars, among them Ruth Mellinkoff and Heinz Schreckenberg for the medieval West and Elisheva Revel-Neher for the Byzantine Empire, continued to pursue the traditional survey and analysis that remained central to such work,25 others, such as Debra Strickland, processed the lessons learned from postcolonialism to frame the development of a pejorative iconography for multiple medieval out-groups as part of an expanding Western Christendom’s desire to assert its own cultural superiority.26 Many of these scholars narrowed their analyses to smaller groups of, or even single, works within local, particularized contexts as case studies revealing of wider social relationships and ideological trends. Exemplary of this approach are Sara Lipton’s study of the portrayal of Jews in the Bibles moralisées in the context of anti-Jewish ideology at the French court and Kathleen Corrigan’s study of anti-Jewish imagery in ninth-century Byzantium, as well as a substantial body of work on the representation of Jews and Muslims in medieval Iberia, discussed ahead. The trend toward case studies in the 1990s and early 2000s also favored the production of multidisciplinary essay collections and special journal issues dedicated to various aspects of the Other. These often included art historical contributions that drew innovatively on nontraditional approaches, such as postcolonial and borderlands theory, monster theory, and queer theory.27 Key collections include a special issue on race published by the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies in 2001, as well as edited volumes on Jews in Europe by Eva Frojmovic and Mitchell Merback, on multiculturalism in Iberia by Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi, and on Others through the lens of queer theory by Glenn Burger and Stephen Kruger.28 Further art historical 496

The Other in the Middle Ages

work took the form of individual journal articles and book chapters, some of which encompass iconographies of Others that had until recently lacked sustained attention, such as the Mongols, the Irish, and the poor.29 The tighter contextual focus undertaken by such scholarship has brought considerable texture to current understanding of how medieval artists represented the Other, especially in revealing the variability of their decisions in response to widely differing circumstances. The most recent years have seen no slackening in scholarship on the iconography of the Other: they have witnessed a new edition of the Image of the Black volumes by Harvard University Press in 2010; several important museum exhibitions, including Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe (Walters Art Gallery, 2012) and Cranach’s Saint Maurice (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015); and the publication of several important essay collections, among them The Origins of Racism in the West, edited by Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler (2009), and Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times (2012), edited by Anja Eisenbeiss and Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch.30 Scholarship on specific types of Others has also remained abundant: the depiction of Jews has been further explored in books by Nina Rowe, Irven Resnick, Herbert Kessler and David Nirenberg, and Sara Lipton, among others, while the 2012 Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle, includes essays addressing gender, sexuality, and race.31 An especially vital subfield in the depiction of the Other has been that of medieval Iberia, where the close coexistence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews offered a rich sociocultural context for such analysis. The late John Williams’s 1977 analysis of anti-Muslim iconography at San Isidoro in León stood in the vanguard of this scholarship.32 Subsequent publications by Otto Karl Werckmeister, Jerrilyn Dodds, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Peter Klein, Francisco Prado-Vilar, Isabel Monteira Arías, Paolino Rodríguez-Barral, and the present author, among numerous others, have revealed the fluidity with which iconographic forms could be selected, intermingled, and revised in concord with the changes in ideology and social relationship that accompanied the expansion and Europeanization of the Spanish Christian kingdoms.33

Key problems and questions Scholarship on the medieval iconography of Others has by now matured substantially, and its openness to new methodologies, new topics of research, and new kinds of questions has paved the way to multiple new areas of inquiry, just a few of which are outlined here. One long-standing problem much in need of analysis is the well-documented increase in depictions of Others around the end of the twelfth century. While this development has been linked by some to sweeping social changes – an increasingly authoritarian Church hierarchy; the new centrality of Jews, Muslims, and other foreigners in Europe’s growing commercial networks; and military threats posed by external Others, such as Muslims and Mongols – that reshaped Europe at about the same time, much could be gleaned from deeper scrutiny of how, as well as why, the emergence of specific new iconographies of Otherness intersected with these developments.34 Why, for example, did the depiction of Mongols as savage cannibals and idolaters intensify even as peaceful trade and diplomatic contact with the Mongol Empire increased? Why did the rise in pejorative imagery of Jews and Muslims in Iberia intersect so irregularly with the imposition of normative Christian policies and social practices there in the wake of the so-called Reconquest? Also deserving of further consideration is the frequent ambiguity of the iconography assigned to Others in both Eastern and Western art. While the somatic exaggerations, distinctive clothing, and other signs associated with medieval out-groups often carried negative connotations, these seem to have been nullified in the case of “positive” figures, such as Moses, Saint Maurice, 497

Pamela A. Patton

or the Queen of Sheba, so that even traditionally negative markers, such as Moses’s stereotyped physiognomy or Sheba’s black skin, were reduced to simple denotative signs or even hinted at the feasibility of conversion.35 Because the interpretation of such images rests so strongly on context, the most successful analyses will take the form of case studies that attend carefully to the specifics of setting and audience.36 The depiction of black or dark skin itself offers a promising field for future research, especially in multicultural Mediterranean societies, such as Sicily and Iberia, where it constituted a more concrete visual reality than in other areas of Europe. In such settings, dark skin appears not just in a wider range of iconographic contexts but also in relation to a wider range of ethnicities and social classes.37 In the illustration to Cantiga 46 in the Códice Rico of the Cantigas de Santa María (Escorial MS T.I.1., fol. 68v), for example, the Muslim armies that gather to divide the spoils of battle include foot soldiers with both dark and light brown skin, while their equestrian superiors, including the elite Muslim convert at the center of the story, are as pale as their Christian opponents (Fig. 36.3). Skin color here plays multiple roles, signaling social and military status as well as the potential for conversion.38 How such nuance shaped the reading of such imagery by medieval viewers remains an intriguing question.

Figure 36.3 Story of the Muslim Converted by an Image of the Virgin (Cantiga 46), Cantigas de Santa María (Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, MS T.I.1), fol. 68v. © Patrimonio Nacional, reproduced by permission.

498

The Other in the Middle Ages

A more difficult problem linked with this is how tightly medieval iconography can be linked to ideas about race. As scholars such as Robert Bartlett, William Jordan, David Nirenberg, and Geraldine Heng have shown, the degree to which medieval classifications of human difference can be compared with modern racial constructs is difficult to calculate; for example, there is little evidence that most medieval viewers would have linked visible somatic features, such as dark skin or an enlarged nose, firmly with any human category.39 Thus, while it may be heuristically fruitful to apply a racial lens to medieval iconography of the Other in certain cases, these will always require careful attention to the specifics of context and viewership.

Figure 36.4 A charivari in progress, Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibiliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr. 146), fol. 36v. Photo courtesy of BnF, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY, reproduced by permission.

499

Pamela A. Patton

Especially promising for future research on the iconography of the Other are those out-groups that have not, to date, received substantial scholarly attention. These include both faraway others, such as those Asians – Mongols, subcontinental Indians, Chinese, and Pacific Islanders – who were becoming familiar to Europeans with the expansion of trade and missionizing along the Silk Roads,40 and more proximate Others whose place in the majority culture was eliminated by exceptional circumstances, such as poverty, physical disability (e.g., blindness, or leprosy), or nonnormative beliefs and practices, such as heresy, homosexuality, or prostitution.41 The potential for study in this last category is especially strong: while their iconography is not as strongly marked or consistent as, say, that of Jews, the boundaries of proximate Others often blur with those of other out-groups in ways that speak revealingly of how self-identity was fashioned in majority medieval cultures. In the well-known depiction of a charivari in the early fourteenth-century manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel now in the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris (MS fr. 146, fol. 36v), the costumed, animal-masked figures typical of such gatherings include multiple visual references to the conventional social outcasts of early fourteenth-century Paris: a disabled man with two canes, his buttocks uncovered; a childlike figure pushed in a dung-barrow by a hooded man with “Jewish” features; two bald, brown-skinned figures; and a mysteriously veiled woman thought by some to be a cross-dressing man (Fig. 36.4).42 This image speaks to far more than the reversal of behavioral norms associated with the charivari; in visually blurring the boundaries among Europe’s medieval Others, it exposes the more resistant frontier that separated all of them from the notional medieval Self.

Notes 1 J. Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in idem, Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, in collaboration with Heloise Fink and Russel Grigg (New York, 2006), 75–81. For an example of Lacan’s impact on cultural historians generally, see S. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, 1985), 15–35; for a crisp analysis of its relevance for medievalists, see P. Freedman, “The Medieval Other,” in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, ed. T.A. Jones and D.A. Sprunger (Kalamazoo, 2002), 1–24. 2 E. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978); G.C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisman (New York, 1994); and H. Bhabha, “The Other Question: Stereotype, Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism,” Screen 24 (1983), 18–36. 3 Freedman, The Medieval Other (as in note 1), 5–8; see also S. Kinoshita, “Deprovincializing the Middle Ages,” in The Worlding Project: Doing Cultural Studies in the Era of Globalization (Santa Cruz/Berkeley, 2007), 75–89. 4 For Gregory, see W.D. Phillips, Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia, 2014), 60. On the Magdeburg Saint Maurice, see G. Suckale-Redlefsen, Mauritius: der heilige Mohr/The Black Saint Maurice (Houston, 1987), 18–20, 42–47, and 158–61; see also G. Heng, “An African Saint in Medieval Europe: The Black Saint Maurice and the Enigma of Racial Sanctity,” in Sainthood and Race: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh, ed. M.H. Bassett and V.W. Lloyd (London, 2014), 18–44. 5 Especially useful in considering this distinction is Debra Strickland’s notion of “the exotic”; see D.H. Strickland, “The Exotic in the Later Middle Ages: Recent Critical Approaches,” Literature Compass 5:1 (2008), 58–72. For scholarship on individual groups, see the section on historiography below. 6 For the term “proximate Other,” see J. Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (Oxford, 1991), 135. 7 See the essays by S. Lindquist, M. Easton, and A.S. Mittman and S. Kim in this volume. 8 For an extensive catalogue of somatic as well as other kinds of signs, see R. Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1996). On Gerald of Wales’s hybrids, see A.S. Mittman, “The Other Close at Hand: Gerald of Wales and the ‘Marvels of the West,’” in The Monstrous Middle Ages, ed. B. Bildhauer (Toronto, 2004), 97–112.

500

The Other in the Middle Ages 9 P.A. Patton, Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (University Park, 2012), 59–61. 10 S. Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley, 1999), 88–90. On the Matthew Paris images, see Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, 2003), 192–93, and S. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Berkeley, 1987), 285–87. 11 Paris, Bibliothèque national de France, MS lat. 8846, fol.3v; see Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews (as in note 10), 80–81, and C.R. Dodwell, The Canterbury School of Illumination, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 1954), 98–103. 12 See, for example, the discussion of the beard and other “Jewish” signs in Lipton, Images of Intolerance (as in note 10), 20–21. 13 E. Revel-Neher, The Image of the Jew in Byzantine Art (Jerusalem, 1992), 51–72; for a thoughtful recent discussion of depicted dark skin in Eastern lands, see L.-A. Hunt, “Skin and the Meeting of Cultures: Outward and Visible Signs of Alterity in the Medieval Christian East,” in Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion, Assimilation, ed. A. Eisenbeiss and L. Saruma-Jeltsch (Berlin, 2012), 89–106. 14 Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews (as in note 10), 192–93. 15 On the traditional connotations of dark skin in European art, see, among others, Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews (as in note 10), 83–86; J. Devisse, “The Black and His Color: From Symbols to Realities,” in The Image of the Black in Western Art. 2. From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery”, ed. D. Bindman and H.L. Gates (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 73–137, and in the same volume, P.H. Kaplan, “Introduction to the New Edition,” 1–30, esp. 12–18; D. Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Cambridge, 2006), 157–81; and D. Verkerk, “Black Servant, Black Demon: Color Ideology in the Ashburnham Pentateuch,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (2001/1), 57–77. 16 “Les Juifs se reconnaîtront à leur bonnet conique.” É. Mâle, L’Art Religieux de du XIIIe siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie du moyen age et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1898), 3. Scholarship on the iconography of Others is extensive and impossible to present exhaustively in an essay of this scale. The section ahead therefore cites key publications only, emphasizing those that track back to broader historiographic trends and additional bibliography. 17 C. Roth, “The Medieval Conception of the Jew: A New Interpretation,” in Essays and Studies in Honor of Linda R. Miller, ed. I. Davidson (New York, 1938), 171–90, and idem, “Portraits and Caricatures of Medieval English Jews,” The Jewish Monthly 4 (1950), suppl., i–vii; J. Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Roots of Antisemitism (Yale, 1943); B. Blumenkranz, Le juif medieval au miroir de l’art chrétien (Paris, 1966). 18 On the ancient period, see the somewhat controversial works of F.M. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, 1970), and idem, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge, 1983), as well as L. Thompson, Romans and Blacks (Norman, 1989). 19 Ladislas Bugner, general editor, The Image of the Black in Western Art, 5 vols. (Houston, 1979–1989); in 2010 it was republished, with new volume introductions, by Harvard University Press and the W.E.B. Dubois Institute under the editorship of David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 20 P.H. Kaplan, Rise of the Black Magus; Suckale-Redlefsen, Mauritius: Der Heilige Mohr (as in note 4). 21 J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago, 1980); R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987; second ed. rev. 2007); J. Richards, Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (New York, 1990). 22 Said, Orientalism (as in note 2). 23 M. Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989). 24 M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London, 1992). 25 Mellinkoff, Outcasts (as in note 8); H. Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History (London, 1996); Revel-Neher, The Image of the Jew (as in note 13). 26 Strickland, Saracens, Demons, & Jews (as in note 10). 27 The theoretical turn is exemplified by the essays in J.J. Cohen, The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York, 2000), as well as by many of the works cited ahead. 28 Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Special Issue: Race and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages, ed. T. Hahn), 31:1 (2001). See also: Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other: Visual Representation and Jewish-Christian Dynamics in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, ed. E. Frojmovic (Leiden, 2002); Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture, ed.

501

Pamela A. Patton

29

30

31

32 33

34 35

36

37 38

39

M.B. Merback (Leiden, 2003); Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, ed. C. Robinson and L. Rouhi (Leiden, 2005); and G. Burger and S.F. Kruger, Queering the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 2001). D. Strickland, “Artists, Audience, and Ambivalence in Marco Polo’s Divisament dou monde,” Viator 36 (2005), 493–529; Mittman, “The Other Close at Hand” (as in note 8), 97–112; Camille, Image on the Edge (as in note 24), 129–52. D. Bindman and H.L. Gates, Jr., ed., The Image of the Black in Western Art, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 2010–2014); Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, ed. J. Spicer (Baltimore, 2012); M. Ainsworth, S. Hindriks, and P. Terjanian, “Lucas Cranach’s Saint Maurice,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 72:4 (Spring, 2015); The Origins of Racism in the West, ed. M. Eliav-Feldon, B. Isaac, and J. Ziegler (Cambridge, 2009); Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times: Exclusion, Inclusion, Assimilation, ed. A. Eisenbeiss and L. Saruma-Jeltsch (Berlin, 2012). N. Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2011); Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, ed. H.L. Kessler and D. Nirenberg (Philadelphia, 2011); I.M. Resnick, Marks of Distinction: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 2012); S. Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitism (New York, 2014); Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. A.S. Mittman and P.J. Dendle (Farnham, 2012). J.W. Williams, “Generationes Abrahae: Reconquest Iconography in León,” Gesta 16:2 (1977), 3–14. Also early and of note is M. García-Arenal, “Los moros en las Cantigas de Alfonso X,” Al-Qantara 6 (1985), 133–51. The scholarship on Iberia is vast and growing; just a sample of key publications includes O.K. Werckmeister, “The Islamic Rider in the Beatus of Gerona,” Gesta 36:2 (1997), 101–6; D.F. Ruggles, “Mothers of a Hybrid Dynasty: Race, Genealogy, and Acculturation in al-Andalus,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34:1 (2004), 65–94; F. Prado-Vilar, “The Gothic Anamorphic Gaze: Regarding the Worth of Others,” in Robinson and Rouhi, Under the Influence (as in note 28), 67–100; P.K. Klein, “Moros y judíos en las ‘Cantigas’ de Alfonso el Sabio: imágenes de conflictos distintos,” in Simposio Internacional “El Legado de Al-Andalus”: el arte andalusi en los reinos de León y Castilla durante la edad media, ed. M. Valdés Fernández (Valladolid, 2007), 341–64; J. Dodds, M.R. Menocal and A.K. Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy (New Haven, 2008); P. Rodríguez-Barral, La imagen del judío en la España medieval: El conflicto entre cristianismo y judaismo en las artes visuales góticas (Barcelona, 2009), I. Monteira Arias, El enemigo imaginado: La escultural románica hispana y la lucha contra el Islam (Toulouse, 2012); and Patton, Art of Estrangement (as in note 9). The classic treatment is R.I. Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society (rev. ed. 2007), esp. 1–60; a broader perspective is offered by Freedman, Medieval Other (as in note 1), 4–9. Suckale-Redlefsen, Mauritius (as in note 4); on Sheba, see M.H. Caviness, “(Ex)changing Colors: Queens of Sheba and Black Madonnas,” Architektur und Monumentalskulptur des 12–14 Jahrhunderts: Produktion und Rezeption. Festschrift für Peter Kurmann zum 65 Geburstag (Bern, 2006), 553–70. J. Devisse, “A Sanctified Black: Maurice,” in Image of the Black in Western Art. 2. From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery”, ed. Bindman and Gates (as in note 15), pp. 139–94. Another positive black figure to emerge in the late Middle Ages was the black magus; see P.H. Kaplan, The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art (Ann Arbor, 1985). For one such study, see E.A. Foster, “The Black Madonna of Montserrat: An Exception to Concepts of Dark Skin in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia?” Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, ed. P.A. Patton (Leiden, 2015), 18–50. As noted by Hunt, “Skin and the Meeting of Cultures” (as in note 13), 89–106. On Muslims and conversion in this cantiga, see Prado-Vilar, Gothic Anamorphic Gaze (as in note 33), 67–71; on skin color in Castile more generally, see P.A. Patton, “An Ethiopian-Headed Serpent in the Cantigas de Santa María: Sin, Sex, and Color in Late Medieval Castile,” Gesta 55:2 (2016), 213–38. See W.C. Jordan, “Why Race?” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31:1 (2001), 165–73; R. Bartlett, “Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31:1 (2001), 39–56; G. Heng, “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages,” Literature Compass 8:5 (2011), 258–74 and idem, “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II: Locations of Medieval Race,” Literature Compass 8:5 (2011), 275–93. See also D. Nirenberg, “Race and the Middle Ages: The Case of Spain and Its Jews,” in Rereading the Black Legend, 71–87; and idem, “Was There Race before Modernity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain,” in The Origins of Racism in the West, ed. M. Eliav-Feldon, B. Isaac, and J. Ziegler

502

The Other in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2009), 232–64. On the postmedieval evolution of the term “race” in application to humans rather than animals, see C. de Miramon, “Noble Dogs, Noble Blood: The Invention of the Concept of Race in the Late Middle Ages,” in the same volume, 200–16. 40 See, for example, Strickland, “Artists, Audience, and Ambivalence in Marco Polo’s Divisament dou monde” (as in note 29), 493–529. 41 Promising work in these areas includes S. Zimmerman, “Leprosy in the Medieval Imaginary,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38:3 (2008), 559–87; E. Wheatley, Stumbling Blocks before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of Disability (Ann Arbor, 2010); M. Camille, “The Pose of the Queer: Dante’s Gaze, Brunetto Latini’s Body,” in Queering the Middle Ages (as in note 28), 57–86. 42 See Camille, Image on the Edge (as in note 24), 143–45, and Le Roman de Fauvel in the Edition of Mesire Chaillou de Pesstain: A Reproduction in Facsimile of the Complete Manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Français 146, intro. E.H. Roesner, F. Avril, and N.F. Regalado (New York, 1990), 11–13. See also N.F. Regalado, “Masques réeles dans le monde de l’imaginaire: Le rite et l’ecrit dans le charivari du Roman du Fauvel, MS B.N. Fr. 146,” in Masques et Deguisements dans la littérature médiévale, ed. M.-L. Ollier (Montreal, 1988), 111–28.

