In this magnificent book, Jacqueline Jung offers a refreshing, even radical, new look at Gothic sculpture, considering movement, emotion, the viewer’s engaged experience, and the kinetic possibilities of sculptural viewing. The result is one of the finest, most engaging discussions of medieval art that I have read in a long time. With probing analysis and lively prose, Jung explores the spatial dynamics and the poetics of bodily motion and expression in Gothic sculpture. It is a study of movement and perception in thirteenth-century sculpture--one that serves as a model for new ways of studying other works of art with a consideration for the encounter with sculpture in time and space. She notes that they are not “sermons in stone” but rather more dynamic forms: “...by considering them from different angles, always taking into account where we stand as beholders and thinkers, we can let the works speak forth in various cadences” (283). Jung offers the book as a “portal” into a new way of looking at Gothic sculpture, inspiring new avenues of looking and investigation. In this endeavor, she is highly successful. The lucid prose and subtle analysis bring to life the dynamic nature and lifeforce of these eloquent bodies.
This sumptuous volume is lavishly illustrated with a plethora of previously-unpublished photographs that reveal the figures in dynamic ways. Most notable are the author’s sequential photographs which chart shifts in appearance as one moves through space and engages them, beautifully illustrating her point about multiple viewing perspectives. There is an ongoing critique of the influence of static, frontal images in the construction of our narratives of medieval art. That is not how the sculptures were meant to be seen and experienced, as the viewpoint shifted with the vantage point of the ambulatory viewer. “They depended on, and responded to, the mobility of beholders” (65). In both text and image, Jung’s volume offers a fresh, dynamic, way to view Gothic sculpture.
The book investigates works from major French sites (Chartres, Reims), but emphasizes sculpture from the early thirteenth-century south transept portal at Strasbourg to the circa 1270 octagonal porch at Meissen Cathedral, with a hearty focus on Magdeburg and particularly Naumburg in between. Jung notes that it becomes a survey of major monuments of German Gothic art--something of a “greatest hits” tour. But, more than surveying these monuments, she reinterprets them in new and exciting ways. The kinetic potential of the sculptures’ meanings helps bring to life both saints and patrons within the fabric of these churches. The volume offers close visual analysis and careful unpacking of meanings that are firmly grounded in the rich array of scholarship on the subject.
Eloquent Bodies offers a refreshingly new analysis of the spatiotemporal play of sculptures with their audiences. How did meanings unfold and how were they embodied by the viewer? Jung deftly explores how these bodies eloquently conveyed meaning through posture, attitude, adornment, and expression: “...it is the phenomenology of these sculptural encounters, so long neglected in a field that has privileged stylistic and iconographic analysis, that I wish to explore here” (4). Both the careful analysis and the plethora of sequential images exquisitely explore this dynamic unfolding of meaning.
The Introduction lays out an important premise: medieval sculptures were viewed by audiences in motion--in time and space. “Gothic sculptures demand to be understood as unfolding spatial presences--or conversely, figures that animate or enliven the spaces around them--and that this aspect enhances and renders more complex their apparently straightforward iconography” (1). Jung addresses the haptic visuality of the sculptures--their invitation to visually caress the image. This visual touch serves to connect the frequently transcendent imagery with the more bodily, sensorial experience of the viewer. “By picturing touch they play on the viewer’s haptic sensibilities, emphasizing the bodily presence and capacity for movement and sensation that links the beholders with their fictive counterparts” (48).
