The Byzantine era was a time of the formation of the Abrahamic religions and a battleground for people's hearts and minds. This book shows that, during the time of the Byzantine Empire, the synagogues in Palaestina developed a visual language adhering to traditional literary sources. Until now, scholars believed that Judaism was oblivious to all art forms, regarding them as mere "decoration." This book shows that, contrary to those beliefs, Jewish art was, in fact, flourishing in this period. The visual language that emerged is a trope that utilizes literal and figurative readings to arrive at an inquisitive mixture-a probing language that facilitates learning. It is a visual language of "becoming," of inward introspection and outward scrutiny. This new analysis goes beyond the limits of compositional rules, and requires an analytical, as well as emotive, thought process, to form a cultural interpretation that reveals the hidden language. This means that some parts of Judaism and some parts of Christianity were in agreement despite the commandment of "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," and operated under the assumption that paintings were not necessarily the creation of idols. Thus, we see that the modern movements of art and architecture were not the first to deal with images through themes such as abstraction and denotation. The language developed during the Byzantine period could rival the best of such visual languages.

Considers the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon art and literature. Art historian Meyer Schapiro defined style as "the constant form--and sometimes the constant elements, qualities, and expression--in the art of an individual or group. "Today, style is frequently overlooked as a critical tool, with our interest instead resting with the personal, the ephemeral, and the fragmentary. Anglo-Saxon Styles demonstrates just how vital style remains in a methodological and theoretical prism, regardless of the object, individual, fragment, or process studied. Contributors from a variety of disciplines--including literature, art history, manuscript studies, philology, and more--consider the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon culture and in contemporary scholarship. They demonstrate that the idea of style as a "constant form" has its limitations, and that style is in fact the ordering of form, both verbal and visual. Anglo-Saxon texts and images carry meanings and express agendas, presenting us with paradoxes and riddles that require us to keep questioning the meanings of style.

This groundbreaking collection of essays by a host of international authorities addresses the many aspects of the Danse Macabre, a subject that has been too often overlooked in Anglo-American scholarship. The Danse was once a major motif that occurred in many different media and spread across Europe in the course of the fifteenth century, from France to England, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Spain, Italy and Istria. Yet the Danse is hard to define because it mixes metaphors, such as dance, dialogue and violence. The Danse Macabre aimed to confront viewers and readers with the prospect of their own demise by showing how Death summons each and every one of us-whether high or low, young or old, rich or poor. It functioned both as a text and as a visual theme, and often in combination, while also lending itself well to performance. Now best known through the satirical woodcuts of Hans Holbein the Younger, the motif was one of several 'macabre' themes that developed alongside the moralising tale of the Three Living and the Three Dead and the stark depiction of the cadaver on tomb monuments. The Danse Macabre was influenced by earlier themes, but thanks to its versatility its own impact went much further. As this corpus of innovative research will show, the Danse inspired sculptors, portrait artists, authors and dramatists such as Shakespeare far more than has been recognised until now. From the mural in 1420s Paris and John Lydgate's poem to the subsequent dissemination in print, Mixed Metaphors will reveal the lasting influence of the Danse on European culture from the Middle Ages to the present day.

This title was first published in 2000: Introduced by Joanna Cannon, this volume of essays by postgraduate students at the Courtauld Institute, University of London, explores some of the ways in which art was used to express, to celebrate, and to promote the political and religious aims and aspirations of those in power in the city states of central Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The contributions focus on four centres: Siena, Arezzo, Pisa and Orvieto, and range over a number of media: fresco, panel painting, sculpture, metalwork, and translucent enamel. Employing a variety of methods and approaches, these stimulating essays offer a fresh look at some of the key artistic projects of the period. The dates cited in the title, 1261 and 1352, refer to two well-known works, Coppo di Marcovaldo's Madonna del Bordone and the Guidoriccio Fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, here newly assigned to this date. By concentrating on individual cases such as these, the essays provide rewardingly sustained consideration, at the same time raising crucial issues concerning the role of art in the public life of the period. These generously-illustrated studies introduce new material and advance new arguments, and are all based on original research. Clear and lively presentation ensures that they are also accessible to students and scholars from other disciplines. Art, Politics and Civic Religion in Central Italy, 1261-1352 is the first volume in the new series Courtauld Institute Research Papers. The series makes available original recently researched material on western art history from classical antiquity to the present day.

