This is the first full-length, English-language study of eleventh-century figural sculpture produced in Dalmatia and Croatia. Challenging the dependency on stylistic analysis in previous scholarship, Magdalena Skoblar contextualises the visual presence of these relief carvings in their local communities, focusing on five critical sites. Alongside an examination of architectural setting and iconography, this book also investigates archaeological and textual evidence to establish the historical situation within which these sculptures were produced and received. Croatia and Dalmatia in the eleventh century were a borderland between Byzantium and the Latin west where the balance of power was constantly changing. These sculptures speak of the fragmented and hybrid nature of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean as a whole, where well-connected trade routes and porous boundaries informed artistic production. Moreover, in contrast to elsewhere in Europe where contemporary figural sculpture was spurred on by monastic communities, this book argues that the patronage of such artworks in Dalmatia and Croatia was driven by members of the local secular elites. For the first time, these sculptures are being introduced to Anglophone scholarship, and this book contributes to a fuller understanding of the profound changes in medieval attitudes towards sculpture after the year 1000.

The resonant ruins of Pompeii are perhaps the most direct route back to the living, breathing world of the ancient Romans. Two million visitors annually now walk the paved streets which re-emerged, miraculously preserved, from their layers of volcanic ash. Yet for all the fame and unique importance of the site, there is a surprising lack of a handy archaeological guide in English to reveal and explain its public spaces and private residences. This compact and user-friendly handbook, written by an expert in the field, helpfully fills that gap. Illustrated throughout with maps, plans, diagrams and other images, Pompeii: An Archaeological Guide offers a general introduction to the doomed city followed by an authoritative summary and survey of the buildings, artefacts and paintings themselves. The result is an unrivalled picture, derived from an intimate knowledge of Roman archaeology around the Bay of Naples, of the forum, temples, brothels, bath-houses, bakeries, gymnasia, amphitheatre, necropolis and other site buildings - including perennial favourites like the House of the Faun, named after its celebrated dancing satyr.

In a museum in the small town of Bayeux in Normandy, specially devised to hold this single object, is a strip of linen nearly one thousand years old. It is 230 feet long and about 20 inches high. On it, embroidered in brightly colored wool, are figures of men, animals, buildings, and ships. In a series of vivid scenes, with a running explanatory text in Latin, it relates the invasion of England by William of Normandy and his victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Nothing remotely like the Bayeux Tapestry exists anywhere in the world, yet comparatively few people have been to Bayeux to see it and appreciate how totally absorbing it is. This book, first published in 1985, reproduces the Tapestry in full color and makes it accessible as never before. The story told in the Tapestry has all the ingredients of an epic poem, and a cast of characters that includes King Edward the Confessor; his liegeman, Duke Harold; and William, Duke of Normandy. When Edward dies, Harold succeeds him as king. William, who has a better dynastic claim, invades England, and at the Battle of Hastings Harold is defeated and killed. Here the Tapestry breaks off, but it probably originally concluded with William's coronation--the beginning of a sequence of monarchs that has continued virtually unbroken until today, and of the English nation as we know it. The Tapestry is reproduced in full color over 146 pages, with captions on a fold-out page for easy reference. A second reproduction of the Tapestry in black and white has a detailed accompanying commentary. Sir David Wilson, former Director of the British Museum, provides an up-to-date summary of the historical evidence, explaining each episode and coveringrelated topics such as the costumes, armor, ships, buildings, and customs. One of the primary sources for the history of the period, the Tapestry is a social document of incalculable value. It is the sole survivor of an art form that may once have been widespread, the wall-hanging commemorating the deeds of a great man.

Something of a landmark in the history of dress... the period is notably rich in its documentation and by carefully analysing both the manuscript sources and published accounts [the author] is able to produce an abundantly detailed narrative of the changes in fashion... Tighter clothes outraged moralists, incensed monastic chroniclers and stirred poets... in the last chapter the author discuss[es] the relationship of the garments she has meticulously reconstructed with their possible representations in manuscript illumination, sculpture and painting... Of lasting value... a pioneering book which will be of enduring value to historians of dress and art alike. APOLLO

The evidence for this scholarly and detailed study is drawn in the first instance from documentary sources... contemporary illustrations reinforce the written evidence... The book contains much that is of wider interest than the subject matter suggests: the various mottoes used by Edward III are discussed, and the problem of his expanding waistline is revealed; there are interesting sidelights on the new orders of chivalry. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW

1340 to 1363 were years notable for dramatic developments in fashion and for extravagant spending on costume, foreshadowing the later luxury of Richard II's court. Stella Mary Newton's ground-breaking study discusses the costume of the period in quite remarkable detail, drawing on surviving accounts from the royal courts, the evidence of chronicles and poetry (often from unpublished manuscripts), and contemporary paintings. Her exploration of aspects of chivalry, particularly the choice of mottoes and devices worn at tournaments, and of the exchange of gifts of clothingbetween reigning monarchs, offers new insights into the social history of the times, and she has much to say that is crucial to the study of illuminated manuscripts of the fourteenth century.

