Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State, Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter & The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy. . - book review

DIANA NORMAN

Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

251 pp.; 130 color ills., 90 b/w. $60.00

MEGAN HOLMES

Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

301 pp.; 147 color ills., 87 b/w. $65.00

JACQUELINE MARIE MUSACCHIO

The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy

New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

212 pp.; 61 color ills., 95 b/w. $50.00

Although the three very different books here under review have the appearance of conventional art historical monographs, they are driven by a common desire to challenge traditional monographic form and, in varying degrees, rhetoric. For this reason, along with their scholarly rigor and novel interpretations, they warrant attention, interrogation, and praise.

Diana Norman's Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval City State is the most conventional of the three publications in its language, research, and methodology. This broad, sparklingly illustrated, and accessible study, informed by its author's deep knowledge, tackles an important but often overlooked problem--the iconographic and ideological function of patron saints. The volume is structured around a series of detailed case studies focusing on a particular city-state and its virginal guardian. The core of the book consists of two parts, one addressing the iconography of the Virgin within the city of Siena, the second treating Mary's appearance in the contado, or territory, controlled by Siena. An introduction to Sienese politics and art preceding these two sections contains little that will surprise readers familiar with the subject; it establishes, however, a foundation for Norman's subsequent analyses.

Although explicitly about art and politics within Siena's city walls, the first part of Norman's book focuses, almost exclusively, on art alone. What is more, while the chapter tities--"The Cathedral," "The Town Hall," "The Patronal Altars," and "The Spedale"-- might sound encompassing, the material presented in each is rather specific. Norman's chapter on the cathedral, for example, is really only an examination of Duccio's Maesta and the various cults of the Virgin whence it arose. Similarly, the chapter on the town hall offers an interpretation not of the building and its decoration, but only of Simone Martini's Maesta. (1) These foci are perfectly in order, given the emphasis the book places on the Virgin in Sienese art and politics. The tities of the chapters are, however, needlessly general and therefore somewhat misleading; they also result in an awkward division of the material. This becomes evident when, in the fourth chapter, the reader returns to the cathedral's crossing to hear about the Patronal Altars, for which four Marian altarpieces were commissioned. While it may make perfect sense to consider these altarpieces as a group--as a number of scholars have already done-it is not altogether clear why they should not have been analyzed in Norman's chapter devoted to the cathedral. Such confusion is, I think, symptomatic of the entire project, which consists of a number of well-reasoned and detailed scholarly theses set within the overwhelming framework of a comprehensive monograph. Norman's interesting and accurate scholarly voice echoes within this large textual suit of armor and therefore occasionally sounds hollow.

This is especially true in the section devoted to the city of Siena. With the exception of the chapter addressing the lost murals on the exterior of the Spedale della Scala, Norman is reviewing very well-known material. Synthesis is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this instance Norman's general hypothesis concerning Marian devotion in Siena as part of a civic ideology requires more substantial and sustained argumentation. Almost any reader interested in medieval devotion and its role in civic life would welcome the questions Norman poses. But the manner in which she responds to them does not take into account obvious complications. For example, throughout the study, Norman insists that Marian devotion in Siena served to yield a particular sense of civic identification. This is indisputably true. The Sienese elected Mary as their patron and gave her a very specific symbolic role in their political imaginary. Having said this, surely it is necessary to understand Sienese civic Mariolatry within the context of the astonishing popularity of Mary throughout Europe in the late Middle Ages. Norman implicitly dismisses this information. The existence of a broad cult of the Virgin in Italy and Europe, and indeed of other civic cults of the Virgin, does not, in the least, invalidate Norman's claims. But in choosing to isolate her case studies from such comparative material, Norman gives a skewed sense of bow devotion and political identification must have developed in Siena and its territories. Although it is probably impossible to state with any precision where civic patriotism ended and religious emotion began in the mind of a 14th-century Sienese spectator gazing on Duccio's Maesta, to ignore that this religiopolitical visuality bound the beholder, through the Virgin, both to Siena and to a broader society of coreligionists is to overlook the strength of the Madonna as a civic icon. For in choosing Mary as their patron, the Sienese eschewed some of the advantages of a particular or local protector in favor of a univ ersal mediatrix. To understand the context for such a development, some references to the cult of Mary in general or to other cities where Mary fulfilled a similar role would have been welcome. For example, concerning the latter, a comparison with the undisputed queen of late medieval Marian devotion, Domina Carnotensis, the Mistress of Chartres--"whose name and tunic," claimed Guibert de Nogent, "are venerated in almost the whole of the Latin world" (2) --might have helped underscore both the manner in which Sienese political and religious culture fit into broader developments and its distinctive peculiarities. Similarly, some references to the enormous literature concerning Marian devotion during the later Middle Ages also might have helped frame Norman's observations. While we might excuse the lack of reference to Marina Warner's popular but vibrant and informed account of Marian devotion in Alone of All Her Sex it seems inconceivable that a book on this subject could be written without engaging with or at least mentioning such standard works as those of Walter Delius, Hilda Graef, and, especially, Hans Belting. (3) The failure to cite Belting's chapter "The Madonnas of Siena: The Image in Urban Life" in his Likeness and Presence is a glaring omission,