Book Reviews Canterbury Cathedral sAndits Roman- up to date by summarising recent scholar- pulpitum,in his new scheme seems to be a esque Sculpture. By Deborah Kahn. 230 ship on the architectural iconography of matter of deduction rather than record. pp. + 278 b. & w. ills. (Harvey Miller, the crypt, the date of its sculpture, and In fact the account rolls explicitly state London, 1991), ?38. ISBN 0-905203-18-6. the Imperialpedigree of the cushioncapital. that Eastry'srefurbishment included a new The subjectof the remainderof this chapter pulpitumand its inner western opening is Our present understanding of English is less well-trodden ground, namely the still in place. romanesque sculpture has been shaped surviving capital sculpture of the external The alternative suggestion, favoured by very largely by the writings, over some blank arcading of Anselm's choir. This is Woodman and others, that the fragments four decades, of George Zarnecki. His will interesting and little-known material and formed part of the twelfth-century cloister remain the great work of synthesis. It falls it could well have been treated in greater superseded by the one in whose structure to his followers either to elaborate on his detail, given the author's particularlyclose they were re-used, is rather summarily dis- model, with perhaps a little fine-tuning, association with it. missedby Kahn. There are, afterall, healthy or to try to approach the material in some The principal contribution which De- precedents for the redeployment of dis- radically different way, always at the risk borah Kahn has already made to our mantled twelfth-century cloister parts in of destabilising the edifice and possibly knowledge of the cathedral and monastic whatever structure replaced them on the of reducing it yet again to fragments. In complex concerns the architectural sculp- same site, be it a new cloister (Norwich in her book on the romanesque sculpture of ture produced during the priorate of the fourteenth century) or domestic build- Deborah Kahn Canterbury Cathedral, Wibert (1152/3-67). The third chapter of ings (Chflons-sur-Marnein the eighteenth). pursuesthe formercourse; its lavish format the book, in which the pace and density of In the twelfth century, ornate sculpture notwithstanding, this is a careful, unpre- the text markedly increase, covers this was oftenlavished on the conventualcloister tentious and conventional study of one of period. Kahn brings to the fore and clarifies or its furnishings. If not from the arcades the major ensembles of English roman- the extent, character and chronology of of a cloister, might not the fragments have esque sculpture. the sculpture of church and precinct in come from a lavatorium,perhaps that de- After a brief introduction, the author the 1150s and 60s. In so doing, she identi- picted in the main cloister in the famous embarks on an account of the surviving fies an undeniableand hithertounremarked Water Works drawing ofc. 1165? romanesque architectural sculpture of filiation between capital sculptureat Christ JILL A. FRANKLIN Christ Church Canterbury from c.1070 to Church and that of the nave vault responds 1180, dealing in three successive chapters of La Trinit&, Caen. This is no mean with the major building campaigns of the achievement in two such well-studied period: the first post-Conquest cathedral, monuments.It exemplifies,too, the author's the new crypt and choir of Archbishop unerring visual acuity (witness also her The Gothic Cathedral. The Architec- Anselm, and the enlargement of the mon- stunning comparison of capitals on the ture of the Great Church 1130-1530. astic complex under Prior Wibert. In a Great Gate at Canterbury with one from By Christopher Wilson. 340 pp. + 221 fourth chapter, she discusses the building the Rhineland, ills.222-23). line drawings and b. & w. ills. (Thames and of the furnishing revolutionary gothic This book inevitably invites comparison and Hudson, London, 1990), ?20. ISBN choir begun after the conflagrationof 1174. with the last major monograph on the 0-500-34105-2. Finally there are short appendices on the Cathedral, FrankWoodman's TheArchitec- Infirmary complex and on the twelfth- turalHistory of CanterburyCathedral (1981). 