In the final section of Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), Hans Belting discusses the crisis of the cult image in the early modern period when holy images of the past lost their power due to new aesthetic criteria that promoted the cult of art and the emerging role of the artist. While monumental in its scope and methodology, Belting’s text and specifically his characterization of the “era of art” have not remained without critical response. The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Erik Thunø and Gerhard Wolf, confronts the challenge to the vitality of cult images by exploring the continuing significance of miraculous images from the late Middle Ages through the seventeenth century. By examining various contexts developed to define, delineate, or control miraculous images, the essays offer a broad framework for the understanding of the post-medieval visual experience. That visual experience, while often circumscribed by iconographic or ritual traditions of the Middle Ages, was sustained at its center by new political, cultural, and social institutions whose needs shaped the sacred topography of the period. As the authors show, the proliferation and popularity of cult images demonstrate the need to move beyond the easy definition of an era of art to consider the various ways that miraculous representations continued to exert a powerful presence.

The Miraculous Image brings together an international group of scholars with essays published in English, French, and Italian. With the exception of the introduction by André Vauchez and a text by Susan Verdi Webster, all essays in the volume were originally presented at a conference held in Rome in 2002 that was sponsored by the Bibliotheca Hertziana and the Danish Academy. Offering a range of analytical approaches, the essays explore the role of miraculous images in diverse geographic contexts—from Italy to Spain to Byzantium. Within these contexts, the patronage of different groups or institutions—confraternities, the papacy, mariners—legitimized cult images and, at times, regulated their accessibility and reception.

As Vauchez describes in his introduction, the power of miraculous images was not necessarily derived from either their physical nature or a contact with their prototype. Rather, public response helped to produce miraculous images at particular moments in time. The promotion of these representations frequently paralleled contemporary conflict among diverse social, political, or religious groups; vying for proprietorship of the miraculous images, such groups could express their power through their control of the representations and the images’ physical display. Vauchez points out that these themes—the genesis of miraculous images, their management, and their relationship to the physical and symbolic space of the sanctuaries that contain them—are explored in-depth by the various essays in the volume.

Richard Trexler opens the essays by describing the miraculous image in the West as “an inorganic representation of a human being that allegedly produces an unnatural or ‘miraculous’ effect on something external to itself” or “a representation that supposedly itself changes momentarily” (15); perhaps one must ask where miraculously created images (e.g., the Acheropita in Rome, a representation of Christ not made by human hands) fit in this definition. Trexler’s general discussion of the varied nature of devotional objects and the typical trajectory for their cultic development establishes a platform from which he offers a critical assessment of current scholarship. He claims that such research is too narrowly focused on single works rather than broader questions that can be formulated with an analysis of the “anthropology of devotion” (18) and sources outside of an ecclesiastical context. Trexler further emphasizes the central importance of image ornamentation, a subject that is often forgotten as representations are stripped of the gold, jewels, clothing, metal frames, over-painting, and restoration that once covered their surfaces. This is one of the more important points of this volume: without an understanding of the material surface of images, their frequent invisibility, and the animation that was effected through their ornamental reframing, we cannot completely understand their reception and meaning.

The essays by Thunø, Morten Steen Hansen, and Paul Davies examine the relationship between cult images and their architectural or artistic surroundings. Thunø, focusing on the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi, notes that the centrally planned structure provided a new architectural solution for housing a late medieval cult image; the plan not only accommodated the needs of pilgrims but also presented a different means for accessing the holy by developing a direct relationship between the devotee and the Virgin. This use of an innovative architectural plan to contain a fourteenth-century miraculous image necessitates a rethinking of the interaction between cult representations and the “new art” of Belting’s “era.” The relationship between a medieval cult image and its visual reframing is also raised in Hansen’s essay on Parmigianino’s incomplete decorative program for the eastern apse and vault of the church of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma. Hansen proposes that Parmigianino’s frescoes, in conjunction with the Coronation scene in the apse and the late fourteenth-century cult image on the high altar, form a type of image defense—a forerunner to the textual discourses on sacred images characteristic of the Counter-Reformation. Representations of Old Testament figures provide a visual response to Protestant claims of idolatry by establishing a commentary on the Mosaic law against graven images, thus justifying the relevance of the miraculous icon below. Davies offers instead a broader discussion of the lighting of Renaissance shrines in Italy, noting a preference for dark interiors with a concentration of honorific lights around holy images; such lights focused devotion on a cult representation while at the same time reinforced the power of the image to produce miracles and answer pilgrims’ prayers.

