REVISITING THE MONUMENT FIFTY YEARS SINCE PANOFSKY’S TOMB SCULPTURE EDITED BY ANN ADAMS JESSICA BARKER Revisiting The Monument: Fifty Years since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture Edited by Ann Adams and Jessica Barker With contributions by: Ann Adams Jessica Barker James Alexander Cameron Martha Dunkelman Shirin Fozi Sanne Frequin Robert Marcoux Susie Nash Geoffrey Nuttall Luca Palozzi Matthew Reeves Kim Woods Series Editor: Alixe Bovey Courtauld Books Online is published by the Research Forum of The Courtauld Institute of Art Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN © 2016, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. ISBN: 978-1-907485-06-0 Courtauld Books Online Advisory Board: Paul Binski (University of Cambridge) Thomas Crow (Institute of Fine Arts) Michael Ann Holly (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute) Courtauld Books Online is a series of scholarly books published by The Courtauld Institute of Art. The series includes research publications that emerge from Courtauld Research Forum events and Courtauld projects involving an array of outstanding scholars from art history and conservation across the world. It is an open-access series, freely available to readers to read online and to download without charge. The series has been developed in the context of research priorities of The Courtauld which emphasise the extension of knowledge in the fields of art history and conservation, and the development of new patterns of explanation. For more information contact [email protected] All chapters of this book are available for download at courtauld.ac.uk/research/courtauld-books-online Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of images reproduced in this publication. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. All rights reserved. Cover Image: Detail of tomb of Jacopo de Carrara © Luca Palozzi. CONTENTS List of Illustrations 5 Notes on Contributors 8 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 11 JESSICA BARKER Erwin Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture: Creating the Monument 16 SUSIE NASH I. REASSESSING PANOFSKY From the ‘Pictorial’ to the ‘Statuesque’: Two Romanesque 30 Effigies and the Problem of Plastic Form. SHIRIN FOZI Memory, Presence and the Medieval Tomb 49 ROBERT MARCOUX Panofsky's Tomb Sculpture and the Development of the Early 68 Renaissance Floor Tomb: The Tomb Slab of Lorenzo Trenta by Jacopo della Quercia Reappraised. GEOFFREY NUTTALL II. MONUMENTS AND THEIR VIEWERS Petrarch and Memorial Art: Blurring the Borders between 89 Art Theory and Art Practice in Trecento Italy LUCA PALOZZI Stone and Bone: The Corpse, the Effigy and the Viewer in 113 Late-Medieval Tomb Sculpture JESSICA BARKER Competing for Dextro Cornu Magnum Altaris: Funerary 137 Monuments and Liturgical Seating in English Churches JAMES ALEXANDER CAMERON III. MONUMENTS AND MATERIALS Panofsky: Materials and Condition 155 KIM WOODS Revealed/Concealed: Monumental Brasses on Tomb Chests— 160 The Examples of John I, Duke of Cleves, and Catherine of Bourbon ANN ADAMS Veiling and Unveiling: The Materiality of the Tomb of 184 John I of Avesnes and Philippa of Luxembourg in the Franciscan church of Valenciennes SANNE FREQUIN ‘Nostre sépulture et derrenière maison’: A Reconsideration of the 201 Tomb of Jean de Berry for the Sainte-Chapelle at Bourges, its Inception, Revision and Reconstruction MATTHEW REEVES Deconstructing Donatello and Michelozzo’s Brancacci Tomb 226 MARTHA DUNKELMAN Bibliography 240 Photograph Credits 257 CHAPTER 2 'FROM THE ''PICTORIAL'' TO THE ''STATUESQUE''': TWO ROMANESQUE EFFIGIES AND THE PROBLEM OF PLASTIC FORM SHIRIN FOZI From the vantage point of the present day, it is deceptively easy to frame medieval tomb 2.1 Tomb of Rudolf of sculpture as a coherent tradition. This is certainly the impression given by the effigies Swabia (c.1080-84). that survive from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the period when cathedrals and Bronze with traces of gilding, Merseburg churches across Europe were swiftly becoming populated with an ever-increasing number Cathedral. of figural tombs. Created in vast numbers to represent a wide array of lay and ecclesias- tical subjects, these objects often followed certain conventions that have come to define medieval effigies as a familiar type: the dead appear on rectangular slabs with heads on cushions and hands pressed together, frozen in a state of recumbent prayer, waiting with calm, open eyes for the promised resurrection of the body at the end of time. Countless SHIRIN FOZI | TWO ROMANESQUE EFFIGIES 31 variations exist, but many of the best-known effigies display such features with a consist- ency that belies their broad geographic and stylistic differences. Like their appearances, the functions of these objects also demonstrate certain patterns across a diverse spectrum of examples. To use the terms coined by Erwin Panofsky, Gothic effigies served both the retrospective and the prospective needs of the dead, commemorating their past ephem- eral lives while also anticipating their expected eternal futures.1 In