The Cambridge Companion to Giotto ed. by Anne Derbes, Mark Sandona (review)

REVIEWS 194 gates the history of exorcism in chapter 5, “Exorcizing Demonic Disorder,” in examining the relationship between exorcism and the discernment of spirits. Drawing from Franz’s Kirchlichen Benediktionen, Caciola notes that exorcists’ manuals in the fifteenth century “were the first medieval texts of any kind to include specific tests for determining whether an individual was truly possessed and if so, by what kind of spirit” (244). The crisis of the Great Schism also ushered in a sense of apocalyptic tension in relation to exorcism and discernment . For Caciola, the discernment of spirits ultimately equated to the reading of bodies and thereby sought to refigure cultural conceptions of the body’s role in possession (272). Chapter 6, “Testing Spirits in the Effeminate Age,” further investigates sainthood and discernment among women. Caciola suggests that the prophecies of Hildegard of Bingen and Birgit of Sweden were intimately connected with the Great Schism. Additionally, discernment treatises of this period, especially those by Pierre d’Ailly, Henry of Langenstein, and Jean Gerson, were bold critiques of female religiosity (298). The strength of the effeminate age survived , according to Caciola, despite the critiques of Langenstein, d’Ailly, and Gerson. The chapter closes with an inquiry into future research, as Caciola ponders the relationship between the discernment of spirits and witchcraft. Discerning Spirits is clearly an important contribution to the study of medieval culture, demonic possession, sainthood, and women’s history. Caciola has a strong command of Latin, French, German, and Italian as witnessed in the numerous translations dispersed throughout the text. The footnotes provide excellent bibliographic information for those interested in the notion of discernment. Ultimately, the work succeeds in laying out a framework for the discernment of bodies associated with divine and demonic possession, especially among women. LISA MORA, Comparative Literature, UCLA The Cambridge Companion to Giotto, ed. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) 313 pp., 96 b/w ill. Each book in the Cambridge Companion series contains a series of articles by leading scholars addressing facets of a major scholarly subject (e.g. medieval romance) or person (e.g. Virgil); each Companion as a whole is thus designed to constitute a scholarly introduction, while individual chapters are useful for teaching and research at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level. The Cambridge Companion to Giotto follows this model, being comprised of articles by leading historians and art historians on the current state of Giotto studies : no small task, since, as Hayden Maginnis remarks, “perhaps no painter has been, and remains, so controversial as Giotto di Bondone” (10). While arguably over heavy on art-historical stylistic analysis and Giotto’s work in the Arena Chapel in Padua, this collection nonetheless lives up to the standard set by previous volumes in the series. After a brief introduction (chap. 1) by the editors, Hayden Maginnis offers an overview of the problems current in Giotto studies (chap. 2), explicating the long-standing lack of scholarly consensus not only on the basic elements of Giotto’s style but also on the catalogue of his works. Bruno Zanardi (chap. 3) complicates the situation sketched by Maginnis by exploring the organization REVIEWS 195 of the medieval Italian artistic workshop, which frequently held many masters working in concert; both he and Maginnis emphasize that the notion of works “by Giotto”—and hence the present volume, a companion “to Giotto”—is problematically anachronistic. Contributions by William Tronzo (chap. 4, on Giotto’s figures) and Gary Radke (chap. 5, on Giotto and architecture) explore facets of the master’s style. Tronzo focuses on Giotto’s use of ancient sculptural models to illustrate the artist’s mingling of innovative naturalism and artistic convention, while Radke investigates Giotto’s use of architectural form both in his painting and his single known architectural commission, the Florentine cathedral campanile. He concludes that Giotto was an inspired user of architecture as a pictorial idea, but not much of an architect (striking a welcome wry note in a collection with a seemingly unlimited lease on the word “genius”). Chapters 6, 7, and 8 focus on Giotto’s relationships with the mendicant orders , especially the Franciscans, for whom he executed many of his—and their—most...