Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art by Hans Belting (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 481 Union's "Radio Moscow," China's "Radio Peking," and Britain's famed "BBC are cursorily mentioned and the opportunity to compare them critically to Vatican Radio is lost. Unfortunately for the historian, each chapter is devoted more to sociological and theological analysis of the Church and various forces within it than to an exposition of the role ofVatican Radio. Too often mention ofVatican Radio appears only at the end of a particular chapter. In grounding her historical and theological analyses, the author occasionally relies on biased or erroneous sources, and on other occasions misreads her sources. One can forgive mention that "Monsignor Achille Ratti, the papal nuncio in Poland, assumed the bishop's miter to succeed Pope Benedict XV in 1922" (p. 45), omitting his admittedly brief sojourn as Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, whence he rose to the papacy. It is more difficult to overlook the table of the popes (pp. 5-15) in which we find that St. Peter "Bestows the power 'to bind and loose' (Roman legal terms) to all his successors, thus separating the power of the papacy from the sanctity of the individual pope." There we also discover that Pope St. Sylvester I "Crowns the pagan Emperor Constantine as pontifex maximus (supreme priest), thus legalizing Christianity through the Edict of Milan. . . ." Here and there in the text mention is made of ominous forces lurking in the background, exercising hidden power within the Church. Not surprisingly they are Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta. Apparently there was a possibility in the 1980's that the direction ofVatican Radio would be taken from the Jesuits and given to Opus Dei. The reviewer would have appreciated details of this possibility and its implications for the policies ofVatican Radio. The Knights of Malta are referred to several times, including mention that former C.I.A. Director William Casey was a member. The connection is left to the reader's imagination. The reader will find the outline of the history ofVatican Radio in this work, but the analysis of its significance and effectiveness in propagating theVatican's message is, unfortunately, lost in the discussion of other issues. RobertJ.Wister Seton Hall University Likeness and Presence:A History ofthe Image before the Era ofArt. By Hans Belting. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994. Pp. xxiv,651; 12 color plates. $65.00.) This book undertakes a monumental operation, the description of the visual direction taken by the holy Christian image from the period ofLate Antiquity as far forward as the eighteenth century. Belting's avowed aim is to focus on the history of the holy image, defined as figurai but non-narrative, and to trace the development in its artistic and conceptual treatment. It is unsurprising that it 482 BOOK REVIEWS takes him twenty chapters, 688 pages, and 306 illustrations to carry out his task as he follows the icon from Byzantium to Medieval Europe, Renaissance Italy and on to Protestant Germany. Likeness and Presence synthesizes evidence from East and West impartially. Continuity and change, link and contrast between the two are highlighted. This dual focus is a rare thing in medieval studies; Belting looks to offer evidence of the connections between Eastern and Western Christian images; his great achievement is to show how intimately the two cultures depend on each other. He undertakes a far-ranging marshalling of empirical evidence, of the sources and images in a variety of languages from all across Europe. It is as stuffed with facts as an egg is with meat. As such, it is a fascinating treasure trove for the medieval art historian seeking information, the history of particular holy images, the legends associated with them. The drawback of such colossal erudition, however, is that it has no space to pause and reflect, to analyze, to ask, "why is this happening to images?" rather than,"what is happening to images?" Belting makes it clear that he sees no place for anthropology, psychology, or the history of mentalités in the study of images . There is no place in history for the viewer of art despite Belting's division between "the history of images" and "the history of art...