William Diebold | Reed College (original) (raw)

Books by William Diebold

Medieval Art, Modern Politics is an innovative volume of twelve essays by international scholars,... more Medieval Art, Modern Politics is an innovative volume of twelve essays by international scholars, prefaced by a comprehensive introduction. It examines the political uses and misuses of medieval images, objects, and the built environment from the 16th to the 20th century. In case studies ranging from Russia to the US and from catacombs, mosques, cathedrals, and feudal castles to museums and textbooks, it demonstrates how the artistic and built legacy has been appropriated in post-medieval times to legitimize varied political agendas, whether royalist, imperial, fascist, or colonial. Entities as diverse as the Roman papacy, the Catholic Church, local arts organizations, private owners of medieval fortresses, or organizers of exhibitions and publishers are examined for the multiple ways they co-opt medieval works of art. Medieval Art, Modern Politics enlarges the history of revivalism and of medievalism by giving it a uniquely political twist, demonstrating the unavoidable (but often ignored) intersection of art history, knowledge, and power.

Papers by William Diebold

Bernard of Angers' Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, written about 1025 ce, contains a well-known a... more Bernard of Angers' Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, written about 1025 ce, contains a well-known account of images, including the golden statue of St Foy now in Conques. In his attempt to sanction the existence and use of such images, Bernard made two unusual claims. First, only one iconographic subject, the crucified Christ, should be depicted in three-dimensional sculpture; the saints should only be represented in two dimensions. Second, Bernard grouped wall painting with writing and opposed those flat, two-dimensional media to sculpture. Both of these claims appear to be unique in medieval writing about images. This essay places them in their textual and historical contexts. Bernard's unusual claims about images are sui generis, but were influenced by a variety of factors: Christian theology, especially of the Eucharist; earlier traditions (especially Carolingian) of writing about images; and the recent introduction to Europe of silent, visual reading.

All thoughts about the Middle Ages are implicitly or explicitly engaged with the modern." 1 With ... more All thoughts about the Middle Ages are implicitly or explicitly engaged with the modern." 1 With this striking claim, the medieval historian Otto Gerhard Oexle argued that, since the Middle Ages is a modern invention, medievalists must take modernity into account. The semiotician, novelist, and cultural critic Umberto Eco thought no differently when he wrote of a "continuous return" to and of the Middle Ages: "Modern ages have revisited the Middle Ages from the moment when, according to historical handbooks, they came to an end." 2 Both authors recognized that the relationship between medieval and modern is dialectical rather than oppositional: one does not exist without the other. Our opening sentence can therefore be turned on its head to say that the Middle Ages has functioned as a foundational myth for modernity. But the relationship of medieval to modern is never straightforward or fixed; it evolves over the centuries, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes abruptly. As Eco put it: "Since the Middle Ages have always been messed up in order to meet the vital requirements of different periods, it was impossible for them to be always messed about in the same way." 3 Even before Italian humanists in the mid-fourteenth century invented the Middle Ages as a distinct period and negatively labeled them "Dark Ages," the visual culture of the preceding centuries was continually being invented and reinvented. 4 This reception process continued through the early modern period to reach a peak during the second half of the nineteenth century, a period marked by intense historicism. The active engagement with medieval art and architecture did not cease then. Quite the contrary, as the bulk of this volume's essays, focused on the period from 1850 to 2000, forcefully evinces. Together, the contributions in Medieval Art, Modern Politics demonstrate that, like anything from the past, medieval art was never experienced "as is": it was always mediated to suit the needs of the moment. This is the theme at the heart of this volume.

Illuminating a Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lawrence Nees, 2024

Probably in the second half of the 10th century CE, a traveler from Spain, Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub, vi... more Probably in the second half of the 10th century CE, a traveler from Spain, Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub, visited the monastery at Fulda in central Germany. There, he saw figurative images of Christ on the cross and of Fulda's patron, Boniface. Ibrahim classed these images as "idols." Ibrahim's text, written by either a Muslim or a Jew, provides an exceptionally rare contemporary glimpse of how early medieval Christian art was viewed by a non-Christian. This paper provides a commentary on Ibrahim's text about Fulda, which is almost unknown to art history. It places it in two contexts: 1) the monastery of Fulda in the Ottonian era and 2) the early medieval discourse of idols. The paper also discusses the relationship of Ibrahim's text to another famous medieval representation of a Christian idol: Bernard of Angers's account of the statue of St. Faith in Conques.

