L'Ombre des ancetres. Essai sur l'imaginaire medieval de la parente.

Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, L'Ombre des ancetres. Essai sur l'imaginaire medieval de la parente

Paris: Fayard Press, 2000. 50 pls. + 458 pp. FF 175. ISBN: 9-782213-604275.

In this stunning book, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber explores how the image of the tree came to dominate Western representations of kinship. Her deeply researched, complex study traces the centuries-long development of this image from its origins in Roman antiquity through its proliferation circa 1500, when the "natural" metaphor of the tree became the triumphant way to depict ties of kinship visually in Western Europe. This study breaks new ground in several ways. The author assembles for the first time a surprisingly large corpus of graphic images, derived mainly from manuscripts, which have been scorned by scholars as secondary. Her aim is not to rehabilitate their reputation, but to view genealogical representations as a coherent ensemble with a discernable history. She successfully captures the novelty of the tree as a way to imagine the flow of time over successive generations, denaturalizing this image and historicizing its many variants. Klapisch-Zuber shows how and why formal choices such as the placeme nt of roots, branches, leaves, and figures mattered in clarifying or obscuring lines of filiation, in claiming a legendary heritage, or in remembering cherished ancestors. Finally, her inquiry reveals the multiple functions the tree form assumed beyond genealogical illustration. Interweaving intellectual history, anthropology; art history, and the histories of mentalites, Klapisch-Zuber illuminates the complicated paths taken by this visual metaphor as it conquered the medieval imaginary of kinship.

Part 1 examines the birth of a graphic language from its origins in Roman antiquity to its elaboration circa 1200. Using the sparse evidence of family portraits, along with more abundant coins, medals, and texts, Klapisch-Zuber argues that ancient Romans relied more heavily on architectural metaphors than on organic, vegetal imagery to represent kinship. Nonetheless, the Roman world transmitted a visualization of kinship organized in a vertical hierarchy. Carolingian monks enriched the figural schemes they inherited, but the turning point in the tree's fortunes occurred in the eleventh century, when clerics began to use tree figures to express complex theological notions, to give visual exposition to biblical genealogies, and to draw readers emotionally closer to Christ's incarnation. Monastic institutions also nurtured the link between liturgical commemorations of ancestors and the genealogies of lay patrons. Around 1100 dynastic historians in France and Germany recognized the instrumental value of royal ge nealogies, beginning a series of fertile visual experiments that combined elements of architectural and vegetal imagery to assert a fictive past for rulers often extending back to Troy.

Part 2 traces the adoption of a common graphic language in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which the tree became central. Universal chronicles relating the history of the world since the Creation popularized the genealogical tree as a quick, legible device able to compress long stretches of time. Royal genealogists, especially in France and England, tied the history of royal families to the history of national communities. Part 3 examines more closely the elaboration of the genealogical tree between 1200 and 1400, when an explosion of images took the tree model in new formal directions and put it to new uses. Literary figures like Boccaccio popularized this representation, which on occasion became conflated with other organic forms like the human body, while court genealogists invoked the memory of legendary ancestors to suggest the divine origins of rulers. While these kaleidoscopic views present intriguing angles of vision on the topic, they make it difficult to sustain a narrative line.

Part 4 examines the triumph of the tree image circa 1400 and its subsequent dissemination through print. Religious orders entrenched the metaphor by modeling genealogical histories stemming from their founders on the Tree of Life. Despite its crucial role in diffusing genealogical images, printing did not always lead to a greater legibility of images. At times printing disassembled the internal coherence of this visual system and stripped away genealogical information because of technical requirements. Between 1450 and 1550 the image of the tree reached full ascendance, with a similar iconographic vocabulary extending across Western Europe. Because this story necessarily unfolds within a sweeping panorama of time and place, the author does not always tether developments securely to specific contexts, making it seem at times that the tree metaphor took on a life of its own. Nonetheless, this original, imaginative study helps us understand how the tree came to dominate representations of kinship and shaped our own mental habits. Linking past and present, the image of the family tree lies at the root of the modern perception that each of us has a unique history worth remembering.