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Subject:

[Fwd: TMR 08.02.04 Kaspersen and Thuno, Decorating the Lord's Table (Iseppi)]

From:

Diana Wright <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 6 Feb 2008 15:49:23 -0800

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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	TMR 08.02.04 Kaspersen and Thuno, Decorating the Lord's Table 
(Iseppi)
Date: 	Wed, 6 Feb 2008 16:15:30 -0500
From: 	The Medieval Review <[log in to unmask]>
To: 	[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]



Kaspersen, Soren and Erik Thuno, eds, <i>Decorating the Lord's Table:
On the Dynamics between Image and Altar in the Middle Ages</i>.
Copenhagen : University of Copenhagen/Tusculanum Press, 2006. Pp. 170.
$45.00. ISBN 978-87-635-0133-0.

   Reviewed by Laura Iseppi
        Universita di Verona
        [log in to unmask]


<i>Decorating the Lord's Table: On the Dynamics between Image and
Altar in the Middle Ages</i> collects the proceedings of a double
session, presented at the 36th International Congress on Medieval
Studies in Kalamazoo (MI), entitled "Image and Altar:
Interrelationships." The collection, edited by Soren Kaspersen and
Erik Thuno, the organizers of the session, comprises six essays mainly
devoted to a very interesting subject: decorated altars and altar
frontals in the Middle Ages, and in particular the "golden altars"
from Scandinavia. According to the editorial opening remarks, the
authors of the essays (Ann van Dijk, Annika Elizabeth Fisher, Erik
Thuno, Soren Kaspersen, Lena Liepe, and Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens)
wish to investigate the iconographical and cultural relevance of the
richly decorated altars and the surrounding areas from "material
remains from Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia that range in time from
the early eighth to the thirteenth century" (7). I will state right
away that I considered the essays devoted expressly to the
Scandinavian material particularly sound and interesting, above all
those authored by Kaspersen and Sonne de Torrens, because they dealt
in a very stimulating way with what for me are new and intriguing
objects (especially those coming from the medieval Danish churches of
Stadil, Olst, Tamdrup, Odder, Sahl, and from the Swedish church of
Broddetorp).

The aims of the collection are thus noteworthy. As stated in the
Introduction, these aims are to shed light on a wealth of material
which, though already known, has received little critical attention to
date and, most of all, to attempt to read these artifacts in the light
of larger iconographical issues, such as the sacramental role of the
altars in the architectonic and decorative contexts of the churches
which contained them or the analysis of the rhetorical patterns
structuring their décor.

The altars and altar frontals which are analyzed in the essays were
part of decorative programs which could include silk cloths and
hangings, "frontals made of wood, stone, or metal {...displaying]
Biblical scenes or personages, often flanked by colorful ornaments
studded with gems" (7). They are, in other words, highly refined and
precious objects which, though not rarely found in the European Middle
Ages, were particularly well preserved in the relatively peripheral
northern region of Scandinavia. The examples presented are thus
"valuable sources of information on medieval altar decor" (8). In this
light, the first three essays in the collection--devoted respectively
to the oratory of Pope John II in St. Peter's, to the Gero Crucifix
and cross altar in Cologne Cathedral, and to the Golden Altar in
Sant'Ambrogio in Milan--provide "southern" counterparts to the
Scandinavian examples more thoroughly investigated in the second half
of the collection.

The first essay in the collection ("<i>Domus Sanctae Dei Genitricis
Mariae</i>: Art and Liturgy in the Oratory of Pope John II"), by Ann
van Dijk, suggests that the depiction of the Nativity over the--now
lost--altar in Pope John II's oratory in the Vatican owed to the well
established "exegetical tradition that linked Christ's birth with the
Eucharist" (34). This type of decoration, the author suggests,
anticipated the ritual re-enactment of episodes of Christ's life in
Middle-Byzantine art and liturgy. By following the typological reading
of the sacred topography displayed in a place, be it church or
oratory, where liturgy is enacted, as indicated in the writings of
early Fathers as John Crysostom and Patriarch Germanos I of
Costantinople, van Dijk traces the line of a link between "sacred
history and its liturgical representation [...through] the spoken
word, the visual image and even architecture" (34).

Annika Elizabeth Fisher's essay ("Cross Altar and Crucifix in Ottonian
Cologne: Past Narrative, Present Ritual, Future Resurrection")
focuses, similarly, on a sort of liturgical/topographical itinerary
along the main nave of Cologne Cathedral. The key site on the
symbolical path (not by chance placed <i>in medio ecclesiae</i>) was
the so-called cross altar, in other words "a <i>Volksaltar</i>
[...that is] the site in the church where the Eucharist was
consecrated and distributed to the laity on high feast days [...] also
used as a key processional site in Paschal ceremonies and for
[celebrating] the Mass of the Dead" (43). Fisher suggests that, thanks
to the fact that this was the place where the laity was allowed to get
closer to the divinity, the positioning of the Gero Crucifix on top of
the Cologne cross altar (possibly associated with the miraculous one
described in Thietmar of Cologne's account of Archbishop Gero's
sanctity in the <i>Chronicon</i>) partook of a particularly
significant liturgical symbolism by which the <i>figura</i> and the
<i>veritas</i> of the Incarnation came to coincide. Since the Gero
Crucifix contained relics of both the True Cross and the Host, its
presence in such a significant location inside the cathedral would
contribute to conflate the performing and the sacred natures of the
liturgy.