503

37 ANIMAL ICONOGRAPHY Debra Higgs Strickland

From Genesis to Revelation, the many creatures mentioned in the Bible ensured the importance of animals in medieval Christian art. Study of medieval animal iconography has been largely oriented around the bestiaries, medieval books that picture and describe real and imaginary creatures, holding up many – but not all – as examples of good and bad moral behavior. But as influential as they undoubtedly were, it would be a mistake to limit iconographical study to the bestiaries, since so much medieval animal imagery is grounded in popular stories, beliefs, and symbolism that circulated independently from the bestiary tradition, and the bestiarists themselves were informed by pre- and extra-Christian animal lore and contemporary social and political ideas. Looking across twelve centuries (c. 300 – c. 1500), it is clear that medieval artists went beyond reporting the mere appearance of animals to express ideas about human nature and experience; or to put it another way, animal forms were important vehicles by which artists communicated what it meant to be human, and what it meant to be a Christian.1 In medieval art, animals without human referents are empty signs, except insofar as they functioned (importantly) as reminders of God’s diverse creation. While concerns with animals qua animals informed late medieval hunting and falconry manuals,2 and nonmorally freighted animal representations populate sketchbooks, world maps, and illuminated calendar pages,3 the lion’s share of medieval animal iconography conveyed ideas about God, the Devil, saints, non-Christians, gender roles, virtues, and sin. The signifying potential of medieval animals was thus very great, and also very flexible: the same animal could communicate universal Christian ideas in one context, and more locally contingent meanings in another – or both at the same time. Indeed, medieval animal meanings are never fixed or absolute; patronage, historical circumstances, artistic context, and audiences provide vital keys to interpretation. The first part of this chapter will survey medieval animal iconography under the rubrics of symbolism, bestiary, and marginalia, with reference to past and suggested future art historical approaches. Its exclusive focus on Western medieval Christian art should not obscure the fact that there were equally rich animal iconographical traditions in Byzantine, Jewish, and Islamic art, and that cross-cultural influences were catalysts in the development of animal imagery all over the medieval world.4 In the chapter’s second part, I present a short case study that addresses some of the theoretical and interpretative issues raised in the first part. The fifteenth-century misericords in the parish church of St. Lawrence in Ludlow (Shropshire) display a meaningful mix of animal and human subjects. By this time, the animals represented had accrued 504

Animal iconography

multiple meanings, which I attempt to access by looking beyond the conventional animal/human divide to local circumstances and the special interests of their clerical and elite lay viewers.

Symbolism Animal symbolism grounded in Scriptures lies at the heart of early Christian art, in which it provided visual shortcuts to the nature of God, the nascent religion, and its followers.5 The earliest cult symbol was a fish, whose Greek name (ΙΧΘΥΣ) is an acrostic for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. As an emblem of a minority religion whose followers were in constant danger of persecution by Roman authorities, a benign, defenseless animal hidden underwater was a significant choice. To outsiders, fish carved on clay lamps to outsiders were merely decorative, but more overtly, they marked early Christian tomb stelae, houses, and catacombs.6 First among other animals in early Christian art is the lamb. As a symbol of Christ, it carries sacrificial connotations inherited from Judaism, but also recalls John the Baptist’s reference to Christ as “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), allowing it to also function as the Baptist’s attribute. Christ’s command to “feed my sheep” (John 21:15) extended ovine symbolism to the Christian faithful writ large, and his parable of the separation of the sheep from the goats (Matt 25:32) transformed these beasts into symbols of the blessed and the damned, respectively, as in a sixth-century mosaic panel at Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. Later, the Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes described in the Book of Revelation (5:6) became a central figure in late medieval Apocalypse iconography. Animal motifs inherited from pagan Celtic and Germanic traditions were creatively redeployed in early medieval metalwork, carved stones, and illuminated manuscripts.7 Examples include Visigothic gold and enamel bird fibulae, the famous sixth-century gold belt buckle found at Sutton Hoo intricately decorated with beasts and birds, and the seventh-century Pictish “Burghead Bull” symbol stone. In the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells, animals represent the four Evangelists, but in the Lindisfarne Gospels and thereafter, human Evangelists are accompanied by their symbolic animals. In later medieval Evangelist portraits, naturalistically rendered animals look more like pets than symbols, as in the fourteenth-century prayerbook of Michelino da Bezozzo, where a young ox cradles the Gospel book between his front hooves as he gazes up lovingly at Luke painting an image of the Virgin Mary (Fig. 37.1). Animal-human pairings are also important in the iconography of the saints, as the ability to communicate with animals was considered a mark of holiness. Francis’s birds, Eustace’s stag, Hugh’s swan, Jerome’s lion, Roch’s dog, and Giles’s hind, as described in the widely circulating Golden Legend and other hagiographical sources,8 are among the more popular companions of saints in medieval art. While most of these animals are friends, a few are foe, such as the dragons who threaten George and Margaret. Some, such as Anthony’s pig, have no textual basis, but were apparently invented by artists. Miraculous rapport with animals was extended even to Christ, who, according to apocryphal sources, as a child was observed playing with lion cubs, as depicted in fourteenth-century England on one of the Tring tiles and in the Seldon manuscript.9 By contrast, certain animals often symbolize evil. Following on from his early Christian association with the damned, the goat enjoyed a rich career as a symbol or attribute of the Devil, for whom the creature’s beard, horns, hooves, and tail are iconographically essential, as in the lively scenes of demons and hell in the fifteenth-century Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur (Book of Our Lord’s Vineyard) (Bodleian Library, Douce 134). Dogs are often associated with social outcasts, Christ’s tormentors, and function as negative motifs in Crucifixion scenes, where they snarl and fight, or snuffle around at the base of the cross.10 But not all dogs were bad: in the bestiaries, they are compared to the Devil, but they are also praised for their loyalty to their masters; lapdogs 505

Debra Higgs Strickland

Figure 37.1 Saint Luke and his ox, Prayerbook of Michelino da Besozzo, Milan, c. 1420. New York, ML, MS M. 944, f. 75v. Photo courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.

are a fashionable attribute of noblewomen in patron portraits, as in the thirteenth-century Psalter-hours of Yolande of Soissons (Morgan Library, M. 729, f. 232v); and elegantly reclining greyhounds were de rigueur in the iconography of the court, as in the feast scene on the January calendar page of the Duke of Berry’s early fifteenth-century Très Riches Heures. Apes, whose humanoid appearance was regarded as both ugly and suspicious, are often associated with evil and mockery in medieval art,11 and with a few exceptions, such as the heraldic pigs that decorate the tomb of John Swinefield (d. 1311) in Hereford Cathedral, pigs were considered an ignominious animal, freighted with bad associations inherited from Jewish purity laws. They thus function as a negative intensifier in anti-Jewish imagery, which attained its most vicious form in the late medieval German motif of the Judensau.12 Pigs, goats, asses, and other underclass beasts sometimes accompany human personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins, as in the splendid series painted in a French book of hours around 1475 (Morgan Library, M. 1001, ff. 84–98). Dragons, snakes, toads, worms, and insects frequently symbolize sin and vice. This is why snakes cling to the pendulous breasts of the emaciated female figure of Luxuria (Lust) carved on the twelfth-century Moissac abbey porch, and three toads emerge from the mouth of the blasphemous dragon in the Silos Beatus, dated 1109 (British Library, Add. 11695, f. 178v). As symbols of both spiritual and physical corruption, toads, snakes, bugs, and worms wriggle from the back of the 506

Animal iconography

thirteenth-century sculpture of the unsavory Tempter originally positioned on the south portal of Strasbourg Cathedral, and from decomposing corpses carved on numerous late medieval transi tombs.13 In the medieval language of heraldry, animals were a primary means by which elite individuals constructed their public identities: on a third of all arms, the main charge is an animal.14 From the thirteenth century, heraldic animal emblems informed by positive cultural associations shaped public perceptions of the character, power, and authority of the bearer and his or her lineage. It is therefore unsurprising that the lion – symbolizing power, strength, supremacy, and above all, Christ – emerged as a favorite heraldic animal, notably in England, in the lion-rich arms of the Plantagenets. After the lion, the next most popular heraldic animal was the eagle, associated with baptism and renewal, and considered the most powerful of birds. The popularity of the bear, fish, swan, unicorn, griffin, and boar is apparent in heraldic manuscripts, such as the fourteenth-century Dutch Gelre Armorial;15 these and other animals also appear on shields, banners, tombs, cups, plates, stained glass, and painting, either as coats of arms or as personal heraldic (livery) badges. The latter include the c. 1400 gold and enamel Dunstable swan jewel, and the Wilton Diptych, which depicts King Richard II’s emblem of a chained white hart as an isolated animal on the exterior, and on the interior in the form of livery badges worn by the king and several angels.16 Earlier studies have surveyed animal symbolism across medieval art and literature,17 and have also addressed the symbolic significance of selected animals in particular artistic and literary contexts.18 Still needed is more probing assessment of the role of animal symbolism in the early Christian cult, as recent work on the Jewish foundations of Christian art suggests that study from this perspective will shed new light on its functions in the multicultural contexts in which it was created and displayed.19 Consideration of the ways in which observation of real animals, such as lambs and doves, might have “activated” and intensified reception of animal representations might expand our understanding of the extratheological dimensions of medieval devotional experience. Broader approaches to the study of heraldry might uncover how associations with particular individuals changed the reception of a given animal in subsequent artistic contexts, and close assessment of the condemnatory efficacy of animal attributes in negative representations of Jews and Muslims will help to clarify the role of animal symbolism in medieval persecuting societies.

Bestiaries Bestiaries were produced all over Western Europe, especially in England, from the twelfth century onwards. For their reader-viewers, they functioned as handbooks to moral behavior, deriving their authority from the Christian belief that the natural world was a marvelously complex lesson created by God for the edification of humans. The ubiquity of bestiary imagery in other artistic media, such as wall painting and sculpture, bears witness to widespread familiarity across medieval Europe. Bestiary images of domestic, wild, and imaginary beasts, birds, fish, reptiles, and insects are varied and inventive, and sometimes incorporate references to contemporary social, religious, and political concerns, especially in the thirteenth-century imagery. For example, the image of three men riding dromedaries in Bodley 764 is an intervisual reference to the three magi, the Westminster Abbey Bestiary presents in sequence those species of deer protected under forest law, and the magician in the story of the asp in Harley 3244 was recast as a preaching friar.20 Narrative images often depict conflict between humans and animals in certain scenes, such as hunters chasing the beaver for his testicles (to be used for medicine), knights defending 507

Debra Higgs Strickland

Plate 8 Horses, Rochester Bestiary, southeast England, second quarter, thirteenth century. London, BL, MS Royal 12 XIII, f. 42v (detail). © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

themselves from the anal blast of the bonnacon, the entrapment of the unicorn by hunters using a virgin as a lure, and the whale drowning the clueless sailors who have lit a fire on his back, thinking he is an island. In the Rochester Bestiary, two wrestling horses mirror the hostility of their knightly riders (Plate 8). In the scholarly literature, the bestiary is sometimes confused with the Physiologus, which in fact is a distinct genre. The Physiologus (uncertainly translated as “The Naturalist”) refers to the bestiary’s core, moralized text,21 which was composed in Greek, probably in second-century Alexandria, and was translated into Latin by the sixth century. The Carolingian survival of the Bern Physiologus (Bern, Burgerbibl., Cod. 318) indicates that the text was illustrated by at least the ninth century. By contrast, the term “bestiary” refers to later, longer, and more complex medieval textual compilations that incorporate all or parts of this core text. Following the lead of M. R. James, most bestiary scholars have focused on the texts in order to refine the antiquarian classifications of the manuscripts into various “families.”22 Others have attempted to integrate the bestiaries into a wider cultural landscape and to clarify text-image relationships.23 Helping to move this important genre from the purview of specialists into the scholarly mainstream are numerous shorter studies in interdisciplinary collections,24 and a growing number of facsimiles and translations, both printed and electronic, that greatly aid research.25 Closely related to the bestiaries are the aviaries, illustrated books devoted to birds, with a twelfth-century text attributed to the French cleric Hugh of Fouilloy.26 The aviaries circulated independently but were also incorporated into or excerpted in many of the bestiaries. While most aviary imagery is stylistically and iconographically similar to bestiary illustrations, the text’s monastic character inspired some distinctive compositions. For example, the dove, allegorized as a figure of the contemplative life, received elaborate diagrammatic treatment in a thirteenth-century bestiary in the Getty Museum (Ludwig XV3, f. 2); and the turtledove nests in a palm tree 508

Animal iconography

rendered in the form of a cross in the Ashmole Bestiary (f. 44). Beyond translation, classification, and iconographical description, the aviaries remain very understudied. They need to be situated more broadly among other late medieval, illustrated contemplative texts and the avian leifmotif traceable across late medieval monastic literature, hagiography, and pictorial imagery. Using the aviaries as a touchstone, more work is needed to explain why medieval religious found it so fruitful to “think with birds,” and to clarify the role of aviary and other bird iconography in such thinking. The most important later bestiary development was the composition of the Bestiaire d’amour (Bestiary of Love) by the cleric and troubadour Richard of Fournival (1201–1259/1260).27 Writing for a courtly audience, Richard’s innovation was to synthesize bestiary and courtly love traditions into a love-plea organized around animal metaphors aimed at an anonymous woman, who in some manuscripts is given a retaliatory voice in an appended Response du bestiaire (Response to the Bestiary). Richard’s animals represent different stereotyped, negative aspects of women, ranging from cold neglect to jealous wrath, giving the work a distinctly misogynist character. That the Bestiaire and, less often, the Response were illustrated in numerous English, French, Italian, and German manuscripts is testimony to the genre’s pan-European appeal. Although the importance of the text for courtly love studies has been clarified by literary critics, the animal iconography remains very understudied, on the assumption that it was imported wholesale from the Latin prose bestiaries. But closer scrutiny of the manuscripts, such as a late thirteenth-century north Italian example (Morgan Library, M. 459) or a French one dated around 1300 (Bibliothèque nacional de France, fr. 25526), reveals that the new text demanded a new iconography. Identified as the first gendered prose debate in a European vernacular, preliminary text-image analysis has demonstrated the importance of this work for our understanding of medieval gender roles, and suggests rich potential for future investigations along these lines.28

Marginalia Animal imagery in medieval manuscript margins, stained-glass borders, tiles, aquamaniles, and misericords has attracted art historical attention in tandem with theoretical interests in “unofficial” art and its socially subversive possibilities.29 Sculptural cycles, such as the twelfth-century beast corbels on the church of Saints Mary and David in Kilpeck (Herefordshire), or the extensive set of misericords in Toledo Cathedral, exhibit a wide variety of animal types. While bestiary iconography is sometimes “imported” into the margins of Psalters and books of hours,30 more often, marginal manuscript beasts engage in quotidian activities, such as fighting, hunting, or feeding; or more eye-catching ones, such as dressing like clerics, copulating, or defecating.31 Especially popular in England were adventures of Reynard the Fox, as depicted in the margins of manuscripts and on misericords,32 and fourteenth-century contributions to the marginal theme of “the world upsidedown” include rabbits, hunting dogs, and men in the Smithfield Decretals, and mice catapulting cats in an English book of hours (British Library, Harley 6563). In some manuscripts, irreverent apes masquerade as ecclesiastics, expose their anuses, or hurl dung precariously close to sacred texts, as in a fourteenth-century French book of hours made for a woman (Morgan Library, M. 754). Relevant to the wider field of manuscript studies, more work is needed to connect marginal animals with the texts and images that surround them to uncover interdependent relationships. In support of this chapter’s thesis that medieval animal images ultimately point to humans, more intensive study of marginal imagery’s anthropomorphic meanings will broaden our understanding of medieval people’s reception of the sacred images and texts they encountered in their private books, as well as inside and outside architectural spaces. Ideological and theoretical relationships between animals and monsters, who often cavort together in marginal art, not infrequently in hybrid forms, 509

Debra Higgs Strickland

suggest the importance of animal iconography to monster studies,33 an approach especially relevant to the study of monuments such as the Kilpeck corbel series mentioned earlier, the twelfth-century Narbonnais arch in the Cloisters Collection, and the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter. As a postscript, the study of medieval animal iconography at both the margins and the center is today more timely than ever in cultures increasingly concerned with animal rights, and in an academic climate in which animal studies are gaining momentum across disciplines. One driver has been accelerating scholarly interest in ecocriticism, which aims to examine relationships between literature and the natural environment, with particular attention to human-animal relationships.34 Bestiaries should be high on the list for scrutiny from this theoretical perspective, as should the study of relationships between animal iconography and medieval royal menageries.35 As noted earlier, animal iconography contributed to the formation of medieval Christian identity, and it continued in this role throughout the entire Middle Ages. As the following case study aims to demonstrate, even a few strategically placed animal images in a larger series of other types could fulfill this and other functions relevant to both the spiritual and social concerns of their viewers. ∗∗∗∗∗ The twenty-eight misericords that decorate the choir stalls in the parish church of St. Lawrence in Ludlow include carved images of a falcon, a stag, a fox preaching (Fig. 37.2), another fox strangling a goose (?), a chained antelope, a griffin, a pelican, and an owl. From their marginal positions underneath seats, these animals carried familiar heraldic, bestiary, and literary associations. However, to understand their full signifying power, they must also be viewed in relation to the other misericords in whose midst they are situated. The full list of subjects, including the animals, is, on the north side (from west to east): four roses; the falcon; an angel blowing a trumpet; a king’s head; the stag; the fox; three feathers; a bishop’s head; the antelope; three figures quarrelling; the chained antelope; a siren; two devils, one with a woman clutching a beer mug slung across his shoulder; a bat-woman (Fig. 37.3); and a grotesque woman’s head. On the south side (from west to east) are: a rose and fetterlock; a schoolmaster (Fig. 37.4); two men dancing around a wine or beer barrel; a man pouring

Figure 37.2 Fox preaching poultry, misericord, oak, c. 1425. Ludlow, St. Lawrence parish church. Image courtesy of Shaun Ward.