Critical Inquiry, 2023

On 7 December 1911, Heinrich Wölfflin gave a lecture to the Prussian Academy of Sciences on the p... more On 7 December 1911, Heinrich Wölfflin gave a lecture to the Prussian Academy of Sciences on the problem of style in the visual arts. This lecture, 1 in which Wölfflin's thoughts on the most universal and fundamental art-historical problem were presented in a manner that is systematic and conclusive (at least until the promised, more comprehensive publication), is of such methodological importance that it seems inexplicable and unwarranted that neither art history nor aesthetics has yet taken a position on the views expressed there. The following attempts to make up for this situation. 2

The Legend of Charlemagne. Envisioning Empire in the Middle Ages,, 2023

«We stand before the first things made on the Rhine. They will be the last, if we do not grasp th... more «We stand before the first things made on the Rhine. They will be the last, if we do not grasp them now.» 1 With those apocalyptic words, Hermann Schnitzler ended the brief introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition of Romanesque art he curated in Cologne in 1947. Romanische Kunst [hereafter RK] was one of several medieval exhibitions held in that almost totally destroyed city immediately after World War II, but it is unusual because Schnitzler, surrounded by destruction both external and internal, found a safe haven in the portable works of Romanesque art he displayed, works that had been sheltered during the War. The status of the objects in RK as rare and fortunate survivals was vividly apparent because they were on view in the same city in which their contemporaries, Cologne's famous crown of Romanesque churches, stood is various states of destruction. Surrounded by such destruction, survivals can become highly auratized, their significance overdetermined. Both of those tendencies characterize Schnitzler's exhibition. This paper presents RK, which has never been studied before, and tries to explain what made Schnitzler, in the ruins of Cologne, able to claim that seeing his exhibition would cause a viewer, «perhaps for the first time in years, again to feel what it means to be secure». 2 In doing that, it illuminates a prime example of the ‹narrows of trans-mission› to which this issue of kritische berichte is devoted. RK opened on 6 September 1947 in Cologne's Alte Universität. Little is known of the planning for the exhibition. Schnitzler, the curator of Cologne's Schnütgen Museum, was assisted by a working committee of Leopold Reidemeister, the head of the city's museums; Willy Weyres, the Dombaumeister; Joseph Hoster, a priest at the cathedral and the head of Cologne's diocesan museum; and the art historian and gallerist Hans Melchers. This roster makes clear that RK was a Cologne-centered operation, but unlike Meisterwerke aus Kölner Museen and Kölner Glasmalerei vom 13. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, two exhibitions of primarily medieval art held in the city the previous year, RK did not display objects only from Cologne's collections. As a result, it far surpassed these earlier exhibitions in size and conceptual ambition. RK was still a relatively small show, but it was full of major works. These included such Cologne pieces as the ivory Heribert comb, the Gero Cross, the doors of St. Maria in Kapitol, and the shrines of Heribert and Anno, but also loans from further afield: the Essen Golden Madonna; all four of the Ottonian-era crosses from the Essen treasury; parts of the Barbarossa chandelier from Aachen; and the Werden bronze crucifix. The 135 objects were listed in a slim catalogue comprising 29 pages of text and 18 black-and-white illustrations (Fig. 1). Evidence about the appearance of RK is extremely scarce. No photographs of the exhibition are known. According to one review, the galleries were simple and light. 3 The still ruinous state of Cologne meant that the show had something of the provision

American Journal of Medical Genetics , 2021

Christ on the Cross, 2020

Die Handschriften der Hofschule Kaiser Karls des Großen,, 2019

Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past, 2019

The Long Lives of Medieval Art and Architecture, 2019

Traditional histories of medieval art and architecture often privilege the moment of a work's cre... more Traditional histories of medieval art and architecture often privilege the moment of a work's creation, yet surviving works designated as "medieval" have long and expansive lives. Many have extended prehistories emerging from their sites and contexts of creation, and most have undergone a variety of interventions, including adaptations and restorations, since coming into being. The lives of these works have been further extended through historiography, museum exhibitions, and digital media. Inspired by the literary category of biography and the methods of longue durée historians, the introduction and seventeen chapters of this volume provide an extended meditation on the longevity of medieval works of art and the aspect of time as a factor in shaping our interpretations of them. While the metaphor of "lives" invokes associations with the origin of the discipline of art history, focus is shifted away from temporal constraints of a single human lifespan or generation to consider the continued lives of medieval works even into our present moment. Chapters on works from the modern countries of Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany are drawn together here by the thematic threads of essence and continuity, transformation, memory and oblivion, and restoration. Together, they tell an object-oriented history of art and architecture that is necessarily entangled with numerous individuals and institutions.

