Carolyn C. Wilson. St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art: New Directions and Interpretations.

Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's University Press, 2001. xxiv + 79 pls. + 281 pp. $49.95. ISBN: 0-916101-36-3.

St. Joseph has not been a fortunate figure in the history of pre-Tridentine art and religion. Too often and too easily, we have relegated him to the wings, or to a metaphorical back stage, for Joseph has long been understood as inessential, a comic, cuckolded figure for whom the Reformation and the cult of the Holy Family were in every sense redeeming.

Carolyn C. Wilson proves how enlightening a single study of a saint can be as she shows, too, how unwise our wry smiles at Joseph's expense. As she argues, the cult of Joseph was an indelible part of European Catholic practice from medieval times until Trent. Neither was Joseph simply a forbearing family man nor privileged witness, for he offered an unparalleled model of intercession and fatherhood that mirrored an ideal of ineffable and celestial paternity. In this beautifully produced and readable monograph, we are invited to read the iconography of the Marriage of the Virgin, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Flight and Rest on the Way to Egypt with new attention. Perhaps in part because we know about the person of Joseph less from Scripture than from the Church Fathers and the apocrypha, and perhaps, too, because each gesture--each protective embrace, each watchful glance--has to be sifted through a complex typology that includes Peter as well as Christ, Joseph has presented a challenge to scholars until now.

Beginning with the Church Fathers, for whom Joseph provided rich opportunities for exegesis, Wilson guides us among an esoteric and neglected collection of votive paintings, sculpture, illuminations, narrative panels, and works on paper. Particularly impressive is her inclusion of some northern examples among the predominantly southern group, as well as her range of works--neither exhaustive nor exhausting--from the twelfth until the eighteenth century. None other than the Chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson, championed a universal feast for Joseph, as well as the commemoration of his marriage. The phenomenal preacher, Bernardino of Siena, took up the call which resounded among the Franciscans through the fifteenth century. The Dominicans took up Joseph's cause in the following century when central and northern Italian regions especially favored him. The Milanese reformer Isidoro Isolano's Summa de donis Sancti Joseph (1514-21) signals an influential high point in devotion.

The Venetian Confraternity of St. Joseph, founded in 1499, provides Wilson with a starting point from which to engage her selection of works of art. As sponsus Sanctae Mariae and nutritor Domini, Joseph's appearance in scenes from the life of the Virgin and Christ is anything but secondary. Among St. Joseph altarpieces, the Nativity is the most common theme. In fact, the modern title "Adoration of the Shepherds" has obscured Joseph's place in the liturgical calendar. Francesco Vecellio's sumptuous Nativity for Belluno (ca. 1519-25) is compared to the German Master Bertram's unusually active Joseph presenting the Child to the Virgin (1379-83), and several Venetian paintings, including Giovanni da Asola's Nativity (ca. 1516-20), Giovanni Bellini's mysticalpredella panel for the Coronation in San Francesco, Pesaro, and Savoldo's Nativity with shepherds from Brescia (ca. 1538-40) are brought together in revealing conjunction. Wilson observes that the consistent presence of the shepherds with Joseph in Nativity scenes derives from the view that the angelic harmonies heard by them were apprehended simultaneously by him; in St. Luke's account, he is clearly also present at the manger to which the shepherds hastened. The link between Joseph and the shepherds resolves his myriad "perplexities" on discovering Mary's pregnancy since he was blessedly enraptured, according to Isidoro, by the angelic Gloria.

In the St. Joseph altarpieces for Udine, Bergamo, Venice, and Florence, the saint emerges as a prominent actor, and we might look again, for example, at Pontormo's exquisite work for San Michele Visdomini in Florence. Joseph's action in conveying the child was misinterpreted by Vasari but it is reminiscent of Master Bertram's participatory father and emphasizes him as the ancestral connection to the Messiah. Dosso Dossi also portrayed this notion in a remarkable Holy Family (ca. 1527-28), as did Michelangelo, most famously in the Doni Tondo. Finally, in episodes depicting the journey into Egypt, such as Correggio's Madonna della Scodella (1520s), the saint is an overtly-muscular tower of strength. Here, he reaches for the palm branches in demonstrative mediation with the angels with whom he has a special relationship.

As a generative type who is sometimes supernaturally illumined in pictorial compositions, dreaming or lost in thought, symbolically identified with architecture and plants, guardian and intercessor, Joseph deserves more than a second glance. Wilson acknowledges that there is still work to be done--on his affiliation with antique hero types, and on connections with the Immaculate Conception, for example--and this study will be an authoritative and instructive resource.

MEREDITH J. GILL

University of Notre Dame