On page 152 Jean A. Givens refers to William Ivins' essay from 1953, "Prints and Visual Communication," in which he separates manuscript and print culture when it comes to the transmission of visual information. I would like to go a step further. Since the invention of photography our conception of visual representation and resemblance has changed. We are not allowed to use a correct life-like drawn portrait in our passports. The police authorities only accept a photo even if it is of bad quality and just with a slight resemblance. Since the invention of photography our conception of visual representation and resemblance has changed. Embedded in the notion of photographic documentation, all of us, in our research, teaching, and publishing, accept photographic representations of our subject. The beautiful illustrations in Jean A. Givens' book--as in all other books--are equalized with the original images without any reservations. It looks as if (art) historians accept Roland Barthes when he hesitatingly suggests that photos, contrary to drawings and paintings, are codeless means of visual transmission.
Since we apparently accept the un-coded mimetic representation, we face a problem. How do we interpret descriptive representations created by artists with pen, easel and knife? How did pre-photographic people deal with the problem? Descriptiveness in a medieval context is a main topic in Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art. "Es ist fotografiert worden--also existiert es." [[1]] Living in the midst of a photographic notion of visual documentaries it is difficult for us to familiarize ourselves with pre-photographic notions of visual reality. We know that at least in the late Middle Ages (since the Lateran council 1215) an amalgamation of picture and depicted took place. The author challenges the notion that descriptive art is a natural response to post-medieval scientific empiricism. By referring to the photographic notion of correct representation and documentation I try to intimate that the many (art) historians brilliantly dealt with by Jean A. Givens are representatives of "the periodical eye" created by Daguerre, Talbot, and their descendants.
Givens wants to examine first hand knowledge as a basis for image making, the functions served by medieval descriptive images, and how those days' viewers may have exploited the potential of visual imagery. The introductory quotation by Nikolaus Pevsner indicates a subject Givens is dealing with in the first chapter: "At Southwell a degree of truth to life is reached which never between the first and the thirteenth century had been attempted in the West." Pevsner is referring to the ornamentation of the chapter house at Southwell Minster. Much of the decoration is composed of sculpted leaves, fruits and flowers that often can be identified in English countryside. On the one hand Pliny equates image and reality. On the other hand Gombrich and Panofsky among others underline reciprocities between descriptive art and post-medieval empirical science. According to Gombrich the schema is the image for medieval artist; to the post-medieval artist it is the means to probe reality and to wrestle with the particular (24). In the 1950s Panofsky argued that the rise during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the branches of natural sciences which may be called descriptive was based on the rise of new representational techniques (25). The iconology behind such a statement is also found in his Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. The title indicates the frame of interpretation in the scholarly world of the last century and therefore it is tempting for me to refer to Irvin Lavin. He was dismayed to learn that late in his life Panofsky gave up the term iconology. Jean A. Givens' book Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art gives us an explanation of Panofsky's expression: "Get rid of it [iconology], we don't need it any more" ("Iconography at the Crossroads," 33).
Chapter 2: In the mid-thirteenth century King Henry III of England received an elephant as a gift from French King Louis IX. Matthew Paris produced a pair of sketches depicting the elephant. Did he draw it from life or copy it from a conventional image, say, a bestiary? Trying to answer her own question, Givens examines relevant sources like Matthew himself, Richard de Fournival's Bestiare d'amour, Gervase of Canterbury's account of the architecture of his Cathedral, maps which "all invoke the value of the visual demonstration of knowledge" (49), William of Rubruck who on his journey to Mongolia had seen things "which I could describe for you only by drawing, and indeed I should have drawn everything for you had I known to draw" (53) and Villard de Honnecourt.
