Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture

Little, Charles T., ed., with an essay by Willibald Sauerländer (2006)

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Description

Faces in medieval sculpture are explorations of human identity, marked not only by evolving nuances of style but also by ongoing drama of European history. The eighty-one sculpted heads featured in this beautifully illustrated volume provide a sweeping view of the Middle Ages, from the waning days of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. Each masterful sculpture bears eloquent witness to its own history, whether it was removed from its original context for ideological reasons or because of changing tastes.

As a work of art, the sculpted head is a particularly moving and vivid fragment; it often seems to retain some part of its past, becoming not unlike a living remnant of an age. In antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages it was generally believed that the soul resided in the head, as articulated by Plato in the Timaeus. The head was thus understood to be a center of power, the core of individual identity, and the primary vehicle for human expression, emotion, and character.

Many medieval sculpted heads became separated from their settings—often churches or ecclesiastical monuments—by the seemingly endless destruction and displacement of art works in Europe during and after the Middle Ages. Political and religious ferment, neglect, shifts in taste, and simply time itself: all exacted a heavy toll. During the French Revolution, in particular, legions of stone figures lost their heads in a course of mutilation that paralleled the infamous guillotine. In many cases the artistic or aesthetic merits of a given fragment are all that remain of the original work's context, meaning, and significance. Some heads survived precisely because of their innate beauty, or perhaps out of reverence for the grand monuments to which they once belonged.

Seven thematic sections retrace the history of these heads using both traditional art-historical methods, such as connoisseurship and archaeology, as well as the latest scientific technologies. In his introduction to the volume, Charles T. Little provides an overview of these general themes, which include Iconoclasm, The Stone Bible, and Portraiture. An essay by distinguished scholar Willibald Sauerländer discusses the complex and fascinating issue of physiognomy in medieval art, from menacing or carnivalesque grotesques to the beatific visages of saints and apostles. Sauerländer presciently observes, "To learn about 'the fate of the face' in the Middle Ages—a period torn by strife, faith, and fear—may prove today to be more than a mere art-historical concern."

Table of contents

Director's Foreword by Philippe de Montebello
Statement from the International Center of Medieval Art
Acknowledgments
Contributors to the Catalogue
Lenders to the Exhibition

Introduction: Facing the Middle Ages
Charles T. Little

The Fate of the Face in Medieval Art
Willibald Sauerländer

Iconoclasm: A Legacy of Violence
Stephen K. Scher

The Limestone Project: A Scientific Detective Story
Georgia Wright and Lore L. Holmes

The Stone Bible: Faith in Images
Jacqueline E. Jung

What are Marginalia?
Janetta Rebold Benton

Sculpting Identity
Stephen Perkinson

Gothic Italy: Reflections of Antiquity
Christine Verzar and Charles T. Little

Reliquary Busts: "A Certain Aristocratic Eminence"
Barbara Drake Boehm

Bibliography

Index

About the authors

Charles T. Little is Curator in the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Willibald Sauerländer is former Director of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich.

Press reviews

The Burlington Magazine

"The handsome catalogue, with its excellent color illustrations, a probing essay by Willibald Sauerlander, investigative catalogue entries, concise thematic discussions, extensive bibliography, and a thorough index, is a model of its kind. Its subject is well served by the expertise of the authors and the astute editorial supervision, so that this volume is not only valuable for future reference but is also easy to use in the exhibition itself."

Choice Reviews Online

"The book enjoys the excellent production values of the Metropolitan Museum in high-quality images. Though geared toward the specialist, these objects in this exhibition have a natural attraction that also fosters an appeal to the general audience."

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Medieval Art

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Charles T. Little

Willibald Sauerländer

Related Content

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (8)

Essays (3)

The Face in Medieval Sculpture

Gothic Art

Medieval European Sculpture for Buildings

Timelines (5)

Central Europe (including Germany), 1000–1400 A.D.

France, 1000–1400 A.D.

Iberian Peninsula, 1000–1400 A.D.

Italian Peninsula, 1000–1400 A.D.

Low Countries, 1000–1400 A.D.

Exhibition

Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture

The exhibition presents more than eighty medieval sculpted heads, half from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and half selected loans from American and European collections. Because historical events isolated these objects from their original settings, they became objects that could be collected, and objects whose lost histories curators and scholars would hope to recover. The works are arranged thematically, beginning with sculptural heads that were intentionally removed from the bodies of sculpture during periods of iconoclasm. During the French Revolution, for example, monumental figures on the facade of Notre-Dame were systematically destroyed or beheaded by government edict. Just as the king was subjected to the guillotine, the sculptures—seen as symbols of authority—were destroyed in parallel acts of vengeance. An outstanding example is the regal thirteenth-century limestone Head of a King of Judah, originally from Notre-Dame in Paris (Musée National du Moyen Âge, Thermes et Hôtel de Cluny).

Another section of the exhibition groups together stone heads representing figures from the Bible. Most of the figures in this section once adorned churches and cathedrals, and their identities—or original locations—have been established on the basis of historical records such as engravings. A particularly moving work is the extremely realistic late-fifteenth-century limestone Head of Christ (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), whose limestone crown of thorns was carved with small holes that once held actual thorns...

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