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REVIEWS 276 This work includes several innovative and useful conclusions. It highlights the mistakes that historians are prone to make when conceptualizing medieval sexuality through a framework of modern ideology. In addition, Schultz’s theory explaining the connection between historical phenomena and the rise of courtly literature is the most convincing explanation for the innovation of courtly love that I have read. By far the most notable aspect of the book is Shultz’s breaking down of courtly love into the love of courtliness, which he dubs “aristophilia.” This idea is so well argued as to appear obvious and will certainly change the way courtly love is conceptualized. Anyone interested in medieval women, the history of sexuality, or courtly literature will benefit from Schultz’s ideas. RUTHEMMA JOY ELLISON, French & Francophone Studies, UCLA Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, ed. Charles T. Little (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2006) xvi + 222 pp., ill. A recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, titled “Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture,” showcased eighty-one medieval sculpted heads from a wide spatial and temporal range.4 Although an exhibition of sculpted heads might initially appear limited and narrowly focused, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue reveal how prosperous such an enterprise can be for medieval studies. The exhibition questions what these faces could reveal to us about the people and culture who produced them and how “people perceived themselves” during the Middle Ages (xiv). Unfortunately for us, most of these objects lack known provenance after becoming decontextualized in a myriad of ways: religious wars, the ravages of time, and changing aesthetic tastes, for example. The catalogue’s essays and entries all employ basic art historical tools such as formal analysis and stylistic comparisons in conjunction with archaeological evidence and more modern scientific methods, such as neutron activation analysis, to attempt to recontextualize these objects and provide a provenance, which is arguably the focus of the show. The exhibit’s accompanying catalogue, written by medieval scholars and museum curators, is framed around the exhibition’s seven themes, ranging from “Iconoclasm” to “Sculpting Identity” to “Bibles in Stone,” with an essay devoted to each theme. After a brief introduction prepared by the curator of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters at the MET and the catalogue’s editor, Charles T. Little, the exhibition catalogue begins with its longest essay written by the distinguished medievalist Willibald Sauerländer. His essay discusses the physiognomy of medieval sculpture, particularly the “extremes of physiognomic tension in medieval art” (5): the stoic face of the holy figure versus the often distorted faces of marginal figures. While not novel, one of the most thought-provoking points that Sauerländer highlights is the idea that 4 As Philippe de Montebello, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stated in his forward to the catalogue, the exhibition resulted from the museum’s continuous desire to expose the public to objects in its permanent collection, as well as to use these objects as the foundation for a larger exhibition that borrows from other museums and private collectors. REVIEWS 277 physiognomy, as it was portrayed in the visual arts, often served moralizing purposes. While he points out that most of the figures in the exhibit are the solemn, serious faces of saints and Old Testament kings, he does not address why the show focused on such objects, nor does anyone else for that matter. Was it simply what was available to the MET? Or are these objects simply considered “fine art,” while those faces that are distorted and expressive are relegated to another category? These questions continuously arise while reading the catalogue. Despite the fact that these questions are left unanswered, Sauerländer does concede that the exhibition caters to the growing interest in medieval art, as well as the modern obsession with the face and identity, a point with which I agree. Each of the remaining essays concentrates on the seven themes of the show. While certain of the essays offer engrossing details, such as Janetta Rebold Benton’s “What are Marginalia?” and Barbara Drake Boehm’s “Reliquary...

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