Orient oder Rom> History and Reception of a Historiographical myth (1901-1970), 2018

is one of the most controversial figures in the history of art history. Part of that controversy ... more is one of the most controversial figures in the history of art history. Part of that controversy stems from his art-historical ideas, including his Orient oder Rom thesis. And part of it has to do with the degree to which Strzygowski's art history and politics were entwined, especially towards the end of his life. This is the period when, by most accounts, Strzygowski's thought moved from the controversial to the crazy. This paper examines a 1936 article by Strzygowski, "Ruins of Tombs of the Latin Kings on the Haram in Jerusalem". 1 By placing this article in various contexts, we can see just how complicated a figure Strzygowski was. Although Strzygowski's 1936 article was published at a time when the bulk of his work had become unreadable, I argue that it is still well worth reading, both as an art-historical contribution to its subject and as a guide to Strzygowski's thought and character. I claim, further, that the history of this article's reception, especially its Anglophone reception, tells us much about both Strzygowski and about art history as an institution. 1936 was an eventful year for western Europe; the Spanish Civil War began, Italy annexed Ethiopia, and Germany reoccupied the Rhineland territories lost after the World War I. It was also an eventful year for Strzygowski. He had always been a prolific author but, even by his standards, 1936 was special, for he published two books. One of these, Aufgang des Nordens. Lebenskampf eines Kunstforschers um ein deutsches Weltbild [The Rise of the North. An art historian's lifelong struggle for a German world view], is typical of Strzygowski's publications between his retirement from his teaching position in Vienna in 1933 and his death in 1941. 2 I would like to thank Francesco Lovino for his kind invitation to participate in the Brno * conference that gave rise to this volume.

he last two decades have seen a spate of museum exhibitions in Germany devoted to the art and cul... more he last two decades have seen a spate of museum exhibitions in Germany devoted to the art and culture of the Ottonian era, the era named for the dynasty that ruled Germany from 919 to 1024. This recent boom in interest in the Ottonians is intriguing because, between the end of World War II and 1989 there had been no German museum exhibitions devoted to the dynasty. This article, part of a larger study of the exhibition of medieval art in Germany since 1900, seeks to understand this recent surge of interest in Ottonian art, culture, and history in the German museum world. 1 It argues that the representation of bishops played an important role in this surge, for the first two exhibitions to break the Ottonian taboo were devoted not to the kings or emperors who give the Ottonian era its name, but to two bishops, Egbert of Trier and Bernward of Hildesheim, who in 1993 were celebrated with shows in their respective episcopal cities. In hindsight, these two episcopal exhibitions of 1 This article forms part of a book in preparation on exhibitions of medieval art in twentiethcentury Germany and is based on talks given at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in 2011 and at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in 2010. Research for it was supported by Reed College, especially its Michael E. Levine Faculty Research Fund, and the American Philosophical Society. I would also like to thank Sigrid Danielson, Evan Gatti, John Ott, and the press's anonymous reader.

Illuminating a Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lawrence Nees, 2024

Critical Inquiry, 2023

The Legend of Charlemagne. Envisioning Empire in the Middle Ages,, 2023

American Journal of Medical Genetics , 2021

Christ on the Cross, 2020

Die Handschriften der Hofschule Kaiser Karls des Großen,, 2019

Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past, 2019

The Long Lives of Medieval Art and Architecture, 2019

Orient oder Rom> History and Reception of a Historiographical myth (1901-1970), 2018

