William Worcestre Itineraries by John H. HarveyReview by: Peter FergussonThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), pp. 126-127Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3049204 .

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126 THE ART BULLETIN

Marshalling a similarly impressive array of evidence, Buchthal ascribes the 187 miniatures in the Bodmer manuscript (B) to the above-mentioned illuminator, Master Giustino del fu Gherardino da Forli. Produced about 1370, this cycle is shown to have been copied from the same model as the one in Madrid (M), stylistic and iconographic discrepancies notwithstanding. The more extensive series in B is less original, adhering closely to the lost common prototype presumed to have originated in Venice before

1345. At this point, having been led gently but firmly into the midst of

the complex question of provenance, the reader is presented with the dramatic denouement of extraneous sources used by the illuminators of M and B respectively. Both had access to diverse material which they incorporated into the basic common model with strikingly different results. Master Giustino, who matched miniatures and text with far more exactitude, introduced a num- ber of original elements drawn from a Greek Trojan War cycle (or fragments of same) and a late antique Virgil manuscript. Inspira- tion for the "portraits" of Greek and Trojan heroes and heroines recalls more recent analogies on Italian soil, for example Giotto's

depiction of Hector, Aeneas, Achilles, and Paris among the nine

pagans in the Sala degli uominifamosi produced for King Robert of

Naples in the Castel Nuovo. The reconstruction of outside sources in the Madrid codex,

taken up in the two concluding chapters, is more specific and bold. The unique form of this Trojan War cycle is analyzed con brio; one has a distinct sense of having arrived at the heart of the matter. The argument unfolds to reveal figural, architectural and land-

scape elements pointing to none other than the Vienna Genesis as the source of inspiration. Point-by-point comparisons disclose the

progressive alteration of borrowings from replicas to idioms ab- sorbed into the illuminator's repertory.

What remains to be established is whether these elements were taken from the Vienna Genesis or from some other Early Christian source, a complex question given the uncertainty of the whereabouts of the former until 1664. To prove his hypothesis, Buchthal

proceeds full force to adduce the necessary evidence. Essential to his conclusions is the recapitulation of the dual

ambition pursued by Venice since the early Middle Ages: to claim the rulership of the Eastern Empire and to establish herself as one of the original Apostolic Sees. Artistic borrowings represented by far the most innocent aspect of the fulfillment of these goals in which warfare and pillage were the rule from the time of the "transfer" of the relics of St. Mark from Alexandria in 828/29. Also an integral part of the limitless lust for aggrandizement was the establishment of a suitably distinguished origin. For this

purpose Venice appropriated the Trojan ancestry legend which filled the bill nobly, even though she joined the ranks of claimants relatively late. The earliest known account, Martin da Canal's

Chronique des Veniciens of the third quarter of the thirteenth century, only predates by a few years Guido de Columnis's statement in his Historia destructionis Trojae: "Veneciarum urbem inhabitaverit ille

Troyanus Anthenore." By the middle of the fourteenth century, the myth had become established fact. It was incorporated as such in the most influential chronicle of its time by the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1345-1354).

As noted above in the discussion of the Madrid codex, it was

during the rule of this eminent Doge that the stylistically related Baptistry mosaics and Pala feriale for San Marco were commis- sioned. It is interesting that Dandolo was a friend of Petrarch who oversaw the first Latin translation of the Iliad, a copy of which had been sent him from Constantinople in

1354, the very year of the

Doge's death. According to Buchthal's calculations, however, it was not Andrea Dandolo's reverence for the classical tradition per se but rather his espousal of the grandeur of Venice past and

present that combined with his pronounced allegiance to the

Trojan ancestry legend to inspire the illustrated copy of the Guido text now in Madrid. It is further suggested that Dandolo owned the Vienna Genesis, either through personal acquisition in his

capacity as an art connoisseur or through inheritance from one of his forebears, perhaps Enrico, head of the Venetian contingent on the Fourth Crusade. For the leading intellectual of his day in

Venice to commission an illuminated manuscript based on an Early Christian model is by no means a far-fetched concept in the light of what is known about the Doge. Several analogous instances of iconographic borrowings from the Cotton Genesis tradition have been recognized in slightly later English and north Italian manu- scripts. Therefore, even though the Madrid cycle is unique, it is not an isolated case in the field of illumination as far as its source material is concerned. Of further significance is the indisputable kinship between the border ornament of the two Madrid incipit pages and the decoration found in the only illuminated manu- script linked with Andrea Dandolo, his promissione ducale of 1344 preserved in the Museo Correr. All in all, against the background of accumulated circumstantial evidence, Buchthal's conclusions are eminently plausible.

