The thirteen essays collected in this hefty volume, originally published from 1971-1997, represent the majority of the life's work of Robert Deshman, a leading figure in the study of Early Medieval art, and "one of the preeminent expositors of Anglo-Saxon art" (xi). They evince a context of rigorously intellectual art, where patrons, illuminators, sculptors and audiences turned to the visual to express not only central tenants of theology but also ideas about monasticism and kingship, and about the intersections among these three forces. There is a great deal to be learned from these essays about medieval art, and about the Early Middle Ages, but also about the value of scholarly rigor and precision, as well as about the historiographic trajectory in the final quarter of the last millennium.
The volume begins well, with a sincere and heartfelt forward by Herbert L. Kessler, exploring Deshman's career, temperament and dedication. The introduction by Adam Cohen details Deshman's other publications (his two books: Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian Art: An Annotated Bibliography [1984] and The Benedictional of Æthelwold [1995]), his coverage (first and foremost, Anglo-Saxon, but also Early Christian, Carolingian, and Ottonian) and his guiding concerns (the interpretive possibilities among the "admittedly elitist" circles of "exceedingly literate individuals" who comprised the patrons, designers and intended audiences of the works [xiv]). It also explains Cohen's rationale for ordering the essays thematically rather than chronologically.
This choice is in some ways effective but in others somewhat problematic, especially as the essays are not quite as consistent as Cohen's introduction would have it. Some of the essays do hold together well in thematic groupings, most notably chapters 7 to 11, all of which deal with the overlaps and intersections between Christ and kingship.
However, some of the earliest essays do not display the desire to "reintegrate art within the cultural contexts in which it was first produced," or to "communicate the intrinsic interconnectedness of art to other forms of cultural production" (xvii). Rather, and with no criticism of the original essays, some of those from the 70s are embedded very much in the academic concerns of the day--style, source tracing, dating and the like. Indeed, in "Anglo-Saxon Art: So What's New?" Deshman notes that "patronage and function" were "novel perspectives" introduced by George Henderson in 1987. The essay that follows, "Anglo-Saxon Art after Alfred" (1974), for example, is concerned with the sources of styles and iconography, with little interest in how or why the works were used or interpreted. The following essay, though, asks pointedly, "Does the Psalter's iconographic programme pertain to how the book was actually used by its owner...?" (42).
This is not to say that these concerns are absolutely absent in the earlier essays. His "Otto III and the Warmund Sacramentary: A Study in Political Theology" (1971) is a noteworthy exception, for example, and placing it first, as it would be chronologically, would have shown its great innovation. Placing the early essays first would not only have revealed to the reader the development of Deshman as a scholar, and highlighted the richness of his work from the 80s and 90s, but also would have made more obvious the value of this volume as a historiography of Early Medieval art history over the final quarter of the twentieth century. I was perpetually struck by the contrasts between the earlier and later work, with the later often breathtaking in its scope and sophistication, as well as by the early prefigurations of concerns that became central, later on. Indeed, as early as 1976, Deshman was beginning to argue for the need to move beyond the traditional concerns of style and influence. In "Christus Rex et Magi Reges: Kingship and Christology in Ottonian and Anglo-Saxon Art," for example, he notes: "Instead of conceiving of English and German relations as a simple matter of influence moving in one direction or the other, perhaps it would be better to think of a complex political and artistic dialogue existing between the two countries," (168). Indeed, this is an accepted commonplace, today, but in 1976 was a daring position to hold, and a chronological ordering would have made this more apparent. Even if the essays were left in their present order, though, this could have been clarified by placing the original dates at the head of each essay, rather than placing them at their conclusions.
The notes conjure an entire era of scholarship, of which Deshman was a central component, with references dominated by Kessler, Kitzinger, Nees, Nordenfalk, Pächt, Schapiro, Schramm, Whitelock, Weitzmann (the bibliography lists a full two dozen works by him) and Wormald. The figures currently dominating the study of Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval art, such as Karkov and Withers, feature by necessity only in the helpful additional bibliography sections that Cohen has added at the end of each chapter. Reading all of the essays together, which few readers would do without the publication of this volume, allows Deshman's place in this lineage to be clear, as a figure at once embedded within and rising out of the scholarly traditions of the twentieth century. He died of cancer at 54, in 1995, as the millennium drew to a close. Had he survived to produce further work, the continued development and flourishing of his scholarship would certainly have been fascinating to observe.
The text is accompanied by 233 illustrations--a lavish number--but regrettably, these are all black-and-white, and are generally of low quality. A great number are either so low in contrast as to be barely legible, especially in the fine details on which Deshman frequently builds his sophisticated arguments, or bear moiré patterns that are likely the result of having scanning earlier printed images rather than obtaining fresh photography. In either case, this is unfortunate. Many of these works are now available in high resolution online, and URLs might have been included to facilitate finding them, as a way of compensating. In addition, the ordering of the images is less convenient than it might be. As many works are used in multiple essays, the reader must continually flip back and forth, not only from the text to the images at the back, but then within the images that, together with the bibliography and index, make up almost half of the volume. Perhaps there was no better order, but I would have appreciated having all the images from a given manuscript together, so that I might consider them both within the context of a given argument posed and on their own.
In closing with one of Deshman's last essays, "Another Look at the Disappearing Christ: Corporeal and Spiritual Vision in Early Medieval Images" (1997), perhaps Cohen is cleverly inviting the viewer to compare the subject of his collection--Deshman--with the subject of the essay. Here, Deshman argues that the Anglo-Saxon iconographic innovation (one of a great many cited here) of the feet of Christ disappearing into a cloud was created to encourage the viewer to reflect on the value of seeing the inner divine nature of the receding deity, rather than his mortal housing, and also to look to John the Evangelist as a model of monastic contemplation. While Deshman has passed on, this volume will help ensure that his scholarship endures, and will perhaps encourage new readers toward rumination on the inner value it houses. These essays bear witness to his role as a "model of the contemplative...life" (272).