Awards
2004 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award
John Beldon Scott, Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin
John Beldon Scott, Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (2003)
In Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), John Beldon Scott traces the rich history of Christ’s Shroud, the revolutionary chapel designed by Guarino Guarini to house it, and the dynastic fortunes of the dukes of Savoy, who made political capital of both the relic and the chapel. This beautifully written, profusely illustrated book provides a vivid and compelling account of the Savoy’s close identification with the Shroud from its earliest traceable history in the fourteenth century to the present day. In an erudite but accessible study that interweaves the long history of a relic, a dynasty, and an architectural masterpiece, Scott examines the evolution of art, patronage, religion, and politics throughout some seven hundred years.
The Shroud was a relic of particular importance, since it displayed the physical consequences of all the instruments of the Passion on Christ’s body. It was acquired by the Savoy in 1453 and was moved to Turin in 1578, cementing the transfer of power to the new ducal capital.
Guarini’s radically original Chapel of the Holy Shroud employed geometry to convey the sanctity of the relic, resulting in one of the greatest achievements of Counter Reformation visual culture. Scott elucidates the architect’s plans, innovations, and iconography, relating the architecture to his theoretical writings and to other thinkers, political developments, and the artistically conservative ambience of contemporary Turin. Guarini’s iconoclastic thinking, innovative Passion capitals, and remarkable geometry, designed to promulgate the importance of both the relic and the family with whom it was closely identified, are all examined. The author shows how the popular relic was used politically by a dynasty in need of cohesive devices to counter its cultural diversity and geographical fragmentation. Moving impressively from one methodology to another, Scott traces the history of the relic’s public rituals, situates the chapel’s construction within the context of Turinese urban planning, and notes the chapel’s transformation into a burial site for the Savoy during the nineteenth century. The book ends poignantly in 1997, when the chapel was tragically gutted during an electrical fire.
Scott’s study is extraordinarily wide-ranging and nuanced, gathering evidence from religious history, popular culture, archival materials, and architectural theory to show how the history of Guarini’s chapel is inseparable from the history of the Shroud’s cult and its manipulation by the House of Savoy. Architecture for the Shroud provides an inspirational model for studies of the interaction between patron and artist, art and culture, and religion and politics, and brilliantly demonstrates the benefits of studying artworks over time.
Committee: Babette Bohn, Texas Christian University, chair; Jonathan M. Bloom, Boston College; Edward J. Sullivan, New York University; Benjamin C. Withers, Indiana University, South Bend.