Burlington Magazine , 2019

and textile as well as manuscripts and a printed book. The second gallery, devoted to the bestiar... more and textile as well as manuscripts and a printed book. The second gallery, devoted to the bestiary proper, provides the centrepiece. Here only manuscripts are on display, ranging from a copy of the Physiologus, the bestiary's predecessor text (c.1000; Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Brusssels; cat. no.1) through to late medieval examples of texts related to the bestiary, such as Richard of Fournival's Bestiaire d'Amour (c.1325-50; Bibliothèque national de France, Paris; no.34). This gallery includes remarkable loans: almost all of the most famous bestiaries are here, including the Aberdeen Bestiary (c.1200; Aberdeen University Library; no.7). Two exceptions, which could not travel, were the Physiologus in the Burgerbibliothek, Bern, and the Bestiary in the St Petersburg Public Library. Some of the dramatis personae of the bestiary are introduced in this gallery. Alongside more familiar beasts such as the unicorn and lion, much is made of the 'bonnacon'. Primarily a combination of cow and horse, the bonnacon also has horns but, because these are turned backwards, it is unable to defend itself from the front. The animal compensates for this, however, when attacked: as the bestiary text explains, it 'emits a fart three acres long [.. .] a fart so hot that it scorches whatever it touches' (p.20). The exhibition pays equal attention to the bonnacon, whose Christian virtues are somewhat unclear, and to animals with deep Christian signi cance, such as the lion (no.11a; Fig.3), an approach which proves to be one

TMR, 1997

One of the most positive aspects of the "new art history" has been its serious concern with histo... more One of the most positive aspects of the "new art history" has been its serious concern with historiography; as a result, the history of art history has become recognized as an important subdiscipline. While book-length studies of such figures as Alois Riegl, Heinrich Wölfflin, and Erwin Panofsky have appeared over the last decade, The Shaping of Art History is, to my knowledge, the first scholarly monograph in English devoted specifically to the historiography of medieval art.

Studies in Iconography, 2003

In Carolingian verbal and visual representations of Christ on the cross, Chazelle has a wonderful... more In Carolingian verbal and visual representations of Christ on the cross, Chazelle has a wonderful subject: the Crucifixion is a central Christian event; the Carolingians are central to medieval and Western culture; and the authors (including Alcuin, Hrabanus Maurus, John the Scot, and Hincmar) and works of art (e.g., the Utrecht Psalter and the Drogo Sacramentary) that are Chazelle's focus are central to Carolingian culture. Nor is it easy to imagine any current scholar better qualified than Chazelle to undertake this exceptionally rich project, which grows out of a Yale dissertation co-advised by the church historian Jaroslav Pelikan and the art historian Walter Cahn. Despite these origins, Chazelle's book is no lightly revised doctoral dissertation; it is an entirely new work of a mature scholar. Chazelle's method is straightforward, probably a good idea given the amount, range, and complexity of her material; she proceeds chronologically and treats texts and images separately. The first chapter provides a useful introduction to the book, laying out its methodological premises and scope and providing a succinct, clear, and very helpful account of the ways in which the Crucifixion was understood by Western theologians before the ninth century, ideas that formed the basis for Carolingian discussions. Chapters two and four through six constitute a chronolog ical account of Carolingian texts discussing the Crucifixion. The subject of the second chapter is Christological inquiry at the court of Charlemagne, emphasizing the writings of Alcuin, the Libri Carolini (LC), and the Carolingian debate about adoptionism; chapter four carries the story through the middle of the ninth century, concentrating on exegesis of the Passion and the epistle to the Hebrews and on the Carolingian liturgy and its commentaries; while chapters five and six discuss in detail the role the understanding of Christ's death played in the Carolingian debates on predestination and the Eucharist. These textual analyses are occasionally inter rupted by brief discussions of works of art (notably Theodulf s chapel at Germigny des-Prés and the prayer book of Charles the Bald), but the bulk of the book's attention to images is found in two separate chapters. Chapter three, on the earlier Carolingian period, discusses the Gellone Sacramentary and Hrabanus Maurus's astounding collection of carmina figurata, In honorem sanctae crucis. Chapter