510

Figure 37.3 Bat-woman, misericord, oak, c. 1425. Ludlow, St. Lawrence parish church. Image courtesy of Shaun Ward.

Figure 37.4 Schoolmaster, misericord, oak, c. 1450. Ludlow, St. Lawrence parish church. Image courtesy of Shaun Ward.

Debra Higgs Strickland

beer from a barrel into a large mug; the griffin; a very damaged scene, whose remaining carved fragments suggest a fox strangling a goose while other poultry scatter; five men, four of whom are wrestling; a man warming himself by the fire; the pelican; the owl; a young woman’s head; a peddler with his wares on his back, pulling on his boot; a leaf ornament; and a well-dressed man standing between a seated figure and emblems of death.36 Although only eight of the central misericord subjects are animals, there are numerous additional fish, bird, and beast supporters (smaller images that flank the central ones). Small lion heads, a beast mask, and a crane on the front of the choir stalls, and a small dragon crouching under a poppycock further augment the animal presence. Some of the other subjects evoke animals indirectly: the three feathers reference an ostrich, the angel and the bat-woman are bird hybrids,37 the siren is a fish hybrid, the two sides of meat hanging on hooks beside the man warming himself represent dead pigs, and in medieval thought, women were closer to animals than humans.38 Although some of these same animal subjects are carved on misericords elsewhere in England,39 in the church of St. Lawrence, I suggest they took on more specialized meanings related to contemporary life in Ludlow, which by this time was a prosperous market town and Yorkist stronghold, signified on the misericords by the rose and fetterlock (the Yorkist badge) and other rose imagery.40 While the contemporary heraldic significance of the chained antelope (King Henry VI), the falcon and fetterlock (Richard, Duke of York), the three feathers (Prince of Wales, including the Black Prince), and the griffin (Edward III) has already been noted,41 the remaining subjects have been only generically linked to bestiary, fable, and satirical traditions.42 The possibility of any thematic unity across the group has been discounted, based on the generalized assumption that misericords were less strictly programmed than other types of church art, and thus their subjects are arbitrary, and their function only decorative.43 But in the church of St. Lawrence, a new set of misericords was carefully integrated with the existing ones into a revised arrangement, which suggests both the continued relevance of the earlier set and a concern with the sequential order of the iconographical subjects. In what follows, I aim to provide a particularized, local reading of the St. Lawrence misericord series and the place of the animal iconography within it. My analysis is grounded in the experiences of the misericords’ clerical and lay viewers, which included the documented patrons of the new series. In 1446–47, the religious fraternity known as the Palmers’ Guild purchased 120 planks of wood at Bristol for “new installations” in the St. Lawrence choir. These included a set of twelve misericords, which were integrated with sixteen older ones (dated c. 1425) in order to double the space of the choir.44 In the revised order, on both sides, the misericord animals were evenly distributed, singly or in pairs, among the other subjects to create an alternating animal-human rhythm. Who were these patrons? Founded in the late 1250s and incorporated in 1329, the Palmers’ Guild, whose name refers to Holy Land pilgrims, was a dominant influence in Ludlow town life for three hundred years.45 Like other late medieval English religious fraternities, it was composed of laymen and women drawn from different professions and a relatively small number of clerics, whose collective purposes were to honor their patron saint and to serve each other’s spiritual, economic, and educational needs.46 According to the earliest ordinance (1284), the Palmers were dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to St. John the Evangelist, and were responsible for offering financial aid to impoverished, sick, aged, and wrongfully imprisoned members; for providing dowries for the daughters of members whose families had met with unexpected misfortune; and for organizing and attending funeral services for deceased members.47 They were headquartered in their own guild hall on Mill Street and also in the parish church, where they built and richly decorated a guild chapel dedicated to St. John.48 The Palmers were responsible for much of the fourteenth-century building work on the church, and they were major contributors to the 512

Animal iconography

mid-fifteenth-century expansion and decoration campaign. They hired chaplains – as many as ten – for private chantries and the Lady Chapel to provide extra Masses for their dead brethren and to assist the parish priests. They also hired singers and the organist, and probably also purchased the organ.49 Such dedication to the musical life at St. Lawrence may account for their special interest in the decoration of the choir with richly carved misericords. Beyond the walls of the parish church, the Palmers contributed to the wider life of the town, and were also well connected to the English monarchy and nobility. They built an almshouse next to the church, and founded and staffed a free grammar school for the education of members’ children. As major property owners with considerable resources, they undertook civic building works, repairs, and other social objectives, and many members served as bailiffs and sat on the Twenty and Five town council. Those of means who looked favorably upon the guild’s spiritual and social works often bequeathed gifts, usually of property and rent-charges.50 During the early fourteenth century, the Palmers enjoyed the patronage of the rich and powerful Mortimer family, and by the mid-fifteenth century, their high-ranking brethren included the resident Duke Richard of York (1411–1460) and his wife, Cecily Neville (1415–1495). The Guild registers for the early part of King Edward IV’s reign list over fifty royal servants and officeholders, thirty members of the royal household, the Duke of Suffolk, and two other noblemen and their families. Edward IV himself made a large donation in 1472–3, and helped secure for the guild a papal indulgence for all who gave alms and contributed toward the restoration costs of the guildhouse and the church of St. Lawrence.51 Guild processions, funeral marches, lavish feasts, and worship services kept the Palmers in the public eye. Their annual feast, held on Pentecost in the guildhall, was the main social event of the year in Ludlow for two and a half centuries.52 It afforded members opportunities to perform public charity by inviting a group of the town’s poor to attend, and for social advancement, by inviting and freely giving livery hoods to prestigious “outsiders and gentry.” The feast was a community event: many Ludlow citizens were involved in the supply and preparation of the candles, rushes, beer, wine, bread, cheese, bacon, fish, and venison; it was also a lively one, characterized by heavy drinking and merriment.53 Like other late medieval religious guilds, the Palmers recognized that good moral conduct was crucial for continued community support, and the importance of exemplary behavior for upholding their good public reputation is articulated in the Palmers’ records. Fines were imposed for making noise during prayers, excessive rowdiness, and bad-mouthing or assaulting other members. During the feasts, members could be fined for drunkenness, sleeping loudly, or failing to pass the cup quickly enough when it was handed to them. There was also a dress code: livery had to be worn, bare feet and dagged clothing (with decorative scallops) were prohibited, and hoods and caps were not to be worn at table. Other proscribed behaviors included public quarrelling, gambling, wrestling, adultery, prostitution, and other forms of sexual misconduct, such as clandestine marriages.54 Let us return now to the St. Lawrence misericords, which were viewed and used primarily by the choristers, the parish priests, the Palmers, and their hired chaplains. How did the carvings address the interests of this audience, especially the Palmers, who were responsible for the new additions and arrangement of the entire series? Representations of well-dressed men and women in different occupations, the king’s head, the bishop, and the heraldic references together represent the guild’s diverse membership, and the misericord of the young woman’s head flanked by two similar ones on the supporters evokes the guild’s responsibility to provide dowries for daughters of needy members. The images of drinking and merrymaking point to the annual guild feast, and perhaps also warned to temper behavior. The wrestling and assault scenes highlight two activities explicitly proscribed for members in the guild’s earliest ordinance. The supporter imagery of the 513

Debra Higgs Strickland

coffin, skulls, bones, and grave implements depicted to the right of the well-dressed man standing before the barrel perhaps functioned as a memento mori, but it also signaled the guild’s funerary responsibilities to its deceased members. The most direct reference to the Palmers appears on the westernmost misericord on the south side, positioned next to the return stalls (Fig. 37.4). The seated schoolmaster holding a long scroll has already been identified with the guild’s grammar school,55 and it is on record that in the same year the misericord wood was purchased, the guild paid for bars on the windows of the Master of the Scholar’s house.56 I suggest that Palmer identity is reinforced by the supporters, which depict a pair of men’s heads wearing livery headdresses similar to those worn by the Palmer figures depicted on the stained-glass window dedicated to the guild’s founding legend that was installed in their chapel at the same time as the misericords.57 Bearing the only figure holding a scroll, this misericord, strategically positioned at the western beginning of the south side series, perhaps reminded viewers of the misericords’ donors, and the need to read the various subjects in light of their shared values and contributions to parish life. How did the animal iconography serve this agenda? Compared to the human subjects, the signifying powers of the animals are greater, because their meanings are multiple. For example, the small lion’s heads carved on the front of the stalls complement the other carved roses as emblems of the Yorkist king, Edward IV, but at the same time, they carried their bestiary associations, especially when viewed in tandem with the poppycock carving of the Pietà, which rhymes with the lion’s bestiary association with Christ’s resurrection. The small crane carved on the front of the south stall is biting his leg, presumably to keep himself awake for the sentinel duty outlined in the bestiaries, which in turn allowed him to symbolize the group solidarity and communal responsibility so important to the Palmers. The pairing of the pelican, the popular bestiary symbol of Christ, with the owl, identified in the bestiaries as a sign of the “unbelieving Jews,” is fully visible in the opening between the stalls as a universal Christian antithesis. Beyond their heraldic associations, the antelope recalled the bestiary’s identification of antelope horns with the Old and New Testaments, and the stag, as a bestiary figure of friendship, embodied a core value of the community-minded Palmers. Also beyond heraldry, according to the aviaries, the tamed falcon (accipter), here depicted with his fetterlock, signified “any spiritual father . . . who draws laymen to conversion through preaching.”58 The griffin, unmoralized in the bestiaries, also pointed beyond heraldry to the legend of the flight of Alexander via tamed griffins, and thus to the sin of pride, with which Alexander was identified in contemporary theological thought.59 Interpretation of the fox misericords is more complex. The motif of a fox preaching to poultry was popular in late medieval art, and is commonly identified with Reynard the Fox, but a mitered one is more unusual (Fig. 37.2). With two men conversing on the left supporter, and positioned next to the misericord depicting a bishop’s head, it suggests a wider satirical purpose. In fifteenth-century Ludlow, a preaching fox could be a sly reference to the declining reputation of the local Carmelites, prominent here as elsewhere as preachers and scholars, whose priors were frequently involved in lawsuits over various offenses and territorial disputes.60 It is tempting to read the fox as a criticism of the established Church if, as previously suggested, the creation of religious guilds was an attempt on the part of the laity to take religion into their own hands and exclude the corrupt clergy.61 Either way, the generic bishop’s head on the adjacent misericord could commemorate the corrupt – or saintly – bishop of the moment, while the vulpine preacher was grounded in the bestiary characterization of the deceptive fox as a figure of the Devil, a theme reiterated on the (mostly destroyed) misericord that originally depicted a more conventional fox attacking poultry. The ale-wife, bestiary siren, bat-woman (Fig. 37.3), and “ugly duchess,” arranged in sequence like a phalanx, warned of the dangers of female sexuality. They also reminded viewers that sexual 514

Animal iconography

offenses, especially among the clergy, were the main business of the Ludlow courts: during the fifteenth century, an average of one chaplain or friar was prosecuted each year in courts held in the chancel of St. Lawrence; punishment typically included fines, some of which were payable to the church fabric.62 A wider interest in misogyny cloaked in an animal idiom is evident from a miscellany dated c. 1300–49, which includes an illustrated Bestiaire d’amour compiled by a local scribe, with a dedication to the parish church of St. Lawrence in Ludlow (lodelowe).63 Without identifying this manuscript as a direct source, I observe that the lively, pen-drawn images include some of the same animals carved on the Ludlow misericords and choir stalls, including the lion, crane, fox, pelican, siren, dog, and birds, which are compared in the accompanying text to wicked women’s ways. As a guide to good moral behavior, I suggest that the Ludlow misericords functioned like a bestiary, albeit positioned inside the church rather than inside a book, and glossed with nonanimal subjects. At the same time, references to the Palmers’ diverse membership, social activities, and proscribed behaviors made them a visual form of their guild statutes. In the living theater of the choir, they were a metaphor for social control: the act of sitting on undesirable figures – women, Jews, wrestlers, corrupt bishops, drunks – literally suppressed them. Or equally, aspirations and allegiance could be performed through intimate contact with emblems of princes and nobility. Because the moral transgressions depicted on the misericords were the same ones named in the town nuisance statues and denounced by the parish priests,64 they furthermore aligned the guild with the social and spiritual interests of their larger community. The animal misericords installed in the choir of St. Lawrence parish church in Ludlow carried familiar heraldic and bestiary meanings, which when carefully integrated with nonanimal subjects helped to break down conceptual barriers between humans and animals. By situating these sculptures in their local historical and social contexts, this brief sketch has highlighted the contemporary social power of animal iconography, and most importantly, its dependence on contemporary viewer experiences for activation of its multiple meanings, beyond heraldry, and beyond the bestiaries.

Notes 1 S. Baker, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation (Manchester, 1993); J. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London, 1994); S. Crane, Animals Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia, 2013). 2 J. Cummins, The Art of Medieval Hunting: The Hound and the Hawk (Edison, 2003). 3 C.F. Barnes, Jr., The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt (Aldershot, 2009); N. Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge, 2001); Time in the Medieval World: Occupations of the Months and the Signs of the Zodiac in the Index of Christian Art, ed. C. Hourihane (Princeton, 2007). 4 M.M. Epstein, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art & Literature (University Park, 1997); H. Maguire, Nectar and Illusion: Nature in Byzantine Art and Literature (Oxford, 2012); R.C. Foltz, Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures (Oxford, 2006). 5 I.S. Gilhus, Animals, Gods, and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Ideas (London, 2006). 6 P.C. Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (New York, 1994). 7 C. Hicks, Animals in Early Medieval Art (Edinburgh, 1993); G. Henderson and I. Henderson: Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland (New York, 2004); H. Pulliam, Word and Image in the Book of Kells (Dublin, 2006). 8 J. de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. W.G. Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993); D. Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2008). 9 Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 35, in The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. J.K. Elliott (Oxford, 2005), 97; Les Enfaunces de Jesu Crist (BL, Seldon Supra 38, ff. 27v-28).

515

Debra Higgs Strickland 10 J. Marrow, “Circumdederunt me canes multi: Christ’s Tormentors in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,” AB 59 (1977), 167–81; R. Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1993). 11 H.W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London, 1952). 12 I. Shachar, The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and Its History (London, 1974). 13 K. Cohen, Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Berkeley, 1973). 14 M. Pastoureau, Heraldry: Its Origins and Meanings (London, 1997). 15 M. Popoff and M. Pastoureau, L’armorial de Gelre: Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Ms 15652–15656 (Paris, 2012). 16 The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. D. Gordon , L. Monnas, and C. Elam (London, 1997). 17 F. Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages (London, 1971); B. Rowland, Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism (Knoxville, 1973); B. Rowland, Birds with Human Souls: A Guide to Bird Symbolism (Knoxville, 1978). 18 Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval Art and Literature, ed. L.A.J.R. Houwen (Groningen, 1997). 19 Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism, ed. D. Nirenberg and H. Kessler (Philadelphia, 2011). 20 As discussed in D. Hassig [D.H. Strickland], Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge, 1995). 21 M.J. Curley, Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore (Chicago, 2009). 22 M.R. James, The Bestiary; Being a Reproduction in Full of the Manuscript Ii.4.26 in the University Library, Cambridge, with Supplementary Plates from Other Manuscripts of English Origin, and a Preliminary Study of the Latin Bestiary as Current in England (Oxford, 1928); W.B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge, 2006); C. White, From the Ark to the Pulpit: An Edition and Translation of the “Transitional” Northumberland Bestiary (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2009). 23 Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries (as in note 20); D. Yamamoto, The Boundaries of the Human in Medieval English Literature (Oxford, 2000). 24 Birds and Beasts of the Middle Ages: The Medieval Bestiary and Its Legacy, ed. W. Clark and M. McMunn (Philadelphia, 1989); The Mark of the Beast: The Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life, and Literature, ed. D. Hassig [D.H. Strickland] (New York, 1999). 25 These include J. Geddes and I. Beavan, The Aberdeen Bestiary Project, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/; C. de Hamel, Book of Beasts: A Facsimile of Ms. Bodley 764 (Oxford, 2008); C. de Hamel, L.F. Sandler, and H. Zotter, Das Bestiarium aus Peterborough: MS 53 (fol. 189–210v), The Parker Library, College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary, Cambridge, 2 vols. (Lucerne, 2003); and White, From the Ark (as in note 22). 26 W. Clark, The Medieval Book of Birds: Hugh of Fouilloy’s Aviarum (Binghamton, 1992). 27 Master Richard’s Bestiary of Love and Response, trans. J. Beer (Berkeley, 1986); J. Beer, Beasts of Love: Richard of Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour and A Woman’s Response (Toronto, 2003). 28 H. Solterer, “Letter Writing and Picture Reading: Medieval Textuality and the Bestiaire d’Amour,” Word & Image 5 (1989), 131–47. 29 M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (London, 1992); P. Barnet and P. Dandrige, Lions, Dragons, & Other Beasts: Aquamanilia of the Middle Ages (New Haven, 2006); E.C. Block, Corpus of Medieval Misericords, 5 vols. (Turnhout, 2003–2010). 30 D. Hassig [D.H. Strickland], “Marginal Bestiaries,” in Houwen, Animals and the Symbolic (as in note 18), 171–88. 31 For many examples, see L. Randall, Images in the Margins of French and English Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley, 1966). 32 Reynard the Fox, trans. P. Terry (Berkeley, 1983); K. Varty, Reynard, Renart, Reinaert and Other Foxes in Medieval England: The Iconographic Evidence (Amsterdam, 1999). 33 The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. A.S. Mittman and P. Dendle (Farnham, 2012). 34 See The Journal of Ecocriticism, http://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/joe/; and S. Kay, “Legible Skins: Animals and the Ethics of Medieval Reading,” postmedieval 2 (2011), 13–22. 35 L. Kiser, “Animals in Medieval Sports, Entertainment, and Menageries,” in A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age, ed. B. Resl (Oxford, 2011), 103–26. 36 At St. Lawrence, I would like to thank Alan Hobbes for allowing me close access to the misericords, and Shaun Ward, director of music, for providing me with a full set of excellent photographs. 37 The bat was classified among the birds in the bestiaries.