It is always a pleasure to find an expert treatment of a subject fully worth the author's mettle. The concentrated approach will prove useful to students as a model of scholarly methodology. At the same time, it affords valuable insights to be pursued further within the overall context of the history of medieval secular illus- tration. Amplified by an extensive bibliography and excellent illustrations (163 figures), the handsome format and sturdy cloth binding convey the same sense of style and permanence as the content. LILIAN RANDALL

The Walters Art Gallery

JOHN H. HARVEY, ed. and trans., William Worcestre Itineraries, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969. Pp. 456; 7 ills., I map. $18.25.

The Oxford University Press has recently initiated a series of

publications devoted to medieval texts. The third volume to

appear is the Itineraries of a fifteenth-century Englishman, William Worcestre, edited and translated by John Harvey. The Itineraries were first published in the late eighteenth century when interest in English medieval monuments started to gather substantial

scholarly and popular support. But James Nasmith's Latin edition of 1778 posed a number of formidable difficulties. Nasmith edited out considerable material without indicating his omissions and he was not always successful in ordering Worcestre's discursive manuscript. Furthermore, for the scholar with modest language skills, Worcestre's medieval Latin was hard to penetrate. Last, Nasmith's edition was limited to two hundred and fifty copies and was never widely available. Harvey's masterly edition, generously annotated and with the first English translation, remedies all these shortcomings.

The literature on Worcestre is small. There have been a couple of fine essays in not too accessible Festschriften but he remains little known, even in England. A longer introduction than Harvey's fifteen pages might, therefore, have been justified. But the intro- duction compactly provides a lucid biographical account, a helpful discussion of Worcestre's use of dimensions, an analysis of his Latin and the history of the manuscript. Of the existing Worcestre

manuscripts it is much to be regretted that his detailed description of Bristol's churches, houses, bridges and streets which he compiled at the same time as the Itineraries has not been included. One still has to go to James Dallawy's scarce Antiquities of Bristol, 1834, for the unedited medieval Latin. One hopes this gap in urban history documents will be quickly filled.

The Itineraries came from three journeys made by Worcestre between 1478 and 1480. He was then a man in his mid-sixties who had spent his working life in the service of a great landowning knight, Sir John Fastolf. Worcestre was employed as secretary, steward, surveyor and doctor, a variety of occupations which

suggests his versatility and breadth of mind. Early in his career he

developed an interest in astronomy and collecting but he never had

enough time to indulge them during Fastolf's life. Even after his

employer's death in 1459, Worcestre's energies were spent for

nearly twenty years in complex litigation over Fastolf's tangled affairs. Only in the late 1470's, as an old and not very well man, was Worcestre free to travel and follow his wide scientific and

antiquarian interests.

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BOOK REVIEWS I27

Worcestre's interests were not of course unique. They have to be seen as part of a wider intellectual movement in late fifteenth-

century England in which other men like the writer and collector, John Rous, played a part. But it is the extent of Worcestre's interests and the manner in which he followed them that separate him from his contemporaries and justify the claim made by Harvey and others that Worcestre was England's first antiquary. It is striking that many of the characteristics that have marked this type of man for the past five hundred years were present from the start in Worcestre: the social rank (lesser gentry), the university training, the restless curiosity, the omnivorous appetite for facts, the high standard of recording, the reluctance to generalize, the fascination with the quaint or bizarre and the distinct trace of eccentricity.

Worcestre never explains the purpose of the Itineraries. He recorded information in narrow columns on folded sheets of paper such as would fit a saddle bag. The notations are hurried and their sequence irregular. This, and the juxtaposition of data of vastly different character and importance, suggests a collection of raw material intended to be ordered later in book form. It is possible, then, to see the Itineraries as the first stage of an ambitious project covering at least southwest England that would have formed a sequel to his Norfolk studies. Evidence survives of works by Worcestre on genealogy, medicine and astronomy in addition to two specifically antiquarian works. Harvey underplays these earlier and wider interests of Worcestre's although they are important to keep in mind in any assessment of him. Certainly, as Harvey emphasizes, Worcestre's work in the Itineraries anticipated by more than a century publications like Camden's Britannia and Drayton's Poly-Olbion.

