Hubert Damisch. A Childhood Memory by Piero della Francesca.

Palo Alto: Stanford

Reviewed by Bronwen Wilson

Published on H-Childhood (July, 2008)

Hubert Damisch is among the few authors The analogy between procreation and artistic
whose books both transform our understanding production was a commonplace in Renaissance
of the specific work at hand and also intervene art theory, but it is taken up here through the
critically in the history of art by excavating the topos of the artist who fails to give birth to his
traditional ground on which the discipline has work. This is the fate of Piero and Leonardo da
been erected. Biography and psychobiography are Vinci according to both Giorgio Vasari, the famous
targets of his critique in this incredibly smart author of The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and
book, which revolves around the Madonna del Architects (1568), and Sigmund Freud. The fa‐
Parto (c. 1460) that Piero painted in Monterchi mous analysis of the latter, Leonardo da Vinci and
near his birthplace of Borgo San Sepolcro. The a Memory of His Childhood (1910), is both a de‐
fresco is both the focus of analysis, and it also the‐ parture point for Damisch and also a kind of
matizes the author's process of exposing and un‐ anamorphic mirror through which to view the
raveling the discipline's entanglements with au‐ structure of art history. Freud attributes Leonar‐
thorship and intentions. In the image, two angels do's failure to complete his work to his homosexu‐
hold the flaps of a fabric pavilion over their heads ality, a characterization he bases on a reference to
that they have apparently parted to reveal the a childhood dream of an erotic oral encounter
Virgin, a process that echoes the slit where her with a vulture. That the anecdote is mistranslated
dress has opened over her swollen belly. She and a commonplace is one thing; but for Damisch,
points at this opening, an indexical gesture that is Freud's investment in Leonardo's story, like the
unusual, as Damisch reminds us repeatedly. It anecdotes that fill Vasari's Lives, demonstrates
functions, like the vanishing point in perspective, how fables about artists not only become sedi‐
as a point of origin; the Virgin's womb is a mented in art history but also determine interpre‐
metaphor for both the generation of the work of tation. By taking up the Madonna del Parto within
art and the structure of artistic creation. Freud's construct of childhood memory, Damisch
is able to show how both psychoanalysis and the
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biographical project of art history fail. Both are tween origins and the nation, between past and
circular: like Freud's reconstruction of Leonardo's present. Genealogy is central here, as is Freud's
life on the basis of a childhood memory, Vasari's concept of Nachträglichkeit (deferred action, re‐
fables are used as evidence by art historians to construction, afterwards-ness), the later revival of
understand an artist's life and to interpret his or an earlier, usually traumatic episode, such as the
her oeuvre. Stories about a person's childhood death of Piero's mother, but also, more generally,
supposedly provide insights into the intentions of in the ways that sources like Vasari are used to
the artist, even though these memories are anec‐ construct history. Indeed, although Damisch is
dotal, and often fictions, a situation magnified by critical of psychoanalysis (of a particular kind),
the lack of any evidence about Piero's early years. the argument of the book, as already noted, is re‐
Moreover, art historians who follow the biograph‐ fracted through Freud. Damisch repeats that he is
ical trail tend to treat pictures as mere historical not applying psychoanalysis, as if responding to
documents, as objects made by an artist under those who would reduce his text to one that uses
certain conditions (for a patron, on a theme, at a this as a method to interpret the past. Instead,
site, on a date). Those pictures are often assessed working against the more predicable tendency by
as if texts that tell us about the mind of the artist art historians to discard work deemed to be theo‐
instead of considering them as visual artifacts retical, Damisch uses Freud in complex ways: to
that make demands of viewers, as objects that re‐ call attention to the risks, on one level, of harness‐
quire us to look in specific ways. Art historians, ing biography to interpretation in art history,
Damisch implies, often look askance: at texts and while drawing on the theoretical implications of
documents instead of at images. his method on another. As Damisch reminds us at
The pairing of Leonardo and Piero comes the end of the book, Freud's method was not to in‐
from Vasari who fostered the idea that neither terpret one story on the basis of "isolated ele‐
was raised by a father. This is one of his fables, at ments or traits" (p. 87); instead, he sought out the
least for Piero, as Damisch points out, since there connections between two stories in order to con‐
is no evidence that his father died before he was struct how they communicate. For pictures, this
born, and some evidence to the contrary. Piero's means that images painted by Piero cannot be un‐
Madonna is thus doubly resonant: painted upon derstood on the basis of his childhood any more
his return to his childhood home after his moth‐ than his mind can be interpreted from reading
er's death, she symbolizes the maternal body. Sec‐ images that he painted. Instead of interpreting
ond, the Virgin's conception of Christ signifies the Piero on the basis of Vasari's stories, then, we
absent father and also the impossibility of knowl‐ ought to read his fables as symptoms, as "certain
edge about him. For Vasari, the missing father be‐ traits that might have played a role in the genesis
comes a way to explain the failure of both Leonar‐ of the said fables" (p. 41). The construction of
do and Piero to complete artworks. The Madonna those stories is evidence, therefore, of a cultural
dell Parto thus both stands for, and also allego‐ interest in childhood and its connection to the
rizes, the discipline's methodological tendency to production of art. Hence, Damisch's analogy be‐
ascribe meaning to biography. tween Freud's famous question, "where do babies
come from?", and the art historical one, "where
These connections, drawn out in the first two
do works of art come from?" (p. 40), is not merely
chapters, are expanded in the third, where
rhetorical, but historical. And both questions are
Damisch makes it clear that what is at stake in the
entangled, as Damisch shows, with interests in
book is the writing of history: the relation be‐
creation, conception, childbearing, and legitimacy
tween childhood memories and the adult, be‐

