Anne McGee Morganstern

A useful, if somewhat narrow, study of effigial tombs from France, Francophone Belgium, and England. Morganstern is good at describing the tombs themselves and delineating their chronologies and artistic influences; their wider historical context is, however, a little less clear. What exactly "kinship" means in this context is never made clear, for instance. I'm also not sure that I agree with her reading of the gendered nature of these tombs (though my views have of course been shaped by almost twenty years of subsequent scholarship on the nature of medieval women's power and authority). Still, this is a useful study of the development of a particular genre of medieval visual culture, and a good jumping off point for someone looking to explore concepts of family and commemoration in the Middle Ages.… (mer)