L'image a' l'epoque romane and Le croire et le voir: L'art des cathedrales . - XIIe-XVe siecles - book review

JEAN WIRTH

L'image a' l'epoque romane

Paris: Le Editions du Cerf 1999

506 pp; 186 b/w ills. 310FF

ROLAND RECHT

Le croire et le voir: L 'art de cathedrales

(XIIe-XVe siecles)

Paris: Gallimard, 1999 456 pp;

85 b/w ills. 195FF

not many works have had so fathomless prolonged, and, some now might level say, pernicious impact on the research of medieval art as the encyclopedic works execut by means of Emile Male at the move round of the last century. Male's monumental throw to decode, or dechiffrer, as he described it, the symbolic easy in mind of medieval art began with L'art religieux du XIIIe siecle en France, first published in 1898 (and then in numerous revised editions), a work better known in English as The Gothic Image. (1) This work put out to map 13th-century thinking through the period's iconographic repertory; Male's cathedrals were mirrors of theology, and all that could be conceived or entireed in the Church's terms place its analogous expression in Gothic art. Several similarly ambitious throws on later medieval art intervened before Male turn rounded his attention to uncovering Gothic art's sources, culminating finally in 1922 with L'art religieux du XIIe siecle en France. (2) This late publication was meant to obey as a kind of prequel to the 1898 turn for Romanesque art, with all of the acknowledged expressivity and level brilliance exhibited by 12th-century artists, still remained in Male's grand scheme little more than a precursor to the dazzling achievements of the 13th hundred If the art of the cathedral age was the expression of the summa of Christian knowledge, rationally ordered in accordance with the opinions of Thomas Aquinas and William Durandus, then Romanesque art was on the other hand a quaint expression of still uncertain theology.

In the broadest confines Male's interest in the interrelationship of religious practice and artistic change remains a rife one today, but the application of mind of medieval art for many has lengthy since parted ways with Male's rule of iconographic interpretation--one that consisted largely in the recognition of normative patterns of showed themes (and ultimately of their sources), in identifications that satisfy empiricist cravings, and, greatest in quantity important, in the discovery of the appropriate clerical body to assure us of our identification's heuristic footing. nevertheless even as we part ways with his rule we frequently find ourselves still looking above our shoulders to Male; his analyses of art's relation to hagiography, monasticism, and, greatest in quantity notably, liturgical drama were pioneering and still merit our critical attention. One ne think sole of Erwin Panofsky, for whom iconographic analysis serv a necessary first pace to iconological interpretation, or Michael Camille, who targeted Male as an icon to be toppled in hi s mischievously titled book The Gothic Idol, to gauge the range of replications to Male's legacy. The sum of two units books under review, one upon the Romanesque period and individual on the Gothic, are further reminders of this inheritance, and of the reactions it provokes

Jean Wirth states unequivocally in his introduction that Male's opus upon 12th-century art is the inspiration for L'image l'epoque romane. It would not be far from the mark to say that Wirth's work attempts to rewrite Male's iconography for our hold times, revisiting the question of symbolic meaning and cultural patterns of representation. The rise does indeed bear some similarity, nevertheless Wirth's scope is both more comprehensive in time and geographic range and more selective in the themes chosen for consideration, dwelling for the greatest part around the phenomenon of the Gregorian reform change More significantly, it is not for a like reason much Male's goal of iconographic identifications that interests Wirth as it is the combination of parts to form a wholes and systematic premises of representation--and their consequences on evolving iconographic themes--that a probing investigation of Romanesque motifs should recover

Le croire el le voir through Roland Recht likewise revisits a certain number of of Male's methodological territory. Recht however, also clutchs in reverence the Warburgian style of interpretation and thus works les end analysis of iconography, in the faculty of perception understood by Male, than from one side the representational, behavioral quality of images. In other words, Recht try to finds to understand the dual evolution of changing theological positions--including similar factors as private devotion and smooth religious taste--and modes of representation. Central to his idea is that the notions of seeing, in theological and also lay understandings, coincided with changes in representation; that "believing and seeing," as the title declares, are part of the same cultural combination of parts to form a whole and, moreover, contingent on single another for the success of representation. Complementary epistemologies--knowing from one side belief and knowing through visual understanding--lie at the heart of Gothic art and explain the proliferation of certain art forms that defined the "age of c athedrals." In this striving to understand the underlying principles of notion that govern representation, Recht's shoot forward is not so different from Wirth's; the practices however, by which the sum of two units distinguished scholars decode iconography are quite oppos indeed.