Parergon

The appearance of precious stones in medieval art has long been a subject waiting to be explored. Medieval writing has been filled with references to the impact of jewellery and precious stones. Abbot Suger, for example, wrote of how, through contemplation of the precious stones found in the cross of Saint Eloy and other works, his mind was transported from the slime of the earth to higher matters in an anagogical fashion. This is in a text, familiar to many medievalists, written to explain and describe the work he commissioned at Saint-Denis near Paris in the twelfth century. In it he outlined how the various stones acted as an aid to this transportation. While Suger does not appear in this book, familiarity with such medieval texts reminds us of the significant social, political, and aesthetic impact minerals and gemstones had on a medieval audience, making this study long overdue. [End Page 244]

Brigitte Buettner’s focus is on precious stones in medieval secular culture, which means that she does not discuss reliquaries or other forms of religious visual culture. She divides the book into three sections: the first is on royalty and crowns, the second on lapidaries, which here join bestiaries and herbals as something art historians should become more familiar with, and in the final section, there is a more general discussion of the medieval geographic imagination, trade, and travel writing. In this last section she evokes Prester John, John Mandeville, and Marco Polo, as well as other figures both fictional and real.

Most medieval crowns have been destroyed. In her discussion Buettner focuses on three gem-encrusted crowns that have survived from the medieval period—one from the Holy Roman Empire, now in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum (in the Schatzkammer); one from the kingdom of Castile, now in Toledo Cathedral; and one from the kingdom of Bohemia, now in St Vitus Cathedral in Prague. They date from the late tenth to twelfth centuries in the Vienna example, about 1256–75 for that in Toledo, and 1344–47 (reworked in the 1370s) for that in Prague. All are gem-encrusted and each quite distinct in style. The crown in Vienna is topped by an ornate arch from front to back, with a bejewelled cross surmounting the heavily decorated front panel; the Toledo crown is eight-sided, topped by miniaturised castles, with jewels and cameos on each side; while the Prague crown is circular in shape with fleur-de-lis finials overarched by a gold strip and decorated with pearls, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and aquamarines. It also has embroidered cloth inset into it.

While the crown, a potent symbol of monarchy, is the subject of the first three chapters, tracing its origins in the West from the time of Constantine, Buettner shifts direction in the rest of the book. In Part 2 she examines lapidaries and the pursuit of knowledge and mastery over such stones, including colour and the sense of sight both vision-enhancing and reality-distorting. In addition, in Chapter 6 Buettner looks at the art of sigils, which include intaglios and cameos, as well as such naturally occurring stones as veined marbles, agates, and fossils. These ‘figurative’ stones were greatly admired but also enigmatic, potentially either legitimate or demonic. These areas of research provide rich material that deserves further exploration, given that lapidaries are deserving of as much attention as bestiaries have thus far received.

Invoking Prester John and Marco Polo, in the final three chapters Buettner explores the illustrated travel book. Other important works discussed include Friar Odoric of Pordenone’s Itinerarium and The Book of John de Mandeville. Another work that is also mentioned at length is the fifteenth-century compilation, Livre des merveilles (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS fr. 2810), made for John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, but given to Jean, duc de...