Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent by Jeffrey T. Hamburger (review)

96BOOK REVIEWS training faciUtated both his diplomatic activities and his abUities to function as a curial insider, he nonetheless was a highly cultured prelate who became an important practitioner of the new humanist oratory at the papal court and an influential patron ofhumanistic learning. He acquired an extensive classical and patristic Ubrary, including manuscripts of recent humanist translations of Chrysostom and other Church Fathers, and he commissioned Francesco Griffolini , the humanist from Arezzo, to provide Latin translations of Chrysostom's Homilies on 1 Corinthians and Homilies on John. Jouffroy's own writings (the author usefully provides in an appendix a complete chronological Usting of titles, including manuscript data and relevant scholarly studies) include an oration in praise of St. John the EvangeUst, deUvered before the papal court on that saint's feast day (December 27) in 1438; the funeral oration for Pope NicholasV (1455); and a dialogue, De dignitate cardinalatus (1467/68), which in response to the accusations of an anonymousfraticelli sympathizer justifies the Uturgical splendor ofthe papal court (including Pope Paul IFs controversial use of the triple tiara at papal Masses) as imparting rightful dignity and authority to the papal see. Yet Jouffroy's life was less Rome-centered than that of many other Renaissance cardinals. Early in his career he represented the interests of Duke PhiUp the Good of Burgundy at the papal court and later had important connections with the court of Louis XI of France. Intensive diplomatic activity involved extended journeys to France, Germany, the Low Countries, and the Iberian peninsula . Late in life he was much occupied with the southern French concerns of his diocese of Albi. His outlook was thus more broadly European than that of the increasingly Italianate Roman Curia. This impressive book, the first book-length treatment of Jouffroy in more than a century, deploys a comprehensive command of the primary sources and a masterful consideration of aU the relevant scholarly Uterature to provide a fully rounded portrait of this Renaissance prelate whose manifold activities touched so many aspects of the mid-fifteenth-century European world. Charles L. Stinger University at Buffalo, State University ofNew York Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture ofa Medieval Convent. By JeffreyT. Hamburger . (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1997. Pp. xxvi, 318. $55.00.) Nuns as Artists offers an adventurous analysis of eleven drawings by a Benedictine nun of St.Walburg in Eichstätt ca. 1500 for devotional use by her sisters. To aid in his meticulous dissection of their symbolism, Hamburger has reproduced them in color in the center of his book and in black and white for easy references on the pages where they are discussed. He argues that their naive execution veils a sophisticated feminine mystical program, enhancing and some- BOOK REVIEWS97 times revising texts taken from a Uturgy devised by the male clergy.The Malerin adapted avaUable print models with references and symbols that spoke directly to the nuns' preferred devotions. Hamburger criticizes modern historians who have dismissed medieval images as simple transmitters of texts, noting that images inherently pose a challenge to the authority of the text. In a particular institutional setting, the drawings blended snippets of Uturgy and exegesis into complex images that reflect the insights and emotions of meditative women. When closely sudied in the context of the observantine reforms of 1456, the pictures reveal their paraliturgical functions, suggesting devotional postures to focus individuals engaged in group prayer. They enrich texts from a common Uturgy with personaUzed symbols famUiar to nuns who copied and Ulustrated many texts.A drawing of Christ's agony in the garden embedded in the heart of an open rose captioned"not my wiU but thine"relates the bridal imagery ofthe Song of Songs with the mysticism of the Passion and the vow of obedience which governed convent Uves. Drawings of the crucifixion forge a further link to the Sacred Heart, an image associated with nuns' piety by the mystics of Helfta.The heart in another form becomes a house in which Christ shares the Eucharistie banquet with a nun/bride. Complex sources for this presentation include the idea of Christ knocking on the door of the heart; the heart as symbol of the body as...