516

Animal iconography 38 39 40 41 42 43

44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64

Yamamoto, Boundaries of the Human (as in note 23), 205. G.L. Remnant, A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain (Oxford, 1969). M. Faraday, Ludlow 1085–1660: A Social, Economic and Political History (Chichester, 1991), 11–12, 103–33. P. Klein, The Misericords & Choir Stalls of St. Laurence’s Church, Ludlow, 3d ed. (Ludlow, 2015), 7–20. C. Grössinger, The World Upside-Down: English Misericords (London, 1997), 38, 53, 54, 77, 78; P. Hardwick, English Medieval Misericords: The Margins of Meaning (Woodbridge, 2011), 19–20, 29–30. L. Houwen, “Bestiaries in Wood? Misericords, Animal Imagery, and the Bestiary Tradition,” in the Playful Middle Ages: Meanings of Play and Plays of Meaning: Essays in Memory of Elaine C. Block, ed. P. Hardwick (Turnhout, 2010), 195–231. Shropshire Archives, LB/5/3/28: Stewards’ Account Roll, 1446–47; cited in C. Liddy, “The Palmers’ Gild Window, St. Lawrence’s Church, Ludlow: A Study of the Construction of Guild Identity in Medieval Stained Glass,” Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 72 (1997), 26–37, at 32. The patrons of the older series are undocumented, but they are likely to have also been the Palmers, for reasons to be discussed. Faraday, Ludlow (as in note 40), 77–95. G. Rosser, The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England, 1250–1550 (Oxford, 2015). For the text, see English Gilds, ed. T. Smith, EETS 40 (London, 1870), 193–95. See also H.F. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Mediaeval England (London, 1919), 19, 224. Liddy, “Palmers’ Guild Window” (as in note 44), 26–37; H.T. Weyman, “A Contract for Carvings in Ludlow Church, 1524–5,” Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society 3 (1903), i–ii. A. Smith, “Elizabethan Church Music at Ludlow,” Music and Letters 49 (1968), 108–21; Liddy, “Palmers’ Guild Window” (as in note 43), 32–33; Rosser, Art of Solidarity (as in note 46), 223. Deeds of the Palmers’ Gild of Ludlow, ed. M.A. Faraday (Ludlow, 2012). The Victoria History of Shropshire, vol. 2, ed. A.T. Gaydon (Oxford, 1973), 94; Faraday, Ludlow (as in note 40), 86. Faraday, Ludlow (as in note 40), 88. G. Rosser, “Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies 33 (1994), 430–46. B.R. McRee, “Religious Gilds and Regulation of Behavior in Late Medieval Towns,” in People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. Rosenthal and C. Richmond (Gloucester, 1987), 108–22, at 114. Klein, Misericords (as in note 41), 20. Faraday, Ludlow (as in note 40), 86. Liddy, “Palmers’ Gild Window” (as in note 44), pl. 8; also reproduced on the St. Laurence Ludlow website: http://www.stlaurences.org.uk/history/the-palmers-guild-a-brief-history. Clark, Medieval Book of Birds (as in note 26), 143. G. Cary, “Alexander the Great in Mediaeval Theology,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 17 (1954), 98–114. Faraday, Ludlow (as in note 40), 62–63. B. Hanawalt, “Keepers of the Light: Late Medieval English Parish Gilds,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984), 21–37, at 21. Faraday, Ludlow (as in note 40), 58–60. British Library, Harley 273, dedication on f. 1v; Bestaire d’amour, fols. 70–81. Digital facsimile and bibliography are available on the British Library Digitised Manuscript website: http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_273. McRee, “Religious Gilds” (as in note 54), 118 (on correspondences between religious guild, parish, and civic behavioral codes more generally).

517

38 MONSTROUS ICONOGRAPHY Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim

Introduction: “The inexhaustible history of monsters” Monstrous iconography was a major, even central, element of the visual arts throughout the entire medieval period, early Christian through late Gothic, east and west, north and south. There are few – if any – medieval cultural traditions that do not rely on monstrous imagery for vital cultural functions. Within this catchall category, often defined through exclusion from all of the more clearly defined categories of the period, there is tremendous dynamism and variety, as well as great hermeneutic and epistemological potential. There have been a few attempts to define the monstrous, though the protean nature of the subject eludes final clarity.1 However, the study of the iconography of the monstrous was, until relatively recently, underdeveloped. It was a subject of interest within the period, but was not frequently discussed in secondary scholarship about the period. In this essay, we will provide a historiography of modern monsters studies, with particular attention to works addressing iconographical concerns, and then will consider the differing cultural and artistic functions of the monstrous. It is worth noting that prominent medieval scholars, most notably Augustine of Hippo and Isidore of Seville, wrote important works theorizing the role of the monstrous. For Augustine, in City of God, the monstrous provides a context for understanding God’s infinitely orderly creation and his power over the bodies of men: what seems to be aberrant to our partial vision is orderly and beautiful in God’s whole. Just as relatively trivial human differences cannot be understood as divine error, differences on a larger scale – he covers Cyclopses, Antipodes, Hermaphrodites, Astomi, Pygmies, Sciopods, Blemmyes, and Cynocephali, before turning to the minor variation of people born with a finger or toe more than the usual – are similarly part of God’s intentional creation and as such exhibit for us the power of that creation, the fact that “even if a greater variation were to arise, he, whose works are justly faulted by none, knows what he has done.”2 The monstrous in its apparent violations of the norm thus demonstrates at once the power and orderliness of God’s creation and the limits of human vision. Isidore takes up the etymological connection to the Latin monstrare and demonstrare. For Isidore, and many other medieval theorists, the monstrous, in its form as portents, prodigies, or omens, points to meaning located elsewhere. Omens (mostrum), for example, “derive their name from admonition (monitus), because in giving a sign they indicate (demonstrare) something, or else because they instantly show (monstrare) what may appear.”3 For Isidore, as for Augustine, the potential violations or threats of the monstrous are neutralized and the monstrous is normalized by its capacity to 518

Monstrous iconography

function as a sign or demonstration of something else. As Bruno Roy argues in his 1974 essay, “En marge du monde connu: Les races de monstres,” the monstrous is both recognized and assimilated as part of its function throughout the Middle Ages. Roy offers three propositions regarding the medieval monstrous: “a) ils existent; b) on les connaît; c) on les assimile” (a) they exist; b) they are known; c) they are assimilated).4 That is, medieval scholars and theologians (as well, presumably, as the larger populace) believed in the existence of beings that we would now call monsters – hybrids, giants, magical creatures, fire-breathing, dog-headed anthropophages, and so on – and believed not only that they had accurate knowledge of them but also that these beings were ontologically meaningful. As part of God’s rich and vast creation, they had to bear the mark of his divine plans and intentions. From their places on the periphery, they seemed to threaten, disturb, and disrupt, but ultimately they were absorbed back into and thus reaffirmed the power of the center. Monsters and the monstrous were therefore as worthy of careful study as all other natural and supernatural phenomena, and so we should not be surprised that vital patristic and medieval scholars dedicated their energies to thinking about a subject that much scholarship of the twentieth century saw as marginal, at best. Émile Mâle, one of the founders of the iconographical methodology and a towering figure in medieval art history, gives the subject substantial treatment in his landmark study, L’art réligieux de XIIIe siècle en France: Étude sur l’iconographie de moyen âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration, later published in English as Religious Art in France, XIII Century: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources.5 He gives, for example, a detailed reading of the monstrous figures of the famous portals of the Basilica Church of St. Mary Magdalene at Vézelay and the Cathedral of Saint Stephen at Sens. Ruminating on the figures more generally, Mâle asks, What is the meaning of all the plants, animals, monsters? Are they due to caprice or have they significance, and do they teach some great and mysterious truth? May one not suppose that they too are symbols, clothing some thought like the statues and bas-reliefs which we shall have occasion to study later?6 Mâle seems to dismiss some as “monsters born of the craftsman’s fancy,” but others (especially, unsurprisingly, those of the Physiologus and bestiary traditions) were, he argued, freighted with meaning, and whether that meaning was the production of “imagination” was irrelevant to the seriousness with which the symbolism was received during the period. As Mâle argues, It occurred to no one, moreover, to verify the accuracy of stories in the Bestiary. In the Middle Ages the idea of a thing which a man framed for himself was always more real to him than the actual thing itself, and we see why these mystical centuries had no conception of what men now call science. The study of things for their own sake held no meaning for the thoughtful man. How could it be otherwise when the universe was conceived as an utterance of the Word of which every created thing was a single word?7 This is a complex passage, suggesting as it does that the monsters of the bestiary and their “moral interpretations” – now generally referred to as “moralizations” – were made up, but were also a meaningful reflection of and on the Word. For Mâle, the fact that monsters were generated by and then “framed for” human consumption did not diminish their significance during the period. And yet, he is not convinced that every monster is freighted with specific, symbolic meaning, and derides those who think they are: Ingenious archaeologists have, it is true, claimed to leave nothing in the cathedral unexplained. According to them the tiniest flower or smallest grinning monster has a 519

Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim

meaning which the mediaeval theologians can reveal to us . . . Each of these monsters became a minute psychological study, setting forth some state of the soul, and precisely illustrating the combination of passions which may co-exist in a single consciousness. [Such scholars] demonstrated one thing only – that the old craftsmen were never so subtle as their modern interpreters. What likelihood is there that they would have attempted to express so many and such subtle meanings through figures which are invisible from below except with good glasses?8 This all may seem somewhat inconsistent. Monsters are meaningful, except when they are not; they bear meanings imprinted by the Word of God, except insofar as they are products of the imagination of craftsmen. And Mâle’s seemingly contradictory assertions reproduce contradictions explicit within medieval discussions: Isidore, for example, explains that monsters as portents have divine meaning, though he does not link specific monsters to specific meanings, and he warns that although some monsters are portents, others are imaginary, human constructs, explanations of natural or cultural phenomena, and he does not provide us with any way to distinguish between these kinds of meanings.9 There are medieval monsters with very specific iconographical meanings, and others that are imaginary, or invented, or resist such interpretation.10 Given that there is no single, correct way to “read” all the monsters of the Middle Ages, in the medieval context or in our own, in this essay, we will consider some of the roles monsters play in medieval art, each of which requires a different route toward interpretation. We will also argue that this multiplicity of meanings, the excess and thus opacity of monstrous iconography, may function not to disable interpretation but to make visible, to demonstrate, and thus to allow for re-vision of the very ways we make and find meaning. Throughout the twentieth century, among the handful of landmark studies of monstrous iconography, Rudolf Wittkower’s “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters” (1942) stands out for its depth of engagement with the subject, as well as its erudition. This article follows a traditional iconographical approach by locating literary sources for a few characters from within what he refers to as the “the inexhaustible history of monsters, those compound beings that have always haunted the human imagination.”11 He traces their origins to a diverse array of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit sources, including Herodotus, Pliny, and the Mahabharata; these textual sources have become something like gospel in modern studies of medieval monsters, particularly the Latin texts, likely owing to the linguistic strengths of medievalists. Wittkower’s work also privileges certain modes of thought – the section on ancient Greece is subtitled “An Enlightened Interlude,” which he describes as notable for its “progressive scientific attitude” and rejection of “superstition.”12 He then performs iconographical readings of some monsters, relying on textual “moralizations.” However, Wittkower presses beyond the static, overly fixed iconographical readings of some of his contemporaries, noting that “late mediaeval moralizations are interchangeable and attach to the moral values of human society.”13 There was little art historical response to Wittkower’s article, and the next major contribution to the study of the iconography of the monstrous was, in a sense, not deliberate. Lilian M. C. Randall’s major 1966 catalogue, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, tackled the iconography of the monstrous in Gothic marginality.14 Her volume is largely an iconographical index, with nearly two hundred pages of subject headings, indexed to over seven hundred illustrations. That many of these are in some way monstrous is less the result of Randall’s interests and more a practical result of the nature of gothic marginalia. Still, she chooses to open her study with Bernard of Clairvaux’s famous Apologia, with its critique-cum-advertisement of the

520

Monstrous iconography

“distractive influence” of “those half-men” and other such monstrosities.15 Randall argues that, in incorporating them, “the Church . . . often endow[ed] them with symbolic overtones.”16 Her main goal is to draw attention to the marginal images that had been to this point largely overlooked, and of course – as art historians are now well aware – monstrous and grotesque figures were a staple thereof. Randall chronicles (and at times endorses) the view that “a good initial and border . . . is spoiled by a repulsive grotesque.”17 Though she notes that she has omitted any references to “isolated renderings of inactive creatures,” including “monsters, and hybrids, which constitute stereotype elements of marginal decoration,” her index lists several entries under “Monster,” as well as entries for “Centaur,” “Mermaid,” and other individual monsters.18 The “Monster” entries, including “Monster crippled” and “Monster vomiting,” clearly deserve their own study.19 In essence, Randall provides the first major guide to the iconography of the monstrous without either setting out to do so or at any point theorizing the nature of her subject. John Block Friedman’s 1981 The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought significantly extends Wittkower’s treatment and surveys representations of the monstrous throughout the Middle Ages.20 Friedman’s extended examination includes different approaches to the monstrous within the medieval tradition. As he notes of the early medieval manuscript illustrations in London, British Library Cotton Vitellius A.xv (Figure 38.4) and Cotton Tiberius B.v (both containing the Wonders of the East), the moralizations of the bestiary even in the early tradition partner very uneasily with some of the monstrous illustrations: the monstrous images in these manuscripts fill or extend beyond the margins of their frames, and for Friedman, [t]his uneasy relationship of creature to frame suggests that the monstrous men are leaving the borders confining them to the static page and beginning to occupy landscapes; they cannot be contained in isolation, as they were in the miniatures presenting the moralists’ point of view.21 It is perhaps not coincidence that Michael Camille opens Image on the Edge, his landmark study of Gothic marginalia (broadly categorized), with the very same text used by Randall: Bernard’s Apologia. He says, “I could begin, like St. Bernard, by asking what do they all mean, those lascivious apes, autophagic dragons, [and] pot-bellied heads . . . that protrude at the edges of medieval buildings, sculptures and illuminated manuscripts,” but he might just as well have said, “I could begin, like Lilian Randall . . .”22 Indeed, he cites her volume in the next paragraph as the most notable in the field. While he deals with the subject of the monstrous throughout Image on the Edge, Camille’s most direct treatments of the iconography of the monstrous are in two essays. First, he took on the very notion of iconographical practice via monsters in 1993 in his “Mouths and Meanings: Towards an Anti-Iconography of Medieval Art,”23 and then in 1996 used monstrous iconography to challenge the art historical canon and the basic notion of canonicity in “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters (Rethinking the Canon).”24 Camille was perhaps the most imaginative and invigorating scholar of medieval art in the late twentieth century; ask any mid-career medieval art historian what drew her to this subfield, and Camille’s work is a likely answer. His work is iconoclastic, in that it challenged traditional conceptions about medieval art and the Middle Ages, and the period that we now discuss seems a messier, sexier, dirtier thing than the Middle Ages of scholarship prior to Camille’s work. It is fitting that, in tackling two of the central pillars of the field – iconographical practice and the artistic canon itself – Camille would turn to monstrous imagery for rhetorical assistance.

521

Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim

Monsters are not really the subject of either “Mouths and Meanings” or “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters.” Instead, monsters are, for Camille, as for Bernard, a concise means of approaching his subjects. In “Mouths,” he offers the magnificent, roiling mess of the trumeau now mounted on the inner side of the west wall of the Abbey of Sainte-Marie at Souillac, “a work of medieval art that has long intrigued art historians precisely because of its resistance to written models of explanation.”25 Through this work, Camille exposes flaws in traditional textbased iconographical approaches.26 As he writes, Suffused with language, either iconically (in the form of inscriptions and speech scrolls) or indexically (by referring to written narratives of the Bible text) medieval art is often described as though it were entirely text-driven. Ever since Mâle’s influential metaphor, taken over from Romantic writers like Victor Hugo, that medieval artists are “writers in stone,” the notion of legibility has been used unproblematically, reducing medieval images to a neatly coded series of signs waiting to be decoded by scholarly exegetes.27 But, as Camille argues, much of medieval art – perhaps especially evident in the iconography of the monstrous – is rooted in “the uninscribed codes and cultural practices that are generated orally and performatively.”28 Surely, many of us would like to discover a passage from Augustine or Isidore that would explain away the Donestre, or a bit from Bede that clarifies just what an elf is, but these passages likely do not, and did not, exist. The trumeau might be tied to various passages from Augustine, Peter of Celle, Bernard of Clairvaux, Caesarius of Heisterbach, and Ysengrimus (as Camille dutifully demonstrates), but it cannot be reduced to a visual cipher for these passages of text. When “stone turns to feathers, claws and fur, textures that ruffle and slither between the cranky joints of shaft and pillar to create an architecture of animality, a spiraling ascent and descent of biting bestiality,” a work can become “more like a scream rent from a human body than words written outside it.”29 Camille is more explicit in his focus on monsters in “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters.” In his desire to press back against the “set of predetermined, isolated images of ‘great works’ reproduced in books,” the “worthy objects” of the canon, he settles on a small monster from Senlis Cathedral, which he describes as “a superbly ambiguous thing, less than a foot long, part reptile, part bird, and all stone.”30 Whereas the canon is a transcendent, uncreated text, like the Bible or the Torah, the monster is a material creature, a creation. Whereas the canon is constructed out of the always already known, prejudged and expected, the monster, being unstable, crosses boundaries between human and nonhuman, mingling the appropriate and the inappropriate, showing itself in constantly novel and unexpected ways . . . [T]he monster is always lurking somewhere, guarding the threshold . . . The monstrous . . . is all sensation, at one point soft and slimy, at another sharp and spiky.31 These are not properties that can be accessed via traditional text-based iconography, nor are they qualities of the artistic canon. Some scholars therefore have dismissed their significance.32 For Camille, monsters are neither codes to be unlocked nor masterpieces to be venerated, but opportunities to connect on a human and intimate, visceral way with art, giving him a route not “to worship at the shrine of actual art or to read in the inscribed traces of the historical past [but] to feel my flesh crawl and to be haunted.”33

522

Monstrous iconography

What are monsters for? In the preface to Monster Theory, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen echoes Camille as he argues that the monster in its hybridity and doubleness “introjects the disturbing, repressed, but formative traumas of ‘pre-’ into the sensory moment of ‘post-,’ binding the one irrevocably to the other.” He continues: The monster commands, “Remember me”; restore my fragmented body, piece me back together, allow the past its eternal return. The monster haunts; it does not simply bring past and present together but destroys the boundary that demanded their twinned foreclosure.34 As we consider the question “What are monsters for?” we recognize the difference monsters demonstrate on many levels – temporal difference, physical difference, cultural and linguistic difference – but we also recognize that even in its marginality, the monstrous, in Cohen’s term, “commands,” exerts powerful, if profoundly contradictory, calls to interpret, to “piece together,” the fragmented into a whole. And while this call may appear conservative, a “restoration” rather than a creation of something new, it also exaggerates, and thus renders legible, the otherwise invisible processes of interpretation: piecing together requires separation, categorization, reinforcing of boundaries even as it traverses them. It is no surprise to consider the number of monstrous representations and interpretations that appear within or take as their source the great encyclopedic texts of the Middle Ages – texts themselves that are attempts at categorizing and piecing together the world. For this reason, we have chosen as our “case study” a number of the widely present monsters of the Alexander materials, and have followed the contemporary work of Jesse Hurlbut in our examining of the images of British Library Royal 20 B.xx, a lavishly illustrated fifteenth-century French Historia de proelis, containing images of confrontations between Alexander and these monsters. In his work with the “manuscript average,” Hurlbut superimposes digitized manuscript images, creating startling, evocative, haunting hybrid images. He approaches the project not with the explicit aim of departure from the “original” but rather as a return from the partiality of the digitized image to an idea of the physical whole of the manuscript as well as the sensual apprehension of that whole. He writes, Without the physical presence of the actual volume between our hands, is there a way for us to take in some aspect of it all at once? For instance, what if we took all the pages of a given manuscript and overlaid them as if they were transparent?35 His “manuscript average” reveals continuities across the images – format, color spectrum, framing – continuities that bind the images and texts of the manuscript as a whole, though often unconsciously for the reader/viewer. At the same time, the superimposition makes it impossible to recognize single figures or images; rather, what emerges from an attempt to locate a whole figure or coherent image in the fields of colors and lines are fragments. With Hurlbut’s generous help, we have generated not a full manuscript average but something of a “monster average” by superimposing transparent images of the numerous images in Royal 20.xx containing scenes of battles between Alexander and his men and hordes of monsters, some particularly creative and bizarre (Figs. 38.1, 38.2, and 38.3).36 We clarified the image some by increasing the contrast and making other small image adjustments. In the Royal 20.xx “monsters average,” fragments emerge from the Chagall-like image: a snout, a foot, perhaps a wing, a stirrup. With reference to this new

523

Figure 38.1 “Monster Average,” London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B.xx, Historia de proelis in a French translation (Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre), c. 1420.

