Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art.

Dillenberger, John

A detailed and comprehensive account of images of persons, i.e. holy images, from the early Church to the beginning of the Counter-Reformation. Physically, the 490 pages of Belting's own text, printed on relatively large pages with fairly small print, disclose the prodigious labor that went into this work. No one has so thoroughly documented and examined the range of images. Yet that single-minded perusal of how the images functioned brackets out an analysis of what images mean. Perhaps that is because B. believes that until the renaissance and reformation periods, images are noted for how they function within societies rather than what they are as realities in and of themselves. That historical judgment has much to be said for it, even if it is only partially true.

While it would be difficult to summarize B.'s text, one can point to several subjects in which his treatment is unique. More than anyone else I know, B. deals with the interrelation of images and relics in early periods, times in which it is hard to distinguish the two. His account of images not made with hands, i.e. images that come directly from a divine source, such as the well-known Veronica veil in the West, is particularly instructive. Such images directly disclose that which they image through both sight and touch. Indeed, when touch is no longer possible or permitted, seeing functions in lieu of touch. When that disposition prevails, even the images made by hands center not in the one who made them but in how the image functions as a redemptive force.

B. gives a good deal of attention to how Eastern images arrived and functioned in the West. That is an important issue, for the Eastern influence is incontrovertible. At the same time, while the West borrowed from the East, it also, through the filter of its own perceptions, changed the understanding of what it received. I wish B. had given more attention to that issue. One could make a case that from the Carolingian period on, images in the West were seen as if they were relics, while in the East relics were seen more as images. Indeed, that difference accounts for the Reformers' being so suspicious of paintings and sculpture, for the seeing of images increasingly gave them the power and status of relics. Seeing in the West, as contrasted with the East, was a more literal modality, one less enveloped by imagination and mystery. Hence, the use of images in processionals in the West made the distinction between veneration and adoration less believable, indeed tilting the understanding to the latter. But given all the materials B. deals with on this issue, one can only be grateful.

Generally, the accounts on various issues are so extensive that few may read the volume from cover to cover. Rather, it will be used as if it were a dictionary. It is a volume into which one will continually dip, not a volume one reads and then discards.

The German original was published in 1990. That may account for the fact that recent work, particularly on the early Church, is not mentioned, work that would partially challenge B.'s generalizations about the church fathers and the role of images connected with Roman emperors. One thinks, e.g., of the contributions of Paul Corby Finney, Robin Jensen, Thomas F. Mathews, and Mary Charles Murray. Furthermore, the materials on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation are sketchy. Undoubtedly that is because B. merely wants to show what a difference the new consciousness of the art objects in their own right makes for the viewing of art, including the new consciousness characteristic of the artists.

In addition to B.'s text, one should note that there are over 300 plates, well selected and placed, and over 46 pages of notes to the text. More importantly still, B. includes relevant texts representative of the history. Many of the 65 pages of 44 texts have had to be shortened; nevertheless, relevant material is quoted and much of it is generally hard to find elsewhere. Thus, taken as a whole, this book is a gold mine for which readers in general and individuals working in the visual arts can only be grateful.

JOHN DILLENBERGER Graduate Theological Union Berkeley, California