Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (review)

This is the first volume of a new series produced through Brepols entitled 'Proteus: Studies in Early Modern Identity Formation'. The essays found here were originally presented as part of the Emory University Lovis Corinth Colloquium in 2003. There are fourteen essays and an extensive introduction by Walter S. Melion, one of the editors of the collection.

The organising theme of the collection is the role that images play in the formation of the religious self. Melion, in his introduction, states that in the pseudo Aristotelian psychology prevalent at the time, 'knowledge of the immaterial … soul was held to derive from its discernible operations', these being the human faculties including sensation, such as sight, and the intellectual, such as reason and memory. In the hierarchy of the senses, sight was significant as it was the mode through which sense images emitted by all perceptible objects were filtered and processed. Consequentially, the visual arts are also of interest, as they had the potential to both aid and gauge the spiritual progress of the soul. Art could act as an aid to devotional practices such as meditation, allowing the viewer to move from outward perception to inward, and to perceive the intangible.

While all of the articles found here do touch on elements of these ambitious aims, the subjects covered are wide-ranging and varied, reflecting a variety of different approaches and understandings of the theme. The works range from Francesco da Barberino's I Documenti d'Amore, from the early fourteenth century to the high Baroque paintings of Rubens. Three of the essays focus on specifically Italian material, while the last two, on Hendrick Goltzius and Rubens, reflect the increasingly trans-Alpine influences that occurred in the Baroque period. The rest of the essays are more Northern in orientation, with discussions on the Hours of Mary of Burgundy and painters like Bosch, Geertgen tot Sint Jans and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Most of the works are Roman Catholic in origin, although two fascinating essays look at the impact of the Protestant Reformation.

The different approaches taken by Italianists and Northern European specialists are striking. For example, Michael Cole in his essay 'Discernment and Animation: Leonardo to Lomazzo' draws on Italian Renaissance art theory to discuss the treatment, by painters such as Orazio Gentileschi and Michelangelo, of saints such as St Francis, as well as angels and demons in terms of pose and decorum. The representation of the experience of the visionary rather than vision itself, in the case of images of St Francis, reflected contemporary concerns about the discernment of deception or authenticity in such visionary experiences. The self-conscious contemporary discussions of the nuances of artistic depictions written in Italy is used to advantage in this essay. Those working on Northern European topics, however, turn more to devotional and theological texts. For me, essays like that of Lee Palmer Wandel are particularly resonant. In 'The Body of Christ at Marburg, 1529', Wandel very effectively uses the debate between Martin Luther and Johannes Oecolampadius and Huldrych Zwingli on the meaning of the New Testament text 'this is my body' to elucidate, not only the varying interpretations of the Eucharist by Lutherans and Swiss Reformers, but also their attitudes to religious art and idolatry. This insightful essay is a model for those interested in exploring the ramifications for art in Protestant theology.

No discussion of Northern art could avoid the nexus between naturalism and symbolism and this theme recurs in several essays. Henry Luttikhuizen's 'Monastic Hospitality: The Cloister as Heart in Early Netherlandish Painting' engages in this debate to remind the reader of the significance of religious institutions within this society. He challenges, not only Panofsky's ideas about 'disguised symbolism', a much trodden path, but also Craig Harbison...