Medieval Art at the Intersection of Visuality and Material Culture: Studies in the 'Semantics of Vision' ed. by Raphaèle Preisinger

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Reviewed by: Medieval Art at the Intersection of Visuality and Material Culture: Studies in the 'Semantics of Vision' ed. by Raphaèle Preisinger Lola Sharon Davidson Preisinger, Raphaèle, ed., Medieval Art at the Intersection of Visuality and Material Culture: Studies in the 'Semantics of Vision' (Disputatio, 32), Turnhout, Brepols, 2021; hardback; pp. 247; 25 b/w, 7 colour illustrations, 1 b/w table; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503581538. The editor's short introduction is her only contribution to the volume, but it is a very focused one which both presents the theoretical justification for the project and references particular artworks. The book seeks to reconcile art history's traditional focus on sight and the visual as a cultural construction with [End Page 166] the recent emphasis on materiality and a multisensory approach to medieval art. These perspectives are crucial to an understanding of late medieval religiosity which combines an emphasis on interior piety and visualization with an intense concentration on devotional objects. Raphaèle Preisinger uses The Seven Deadly Sins by Hieronymous Bosch, with its ocular design featuring Christ as the pupil, to interrogate the relationship between sacramental vision and bodily participation through the view of the elevated Host. A manuscript illumination of a nun's mystical progress moves from initial inspiration by a painted sculpture through Eucharistic devotion to an ecstatic vision of the Trinity. If Preisinger's introduction is notable for its restraint, Berthold Hub's article fully redresses any imbalance, weighing in at fifty-three pages, albeit fourteen of them being bibliography. Indeed, none of the articles in this collection could be accused of lacking bibliographical support. Hub devotes the first section of his paper to savaging all previous scholars of medieval vision. They had rashly assumed that, with the introduction of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators in the twelfth century, the extramission theory of vision, by which rays went out from the eyes to make physical contact with the object seen, had been displaced by the intromission theory, which we currently hold, in which rays travel from the object to the beholding eye. As with other elements of pagan learning, the accommodation was far more complicated, especially where it touched on religion. A hybrid model, adopted by the perspectivists, became dominant, as it was necessary for the maintenance of beliefs such as the evil eye, which relied on a concept of the performative—that is, active—gaze. Even physicians continued with the perspectivist model, which, moreover, had no connection at all with the development of linear perspective. The persistence of the extramission theory is fundamental to an understanding of both late medieval religious practices and witchcraft beliefs. Hub's argument is convincing, and he provides an excellent overview of the various visual theories and their supporters. Wendy M. K. Shaw's article points to the lack of any Quranic basis for either the veiling of women or the prohibition on representation which have become emblematic of Islam in modern Western consciousness. Through mystical and literary texts, she traces the dialectical play around worldly vision, which impedes vision of the divine, and veiling, which, in concealing, points both to significance and the need for transcendence to access what is concealed. My only concern with this interesting paper is that it is arguably slightly out of place in a volume on late medieval Christian visualizing and so may fail to reach the readership it deserves. Shaw's article does, however, connect nicely with Jens Rüffer's contribution. Mistrusting 'the concupiscence of the eyes', the Cistercians favoured an aesthetic of utter simplicity. As in Islam, Cistercian rejection of representational images led them to a preference for complex geometric designs, seen in both floors and windows, and serving as aids to contemplation. Bissera V. Pentcheva draws attention to the conditions in which medieval worshippers experienced religious images. Our use of electric lighting misleads [End Page 167] us into perceiving these images as static. To a medieval worshipper, watching flickering candlelight reflected from silver and gold sheathing and glittering jewelled eyes, and the changing shadows from the illumination filtered through stained glass windows, these statues would have appeared to move. Pentcheva supports her argument with texts from...