On the east choir screen of Bamberg Cathedral, sculpted pairs of men are framed by carved arches. Though their bodies twist and their garments whirl with heavy pleats, the pairs always manage to face each other. Identified as the apostles on the south side of the choir screen and their Old Testament forebears, the prophets, on the north side, these sculpted men seem to be locked in eternal conversations, suggested by both their hand gestures and their accompanying banderoles. Amongst these twenty-four figures, however, one pair is shown with gently parted lips, an additional detail to suggest they are speaking.

Sculpted in the 1220s, these choir sculptures in high relief fall on the earlier end of the subjects in Kim W. Woods’s Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe: A Silent Rhetoric, which presents a vast corpus of sculptures dating roughly from the late thirteenth to the first few decades of the sixteenth centuries, and spanning Italy, Iberia, France, Germany, and more. The uniting factor for this wide range of sculptures is the depiction of open mouths, which, Woods argues, necessitates consideration of speech and sound. As the author points out in the introduction, recent studies of medieval sculpture have emphasized the ways in which these crafted objects acted upon their viewers, and so her aim is to add the element of sound in such considerations. In other words, this book boldly explores what it might mean for (mute) sculpture to elicit sonic memories or even spoken responses from its audience. The results of this exploration are uneven.

In chapter one, “Affective Sound, Dramatic Dialogue and Animated Performance,” Woods explores how depictions of figures with open mouths guided the emotional responses of their viewers, helping them connect these affective experiences with orthodox narratives, texts, and lessons. Thus, the open-mouthed figures on the Havelberg Cathedral choir screen’s Passion cycle, dating to ca. 1400, may have prompted viewers to listen in to the “soundscape” of abuse hurled against Christ, and the parted lips of the sculpture type known as Christ on the Cold Stone, depicting the seated Christ after his flagellation, may have triggered viewers not only to observe his pain, but also to hear it. Considering this chapter’s title, I expected a more sustained engagement with medieval theatrical performances, and particularly those in which sculptures “played” different roles, a widespread practice across the later medieval world. These performances seem a rich source for considering the relationship of speech and sculpted representation, a topic already touched on by scholars like Johannes Tripps and Amy Knight Powell, but worthy of further consideration.

Chapter two, “Catechism, Liturgy and Song,” is the strongest chapter, thanks in large part to its clearly stated focus on “precise speech acts: sculptures that evoke identifiable texts” (52). By concentrating on sculpted depictions of moments like the Annunciation and Christ as the Man of Sorrows, long associated with canonical instances of speech, Woods’s argument that the open mouth was meant to trigger reflection of particular texts or statements is convincing. The coda on song is somewhat less persuasive due to a slippage between ideas of “speech” and “song,” a point I will return to below. Nevertheless, this chapter makes a convincing case that such open-mouthed figures may have been intended to elicit memories of specific liturgical and Biblical texts, and perhaps even evoke in-the-moment verbal responses.

The third chapter, “Speech, Rhetoric and Agency,” turns to the important question of who was permitted to speak, and thus who was permitted to be depicted as such in sculpture. As she notes, most of the sculptures she presents are of male subjects, with a few exceptions like Eve, for whom speech is an act of sin, and Mary Magdalene, as witness to the Resurrection. This chapter treats some well-known German sculptures with open mouths, including the Magdeburg Rider (ca. 1240) and the donor portraits in Naumburg Cathedral (mid–13th ca.), and the aforementioned prophets at Bamberg Cathedral. Here, Woods suggests that depicting speech was a way to depict authority and/or a naturalistic technique intended to engage the viewer. The coda on blessings is not entirely convincing, as the sole example accompanied by an illustration in the book is Gregor Erhart’s Christ Child Blessing (ca. 1500), where the barely parted lips of the figure do not seem definitive proof of her claim that he would have been seen as delivering an “oral blessing” (91).

The fourth and final chapter, “The Speaking Dead,” treats figural funerary monuments and sculptures of the Crucified Christ. Here again her argument is muddied by a failure to distinguish between speech, song, and voice. For example, the author suggests that the open mouths of pleurant figures on tomb sculpture “might be construed as captured in liturgical song” (95), but to my mind this visual cue might also signal a wider range of vocalizations like wordless laments or weeping. Later, she suggests that certain depictions of the crucified Christ were intended to show Christ speaking, rather than simply suffering. The limited illustrations included in the book, however, do not always support her claims, and without treatment of further textual or contextual evidence, this hypothesis can only be tentative.

Woods’s overarching assertion that sculpture, though mute, might have prompted memories of voice or sound, is persuasive, and her arguments are strongest when focusing on specific sculptures and their contexts (like the Havelberg Cathedral relief cycle, to which she returns several times). However, several issues undercut the points made in this book. As mentioned, Woods discusses numerous sculptures that are not reproduced in the book or are only represented by a single image. It is hard not to sympathize with Woods here, as all art historians must reckon with publisher-mandated limits on images. However, the number of works referenced but not illustrated frustrates the reader. Furthermore, given that many of Woods’s claims rest on close observation of details (especially mouths), even the included photographs do not always strongly support her arguments. For example, in her discussion of a fifteenth-century French crucifixion group, now in the Louvre, she claims that Christ’s facial expression—with open mouth, exposed teeth, and raised eyebrows—is “suggestive less of a cry of anguish than of actual speech” (104). The only image of this sculpture reproduced in the book is a quarter-page photograph of the entire group, with Christ’s mouth barely visible. Viewing this image myself on the Louvre’s website, I was unable to see clearly what the author describes, and thus also unable to accept her argument about its depiction of speech.

Another overarching issue in this book is terminological, stemming from a lack of clarity about what Woods means by such related (but not interchangeable) terms like speech, sound, and utterance. The topic of the book as stated in the introduction is “the illusion of sound and, more specifically, figures carved open-mouthed as if captured mid-utterance” (8). However, in the opinion of this reader, “the illusion of sound” indicates many more possibilities than speech, which to me suggests an articulate form of sonic meaning-making that is different from, say, crying, groaning, or even singing. To be sure, Woods herself seems more interested in this larger category of expressive sound making, as discussed in the chapter summaries. Nevertheless, this elision of speech, voice, and sound casts a shadow over some of Woods’s more compelling points in the chapters that follow. Her repeated use of the phrase “speech motif” further complicates the issue, as this phrase is never clearly defined. Ultimately, it seems to be a shorthand for referring to figural sculptures depicted with open mouths or parted lips, and yet this points to another issue—an open mouth or parted lips may or may not indicate sound, but instead, silent emotional responses like horror or surprise. Further work on the sonic dimension of sculpture, building on Woods’s collection of objects, would do well to include a more sustained reflection on what is meant by “speech,” “sound,” and/or “voice,” both as terms of analysis, and within the medieval contexts in which these sculptures were created.

Despite these issues, this book’s engagement with how sculptures represent or evoke sound is a welcome addition to the corpus of scholarship on medieval art that troubles the idea of medieval encounters with sculpture as solely (or even primarily) visual and takes seriously sculpture’s affective presence. As Woods writes in the conclusion, depicting figures with open mouths can be understood as “a strategy of engagement and interaction” (109). Thus, while the sculptures themselves remain mute, depicting them with open mouths might “[turn] spectators into listeners” (111). Future scholars will find a rich range of subjects for further investigation in Woods’s book, both by considering the sonic dimensions of well-known sculptures and looking into some of the lesser-known examples she has collected here. These investigations will no doubt help us expand our understanding of how medieval makers and viewers engaged with and understood the special role of representation, not as a static site of observation, but as an active cocreator of meaning.