A New York Times best art book of 2022 New insights into the innovative multimedia work and early career of fourteenth-century Italian painter Simone Martini Painter to popes, princes, and scions of Renaissance dynasties, Simone Martini (ca. 1284-1344) transformed Western painting with his groundbreaking devotional images and masterful manipulation of gold. This beautifully illustrated book highlights the astonishing novelty of his paintings in terms of their construction, multimedia techniques, and imagery. A focus of the book-the first on Simone Martini in English in over thirty years-is the work that he produced for churches in the Umbrian city of Orvieto, a papal refuge and stronghold of the Guelph political faction. The publication sheds light on Simone's early career and technical accomplishments with extended catalogue entries for three Orvieto altarpieces and a painting of private devotion, including the results of new scientific analysis for the Gardner works. Leading scholars consider Simone's patrons, artistic accomplishments, and contributions to the development of the polyptych altarpiece. Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Exhibition Schedule: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (October 13, 2022-January 16, 2023)

Offering snapshots of mercantile devotion to saints in different regions, this volume is the first to ask explicitly how merchants invoked saints, and why. Despite medieval and modern stereotypes of merchants as godless and avaricious, medieval traders were highly devout - and rightly so. Overseas trade was dangerous, and merchants' commercial activities were seen as jeopardizing their souls. Merchants turned to saints for protection and succor, identifying those most likely to preserve their goods, families, reputations, and souls. The essays in this collection, written from diverse angles, range across later medieval western Europe, from Spain to Italy to England and the Hanseatic League. They offer a multi-disciplinary examination of the ways that medieval merchants, from petty traders to influential overseas wholesalers, deployed the cults of saints. Three primary themes are addressed: danger, community, and the unity of spiritual and cultural capital. Each of these themes allows the international panel of contributors to demonstrate the significant role of saints in mercantile life. This book is unique in its exploration of saints and commerce, shedding light on the everyday role religion played in medieval life. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious history, medieval history, art history, and literature.

This volume breaks new ground by conceptualizing physical landscapes as living cultural bodies. It redefines dynamic cultural landscapes as catalysts in which the natural world and human practice are inextricably linked and are constantly interacting. Drawing on research by eminent archaeologists, numismatists and historians, the essays in this volume * Provide insights into the ways people in the past, and in the present, imbue places with meanings; * Examine the social and cultural construction of space in the early medieval period in South Asia; * Trace complex patterns of historical development of a temple or a town, to understand ways in which such spaces often become a means of constructing the collective past and social traditions. With a new chapter on continuity and change in the sacred landscape of the Buddhist site at Udayagiri, the second edition of Negotiating Cultural Identity will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of archaeology, social history, cultural studies, art history and anthropology.

The Medieval World Complete re-creates one of the great ages of European civilization through a sequence of spectacular images accompanied by a lively, informed commentary. Organized by topic and thoroughly cross-referenced, this comprehensive volume enables the reader to explore and understand every facet of the Middle Ages, an era of breathtaking artistic achievement and religious faith in a world where life was often coarse and cruel, cut short by war, famine, and disease. Framed by chapters that bracket the beginning and the end of this misunderstood period, The Medieval World Complete covers religion and the Church, nations and laws, daily life, art and architecture, scholarship and philosophy, and the world beyond Christendom. The book is completed by biographies of key personalities, from Charlemagne to Wycliffe, as well as timelines, maps, a glossary, a gazetteer, and a bibliography.

Originally published in 1971, Animals in Art and Thought discusses the ways in which animals have been used by man in art and literature. The book looks at how they have been used to symbolise religious, social and political beliefs, as well as their pragmatic use by hunters, sportsmen, and farmers. The book discusses these various attitudes in a survey which ranges from prehistoric cave art to the later Middle Ages. The book is especially concerned with uncovering the latent, as well as the manifest meanings of animal art, and presents a detailed examination of the literary and archaeological monuments of the periods covered in the book. The book discusses the themes of Creation myths of the pagan and Christian religion, the contribution of the animal art of the ancient contribution of the animal art of the ancient Orient to the development of the Romanesque and gothic styles in Europe, the use of beast fables in social or political satire, and the heroic associations of animals in medieval chivalry.

