Masaccio: Saint Andrew and the Pisa Altarpiece by Eliot W. Rowlands (review)

REVIEWS 276 the emperor’s daughter Josian, performs a variety of martial feats (including defeating a giant), saves Josian from a forced marriage, sojourns in the holy lands, and avenges his father’s murder. Josian, meanwhile, forced to wed, against her will, strangles her would-be husband on their wedding night, and is condemned to be burned at the stake. Bevis manages to save her in the nick of time, they have two brave sons, one of whom weds the king’s daughter and becomes the earl of Cornwall, and all live happily ever after. In many ways Bevis of Hampton is typical of a metrical romance, and it is probably the most popular, based on the number of extant versions in a variety of languages. The Squyr of Lowe Degre is the text that suffers the most from Ashton’s presentation. Part of the charm of The Squire of Lowe Degre lies in the endless catalogs, the breathless inventories of birds, plants, and household items, which are largely skipped here. What plot there is revolves around the unnamed squire, who serves the king of Hungary and suffers unrequited love for the king’s daughter. He confesses his love to her, and she confesses that she returns his affection but that he must win her by deeds of arms. She offers to equip him to adventure for seven years, and promises to wait faithfully for him. Unbeknownst to them, the king’s lying evil steward tells the king that the squire dishonored the king’s daughter. The king does not believe the steward but provides the steward with men at arms on condition that the steward only attack the squire if he sees him enter the princess’s chamber. The steward of course plays false, and is slain by the squire. The princess thinks the body is that of the squire and mourns his death, until the king reveals the truth to her. The squire is made knight and lord, everyone in Hungary attends the wedding and the king abdicates in favor of his new son-in-law. Ashton also includes versions of Sir Tryamoure, The Knight of the Swanne, Valentine and Orson, Sir Eglamoure of Artoys, Guy of Warwick, and two later prose texts, Robert the Devyll, and Howleglas, a variant of the Til Eulenspiegel story. Ashton includes forty-five engravings of woodcuts taken from a variety of sources to illustrate the romances, occasionally footnotes archaic terms, and provides a four-page glossary of Middle English words. While Romances of Chivalry is possibly useful as an example of nineteenth-century interest in medieval literature and culture, it is less useful to a medievalist. Indeed, the romances , or perhaps, more accurately, the romance summaries, are themselves based on sixteenth-century editions of Middle English texts, and are not presented with the sort of provenance information a scholar would require, though the head notes do usually indicate the edition that Ashton used as a base text. If you are genuinely interested in medieval metrical romances, you would do better to consult the standard scholarly editions of French and Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances (New York: Russell and Russell 1964); Schmidt and Jacobs, Medieval English Romances (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1980); or the recent TEAMS editions produced by Medieval Institute Publications , most of which are also freely available online. LISA SPANGENBERG, English, UCLA Eliot W. Rowlands, Masaccio: Saint Andrew and the Pisa Altarpiece (Los Angeles: Getty Publications 2003) 128 pp., ill. In this short introduction to Masaccio (1401–1428), Eliot Rowlands re- REVIEWS 277 contextualizes the Saint Andrew panel from the now fragmented Pisa Altarpiece , which was completed in 1426 for the chapel of a notary in the Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. She systematically divides the book into roughly six sections: 1) an obligatory description and discussion of the Saint Andrew panel, which is but a very small part of a larger whole, charming as it may be; 2) Masaccio ’s short life and career, and artistic influences; 3) the Pisa Altarpiece; 4) the patron, Ser Giuliano di Colino di Pietro degli Scarsi da San Giusto; 5) the Carmelites of Santa Maria del Carmine and their influences; and 6) the...