Giulia Barone, Barbara Wisch, and Bram Kempers focus on icons in Rome and their relationship to mendicant, confraternal, or papal patronage. Barone suggests that a new sensitivity to the image characterized the thirteenth century and led to the promotion of the thaumaturgical quality of Marian icons. The rise of the mendicants, especially the Franciscans associated with Santa Maria in Aracoeli, provided a competitive base from which new legends were developed that established the sacred history of images, in turn reinforcing the power of their guardians. In her analysis of the icons of the Sancta Sanctorum and Santa Maria Maggiore, Wisch explores the “economy of salvation” associated with the confraternal care for miraculous images; the author effectively describes how the potential for financial gain placed icons at the center of a shifting political landscape characterized by competition between church canons and confraternities. Wisch raises important questions about the interrelationship of ritual performance, image reception, and economic success, demonstrating that spiritual and financial rewards were often intertwined. Kempers instead examines Raphael’s portraits of Julius II and how they relate to the miraculous image of the Virgin found in Santa Maria del Popolo. While I believe that Kempers exaggerates in his suggestion that the combined ensemble of a papal portrait and medieval icon could give the representation of Julius II the status of a miraculous image, his discussion of the multi-functional nature of the pope’s image as a state portrait and ex voto provides a lens through which the complex political circumstances of the summer of 1511 can be understood.

The essays by Robert Maniura and by Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser explore how miraculous images were transformed by examining various means of promoting cult representations. Maniura focuses on the early surviving miracle collections associated with the sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato and its image of the Virgin. Importantly, the author’s findings demonstrate the ambiguous relationship between a shrine image and the performance of miracles; his textual analysis shows that “the shrine’s power was clearly perceived to need neither proximity of the holy place nor a material means of transmission” (94). By investigating the reception of the miraculous, the author refocuses attention away from the image itself and its disseminated copies. It would be profitable to expand such a study to include other miracle collections to determine if the disconnection between image and miracle was specifically related to the context of Santa Maria delle Carceri or if this break has broader ramifications for the definition of what makes a miraculous image. Notably, in texts dealing with Ligurian cult paintings or statues, images acted as necessary mediators for the performance of a miracle, as described in the essay by Garnett and Rosser. Their discussion of early modern cult images is especially interesting in light of Trexler’s comment that “only images in churches make it into the history books” (17). As demonstrated in Liguria, the tension between popular piety and official Church approval reflects the frequent instability of cult practice; the reframing of miraculous representations, through architecture, oral tradition, or official copies, provided a means not only of authentication but also control. Garnett and Rosser’s essay should help to broaden the understanding of the process of image replication beyond the straightforward relationship between copy and prototype to include a consideration of more complex issues of image management, the power of popular devotion, and the various ways that miraculous representations could be textually and visually defined.

Megan Holmes demonstrates that copies, in conjunction with an analysis of divergent textual sources, can help to explain the early cult development of the Florentine image of the Santissima Annunziata. Holmes proposes that the miraculous nature of the Annunciation fresco was developed retrospectively in legends that emphasized the face of the Virgin as divinely created by St. Luke or through angelic intervention; such an association established the portrayal as an acheropita and aligned the fresco with a tradition of miraculous images in Rome and Impruneta. Copies of the Annunziata suggest that the fresco was, in fact, repainted, a process that both activated the miraculous nature of the image and animated the presence of the Virgin.