A delightful translation of one of the finest, and most beautiful, examples of a medieval Bestiary. Bestiaries are a particularly characteristic product of medieval England, and give a unique insight into the medieval mind. Richly illuminated and lavishly produced, they were luxury objects for noble families. Their three-fold purpose was to provide a natural history of birds, beasts and fishes, to draw moral examples from animal behaviour (the industrious bee, the stubborn ass), and to reveal a mystical meaning - the phoenix, for instance, as a symbol ofChrist's resurrection. This Bestiary, MS Bodley 764, was produced around the middle of the thirteenth century and is of singular beauty and interest. The lively illustrations have the freedom and naturalistic quality ofthe later Gothic style, and make dazzling use of colour. This book reproduces the 136 illuminations to the same size and in the same place as the original manuscript, fitting the text around them. Richard Barber's translation from the original Latin is a delight to read, capturing both the serious intent of the manuscript and its charm. RICHARD BARBER has written many books on the history of and life in the middle ages, from his Somerset MaughamAward-winning The Knight and Chivalry, by way of biographies of Henry II and the Black Prince, to an anthology of Arthurian literature from England, France and Germany, Arthurian Legends, and an account of the historical Arthur, King Arthur: Hero and Legend.

The studies in this volume all deal with images and texts that relate to the veneration of the saints in Byzantium after the 9th century. Some papers are devoted to the church calendar and the annual commemorations of hundreds of saints through liturgical poetry and sequences of isolated images in fresco, icon painting and illuminated manuscripts. Others are concerned with the longer and rarer, narrative cycles devoted to the life of a single saint, cycles found mainly in fresco and on the so-called vita icons that first appear in the East in the late 12th century. Additional studies deal with the developing role of icons in liturgical ceremonies, and with images of a saint being approached by a supplicant or patron. A final section is devoted to places made holy by the saints, and to their holy relics.

In this new edition of A Short History of the Middle Ages, Barbara H. Rosenwein offers a panoramic view of the medieval world from Iceland to China and from Sweden to West Africa. Yet the book never loses sight of the main contours of the period (c.300 to c.1500) or of the fate of the heirs of the Roman Empire. Its lively and informative narrative covers the major events, political and religious movements, men and women, saints and sinners, economic and cultural changes, ideals, fears, and fantasies of the period in Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic world. A comprehensive new map program, updated for the global reach of this edition, offers a way to visualize the era's enormous political, economic, and religious changes. Line drawings make clear archaeological finds and architectural structures All of the maps, genealogies, and figures in the book, as well as practice questions and suggested answers, are available at utphistorymatters.com,

This book traces the historic evolution of urban form, principles, and design; it serves as a compendium, or reference, of city design; and is a polemic about the necessity for the recovery of the city and a contemporary urban architecture. It begins with the planned cities of Greece and the Roman Empire from about 500 BC, through the late-medieval Bastides, the Ideal Renaissance cities, and Baroque new towns, to the urban planning strategies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It covers anti-urban modernist architecture and the resulting disintegration of the city. It concludes with late-twentieth-century efforts to recover the city, a contemporary urban architecture, and urbanism's potential contribution to the contemporary ecological crisis. The book is project oriented and extensively illustrated. It may be read graphically, textually, or both. As such, it falls into the long tradition of illustrated treatises in which theory is embedded in the projects, with only occasional assistance or clarification from the text. Architecture and urban design are physical arts, not verbal arts, and they are best understood from graphic representations.

In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual.

An innovative, interdisciplinary approach to the understudied Icelandic mappae mundi. The Icelandic mappae mundi (maps of the world), drawn between c. 1225 and c. 1400, are contemporary with the breathtaking rise of its vernacular literary culture, and provide important insights into the Icelanders' capacious geographical awareness in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, in comparison with those drawn elsewhere, among them the English Hereford mappa mundi, they have received little critical attention. This book explores the Icelandic mappae mundi not only for what they reveal about the Icelanders' geographical awareness, but as complex registers of Icelandic national self-perception and imagining, situating them in their various literary, intellectual, and material contexts. It reveals fully how Icelanders used the cartographic medium to explore fantasies of national origin, their political structures, and place in Europe. The small canon of Icelandic world maps is reproduced here photographically, with their texts presented alongside English translations to enable a wider understanding.