H-France Reviews, 2014

Review by William J. Diebold, Reed College. Uncovering the Germanic Past's subtitle is an excepti... more Review by William J. Diebold, Reed College. Uncovering the Germanic Past's subtitle is an exceptionally accurate guide to its contents. This makes Effros's a kind of book that I suspect many scholars have thought about writing, but few have carried out. The situation (at least as I imagine it) is this: Effros was trained as a historian of early medieval Europe; her first book, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages grew out of her doctoral dissertation. In the course of her research for that book on pre-modern history, Effros will have often found herself using sources collected, edited, and published in the nineteenth century, the heyday of European modernity. This situation is common enough for students of the past, but is perhaps especially striking to medievalists; our chronological field was essentially defined under modernity, but our subject was usually construed as the very opposite of the modernity that defined it.[1] Many scholars have been struck by this poignant, trenchant situation, but relatively few have acted on it in the form of a publication. And, when they have acted on it, they have often done so less than professionally, engaging in a kind of off-the-cuff historiography. Effros is aware of the dangers of her task ("a project on modern France did not seem the most accessible path for a practising medievalist whose work usually ended at the accession of the Carolingian dynasty" [p. viii]), but in Uncovering the Germanic Past she displays all of the first-rate training she first received as a historian of the early Middle Ages. (Witness the book's forty-page bibliography of both published and unpublished sources.) She carried out her task with consummate skill and professionalism and it produced real results, not least because her subject, unlike most involving the early Middle Ages, was essentially unstudied before her book. As she dryly remarks: "The path taken by my research...was not overcrowded by outsiders" (p. viii).

TMR, 2018

The twelfth-century treatise On Diverse Arts by someone who called himself Theophilus has been we... more The twelfth-century treatise On Diverse Arts by someone who called himself Theophilus has been well known in the modern world since the eighteenth century, when it was first published by none other than Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the playwright, art theorist, and sometime librarian at Wolfenbüttel, where one of the important manuscripts of the text is housed.

Bryn Mawr Medieval Review, 1994

The conventions of book reviewing demand that the first part of the review (and its bulk) be devo... more The conventions of book reviewing demand that the first part of the review (and its bulk) be devoted to an assessment of a book's content. Remarks concerning the book's form, be it the author's style, the proofreading, or the finished volume's appearance, are relegated to the end. Reviewers tend to privilege content; criticisms of form are thought pedantic, not really serious (as a result, they are traditionally deprecated as "quibbles"). In the case of last year's reprint of George Henderson's 1972 Early Medieval, however, this convention must be discarded, for the book's production is so egregious as to make it useless for its intended audience, students of early medieval art.

CAA.reviews, 2000

has a wonderful topic, the verse inscriptions that decorate a large number of Romanesque church p... more has a wonderful topic, the verse inscriptions that decorate a large number of Romanesque church portals. While I sometimes disagree sharply with Kendall's treatment of his material, he gets full marks for paying attention to it in the first place; it is an embarrassment to art history that such an important and literally obvious topic was first studied monographically by a professor of English. And, whatever disagreements one may have with Kendall's method and conclusions, the long appendix to his book, which meticulously transcribes and translates all of the inscriptions known to him, is a crucial corpus of material; I believe it will be a goldmine for other scholars. (The author implies that the catalogue is comprehensive. It is not; cf. the additions noted by Pierre Mariaux in his review of Kendall's book in Art Bulletin 81 1999, 538-40.) Despite the book's title, the catalogue is not limited to portals. Rather, it "is an inventory of Latin verses carved in stone on mural surfaces, including columns, of churches and monasteries in western Europe from AD 1000 to the thirteenth century" (excluding epitaphs). Kendall explains that the starting date of 1000 is arbitrary, but the ending date coincides with the "exhaustion of the tradition of verse inscriptions." A thorough corpus challenges a hierarchically arranged canon of monuments by giving equal weight to each member of the set; true to this quality of corpora, Kendall's catalogue ranges from the most famous works of Romanesque art (the Cluny choir capitals, the Vézelay tympanum, the facade inscription from Modena naming the sculptor Wiligelmo) to obscure parish churches in France, Spain, and Italy. Likewise the body of his text, which gives considerable attention to famous works such as the Conques tympanum, also studies in detail many lesser known works, such as the tympanum from Santa Cruz de la Serios or the archivolts from Fanioux and Chadenac in Aquitaine.

