Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (review)

206 Reviews Parergon 21.2 (2004) images. If those who are most intimately familiar with them do not consider that the illustrations are important, how then are art historians supposed to know that they even exist. At the same time, Knapp’s focus on English texts means that he downplays the international nature of print media, the book trade in general, and the printed image in particular. But it is not surprising that art historians, whose interests often do not correlate to those of literary scholars, might be more interested in the wider market of print culture than the specificities of the English book. Another quibble is that, although Knapp criticises earlier scholars for not paying enough attention to the book page or the particular image or the relation of image to text, he himself does not deal with these matters in any depth. For example, when he discusses the different usages of typefaces and number of columns on the page to designate English and foreign language sources in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments he neither includes reproductions of any examples nor discussing the impact of this. Nor does he compare this manipulation of the page to similar design solutions in manuscripts. I also found it frustrating that he did not analyse more fully the different sizes and placement of imagery within these books nor how they compared to other contemporary books both within England and abroad. While for an art historian Knapp leaves many questions hanging, I found this book extremely compelling and it is one that I will return to again and again when doing my own research. It is certainly a significant contribution to any discussion of book culture. Judith Collard Art History and Theory University of Otago Levy, Allison, ed., Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; hardback; pp. 266; 101 b/w plates; RRP US$79.95; ISBN 0754607313. The past decade has witnessed the appearance of a number of excellent edited essay collections dealing with widowhood in the European past, including Louise Mirrer’s Upon My Husband’s Death: Widows in the Literature and Histories of Medieval Europe (1992), Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl’s Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages (1999), and Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner’s Widowhood in Medieval and Early Reviews 207 Parergon 21.2 (2004) Modern Europe (1999). The essays assembled by Allison Levy in Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe offer a distinctive contribution to the existing scholarship, shifting the focus away from social, legal, and discursive constructions of widowhood to explore instead the ‘understudied correlation’ between widowhood and such visual media as painting, architecture, sculpture, mourning ritual, and so on. The volume’s 15 essays together make a compelling case for widows’active involvement in the production and perpetuation of visual culture (particularly in their capacity as patrons), and offer a thorough portrayal of widows’ centrality in the memorial practices of their day. The strength of the volume is twofold. First, it fuses social history with close interpretations of images, artefacts, and architectural spaces, an approach that emphasises the dynamic interaction between legal, social, creative, and individual interpretations of widowhood. This approach is particularly assured in the hands of Michael E. Yonan, Marina Arnold, Sara French, and Christelle L. Baskins, all of whom offer carefully contextualised and astute analyses of their materials. Secondly, the geographical and historical breadth of this volume effectively highlights the volatility of widowhood not only as a socio-historical phenomenon but, crucially, as a lived state that was endured (or embraced) by individual women in a vast range of circumstances. To this end, Levy has made sound editorial decisions in assembling this volume, selecting essays that range from the trecento to the eighteenth century. And while there is a concentration of discussion on Italian widows, analysis also extends to England, France, Spain, Germany, and Austria. The division of the volume into four thematic sections works as a sound organising principle, allowing complementary essays to offer suggestive commentary on one another. For instance, the essays on Caterina Sforza, Marie de Médici...