This volume marks a new departure for »Les études du RILMA«, founded and edited by Christian Heck, which now presents conference papers from outside the confines of Paris and under other editorship. The subject of this conference on the uses of models in medieval art opens with a perspicacious and nuanced introduction by Fabienne Joubert, who noted that »partout se révèle une étroite imbrication entre mémoire, copie, et création«. The volume ends with a conclusion by Xavier Barral I Altet, himself the instigator of the epoque-making conference held in Rennes in 1983, »Artistes, artisans et production artistique« which resulted in three massive volumes that transformed approaches to medieval art at the end of the 20^th century (published 1986, 1987, 1990); notes from the round table discussion complete the present collection of essays. The production is of very high quality, in large format, with black and white illustrations in the text, supplemented by a quire of 16 pages of good color reproductions at the end.

The 16 essays that form the corps of the volume are clustered under four headings: I) L’œuvre modèle; II) Les carnets de modèles; III) Modèles et polyvalences artistiques; IV) Transferts de modèles et procédés techniques. These conceptual categories overlap to a considerable degree but are largely differentiated by media preferences, although these too overlap somewhat. All media are included in Part I, from Alain Salamagne on architecture, Anna Kónya on prints and wall painting, Thomas Bohl on Giovanni di Paolo and panel painting, Alessandra Costa on wall painting by Giacomo Jaquerio, Nicolas Bock on Napolitan funerary slabs (Part I, L’œuvre modèle); Part II (Les carnets de modèles), focuses on manuscripts.

Anna Pozhidaeva leads off with the iconography of the Days of Creation in 11^th century manuscripts from Verdun and Lobbes, also drawing on a 12^th century Flavius Josephus manuscript and a Coptic textile fragment; Anne Ritz-Guilbert follows, on the Vitae imperatorum Master’s use of models from BnF fr. 95 in creating marginalia in the Breviary of Marie de Savoie; Joris Heyder discusses drawings in relation to finished manuscript illuminations in the 15^th century; Dominic Delarue discusses the illustrated legendary BnF fr. 185 in relation to commercial book production and work attributed (questionably, in my view) to Jeanne and Richard Montbaston in Paris in the second quarter of the 14th century. Sculpture in relation to drawing and painting comes to the fore in Part III (Modèles et polyvalences artistiques), beginning with an experimental creation by Vincent Cousquer, sculptor in the Fondation de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, of a sculpted head based on Villard de Honnecourt's drawing of the head of St Peter. Pascale Charron discusses the circulation of Jean Fouquet’s manuscript and panel painted models in relation to sculpture in Touraine; Marc Gil considers the sculpture of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux at Châlons-en-Champagne in relation to the glass of the Collegiate Church of Saint-Étienne at Troyes and the illumination of the Capucin Bible, and further compares foliate initials in the Bible with foliage rendered in metalwork on the shrine of St Etherius in Cologne. Michele Tomasi concludes Part III with a study of written sources for French metal production in the 15^th century.

In Part IV (Transferts de modèles et procédés techniques), Daniel Parello considers glass in Strasbourg, Freiburg, Naumburg, and Marburg in relation to the Hortus deliciarum, the Elizabeth Shrine and the Aschaffenburg Gospel book, with an excursus to Assisi and panels from the Dominican Church in Cologne now in the Cathedral. Sofia Gans returns to metalwork with a study of the Vischer workshop of Nuremberg and the detailed studies end with Joanna Olchawa’s study of moulds in Hildesheim bronzes of the second quarter of the 13^th century. All the authors also deal to a greater or lesser extent with the theoretical issues outlined in the opening and closing essays. A cumulative bibliography would therefore have been more useful as a reference tool than the individual bibliographies at the end of each article.

My major caveat is that more careful attention should have been paid to the translations into English to ensure a more accurate and idiomatic result. On the title page we have Middle Age for Middle Ages (correct on the cover, fortunately); p. 13 »A State of Questions« would be better rendered as »The State of the Question« or simply »Questions«; several of the English abstracts are poorly translated (p. 75, 121, 133, 207, 223, 233), whereas others read quite well (p. 85, 99, 109, 165, 179, 193); and the essays in English also needed more exacting editing. Another minor but irritating point: titles in English should be capitalized. Now that so many publications include essays in English by non-native speakers, a high level of editing is essential if an appropriately professional level of production is to be maintained.