IN THE polarised religious climate of the Protestant Reformations in Europe, late-medieval sculpted images were controversial objects — to be reviled or venerated.
Viewed by orthodox Roman Catholics or Reformers, they were regarded as either devotional or idolatrous, their viewing audience either pious or superstitious and credulous.
Late-medieval religious images were not just objects of veneration, however, but also subjects with agency. They invited intelligent interaction. They assumed complex functions, whether liturgical, narrative, or devotional.
Nowhere is this more in evidence than in figures carved as if arrested mid-speech: “speaking” sculptures.
The illusion of speech can enhance a narrative sequence, appealing to the senses, such as cries or groans eliciting empathy and devotion. But it also connects with specific liturgical texts and practices, which the theme of the annunciation neatly demonstrates.
The alabaster relief of the Annunciation in Havelberg Cathedral, north-west of Berlin, dates from around 1400, and is placed in the Marienkapelle on the north side of the cathedral next to the cloister. In this Annunciation drama, the participants act out their parts — but they also speak their lines.
Gabriel, the Virgin, and God the Father, above, are all captured in mid-speech. The words uttered by Gabriel, the Ave Maria, would be obvious and familiar to all: since the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, this was one of the key elements of the catechism, to be recited daily. Effectively, the very act of recognising the scene and supplying the words of the Ave Maria would draw visitors to the cathedral into this pious practice.
This principle is made explicit in a famous fresco by Fra Angelico (c.1440-45), in the Dominican monastery of San Marco, in Florence. It bears a Latin inscription that translates roughly as: “When you pass the image of the Virgin, do not forget to say a Hail Mary.” Through the open-mouth motif rather than a cumbersome inscription (accessible only to the literate), a speaking sculpted Annunciation also invited a wider public to supply the well-known words, prompting recitation as effectively as Fra Angelico’s painting did for the Dominican inmates at San Marco.
There is a clear rationale for evoking the voice in the other two key players, also. Like Gabriel’s “Ave”, the verbal assent of the Annunciate Virgin was considered performative in the conception of the Christ-child by medieval thinkers such as Ludoph of Saxony, St Bernard, and St Bridget of Sweden, as was the performative Word of God himself. For the Premonstratensians (the order active at Havelberg), the image may have held an additional exhortation to praise; for the Annunciation was traditionally associated with matins, particularly the opening line: “O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouths shall show forth (annunciabit) thy praise.”
The Apostles’ Creed presented other articles of faith, and all were supposed to memorise and recite it daily. Sculpted series of the Twelve Apostles frequently bear scrolls on which their creed is or was inscribed, one clause per apostle as devised by St Ambrose (c.339-c.397).
Almost as common are sculpted apostle series, where one or more figures were shown in active recitation — again, by implication — of the creed, where the illusion of speech stands in for scrolls and inscriptions.
The small alabaster St Philip of c.1430 by the so-called Rimini Master comes from a rank of 12 apostles from a crucifixion altarpiece imported from Northern Europe, and installed in the Church of Santa Maria della Grazie, in Rimini.
Probably originally placed at the eye level of the officiating priest, this vocal figure echoes the creed that might be said in prime and compline, and before all offices.
Other speaking apostles were to be found in the public arena, typically in portals, around the triforium, or on the pillars of the nave of great churches. Through the speech motif and its widely understood significance, these speaking-apostle statues invited the general congregation to summon the creed to mind, and offered the illusion of participating in its recitation.
LIKE speaking archangels and apostles, late Gothic statues of John the Baptist frequently represent him as arrested in mid-speech, again inviting the viewer to “hear”. The famous 1438 wooden statue of John the Baptist by Donatello, in the Frari church in Venice, both “speaks” and carries a scroll with his text inscribed: “Ecce Agnus . . .”. This leaves no doubt that the words viewers are intended to hear are John’s signature speech at Christ’s baptism (St John 1.29).
The spoken words serve as a clear attribute of John the Baptist, like the lamb that he so often carries. They also carry a liturgical significance; for John’s speech is also evoked in the Agnus Dei of the mass: a text familiar even to those unable to read or understand Latin.