Chapter 1, “Encountering Gothic Sculpture: Mimesis, Kinetics, Haptic Engagement,” masterfully introduces the ways of looking at portal sculpture “in motion” through a survey of the evolution of these images and the ways that they develop flexible meanings through the variance of viewpoint. Considering the physical situation (and posture) of viewers as critical to the images’ ways of meaning, Jung articulates what she terms a “haptic” mode of viewing which accentuates one’s own kinetic capacity, thereby facilitating a close psychological and physical interaction. Jung’s beautiful prose invites one to explore spaces “where colossal architecture and eloquent sculptures lure beholders into a slow choreography of motion and reward their movements with ever new impressions” (59). This enables, even necessitates, sequential unfolding of meaning(s), which allows the images to spatially connect with audiences. This chapter lays out the approach that Jung wishes to explore in close examinations in the succeeding chapters--each focusing on a specific setting - that flow chronologically across the thirteenth century and move west (Strasbourg) to east (Naumburg). This chapter introduces the embodied nature of viewing and the multifocal perspective that this enforces. Deftly examining the shifting natures of Madonna and Child images, Jung articulates the notion of spatial dynamics and images that “work the room.” Introducing the idea through a Madonna and Child group from Madgeburg (1270-1280), she notes that it does not present as a static or a moving image, but rather as a sequence of different discrete perspectives/viewpoints. This, and other examples, suggest that Jung is correct in assessing such viewpoints as intentional and not merely accidental results. Offering subtle analysis of the development of jamb figures, Jung explores how the imagery fashions ways for the viewer to interact and reenact sacred roles, essentially analyzing how placement impacts viewing. Even the widely analyzed Annunciation-Visitation group from the west portal of Reims Cathedral is examined afresh through the eyes of a visitor in motion.
Chapter 2, “Moving Bodies, Dynamic Perception: The Slowscapes of the Strasbourg South Transept Portal,” explores how imagery unfolds through motion, articulating the portal as a “spatial and temporal ensemble” that involves the viewer in unfurling meaning. Exploring how different vantage points inflect the reading of the sculpture, Jung posits some fluidity of meaning as the vantage point shifts. This implies that we perhaps need not look for a single predetermined message, but rather a dynamic unfurling. As such, she is able to read the Synagoga figure more subtly than simply as a “straightforward emblem of Jewish defeat” (7), noting how the figure’s adamant bodily nature and dynamic posture precludes her from being fully grasped, as she is permanently in flux. In contrast, the architectural Ecclesia presents a solid, cohesive unit. This fluidity of motion renders the Synagoga figure a subject for active compassion. While noting that this compassion may have been fleeting, it nonetheless reveals the possibility for an internalized response to the figure. As such, Jung offers a refreshing new look at an ensemble that has previously garnered much attention.
Chapter 3, “Movement, Media, and the Quest for Salvation: A Pillar for Thinking in the Strasbourg South Transept,” examines thesculptural complex within Strasbourg’s south transept, focusing on the historiated pier known as the Pillar of Angels. Jung considers the circumambulatory nature of apprehending this pier, noting its changing appearances and suggestions of meaning, particularly its engagement with the nearby stained-glass windows,viewing them as “a conceptual and visual unity” (129). As there is no single vantage point, there is a constantly mobile perspective--one that transcends a single iconographic message--a point often overlooked in scholarship. Taking the medieval viewer’s perspective into consideration, Jung notes how the figures seem to acknowledge (and even watch) the viewer, incorporating them into the experience of meaning. She observes that, as viewed from below, the figures take on more bodily presence (and thus mass) than is regularly attributed to them. The evangelists on the lowest level most emphatically shift with dynamic bodily emphasis. This only becomes perceptible from a close viewpoint. “Only physical proximity yields this recognition of the Evangelists as denizens of the earth, not simply as the otherworldly messengers we perceive from afar” (125). Christ’s figure--not altogether apprehensible--teases with the “possibility of revelation” (118), as he is dynamically posed to be perceived in a spatial and temporal sequence, thus emerging as an unfolding entity. Thus, not portraying a specific narrative moment, the figures (and column) invite viewers to see proleptically--toward the future--or retrospectively toward the past in a dynamic present.
In chapter 4, “From Motion to Emotion. Encounters with the Wise and Foolish Virgins,” Jung explores the “shift from emblematic to mimetic modes of representation and...the shift from motion to emotion in the sculptural depiction of the Wise and Foolish Virgins” (133-134). Seeing the figures in the thirteenth century as “embodiments of feelings” (of admittance/exclusion into Church), she notes how the bodies perform presence, and this presence conjures the emotive embodied response. The chapter provides an excellent study of the evolution, iconography, and meaning of the parable in medieval art and life, charting the evolving embodiment of the spiritual message of the parable and its translation into emotional identification and response. The centerpiece is a close look at the maidens on the north transept of Madgeburg Cathedral in which Jung explores how renderings of emotional response would be understood, arguing against the reading of these Foolish Virgins as inherently corrupt. She asserts that, through their movement, the figures are more palpable and thus pose open questions about faith and preparedness. These figures can incite pity but serve primarily to awake one from a similar fate. This close examination of Magdeburg is situated between a history of the development of the theme and further evolution, noting Magdeburg’s influence on the large scale and bodily expression of later images of the Virgins.
