Arts of the Medieval Cathedrals: Studies on Architecture, Stained Glass and Sculpture in Honor of Anne Prache ed. by Kathleen Nolan, Dany Sandron (review)

This collection of thirteen essays centred on Gothic art and architecture stems from the sessions organized by the Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Technology, Science and Art (AVISTA) at the 2010 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. The proceedings of these sessions, along with invited contributions, form the present volume honouring the life and scholarly work of Anne Prache, and highlight recent scholarship on the design, decoration, and functions of Gothic buildings. The essays are divided into three categories: architecture; stained glass; and sculpture; and are preceded by a foreword from the editors, a preface on Prache's work and methodological approaches to the study of medieval art and architecture, and an introduction to the volume. The contributions in each part begin with an essay on Reims Cathedral that complement Prache's work and her 1991 volume on the celebrated cathedral at Reims. Prache's husband, Gérard P. Prache, offers the afterword to the volume.

The essays cover a wide range of topics related to the architecture of specific buildings, their sculptural and stained glass programs, as well as issues centred on patronage, workshop practices, style, iconography, and chronology. A number of the contributions emphasize the importance of the historical and archaeological evidence to the examination of Gothic architecture, as well as the application of new technologies to the design of medieval buildings. Other essays integrate the study of architecture, sculpture, and stained glass in efforts to understand Gothic buildings through 'artistic integration'.

In the first article in the section on 'Architecture', Walter Berry re-examines the building chronology of Reims Cathedral based on excavation data from the 1990s. Michael T. Davis explores the urban environment of Paris by scrutinizing a document of Guillebert de Mets's fifteenth-century description of the city with a focus on the cathedral, the royal palace, and the new mansion of Jacques Duchie. The last two architectural essays—by Ellen M. Shortell on the analysis of the choir of Saint-Quentin, and by Nancy Wu on the designs of smaller Gothic doorways—look at new technologies and the application of geometry to the study of Gothic buildings.

In the second part on 'Stained Glass', Sylvie Balcon-Berry returns to Reims Cathedral and examines its stained-glass windows with a particular focus on those destroyed during the 1918 bombardment, which she investigates through surviving drawings. Turning to Saint-Denis, Michael W. Cothren attempts to reconstruct the stained-glass cycle of the Infancy of Christ in Abbot Suger's famous choir. Claudine Lautier's study centres on the western rose window showing the Last Judgment from Chartres Cathedral, and Philippe Lorentz's essay examines the Annunciation window of Bourges Cathedral.

Turning to 'Sculpture', William W. Clark contextualizes the exterior sculptural program of the radiating chapels at Reims Cathedral, and considers the motivations of the patrons relative to the choice of imagery in the figural sculptures. In examining the elaborate central portal sculptures of Bourges Cathedral, Fabienne Joubert discusses thirteenth-century mason workshop practices with a focus on the conception and execution of figural sculpture programs. Charles T. Little looks at a small limestone head from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and situates the object in the thirteenth-century dismantled choir screen at Chartres Cathedral. Kathleen Nolan and Susan Leibacher Ward study the narrative and symbolic meanings of the statue-columns of the collegiate church of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux. In considering the findings of a 2011 archaeological project at Lyon Cathedral, Nicolas Reveyron investigates in the final essay the iconography and style of the fourteenth-century façade sculptures of the cathedral.

The individual essays are beautifully written and...