During the period of Aztec expansion and empire (ca. 1325-1525), scribes of high social standing used a pictographic writing system to paint hundreds of manuscripts detailing myriad aspects of life, including historical, calendric, and religious information. Following the Spanish conquest, native and mestizo tlacuiloque (artist-scribes) of the sixteenth century continued to use pre-Hispanic pictorial writing systems to record information about native culture. Three of these manuscripts-Codex Boturini, Codex Azcatitlan, and Codex Aubin-document the origin and migration of the Mexica people, one of several indigenous groups often collectively referred to as "Aztec." In Portraying the Aztec Past, Angela Herren Rajagopalan offers a thorough study of these closely linked manuscripts, articulating their narrative and formal connections and examining differences in format, style, and communicative strategies. Through analyses that focus on the materials, stylistic traits, facture, and narrative qualities of the codices, she places these annals in their historical and social contexts. Her work adds to our understanding of the production and function of these manuscripts and explores how Mexica identity is presented and framed after the conquest.

Although liminality has been studied by scholars of medieval and seventeenth-century art, the role of the threshold motif in Netherlandish art of the late fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries -- this late medieval/early 'early modern' period -- has been much less fully investigated. Thresholds and Boundaries: Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385-1550) addresses this issue through a focus on key case studies (Sluter's portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol and the calendar pages of the Limbourg Brothers' Tres Riches Heures), and on important formats (altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts). Lynn F. Jacobs examines how the visual thresholds established within Netherlandish paintings, sculptures, and manuscript illuminations become sites where artists could address relations between life and death, aristocrat and peasant, holy and profane, and man and God-and where artists could exploit the "betwixt and between" nature of the threshold to communicate, paradoxically, both connections and divisions between these different states and different worlds. Building on literary and anthropological interpretations of liminality, this book demonstrates how the exploration of boundaries in Netherlandish art infused the works with greater meaning. The book's probing of the -- often ignored --meanings of the threshold motif casts new light on key works of Netherlandish art.

The twelve studies contained in this second collection by Henry Maguire are linked together by a common theme, namely the relationship of Byzantine art to the imaginary. They show how art enabled the Byzantines not only to imagine the sacred events of the past, but also to visualize the invisible present by manifesting the spiritual world that they could not see. The articles are grouped around the following five topics: the depiction of nature by the Byzantines before and after iconoclasm, especially in portrayals of the earthly and the spiritual Paradise; the social functions and theological significance of classical artistic forms in Byzantine art after iconoclasm; the association between rhetoric and the visual arts in Byzantium, especially in contrast to the role played by liturgical drama in western medieval art; the relationship of the visual arts to Byzantine concepts of justice and the law, both human and divine; and portrayals of the two Byzantine courts, the imperial court on earth and the imagined court in heaven. The papers cover a wide range of media, including floor and wall mosaics, paintings in manuscripts and churches, ivory carvings, coins, and enamel work.

The sixteen studies in this book include six specially translated from Greek and another two published here for the first time. They deal with the art of painting in Crete at a time when the island was under Venetian rule. The main emphasis is on the 15th century and especially on the painter Angelos. More than thirty icons with his signature survive, and at least twenty more can be reliably attributed to him. Angelos was the most significant artist of a particularly significant era. It was at this time that the centre of artistic production migrated from Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire to Candia, the capital of Venetian-occupied Crete. These studies try to reconstruct the personality of this late Byzantine painter, Angelos, not only through his icons but also through his will (1436), now in the State Archives in Venice. In this context they also explore the status of the Cretan painter in society. The large number of extant Cretan icons clearly indicates the striking increase in production from the 15th century onwards. Similarly, archival documents are used to examine the trade of icons in Crete and the way Cretan artists had to organize their workshops in order to meet the requirements of the market.

This book explores the issue of ecclesiastical authority in Romanesque sculpture on the portals and other sculpted "gateways" of churches in the north Italian region of Lombardy. Gillian B. Elliott examines the liturgical connection between the ciborium over the altar (the most sacred threshold inside the church), and the sculpted portals that appeared on church exteriors in medieval Lombardy. In cities such as Milan, Civate, Como, and Pavia, the liturgy of Saint Ambrose was practiced as an alternative to the Roman liturgy and the churches were constructed to respond to the needs of Ambrosian liturgy. Not only do the Romanesque churches in these places correspond stylistically and iconographically, but they were also linked politically in an era of intense struggle for ultimate regional authority. The book considers liturgical and artistic links between interior church furnishings and exterior church sculptural programs, and also applies new spatial methodologies to the interior and exterior of churches in Lombardy. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, medieval studies, architectural history, and religious studies.

