The Lamentation Group in St. Anne’s Church in Augsburg is unusual in many respects. At the center, the haunting, almost levitating Christ confronts the audience with his emaciated body. The emotional impact of this pitiful sight is further heightened by Christ’s parted lips, as if he is in the midst of uttering his final sounds. The sculpture prompts the churchgoer to imagine not only how Christ’s death looked, but also how it sounded. It is this silent, yet sonic aspect of sculpture that Kim Woods examines in her new publication. Why, she asks, do sculptures simulate speech?

Recent publications on sculpture in the Middle Ages have emphasized their affective and enlivened engagement with their audiences. Research by Jacqueline Jung, Paul Binski, Ethan Matt Kavaler, Stephen Jaeger, and many others has explored how the body positions, facial expressions, and narrative compositions forge a dialogue between artwork and humans. Woods builds on many of these threads, reminding us that sculptures are meant not only to be seen but also to be heard. This concise book focuses on sculptures that imply speech through their open mouths, adding to the conception of sculpture as a plastic and sensorial medium. Focusing loosely on the later Middle Ages, with examples ranging from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries across Europe, this book offers a focused examination of a common sculptural device. While her focus is particularly on statuary, relief sculptures equally suggest a noisy crowd or flow of voices. An introduction, followed by four short chapters and brief conclusion, note the prevalence of the open-mouthed motif and argue that the suggestion of sound is key to communicating meaning to their audiences.

The book’s introduction demonstrates the ubiquity of sculptures silently speaking, a theme that has not been treated discretely in the scholarly literature. Building on the study of the rhetoric of sculpture, Woods aims to explore the effect of sonic evocation, which challenges the idea of the later Middle Ages as a period of inward reflection and silent meditation. The evidence for speaking sculptures is primarily visual, although Woods has identified some relevant contracts and descriptions of works that point to how audiences could have perceived sculptures’ speech. Audiences, who live in an auditory culture and are primed to ‘hear’ what the sculptures have to say, can understand sound through facial expressions, body positions, and more. In this way, sculptures generate varied and complex meanings for their communities.

In the chapters that follow, Woods examines the significance and effect of the speech motif. She draws on a very large corpus of examples, which are treated with varying degrees of detail. The book’s argument is strongest when the visual evidence is treated with extended attention in its cultural context. The first chapter considers the way in which the open mouths of sculptures prompt affective sounds, imagined dialogues, and animation. She argues that the suggestion of sound was critical to the reception of the sculpture and the way that its public responded to these works. For instance, the emotional impact of a work was heightened by the suggestion of sounds of violence or distress. The intense grief of Niccolò dell’Arca’s famous Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1463) is one of the more overwrought depictions. Such frozen sounds of emotion are a tactic used by sculptors on both sides of the Alps to intensify the emotional reaction to the horrors of the Passion or martyrdom. Meanwhile, images of Christ on the Cold Stone are more restrained, but the open mouth is necessary to their rhetorical effectiveness. Sculpted performances of narratives on pulpits, portals, and altarpieces, meanwhile, are guided by the speaking figures. Evocation of sound brings these stories to life, much as it does relief carvings, notably in the oeuvre of Desiderio da Settignano. Sculptures’ voices can torment or delight their audiences with their mimetic power.

In the second chapter, Woods analyzes specific sounds or texts referenced in sculpture. Focusing especially on the religious context of sculptures in the Middle Ages, she finds that simulated speech serves to enforce orthodoxy, helping audiences to recall familiar images and recitations. The examples in this chapter are among the most obviously connected to sound, although it is worth considering them within Woods’s larger framework. Scenes of the Annunciation, for instance, could offer their audiences the cue to recite the Ave Maria. Sculptors’ use of banderoles can specify the text for viewers, although Woods contends that different spectators may understand scenes in distinct ways given their education or social status. Repeated imagery, such as of John the Baptist in the Wilderness, the twelve Apostles, or Christ as the Man of Sorrows each could prompt their audiences to remember precise utterances to aid in prayer or reflection. It was not simply speech that sculptures could communicate, but also song; representations of angels with their mouths open might conjure up the idea of heavenly music echoing now on earth. In all these cases, parted lips act as memory aids, placing the spectator in an active, if silent dialogue with the sculpture.

Next, the book turns to the relationship between speech and authority. While women are often portrayed as silent, in keeping with gendered cultures of talking, images of Mary Magdalene are an exception; her sounds are those of pious women. In contrast, Eve’s voice is one of temptation, enticing Adam to bite the apple. Sculptures of men, on the other hand, are often shown mid-utterance, especially portrayals of rulers. Equestrian statues in Magdeburg and Bamberg from the thirteenth century, for instance, as well as ancient portraiture and coinage, harness the ruler’s imagined voice to promote their earthly authority. Meanwhile, prophets and saints speak to connect the worshipper to God. For Woods, the speaking sculpture becomes a conduit to realms of power.

Finally, the book turns to the “speaking dead.” The tomb offered patrons a means of communicating from the grave, given sound either through obviously weeping pleurant figures or gesturing effigies. Echoing arguments from Chapter Two, Woods closes with a discussion of the dying Christ, whose final words on the cross ring out to praying audiences. The book ends with a short conclusion that considers how the speech motif is often nuanced by its temporal and geographic context. This ending demonstrates one role of the book: Woods has gathered a plethora of examples from across time and place, each of which could be treated in detailed studies to assess the connotations of the depicted speech.

As a whole, this text demonstrates the prevalence and significance of the silent speech of sculptures. Its sweeping approach reminds readers that this aspect of carvings should not be taken for granted; instead, sculptures’ rhetoric is core to their function. The large corpus of examples assembled in such a short text necessitates that not every sculpture can be considered in depth. While there are limitations to the number of illustrations in any publication, there are several instances in which sculptures discussed at length are not pictured at all, undercutting the argument somewhat. Woods’s attention to the recurring themes and patterns across different centuries and places provides a basis for understanding this motif. Nevertheless, the text is clearly structured and written in an accessible manner that invite both the specialist and the generalist reader to attend more closely to how sculptures perform.

Future scholars will be able to build on Woods’s considerations to understand the additional complexities of sculpture within their specific cultural contexts, as the conditions of speech in thirteenth-century Bamberg differ greatly from those of fifteenth-century Bologna. Her examination of the sounds that sculptures make complements the growing body of literature that explores the active engagement of images, and especially sculptures; the voice of sculptures here rings out. Audiences before carvings of angels, saints, rulers, Christ, and many more were ready to both see and to listen.

Elizabeth Rice Mattison
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth