Thomas E. A. Dale, Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience., University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, x, 276 pages, 21 color plates, 113 b/w ill.

When sculpture came to prominence in Western Church architecture in the eleventh century it had largely been absent for some seven centuries. Scholars have explained the paucity as a recognition among Christian leaders of the dangers of life-like, in-the-round objects that might move observers into idolatry. Scholarly consensus has also explained sculpture’s reappearance in the period of Romanesque as a part of the revivalist efforts aimed at reclaiming the grandeur and authority of ancient Rome. Thomas E. A. Dale is perhaps too subtle in situating his book within and against this historical context, but he quite explicitly and emphatically piles on evidence for an alternative.