The essay that Erik Thuno dedicates to "The Golden Altar of
Sant'Ambrogio in Milan: Image and Materiality" tries to evoke the
relation linking viewer and work of art with regard to sacredness and
to the preciousness of the material support employed. He is thus led
"naturally" to "the question of the status of the images in a
hierarchy where sacred bones rank higher than precious gold" (67).
This is indeed an important question regarding medieval aesthetics.
Given a highly valuable frontal depicting the <i>Majestas Domini</i>
and the most significant scenes of Christ's life, what comes across
more directly to the viewer: the glittering of gold and precious
stones, or the sanctity of Christ's life? As Thuno suggests, it will
be enough to read the beginning of the inscription which runs across
the border of one of the beautiful golden altars from Denmark, and
which basically repeats what was already written in the rear of the
Milan altar: "More than with the golden radiance by which you see it
shine, this work shines by virtue of the knowledge it conveys about
sacred history" (70). Given this affirmation of spiritual (invisible)
over material (visible) beauty, Thuno maintains, that the "golden"
altar "assumes a central role in the mediation between the terrestrial
and heavenly church" (73).

I found Soren Kaspersen's well documented and balanced attempt at
reading the construction and deployment of a "narrative" in the
Scandinavian frontals particularly stimulating. In "Narrative 'Modes'
in the Danish Golden Frontals," Kaspersen first analyzes the ways in
which the frontals treat a few thematic threads (such as the
Visitation, the Magi and the Shepherds, the <i>Majestas Domini</i>)
and then establishes a number of interesting narrative "hinges" which
contribute to confer depth and intensity to the apparently flat
panels. In so doing he emphasizes a rhetorical reading of the
narratives and "demonstrates how an individual episode may be narrated
in different ways; 'modes' vary according to the ordering
(<i>dispositio</i>) and ornamentation (<i>elocutio</i>)" (10) that
each artist privileges. He also deals with issues of time and with
"gestures" to show how multilayered and complex any "attempt at
communicating sacred history" (116) is.

Lena Liepe's essay ("Body and Space in the Olst Frontal") also focuses
on "body language" and, keeping in mind Panofsky's famous definition
of gesticulation and facial expression as belonging to a "'pre-
iconographic' level of interpretation" (129), she "investigates a type
of visual communication that is not bound by textual sources" (10).
Analyzing the Olst altar frontal narrative version of the sequence of
episodes that compose the childhood and passion of Christ in relation
to notions of "space", "mode" (Meyer Schapiro), "contact", "functions
of gesture" (Norbert Ott), and "factors" determining meaning (which,
according to Birgitte Buettner, are similarity/repetition, contrast,
and variation), Liepe concludes that a number of "relational
variables" (142) have a strong influence on the overall significance
of each narrative scene and of the sequence in its totality.

The last essay in the collection (Harriet Sonne de Torrens' "The
Stadil Altar Frontal: A Johannine Interpretation of the Nativity of
Christ and the Advent of Ecclesia") is convincing in its attempt to
read the Nativity panel from the golden frontal in Stadil Church in
the light of a passage from the Gospel of John. In her own words,
Sonne de Torrens "demonstrate[s] that the unusual conflation of
elements in the Nativity of Christ is rooted in Johannine eschatology;
and, more importantly, that the image signifies not only a theological
interpretation of Christ's birth, but, also, on an ecclesio-political
level, the Advent of the New Law and Ecclesia in the North" (148). The
image Sonne de Torrens refers to in the above passage is well worth
being brought to the attention of the scholarly community since it
represents a highly significant and symbolic rendition of the
Nativity, here uniquely structured around a particular "gesture"
linking the Virgin and the Child. This gesture which, as Sonne de
Torrens notes "knows no parallels in pre- or post-thirteenth-century
Nativity scenes" (157), leads the scholar to a stimulating reading of
the panel in ecclesiological terms, where the Nativity of Christ
adumbrates the Nativity of Ecclesia in Northern Europe.

I read the essays collected in <i>Decorating the Lord's Table</i> with
great interest and I am grateful for having been introduced to the
Scandinavian altar frontals, especially through the notable examples
and interpretations offered by Kaspersen and Sonne de Torrens.
Unfortunately, though, some of the essays (in particular the three
dedicated to the non-Scandinavian material, and also Liepe's) are too
short to let the reader fully appreciate their scholarly scope. The
overall impression I had reading these four essays was one of
excessive "brevity": the questions they raise and the problems they
pose are certainly relevant, but would need a deeper and more detailed
analysis to be convincingly dealt with. One example will suffice to
explain what I mean: Thuno's statement that the "tension between
proximity and distance [between viewer and work of art] was further
strengthened by the altar's jeweled ornament, which not only added to
the strong visual impact at a distance, but also ensured the attention
of the viewer and encouraged him to approach for a clearer and more
intelligible view" (75) might not have been meant to sound over
simplistic, but it does. Couldn't it also be possible that, given the
sense of sacredness surrounding sites such as altars, the glittering
of gold and precious stones kept people at a distance? That it
actually reinforced the gap between heaven and earth? That it was
<i>meant</i> to create a distance between the two worlds? In the
economy of Thuno's otherwise thought-provoking essay debatable
opinions of this kind should perhaps be offered as a "possibility",
not as an ultimate truth. Consequently, as a reader of these four
essays, in a number of instances I felt I needed a stronger and more
explicit theoretical frame to support the statements made and the
conclusions reached. 
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