Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience by Thomas E. A. Dale

Abstract

Reviewed by: Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience by Thomas E. A. Dale Judith Collard Dale, Thomas E. A., Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience, University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019; hardback; pp. 320; 21 colour plates, 113 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$99.95; ISBN 9780271083452. Thomas Dale begins his book with a story from Reginald of Durham’s Life of Saint Godric, in which the saint sees two carved wooden statues come alive, the crucifix and the Madonna and Child. These statues, which may seem rigid and stylized to us, embodied many of the qualities explored here, including their three-dimensionality, their use within various rituals, and the multiple senses that were evoked in these settings. The desire for such statues to come alive has been termed the ‘Pygmalion effect’. As Dale points out, these statues were brought to life through public religious processions and liturgical drama, through ritual veneration, and in more private devotional practices. This important and stimulating book examines Romanesque sculpture that has long been familiar to art historians. It covers images of the Madonna and Child, crucifixions, tomb sculptures, Bible scenes, monsters, and grotesques found on the capitals in cloisters, as well as such porch sculptures of Moissac, Autun, Vézelay, and Conques. The tympanum sculptures of Moissac or Vézelay have come to represent the Romanesque in many art history courses. Certainly, these tympana have featured prominently in mine, and as a first-year student were the subject of my first art history essay. What Thomas Dale has done in this book is to reinvigorate this familiar topic and provide fresh insights on these much-studied works. It has been customary to credit the revival of figurative stone sculpture in the mid-eleventh century to a desire to reclaim the authority of ancient Rome. Here, however, Dale argues that that the revitalized art form is part of a shift to a wider emphasis on spiritual embodiment and affective piety during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. His work is anchored in a strong historiographical base, as well as a deep knowledge of contemporary literature, moving easily between the two. He is also influenced by cultural anthropology and liturgical studies, in addition to the work of such historians and art historians as Robert Maxwell, Mary Carruthers, and Caroline Walker Bynum. The book is divided into five chapters, each focusing on a particular type of sculpture. The first examines crucifixes and images of the Madonna and Child or the Throne of Wisdom. Such sculptures have been given prominence in narratives about the origins of monumental sculpture, as they often contained relics and thus overcame concerns about idolatry. Dale, amongst others, challenges this, pointing to their affective qualities and their links to devotional practices. The second chapter concerns the presentation of the nude body, exploring such themes as man as microcosm, Eve and the Fall, pagan nudes as fallen idols, and the asexual nudes of the baptized and the resurrected. The chief object of study, however, is the representation of female lust in the portal of the church of Sainte-Pierre in Moissac. Next, he explores portraiture, both in the reliquaries of the saints and in tomb effigies. These were less concerned with producing a naturalistic likeness [End Page 233] than with an ideal inner one. In the fourth chapter the focus is on monsters and phantasms. Three case studies, encompassing the cloister capitals of the Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, the choir capitals of the collegiate church of Chauvigny in Poitou, and the portal of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, are investigated, interrogating St Bernard of Clairvaux’s celebrated critique of such monsters. In the final chapter, Dale examines facades and portal sculpture. The presence of the theophany, in the representation of the Ascension and the Second Coming, and the related Last Judgement, at the entrance of such churches as the Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques, Autun Cathedral, and Sainte-Pierre in Moissac, is investigated, while the Pentecost tympanum at Vézelay Abbey in Burgundy is also discussed. Close readings of each explore how the different...