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among the contemporaries of Piero and Leonar‐ thor's critique here, as the pointed example of one
do. art historian makes clear who "flatters himself
As evidence of the historical investment in that he has uncovered the 'true meaning' of the
both questions, about the generation of babies Madonna del Parto (as if the 'meaning' of art were
and works of art, the author cites the ubiquity of a matter of true or false)" (pp. 45-46). The author's
texts and images about childbirth, such as the nu‐ penetrating visual analysis and scholarship
merous images of the Visitation and the Nativity, demonstrate how iconography neglects the differ‐
and the importance of naming children, particu‐ ences between images and texts. This is also a les‐
larly boys. Renaissance art historians, however, son taken from Freud's distinction between inter‐
have tended to conflate the two questions, there‐ pretation and construction noted above. By inter‐
by harnessing the production of art to the person, preting an image on the basis of a text instead of
as evidenced in the discipline's traditional preoc‐ constructing the connections between them, the
cupations with authorship, provenance, and the iconographer overlooks the process of communi‐
biographical monograph. Instead, Damisch argues cation between the visual image and the observer.
for a different kind of history, one that abandons Instead of yoking the Madonna del Parto to a text,
interpreting authorial intentions of the artist in Damisch redirects our focus to the work's visual
favor of delineating how that identity is construct‐ strategies, its ambivalences, its original site, and a
ed by the work. This strategy is brought forward context of images within which, and to which, he
by how Damisch positions himself in relation to opens up the picture.
his own work of writing: the title of the book is Chapter 5 turns to perspective and anthropol‐
"not of but by Piero della Francesca" (p. 1), and the ogy in order to explore the earlier suggestion that
chapters are not titled; we should not read the we consider the Virgin's womb in relation to the
book as Damisch's baby, in other words, but as an vanishing point and origins. The parting of her
opening (a series of interconnected parts that dress prompts the maternal body/work of art
open into each other, to other texts, between analogy to be conjoined with a series of mecha‐
those texts and the reader, etc.). We need not nisms for generating art, from the perspectival
abandon the name of the artist, which provides window, to a First Nations' Kwakiutl [Kwakwa‐
the "proofs or indices, the traces of an activity, the ka'wakw] transformation mask, to Alberti's veil.
outline of a role" (p. 32); however, instead of the Here the target of Damisch's critique is the divide
artist as the object of analysis, and the art histori‐ between science and art.
an as the analyst, Damisch is interested in the "op‐ The last chapter turns to the unconscious and
eration of painting" (p. 75), in how painting is al‐ to the ambiguity of the fresco: it is unclear if the
ways open to something that can never be settled, angels are opening the flaps of the pavilion or
an idea that suggests the range of ways his project closing them, a kind of suspension that character‐
open ups, instead of closes down, a dialogue with izes works of art more broadly as concerned with
the past. openings. The point here is not only how the work
This is explicit in the following chapters, is framed, but "how the definition of the picture
which each probe the fresco through a different must constantly reference its initial delimitation"
lens. Chapter 4 turns more directly to the histori‐ (p. 75). That is, the image is always in the act of
ography of the work, to religious history and to doing something, and thus, the viewer always
Marian theology. The claim of iconography, that held in an imaginary relation to it, one staged by
the "true meaning" of the work can be discovered the Madonna del Parto who "gives her self to vi‐
by identifying the right text, is the focus of the au‐ sion" (p. 80). The assertion is that there is always a