Figure 38.2 Alexander Battles Blemmyes, London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B.xx, f. 80, Historia de proelis in a French translation (Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre), c. 1420, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

Monstrous iconography

Figure 38.3 Alexander Battles Boars and Wild Men, London, British Library, MS Royal 20 B.xx, f. 51, Historia de proelis in a French translation (Le Livre et le vraye hystoire du bon roy Alixandre), c. 1420, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

composite image, made by overlaying twenty-four existing images, as our “case study,” we survey three roles monstrous iconography serves in medieval art.

1 Monsters demonstrate difference, and thus at once threaten and confirm the norm – in body, in culture, and in language The monsters of the Alexander material include monsters of culture, like the wild man; monsters of language, like the horse-headed and dog-headed peoples whose bodies disallow speech; and monsters of body, including hybrids like the dog-headed people but also creatures of excess and lack, like giants or the famous Blemmyes (people with no heads; Fig. 38.2). All of these monsters can be subject to broad iconographical readings: the nakedness and hairiness of the wild man itself, as Friedman observes, “was a sign of wildness and bestiality – of the animal nature thought to characterize those who lived beyond the limits of the Christian world” (Fig. 38.3).37 The Blemmye, also naked, whose later medieval moralizations would range from humility (the Gesta Romanorum) to the extraction of excessive legal fees (Liber de monstruosis, Thomas of Cantimpré),38 often appears with a club as his characteristic weapon. As Friedman argues, the linking of the monster and such a nonchivalric weapon poses “a resemblance between the representative of a monstrous race and the rustic or churl whose uncivil nature is commonly shown by the club he wields”:39 the Blemmye as a monster of culture is also a monster of class. Whereas the monstrous as it appears in contexts like the mappae mundi (e.g., the Psalter Map, BL MS Add. 28681, fol. 940) and the Marvels of the East manuscripts (perhaps mostly clearly in BL Cotton Vitellius A.xv, Fig. 38.441) is often presented as a catalogue or in a sequence of monsters, often without human interactants, the Alexander material more often partners these monsters with representations of Alexander and his men, figures of the Western, the human, the masculine, the normative. The hairy wild men and naked Blemmyes with their clubs in Royal 20 B.xx 525

Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim

Figure 38.4 Cynocephalus, London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv, f. 3, Wonders of the East, c. 1000, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved.

are clearly contrasted with, and outnumbered as well as overpowered by, the lavishly garbed and armored Alexander and the tight group of his sword-, pike-, and banner-wielding men. Perhaps more effectively than even the tight frames of the Psalter Map, the miniatures out of which our “average” was constructed contain the threats of the monstrous through the display of mastery by Alexander, the putatively nonmonstrous. In this sense, the monstrous figures affirm and confirm the power of the norm. In the “monster average” image, the left side is dominated by what 526

Monstrous iconography

had been in the miniatures the figures of Alexander, his men, and their horses. Above them is a bristling forest of pikes and lances. Their side of the image is all dynamic, forward motion, pressing toward the monstrous average to the right. Of course, we recognize which side of the average is Alexander’s and which belongs to the monstrous only by disambiguating the superimposed frames of the “average,” and thus by reinscribing the very work of differentiation which underlies one function of the monstrous. Here, making sense of the image of the “monstrous average,” the call to “piece it together,” can be articulated only in pulling the image apart into the miniatures by whose accretion it is formed, by returning to difference which both antecedes and constitutes the image. And the return to difference is also affirmation of boundary, legibility, and the normative.

2 Monsters demonstrate difference, and thus embody and make visible the difference already within the norm As David Gordon White argues, although monsters are positioned as “marginal groups that haunt the boundaries of human, civilized spaces,” nonetheless we cannot conclude that “they have been of marginal concern to humans living within such bounded spaces.”42 And the fascination with the monstrous cannot be restricted even to the question White poses in this context of where the human begins and ends. Even the foregoing readings of the Blemmye and his club complicate our discussion of what monsters are for (Fig. 38.2). If the club links the Blemmye to class anxieties as it represents the “uncivil nature” of the monster, at the same time, difference externalized in the figure of the monster exists within the nonmonstrous: class difference is a human matter. As Michael Camille has observed, in Gothic art, animal and human realms are usually represented as clearly distinct territories, with the notable exception of the monstrous. He argues that the half-human, half-animal bodies of some monsters can figure illicit, but nonetheless extant, desires and actions: given the definition in canon law of acts like sodomy as being both bestial and “against nature,” the activities of the monstrous body could make visible “illicit couplings that could not be talked about, but could be pictured.”43 That is, the monstrous can represent not simply the unknown or unknowable, but also acts and relationships, ways of being that are proscribed but nonetheless known, even intimately familiar. In our “monster average,” at the interface between the two halves of the image, what had been the human and the monstrous in the miniatures interpenetrate. There are two clear halves, but there is nonetheless no actual point of divide between them. The “human” half, taken in aggregate, and with the horses and weapons and armor, forms a mass just as monstrous and hybrid as the “monster” half.44 And throughout the “monster” half, there are traces of the human, perhaps most clearly the foot and stirrup in the lower right corner of the image. The monstrous and the human interpenetrate, however strenuously – or perhaps even because of how strenuously – they are differentiated. That interpenetration emphasizes that the difference externalized in the monster is never simply a difference from but rather also a difference within the norm. Returning to one of the original images from the manuscript, one of the layers of our “average” image, the Battle with Boars and Wild Men reveals the same sort of blurring of sides as the composite image (Fig. 38.3). While one Wild Man hefts a class-identifying club like that of the Blemmyes, another has a curiously self-reflexive image on his shield. The boar-tusked Wild Man bears a shield carved with the face of a Wild Man. The style of the illumination allows for slippage, here, in that the shield appears as lively as the being who carries it is. However, across the image, at the far left, one of Alexander’s men bears as shield that seems to reflect the self-reflexive shield, as it is carved with another Wild Man face. Indeed, the two rather 527

Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim

animate, smiling shield-faces seem to be making eerie eye contact across the battle, as if sharing in a private joke. Perhaps they notice that both sides wield similar spears, and one combatant on each side raises a giant, curved sword more appropriate to the monstrous warrior than to the noble knight striving against him. How different, then, are these mortal combatants? And, inversely, how similar, how unified, how resolutely normal are Alexander’s men? The British Library’s Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts titles this image “Detail of a Miniature of Alexander’s Battle with Boars and Many-Handed Savages,” and yet the “savages” each have a rather underwhelming complement of only two hands, and the knights, with a seemingly alive Wild Man face and giant’s sword among their more noble weapons, enact again and again a violence that, in its ferocity and its scale, is savage.45

3 Monsters demonstrate difference and thus signification, in image as well as language In his study of the monstrous, Deformed Discourse, David Williams stresses the importance of Isidore’s etymological definition of the monster, through monitus, demonstrare, and monstrare, as we have discussed earlier: It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this definition of the monster, not only because it was universally accepted in the Middle Ages and not only because by its acceptance and celebration of the monster it sets this period apart from the periods that preceded and succeeded it but also because this definition elevates the monster in all its various manifestations – as the deformity and as the grotesque that arise from negation – to the level of conceptual sign.46 The monster in its difference from itself, and in its capacity to point away from itself to meaning elsewhere, embodies and figures signification itself. It is no surprise then to find monstrous forms as text itself – for example, in anthropomorphic alphabets, or in monstrous initial capitals.47 In the Alexander materials, too, in Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle, bound with the illustrated Wonders of the East in Cotton Vitellius A.xv, Alexander’s journey into the land of the monstrous unfolds as the progress of the letter itself: the insistent concern with writing and the letter in that thread of the Alexander material replicates the coterminal concern with the monstrous. And again, this coterminal concern re-presents the monstrous not as experiential but as representational: the transmission and sometimes even the origin of the monster are in text and image, even when the reception of the monster is as reality rather than representation or fiction. As Wittkower details, the origins of medieval monsters can be traced in literature back to Herodotus, Megasthenes, and Ktesias. Even there, as he notes, “the majority of the fabulous stories were of literary origin; they were borrowed from the Indian epics.”48 As Mary B. Campbell notes, even beyond literary origin, some monstrous figures arise in the act of writing itself: unlikely creatures such as the “bird-centaurs of Wonders of the East belong to the genre of fact, but they do not and never did exist – they were begotten of an error in scribal transmission.”49 Hence, at least in part, the durability of the monstrous in the face of increasing geographic and scientific knowledge: even when the monstrous is apprehended, in contexts like the Wonders traditions, the encyclopedias, and even the Alexander materials, as “real,” it also inheres in the representational strategies through which we continue to encounter it. The monstrous as we encounter it in medieval art and thought is seemingly infinitely accretive. We can attempt to trace its sources, its interpretations, and its functions as we read it; as David White proposes in his study of the dog-man, we can attempt to “go back in time, and move 528

Monstrous iconography

from a complex sedimentation of symbols and socio-religious elements to simpler, less elaborate composites.”50 White is concerned with following through a specific analysis and its capacity to “intercept, as it were, certain very basic human categories in their embryonic formation.”51 Doing so more generally than White does in his study, however, often presumes the existence of an entity recognizable as the monstrous before and behind the accretion of those sources, interpretations, and functions. And the problem with that assumption is that the monstrous, as we have argued earlier, appears exactly in and through those representations. Even if we do not pose such an “original,” certainly the iconography of the monstrous requires a degree of stability, and in many senses stability persists. Campbell argues, Visual representations of the dogheads, for instance, remained as constant as verbal ones, throughout centuries of stylistic change in the languages of both visual and verbal mimesis. This is perhaps because a very bare minimum of features was necessary for definition, and once these features had been sketched or mentioned, the image “doghead” had been evoked to the limit of its usable significance.52 We can read the Cynocephalus in BL Cotton Vitellius A.xv as a Cynocephalus, and similarly the two Cynocephali from the famous tympanum of the Benedictine abbey church of Sainte-MarieMadeleine at Vézelay as Cynocephali by the informing contexts, the text of the manuscript, the surrounding figures in tympanum, and the shared features of the representations, the human bodies and elongated, muzzle-like faces (Fig. 38.4 and 38.5). And once we identify these figures

Figure 38.5 Cynocephali, Tympanum of the Benedictine Abbey Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay. Image courtesy of Karl Steel.

529

Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim

as Cynocephali, we can progress with the pluralities of iconographical readings that, as Cynocephali, they point to. But if we limit our focus to these stabilities through which we identify and read the Cynocephalus as such, we also elide the problem that these monsters are significantly different from each other, even in those identifying features. The Vitellius figure is elaborately clothed, even regal, in contrast to the bent and twisting figures on the Vézelay tympanum, one naked and one clothed in a short, simple tunic, for example. And furthermore, even the identifying features like the dog-head are not so transparent: the elongated muzzle-like faces in both the BL Cotton Vitellius A.xv and the Vézelay figures, for example, are not simply or unambiguously canine, and not, for example, dissimilar in shape to the horse-heads represented in Royal 20 B.xx (f. 29).53 The problem we are articulating here is also the invitation offered through Hurlbut’s “manuscript average.” These “average images” are something of a rebuke to traditional iconography, which, especially since Erwin Panofsky’s landmark work, has in seeking to determine the “correct iconographical analysis” of a work of art taught us to look away from that work, and inevitably toward a text.54 “Literary sources,” he says, are “indispensable and sufficient for an iconographical analysis,” when coupled with “a corrective principle which may be called the history of style,” and, if absolutely necessary, some knowledge of cultural context.55 Any remaining ambiguities are, for Panofsky and his method, problems rather than strengths in works of art, and can be dismissed as the result of “clumsiness,” “incompetence” of a “poor . . . copyist,” and other examples of “failure.”56 Indeed, even when his system is functioning well, for Panofsky, “we deal with the work of art as a symptom.”57 In contrast, Jennifer Borland encourages us to embrace the idea that “in cases where so little is known about the object, its function, or its meaning,” as is so often the case with monstrous imagery, we can adopt an approach that “acknowledges and capitalizes on necessary speculation,” since “iconography demands knowledge of ‘original’ meanings usually based on textual sources that we often do not have.”58 Of course, we can still posit iconographical meanings in the absence of reliable texts, but the “manuscript average” images ask us to look at art differently, in a way never before possible, to look at manuscripts and the monsters they contain in more complete ways than our eyes can manage. The result does not produce the sort of clarity and “correctness” that Panofsky was seeking, not the “oneness” he praises in Renaissance art.59 Rather, the bizarre and beautiful oneness of our “monster average,” this composite aggregate image of hybrid monsters and collective, violent action, invites puzzled contemplation: how did that stirrup come to be on the monster side? What are those leathery wings attached to? Who, if anyone, is winning? In the singular images, time and again Alexander triumphs, but the “average” emphasizes the endless nature of these battles, and the endless chains of signification they imply. Hurlbut’s project is restorative in its explicit aim: the recreation of the apprehension of the manuscript as “a whole thing,” complete with weight, the smell, the groaning of the bindings, the crackling of parchment.60 Of course, one other premise must also be that such recreation, through another kind of digitized image, creates something different, necessarily dislocated from the manuscript as an original object, however effectively it evokes that “whole thing.” There is no view of an actual manuscript – seen in person in a library reading room, held in the hands, its sharp scent smelled, its leather cover and vellum pages felt – that affords anything close to the view provided by Hurlbut’s wonderful reimaging and reimagining of the manuscripts he has “averaged.” There is, without such techniques, no way to see “a whole thing” at once, except perhaps in one’s mind. In this sense, his “manuscript averages” and, following his lead, our “monster average” are new creations, but ones that generate previously unarticulated information about the original artifacts. And further, as the “manuscript averages” evoke the simultaneity of the “whole thing” we experience in the manuscript, they also allow for what both Camille and Cohen have described as 530

Monstrous iconography

the “haunting” of the monstrous: in that simultaneity, in the disorienting superimposed frames, we can see, feel, and know something, even though we may not be able to articulate what that something is without losing what provokes it in the first place.

Conclusions: “A great bulk of material, which may seem bewildering”61 Any study of the iconography of the monstrous arrives quickly at a sense of excess, in the proliferation of material offered up for examination, in the exponential expansion of possibilities for interpretation, and in the seemingly unavoidable self-reflexiveness of iconographical readings of images created as signs, in representation, and thus as signs of signs, and, as such, demonstrating the process of interpretation itself (among many other things). Uneasiness with this excess is manifest in Mâle’s suggestion about the monstrous figures on the Vézelay portals, that “ingenious archaeologists” may read more than “the old craftsmen” could have intended in images “which are invisible from below except with good glasses.”62 It is certainly tempting to counter the suggestion – for example, with discussion of the impact of these highly detailed figures barely discernable from below, in the context of the cathedral, or of the fact that these images are now available in high resolution in digital photographs, and their reception cannot be limited, now, to only the physical context of the cathedral itself. But more important than the immediate argument about the cathedral portal is the expression of discomfort with the interpretation of these figures, and by one of the founding scholars of iconographical methodology itself. Uneasiness about the monstrous becomes immediately discomfort with too much “subtlety” or too much “ingenuity” – that is, with excess in interpretation, with the implication that we can go too far in our attempts to make and find meaning. We suggest here that going too far is part of what engaging with the monstrous requires of us, that, haunted and bewildered, we have in the iconography of monstrous the chance to see and feel more than we might know how to write about.

Notes 1 See, for example, J.J. Cohen’s influential “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in J.J. Cohen (ed.), Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis, 1996), 3–25, and A.S. Mittman, “Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies,” in Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. A.S. Mittman with P. Dendle (London, 2012), 1–14. 2 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, PL 41, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1845), 16.8: “Ita etsi major diversitas oriatur, scit ille quid egerit, cujus opera juste nemo reprehendit.” 3 Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. S.A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and O. Berghof (Cambridge, 2006), XI.iii.3, 244. 4 B. Roy, “En Marge du Monde Connu: Les Races de Monstres,” in Aspects de la Marginalité au Moyen Age, ed. G.-H. Allard (Montreal, 1974), 72. 5 É. Mâle, L’art réligieux de XIIIe siècle en France: étude sur l’iconographie de moyen âge et sur ses sources d’inspiration (Paris, 1898); É. Mâle, Religious Art in France, XIII Century: A Study of Medieval Iconography and Its Sources (London, 1913). 6 Mâle, Religious Art (as in note 5), 27–28. 7 Mâle, Religious Art (as in note 5), 33. 8 Mâle, Religious Art (as in note 5), 47–47. 9 Etymologies XI.iii.28–31 (as in note 3): “Dicuntur autem et alia hominum fabulosa portenta, quae non sunt, sed ficta in causis rerum interpretantur.” 10 See Mâle, Religious Art (as in note 5), 47, for further discussion. 11 R. Wittkower, “Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 159. 12 Wittkower, “Marvels of the East” (as in note 11), 165. 13 Wittkower, “Marvels of the East” (as in note 11), 178. 14 L.M.C. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley, 1966).