Givens examines the comprehensive literature about Matthew's and Villard's claim that they made their sketches from life (al vif). Here I would like to point at Julius von Schlosser's observation that "for a man of the Middle Ages it was impossible to consider as meaningful anything but the idea, the concept, behind the appearance of things" (58). Isn't it so for all historical periods? I allow myself to refer to quite another kind of image making, the Danish wall paintings with which I am familiar. The images depicting animals of daily life differ in modes of depiction from other kinds of animals, like elephants. One example is sufficient. In Birkerod church there is a depiction of a tree attacked from one side by an elephant and from the other side by a boar (probably a reference to Psalm 80:13; www.kalkmalerier.dk search: Birkerod in kirke and elefant). We can only recognize the elephant because of the tower on its back whereas the boar clearly denotes the well-known beast. It is a very lifelike image but to my mind it is not copied from a model, conditioned by the representational strategies employed by other artists of the period (Gombrich) or even made al vif but out of daily life experiences of an artist acquainted with boars and generally the Danish fauna. The artistic quality of this boar is a combination of observation routines and an ability to express the connotations attached to this wild animal destroying the fields and the crops--and in the church the tree of life. Even if Matthew and Villard might have seen respectively an elephant and a lion they would never be able to catch the concept of the animals. I know this is not Givens' business. She was asking whether Matthew drew from life, and not whether his drawing represented life. This chapter is an eye-opener to me. Givens points at the Franciscan monk, William of Rubruck, who in the 1250s went to Mongolia to convert the Khans. But he also described what he saw. Reading this I thought of Gesta Danorum, written about 1200 by the Danish author Saxo Gramaticus (excuse me for once again referring to my local source material but the so-called marginal regions are often overlooked in [art] historical discourse). In his verbal description of the Danish crusade to a Slavic island to convert the population, Saxo makes an acute description of the site and especially of the statue of the pagan god. Its four heads were made with tight cut hair "as if the artist had copied the inhabitants' traditional coiffure" (Gesta Danorum, 14 chap. 39). It is interesting to notice that when abroad among heathen foreigners, both authors try to make detailed descriptions. And Saxo's remark about the haircut indicates a visual expression familiar with al vif experiences. After an interesting argumentation, the author convincingly presents her answer to the opening question. Yes Matthew did draw the elephant from life. His and other artists' goal "seems to be information rather than imitation" (81). To throw grit into this conclusion I feel inclined to respond to the author's statement that "to picture an object is to learn what stands before us" (80). It applies to photography ("Es ist fotografiert worden--also existiert es") or else it is a commonplace. Linguistic expressions are abstract and functioning in time. Visual expressions are material and functioning in space. Whether the picture is made al vif, after model, or out of free fantasy, the image materializes the depicted object which consequently stands before the beholder, be it a blemmyae or an elephant. In my opinion only photographs document what is before us--or more correctly, before the photographer.
In a very interesting way, Givens in chapter 3 is discussing textual versus visual description. It seems obvious that "even the most informative of the medieval texts cited here do not provide the visual specifics deployed by sculptures like those at Southwell," but the author introduces the reader to the debates about the truth-claims of words and images. The two means of communication represent two quite different structures, being discursive and non-discursive, respectively functioning as earlier mentioned in time and space (Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art). Acknowledging this, Pliny wrote that "it is not enough for each plant to be painted at one period only of its life, since it alters its appearance." Consequently the Greeks abandoned pictures for words (86-87). Givens puts forward very useful definitions of realistic, naturalistic and descriptive images, which offer a better understanding of the different kinds of visual representations. However, one could ask for a discussion of the differences between two- and three-dimensional depictions. Indeed, one could question whether a non-discursive image is descriptive at all. I would like to advocate that the descriptive aspects first of all come into being through the beholder's verbalising. In spite of my question I value very much the conclusion that "naturalism" is best reserved for a quality of "lifelikeness" as opposed to "descriptiveness." A naturalistic image and a descriptive image may well be grounded in very different processes (104-105).
At the beginning of chapter 4, Givens writes that the identity of the viewer, the function of the images, and descriptive rendering are inextricably linked. My first thought was "Shall the author be able to convince me?" After a comprehensive discussion my answer is yes, the versatile argumentation is impressive and the conclusion obvious: "At least in these settings, the observation of nature registers the concerns of aristocratic, feudal patrons" (128). By this Givens feels obliged to return to Panofsky's argumentation about the equation of scientific inquiry, empiricism, and naturalism, and again convincingly, she argues that the selection of plants at Southwell and other examples all demand audiences attuned to the level of visual difference. The old Panofsky wanted to get rid of iconology. By her essay Givens has removed it from (art) history.
Even if from the very beginning of reading Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art you would guess the conclusion of the hypothesis, there is a good deal of suspense in this erudite essay. The last chapter is entitled "Models and Copies." It represents a rebellion against traditional thinking of artistic medieval art as an art of copyists. It seems as if Givens does not make a distinction between a pure copyist (e.g. relevant regarding herbals) and artists using models or nature itself but displaying artistic creativity (e.g. the Southwell carvings). Pliny had already observed that copying typically degrades the transfer of visual information, but this observation only goes for the pure copy. As an example, Givens once again refers to Matthew's elephant drawn from life. Without doubt John of Wallingford soon after copied Mathew's drawing. John's sketch "illustrates the sort of erosion of visual information" (148). This is right but I feel inclined to ask whether it really was John's intention just to transfer information. Contrary to Matthew, John is creating a drawing of an elephant with simple vivid lines bringing much more life to the animal. On the basis of a model he has made a new and different representation of the gift from King Louis IX of France to King Henry III of England. The convincing conclusion? "Medieval art-making often seems to reflect the reworking of past art and past solutions; but some of the images surveyed here testify instead to an accumulation of information about the world that ... speaks of observation rather than invention" (168).
NOTES
[[1]] Klaus Waller, Fotografie und Zeitung, Dusseldorf, 1982, p. 21.