Brief Notices

Millet, Hélène, and Claudia Rabel. La Vierge au manteau du Puy-en-Velay. Un chef-d’œuvre du gothique international (vers 1400–1410). With a Contribution by Bruno Mottin. (Lyon: Fage éditions. 2011. Pp. 188. €29,50 paperback. ISBN 978-2-84975-228-9.)

The subject of this well-written study is a rare painting on canvas from the early-fifteenth century, discovered in 1850 in the church of Saint-Pierre-des-Carmes in Le Puy-en-Velay, and now preserved in the local Musée Crozatier. It shows the so-called Virgin of Mercy—that is, a representation of the Virgin with a group of people (in this case laypeople to the right, religious to the left) seeking shelter below her mantle. The subject is more complex, however, in that the Virgin is holding the Child in her arms, whereas her apocryphal half-sisters, Mary Salome and Mary Jacobi, are holding up her mantle; their children are shown behind it. The book provides an informative and well-researched study of various aspects of the painting: its critical fortune; the canvas support; the artist (from the circle of an illuminator known as the Master of the Coronation of the Virgin, perhaps to be identified as Jacques Coene) and date (c. 1400–10); the iconography and its meaning; the possible relation with the cult of the three Maries with the Carmelites in Paris; its original destination (the Carmelite convent in Le Puy); the possible patrons (Nicolas Coq, theologian and Carmelite friar in Le Puy, and Armand-Randon X, vicomte de Polignac); the Marian devotion at Le Puy at the time; the people depicted below the Virgin’s mantle; and the ecclesiological meaning of the image, perhaps intended as a counterimage to the Great Schism. The volume concludes with a technical study of the canvas. The attribution of the painting is not entirely convincing, and the dating could have been more precise on the basis of the dress of the figures depicted. On the whole, however, this is a fine study of an extraordinary painting and is of interest not only to art historians but also to scholars with an interest in church history in general, and Mariology and the Carmelite order in particular.

Victor Schmidt
University of Utrecht

Book of Honors for Empress Maria of Austria. Composed by the College of the Society of Jesus of Madrid on the Occasion of Her Death, 1603. A Translation with an Introductory Study and Facsimile of the Emblems Prepared by Antonio Bernat Vistarini, John T. Cull, and Tamás Sajó. [Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, Vol. 5.] (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press. 2011. Pp. vi, 280. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-916101-73-2.)

This translation and study of the book describing the funeral honors for María of Austria (sister of Philip II) is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on funeral honors of Hapsburg Spain. Published by the Jesuit College in Madrid in 1603 on the occasion of the exequies it held for the recently departed dowager empress, the funeral book included a description of the church decoration, funeral oration, sermon, hieroglyphs (emblems), and numerous poems. This study is organized into four sections: an introductory essay (which includes a summary table of the hieroglyphs), a translation of the entire text, an index to the hieroglyphs, and facsimiles of the title page and hieroglyph pages. The summary table is particularly interesting, because the authors provide not only clear descriptions of the hieroglyph imagery but also sources for their Latin mottos.

The introduction briefly discusses María’s relationship with the Jesuits (which ended with the Jesuits inheriting most of her estate) and the funeral book genre. An in-depth examination of the structure and content of the funeral book (with notes and bibliography) follows. The translation of the Libro de las honras occupies the bulk of the study. It requires careful reading, not because of the translation, but because of the formal and flowery language of the era with many sentences of excruciating...