Worlds Within: Opening the Medieval Shrine Madonna by Elina Gertsman (review)

This is a beautiful book of unusual and delightful sculptures. It is anchored in the scholarship of the last thirty years and demonstrates how an interest in devotional forms of art and the gendering of the Middle Ages has opened up the range of subject matter now acceptable as the focus of scholarly research. Elina Gertsman's widely read scholarship is evident on every page.

Shrine Madonnas are surprisingly well spread: they can be found in Spain and in Finland. They can be physically small and used for private devotion or large-scale statues found within chapels and churches. Most date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but first appeared in the late thirteenth century. Conventionally, a Shrine Madonna is a statue, usually carved in wood, of a seated and crowned Madonna, holding an infant Christ, which can be opened and acts as a container for holy images. The container wings, made of the split sides of the Madonna, might contain painted images of the Trinity, featuring a bearded God, the crucified Christ, and the dove of the Holy Spirit above their heads. There are variations, however. The Shrine Madonna of the Holy Clares' convent in Allariz, for instance, opens to display, in ivory, carved in deep relief, a series of seven crucial narrative moments in the life of Christ and the Virgin: the Annunciation, Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, and the Coronation of the Virgin.

The book is divided into four chapters, each exploring different aspects of these statues. It begins with condemnations of such works by Catholic theologians such as the Flemish Johannis Molanus and Jean Gerson, the Chancellor of the University of Paris. The latter condemned a statue seen in a Parisian Carmelite monastery, objecting to the image of the Trinity in Mary's womb, 'as if the entire Trinity took flesh in the Virgin Mary'. He objected to this imagery, as it had 'neither beauty nor pious sentiment and can be a cause of error and lack of devotion'. Yet, as Gertsman explores, such artworks acted as sites of devotional disclosures that were rooted in philosophical and physiological understandings of the human body. She uses these statues as Barthian punctum, a point of entry into late medieval culture. She highlights the porous borders between lay and ecclesiastical environments where objects were used by a range of people from different segments of society.

In her discussion of these marvellous containers, Gertsman locates them within a broader late medieval visual culture, bringing in reliquaries and a range of other physical objects, such as the fifteenth-century Weinhausen sepulchre featuring a carved effigy of the dead Christ. The wooden sepulchre is decorated with a complex network of Christological narratives. She also draws in elaborate altarpieces, small, bejewelled cribs, and figures of the infant Christ. These often interactive works, used sometimes in devotional performances, were once not the subject of academic study but are now found at the heart of this exciting research.

Given the emphasis on pregnancy in these works, it is not surprising that Gertsman also addresses medical imagery. Scenes of the Visitation are shown, along with woodcuts and other images concerning monstrous birth. Miracle plays, the writings of Rupert of Deut, Bonaventure, and others discussed the miracle of Mary's escape from labour pains. Mary's body also becomes a sacred space: Robert Grosseteste compared it to a castle, while her womb was Jesus's ivory throne.

This is a thoughtful work that draws on wide literature related to the Virgin Mary and pregnancy and anchors these shrine statues in the rich visual culture of late medieval religious devotion. It moves a devotional art form that has sometimes been regarded as controversial into the mainstream of medieval thought and practice.