'To generalise' said Blake 'is to be an century reliefs of Thomas Becket. A suc- In many respects, the two could hardly idiot'. This important book avoids all the cinct outline of the relevant political and differ more. Woodman's is a provocative pitfalls of the synoptic survey by meticulous ecclesiastical history is provided through- and engaging book, wider in scope and scholarship and exceptional grasp of detail. out the book, which is generouslyillustrated usefully recklessin some of its pronounce- The result is a personal, at times idio- (although there is, surprisingly, only one ments. Kahn deftly deals with various syncratic, revision of the whole picture of plan) and fully annotated. points of contention between them (e.g. gothic architecture in Europe. Chapter I, covering the sculpture of the the date of the reinforcementof the radial Right from the start, Wilson shakes up time of Archbishop Lanfranc, is inevitably chapels in the crypt). However, one such the conventional divisions and periodisa- shortfor the materialremains of the Norman issue remains unresolved, namely the tions. His account of the origins of French Kingdom's firstcathedral are few. Roughly provenance of a group of finely carved gothic does not begin with St-Denis, and one quarter of the total text, on the other fragments, most of which came to light his analysis of early gothic in England hand, is devoted to an examination of the during repairs to the present cloister some ends, instead of starting, with the choir of design and decoration of the crypt, the twenty years ago. A discussion of this Canterbury. He redresses the old bias to- eastern extension of Lanfranc's church question constitutes the final section of the wards the 'high middle ages' by his long begun by his successor,Anselm, after 1093. book. section on late gothic, including a searching This section makesextensive use of material The propositionthat the fragmentscome account of French Flamboyant, and the first studied and published forty years ago; from the pulpitumof the documented choir best short analysis - in any language - of those familiar with Zarnecki's work will screen of 1180 is not a new one but is that terra incognita, the late gothic of the find the parallelsbetween capital sculpture argued here in detail for the first time, Low Countries. Most drastically, he de- and broadly contemporary, sometimes and supported by some interesting com- motes French high gothic to the status of a locally executed, manuscript decoration parative material. For this assertion to be transitional episode, and elevates rayonnant as striking as ever. Such is the similarity plausible, it must be unequivocallydemon- as the pivotal epoch, the normative style, between motifsin the two media that Kahn strated that the twelfth-century pulpitum in the history of gothic. is led to suggest both were produced by survived in situ until the rebuilding of the Wilson's revisionism also includes a one and the same group of people. She cloister, incorporating the fragments, be- general reluctance, against the current of insists, too, on the dependence of capital gan under Prior Chillenden (1390-1411). much recent scholarship, to explain the sculpture on manuscript illumination. In The superstructureof the side walls of the great church in terms of the concerns of these views she is far from alone, but one 1180 screen was replaced by Prior Eastry the patron. This does not mean that the wonders if the truth of the matter is not at the beginning of the fourteenthcentury. book ignores historical and cultural con- more elusive and complex. Kahn brings us That Eastry retained the western wall, the texts; on the contrary, architectural de- 547 This content downloaded from 81.130.200.251 on Tue, 19 Nov 2013 06:29:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BOOK REVIEWS cisions are firmly anchored to urban politics medieval architect he shows to be into the now recognised only in sculpture and (Barcelona cathedral), mercantile inde- ranks of the bourgeoisie, not the intelligent- painting. pendence (St Mary Liibeck), and episcopal sia. On matters of technique and construc- Behind Wilson's elegant and polished wealth (the English dioceses). Nor does it tion Wilson's sharp eye for detail comes narrative runs a sharp polemical current mean that Wilson ignores the patron's in- into its own. How many architectural his- which is bound to provoke disagreement. fluence; in exceptional cases (Bernard of torians have spotted the remains of original His predilection for rayonnant may explain Castelnau, Alan of Walsingham) he shows wooden planking under the cells of a vault why he locates the 'visionary quality' of that patrons actually determined style. in Lincoln? or the existence of the tufa vaults French gothic in tracery windows, and Wilson has little to say about ritual and mentioned by Gervase in the Canterbury not, as Robert Branner argued, in the scale devotional use - apart from such obvious choir? or the rainwater disposal system at and massiveness of high gothic. But the usages as the placing of the choir east of Bayeux? And his set-piece analysis of the thirteenth-century author of the Metrical the crossing in England, and a long way geometrical ratios (largely the square root Life of St Hugh obviously saw space as a west of it in Spain - simply because he of two) informing the choir of Beverley sign of transcendence when he described sees little interaction between form and minster is an original contribution to our the height of the new choir at Lincoln as function. Thus the recent liturgical inter- knowledge of English proportional systems.