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Reframing pilgrimage: cultures in motion Coleman, Simon and Eade, John (eds)

Gregory Nazianzus in Sinai 339 in Chapter 3, Peers relates the painted architectural frame to contemporary monastic experience. Far beyond a formal analysis of this one particular page, this chapter investigates twelfth-century monastic reforms, architecture, and monumental visual programs as frames for the liturgy enacted below, and also the use of the manuscript. Here we see the success of Peers’ method most strongly—integrating close readings of objects, architecture, liturgy, and politics. Indeed one of the strengths of Peers’ work is its move beyond origins, iconographies, and styles towards logic and visual effect. This is perhaps most evident in Chapter 4 which explores thresholds, size, and dimensionality as framing strategies through close analysis of a vita icon of St. George in the Byzantine Museum in Athens. Peers provides a productive and compelling reading of this unique icon despite the fact that many questions must remain unanswered. Chapter 5 then turns to metal icon revetment. The discussion is divided between Annunciation imagery, where analysis centers on two early-twelfth-century icons in Ochrid, and Mandylion imagery, where the focus turns to the holy image and late-thirteenthor early-fourteenth-century silver narrative frame in Genoa. In the discussion of all these works and related comparanda, light and environment emerge as themes: “During liturgy, these interiors became Gesamtkunstwerken, in which all the senses—sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste—were appealed to and used” (p. 109). The book concludes with a short epilogue, “Framing the Body,” that aims to synthesize the material and restate the main claim that frames, even unselfconsciously, mediate the viewers’ experience of divine presence. The Chludov Psalter’s blood, the crucifix’s outline, architecture around Gregory, bodies around George, and the aura of silver’s surface are for Peers “epiphanic details” and “each contained the conditions for consuming that object, for providing a ‘sacred shock’ of presence unexpectedly contingent on our own presence” (p. 134). Just as frames blur boundaries and act as points of assimilation, so too does Peers make the Byzantine material fully present for the reader, both powerfully evocative and elusive. The larger project of the book is not teleological and does not posit a single stable ideal viewer. The author acknowledges this he is acutely aware of his own subjectivity in the framing of the material. The result is a rigorous and theoretically informed work that will satisfy a scholarly audience invested in new analytical approaches to material culture. At times the book’s production values preclude full appreciation of the analysis. The reproduction quality falls short at some key moments—for instance, the image of the Kurbino Annunciation plays a key role in the author’s text but is difficult to make out in the small black-and-white reproduction (fig. 66). Moreover, a full bibliography would have been most welcome as the present one seems too “selected” to this reviewer. Nonetheless Penn State is to be commended for publishing such an evocative work that exceeds traditional iconographic, media specific, or temporal restrictions.