Eloquent Images represents an ambitious and self-aware contribution to highly fraught historiographical debates on the use and analysis of images in studies on the early modern period. The book's editors have assembled an exciting and diverse cast of scholars to explore the many ways that images functioned within the complex mosaic of early modern religious practice. The premise laid out in the book's introduction is that the analysis of images, their creation, messages, and use, must also be contextualized within their specific historical contexts. The resulting contributions effectively deploy methodological tactics that are simultaneously foregrounded in cultural historical approaches and steeped in art historical analysis and contexts.
The book is divided into three thematic sections: Part 1, Converting the Images, Converting by the Images; Part 2, Paths of Devotion; and Part 3, Ways of Propaganda. Each contribution within these sections represents a standalone case study. This division productively enables each author to lean on the book's methodological scaffolding and move quickly and effectively into their analysis. There was, however, some predictable leakage between each section's themes. Each one essentially deals with the form and function of religious images, with their major differentiations resting primarily on matters of intent, intensity, and directionality. For instance, Part 1's first contribution takes the Evangelicae Historiae Imagines and situates it within a contentious and complex context of image creation, production, and proliferation to argue that it served as a model for the construction of subsequent visual and textual Tridentine publications (31–48). Similarly, in their superb contribution to Part 2, Silvia Mostaccio also explores how certain imagery emerged, evolved, and concretized within contexts of religious viewership, participation, and education (151–168). Part 3, with its emphasis on the creation and deployment of propaganda, embodies these thematic similarities throughout. This lack of differentiation is a minor fault, however, and only speaks to the coherence and strength of the book's guiding argumentation.
Eloquent Images is an innovative and informative book, laying out a framework for future scholars to adopt and enough case studies to make clear that much fertile ground remains untilled. Each contribution features extensive endnotes in addition to full bibliographies—a clear indication of the authors’ commitment to facilitating future research through their own eloquent words and images.
