This 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.

This treatment of the monastic complex (also known as Centula) founded by Angilbert ca.790 includes chapters on Angilbert, Angilbert's symbolic understanding, theological issues of the 790s, and a proglomena. A fifth chapter addresses the program of Saint-Riquier: the physical arrangement of the monastery that featured three churches, the largest a basilica dedicated to S. Richarius, and the Holy Savior (known for its early westwork). The number three and trinitarian symbolism was ubiquitous throughout the complex, including the building proportions. The work summarizes what is known of the interior arrangement of the basilica and the other churches, their decoration, and liturgical processions and activities.

Continuing from the year 817, reached in his The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, Raymond Davis deals with the remaining ten biographies of the Liber Pontificalis down to 886, when compilation ceased. The 9th-century biographies, as a semi-official papal chronicle, are one of the most important sources for Italian history. Major themes preoccupying the popes of this period and their contemporary biographers were relations with the Carolingian and Byzantine Empires. In respect of the former, the popes were determined to maintain freedom of action while the Western emperors were concerned to exercise some influence in Rome. In the case of the Eastern Empire, the popes wished to maintain their independence, established in the previous century, yet to assert primacy over the Byzantine Church; hence their concern both to have their right to decide between claimants to the See of Constantinople acknowledged and to assert jurisdiction in territory disputed between East and West. Rome itself was under threat, and the Saracen invasion of 846 forms a high-point of the narrative.

Up to its pillage by the Crusaders in 1204, Constantinople teemed with magnificent statues of emperors, pagan gods, and mythical beasts. Yet the significance of this wealth of public sculpture has hardly been acknowledged beyond late antiquity. In this book, Paroma Chatterjee offers a new perspective on the topic, arguing that pagan statues were an integral part of Byzantine visual culture. Examining the evidence in patriographies, chronicles, novels, and epigrams, she demonstrates that the statues were admired for three specific qualities - longevity, mimesis, and prophecy; attributes that rendered them outside of imperial control and endowed them with an enduring charisma sometimes rivaling that of holy icons. Chatterjee's interpretations refine our conceptions of imperial imagery, the Hippodrome, the Macedonian Renaissance, a corpus of secular objects, and Orthodox icons. Her book offers novel insights into Iconoclasm and proposes a more truncated trajectory of the holy icon in medieval Orthodoxy than has been previously acknowledged.

The Book of Kells, dating from about 800, is a brilliantly decorated manuscript of the four Gospels. This new official guide (French language edition), by the former Keeper of Manuscripts at Trinity College Library, Dublin, provides fascinating insights into the Book of Kells, revealing the astounding detail and richness of one of the greatest works of medieval art. The illustrations in the guide include reproductions of complete pages, and details that allow one to marvel at the intricacy of the decoration. The Book of Kells is explored through its historical background; its structure; its decorative elements, including the richness of its symbols and themes; the scribes and artists who worked on the manuscript; and the tools and pigments used in its creation.

"The Alchemy of Paint" is a critique of the modern world, which Spike Bucklow sees as the product of seventeenth-century ideas about science. In modern times, we have divorced color from its origins, using it for commercial advantage. Spike Bucklow shows us how in medieval times, color had mystical significance far beyond the enjoyment of shade and hue.

Each chapter demonstrates the mindset of medieval Europe and is devoted to just one color, acknowledging its connections with life in the pre-modern world. Colors examined and explained in detail include a midnight blue called ultramarine, an opaque red called vermilion, a multitude of colors made from metals, a transparent red called dragonsblood, and, finally, gold.

Today, "scarlet" describes a color, but it was originally a type of cloth. Henry VI's wardrobe accounts from 1438 to 1489 show that his cheapest scarlet was 14.2s.6d. and that scarlets could fetch up to twice that price. In the fifteenth century, a mid-priced scarlet cost more than two thousand kilos of cheese or one thousand liters of wine. This expense accounts for the custom of giving important visitors the "red carpet treatment."

The book looks at how color was "read" in the Middle Ages and returns to materials to look at the hidden meaning of the artists' version of the philosopher's stone. The penultimate chapter considers why everyone has always loved gold.

Spike Bucklow is a conservation scientist working with oil paintings at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge.

Tracing the Gospel text from script to illustration to recitation, this study looks at how illuminated manuscripts operated within ritual and architecture. Focusing on a group of richly illuminated lectionaries from the late eleventh century, the book articulates how the process of textual recitation produced marginalia and miniatures that reflected and subverted the manner in which the Gospel was read and simultaneously imagined by readers and listeners alike. This unique approach to manuscript illumination points to images that slowly unfolded in the mind of its listeners as they imagined the text being recited, as meaning carefully changed and built as the text proceeded. By examining this process within specific acoustic architectural spaces and the sonic conditions of medieval chant, the volume brings together the concerns of sound studies, liturgical studies, and art history to demonstrate how images, texts, and recitations played with the environment of the Middle Byzantine church.

