The eleventh and twelfth centuries in Western Europe witnessed a level of sculptural production unequaled since antiquity. Thomas Dale offers a fresh and compelling account of this phenomenon, focusing on how the very materiality of Romanesque sculpture helped patrons and audiences make sense of their world. This book will be of wide interest to historians of medieval art, as well as to anyone interested in the problem of the senses.
Kirk T. Ambrose, author of The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe In Pygmalions Power, Thomas Dale replaces the outdated master narrative of Romanesque sculpture with a brilliant new history of materials, meanings, and functions. Considering both the normativeportraiture and the ideal nudeand the disruptive other of the monstrous and the lustful, he delves into issues of the body as model, as admonition, and even as musical instrument to be played rightly. Finally, characterizing the church itself as body, he demonstrates how sculpture could activate the senses and allow perception of the divine.
Cynthia Hahn, author of Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400circa 1204 The reasons for sculptures revival and its vital eventual role in the visual culture of the Middle Ages have long dogged the narrative of medieval art. Dale offers an original and thought-provoking rewriting of the problem by exploring sculptures new spiritual embodiment, decisively showing how viewers psychological investment in sculptural objectsstone sculpture in a cloister, reliquaries in crypts, carved wooden Crucifixionsanimated the works and gave them meaning. Pygmalions Power represents a significant reorientation for medieval sculpture studies and offers a welcome challenge to older orthodoxies.
Robert A. Maxwell, author of The Art of Medieval Urbanism: Parthenay in Romanesque Aquitaine This is a major contribution to understanding Romanesque art. The so-called Pygmalion effect should be presented in every course on Romanesque art.
D. K. Haworth Choice