It is the two chapters on Naumburg that form the culmination of the volume, exploring “one of the most famous and elusive of all interior sculpture programs from thirteenth-century Europe” (185). Chapter 5, “The Donor Figures of Naumburg Cathedral, Part I: Presence,” concentrates on the twelve figures of lay nobility in the west choir, exploring both the physical presence of the forms and the suggestion of emotional states. Despite the vast body of literature on these figures, Jung notes that they are rarely considered as “space-animating objects” (187). A detailed analysis reveals the figures’ haptic possibilities, particularly through their manual activities, while facial features and bodily gesture reveal their inner state. Shifting viewpoints dynamize them to moving audiences, while the figures’ relationships to other sculpture and the choir’s stained glass, fashion new, morphic meanings. This close, incisive analysis of the gestures, postures, and facial expressions of the figures--all in states of flux--reveals how they connect with the viewers moving through space. Jung looks closely at the images, beginning with a careful analysis of details--hands to be specific--and their haptic behaviors. Next, she pulls the lens back to examine the figures individually “as multifaceted entities” (187) and then pulls back further to consider the larger configuration of figures in the choir, exploring the connections between the window program and the donor figures, accentuating the space as a larger ensemble replete with cross-spatial connections.
The author tackles the complex issue of meaning in chapter 6, “The Donor Figures of Naumburg Cathedral, Part II: Meaning.” Jung posits that, as there is no single vantage point, they change meaning through shifting movement. Therefore, there is not a single, unified message to the figures. Effectively setting up the idea that the quaestio of the meaning of the program sets up an irresolvable disputatio, with each sic being met by a non, she lays this out as a conversation in a series of points and responses. In this lovely conceit, Jung elucidates the various interpretations of the program, underscoring just how variously these figures have impacted their viewers. Noting that, in situ, there is no single focus or viewpoint, Jung asserts convincingly that polyfocality is forced upon the viewer. Stopping short of arguing a completely open-ended series of meanings, Jung notes the multi-perspectival vantage points--both psychical and cognitive: “they open and close themselves to a range of interpretations just as they open and close themselves to a range of physical viewpoints” (249). In short, she offers a more satisfying, and open, understanding of the ways in which the program conveys information. Conceptually and physically, they occupy a middle ground--in space, but also between our world and heavenly realms. Their appearance and actions link them to us: “They exist with beholders in a symbiotic relationship” (250).
Jung further notes how the donor figures form a coherent group. A “courtly community” (263) is presented in the stained-glass saints and stone donor figures, connecting the past fundatores with present and future donors, as expressed in a funding plea from 1249. Combining past and future into an ongoing present, the noble figures thus fuse the living and the dead. Speculating on the circumstances that prompted the ecclesiastical authorities at Naumburg to build the West Choir and have the donor figures carved, Jung charts the complex relationship between the clergy and the local nobility, noting that the bishop and chapter were asserting their position, which was not as secure as might be hoped. The donor figures seem to be exempla of supporters of the church. Jung notes how this was ultimately a failure, as Naumburg’s authority diminished. However, she also articulates how it was an artistic success, tracing the workshop’s sojourn to Meissen Cathedral, offering another subtle and incisive analysis of the figures of founders and patrons in the choir. Specifically addressing the figures at Meissen, Jung concludes the chapter with a note that could summarize part of the book’s intent: “The designers and carvers who fashioned them may not have left us their names, but through these eloquent bodies--their lifelike appearance, their suppleness and complexity of stance and gesture, the vital sling of their draperies and focused attentiveness of their gazes--their presence is palpable” (273).
The Conclusion asks where we go from here, outlining avenues yet to be explored. Jung notes that she generally concentrates on an established cannon of German sculpture, observing that there is room to explore well beyond these monuments. From focusing on sculptures that demand haptic interaction (reliquaries et al) to reexamining French and Spanish works with an eye toward movement and audience interface to exploring potential crosspollination from Germany to Italy, Jung charts a course for further investigation of Gothic sculpture. One can only hope that she will continue to research some of these avenues while inspiring others to follow suit. This extraordinary volume is a critical addition to any library on medieval art.