The "Things of Greater Importance" provides a close look into the social and cultural context of medieval art, primarily as expressed in Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia, the central document in the greatest artistic controversy to occur in the West prior to the Reformation and the most important source we have for understanding medieval attitudes toward art. Bernard wrote the Apologia during the medieval efflorescence of monumental sculpture and stained glass, of advanced architecture, of pilgrimage art, of high Romanesque, and of the origins of Gothic art. Rudolph places the Apologia, traditionally seen as a condemnation either of all religious art or of all monastic art, in a broader context, using it to explore the role of art in medieval society. He shows that Bernard was interested in the impact of art on contemporary monasticism in a more complex way than previously believed. The book offers the most thorough study available of the theoretical basis of medieval art as it functioned in society; and its implications for the art of both the Romanesque and Gothic periods, which were spanned by Bernard's life, are significant.

Art in England fills a void in the scholarship of both English and medieval art by offering the first single volume overview of artistic movements in Medieval and Early Renaissance England. Grounded in history and using the chronology of the reign of monarchs as a structure, it is contextual and comprehensive, revealing unobserved threads of continuity, patterns of intention and unique qualities that run through English art of the medieval millennium. By placing the English movement in a European context, this book brings to light many ingenious innovations that focused studies tend not to recognize and offers a fresh look at the movement as a whole. The media studied include architecture and related sculpture, both ecclesiastical and secular; tomb monuments; murals, panel paintings, altarpieces, and portraits; manuscript illuminations; textiles; and art by English artists and by foreign artists commissioned by English patrons.

An investigation of the depiction of the story of Theophilus in both its original texts, and images. The legend of Theophilus stages an iconic medieval story, its widespread popularity attesting to its grip on the imagination. A pious clerk refuses a promotion, is demoted, becomes furious and makes a contract with the Devil. Later repentant, he seeks out a church and a statue of the Virgin; she appears to him, and he is transformed from apostate to saint. It is illustrated in a variety of media: texts, stained glass, sculpture, and manuscript illuminations. Through a wide range of manuscript illuminations and a selection of French texts, the book explores visual and textual representations of the legend, setting it in its social, cultural and material contexts, and showing how it explores medieval anxieties concerning salvation and identity. The author argues that the legend is a sustained meditation on the power of images, its popularity corresponding with the rise of their role in portraying medieval identity and salvation, and in acting as portals between the limits of the material and the possibilities of the spiritual world Jerry Root is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Utah.

This anthology of readings related to Western art history explains specific works of art illustrated in Janson's "History of Art" and De la Croix and Tansey's "Gardner's Art Through the Ages" in terms of the ideas, beliefs, and concerns of the people and cultures who created the art. It brings a new understanding of art because it shows the social and cultural basis of major works of art through history. The ten sections are Ancient Near East; Egyptian; Aegean; Greek; Etruscan; Roman; early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic; early Medieval; Romanesque; and Gothic. The readings have been drawn from many areas of intellectual and social history, including religion, philosophy, literature, science, economics, and law. Each selection is preceded by an introductory note, which discusses the readings in terms of its subject and theme, its source and usage, and its relevance to the study of the work of art.

In this new edition of A Short History of the Middle Ages, Barbara H. Rosenwein offers a panoramic view of the medieval world. Volume I ranges from northeastern North America to Kievan Rus', while never losing sight of the main contours of the period c.300 to c.1150. The lively and informative narrative covers the major developments, political and religious movements, people, 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.

These three volumes by Moshe Barasch consider the development of European art theory and its major trends from the time of Plato to the early 20th century.

Moshe Barasch argues that although art theory may have changed in intellectual outlook and artistic aims during the pre-modern period, the different attitudes and traditions were so intricately interwoven that they could not be separated from one another. He then shows how and why art theory broke into several disciplines in the 18th century.

A masterpiece of medieval Arab metalwork revealed, shedding light on courtly life in northern Iraq under the Mongol governorship. Accompanying a major scholarly exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this book explores one of the most beautiful and enigmatic objects in The Courtauld's collection: the so-called 'Courtauld wallet', a brass container richly inlaid with gold and silver, imitating a lady's textile or leather bag, and probably made in Mosul in northern Iraq around 1300. No other object of this kind is known. Decorated all round with courtly figures and on the top with an elaborate banqueting scene featuring an enthroned couple, it has long been recognised as a masterpiece of Arab metalwork. Yet, despite the superb quality of its design and craftsmanship and its status as a unique object, this exceptional metalwork bag has never been properly published. Thus it remains little known outside a small circle of specialists, and little understood even within that circle. Encompassing a variety of multidisciplinary essays by distinguished historians and art historians- on subjects ranging from music at the Mongol court, Mosul under Mongol governorship and Mongol marriage customs to the role of women under the Ilkhanids-this publication aims to explore the origins, function and iconography of this splendid luxury object as well as the cultural context in which it was made and used. It will bring together other images of enthroned Mongols with female consorts, as well as scenes of hunters, revellers and musicians in a variety of media, including illustrated manuscripts, ceramics, textile, and metalwork. By presenting the bag alongside carefully selected contemporary material, it will provide an insight into courtly life under the Mongols in the newly conquered areas of their empire, and will also provide an unrivalled opportunity to investigate the inlaid brass tradition in Mosul after the Mongol Conquest. Objects made before and after this seismic event will be reproduced side by side to demonstrate how the Mosul metalworkers adapted their work for their new patrons.