THE carved wooden crucifix placed over the high altar in St Michael’s, in the German city of Schwäbish Hall, was made by Michel Erhart in 1494. It shows Christ with drooping head, but alive, and offers the illusion of communicating with viewers below through both fixed gaze and the suggestion of speech or sound: his mouth is open so wide that the teeth can be seen.
This might be viewed as an affective image, suggesting a groan of agony or Christ’s harrowing final cry before death; but the Latin inscription winding in and out of view along the border of Christ’s loincloth provides the clue to an alternative, more complex reading.
Here, four of Christ’s last speeches on the cross are transcribed: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”; “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”; “It is finished”; and “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” These barely legible texts surely provide the key to understanding what Erhart intended. Christ’s open mouth may as easily be construed as speaking these last words, offering the illusion of personal address, and prompting viewers below to supply and meditate on his words on the cross from their reserves of memory.
IN HIS remarks on the usefulness of artistic images, Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) infers a rational function and intelligent viewers, albeit unlettered: “For what writing makes present to those reading, the same picturing makes present to the uneducated, to those perceiving visually” (translation: Mary Carruthers).
Gregory’s understanding of art as a “Bible of the Poor” was not exclusively or even primarily didactic: it is not easy to decipher a visual narrative unless you know the story already. But, for a popular audience already familiar with the stories, religious imagery can appeal not just to the emotions, but also to the imagination, refreshing the memory and offering scope for reflection and contemplation. The illusion of speech in sculpture may be understood to operate in a very similar way.
Of course, an image can clearly never actually speak. It is up to an attentive audience to decipher what the speech might be, and to supply the words from their catechism. Although there was — and is — nothing to prevent individuals from indulging in flights of imagination of dubious orthodoxy, many of the “speaking” statues evoked texts that were so well known there was little danger of deviation, as in the Annunciation, the Apostles’ Creed, and the speech of John the Baptist.
Had sculptors and patrons lacked confidence in the audience’s ability to make these connections, there would have been no point in attempting the technical challenge of simulated speech at all, at least in public artworks. This confidence undermines the trope of the ignorant, superstitious, and uneducated common folk with which modern believers tend to populate the Middle Ages.
Speaking sculptures suggest that we may have underestimated the capacity of late-medieval congregations, and that modern, infinitely better-informed visitors, might perhaps be missing something that to them was obvious.
The rudimentary catechism, occasional sermons, liturgical drama, and mystery plays were the ways in which the late-medieval public became familiar with biblical narratives and texts. A stone statue ofSt Mary Magdalene is placed on the jamb of the right doorway in the Havelberg choir screen, not far from where the central parish altar used to be.
She is represented holding her ointment pot, and with mouth wide open as if speaking loudly, or even singing. This is surprising; for, in artistic representations, female saints are usually decorously mute. She faces westwards, addressing not the Premonstratensian choir behind her, but the nave, and a vernacular congregation, gathered either for services at the parish altar or a wider public visiting for annual feasts.
Her presence disrupts the sequence of apostles (some of them “speaking”) otherwise dividing the screen’s relief scenes of the Passion of Christ. This, as well as the prominent speech motif, cannot be a random anomaly. The space in front of the choir screen was used to enact a liturgical drama of the resurrection early each Easter Day. As the first to encounter Christ after the resurrection, Mary Magdalene played a vital part, and it was she who uttered the key word of recognition: “Rabboni”.
This is surely what we hear from the carved Mary Magdalene, who served as a permanent reminder through the year of that dramatic moment in the Easter liturgy for the many who had witnessed it in person.
These speaking images make demands on viewers, but offer by way of reward a sense of direct, personal address, a sense of being drawn into a shared speech, common to both heaven and earth. Sculpture was capable of exerting a performative power that far exceeded two-dimensional painting — something that, sadly, iconoclastic reformers understood all too well. All that viewers needed was the eyes to hear.
Dr Kim W. Woods’s Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe: A silent rhetoric was published this month by Lund Humphries at £60 (Church Times Bookshop £54); 978-1-84822-673-9.