531

Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim 15 Randall, Images (as in note 14), 3, with internal quotation and translation from Apologia ad Guillelmus Sancti Theoderici Abbatem, MPL, CLXXXII, cols. 915–16. 16 Randall, Images (as in note 14), 4. 17 Randall, Images (as in note 14), 10, sympathetically quoting as “not unjustifiably in the particular instance”; M.J. Rickert, Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages (Baltimore, 1954), 148–49. 18 Randall, Images (as in note 14), 15. 19 Randall, Images (as in note 14), 189. 20 J.B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, 1981). 21 Friedman, Monstrous Races (as in note 20), 154. 22 M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1992), 9. 23 M. Camille, “Mouths and Meanings: Towards an Anti-Iconography of Medieval Art,” in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. B. Cassidy (Princeton, 1993), 42–48. 24 M. Camille, “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters (Rethinking The Canon),” The Art Bulletin 78 (June 1996), 198–201. 25 Camille, “Mouths and Meanings” (as in note 23), 45. 26 Camille, “Mouths and Meanings” (as in note 23), 43. 27 Camille, “Mouths and Meanings” (as in note 23), 44. 28 Camille, “Mouths and Meanings” (as in note 23), 43. 29 Camille, “Mouths and Meanings” (as in note 23), 54. 30 Camille, “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters” (as in note 24), 199. 31 Camille, “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters” (as in note 24), 200. 32 For a personal account of the dismissive attitude, see Mittman, “The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies” (as in note 1), 1–2: “‘Listen, Asa, you’ve got to drop all this monster stuff and start doing real scholarship.’” 33 Camille, “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters” (as in note 24), 201. 34 J.J. Cohen, “Preface: In a Time of Monsters,” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. J.J. Cohen (Minneapolis, 1996), ix–x. 35 J. Hurlbut, “The Manuscript Average, Part 1,” Manuscript Art (12/14/2013), http://jessehurlbut.net/ wp/mssart/?page_id=2097 (accessed August 21, 2015). 36 For many of the images from this manuscript, see “Detailed record for Royal 20 B XX,” British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts (no date), http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ record.asp?MSID=6533&CollID=16&NStart=200220 (accessed August 2015). 37 Friedman, Monstrous Races (as in note 20), 32. 38 Wittkower, “Marvels of the East” (as in note 11), 178. 39 Friedman, Monstrous Races (as in note 20), 33. 40 The Psalter Map is available online at the British Library’s website: “Psalter World Map,” British Library Collection Highlights (no date), http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/psalter-world-map (accessed August 2015). 41 For a complete color facsimile of the Wonders of the East, see A.S. Mittman and S.M. Kim, Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (Tempe, 2013). 42 D.G. White, Myths of the Dog-Man (Chicago, 1991), 1. 43 M. Camille, Gothic Art:Visions and Revelations of the Medieval World (London, 1996), 152. 44 For a discussion of the unification of warrior and armor into a posthuman cyborg, see A.S. Mittman and P. MacCormack, “Rebuilding the Fabulated Bodies of the Staffordshire Hoarders,” postmedieval 7:3, “Hoarders and Hordes: Responses to the Staffordshire Hoard” (October, 2016), 356–68. 45 “Detail of a Miniature of Alexander’s Battle with Boars and Many-Handed Savages,” British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts (no date), http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=46701 (accessed August 2015). 46 D. Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Montreal, 1996), 13. 47 Williams, Deformed Discourse (as in note 46), 216–22. 48 Wittkower, “Marvels of the East” (as in note 11), 164. 49 M.B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, 1991), 4. For discussion of a similar instance of scribal transformation of a monster, the People with Three Colors, see Mittman and Kim, Inconceivable Beasts (as in note 41), 79–81. 50 White, Myths of the Dog-Man (as in note 42), 31. 51 White, Myths of the Dog-Man (as in note 42), 33.

532

Monstrous iconography 52 Campbell, Witness and the Other World (as in note 49), 72. 53 For an image, see “Royal 20 B XX, f. 79, Battle with Horse-Headed Men,” British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts (no date), http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN. ASP?Size=mid&IllID=46745 (accessed August 2015). 54 E. Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art,” in The Art of Art History, ed. D. Preziosi (Oxford, 2009), 224, 2nd ed. This is a reprint of a text first published as Studies in Iconology (Oxford, 1939). 55 Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” (as in note 54), 225–27. 56 Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” (as in note 54), 232, 233, 234. 57 Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” (as in note 54), 223 (emphasis added). 58 J. Borland, “Audience and Spatial Experience in the Nuns’ Church at Clonmacnoise,” Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 3 (September 2011), 1–45, 4, http://www.differentvisions. org/issue3/Borland.pdf (accessed September 2015). 59 Panofsky (as in note 54), 224, 234. 60 Hurlbut, “The Manuscript Average” (as in note 35). 61 Wittkower, “Marvels of the East” (as in note 11), 159. 62 Mâle, Religious Art (as in note 5), 45–46.

533

INDEX

Italic indicates a figure on the corresponding page. Abbey Church of Saint-Denis 467–8, 468, 482 Abbot Suger on the Church of St. Denis and Its Art Treasures (Panofsky) 112–13 Acta Sanctorum 223 Agamben, G. 39 agency and patronage 348–51 Agilulf 359 Agobard of Lyons 243 Airlie House 193 Alarich II, King 360 Alber, Franz 97, 115 Alberti 19 Albrecht Dürer (Panofsky) 111, 119 Alciato, Andrea 1, 2, 11–12, 34; commentaries on emblems of 23; emblems of 12–16; emblems reception in the material culture 24–7; notion of symbolism 19–21; translations of emblems of 21–2; use of the term “emblem” 16–19 Aldobrandino of Siena 271 Aldus, house of 12, 17, 22 Alexander III, Pope 302 Alexander IV, Pope 302 Alexander the Great and monsters 523–7 Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle 528 Alexander, Jonathan 349 Alfonso X 317, 484 al-Sufi, Abd al-Rahman ibn Umar 316–17 Al-Zahrāwī 330 Amaury-Duval, Emmanuel 49 Ambrose, Kirk 413 Amerbach, Boniface 11 American Library Association 193 Amman, Jost 22 Analecta Bollandiniana 223 Anastasis Rotunda 378–9

Andrew W. Mellon foundation 189 Aneau, Barthélemy 12, 15, 21, 22, 23 animal iconography 504–6; bestiaries in 507–9; in emblems 16; marginalia 509–10; St. Lawrence Church, Ludlow 510–15; symbolism in 505–7 Annales Archéologiques 48, 50–1, 53, 54 Annales School 71 Annotationes (Alciato) 11 Anselm of Canterbury 244–5, 246 anthropology of images 175–81 anti-iconography of Camille 164 Antonio of Pisa 345 anxiety, spiritual 246–8 apes 506 Apollon 58 Apologia (Bernard of Clairvaux) 520–1 Aquinas, Thomas 39, 447 archaeological studies by Didron 48–9, 52 architecture, iconography of 373–82; castles 381–2; columns in 377; cruciform mausoleums 379–80; ecclesiastical 465–71; entrances in 375; groups of buildings and 377–9; longitudinal basilicas 381; palace chapel of Charlemagne 379–80; significance of different parts of buildings in 374–7; symbolism of the church and 373–4 Arías, Isabel Monteira 497 Aristotle 19, 20, 34, 272, 324, 413 Arnulf of Carinthia 364 Art Bulletin, The 137, 166 Art des scupteurs romans (Réau) 60 Art Medieval (Faure) 59 Arts of Early England, The (Brown) 145 Artstor database 3 Artus Court 303–4

534

Index Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous 497 astronomy See scientific iconography Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaf 114 Augustrodunensis, Honorious 67 Aulus Gellius 20 Autumn of the Middle Ages (Huizinga) 69 aviaries 508–9 Aymar, Brandt 157 badges 390–1, 507 Baert, Barbara 5 Baldini, Baccio 34 Balfour, Henry 188 Bandmann, Günter 119 Barberini, Maffeo 36 Bargheer, Eduard 113 Barr, Alfred H., Jr. 111, 125–6 Barr, Margaret Scolari 111 Barral i Altet, Xavier 224 Barrell, John 159 Bartholeyns, G. 178 Bartlett, Robert 499 Bartoli, Cosimo 35 Bartolo, Taddeo di 487 Baschet, Jérôme 164, 181, 225 basilicas, longitudinal 381 Bassée, Nicolaus 22 Bath, Michael 27 Bauch, Kurt 114 Baudoin, Jean 33 Baxandall, Michael 341 Bazin, Germain 57 beauty role in iconography 70 Beauvais, Vincent de 51, 67 Bebelius 12 Beckford, William 158–9 Beilmann, Mechthild 130 Belles Heures 417, 418 Bellini, Giovanni 36 Belting, Hans 5, 162, 178, 225 Berenson, Bernard 111 Bernard of Clairvaux 373, 406, 444, 520–1, 522 Beroaldo the Elder 19 Berry, Duke John of 154, 158–9, 166, 168, 256, 417, 457 Besozzo, Michelino da 456–7 Bestiaire d’amour 509 bestiaries 507–9 Betjman, John 155 Bhabha, Homi 492 Bialostocki, Jan 99, 107, 119, 137 Biay, Sébastien 522 Bible moralisée 349–51, 496 Bibliothèque Royale 52–3 Bidler, Rose 147

Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Belting) 162 Bildarchiv Foto Marburg 189 Billiet, Frédéric 480 Bing, Gertud 77–8, 80–1, 86, 93, 94, 116, 188 Binski, Paul 156, 162 Binswanger, Ludwig 77 birds 507–9, 528 Birth of Venus, The (Botticelli) 463 Bisconti, Fabrizio 225 black and African persons as Others 495, 497, 498 Blanckenhagen, Peter Heinrich von 113 Bleeke, Marian 433 blue color 444–5 Blumenkranz, Bernhard 495 Boccaccio 430, 432 body, the medical 324–7 Bognetti, G. P. 148 Bolland, Jean 223 Bolzani, Perio Valeriano 1 Bomford, Zahira Véliz 186 Bondone, Giotto di 41 Bonhomme, Macé 12 Book of the City of Ladies, The (de Pizan) 431–2 Book of the Duchess (Chaucer) 287 Book of the Three Virtues, The (de Pizan) 432 Borland, Jennifer 433, 530 Boswell, John 496 Botticini, Francesco 84, 460, 463 Boulvène, Jacque 35 Boyer, Jean-Claude 35 Boyer, Paul 58 Bredekamp, Horst 5, 177, 178 Bréhier, L. 223 Breitenbach, Edgar 97, 117, 187, 189 Brière-Misme, Clotilde 186 Brigitte of Sweden 61 Brilliant, Richard 484 Brisac, Catherine 54 Broederlam, Melchior 460 Brooke, Barry S. 479 Brown, G. Baldwin 145 Bryson, Norman 156 Bullard, Melissa Meriam 348 Bulletin Archéologique 49, 53 Burckhardt, Jakob 79 Burger, Glenn 496 Burlington Magazine 162 Bynum, Caroline 346, 415, 417, 419 Byrhtferth’s diagram 399–401 Cabrol, F. 223 Cadamosto, Paolo Aemilio 22 Caesarius of Heisterbach 522 Cahier, Charles 58–9, 66 Cahn, Walter 145 Calcagnini, Celio 18

535

Index Callimachus 453 Calvo, Francesco 16–17 Camille, Michael 71, 252, 267, 271, 276, 348, 496; introduction to work of 154–6; on color 445; on monsters 521–2, 527, 530–1; origins of 156–9; writings of 160–8 Campbell, Mary B. 528, 529 Campin, Robert 460 Canini, Giovanni 223 Cantigas de Santa María 498, 498 Capaccio, Guilo Cesare 22 Capellas, Martianus 36, 312 Caritas (Ripa) 41, 40–2 Carrow Psalter 445, 446 Cartari, Vincenzo 1 Caskey, Jill 340 Cassiodorus 522 Cassirer, Ernst 77, 110, 115 castles, architecture of 381–2 Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts 528 Cavallini, Pietro 240 Caviness, Madeline 157, 486 Census of Antique Art and Architecture 189 Charlemagne 310, 356, 357, 360–1, 364, 368; palace chapel of 379–80 Charles I 26 Charles IV 366 Charles the Bald 341, 342, 345, 359, 360–4, 362–3 Charles V 12, 358, 358, 368 Charles VIII 390 Chaucer, Geoffrey 251, 287 Chicago, Judy 425, 431–2 Choice of Emblems, A 21 Christian iconography See religious iconography Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Grabar) 224 Chronica Maiora (Paris) 408, 493 chronology of patronage 344 Cicero 20, 115, 312 City of God (Augustine) 184, 432, 518 civic political iconography 302–5 Clark, T. J. 159, 164 classical history and mythology in imagery 16, 17–18, 297, 453, 454–5 Classical Mythology in Medieval Art (Panofsky and Saxl) 89, 92, 112 classification systems and cataloging tools: anthropology of images and use of 175–81; classifying image content in visual collections 184–90; DIAL (Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries) 132–3, 134, 202, 207; Iconclass 132–3, 188, 189, 201–15; Library of Congress subject headings 192–200 coats of arms see heraldic imagery Cockaigne 260, 260–1 Codex Egberti 442 Codex Gisle 486

Cohen, Jerome 523, 530–1 Colombe, Michel 37 Colonna, Francesco 14–15 color, iconography of: analysis of specific colors in 441–7; blue and 444–5; garments and 439; green and 445–6; introduction to 437–41; purple and 442–3; red and 443–4; religious imagery and 437–48; yellow 447 Combe, Thomas 295 combs, hair 290–2 Comité historique des Arts et Monuments 48, 49 computer technology: in studying heraldic imagery 397; role in reviving iconography 2–3, 189–90; see also classification systems and cataloging tools Conjectures on Original Composition in a Letter to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison (Young) 152 Conseil d’État 49 Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis, The (Rembrandt) 131, 132, 136 Conti, Rinaldo 302 Contra vitam monasticam (Alciato) 11 Cook, Walter W. S. 111 Coronation Book 358, 368 Corrigan, Kathleen 496 Corrozet, Gilles 35 Council of Trent 69–70, 223, 241–3 Courtauld Institute 3 courtly love imagery 427–31 Coussemaker, Edmond de 51 Covers of the Lorsch Gospels, The (Morey) 125 Cranach’s Saint Maurice 497 Cratylus (Plato) 20 Crispin, Gilbert 246, 247, 248 Crivelli, Carlo 462 Crosnier, A. 223 crowns 356–9 cultural expansion 57 culturalist approaches to image 177–8 Curtius, Ernst Robert 113 Cuthbert 244–5 Cuvier, Georges 58 Cuxa, Michel de 484 Cynocephali 529, 529–30 d’Arzago, A. de Capitani 148 d’Eyck, Barthélemy 396 d’Oresme, Nicole 38 Da Barberino, Francesco 35, 36, 40 Daly, Peter 296 Dante 35, 37, 115, 421, 459 Dantyszek, Jan 18 Darcel, Alfred 51 David, Gerard 460 Davis, Whitney 160 Daza of Valladolid, Bernardino 22–3 De animalibus (Aristotle) 272 De Archa Noe (Hugo of St. Victor) 253

536

Index De generatione (Aristotle) 272 De Givry, Cardinal 21 De Insigniis et Armis (da Sassoferrato) 396 De mulieribus claris (Boccaccio) 432 De natura rerum 92–5 De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Capellas) 36 De singulari certamine (Alciato) 12, 17 De universo (Maurus) 373 De verborum significatione (Alciato) 19 Decameron (Boccaccio) 430 Decio, Filippo 11 Declaración magistral sobre las [sic] emblemas de Andres Alciato (López) 23 Deformed Discourse (Williams) 528 Deguileville, Guillaume de 36, 38 Dendle, Peter 497 Detzel, Heinrich 224 Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung 117 Deutschsprachige Aufsätze (Panofsky) 112 DeWald, Ernest 125 diagrams see maps and diagrams DIAL (Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries) 132–3, 134, 202, 207 Dialogue with Trypho (Justin) 236, 246 Dictionnaire critique d’iconographie occidentale (Barral i Altet) 224 Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Cabrol and Leclercq) 223 Dictionnaire érotique (Bidler) 147 Dictionnaire polyglotte des termes d’art et d’architectur (Réau) 59 Didron, Adolphe-Napoléon 1, 47, 66, 223; Annales Archéologiques and Librairie archéologique and 48, 50–1; as journalist, professor, and businessman 52–4; career choices of 47–8; Christian iconography and 51; gothic art and 51–2; late and limited official recognition for 49–50; legacy of 54; methodology for archaeological studies 48–9; opinion on restoration of monuments 52 Didron, Édouard 51, 53 Die Denkmale der deutschen Könige und Kaiser (Schramm) 356 Die deutsche Plastik des elften bis dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Panofsky) 112, 117 Die deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit 751–1190, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik (Schramm) 356 Die Gestaltungsprincipien Michelangelos, besonders in ihrem Verhältnis zu denen Raffaels (Panofsky) 108 difference: and the Other 492–500; monsters demonstrating 525–31 Dillon, Emma 486, 487 Dinner Party (Chicago) 425 Dioscorides 330–1, 456 Discorso sopra la Mascherata della genealogia degli déi (Baldini) 34

disguised symbolism 107 disjunction, principle of 96 Disputation of a Christian and a Jew (Crispin) 247 Documenti d’Amore (Barberino) 35, 36, 40 Dodds, Jerrilyn 497 dogs 505–7 Dölger, Joseph 224 Donatello 396 Donato, Francesco 22 Donato, Geronimo 18 Doni, Anton Francesco 35 Doni, Raffaelo 84 Doren, Alfred 188 Dorner, Alexander 111 Doucet, Jacques 186 Dreibilderserie (Sudhoff ) 325–7 Dressler, Rachel 433 Dufresne, Lilian Henriette 133 Durand, Hippolyte 50 Durand, J. 223 Durand, Paul 51 Durand, William 240, 243 Durandus 373, 375–6 Dürer, Albrecht 90, 92, 111, 115, 300, 463 Dürers Kunsttheorie, vornehmlich in ihrem Verhältnis zur Kunsttheorie der Italiener (Panofsky) 107 Dutton, Paul 361 Dvorák, Max 89 Eadmer 244 Early Christian Art: Outline of the Evolution of Style and Iconography in Scupture and Painting from Antiquity to the Eighth Century (Morey) 125 Early Latin Illustrated Manuscripts (Morey) 125 Early Netherlandish Painting (Panofsky) 107, 111, 113, 119 East Christian Manuscripts (Morey) 125 Easton, Martha 417 Ebstorf Map 252–5, 401, 404 Ebulos, Petrus de 256 Ecce Homo (Rembrandt) 138 Echecs moralisées 39 Eco, Umberto 373 École Normale Supérieure 57 Edward I 246, 359 Edward IV 513 Edward the Confessor 358, 366 Egbert, Donald Drew 125 Eigil, Abbot 378 Einem, Herbert von 114 Eisenbeiss, Anja 497 Eisler, Colin 113 Elbern, Viktor 225 Eleanor of Aquitaine 432 Eliav-Feldon, Miriam 497 Elizabeth I 25–6

