Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent

Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent. By Jeffrey F. Hamburger. California Studies in the History of Art, vol. 37. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1997. xxiv + 318 pp. $55.00 (cloth).

Art historical studies often aim "high," portraying fine art on a grand scale by insisting on historical antecedents and analogues. This study of a set of single-leaf drawings from late medieval Franconia aims "low" and in doing so attains monumental scope. At the heart of this pioneering book is a series of small devotional images (Kleines Andachtsbilder or Nonnenarbeiten) that are similar enough in style and iconography to be considered the work of one cloistered nun in the convent of St. Wallburg. Hamburger laments that these images have been classified out of "serious" scholarly consideration, tossed into "dumping grounds for images . . . with which art history would rather not be bothered" (p. 4). Yet these modest sheets attest beautifully to the resourceful and complex visual culture of female monasticism.

Hamburger's book itself is aesthetically delightful, with twelve vivid color plates and 118 black-and-white illustrations. The author guides his readers effortlessly through fine, detailed descriptions and a painstaking delineation of his argument. He opens by examining possible textual, ritual, and artistic sources for these images while carefully avoiding any insinuation of direct influence. He then explores at length several extraordinary visual themes, such as "The Sweet Rose of Sorrow" and "The House of the Heart," all of which reflect the nims' spiritual inwardness and humility, ideals of imitatio Christi, and actual enclosure. The final chapter explores the ways in which image-making and use became a pivotal part of devotional life in the convent.

Hamburgers evidence and rhetoric challenge the long-held prejudice that "religious imagery . . . had to be not only true but beautiful as well. In a word, it had to be `Art"' (p. 207). Aesthetics and artfulness, Hamburger warns, should never be the privileged arbiters of value. Despite their apE)arent lack of sophistication, these images were favored sources of religious authority. They were, above all, practical instruments of affective piety and paraliturgical devotion.

This book join; several recent monographs (e.g. Colleen McDannell's Material Christianity and David Morgan's Visual Piety) in sanctioning serious scholarly study of everyday objects. Each of these books wrestles with notoriously slippery theoretical categories, such as "popular piety" and "visual culture.' Yet Hamburger seems wary of forcing certain (e.g. feminist and post-modern) interpretive models on medieval sources. For instance, he resists the attempt to find in these drawings "modes of representation particular to women, ways of seeing and experiencing that reject dominant paradigms" (p. 219). f fe opts instead for a mode:rating cooperative model, in which "sight and oversight, vision and supervision were not antithetical but went hand in hand" (p. 192). These women thus shine forth as resourceful innovators, free within certain restrictions to create a distinct visual culture.

This book succeeds in revealing the deficiencies and prejudices of traditional art historical study while highlighting the complexity and profundity of what has heretofore been considered "low" art. This book testifies beautifully to the riches to be found in the seemingly trivial and humble artifacts of everyday devotional life.

University of North Carolina Charlotte, North Carolina

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Summer 1998
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