The Cloisters cross: its art and meaning (review)

218 Reviews Parker, Elizabeth C. and Charles T. Little, The Cloisters cross: its art and meaning, London and N.Y., Harvey Miller, 1994; cloth; pp. 316; 16 colour plates, 185 monochromefigures;R.R.P. £48.00. This book is a pure delight to behold in its elegant sanguine garb, with excellent colour and monochrome illustrations, and high class schematic diagrams. The clear font complements the authors' written word, which is happily devoid of late twentieth-century mannerisms. Almost nothing is stated as a fact. Both authors temper their respective commentary with provisos acknowledging that the Cloisters cross, also recognized as the 'Bury St Edmunds cross' (p. 197), has no known documentation. William D. Wixon writes the foreword. Thefirsttwo chapters and the seventh are by Little and the third to the sixth by Parker. Then object of attention is the gem of the Cloisters collection, a golden-toned morse ivory cross, 23 inches high with an arm-span of 14.25 inches. It has numerous anthropomorphic and zoomorphic scriptural figures exquisitely carved in the 'damp-fold' manner (p. 239). It is believed to have no model, and does not appear to have influenced latter roods. After a rather intriguing mid-twentieth century ownership, and after being hawked around Brtitain and the United States, this cross was acquired, with an unrevealed provenance, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1963. Its last private owner was Ante Topic Mimara, an Austrian national of Yugoslav birth, living in Tangiers (pp. 14-15). It is one of only three medieval ivory models known to survive, the other two herein analysed being the Ferdinand and Sancha cross, in the Museo Arqueol6gico Nacional, Madrid, and the Gunhild cross in tbe Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen. The amount of research expended on the Cloisters cross has been prodigious, Wiltrud Mersmann, the wife of Topic Mimara, having pioneered this scholarship in 1963. The general consensus is that it is English in character and workmanship. Chapter one introduces the history of the cross. Chapters two and three, its iconography and function, five and six the intellectual setting and the indebtedness of the decoration to Victorine traditions. Its connexion with Bury is also debated, while its place in English romanesque is examined in chapter seven. The complementary evidence of contemporary manuscript illumination enhances tbe discussion. Inscriptions on this liturgical object are appropriately dealt with in appendix one. The ancillary apparatus of appendix two, includes a discourse on 'The Oslo corpus', a fragmentary Reviews 219 ivoryfigureof Christ, once considered a component of the Cloisters cross, and even on occasion, exhibited with it Thomas Hoving, when a curatorial assistant at tbe Cloisters went so far as to state that: 'If one were to choose a single work of art... that would most perfectly typify tbe ait, the history and the theology of the late Romanesque period in England ...the Cloisters Cross . . . is the spirit and essence of its times' (p. 7). Hoving dated the cross to 1181-90 because of two couplets, known apparently only at Bury St Edmunds, and what he considered stylistic links with the Bury Bible of c. 1135 (p. 36). A point de depart for Hoving appears to have been the fact that the nature of the figures and the text on the cross reflect a particularly pro-Christian stance strengthened by the policies of Abbot Samson in the 1190s. Parker mentions that the programme: 'clearly went far beyond the requirements of the liturgy . . . with more imagery and texts than any other known processional or altar cross' (p. 239). He also observes that: ' . . . the fully inscribed scrolls on the cross carrytextsfor the most part excerpted from the Old Testament that enrich the meaning of images drawn mainly from the New Testament' (p. 204). Parker and Litde propose a mid-twelfth-century date which ' . . . is determined not only by style but also by the iconographc evidence, as well as by historical and liturgical considerations' (p. 42). Yet they also acknowledge that: 'On purely stylistic grounds, the date of the cross is a conundrum' (p. 38). They assemble and review all the theses advanced by the numerous researchers who have studied this treasure. Then own joint achievement merits as much praise for its clear...