David Areford’s marvelous book offers his readers the opportunity to reconsider early woodcuts and metalcuts in new ways. He not only effectively shows how these ephemeral and inexpensive images were integrated into daily life, but he also reveals how these portable and highly adaptable prints were manipulated by those who purchased and collected them. Although surviving reproductions are typically preserved in museums, this has concealed their original function. As museum objects, they are readily interpreted as aesthetic objects, as things to be seen rather than to be used. Not surprisingly, print scholarship has consequently concentrated primarily on issues of connoisseurship, on matters of attribution and dating. By contrast, Areford, deeply informed by the Rezeptionsästhetik of Hans Belting and others, investigates the ways in which viewers reconstructed their meaning.
His text provides a persuasive critique of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936).” As Areford rightly argues, Benjamin recognizes the cultural significance of printmaking as a means of making images more assessable. However, he is misguided in his assumption that reproductions weaken the cult value of unique works of art. Early prints did not diminish the aura of originals. On the contrary, reproductions extended and intensified their power. Early prints occasionally functioned as contact relics, as surrogates for the cult images they represent. In some instances, woodcuts were even considered to be miraculous images. A print of the Madonna del Fuoco, for example, is believed to have helped children escape from a deadly fire. As Areford notes, a shrine was subsequently built in its honor.
In the first chapter, Areford addresses the materiality of the image. Early prints frequently imitated more expensive media, such as illuminated manuscripts, embroideries, and painted textiles, in visual appearance. However, the hand coloring on woodcuts seems sloppy and weak in craftsmanship. As Areford argues, the application of paint was not the result of hasty production or carelessness. On the contrary, it was intended to intensify religious devotion. The hand coloring on images of the Passion simulates the spilling of Christ’s blood. In a sense, the fluid application of paint makes the picture seem as if it continues to bleed, fostering a more visceral response. The pious beholder is not only intimately confronted with Christ’s wounds, but also further implicated by the apparent continuity of his suffering. Some early prints were designed with collaboration in mind. For instance, images of St. Francis were printed without indication of the stigmatization, in anticipation of viewers drawing or painting rays marking the nexus between savior and saint.
The second chapter is devoted to the ways in which beholders physically altered woodcuts and metalcuts after their purchase. Images were often transformed to suit personal needs. Active reworking also fostered greater remembrance. Inscriptions were occasionally added to the face of prints. The name of the depicted saint or phrases asking for divine intercession or calling attention to Judgment Day was typically inserted. Sometimes collectors trimmed prints to change their meaning. For instance Anna Ebin modified the iconography of an image by cutting out the figures of the Virgin and St. John at the foot of the cross, in the desire to replicate Lidwina of Schiedam’s vision of the Crucifixion. Single sheet prints were also placed in books in ways that reconfigured their meaning.
In the third chapter, Areford discusses the early print collection of Jacopo Rubieri, a fifteenth-century notary and lawyer from Parma. Although these images have been badly restored and have been removed from their original context, Areford reconstructs their possible placement and use. Rubieri glued single sheet images into judicial texts. He also blackened the backgrounds of many of his prints. His selection and arrangement, Areford suggests, were not accidental, but assembled to present pictorial arguments.
The fourth chapter focuses on a print series depicting the story of Simon of Trent, an innocent child allegedly killed by Jews in 1475. Reinforcing contemporary verbal accounts, these anti-Semitic images were widely and quickly distributed, providing visual evidence of the apparent crime by rendering the event as a ritualistic murder in a synagogue. These prints not only promoted the sanctification of Simon as a martyr of the faith, they also supported the torture and restriction of Jews as legitimate acts.
Areford addresses prints representing of Christ’s side wound in his final chapter. These popular images depict the wound in isolation, inviting beholders to contemplate the depths of his suffering. Reproduced apparently to actual scale, the precise measure of the wound reinforced the veracity of the sacred event. As Areford suggests, the disembodied opening may have readily been compared to a vagina or vulva as the site of desired rebirth. In addition, its appearance may have elicited connotations of a mouth, a place to be kissed, reinforcing its link with relics. Imaginatively mapping the dimensions of Christ’s side wound not only offered indulgence, it was believed to protect the devout from sudden death and misfortune. For pregnant women, it also promised the uncomplicated birth of healthy children. Visual representations of the side wound not only fostered prayerful meditation, it may have fostered greater Eucharistic devotion. By depicting a fragment of Christ’s body, prints may have reinforced the notion that broken bread transformed into the consecrated host could re-present the body and blood of Christ in its entirety. Reproduced at the proper dimensions, such prints provided an effective means to comprehend the measure of Christ’s love (Ephesians 3: 18-21).
Areford’s book persuasively reveals the breadth and depth of uses these images served. His text not only encourages scholars to take a closer look at early printmaking, more importantly, it also offers a deeper understanding of the beholder’s share in constructing their meaning.