In 1966 Mark Gambier Parry bequeathed to the Courtauld Gallery the art collection formed by his grandfather Thomas Gambier Parry, who died in 1888. In addition to important paintings, Renaissance glass and ceramics, and Islamic metalwork, this included 28 medieval and Renaissance ivories. Since 1967 about half of the ivories have been on permanent display at The Courtauld, yet they have remained largely unknown, even to experts. This catalogue is the first publication dedicated solely to the collection. There are examples of the highest quality of ivory carving, both secular and religious in content, and a number of the objects are of outstanding interest. They are a revealing tribute to the perceptive eye of Thomas Gambier Parry, a distinguished Victorian collector and Gothic Revival artist responsible for a number of richly painted church interiors in England, such as the Eastern part of the nave ceiling, and the octagon, at Ely Cathedral.The earliest objects in date, probably late 11th century, are the group of walrus ivory plaquettes set into the sides and lids of a casket, portraying the Apostles and Christ in Majesty surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists. The style leaves little doubt that they should be associated with a group of portable altars at Kloster Melk in Austria. A gap of some two centuries separates the casket panels from the next important object - the central portion of an ivory triptych, containing a Deesis group of Christ enthroned between angels holding instruments of the Passion in the upper register, and the Virgin and Child between candle-bearing angels below. The style of the ivory relates it securely to the atelier of the Soissons Diptych in the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Gambier-Parry fragment employs bold cutting of the frame to accentuate the three-dimensional quantities of the relief. Somewhat later in date, towards the middle of the 14th century, is a complete diptych of the Crucifixion and Virgin with angels, the faces of which Gambier-Parry described as worthy of Luini. The extraordinary foreshortening of the swooning Virgin's head can happily be paralleled to a diptych in the Schoolmeesters Collection, Lie'ge, bythe aterlie aux visages caracte'rise's, as named by Raymond Koechlin. The Gambier- Parry diptych, must rank with the finest productions of the workshop.

Emile Male's book aids understanding of medieval art and medieval symbolism, and of the vision of the world which presided over the building of the French cathedrals. It looks at French religious art in the Middle Ages, its forms, and especially the Eastern sources of sculptural iconography used in the cathedrals of France. Fully illustrated with many footnotes it acts as a useful guide for the student of Western culture.

This is an English-language study on the architecture and art of medieval France of the Romanesque and Gothic periods between 1000-1500. In addition to essays on individual monuments there are general discussions of given periods and specific problems such as: why did Gothic come into being? Whitney Stoddard explores the interrelationship between all forms of medieval ecclesiastical art and characterization of the Gothic cathedral, which he believes to have an almost metaphysical basis.

A fresh appraisal of the art of Anglo-Saxon England, focusing on art as an aesthetic vehicle and art as an active political force. Two particular perspectives inform this wide-ranging and richly illustrated survey of the art produced in England, or by English artists, between c. 600 and c.1100, in a variety of media, manuscripts, stone and wooden sculpture, ivory carving, textiles, and architecture. Firstly, from a post-colonial angle, it examines the way art can both create and narrate national and cultural identity over the centuries during which England was coming into being, moving from Romano-Britain to Anglo-Saxon England to Anglo-Scandinavian England to Anglo-Norman England. Secondly, it treats Anglo-Saxon art as works of art, works that have both an aesthetic and an emotional value, rather than as simply passive historical or archaeological objects. This double focus on art as an aesthetic vehicle and art as an active political force allows us to ask questions not only about what makes something a work of art, but what makes itendure as such, as well as questions about the work that art does in the creation of peoples, cultures, nations and histories. Professor Catherine Karkov teaches in the School of Fine Art, University of Leeds.

Glorious works of art as well as chronicles of a past age, illuminated manuscripts supply some of the finest and best-preserved evidence of what life was like during the medieval and Renaissance periods. This little Tiny Folios book contains spectacular examples of early book illustration from one of the greatest libraries of illuminated manuscripts in the world. 240 full-color illus.