DEVOTION TO LITURGY

The importance of sacred art in the Catholic liturgical tradition is evident through the great altarpieces of Medieval and Re-naissance Europe, where the decrees of the Council of Lyons codified the tradition of priests facing ad orientam and the liturgi-cal necessity of devotional artwork on the altar. While altarpieces were found in churches during a period of several centuries, the authors of this book bind the scope of their study to the most im-portant altarpieces of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Limentani, one of two au-thors working together on this project, provides a brief explanation of the altarpiece in the introduction. The author notes that the secularizing Napoleonic laws were principally responsible for the scattering—and frequent dividing—of the painted paneled altarpieces through-out Europe, necessitating the study and physical recon-struction of many of these altarpieces. She then focuses on the liturgical history lead-ing to the creation of the al-tarpieces, the proper linguistic derivations of the termi-nology used, and a “system-atic theory” of a polyptych’s origins. This systematic theory focuses on the donor’s objectives, the placement of the polyptych within a space, and the arrangement of the various panels of a polyptych. The donor receives his own section before the introduction concludes with evaluations of the more overtly physical considerations of any given altarpiece: including the techniques, compositions, symbolism, and stylistic selections chosen.

Limentani and Pietrogiovanna then provide a series of individual essays covering thirty of the most important and noteworthy altarpieces of Europe. The wonderful thing about this book is that there is no need to view it as a necessarily sequential anthology. A reader can feel quite comfort-able jumping about from altarpiece to altarpiece, reading and exploring only those essays of an immediate interest, knowing that within an essay’s text the relevant facts will be covered.

The authors compose each essay individually and concisely, noting only the information necessary to understand the particular altarpiece in question, typically in no more than three pages of text. Depending on the altarpiece, the essay may address issues involving the artists, the contract arrangements, the patronage, or the artwork’s dedication, as well as other information; however, all the essays discuss the imagery of the altarpieces and their composition. The autonomy of any given essay is partially necessitated by the reality of two separate authors contributing independently on the various altarpieces. But while this book could appear disjointed due to its dual authorship, the obvious high quality of the compilation betrays no disunity. The writing is clear and surpris-ingly enjoyable to read, combining the essays with wonderfully formatted illustra-tions into an elegant collection.

This book takes great care to diagram-matically describe the altarpiece composi-tions, citing the imagery represented in the panels and noting their dimensions in metric. Enlargements of important elements of the altarpieces have been judiciously selected to ensure their proper appreciation, and additional artwork relevant to the con-sideration of the altarpieces has been in-cluded. Of the folding triptychs where the exterior panels have remained intact, the authors elected to use gatefolds to impart the experiential quality of the altarpieces to the readers. As such, one can physically see the relationship established between the exterior and interior panels, in both the opened and closed positions.

This formatting feature remains the most singularly unique aspect of this book, adding an additional level of enjoyment beyond the already noteworthy quality of the im-ages. Unfortunately, the Ghent Altarpiece is unquestionably among the most famous altar-pieces represented, and yet the gatefold feature was not applied to it, apparently because the vertical dimension of the altarpiece was too elongated to allow for the proper page for-matting. Given that the book itself is already an oversized format, it would seem logical that consistency in the formatting of the altarpieces for the gatefold pages would have taken precedence, even if this required modifying the dimensions of the book itself.

Additionally, both the Coronation of the Virgin Altarpiece by the Bressanone Workshop, and the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grûnewald, were too complex in their movements to be represented by the gatefold feature. Despite this limita-tion, both altarpieces remain liberally illustrated. Additionally, the compilers take great care to describe the Isenheim Altarpiece’s multiple arrangements clearly through the standard series of diagrams.

In the end, with so few shortcomings to note, this collection rightly stands among the most important art books of the year: a legitimate scholarly endeavor with beauti-ful large-format illustrations that will be a cherished addition to any book collection.

Thomas M. Dietz is an architect and a graduate student in history, theory, and criticism of architecture and art at MIT.

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