Medieval churchmen typically defended religious art as a form of "book" to teach the unlettered laity their faith, but in late medieval England, Lollard accusations of idolatry stimulated renewed debate over image worship. Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages places this dispute within the context of the religious beliefs and devotional practices of lay people, showing how they used and responded to holy images in their parish churches, at shrines, and in prayer books. Far more than substitutes for texts, holy images presented a junction of the material and spiritual, offering an increasingly literate laity access to the supernatural through the visual power of "beholding."

Baptismal fonts were necessary to the liturgical life of the medieval Christian. Baptism marked the entrance of the faithful into the right relation, with the Catholic Church representing the main cultural institution of medieval society. In the period between ca. 1050 and ca. 1220, the decoration of the font often had an important function: to underscore the theology of baptism in the context of the sacraments of the Catholic Church. This period witnessed a surge of concern about sacraments. Just as religious thinkers attempted to delineate the sacraments and define their function in sermons and Sentence collections, sculptural programs visualized the teaching of orthodox ideas for the lay audience. This book looks at three areas of primary concern around baptism as a sacrament - incarnation, initiation, and the practice of baptism within the institution of the Church - and the images that embody that religious discussion. Baptismal fonts have been recognized as part of the stylistic production of the Romanesque period, and their iconography has been generally explored as moral and didactic. Here, the message of these fonts is set within a very specific history of medieval Catholic sacramental theology, connecting erudite thinkers and lay users through their decoration and use.

This series of papers shows that a group of monuments erected by the French Cistercian monks, and here for the first time fully described and illustrated, were the earliest Italian buildings using transitional-Gothic architecture.

Arthur Kingsley Porter here traces the roots of Renaissance sculpture to the smaller decorative sculptures found on the outside of churches and other buildings beginning around the turn of the first millennium A.D.

In the first English attempt to address the Syriac homilies of Aphraates, Gavin sets a context for the material by considering the church and the sermons themselves. The topic of how the Jews are treated in the homilies is given special attention.

Medieval Sussex Pottery

This volume features many carved wooden sculptures of saints from 14th- to 20th-century Russia, which until now have been largely unknown to the western public. Officially banned by a proclamation of Peter I, they have nevertheless always been an important part of Russian religious devotion. The sculptures are grouped stylistically into two major groups: early ones are characterized by iconically transcendent austerity, while later ones refl ect western infl uences in anatomical features and gestures. German text.

English description: The gospel of Emperor Heinrich III. is the smallest work (in size) from the scriptorium in Echternach. Its most precious decoration with 38 full pictures (some with two scenes), 13 smaller pictures, 3 decorated text pages and 5 full pages with initials makes it equal to the important codices from there which are now in Nurnberg and Madrid. German description: Das Evangelistar Heinrichs III. ist eine der bekanntesten Handschriften aus dem Skriptorium des Kloster Echternach. Als einzige der dort entstandenen Handschriften verweist das Evangelistar nicht nur aufgrund von Stilkriterien, sondern durch einen schriftlichen Vermerk auf das Kloster: Die weltberuhmte Miniatur Schreiber und Maler im Skriptorium des Klosters Echternach ist mit einer Bitte an den Konig uberschrieben: "O Konig, dieser Dein Ort, Echternach genannt, erwartet bei Tag und Nacht Deine Gnade." Mit einem Umfang von 127 Blatt (= 254 Seiten) und einem Format von 19,3 mal 14,6 cm is es das kleinste unter den Prachtwerken des Echternacher Skriptoriums - sie war moglicherweise als Reisehandschrift fur den Kaiser gedacht. Es ist wegen seiner aufwendigen Ausstattung mit 38 Vollbildern, die zum Teil 2 Szenen enthalten, 13 kleineren Bildern, meist halbseitig, 3 Zierseiten mit Text und Gold- oder Farbleisten und 5 Vollinitialseiten, zahlreichen Goldinitialen und ornamentalen Zierseiten sowie die Einzigartigkeit einzelner Bildmotive machen das Evangelistar zu einer herausragenden Handschrift.

Although the tomb of the apostle St. James the Great is located in Spain, it was in France that the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela became most popular during the 11th and 12 centuries. Four main routes traverse the country before they merge in the Pyrenees to form the Camino Frances. This volume follows each of the pilgrim routes through France and introduces the architectural marvels that can be found along the way in such regions as Burgundy, Provence, Poitou, Perigord and Languedoc. The volume contains eight chapters, each introduced by an overview of the regions history and geography and superbly illustrated with color photographs. German text.