TMR, 1996

The corpus as a genre of art-historical writing has served students of Carolingian art particular... more The corpus as a genre of art-historical writing has served students of Carolingian art particularly well. Adolph Goldschmidt set an exceptionally high standard in 1914 with the first volume of his Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und saechsischen Kaiser, a standard matched by Goldschmidt's most important followers, Wilhelm Koehler and Florentine Muetherich, with their Die karolingischen Miniaturen (begun 1930; the most recent installment, the first part of volume 6, appeared in 1994). Given this tradition, it is a pleasure to report that Genevra Kornbluth's Engraved Gems of the Carolingian Empire is a worthy successor to these earlier corpora. In certain ways, Kornbluth's task was easier than that of her predecessors. The 20 extant Carolingian engraved gems make up a body of material far smaller than the hundreds of Carolingian ivories or illuminated manuscripts. But Kornbluth also faced difficulties greater than those that confronted Goldschmidt, Koehler, and Muetherich. As most scholars will know, the Carolingian gems are often difficult to make out, even in person, and have not, until now, been photographed well. We must, therefore, be exceptionally grateful that Kornbluth had the perseverance to obtain permission to photograph each of the gems herself. As a result, in the book each gem is documented by at least two, and usually more images (there are a remarkable 27 of the Lothar crystal). These photographs almost always include life-size depictions of the

Common Knowledge, 2017

Li t t l e Re v iew s 541 and café. The eau de vie served in the lower dives went by the name of ... more Li t t l e Re v iew s 541 and café. The eau de vie served in the lower dives went by the name of poivre, camphre, or casse-poitrine (chest-breaker) and came in three different sizes of glass: the monsieur, the mademoiselle, and the niggardly misérable. The real names and identities of the "Parigots" who lived and died in the capital have vanished, but the first holder of the chair of medical hygiene at the University of Paris noted that the noms de guerre of the prostitutes in the better class of brothel -Aspasia, Sidonia, Calliope -were very different from those sported by the women who walked the streets around Les Halles: Belle-cuisse (Nice Thigh), Faux cul (Fake Ass), Le Boeuf.

Studies in Iconography, 1999

The Middle Ages in general, and medieval art in particular, had a good run in the nineteenth cent... more The Middle Ages in general, and medieval art in particular, had a good run in the nineteenth century; examples include such disparate phenomena as Hugo's Notre Dame of Paris, the Gothic and Romanesque Revivals, or the reassertions of Catholicism and nationalism, which claimed the Middle Ages as a precedent. The twentieth century continued this streak, at least as far as medieval art is concerned. This is largely because twentieth-century art was consistently able to find virtues in medieval art. In the first half of the last century, the era of modernism, art's penchant for abstract or non-naturalistic forms found historical validation in the presence of those same forms in medieval art. Then, in the later part of the twentieth century, the era of postmodernism, medieval art continued to fare well. It was no longer its forms that mattered so much, but its function. Postmodern artists wanted to make art that mattered, art that spoke to viewers in visceral ways, art that was efficacious. For them, medieval images and objects, which were believed by their original viewers to have extraordinary power, provided a validating model. If the status of medieval art was good throughout the twentieth century, the status of medievalism was less consistently high. Modernism, with its search for the new and the authentic, had problems with medievalism. At the artistic level, this meant the explicit rejection of nineteenth-century historicist styles, and, at the scholarly level, it meant the marginalization of medievalism. In modernity, scholars wanted to know about the Middle Ages themselves, not its more recent avatars, which were seen to be of antiquarian interest at best. Postmodernism, by contrast, has been a tremendous boon to medievalism, which is currently enjoying an intellectual revival. If people believe, as many now do, that what matters is not the thing itself (if that can ever be known), but rather its appearance and representation, then medievalism turns out to be not peripheral, but central. As Leslie Workman, the founder of the modern discipline of medievalism put it, " the Middle Ages quite simply has no objective correlative, " it exists only in its representations.[1] In this sense, medievalism, which studies post-medieval representations of the Middle Ages, is now where the action is.

Catholic Historical REview , 1996

La Vie des Idees/Books and Ideas, 2014

Between the start of the Franco-Prussian War and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, art historian... more Between the start of the Franco-Prussian War and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, art historians in Germany and France were studying the Italian Renaissance and the Gothic monuments of the Middle Ages. Passini's recent book analyses the role of French and German nationalism in the shaping of art history.