Image and Ornament in the Early Medieval West: New Perspectives on Post‐Roman Art. By MatthiasFriedrich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2023. 300 pp. £85. ISBN 9781009207775.

The question of the function and purpose of images and ornaments in early medieval art is not only of concern to art historians and archaeologists. The complicated nature of the source base for the period makes the interpretative frameworks set up to explain these key to understanding many fields. Among these we find not only social relations or issues of production and consumption of art, but also topics as wide ranging as political systems, class relationships or even the fall of the Roman Empire itself. Robert Friedrich’s new, richly illustrated book proposes a radical reassessment of many of these frameworks and is bound to take an important place in these debates. The book is divided into two main parts, with the first devoted to deconstructing terms and ideas that are crucial for the subject. This is not necessarily done in a systematic way, but instead more as a form of polemic regarding both recent and older publications, presenting a traditional view of them. Views on such concepts as ‘the Germanic’, ‘Romans and Barbarians’ or ‘Pagans’ are summarized, put into their research context and – some more, some less – dismantled. Three highly problematic concepts from German archaeology take centre stage in this first part of the book: Heilsbild, Gefolgschaft and Sakralkönigtum. Friedrich aptly positions these in the archaeological and historical system of knowledge production by addressing their roots and analysing their contemporary lives. His desire to steer clear of speculative interpretations (for example, the case of the ‘one-eyed’ helmets and their association with Odin/Wotan) is commendable. For Friedrich the key issue seems to be the avoidance of simple binaries. This is not always a success and sometimes leads to extreme interpretations – for instance, arguing for the near complete insignificance of the Roman/Barbarian divide for the people that buried the helmet at Planig near Mainz (p. 29). It might not have been significant to them. But what if it really, really did matter? Would the interpretative centre proposed here still hold? In the fight with dichotomies new ones appear. ‘Mediterranean’ is, for example, not a neutral term (and it is never really defined in the book). The extent of what, in terms of expressive language, can be seen as belonging to the ‘Mediterranean’ is debatable. Some clearer definitions of what the author means by the terms (as opposed to what other authors before him meant erroneously) might have helped to avoid some of these problems. This may be the only substantial form of criticism directed at this introductory chapter: while calling for the avoidance of binaries, the author introduces several himself. What is sometimes missing is more subtlety in assessing differences. Otherwise, it is a masterful and concise summary of the problems that await us in the interpretation of the material culture of the early Middle Ages. Here one must also praise the decision to avoid a traditional large-scale, cursory, literature review reiterating countless such introductions. It is refreshing to see that Friedrich engages with the previous scholarship instead of winking it through for the sake of obligation. One must also applaud the courageous and slightly unusual move of starting with the practical analysis and then going into the exposition of theory. This works very well here and makes the intent of the book clearer. That being said, Image and Ornament was not envisaged as an easy read – not only because of its subject matter but also owing to the rather complicated exposition of its main points. This does not have to be seen as a disadvantage but limits the usability of the book. We jump from theories of commodity to the principles of typology within the space of a few paragraphs. The argument of the book is impossible to comprehend without not only knowing all of these debates but also having a stance on them. The scope of Friedrich’s interpretative horizons is impressive. He moves with ease between objects and has an in-depth knowledge of literature that only comes with proper understanding. In the second chapter, he quickly and decisively deconstructs the notion of ‘Germanic’ art being a poorer sister of the Roman one, using the example of bracteates. This sets the scene for a detailed interpretation of, purported, Christ depictions, which Friedrich re-evaluates and repositions, working mostly with the milites Christi framework. The intense and complex debunking of the interpretations of older scholarship ends up with what is essentially a well-argued call for interpretative caution. When repositioning the relationship between Roman (never in scare quotes) and ‘Germanic’ (always in scare quotes) art, Friedrich seems to be looking for an alternative model of contact and interaction. ‘The question we ask should not be whether a certain object is pagan or Christian, or what religious figure might be depicted, but rather how and why the object renders certain well-known imperial iconographies in new ways’ (p. 65). On the one hand this is a valuable approach in terms of what we can say about a work of art from the period. On the other, we do not always need to limit ourselves to the reception of imperial models. At times Friedrich’s concern with the