The Cambridge Companion to Raphael ed. by Marcia B. Hall (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 226 Butterworth’s study is divided into chapters which address the role of the “juggler ” (or in modern terms, the magician), acrobatic elements of stagecraft, devices which involve the collusion or confederacy of pseudo-audience members, the creation of illusions of appearances and disappearances, the use of sound, puppetry, substitution (such as the use of dummies), other stage tricks, and finally, a chapter on terminology. The focus on primary historical documents allows for valuable explorations of these events, such as the section where Butterworth argues for a specific magician who invented and operated under the stage-name “Hocus Pocus,” but the absence of an engagement with cultural theory detracts from this research. For example, Butterworth discusses texts which refer to public and legal performances of “magic tricks,” texts which refer to incidents which were characterized as theft, and texts of published drama. While these texts clearly share a set of practices and conceptions of magic, Butterworth makes no effort to distinguish between their theoretical positions—they are simply quoted interchangeably to describe performance techniques. Such a slippery slope between entertainment and criminality could easily be connected to the large array of scholarship on the quasi-legitimate status of theatrical performances generally. Similarly, the question of whether the magic was perceived to be “real” or not could fruitfully be connected with the similarly active body of literature on the performativity of witchcraft, gender and identity in the period. In the absence of a literary or cultural goal, Butterworth’s main aim seems to be to ascertain the “truth” of how these tricks were staged, and at times such revelations seem relatively obvious. For example, he discusses that an early modern magician caused a trained horse to make a “seemingly reasoned choice” among available alternatives during a performance. Butterworth counters that “such reasoned responses are unlikely” to actually come from a horse, and that instead the magician probably used patter to create the illusion of a thinking horse (64). Butterworth explains that “The trainer should only use the prescribed words to instruct the horse in his actions and must not feed or reward him when he does not perform the correct action” (65). The study remains a meticulously organized expansion of our records and understanding of early modern magic. MICHAEL SAENGER, English, Southwestern University The Cambridge Companion to Raphael, ed. Marcia B. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005) xiii + 415 pp., ill. The art of Raphael, master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance, has been universally admired by art historians for its clarity of form and ingenuity of composition. His work, along with that of Bramante and Michelangelo, was fundamental to the development of the High Renaissance style in Rome and his creations have been lauded as the ultimate visual manifestation of Christian Neoplatonic ideology. The essays collected within this volume variously consider this celebrated artist and his artistic legacy. Each contribution is highly singular in both topic and approach, providing readers with a spectrum of Raphael scholarship. Indeed, the diversity of viable approaches is in itself a testament to the complexity of the artist and the historical significance of his work. The volume is dedicated to the late John Shearman; the breadth and high quality of the scholarship therein makes a fitting tribute to REVIEWS 227 this great Renaissance scholar. Jeryldene M. Wood’s essay provides an overview of Raphael’s earliest beginnings as an artist through 1508. Looking to such influences as patronage and his interactions with other artists, Wood traces Raphael’s early career both geographically and temporally. The essay considers the artist’s “extraordinary powers of assimilation” as fundamental to Raphael’s success (16). Wood describes the young Raphael as an artist who carefully assimilated and developed upon the example of established masters in order to establish himself within the parameters of a preexisting artistic system (22). Raphael’s early work is considered vis-à-vis that of the artists most influential in his development, i.e. Perugino , Signorelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo. Raphael emerges as a vibrant and savvy character, able to maximize his own artistic potential in light of contemporary needs and taste. In her chapter, Sheryl E. Reiss presents a helpful summary of Raphael...