Images of love and religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and court entertainments (review)

Reviews 111 The bibliography is an excellent source for those interested in either Fray Luis or the reUgious and linguistic debates of the period. The entire book should be read by scholars whose interests lie weU beyond the works of Fray Luis. Jane Morrison Department of Spanish University of N e w South Wales Veevers, E., Images of love and religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and court entertainments, Cambridge, C. U. P., 1989; cloth; pp. ix, 244; 46 Ulustrations; R. R. P. A U S $ 119.00. Henrietta Maria has been the focus of previous books. Elizabeth Hamilton in 1976, like Veevers, also discussed the message of the masques. But Veevers aims to show that the fashions of thought and religion the Queen brought from France influenced the masques, and through them Court ideas. She focusses on the pricieuses praising Platonic love and on Catholicism. The masques are described, with some nice Ulustrations. But both of the main arguments present problems. The virtues the author says the 1630s' plays give the honnete femme, piety, modesty, virtue, were not as novel in England as she argues. They were expounded in the mass of conduct books for domestic life published in Elizabethan and Stuart England. The idea that Court masques raised the status of women is therefore questionable. The argument relating the Queen's Catholicism to the masques is seriously flawed at every stage. The view of the religious position which underpins it is misleading, probably because it is based on two works: Rushworth's document coUection and Gardiner's 1884 history. The historical context is deficient. Important recent work on the subject by Nicholas Tyacke, Caroline Hibbard, and Kevin Sharpe is ignored. It is quite extraordinary to claim that the main difference between Catholics and Protestants was the placing of the altar (p. 162). The book argues that through Henrietta Maria's influence in the 1630s, stage placing became similar to the Continental Catholic altar position and the masques therefore held Catholic implications, especially the Queen's masques. Because of his Laudian views, Charles agreed with this approach to religious imagery. The initial point is stretched. Shakespeare had a raised stage at one end, too. The use of a 1674 illustration, for the 'before' picture for the change to 1630s' usage under Laud (p. 163) does not help the case. Further, Inigo Jones becomes an element in the Queen's propaganda. Through Jones's designs, the association between Continental religious ceremony and the masque settings is supposed to have been obvious to courtiers and critics. But he is simply assumed to have viewed a scene in the Capuchin chapel in December 1636 (p. 167). Although there is no proof given, we are 178 Reviews then told he wished to emulate it and did so (p. 171). Moreover, Jones's use of Palladio's ideas based on R o m e is scarcely evidence of a 'CathoUc' tendency in his own designs. And, if Jones used a 'Roman' double-cube design for Somerset House's Catholic chapel, he also used it for the strenuously Protestant Earl of Pembroke at WUton. Perhaps courtiers were more interested in other facets of the entertainments than their possible religious significance? The highly speculative nature of the book is emphasised by the constant, irritating repetition of phrases such as, 'may have', 'would have', 'it seems to me'. But they are also a comment on it. There is some interesting material along the way but not an argument which can convince. Alison W a U Exeter CoUege Oxford SHORT NOTICES Cormack, R., The Byzantine eye: studies in art and patronage, London, Variorum, 1989; cloth; pp. xii, 348; 64 plates; R. R. P. £40. For most publications in the Variorum Reprints Collected Studies series, the anthologies bring together a thematic sample of an author's work. Robin Cormack's The Byzantine eye is different as it represents virtually the entire corpus of the author's articles published in the past two decades. Robin Cormack entered art history as a graduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London in 1962 and completed there in 1968 his doctoral dissertation entitled Monumental painting and mosaic in Thessaloniki in...