An Allegory of Divine Love: The Netherlandish Blockbook Canticum Canticorum by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin (review)

The Canticum canticorum, a blockbook produced in the Netherlands around 1465–70, is a series (or Suite, as the author calls it) of eight double-page woodcuts comprising four individual pictures each, arranged in two registers per page. The woodcuts depict Christ; a crowned and haloed young woman (Mary); and various bystanders, mostly a group of three virgins (the daughters of Sion). The pictures contain banderoles with (xylographic) texts, taken from the Latin text of the Canticles but arranged in different order from the Vulgate. By being inserted in banderoles, the texts are turned into a dialogue between the persons depicted, with the pictures serving as a visual aid to understand and to meditate on the text. Although the sequence of the pages varies in some of the approximately thirty surviving copies, they are here reproduced in the “order accepted by the author as original” (p. 222). Each of the eight double-page spreads is presented first in a reproduction from the (uncolored) copy held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York; subsequently, each of the four pictures is analyzed individually in minute detail, beginning with a reproduction from a 1949 facsimile, a description, an iconographic study of “visual parallels” (p. 16), transcriptions and translations of the Latin inscriptions, interpretations of the verses by modern and medieval authors (Marvin Pope, Giles of Rome, Nicholas of Lyra, Denys the Carthusian), and a brief summary (analysis). The book thus allows the reader to immerse her- or himself deeply into the fifteenth-century blockbook. It is very attractively designed, with more than 200 color reproductions of works of art that can in some way be compared with the (highly unusual) iconography of the blockbook. Rather than putting the blockbook solely in the context of medieval illustrated manuscripts of the Canticles, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin draws on copious material from other forms of art—mainly Italian paintings and frescoes. This method, of course, raises questions as to whether direct influences between such different works of art, which originated in different regions, are possible; but instead of studying antecedents, Lavin intends to make the reader familiar with a widespread iconographic repertoire that allowed fifteenth-century users to understand and contextualize the blockbook. In her very close reading of text and images, she succeeds in conveying to the modern reader a sense of the deep and often rather obscure meaning; she stimulates a profound involvement with the blockbook that may come close to its medieval usage—probably predominantly by (female) members of religious orders, who were induced to follow Mary’s example in renouncing the world and achieving a spiritual union with Christ.

The book also provides the reader with a concise introduction to the block-book as a printed medium and to the Song of Songs as well as with a conclusion outlining some general aspects of its function and readership. Although the overall layout is clear and appealing, the quality of the book is marred by numerous major and minor mistakes in the details. There are misprints on nearly every page (many more than listed on the errata slip), even in names of authors, institutions, and titles; factual mistakes (such as labeling figure 3’s Speculum humanae salvationis as a woodcut blockbook instead of as a work containing typeset text); and particularly frequent errors in the transcriptions of the Latin verses that are accompanied by translations from the “Douay-Rheims Bible” of 1585–1610 rather than verbatim translations. The author seems unfamiliar with languages other than English and with book-historical terminology alike, and the result of her research would have been more convincing if experts in these areas and a reliable copyeditor had been consulted. It is particularly regrettable that the author was obviously unaware of a major project that has digitized and catalogued about ninety blockbooks held in Bavarian collections...