Worcestre's Itineraries are distinctive in the wider context of earlier travel writing. The journeys were not undertaken as pilgrimages, even though Worcestre's routes took him across eastern England as far as the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk and, in the southwest, as far as Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall. Nor were they simple pleasure jaunts. The Itineraries show Worcestre moving within the framework of a religious society even while his interests took him outside it. True, he spent some time recording obits and patristic quotations in monastic libraries but much more went in collecting material that was not merely secular but quite simply of a type that earlier men had not thought worth assembling. In this sense the Itineraries throw a revealing light on England in the last decades of her medieval period. Worcestre included such items as the distances between towns, the size of islands and the width and depth of water channels, the names of men killed in battle, the costs of travel for himself and of medicine for his horse, notes on the animals, birds and fish in the areas he traveled through and, most consistently of all, the dimensions of numerous churches, monasteries, castles, bridges and other buildings he visited. It is this last interest which amounted to a passion. Excluding his Bristol topography, measure- ments of more than a hundred and fifty buildings are scattered through the pages of the Itineraries; Worcestre measured some, like the Cathedral at Wells and the abbey church at Glastonbury, as many as three times. His usual practice was to pace out distances, though on occasion he would measure in fathoms, yards or feet or have this done for him. In every case he noted the method used and, conscious of the unknown length of his step, attempted to give a precise equivalent in yards. Where it is possible to check them, his distances are generally reliable. Less consistently Worcestre supplied the heights of buildings, the width of walls and columns, the number of clerestory windows and the costs of build- ings. In two cases, at Saint Mary Redcliffe and Saint Stephen's, both in Bristol, he commissioned sectional drawings of door arch profiles.

Perhaps it was as much Worcestre's background and bookkeeper career as the lack of a developed critical vocabulary that limited his architectural interests to the numerical. Only on very rare occasions does he permit himself an appreciative comment and even then, for example, when he was stirred by the new tower at Warwick Castle or the recently vaulted nave at Exeter, he expres- sed his admiration in a single phrase. Given this character

Worcestre's building descriptions resemble those in a manuscript like the twelfth-century Pilgrims Guide, in which a church such as Santiago de Compostela is described in terms of simple dimension and number, rather than a study like Gervase of Canterbury's, in which description of the Cathedral's rebuilding serves as a pre- liminary for analysis.

For all this there is much of value in Worcestre's Itineraries. Some of the churches and buildings he measured have disappeared, others have grown or contracted, all that survive have undergone restoration. Perhaps the greatest value of the Itineraries lies in their revelation of Worcestre's interests, his methods and his tastes. On the personal side one is left with an abiding admiration for the man's sheer stamina and grit in working and journeying under conditions which the modern scholar would find impossible.

As source material the Itineraries represent an important addition to the expanding body of medieval documents. Ideally they should be tackled from a broad interdisciplinary perspective for the range of material extends beyond the purview of the architectural historian. Thanks to Harvey an ambitious study of Worcestre is now possible. Scholars will remain indebted to him for this taxing, patient work of scholarship.

PETER FERGUSSON

Wellesley College

FERDINANDO BOLOGNA, Ipittori alla corte Angioina di Napoli, 1266-14I4, e un riesame dell'arte nell'etd fridericiana (Saggi e studi di storia dell'arte, ii), Rome, Ugo Bozzi Editore, Rome University Press; U.S., Pennsylvania State University Press, 1969. Pp. 398; 34 color pls., 561I black-and-white ills. $69.50.

In this monumental volume Professor Bologna has set himself the task of making Neapolitan painting of the fourteenth century both significant and worthy of fame. His introductory assertions are three: that there is a unique and great school of painting in Naples during the trecento, that this school can at almost every juncture be intimately related to the Angevin rule, and, thirdly, that the courtly art of Naples, which he distinguishes from the democratic and bourgeois art of the Tuscan centers, is an important prece- dent for that of Avignon and the subsequent international Gothic movement.

Prior to this volume, Neapolitan trecento painting was only superficially known, a situation partly explicable by condition and inaccessibility, as any visitor to Naples will testify. Now recent restorations, photographic campaigns, and an art historian with a long and personal familiarity with the city and its churches, as well as a profound knowledge of Neapolitan political and intellec- tual history, have made possible the ground-breaking study this book represents.

Bologna's Ipittori alla corte Angioina is a volume which scholars of the fourteenth century must peruse with care, for it contains a vast amount of new, important, and unpredictable material. In fact, the assertions and attributions are so numerous that a review which factually reported or discussed each critically is out of the question. Bologna's subjects range from the origins of Nicola Pisano (whom he finds to be Apulian, not Capuan, and a Ghibel- line, which would explain why he did not work in Guelph Florence), to the influence of Naples on the art of Tuscany and Avignon, and from the textual and pictorial origins of the popular Gothic theme of the Contrast of the Living and the Dead (sixth- century writings of the Arab Adi ibn Zaid and a fresco at Atri, pls. I-20 and 21, dating ca. I1240-1250) to the Neapolitan mini- atures of Cristofore Orimina and others. The wealth of topics the author chooses to discuss is, in fact, one of the problems with this book. He moves from work to work and conclusion to conclusion without focusing on larger ideas or developing them: even his introductory premises do not become themes around which the book is constructed. Each chapter is broken down into a miscel- lany of short sub-chapters (seventy-five in all!) and neither the chapters nor the book have conclusions which synthesize or even summarize their contents. Bologna's random organization, a

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