Memorializing the Middle Classes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Abstract

The volume of essays examines memorials within various religious contexts during the Middle Ages and early modern period. In her introduction, Anne Leader points up the impact of the material here studied, noting that the history of Western art would be quite short were it not for practices of memorializing. Perhaps the most productive aspect of this book is the insistent use of the plural “middle classes.” The authors explore not “a middle class” but the shifting, growing, and contended groups that the term middle class has come to comprise. Contentious fluidity is underscored in nearly every essay. (Only one contributor, Agnieszka Patala, attempts to draw a sharp distinction between the patrician and the middle classes in urban centers.) I would further stress that the terms middle class and bourgeoisie are of course retrospective and analytical; they did not constitute contemporaneous self-fashioning or aspirational categories. The contributors bring together a wealth of artistic examples and written documents as they interrogate the hierarchical placement of tombs, including floor slabs and wall monuments, distinctions of placement inside and outside of churches, patrons’ choices of institutions, the decorum and meaning of materials, the usage of various media and multimedia, the meanings of spolia and emulation, the comparative advantages of various kinds of furnishings, as well as of transitory consumable gifts, and the ways in which memorials were interconnected with the performance of liturgy and the observance of the church year.Without any attempt to “cover” all topographies, institutions, or types of monuments, the eleven chapters present a welcome diversity of material and approaches from statistical analysis over extended periods of time to detailed case studies of specific monuments or individuals. Readers will recognize works associated with well-known patrons and artists but also discover yet unstudied material. In her contribution “Recycling for Eternity: The Reuse of Ancient Sarcophagi by Pisan Merchants, 1200–1400,” Karen Rose Mathews demonstrates how, in the fashioning of the Camposanto, elite Pisan merchants of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries reused ancient Roman sarcophagi from other locations in order to forge legitimacy from two interconnected pasts: ancient Rome and medieval Pisa. In “Nuremberg Merchants in Breslau (1440–1520),” Agnieszka Patala shows how Nuremberg families carved a niche for themselves in Breslau by initiating donations of chapels, altarpieces, memorial Masses, and associated church furnishings, many of which foregrounded the Nuremberg saint, Sebald. In “The Sepulchralization of Renaissance Florence,” Anne Leader cites the wealth of scholarship on Tuscan patronage, arguing that Florentines, motivated by a mix of Christian piety and social calculation, consciously made use of the “power of place,” which colored decisions regarding the positioning of tombs, as well as choices of institution. Leader draws from her ongoing digital study of tomb ownership to extract statistical comparisons with respect to membership in various occupations, guilds, and families as well as the relative positions of groups in the communal hierarchy. By contrast, Christian Steer’s essay “‘Under the Tombe That I Have There Prepared’: Monuments for the Tailors and Merchant Tailors of Medieval London” focuses on monuments that were erected for two masters of a fraternity. In the chapter “Tombs and the imago doctoris in cathedra in Northern Italy, ca. 1300–1364,” Ruth Wolff expands our understanding of the motif of the learned man seated and teaching at a desk, heretofore associated primarily with the famous sculptures of professors in Bologna. Wolff shows that the motif refers to a broad class of intellectuals with legal and notarial training and explores three examples that manifest the complex meanings of the motif in various settings associated with churches. In their essay “‘Middle-Class Men Who Would Be Nobles in Fifteenth-Century Castile, Flanders, and Burgundy,” Ann Adams and Nicola Jennings focus on patrons well-known to art history, who, like many of the rising middle classes, had themselves commemorated as medieval gentry. In “Remembering the Dead, Planning for the Afterlife in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany: The Case of Cione di Ravi,” Sandra Cardarelli edits and studies a surviving testament from the last feudal lord of the contado of Siena in which he makes aspirational provisions for elaborate memorial undertakings that may never have been realized due to a lack of funds.In contrast, the essay “Noble Aspirations: Social Mobility and Commemoration in Two Seventeenth-Century Venetian Funerary Monuments” by Meredith Crosbie interrogates surviving works as monuments attesting to the successful ascent of two Venetians into the ranks of nobility. In an important but surprising chapter in this book on art, Charlotte A. Stanford writes about “Commemoration through Food: Obits Celebrated by the Franciscan Nuns of Late Medieval Strasbourg,” playing up the importance of memorial pittances, which, through endowments, provided delicacies on specified holidays or anniversaries for the deceased. Barbara McNulty’s examination of commemorative Byzantine icons, “The Panel Painting as a Choice for Family Commemoration: The Case of Fifteenth-Century Patrons on Cyprus,” presents the rich history of specific Cypriotic panels through which important individuals and families promoted their positions within the church. In the final chapter, “The Knight and the Merchant: Familial Commemorative Strategy in the Wake of the Flemish Revolts ca. 1482–1492,” Harriette Peel scrutinizes two similar sets of memorials against their political backgrounds.Several issues stand out. One is the problem posed by growing numbers of tombs in and around churches, which was recognized already in the eighth century, provided the catalyst for establishing the Camposanto in Pisa during the twelfth century and its expansion during the fourteenth, and gave rise to the increasing endeavors of the mendicants, beginning in the thirteenth century, to attract burials of important individuals and families. Leader states poignantly that, although you could distribute different kinds of commemorative objects and rituals among various institutions, you could choose only one place of burial. In this regard she points to tensions between mendicant monasteries and parish churches. Donor rivalries for prominence and pious favor were of course rampant, but institutional competition for the income and wealth generated directly or indirectly through burials and all forms of memorialization were also paramount. Gender is given significance, beyond heraldic left and right placement: Leader informs us about gender-specific practices and gives statistics. Stanford asserts that scholarship has stressed the celebration of anniversary Masses by priests, overlooking the importance of nuns’ prayers for benefactors.Ironically, it becomes clear throughout most of the essays that neither local custom nor even canon law was carved in stone. Exceptions were the rule and definitions vary. I would therefore caution against generalizations, e.g., that Nuremberg’s donor families were not allowed their own chapels in their home parishes, or hasty conclusions, e.g., connecting the presence of saints in liturgical books with the existence of altarpieces (Patala, 51, 60). Of course, the ambition to expand influence and to challenge existing social structures and barriers lay at the heart of the efforts of those who were later credited with carving out new middle-class niches for themselves, and these goals provided the motivations of the new monied classes to establish themselves as belonging to the elite and privileged. It is often asserted in the essays that memorial donations for the next life reflected social status in this life. It must, however, also be stressed that works of art, literature, liturgy, and sensory delight could cement, promote, or even create social status in the present world, for current, future, and—retroactively or contrafactually—past generations.The collection is astonishingly cohesive in its purposes. Anyone interested in memorial donations from this period will profit from reading the volume from cover to cover. Although the book disappoints with its poor photographic reproductions, it excels in its inclusion of new maps and appendices of documents. It is rare when art historians specializing on works in Italy and the North meet in one project. The motivations and strategies of memorializing were indeed comparable, and yet they are seldom considered together. Although those who initiated commemorative art during this period were remarkably polyglot, art historians of today must collaborate if they wish to overcome linguistic barriers. As this review goes to press, news reports from around the globe are full of protests regarding certain commemorative art. This situation should give reason enough to continue our critical analysis of the history and power of monuments from all periods.