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Abstract
The exhibition of medieval sculpture held at the Metropol
itan Museum of Art, New York, in 2006 consisted of heads,
once forcibly detached from their original contexts, and busts,
between the viewer and that other. Although most, if not all,
act of spoliation.4
Charles Little, the curator of the medieval collection
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and organizer of the
splendid 2006 exhibition there, entitled Set in Stone: The Face
viewer and the sculpted face becomes the means whereby the
then, that the head and its symbolic burden, the face, have
functioned for so long in human culture as the metonymous
sign for the corporeal whole.2 No wonder, too, that the forcible
removal of the head from the body means the death of its
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Art).
and head.
its distinctive curving nose (Fig. 1). Both it and the clearly
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accident, that is, the head that was once part of a larger whole
and that has been deliberately detached from something else;
represented.
Whereas in Brancusi's Sleeping Muse the "essentialist
view" belongs primarily to the artist and only secondarily to
1983; Fig. 6).13 Because the name George Sand was itself a
pseudonym, Wunderlich has investigated the notion of masked
fully engaged, more fully realized, body. In this way the artist
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FIGURE 5. Constantin Brancusi, Sleeping Muse, bronze, ca. 1910, The Art Institute of
Chicago (photo: from Geist, Brancusi).
Museum of Art).
94
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^ ^ ^ ^ !^ ^^^^ ^
FIGURE 6. Paul Wunderlich, Portrait of George Sand, lithograph, ca. 1983 (photo: author).
FIGURE 7. Headless, Recumbent Husband and Wife, Roman sarcophagus, mid-3rd century, Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano (photo: author).
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FIGURE 8. Portrait of Roman Empress Flacilla, marble, ca. 380-90, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 47.100.51 (photo: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art).
FIGURE 9. Recumbent Husband and Wife, Roman sarcophagus, early 3rd century, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 1993.11.1 (photo: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art).
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In layman's terms:
not (Fig. 9). Now, I do not want to make any sort of socially
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FIGURE 11. The Capitoline Brutus, bronze, Roman head of Augustan date
on 3rd-century bust (photo: author).
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NOTES
1. An earlier version of this essay was delivered at the symposium in
honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the International Center of Medieval
Bust (Leeds, 2000); J. Kohl and R. M?ller, eds., Kopf-Bild: Die B?ste
in Mittelalter und fr?hen Neuzeit (Munich, 2007); and in general, see
G. Simmel, "The Aesthetic Significance of the Face," in Essays in So
ciology, Philosophy, and Aesthetics, ed. . . Wolff (1901; New York,
1959), 276-81.
11. Fig. 4: Set in Stone, no. 59. On the Baptist's disembodied head, see the
article by Annemarie Weyl Carr in this issue of Gesta.
of Gesta.
15. For decapitations during the French Revolution, see R. James, "Behead
1998), by R. W?nsche.
18. A. Giuliano, ed., Museo Nazionale Romano: Le Sculture, 1.7.1 (Rome,
1984), no. 11.11, 24, 25.
19. Fig. 8: Set in Stone, no. 54.
108-41.
Augustan fabrication.
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PLATE 1. (Little and Maines Figure 3) Three heads from the Chartres Cathedral choir screen, as displayed in Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture,
left to right: Head of Joseph, Head of a King, Head of Herod (photo: C. Little).
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