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structural relation to an earlier form of which this worth reading for this alone. The book is also im‐
image is a transformation, and that we too have a portant as a demonstration--and this is the case in
structural relation to the work through the moth‐ all Damisch's books with which I am familiar--of
er and our unconscious: the way in which the how we need to be attentive to the work that im‐
painting posits us as subjects. And that subject po‐ ages do, and to how they constitute us as behold‐
sition is in relation to "an archaic past" (p. 90) ers.
onto which the work is an opening. Against biog‐ Translating Damisch cannot be easy; as in his
raphy and interpretation, then, we should be at‐ earlier The Origin of Perspective (1994, which this
tentive to how the subject is generated by the reader found easier to follow in the French, L'
work, and to how the work of art performs its origine de la perspective, 1987), many words are
own operation. multivalent and metaphorical, such as "opera‐
Although short in length, this is a complex tion," and these do not all translate well. Some
and self-aware book that unfolds in myriad ways may find the poetic character of his writing chal‐
and on many levels. For Renaissance and early lenging, since the trajectory of his text is not
modern historians of childhood, the text brings straight; instead it opens up, as if encountering
forward the pivotal role of conception and child‐ Russian dolls that have neither a beginning nor
birth: it is a theme, even a point of origin, that an end. Sometimes sentences are missing a sub‐
generates an overlapping visual, religious, and so‐ ject or a verb. Nevertheless, Goodman's transla‐
cial culture in the period. If historians of child‐ tion is impressive, since the text is both clear and
hood are accustomed to looking at images of yet also maintains Damisch's style. He can be sar‐
childbearing and childbirth as reflections of a cul‐ castic in his criticisms, as the example cited earli‐
ture with an investment in children--as a straight‐ er shows, but also very funny, pointing out prob‐
forward relation between the signifier and the lems of interpretation. For example, he refers to
signified--this book will challenge readers to think Aby Warburg's "torture" of works of art, which is
about how those images constitute that invest‐ a reference to the earlier scholar's effort to make
ment through the meanings opened up by pic‐ paintings speak. This is a book, to be sure, for art
tures. Piero's Madonna del Parto does not only il‐ historians. Part of its brilliance lies in what it sug‐
lustrate the Virgin's conception of Christ and ges‐ gests not only about method, but also about how
ture toward the historical importance of children, we write, and why history matters.
it also thematizes creation, propelling the past
into the present in ways, as stated earlier, that can
never be settled.
Above all, the book is a critique of art history,
particularly of a Renaissance kind, and although
the lessons are familiar to some, I would urge ev‐
eryone in the discipline to read it. It will also irri‐
tate many readers, not only for its trenchant criti‐
cisms, but also for its theoretical complexity,
structuralism, and psychoanalysis. The book is an
homage to Freud, somewhat less "parodic" than
asserted, and read, in part, through Jacques La‐
can. To cite the author's erudition would be an un‐
derstatement, but the text and endnotes are

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Citation: Bronwen Wilson. Review of Damisch, Hubert. A Childhood Memory by Piero della Francesca.
H-Childhood, H-Net Reviews. July, 2008.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14675

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