Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object (review)

Reviews 217 Parergon 21.1 (2004) essays are very valuable in the examination of legal concepts of domestic violence in England, and it will be interesting to see how their conclusions work when tested in other medieval societies with different legal frameworks. The rest of the collection essentially deals with literary texts, apart from Anne Laskaya’s essay on illuminations of the apocalypse. As well as acknowledging that domestic violence was not a defined category as such in medieval societies, the articles on literary interpretations are interested in how we are modern readers interpret texts which we find highly problematic. How can episodes of rape, murder, dismemberment and abandonment be read in ways that allow the voices of medieval authors and readers to emerge while still recognising the abhorrent nature of some of the textual images? This is a point which is often challenging when teaching medieval texts to undergraduates and, although these essays are not aimed at undergraduates, some of the readings of violent episodes will be useful to those trying to deepen their students’ responses beyond initial abhorrence at the alienating images. In many ways this book works better than many collections of essays as a coherent response to a complex problem and does benefit from being read in its entirety. All the thought provoking essays will deepen our understanding of medieval violence, and also raise intriguing questions for others to explore in different societies and time periods. Understanding that violence is not static and has different meanings depending on chronological and geographical contexts is essential to our knowledge of past societies. This book is an important part of developing that understanding. Dianne Hall Department of History University of Melbourne Sears, Elizabeth and Thelma Thomas, eds, Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2002; paper; pp. xviii, 262; 67 b/w illustrations, 7 colour plates; RRP US$27.95; ISBN 0472067516. This book was conceived as a tribute to Ilene Forsyth. The editors invited eighteen medievalists, colleagues and friends of Forsyth’s to contribute a short essay which analyses an artwork of their own choosing. In recognition of Forsyth’s particular talent for visual analysis the editors emphasise the idea of 218 Reviews Parergon 21.1 (2004) reading the image. In short introductory essays they describe reading as more than formalism, with its attention to the physical qualities of the artwork, and more than iconographical analysis, with its search for the meaning of the content. Reading is a sophisticated process of ‘analyzing form and content in their interaction, in relation to the reconstructed circumstances of an artifact’s making and viewing’. When the contributions came in they seemed to furnish an example of how art history should be done. The editors decided to expand their scope and use medieval culture as a vantage point to look at the task of art history in general. The eighteen essays were divided into nine sub-groups, each with a two-page editorial, covering medieval sign theory, visual rhetoric, geometry and architectural design, audience, style and ideology, pictorial conventions, narrative, sacred images, and mimesis. This, then, is a book that looks inward in considerable detail at eighteen individual works, and outwards at the role and practice of the art historian. It will be of interest for students of the discipline to see how the contributors have gone about their task but perhaps the more lasting value of the book is that it provides close descriptions of works ranging from late antiquity to the Quattrocento , from textiles to an ivory comb to an altarpiece, all of which can be described as medieval. In the section headed ‘Audience’, Oleg Grabar looks at a bronze aquamanile in the shape of a bird, located in the Louvre. He points out that it is quite well known as an image, but the original function and context are no longer known. Information could be obtained in various ways. Grabar refers to technical analysis of the metallic surface, which could reveal what sort of liquid it was used for. This has apparently not yet taken place. Instead Grabar concentrates on the inscriptions, one in Latin and the other in Arabic, across...