The essays by Susan Verdi Webster, Alexei Lidov, and Michele Bacci extend the discussion of miraculous images beyond the context of Italy. Verdi Webster explores the influence of the Virgen de los Reyes of the Royal Chapel in the Cathedral of Seville on the evolution and subsequent development of the imágenes de vestir, sculptures of the Virgin produced with the intention of being clothed and adorned. The addition of Verdi Webster’s essay in this volume, a paper that was not part of the original conference, responds to Trexler’s call for greater attention to be paid to the physical appearance of miraculous images; Verdi Webster effectively describes the transformation of the imágenes de vestir from being visualizations of royal power to acting as symbols of the new, spiritual wealth and prestige claimed by lay confraternities. In the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, articulated sculptures of the Virgin acted as statements of power through their luxurious and splendid display of contemporary fashion, crowns, and scepters.

Lidov’s essay shifts attention to the Byzantine Empire by focusing on the Tuesday rite of the Hodegetria in Constantinople and the symbolic relationship of that weekly procession to the siege of the city in 626. In his analysis of the Hodegetria celebration and similar processional performances found in Thessalonike, Polotsk, Moscow, and some cities of southern Italy, Lidov explores the making of sacred space, a study that he names Hierotopy. He uses the concept of Hierotopy to discuss “iconic images created in space”—images that were “not depicted but represented in a given sacred space between or around actual pictures” (303). Miraculous images, like the Hodegetria, could develop “spatial imagery,” effectively extending their power to the urban context in which the procession was enacted as well as to distant geographic locations where similar processions were established. Lidov overcomplicates his analysis through the introduction of the term Hierotopy. However, his examination of how sacred space could expand beyond an ecclesiastical interior to encompass also the urban milieu associated with an image’s processional life is an often neglected subject in the study of icons; our understanding of miraculous images and the processions that mediated contact between the holy and the viewer must take into consideration the transformation of the urban fabric into a locus for the communication of the sacred, a space that could be imbued with its own divine energy.

Bacci broadens the analysis of sacred topography to include not just the terraferma but also the bays, wharfs, and natural ports that characterized a sailor’s journey from western Europe to the Holy Land. With the intensification of maritime travel in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mariners used topographical references often associated with image sanctuaries to navigate the Mediterranean coastline, essentially guaranteeing a constant stream of visitors to relatively minor shrines. The sante parole, prayers recited when lost at sea or in need of assistance, offered an evocative list of those sanctuaries to develop a spiritual map of the sacred topography of the Mediterranean.

In the final essay of the volume, Wolf returns to the Italian images of the Santissima Annunziata as well as the Virgin in Santa Maria delle Carceri to raise more general questions related to the nature of miracles, the conception of miraculous images, and the role of magic. Revisiting Belting’s “era of art,” Wolf explains that miraculous images and artistic celebration converged during the fifteenth century to produce various types of miracles; at that time, the “incarnate” nature of representations and their potential for miraculous expression could be confirmed on both emotional and scientific levels. The late medieval understanding of optics and the nature of vision also offered a new means of experiencing the holy; images, as mediators between the visible and invisible realms, were distinguished by miracles that could be realized internally in the individual or collectively in an urban context.

The various methodologies and subjects approached in this volume demonstrate both the continuing power of the miraculous image in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance and new directions for future scholarship. Hopefully, the thought-provoking essays will offer a springboard for further examination of topics such as the confraternal control of miraculous images, the role of copies, the nature of sacred topography, and the significance of image ornamentation—areas that still provide rich material for study. My one criticism relates, however, to the diverse nature of the essays. This ambitious volume, with its portrait of the geographic and temporal continuity of the miraculous image in the post-medieval world, at times demonstrates a lack of cohesiveness as essays jump from papal patronage to seaside shrines to the relationship of text and image. While some authors (for example, Maniura, Garnett/Rosser, and especially Wolf) attempt to bridge the divisions among the essays by citing other works in the volume, it would have been helpful to have a greater articulation of the relationships among the essays; the lack of a clear trajectory for the texts will perhaps lead to their being read in isolation, a shame considering the conceptual approaches that link many of the works. In addition, the essays by Bacci, Verdi Webster, and Lidov seem “tacked on” as an afterthought to the volume’s primary focus on Italy. Yet overall, the high level of scholarship presented in the individual essays makes this volume a significant contribution to the question of the role of the cult image in post-medieval visual culture.