537

Index Elsner, Jas 225 Emblemata (Alciato) 19, 20 emblems: Alciato’s 12–16; commentaries on 23; content of 15–16; defining 16–19; formatting of 12–13; meaning of 15, 20–1; political iconography and 295–297; popularity of 13–14; reception in material culture 24–7; symbolism of 19–21; translations of 21–2; see also heraldic imagery Encomium historiae (Alciato) 11 Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art (Roberts) 224 Encyclopedia of the Black Death 322 epigrams 17 Erasmus 11, 12, 15, 19, 115 Ercole II d’Este 12 erotic iconography 157–8, 166, 168; allusions to sex and 147, 160, 417; Christian art and 147, 269–71; diversity of 276–7; in manuscripts 273–6; Manesse Codex 272, 272–3, 276; on public monuments 273; portable figurines 273; sadism in 276, 417, 427; sheela-na-gigs 274; studies of 267–8 Erwin Panofsky in Memoriam 106 Éthiques d’Aristote (Ripa) 37, 38–9 Ettlinger, Leopold 114 Etymologies (Isidore of Seville) 373 Eucharist, the 244–5 Excerpta Medica 201, 202 Eyck, Jan van 299, 382, 460, 462 Fabiny, Tibor 297 Fabriano, Gentile da 487 Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) project 198–9 Faeij, Lepido 33 Fassler, Margot 373, 377 Faure, Élie 59–60 Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index 433 feminist art history 425–33; courtly love imagery and 427–31; feminist scholars of the Middle Ages and 432; recent scholarship in 432–3; sexual violence against women and 430–2; women artists and 425–6 Fendulus, Georgius 317 Fest, Joachim 107 Feyerabend, Sigismund 22 Fiera, Battista 38 Filarete 340 First Bible of Charles the Bald 341, 342, 345 Fisher, Celia 4 Flexner, Abraham 110 Flora, Holly 340, 348 Florimi, Matteo 33 flowers and plants, iconography of 453–63; in Flemish tapestries 462; in manuscripts 456–7; paradise depicted with 461, 461; pre-Christian

454–5; religious imagery and 453–4, 457–63; symbolism of 462 Focillon, Henri 59, 96 Folda, Jaroslav 4 Forsyth, Ilene 143 Francis of Assisi 243, 244 François I 17 Frederic II of Hohenstaufen 317 Freedberg, David 162, 177, 180 Freedman, Paul 492 Freie Hansestadt Hamburg 113 Frick Library 185 Friedman, John Block 521, 525 Friend, Albert M. 118, 123 Fritz, Johann Michael 252 Fröbe-Kapteyn, Olga 188 Frojmovic, Eva 496 Fromentin, Eugène 133–4 Frugardi, Roger 330 Fünfbilderserie (Sudhoff ) 324–5 Gage, John 439, 441 Galen of Pergamum 324, 333 Galle, Philippe 35 Gaposchkin, Cecilia 348 Gargoyles of Notre Dame, The (Camille) 166 Garnier, François 3 Gasparin, Adrien de 52 Gattinara, Charles V Cardinal Mercurino 18 Gay and Lesbian Studies in Art History 157 Gazeau, Guillaume 12 Gell, Alfred 176, 177 gender, iconography of 412–21; identity and 417–20; religious themes in 412–17, 419, 419–20, 427; sexual violence against women and 430–2; sexuality and 417–18; souls and 420–1 Genesis of Christian Art, The (Morey) 125 Gerald of Wales 406, 493 Gerhard of Cremona 316 Germanicus 318–19 Gerson, Horst 130 Gerson, Paula 276 gesture: in narrative 283–7; language of 97–100 Getty Museum 441, 508; Art History Information Program 3; Research Institute 189 Geyl, Pieter 137 Giarda, Cristoforo 34 Giesau, Hermann 113 Gilbert, Creighton 4, 184, 185, 348 Ginzburg, Carlo 96 Giorgio, Francesco di 375, 376 Glass, Ira 154 goats 506 Godde, Étienne-Hippolyte 52 Goes, Hugo van der 459 Goldschmidt, Adolph 70, 92, 96, 105, 108, 110 Golsenne, T. 178

538

Index Gombrich, Ernst 34 Google 189 Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (Panofsky) 66, 113, 155 gothic art 51–2, 229–31; see also Mâle, Émile Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, The (Camille) 71, 154, 159, 160–2, 166, 496 Gothic Image, The (Mâle) 71, 154 Gozzoli, Benozzo 302–3 Grabar, André 58, 71, 148, 224 Graff, Raymund 22 Grande Revue 59 Grandes Chroniques de France 358, 368 Gratiam referendam (Alciato) 14 green color 445–6 Green, Henry 22 Gregory I, Pope 242 Gregory IX, Pope 302 Gregory of Tours 413 Gregory the Great 175, 184, 222, 492 Gregory XIII, Pope 241 Guilhermy, Ferdinand de 50, 51, 54 Guizot, François 49 Hadrian I, Pope 380 Hagar in the Desert (Rembrandt) 138 Hagia Sophia 465–6, 472 Hahn, Cynthia 346 hair: combs 290–2; royalty and long 359–60 Halperin, David 156 Haman in Disgrace (Rembrandt) 134 Hamburger Kunsthalle 108 Hamburger, Jeffrey 166 Harsy, Denis de 21 Harvey, Gabriel 24 Harvey, John 24, 155 Haseloff, Arthur 110, 118 Haskall, Francis 344 Hécatomgraphie (Corrozet) 35 Heckscher, William S. 106, 111, 113, 188 Held, Jeremias 22 Henderson, George 156 Heng, Geraldine 499 Henkel, Arthur 16 Henry II 364, 366, 406 Henry III 346, 348, 358–9, 365–6 Henry VI 368 Henry VII 368 Henry VIII 453 Heraclitus 20 heraldic imagery 299–300, 386–97; animals in 507; as emblematic and symbolic 395; badges or heraldic devices 390–1; development of styles of 391–2; digital future of studying 397; functions of 395; importance of 395–6; marginal systems 396–7; para-heraldic signs 389–90; used in absentia of bearer

393–4; see also emblems; royal and imperial iconography Hercules am Scheidewege (Panofsky) 118 Hereford mappa mundi 399–408 Hermogenes 20 Herrlinger, Robert 324 Hertz, Mary 76–7 Heydenreich, Ludwig Heinrich 114 Hieroglypica Hotapollinis (Horapollo) 14, 19 Hieronymus 310 Hildegard of Bingen 415, 416, 426, 432, 440 Hills, Paul 447 Hippocrates 324 Histoire de l’art (Faure) 59 Histoire de l’expansion de l’art français (Réau) 58 Histoire de l’histoire de l’art (Bazin) 57 Histoire du vandalisme: Les monuments détruits de l’art français (Réau) 58, 60, 62 Historia de proelis (Hurlbut) 523 Historia Francorum 356 History of the Peloponnesian Wars 26 Hoey, Larry 345 Holy Sepulcher 287–8 Holzinger, Ernst 114 Horace 20 Horapollo 19 Hortus Deliciarum 67 Hosios Loukas 472 Hours of Engelbert 457, 458 Hourse of Jeanne d’Evreux 341 Hugo of St. Victor 253 Hugo, Victor 48, 49, 52–3, 65, 522 Huizinga, Johan 69 human body in medicine 324–7 Hunger, Wolfgang 21, 22–3 Hurlbut, Jesse 523 Hurtado de Mendoça, Diego 23 Hüter, Simon 22 Hyckes, Francis 26, 27 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Colonna) 15 Iconclass 132–3, 188, 189; coding of works of art with more than one subject 207; digital world and 207–10, 211; enriching metadata using 213–15; general principles 202–4; structure flexibility 204–5; user as collaborator and editor of 211–13; words, keywords, and crossreferences 205–7 Icones Symbolicae (Giarda) 34 Iconografia (Canini) 223 iconographic languages, development of 237–40 iconographic topography 225–8 Iconographie chrétienne (Crosnier) 223 Iconographie chrétienne, Histoire de Dieu (Didron) 48, 223 Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Réau) 59, 60, 224 Iconographie der christlichen Kunst (Künstle) 224

539

Index Iconographie der christlichen Kunst (Schiller) 224 iconography: animal 504–15; as historical construction 80; classical history and mythology in 16, 17–18, 297, 453, 454–5; classification of images in 184–90; computer technology role in 2–3, 189–90; cultural expansion and 58; dating of 148–9; deciphering the world 59, 143; definitions of 1, 6, 79; development of scholarship on 3–6; early 20th century interest in 2; early works on 1–2; erotic (see erotic iconography); feminist art history and 425–33; iconology and 118–19; language of gestures in 97–100; Library of Congress subject headings and 192–200; liturgical (see liturgical iconography); methods and thematic density 228–31; Mnemosyne Atlas of 80–7, 97; monstrous 518–31; of architecture 373–82; of black and African figures 495–6; of color 437–48; of flowers and plants 453–63; of gender 412–21; of light 465–76; of music and sound 479–88; of narrative 282–93; of the Other 492–500; patronage of 340–51; political (see political iconography); postructuralist theory and 155, 225; recent increase in 4; secular (see secular iconography); shortcuts in 80; topography and 225–8; typology in 117; Warburg Institute emblem 92–5; see also classification systems and cataloging tools; images Iconography at the Crossroads 162 Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell’imagini Universali cavate dall’Antichità et da altri luoghi (Ripa) 1, 32–4, 223; sources for 34–6; standardization of personifications 40–2 iconology 118–19 identity: and the Other 492–500; gender 417–20; new iconographic languages and 238–40; of true Israel 240–3; through heraldic emblems 386–9; transfer, Israelite to Christian 236–7 idols, pagan 160–2 Illuminated Manuscripts of the J. Pierpont Morgan Library (Morey) 125 Image of the Black in Western Art 495, 497 Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Camille) 154, 164–6, 496, 521 images: classifying content of 184–90; congruence between space and 226–7; from material turn to the performative turn 176–7; from representation to presence 175–6; heraldic (see heraldic imagery); intrinsic image-act and power of ornament 178–81; naturalist and culturalist approaches to 177–8; of constellations 314; see also iconography Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Randall) 520–1 Images of Otherness in Medieval and Early Modern Times 497

Imagines et elogia vivorum inlustrium (Statius) 223 Imago Musicae 479 Imago Pietatis: Ein Beitrag zur Typengeschichte des Schmerzensmanns und der Maria Mediatrix (Panofsky) 110, 111, 118 In Memoriam 1940–1945 (Van de Waal) 134 In nothos (Alciato) 13 In the Defense of the Ivory Tower (Panofsky) 112 Index of Christian Art 2, 3, 123, 125, 126–8, 185, 186–7, 189, 224 Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique 368 Innocent III, Pope 302 Innocent IV, Pope 302 instruments, representations of 480–5 International Center of Medieval Art 3 Ireland 405–8 Irish High Crosses 4 Isaac, Benjamin 497 Isidore of Seville 373 Ivins, William M. 111 James, M. R. 508 Janitschek, Hubert 75 Jesus Christ: color and imagery of 442–47; depicted in Hereford map 402–3; depicted in the Ebstorf Map 254–5, 401; depicted royal portraits 300; killing of 237, 246–8; Lazarus and 419, 419–20; light imagery and 468–71, 473–5; mind of 235; the Eucharist and 244–5; see also liturgical iconography; religious iconography Jews and Otherness 493–500 Joan of Arc 432 Joannides, Paul 158 John of Berry 417 John of Salisbury 305 John the Evangelist 377 John the Good 368 John VIII, Pope 364 John XXIII, Pope 379 Jones, Malcom 27, 252 Jones, Peter 324, 327 Jöns, Dietrich 297 Jordan, William 499 Jörg Syrlin der Ältere und seine Bildwerke (Panofsky) 107 Jörgensen, Trux 113 Journal général de l’Instruction publique, Le 53 Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 496 Journey of Christ toward the Cross, The (van Eyck) 299 Judaism 133, 134–5 Julian the Apostate 235 Juliana of Mont Cornillion 244–5, 246, 247 Jung, Jacqueline 346 Junius, Hadrianus 12 Justi, Carl 75 Justin Martyr 236–7, 246 Justitia Pingenda (Fiera) 38

540

Index Kahneman, Daniel 86 Kaiser Heinrichs Romfahrt 368 Kaplan, Paul 495 Katzenellenbogen, Adolf 111 Kauffmann, Hans 114 Kaufmann, Hans 108 Kelly, D. 39 Kemp, Wolfgang 282 Kempe, Margery 432 Kendall, Calvin 377 Kessler, Herbert 225, 341, 361, 497 Kidson, Peter 345 Kirschbaum, Engelbert 224 Kitzinger, Ernst 225, 344 Klauser, Theodore 224 Klein, Peter 497 Klein, Robert 185 Klibansky, Raymond 90, 130 Koch, Robert A. 106 Koninklijk Museum 5 Konrad II 365 Kracauer, Siegfried 96, 111 Krautheimer, Richard 225, 373, 377–8, 379 Kruger, Stephen 496 Kubler, Georg 96, 99 Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW) 76–7, 78, 97, 108, 110, 111, 117 Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Wölfflin) 110 Kunsthistorisches Institut 187, 189 Künstle, Karl 224 L’Artiste 48, 52, 53 L’Univers 50, 53 L’art chrétien: Son développment iconographique des origines à nos jours (Bréhier) 223 L’art français sur le Rhin (Réau) 57 L’Art religieux du XIIe siècle en France: Étude sur les origines de l’iconographie du Moyen Âge (Mâle) 67–71, 69, 184, 223, 519 L’Européen 53 L’image mediévalé: Naissance et Developpements (Wirth) 162 La fn du paganism en Gaule et les plus anciennes basiliques chrétiennes (Mâle) 70 Labarte, Jules 51 Lacan, Jacques 492 Ladner, Gerhart 225 Lamprecht, Karl 75 Landevennec Gospels: A Breton Illuminated Manuscript of the Ninth Century, The (Morey) 125 Laon Cathedral 346 Laon, Colard de 396 Las Brozas, Sánchez de 23 Lassus, Jean-Baptiste 49, 50, 51, 54 Lasteyrie, Ferdinand de 51 Lautier, Claudine 345 Laval, Jeanne de 388, 388, 388–9, 391

Lazarus 419, 419–20 Le Coup du Lance (Rubens) 5 Le Fèvre, Jean 15, 21, 23 Le Petit Orfevre (Rembrandt) 138–9, 139 Leclercq, H. 223 Ledoux, Auguste 53 Lee, Henry 24 Lees, A. van 299 Légende Dorée 51 Lemaire de Belges, Jean 39–40 Léniaud, Jean-Michel 54 Lenoir, Albert 49, 52 Leo VI 365 Leo X 11 Leo, Dominic 276 Leonardo da Vinci 463 Les Maîtres d’autrefois (Fromentin) 133 Leson, Richard 274 Letourneur, Pierre 152 Leuschner, E. 33 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 113 Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie (Kirschbaum) 224 Liber ad honorem Augusti (Ebulos) 256 Liber de signis et imaginibus celi 317–18 Liber introductorius 317 Liber pontificalis 356 Liber Vitae 341–2, 345 Liberté, La 53 Librairie Archéologique 48, 50–1, 53 Library of Congress 3, 187; subject headings 192–200 Libri computi 312–13 Libro de las estrella fixas 317 Lidov, Alexei 225 light, iconography of 465–76; ecclesiastical architecture and 465–71; pictorial representation and 472–6; symbolism in 468–9 Lille, Alain de 33 Lillich, Meredith 468 Lindley, Philip 156 Lindquist, Sherry 268 Lippi, Filippino 40 Lipton, Sara 493, 497 literature and painting, relationship between 39–40 liturgical iconography: becoming other than one in liturgy and 243–6; development of new iconographic languages in 237–40; identity transfer from Israelites to Christians and 236–7; mind of Christ and 235; spiritual anxiety and 246–8; who is the true Israel addressed in 240–3; see also religious iconography livery companies 391 Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur 505 Lochner, Stefan 444 Loeb, Nina 76 Longhurst, M. H. 125

541

Index López, Diego 23 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio 37, 41, 303, 440 Louis the Pious 311–12 Louis VII, King 247 Louis X, King 358 Louis-Philippe, King 49 Lowden, John 349–51 Lubac, Henri de 66 Luttrell Psalter 154, 159, 510 Luyster, Amanda 252 Machaut, Guillaume de 487 Madonna in a Church (van Eyck) 382 Maestà (Lorenzetti) 37 Maffei, Sonia 34 Magazine of Art 107 Maguire, Henry 225 Maino, Giasone del 11 Mâle, Émile 1, 34, 37, 38, 57, 59–60, 65–7, 124, 184; legacy of 70–1; Michael Camille and 154, 162; on 13th century France 67–71; on monsters 519–20, 531; on need for comprehensive knowledge and understanding of images 223–4; on Otherness 495 Malouel, Jean 396 Mandowsky, Erna 34 Manesse Codex 272, 272, 272–3, 276 Manet, Edouard 164 Manning, John 21 Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne grecque et latine (Didron) 48, 50, 51, 223 Manuel des œuvres de bronze et d’orfèvrerie du Moyen Âge (Didron) 50–1 Mapplethorpe, Robert 267 maps and diagrams, Medieval 399–408; cosmological 401; Ebstorf Map 252–5, 401, 404; Ireland represented in 405–8; physical material used for 401; religious components in 402–5; uses of 402 MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloguing) 199 Marcolini, Francesco 35 Marichal, Robert 113 Marin, Louis 178 Marquale, Giovanni 22 Marquand, Alan 123 Martyrologium Romanum 223 Marxism 155, 159 Mary Magdalene 426, 437–8, 438, 445 Massing, Jean-Michel 156, 158 Materia Medica (Dioscorides) 456 material medicine 330–1, 332 Mathews, Thomas 225 Matisse, Henri 61 Mattius, Bernard 11, 15 Maurus, Hrabanus 373–5, 377, 381, 382 mausoleums, cruciform 379–80 Mauss, Marcel 177, 340

