With 12 color plates, 173 illustrations, and essays by continental and American curators and scholars, Illuminating the Book is a fitting offering to honor Janet Backhouse, retiring after thirty-five years' career in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Library. The editors and the publishers have done an admirable job, and there are few errors and omissions, minor and mostly in the footnotes. The quality of production and editorial standards match those of the series (The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture). The editors, however, have not achieved the elusive goal of creating a coherent volume. The presence of a more detailed introduction, or of articles' abstracts, would have increased the value of the volume, while the presence of contributors' brief vitae would have better highlighted Janet Backhouse's role in fostering a "network of scholarly colleagues" (Preface).
The essays are divided into three parts--Interpreters, Makers, and Owners. The book also contains a preface, an account of Janet Backhouse's career and a list of her publications, a list of illustrations, and an index. Part One contains four articles, focusing on "iconography and style;" Part Two--seven essays on "patrons, named artists or schools and their relationships;" Part Three--four contributions on "provenance and collecting history." In describing the contributions, I follow the order of the volume.
Ruth Melinkoff's "Sarah and Hagar: Laughter and Tears," a wide- ranging comparison (from the eleventh-century Old English Hextateuch to a seventeenth century Netherlandish engraving), argues for an evolution towards a more autonomous presence of Sarah and a more sympathetic portrayal of Hagar. Such preliminary periodization of both the pictorial tradition of Sarah's laughter and the sympathy to Hagar's plight is nothing short of exciting, but the focus on iconography alone limits its usefulness. Melinkoff attributes the persistence of the agonistic representation of the relationship between the two women to commentaries, and one hopes that future research will elaborate on that point and determine the influence of the different textual traditions (biblical text, paraphrase, translation, and text-free pictorial narrative) and their public on the trends Melinkoff notes in the iconography.
In "Pictorial and Verbal Play in the Margins: The Case of British Library, Stowe MS 49," Lucy Freeman Sandler argues that the marginalia in this manuscript relate the tensions between the town and the abbey. This argument appears somewhat circular: Sandler's identification of the scribe and the public as Benedictine monks (which justifies her reading of the marginalia as hostile cartoons of the townsfolk and transients) depends on her primary identification of these portrayals as (1) hostile and (2) oriented solely against the secular world. Still, it is a very interesting argument in view of the discussion on the status of marginalia. Marginalia incongruous with the sacred, or at least with the orthodox body of the text and the main pictorial stratum, are generally thought by modern readers to relate repressed drives and viewpoints. Although Sandler does not explicitly say so, her essay implies that marginalia can be parallel to the main narrative, a place where the manuscript "author" affirms the connection with the public by the expression of common concerns and prejudices. The apparent incongruity (representation of transgressive sexuality, for instance) is here in fact another form of coherence (transgression is ascribed to the outsiders--the secular world--in this manuscript produced by and for the abbey). This would be an important conclusion, allowing us to qualify our perception of marginalia as transgressive: where the purpose of the "author" and the public coincide, the marginalia express a community's contempt for the outsiders.
In "The Master of Francois de Rohan: A Familiar French Renaissance Miniaturist with a New Name," Myra D. Orth gives a chronology of miniatures and woodcuts (Appendix) and discusses some of the examples she ascribes to the Master of Francois de Rohan. Based on iconography (figures, architectural frames), she argues for the artist's "Swiss or Germanic origin," and speculates on the channels of influence: the presence of German and Swiss woodcuts in Paris, close cultural interactions in the period she describes (second quarter of the sixteenth century), the migration of Swiss and German craftsmen to Paris. The chronology lists twenty three items, including details of size and script or type face.
Nicole Reynaud's short contribution, "An Unknown Manuscript Made for Philip the Good," discusses a prayer book, LXV oroisons de la tresamere passion de nostre benoit sauveur Jhesucrist , in the collection of the Bibliotheque Municipale in Roubaix. The article proposes a history of provenance and date (around 1460), and discusses the decorations: border on folio 4 and eight large historiated initials with scenes of Passion; three rare examples of gold on black ground, the rest camaieu on colored ground. This is compared to similar camaieu decoration, particularly in the "Sforza" Black Book of Hours in Vienna and the Flemish Book of Hours in Baltimore (Walters Art Gallery W. 190). Reynaud suggests that the outstanding gold on black camaieu historiated initials are either specifically an early work of the Master of the Black Book of Hours, or the product of the trend for similar techniques (camaieu and grisaille), well defined chronologically and geographically (Bruges, 1460-1470). In addition, Reynaud provides a full and subtle assessment of the eight historiated initials, with comparisons of technique within the manuscript and in the wider context of examples of this type.
Pamela Tudor-Craig's article, "The 'Large Letters' of the Litlington Missal and Westminster Abbey in 1383-84," links decorations in the missal with architectural detail, decorations, particular devotions, and other properties of the Abbey at the time of Nicholas Litlington. Like Sandler's argument, this one is somewhat circular: the missal serves as a means to interpret the earlier iconography of the Abbey, or even hypothesize how lost or destroyed objects looked like, while the necessary presupposition that there exists a close relationship between the missal and its surroundings is being argued on the basis of these same examples. However, again as in Sandler's case, the argument is detailed, and the number of positive correlations may justify the leap of faith in the logic. The discussion includes, among others, the reinterpretation, based on the evidence of the Missal, of two North Transept spandrels; the identification of the relics in the initial for the Feast of the Relics, based on the lists of relics; the Ascension initial is linked to the relic tombstone of the royal children; the Holy Cross and the Blessing of the Salt initial, according to Tudor-Craig, represent the furnishings (no longer extant) of the Abbey at the time of Litlington.
