Jeffrey Hamburger’s Flesh and Fabric is a relatively short book. His text runs to ninety-two pages and is followed by two shorter multi-authored sections of which the first contains a detailed technical examination, and the second a scientific analysis. This might, at first sight, seem overkill, for the entire book is focused on one small—Hamburger characterises it as “diminutive” (9)—panel painting currently measuring 45.9 x 36.2 cm. The panel, in the Harvard Art Museums, has undergone some changes since it was painted in the early fourteenth century: the authors of the Technical Examination suggest that these were instigated in order to enhance marketability in the twentieth century (116). Despite areas of abrasion, it is still a relatively well-preserved painting, enabling detailed consideration of its subject and its probable original format, as well as Pietro Lorenzetti’s technique which, in some respects, departs from what might be expected through the use of pigment on top of gilding (39-40). The book is beautifully illustrated throughout with many details of the Harvard painting plus comparative material. Most of the images are printed in colour.
Lorenzetti’s Crucifixion with the Virgin, John the Evangelist, and Saints Clare and Francis could be considered as one amongst many small devotional paintings made, with some minor degree of bespoke tailoring, for an individual—in this case, Hamburger suggests, for a Poor Clare, since it is Saint Clare of Assisi who is placed to the right of Christ. It is easy to consider it as, simply, another crucifixion painting. But, as Hamburger shows, this is very far some the case, and his extended analysis sheds light on its complexities. This is something far removed from paintings such as those requested by Francesco di Marco Datini in a letter of 1373 (“I care not—so that the figures be handsome and large”) and Hamburger provides a compelling argument for not underestimating the ways in which subject matter, artist, and commissioner/viewer could interact in small devotional works to produce something that is more than the sum of the separate parts.
Hamburger’s exploration of the different aspects of the painting is divided up into sections starting with an introduction discussing the painting as something that is “Between Image and Art” (9). He then moves onto the “Image as Object” (22); the unique nature of the image (23); the garments of Christ shown in the paintings, with a particular focus on that held by the angel above the cross (51); a discussion of “Blood and Paint” (79). In the conclusion, Hamburger draws attention to the painting as a “permeable veil” (90) where the personifications of Day and Night, with the angels below them moving into the viewer’s space, and the blood-stained clothes of Christ work together to position the panel as a threshold “mediating between this life and the next” (91). Panels and other painted surfaces considered as porous objects are to be found in the lives of several thirteenth-century holy women. Umiliana de’Cerchi (1219-1246), for example, kept a painting, no longer extant, in the room in which she lived after she was widowed. Living beings—a dove, a boy—moved in and out of the panel. Hamburger’s analysis of the groups of angels to either side of the cross along with the figures of Day and Night uses the material object to establish the ways in which Pietro used pictorial strategy and technique in order to achieve a sense that the panel is, somehow, penetrable. The figures were painted onto the gold ground (39-40) making them appear as though they are breaking through the painted surface and, consequently, the painting becomes a means of access to the heavenly realm. More discussion of the likely Clarissan context could have added further depth to this already profound analysis, perhaps including discussion of contemporary ideas about women as viewers.
The Technical Examination provides invaluable information about Lorenzetti’s technique and about the original format of the painting. This shows that it was not, as previously thought, one panel from a diptych. Rather it was created as a single panel with a flat-topped peak. Further, the analysis of the decorative elements on the gilding, mainly incised with the use of some punched indentation, helps to confirm the painting as nearer the beginning of Pietro’s known oeuvre. Analysis of the use of colour appears to confirm careful and considered use of various pigment mixtures in support of religious meaning, with increased saturation corresponding to the holiest parts of the image. The final section, the Scientific Analysis, gives specific details on the pigments used.
The text is a masterclass demonstrating the information that can be gathered from iconographical analysis allied to a consideration of context, the painter’s approach to his commission, and his manipulation of technique in the service of specific effects. The discussion of the imagery is detailed and clearly illustrates its exceptional nature as something which would have been a focus for meditation, deliberately using the visual vocabulary of visions and reliquaries to achieve this. Throughout, Hamburger underscores dualities—blood and paint, paint and textile, textile and flesh—that help to make clear the interdependency of image, text, and object.