Art, Piety and Destruction in the Christian West, 1500–1700 (review)

This collection of essays contributes to a growing literature on iconoclasm and censorship, but it foregrounds social forces such as historic preservation that deflect negative outcomes. One recurrent theme is the fate of Catholic visual images following the rise of Protestantism. However, it is refreshing that the emphasis is less on destruction than on the transvaluation of medieval cult objects as “art” and the invention of distinct Protestant imagery and ritual. The main thrust is contextual, with thick analysis of particular events and interactions affecting Christian images and spaces in Germany, England, France, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. The contents are as follows: “Introduction: Art and Religion: Then and Now” by Virginia Chieffo Raguin; “Salvaging Saints: The Rescue and Display of Relics in Munich during the Early Catholic Reformation” by Jeffrey Chipps Smith; “Does Religion Matter? Adam Kraft’s Eucharistic Tabernacle and Eobanus Hessus” by Corine Schlief;“—You Are What You Wear (and Use, and See):The Form of the Reform in England” by Raguin; “Repackaging the Past: The Survival, Preservation and Reinterpretation of the Medieval Windows of St. Mary’s, Fairford, Gloucestershire” by Sarah Brown; “Preserving Antiquity in a Protestant City: The Maison Carrée in Sixteenth-Century Nîmes” by David Karmon; “Destruction or Preservation? The Meaning of Graffiti on Paintings in Religious Sites” by Véronique Plesch; and “Inquisitorial Practices Past and Present: Artistic Censorship, the Virgin Mary, and St. Anne” by Charlene Villaseñor Black.

Presumably in the interests of coherence and size, the fate of Jewish cultural production is not included (such as the continuing destruction of synagogues, as in Halberstadt in 1669). Postmodern collections that have become a major genre of publication in recent decades do not claim to be collaborative histories. Their value lies in presenting good scholarship under a thematic rubric, orchestrated by an imaginative editor, as is the case here.

In the introduction, the editor explores the alienation of religious objects that thereby “shed their historical usefulness and their power” (p. 7).Yet, she notes, as in several of these studies, that reclassification as “art,” or as material culture, comes with new historical significance and power—a “reconfigured meaning,” as she puts it (p. 9). She gives a nuanced discussion of the interactions of patron, artist, and church in the commissioning and especially in the reception of works. To elaborate the social and historical contingencies of ascribed value, she seeks a theoretical base in books by Pierre Bourdieu, first published in French in the 1960s. Although his work has been as foundational—and as much criticized—as that of Derrida and Foucault, some recent studies also would have been of assistance. In expanding the purview of the introduction to survey recent incidents of tension surrounding sacred objects, Ragiun might have taken into account the global approach offered in Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art, Karlsruhe, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA, 2002).

The case studies that follow engage with particular instances that complicate generalizations. Each author provides a careful analysis of specifics, whether concerning the political value of relics; communal attitudes to private, public, and sacred space; the interventions of individuals; the ability of artists to skirt censorship and the anxieties that lead to it; and even the sociological interest that can compensate for premodern graffiti on mural paintings. The combination of broad framework and thick history in the contributions by Schlief, Raguin, and Brown—and the documentary detail presented by Smith—are especially laudable. Overall, this is a valuable, well-presented collection, with bibliography and index. The publishers should be lauded for the choice of paper that facilitates the reproduction of high-quality black-and-white illustrations. However, weak binding may be the price for reining in costs.