late-medieval Europe, funerary monuments frequently appealed to the living to pray for the dead, and were of- ten commissioned by the subjects themselves, or else their immediate kin, in the hope of gaining entry to heaven. While many notable exceptions exist, this model is widespread enough to allow broad-based discussions of the cultural expectations that inflected the use and meaning of Gothic effigies.2 At first glance the earliest tomb effigies of the Middle Ages, dating to the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, do seemingly little to disrupt this paradigm. While it is true that these Romanesque examples generally lack pillows, and their hands are shown hold- ing attributes of office rather than making gestures of prayer, their alert, expressionless faces and full-length bodies carved in static, frontal poses on rectangular slabs invite the preliminary conclusion that Romanesque effigies are the obvious predecessors of their Gothic counterparts, and once served much the same purpose. It is only upon close exami- nation of the monuments in their historical contexts that the first medieval effigies emerge as objects that were challenging, or even radical, in their own time. Romanesque effigies intruded unexpectedly into ecclesiastical spaces in the decades around 1100, showing de- feated warlords and extinguished dynasties in daring images that transformed the earthly disappointments of the dead into new heavenly victories. None of the known figural effi- gies from before the mid-twelfth century could have been commissioned by their subjects, and while every example is defined by a unique set of circumstances, each one also displays remarkable agency in retooling a problematic legacy as a larger spiritual success.3 Nowhere is this stark reversal of fortune more apparent than in the effigies of Rudolf of Swabia in Merseburg (c.1080-84, figs 2.1 and 2.2) and Widukind of Saxony in Enger (c.1100-30, figs 2.3 and 2.4), two prominent examples from the first generation of effigies made in post-classical Europe.4 Grasping delicate sceptres and wearing heavy crowns, both appear as ideal kings on their respective monuments. Together they seem to form an intuitive point of origin for the genre: pictures of kings and emperors had enjoyed special prominence since at least the time of Louis the Pious, and these two examples share icono- graphic features with royal and imperial figures in manuscripts and metalwork from the ninth through twelfth centuries.5 The complication is that neither Rudolf nor Widukind had actually reigned as a king in life. The former was elected king during the Investiture Controversy by the rebellious nobles who were waging war against Henry IV, only to die in the course of that conflict; the latter was a warlord who led the pagan Saxons in their resistance against Charlemagne, and fell from prominence after his surrender in 785.6 Both men were justly famous as leaders of opposition parties that suffered bitter defeats SHIRIN FOZI | TWO ROMANESQUE EFFIGIES 32 2.2 2.3 Tomb of Rudolf of Tomb of Widukind of Swabia (c.1080-84), Saxony (c.1100-30), overhead view. Bronze overhead view. Plaster with traces of gilding, (stucco), Enger (West- Merseburg Cathedral. phalia), Church of St. Dionysus. SHIRIN FOZI | TWO ROMANESQUE EFFIGIES 33 in disastrous wars, but their effigies reshaped these tragic outcomes in triumphant terms. 2.4 Tomb of Widukind of Such transformations suggest a topos that is familiar to hagiographic literature, but highly Saxony (c.1100-30), unusual in Romanesque sculpture, or in any medieval monument presenting single figures shown in profile as installed today on a in iconic, non-narrative form. Thus the fact that the first effigies for kingly men were sarcophagus from the made not merely to reflect individual identities, but rather to refashion past events in the 16th century. Plaster (stucco), Enger eyes of their publics, carries deep implications for the study of medieval tomb sculpture, (Westphalia), Church and also for the history of memorial culture as a whole. of St. Dionysus. This point, however, is easily lost for casual readers of Panofsky’s landmark volume on Tomb Sculpture (1964). Couched within a larger argument that stresses continuity over change, these provocative early effigies are introduced in the medieval chapter as norma- tive advances in a much longer tradition, objects whose appearance is noteworthy, but still to be expected almost as a matter of course in a teleological history of art that began in ancient Egypt and reached an apogee with Bernini. Panofsky was eminently sensitive to questions raised by historical context, and it is not the purpose of this essay to suggest that he was blind to the events surrounding the lives of Rudolf and Widukind, or disinterested in their fates. To the contrary, Tomb Sculpture is rich with insightful details concerning the individuals who are commemorated in its chosen examples, and these two men are no ex- ception. Ultimately, however, it is the formal, physical development of tombs as sculpture, and not their social history, that is the driving force of the book.