Maximilian I 299–300, 453 Mazzocchi, Giacomo 223 McGrath, Elizabeth 34 McKinney, Loren 324 McKinnon, James 479 meaning: from representation to presence 175–6; naturalist and culturalist approaches to 177–8; performance and 181; relationship between text and image in relaying 222–3 Meaning in the Visual Arts (Panofsky) 107, 111, 114, 119 Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art, The (Lindquist) 268 Medici, Piero de’ 303 medicine 322–3; burning, bleeding, urinating, diagramming iconography in 327–30; future directions in iconography of 335; historiographies and histories 324; material 330–1, 332; picturing patients and practitioners in imagery of 333–5; the medical body and 324–7 Medieval Art (Morey) 125 Meditations on the Life of Jesus Christ 61 Meiss, Millard 111, 168 Melancholia I (Dürer) 90, 92, 130 Mélanges of Archeology, History and Literature (Cahier) 58–9 Mellinkoff, Ruth 439, 496 Memling, Hans 222 Menil Foundation 495 Merback, Mitchell 496 Mériméee, Prosper 49 Merino, Luis 23 metadata, Iconclass 213–15 Metropolitan Museum of Art 3 Mic 23 Mignault, Claude 21, 23 mind of Christ 235 Mitchell, W. J. T. 5, 155, 176 Mithras (Saxl) 90–1 Mittman, Asa Simon 497 Mnemosyne Atlas 80–7, 97, 187 modern art 137 modernity: ideal versus anti-ideal of 166; self in 419–20 Moissac 143–4, 144 Mommsen, Theodor 11 Mondeville, Henri de 327 Monographie de Notre-Dame de Brou (Didron) 49 Monster Theory (Cohen) 523 monstrous iconography: excess of 531; inexhaustible history of monsters and 518–21; purpose of 523–31 Monstrous Races in Medieval Art, The (Friedman) 521 Montalembert, Charles de 51–2 Montpellier Codex 487 Moore, R. I. 496 morality 15

542

Index More, Thomas 12 Morellus, Fredericus 23 Morey, Charles Rufus 2, 111, 112, 123–6, 186, 224 Morgan Library 192, 346, 457 Mosse, Martha 113 Moxey, Keith 5 Mulvey, Laura 426 Murdoch, John 324 Murray, Jacqueline 413 music and sound: depictions of singers and 485–6; iconography of 479; musical notation and 487; mythological, demonic, and grotesque representations in 486; nonmusical sound 488; representation of instruments and 480–5; subject overview 479–80 Music in Art 479 Muslims and Otherness 493–6, 497, 498, 498 narrative 282, 292–3; gesture in 283–7; historiography 282–3; on hair combs 290–2; on the Ruthwell Cross 292; religious 283; royal 366–8; space in 287–90; time in 290–2 National Institute of Eastern Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) 57 naturalist approaches to image 177–8 nature, emblems based on 16 Negotiating Secular and Sacred in Medieval Art (Walker and Luyster) 252 Neville, Cecily 513 New Art History 154 Nicene Creed 465 Nicholas of Verdun 472–3, 473 Night Thoughts (Young) 152 Nirenberg, David 497, 499 Nochlin, Linda 425 nonmusical sound 488 Nordenfalk, Carl 113 notation, musical 487 Notger of Liège, Bishop 379 Notre-Dame de Paris 48 Oberer, Hariolf 114 OCLC 195, 198–9 Odo of Bayeux 349 Odo of Cluny 437 Oettingen, Wolfgang von 79 Offner, Richard 111 Olympia (Manet) 164 Omne Bonum (Le Palmer) 322, 323, 333 On Movies (Panofsky) 112 Onians, John 373, 376–7 Open Field meetings 135 Opera (Pirckheimer) 18 Orientalism (Said) 496 Origins of Racism in the West, The 497 ornament, power of 178–81 Os, Pim van 136

Osten, Gert von der 114 Otherness 492–500; historiography of 495–7; key problems and questions in studying iconography of 497–500 Otto I 359 Otto II 366 Otto III 364–5, 442 Oxford Handbook on Women and Gender in Medieval Europe 432 Pächt, Otto 114, 324 pagan idols 160–2 painting and literature, relationship between 39–40 Palmer guild 512–15 Palmer, James Le 322 Palmer, Thomas 21 Pandora’s Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol (Panofsky and Panofsky) 113 Panofsky, Dora Mosse 108, 113, 188, 324, 373 Panofsky, Erwin 2, 4, 5, 6, 34, 66, 71, 98, 130, 154, 155, 164, 185, 224, 530; Aby Warburg and 77, 78, 85–6; Charles Morey and 124, 125, 126; description and interpretation of works of art 116–19; Fritz Saxl and 89, 92, 96; Index of Christian Art and 187; life and work of 105–16; on iconography and iconology 118–19; on light 467; on typology 117 Panofsky, Hans 109, 113 Panofsky, Wolfgang 109, 113 para-heraldic signs 389–90 Paradiso (Dante) 459 Parergon iuris (Alciato) 12 Paris, Matthew 408, 493, 494 Parker, Elizabeth 342 Parma Ildefonsus (Schapiro) 144–5 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 166 Pastoureau, Michel 392, 439, 444, 447 patriarchy 15, 146 patronage: agency and 348–51; chronology of 344; defined as a dynamic relationship 340–3; media and materiality 346–8; methods and evidence in studying 344–5 Paul V, Pope 241 Paul, Apostle 235, 236 Pauli, Gustav 108, 110, 113 Pauli, Wolfgang 110 Pavia, Pietro da 456 Peck, Russell 270 Peele, George 24 performance and image 176–7, 181 Perkinson, Stephen 368 Perréal, Jean 39 Perrière, Guillaume de la 295 personifications 34–6; in Europe before 36–40; standardization by Ripa 40–2 Peter of Celle 522 Peter Vischer et la sculpture franconienne du XIVe au XVIe siècle (Réau) 58

543

Index Pevsner, Nickolaus 155 Philip III 367 Photo Archive of Archive of Villa I Tatti 189 photography: experimental 135–6; used in classification 186–9 Physiologus (Horapollo) 14 Pierguidi, Stefano 34 Pignorius, Laurentius 23 pigs 506 Pio, Giovanni Battista 19 Pirckheimer, Willibald 18 Pisanello 396 Pisano, Andrea 41 Pitt Rivers Museum 188 Pitture (Doni) 35 Pizan, Christine de 426, 431–2 Plainte du Désiré (Lemaire de Belges) 39 Plantin, Christophe 26 Plotinus 19 Plummer, John 143 Polak, Richard 135 Politian, Angelo 18 political iconography 306; civic 302–5; complexities of 300–2; emblematic way of seeing and 295–7; heraldry and portraits in 299–300; royalty and typological symbolism in 298–9; see also royal and imperial iconography Political Unconscious, The (Jameson) 159 Polyhymnia (Peele) 24 Porter, Arthur Kingsley 68 Portrait of the Syndics of the Amsterdam Clothmasters’ Guild (Rembrandt) 136–7, 137 portraits 299–300 poststructuralist theory 155, 225 Power of Images, The (Freedberg) 162, 177 power of ornament 178–81 Prado-Vilar, Francisco 497 preservation of monuments 52 Presse, La 53 Primavera (Botticelli) 463 Progès Social, Le 53 Prosopographia (Galle) 35 Prudentius 36, 67 Psalter-Hours of Yolande of Soissons 346–8, 350 Pseudomorphosis 98–9 Psychomachia (Prudentius) 36, 37, 67 Ptolemy 318, 319 Pucelle, Jean 382 Pulliam, Heather 439 purple color 442–3 Qing Dynasty 5 Quintilian 20 Raben, Georg 22 Randall, Lillian 164, 520–1 Randall, Michael 39

Raoul-Rochette, Désiré 50 Rationale Divinorum Officium (Durandus) 375 Réau, Louis 1–2, 57–62, 224 red color 443–4 Reed-Elsevier 201 reintegration, principle of 96 religious iconography 51; animals in 505–15; anthropology of images and 175–81; as cultural expansion 58; Christianitas and 59; civic political iconography and 302–5; classification of images in 184–90; color in 437–47; dating of 148–9; definition of the field, methodological considerations, and brief historical overview 221–5; flowers and plants in 453–4, 457–3; gender and 412–17, 419, 419–20, 427; gesture in 283–7; gothic art as 51–2, 229–31; impact of Council of Trent on 69–70, 223, 241–3; in 13th century France 67–71; in emblems of Alciato 15, 16; in maps 402–5; Index of Christian Art and 2, 3, 123, 125, 126–8; light in 465–76; music and sound in 479–88; narrative 283–7; patronage of 341–3; personification in 34–42; role of beauty in 70; Ruthwell Cross 145–6, 292; sexuality in 147, 269–71; symbolism of the church and 373–6; see also liturgical iconography Rembrandt van Rijn 130–2, 134–9 Remède de Fortune 487 Renaissance and Renascences (Panofsky) 96–7, 114 René of Anjou 388 Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) 479 Rerum patriae libri IV (Alciato) 11 Resnick, Irven 497 Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe 497 Revel-Neher, Elisheva 496 Revue Archéologique 50 Revue de Paris, La 53 Revue des Études Slaves 58 Richard II, King 300 Richard of Cornwall 359 Richard of Fournival 509 Richard of York 513 Richards, Jeffrey 496 Riegl, Aloïs 70, 105, 142, 143, 324 Ripa, Cesare 1, 2, 32–4, 184, 223; personifications in Europe before 36–40; sources for work of 34–6 Roberts, Helene 224 Robinson, Cynthia 496 Rodríguez-Barral, Paolino 497 Roisin, Ferdinand de 50 Roman de Fauvel 487, 488, 499 Roman de la Rose (Lorris and Meun) 283–7, 290, 432 Roth, Cecil 495

544

Index Rouhi, Leyla 496 Rouille, Guilluame 12, 21, 23 Rowe, Nina 497 Roy, Bruno 519 royal and imperial iconography 356; crowns, scepters, and thrones 356–9; other symbols in 359–66; royal narratives in 366–8; typological symbolism in 298–9; see also heraldic imagery; political iconography Rubens, Peter Paul 5 Ruberti, Isidoro 40 Ruggles, D. Fairchild 497 Ruini, Carlo 11 Ruthwell Cross 145–6, 292 Sachs, Paul J. 110, 111 Sacrosanctum Concilium 241–2 Said, Edward 492, 496 Saint Elzér 333, 334 Saint Emilianus 483, 483–4 Salih, Sarah 413 Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pasolini) 166 Salviati, Cardinal Lorenzo 32, 40 San Vital chapel 379 Sand, Alexa 346–8 Sandron, Dany 346 Sassoferrato, Bartolo da 396 Saturn and Melancholy (Saxl) 90 Sauerländer, Willibald 66, 114 Saunders, Alison 21 Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte E. 497 Saxl, Fritz 77, 130, 145, 324; impact of Warburg on work of 89–92, 187, 188; on medieval diagram emblem of a “new science” 92–5; visual principle of reformulation 96–100 scepters 356–9 Schapiro, Meyer 142–52, 344; interesting in dating 148–9; on color 441; study of the Ruthwell Cross 145–6 Schaus, Margaret 433 Schiff, Frieda 76 Schiff, Jacob 76 Schiller, Gertrud 224 Schilling, Edmund 108 Schlosser, Julius von 89, 105 Schmarsow, August 105 Schmitt, Jean-Claude 5, 180 Schöne, Albrecht 16, 297 Schramm, Percy Ernst 356, 359 Schreckenberg, Heinz 496 Schweitzer, Bernhard 113 scientific iconography 310–20; astronomy 310–11; Charlemagne and 310–11; constellations codex 311–13; cosmological questions and 313–14; Greek system 310; Michael Scotus and 317–19; miniatures used in 314; translations of Arabic works in 314–15

Scott, Joan 344 Scotus, Michael 317–19 Seckel, Jos 135 Secret Middle Ages, The (Jones) 252 secular iconography: Cockaigne in 260, 260–1; country life depicted in 258–9; defined 251–2; Ebstorf Map 252–5; prodigal son depicted in 259–60, 261; relationship to religious art 252; tapestries 261–2; Tournament Hall, Rodenegg Castle 258; wall paintings 255–8; Wild Men depicted in 261; women depicted in 262 self in modernity 419–20 Sextus Placitus 331 sexuality see erotic iconography Sforza, Galeazzo Maria 390 Shakespeare, William 115 sheela-na-gigs 274, 427 Sigismund of Luxemburg 298, 298, 298–300, 364 Signs and Street Life in Medieval France (Camille) 166 Simpson, Jacqueline 357 Simson, Otto von 373 singers, depictions of 485–6 Sluijter, Eric Jan 130 Smith, Cheryl 156 snakes 506 Snell, Bruno 113 social issues in emblems 15 Société des Bollandistes 223 Socrates 20 Soergel, Gerda 113 Solis, Virgil 22 Sorti intitolate giardino d’i pensieri (Marcolini) 35 Sotomayor, Juan de 23 souls and gender 420–1 sound see music and sound Sources in Medieval Style (Morey) 125 Souriau, Étienne 59 space in narrative 287–90 Speculum humanae salvationis (Breitenbach) 117 Speculum Majus (Beauvais) 184 Speculum Universale (Beauvais) 51, 67 Spengler, Oswald 99 Spero, Nancy 425 spiritual anxiety 246–8 Spivak, Gayatri C. 492 Springer, Anton Heinrich 1, 224 St. Albans Psalter 437, 438 St. Augustine 20, 269, 404, 483, 522; City of God 184, 432, 518 St. Floret castle 289–90 St. Jerome 413, 414 St. Lawrence Church, Ludlow 510–15 Stalley, Roger 379 Statius, Achilles 223 Stefano, Cardinal 302 Steinke, Martin William 152

545

Index Steps towards Rembrandt (Van de Waal) 134–5, 137, 138–9 Steyner, Heynrich 12 Stockhamer, Sebastian 23 Stones of Sodom, The (Camille) 166 Stones, Alison 348 Straten, Roelof van 119, 130 Strickland, Debra 496 Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin (Sudhoff ) 324 Studies in Iconography 433 Studies in Iconology (Panofsky) 98, 106, 111, 114, 119 Subsidia hagiohraphica 223 Suckale-Redlefsen, Guda 495 Sudhoff, Karl 324–7 Sufi latinus 316–17 Suger, Abbot 359, 373, 374, 377; color iconography and 444–5; Erwin Panofsky and 112–13, 115; on light 467; patronage and 344–5 Suso of Constance 61 Swarzenski, Hanns 111 Swinefield, John 506 Sylvester I, Pope 301 symbolism: Alciato on 19–21; animal 505–7; disguised 107; o flowers and plants 462; of church architecture 373–6; of coats of arms 395; of light 468–9; of topography 225–8; royalty and typological 298–9; Schapiro on 146, 148 systemic narration 282 Tarkington, Booth 111 Taylor, Andrew 277 Temple, Elizabeth 150–2, 151 Texte, Joseph 65 Thatcher, Margaret 159 Theatre des bons engins, Le (Perrière) 295 themes in Medieval art: erotic iconography 267–77; iconography of narrative 282–93; liturgical iconography 235–51; medical 322–39; political iconography 295–306; religious iconography 221–31; secular iconography 251–63 Thibaud, Émile 53 thirteenth-century France, art of 67–71 This American Life 154, 168 Thoughts of Iconography (Klein) 185 thrones 356–9 Thuilius, Joannes 23 time in narrative 290–2 toads 506 Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini (Panofsky) 106 Topographia 406–7 Topographia Hibernica (Gerald of Wales) 493 Torre Aquila 256–8 Tournament Hall, Rodenegg Castle 258 Tournes, Jean de 12, 15, 21, 22, 23 Tozzi, Peter Paul 23

Trachenberg, Joshua 495 Tracy, John 26 transfiguration 474–5 translations of emblems 21–2 Très Riches Heures 154, 156, 166–8, 256, 457 Trial of Eugenia 413–14, 414 Trivulzio, Gian Giacomo 11 trumeau at Souillac 163, 163–4 Tversky, Amos 86 typology 117; symbolism and royalty 298–9 Urban, Pope 36 Ureña, Jesús 23 Usener, Hermann 75 Valeriano, Pierio 34 Van de Waal, Hans 130–40, 188, 201–2, 213; areas of study 130–2; commentary on Fromentin 133–4; DIAL (Decimal Index of the Art of the Low Countries) and Iconclass projects 132–3, 134; experimental photography and 135–6; modern art and 137; on craftsmanship 138–9; Open Field meetings 135; see also Iconclass van Straten, Roelof 5 Varin, Pierre Joseph 50 Vasari, Giorgio 1 Vecchio, Cosimo il 303 Verheyen, Egon 114 Verneilh, Félix de 51 Victoria and Albert Museum 3 Vidal, Salamó 493, 494 Vie des formes (Focillon) 59, 60 Villon, François 239 Vinken, Pierre 201 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 50, 51, 54, 58, 60, 66 Visconti, Ambrogio 16–17, 18 Visconti, Galeazzo 11, 390 Visconti, Otho 18 Vita Nova (Dante) 37 Vitet, Ludovic 49 Vitruvius 377 Vivian Bible 345 Vöge, Wilhelm 70, 105, 106, 107, 113 Vondel, Joost van den 130 Voragine, Jacobus de 221 Vos, Maarten de 26 Walker, Alicia 252 Walle, Frans van der 202 Walpole, Horace 158–9 Walters Art Museum 3, 426 Warburg Institute 3, 75, 92, 113, 116, 187, 188, 189; emblem 92–5 Warburg, Aby M. 2, 4, 75, 105, 110, 112, 187, 324; “Zum Bild das Wort” and 79; as iconographer 79–80; biography of 75–8; Fritz Saxl and 77, 89–91, 93–4, 97–8; Hans Vand de Waal

546

Index and 132; Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW) and 76–7, 78; legacy of 85–7; mental breakdown and recovery 77–8; Mnemosyne Atlas 80–5; on historical construction 80 Warburg, Felix 75–6 Warburg, Max 75–6 Warburg, Paul 75–6 Wechel, Christian 12, 21–2, 27 Weitzmann, Kurt 125, 148, 225 Wenzel, King 317 Werckmeister, Otto Karl 497 Werner, Gerlind 34 What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Mitchell) 5 White, David Gordon 527, 528–9 Wickhoff, Franz 89, 282–3 Widukind of Corvey 359 Wiesel, Elie 134 Wikipedia-Wikimedia Commons 3, 189 William I 255 William II 316 William of Normandy 366 William of St. Thierry 243 Williams, David 528 Williams, Jane Welch 348 Williams, John 144, 497 Wilson, Christopher 346 Wilton Diptych 300, 301, 459, 460 Wind, Edgar 93, 94 Wino, Abbot 379

Winternitz, Emanuel 479 Wirth, Jean 162, 225 Wirth, Karl August 34 Witt Library 185 Wittkower, Rudolf 187, 520, 528 Wölfflin, Heinrich 89, 105, 110, 324 women see feminist art history; gender, iconography of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia 433 Woodruff, Helen 125 Words, Script and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language (Schapiro) 143, 150 WorldCat 195 worms 506 Wright, Owen 480 Wuttke, Dieter 79 yellow color 447 Young Male Figure in Paintings, Sculptures, and Drawings from Ancient Egypt to the Present, The (Aymar) 157 Young, Alan 24, 26, 150–2, 151 Young, Edward 150 Zainer, Günther 92 Zasius 11 Ziegenhagen, Bertel 113 Ziegler, Joseph 497 Zur Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst (Panofsky) 110

547