Richard Marks discusses two Bedfordshire illuminated guild registers, heeding Janet Backhouse's call for a serious study of native English fifteenth and sixteenth century manuscripts, "preferably by someone prepared to enjoy rather than to despise" them. Marks does not stop at the analysis, but rather uses his research to hypothesize the social functioning of these registers. Among the strengths of this article are the scope and objectives of research, congruous with the article format; the collaboration with regional antiquarians; the relevance to a wider set of issues in medieval studies. The surprise of finding so much wealth in a subject where one anticipated limited interest, made it one of the most valuable articles in the volume for this reviewer.
A similar surprise is offered in Ann Payne's "Sir Thomas Wriothesley and his Heraldic Artists." Her detailed account of Wriothesley's activity includes the discussion of his participation in the social, political, economic and architectural fabric of London in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Payne gives details on heraldic painters' production, including the infrastructure which sustained it, the processes through which it was carried out, and the social consumption and significance of their products. In the appendix, she edits painters' bills relating to funeral ceremonies connected with Wriothesley.
Mark L. Evans's extensive article focuses on Fouquet's Italian connections, with details on Italian sources of his iconography. While the discussion of Fouquet's career centers on the lost portrait of pope Eugenius IV, the article sheds much light on questions of patronage and Fouquet's early years, in the context of the political and cultural interaction between France and Italy in fifteenth century. The article closes with an excellent argument for reevaluating the role of Fouquet as an artist. Through the analysis of Fouquet's self- portraits, Evans argues for the French artist's investment in the new, powerful stature of the artist advocated by the Florentine humanist avant-garde.
Jonathan Alexander's contribution, "Illumination for Cardinal Antoniotto Pallavicini (1442-1507)," reassembles a Missal whose decorations are now present in the form of cuttings and fragments in at least six collections. Alexander traces in detail the history of the Missal's dispersal, discusses the illuminator's style, the sources of the iconography (which allows him, among others, to narrow the date to 1506-7), and closes with a tantalizingly brief reflection on subjectivity in donor portraits: on one hand, increasing realism and "emphasis on personal ownership;" on the other hand, limitations immanent in the pious purpose of these representations.
Thomas Kren's "Landscape as Leitmotif: A Reintegrated Book of Hours Illuminated by Simon Bening" reconstructs the Munich/Monserrat manuscript, placing it in the context of the demand for landscapes by the Peninsular patrons of Flemish illumination in the first half of the sixteenth century. This substantial article cogently argues for the placing of the detached illuminations, including two unusual themes: the Flood and the Creation of Eve. Kren convincingly calls for the recognition of Bening as a major artist, in the section discussing his innovative use of landscape. The article is followed by a chart reconstructing the dismembered manuscript.
William M. Voelkle traces some of the unexplored pictorial motifs in the Farnese Book of Hours (Morgan Library M. 69), including in particular two preparatory drawings by Clovio unknown to scholarship. The publication of these drawings and Voelkle's discussion of the patron's presence in the borders justify Voelkle's call for more extensive study of this major manuscript.
Christopher de Hamel discusses the "Rogers" leaf of the Hours of Etienne Chevalier, and the ownership history of this and other fragments of this superb work. The article provides extraordinarily complete details concerning the alterations to the manuscript (opening with a delicious vignette on the modalities of viewing the "Rogers" leaf at the British Library), and convincingly argues that the Hours must have been dismembered before the French Revolution, in the mid-eighteenth century. This, and the recent (1969) appearance of an illuminated text bifolium, allows de Hamel to hope that the "parent manuscript" will emerge.
James P. Carley examines Anne Boleyn's and her brother George's patronage of French texts associated with the Reformation milieu, focusing on two books: a version of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples's Epistres et Evangiles des cinquante et deux sepmaines de l'an (1552-3), and his translation (with a commentary based on Johannes Brenz) of the Ecclesiastes (1553-6). This article is interesting in a number of ways. In analyzing the (almost immediate) appearance in England of bilingual versions of French pre-Reformation texts, it not only elucidates Anne Boleyn's religious preferences, but also bears on the role of the court in the cultural dialogue between France and England during the Reformation. Since these texts appear in the form of manuscripts destined for personal consumption by Anne and her circle, they cast the court in a role both pioneering and limited. As an analysis of manuscripts based on printed books, the article bears on aristocratic book patronage in the sixteenth century. Carley's attribution of the dedication from Epistres et Evangiles to George Boleyn is irresistible in the light of his substantial and detailed discussion.
It is obligatory for a Festschrift reviewer to deplore the institution of Festschrift, a book whose only coherence is in that the authors and the dedicatee know and like each other. Attempts at coherence--imposing a theme, or arranging the contributions in chronological or thematic order--always fail. This, in turn, affects the individual essays, rich in analysis but short on conclusions. Such collections are at worst inconsequential, and at best become a resting place for valuable research which would be better set off in a theme- oriented volume or a monograph. This book is among the best possible, and it is rich in valuable new findings.