Early Islamic Art, 650-1100 is the first in a set of four volumes of studies by Oleg Grabar. Between them they bring together more than eighty articles, studies and essays, work spanning half a century. Each volume takes a particular section of the topic, the three subsequent volumes being entitled: Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800; Islamic Art and Beyond; and Jerusalem. Reflecting the many incidents of a long academic life, they illustrate one scholar's attempt at making order and sense of 1400 years of artistic growth. They deal with architecture, painting, objects, iconography, theories of art, aesthetics and ornament, and they seek to integrate our knowledge of Islamic art with Islamic culture and history as well as with the global concerns of the History of Art. In addition to the articles selected, each volume contains an introduction which describes, often in highly personal ways, the context in which Grabar's scholarship developed and the people who directed and mentored his efforts. The present volume concentrates primarily on documents provided by archaeology understood in its widest sense, and including the study of texts with reference to monuments or to the contexts of these monuments. The articles included represent major contributions to the understanding of the formative centuries of Islamic art, focusing on the Umayyad (661-750) and Fatimid (969-1171) dynasties in Greater Syria and in Egypt, and on the Mediterranean or Iranian antecedents of early Islamic art. Historical, cultural, and religious themes, including the role of court ceremonies, the growth of cities, and the importance of the Qur'an, are introduced to help explain how a new art was formed in the central lands of the Near East and how its language can be retrieved from visual or written sources.

The first major illustrated study of this unique medieval art form for almost half a century, surveying the images and iconography that made the medieval church a riot of colour. Highly Commended in the Best Archaeological Book category of the 2008 British Archaeological Awards. Wall paintings are a unique art form, complementing, and yet distinctly separate from, other religious imageryin churches. Unlike carvings, or stained glass windows, their support was the structure itself, with the artist's "canvas" the very stone and plaster of the church. They were also monumental, often larger than life-size images forpublic audiences. Notwithstanding their dissimilarity from other religious art, wall paintings were also an integral part of church interiors, enhancing devotional imagery and inspiring faith and commitment in their own right, and providing an artistic setting for the church's sacred rituals and public ceremonies. This book brings together, often for the first time, many of the very best surviving examples of medieval church wall paintings. Using newtechnologies and many previously untried techniques, it allows us to visualize these images as the artists originally intended. The plates are accompanied by an authoritative and scholarly text, bringing the imagery and iconography of the medieval church vividly to life. ROGER ROSEWELL was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University. A former journalist, he is a Director of a private European art foundation and the news editor of the online stained glass magazine, VIDIMUS.

Perceptions of the Body and Sacred Space in Late Antiquity and Byzantium seeks to reveal Christian understanding of the body and sacred space in the medieval Mediterranean. Case studies examine encounters with the holy through the perspective of the human body and sensory dimensions of sacred space, and discuss the dynamics of perception when experiencing what was constructed, represented, and understood as sacred. The comparative analysis investigates viewers' recognitions of the sacred in specific locations or segments of space with an emphasis on the experiential and conceptual relationships between sacred spaces and human bodies. This volume thus reassesses the empowering aspects of space, time, and human agency in religious contexts. By focusing on investigations of human endeavors towards experiential and visual expressions that shape perceptions of holiness, this study ultimately aims to present a better understanding of the corporeality of sacred art and architecture. The research points to how early Christians and Byzantines teleologically viewed the divine source of the sacred in terms of its ability to bring together - but never fully dissolve - the distinctions between the human and divine realms. The revealed mechanisms of iconic perception and noetic contemplation have the potential to shape knowledge of the meanings of the sacred as well as to improve our understanding of the liminality of the profane and the sacred.

The imagery of Hell, the Christian account of the permanent destinations of the human soul after death, has fascinated people over the centuries since the emergence of the Christian faith. These landmark volumes provide the first large-scale investigation of this imagery found across the Byzantine and post-Byzantine world. Particular emphasis is placed on images from churches across Venetian Crete, which are comprehensively collected and published for the first time. Crete was at the centre of artistic production in the late Byzantine world and beyond and its imagery was highly influential on traditions in other regions. The Cretan examples accompany rich comparative material from the wider Mediterranean - Cappadocia, Macedonia, the Peloponnese and Cyprus. The large amount of data presented in this publication highlight Hell's emergence in monumental painting not as a concrete array of images, but as a diversified mirroring of social perceptions of sin.

Encompassing a broad range of architectural styles and elements, this impressive sourcebook contains 200 striking illustrations -- from decorative panels and gawking gargoyles to exquisite stained glass and ironwork designs.