meta narrative of the field gets in the way of his interpretative model. The book is, at its core, about a field sitting uneasily in its chair, rustling around in search of a new position. But it is also about new ways of interpreting objects from the early Middle Ages and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between these two levels. Debunking (mostly German and mostly completely myopic) art historians and archaeologists becomes part of the interpretative framework of the objects themselves. This is, to a large extent, impossible to avoid but Friedrich seems to assume or implicitly suggest that it can be done. In the process he confirms the dependence of interpretations on contemporary critiques. This is not a criticism of the author’s approach – just a confirmation that it is very difficult to achieve an escape velocity from our traditions. In the second part of the book Friedrich presents his own framework, for which he laid the groundwork in the first part. He starts with a truly magisterial dismantling of Panofsky’s approaches to late antique and early medieval imagery analysis (pp. 107–9). Friedrich then moves to a discussion of Gell’s Art and Agency as well as the Actor-Network-Theory that plays a decisive role in building his new approach. Key to Friedrich’s theory are two assumptions: that things can have (unintentional) agency and that they can possess both a secondary and primary form of such agency (p. 120). This, in the very last part, Friedrich supplements by diving into the theory of varietas as the unifying aesthetic principle of early medieval art, especially in the context of animal ornaments. While the notion is by no means new, the author deploys it with skill and freshness in approach. Ultimately Friedrich proposes less focus on decoding meaning and more on the use and position of objects within both the social matrix and the current research debates. Friedrich is extremely polemical at times and there is something dialectic in his method, something of Lukács in the form (but, obviously, not in the content). To understand his approach a vast philosophical and theoretical knowledge is required. On one level – that of theoreticians of art history and archaeology – these are signposted well in the reference apparatus. But on another – which involves Heidegger, but also Kant, traces of semiotics, and a vast trove of writings on aesthetics – only sparse direct allusions can be found. These are necessary for our understanding of the text and the theory proposed within. I doubt Friedrich read Tatarkiewicz but at times it does seem almost like he did – and these kinds of ‘far grabs’ into the vast theoretical field of this book the reader encounters on almost every page. The reviewer shares, for example, the subtle aversion to primitive positivism, present throughout the book. While one can use the book without this a priori knowledge, it is only within a philosophical and theoretical context that Friedrich’s proposals join into the wider framework and lose their sometimes narrow purview. The author invests large methodological and theoretical capital in establishing the relative value of judgements of early medieval material and stresses the role of tools in the process of creation and interpretation (e.g. pp. 126, 141, 177). There is, however, little to no engagement with the way most of the objects and information about them are stored, aggregated, and consumed: through digital data. And yet, if the objects that create objects are key to the process of interpretation, so are the objects that filter the data about them. There are scattered references to the use of GIS (p. 125) or ‘gathered data’ (p. 98) and even databases themselves (p. 128), but the narratives, presuppositions, and interpretative power of these technological tools (as well as the questions of accessibility and the results of their use) is scarcely touched upon. This is even more surprising, given that Friedrich engages, albeit briefly, with the role of photographs and reproductions (pp. 129–30). The maps that are used in the book to illustrate points of theory have a secondary agency too. To paraphrase the author, when he talks about hoards, databases ‘often lack information explaining the reason of their’ aggregation (p. 128). What happens with our research when we filter a museum database to show ‘Christian’ or ‘pagan’ objects? It is impossible and probably counterproductive to judge the new framework that Friedrich proposes in the scope of a brief review. A larger discussion is necessary in order to engage with all its points. But a few observations can still be made. First of all, despite its few shortcomings, this book is meant to be discussed and engaged with for the years to come. It is courageous and well researched. Second, Friedrich’s book fits into the larger output of the new generation of scholars working on Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages across disciplinary debates, who radically question existing interpretative frameworks. This output in total is starting to offer a new direction to the field and must be reckoned with. There is a breath of freshness in it, as it is entirely devoid of unnecessary reverence to previous notions just because they are there. This is exactly what, programmatically, is needed and Friedrich’s theory does it as well. There is little doubt that it will be hard to discuss early medieval art without his contribution.