This book articulates a new approach to medieval aesthetic values, emphasizing the sensory and emotional basis of all medieval arts, their love of play and fine craftsmanship, of puzzles, and of strong contrasts. Written for a general educated audience as well as students and scholars in the field, it offers an understanding of medieval literature and art that is rooted in the perceptions and feelings of ordinary life, made up of play and laughter as well as serious work. Medieval

This pioneering study examines a pivotal period in the history of Europe and the Near East. Spanning the ancient and medieval worlds, it investigates the shared ideal of sacred kingship that emerged in the late Roman and Persian empires. Bridging the traditional divide between classical and Iranian history, this book brings to life the dazzling courts of two global powers that deeply affected the cultures of medieval Europe, Byzantium, Islam, South Asia, and China.

Simple geometric techniques for making Celtic interlacements, spirals, Kellstype initials, animals, humans, etc. Lavishly illustrated.

In this book, Lisa Reilly establishes a new interpretive paradigm for the eleventh and twelfth-century art and architecture of the Norman world in France, England, and Sicily. Traditionally, scholars have considered iconic works like the Cappella Palatina and the Bayeux Embroidery in a geographically piecemeal fashion that prevents us from seeing their full significance. Here, Reilly examines these works individually and within the larger context of a connected Norman world. Just as Rollo founded the Normandy 'of different nationalities', the Normans created a visual culture that relied on an assemblage of forms. To the modern eye, these works are perceived as culturally diverse. As Reilly demonstrates, the multiple sources for Norman visual culture served to expand their meaning. Norman artworks represented the cultural mix of each locale, and the triumph of Norman rule, not just as a military victory but as a legitimate succession, and often as the return of true Christian rule.

This book investigates the origins and transformations of medieval image culture and its reflections in theology, hagiography, historiography and art. It deals with a remarkable phenomenon: the fact that, after a period of 500 years of absence, the tenth century sees a revival of monumental sculpture in the Latin West. Since the end of Antiquity and the pagan use of free-standing, life-size sculptures in public and private ritual, Christians were obedient to the Second Commandment forbidding the making and use of graven images. Contrary to the West, in Byzantium, such a revival never occurred: only relief sculpture - mostly integrated within an architectural context - was used. However, Eastern theologians are the authors of highly fascinating and outstanding original theoretical reflections about the nature and efficacy of images. How can this difference be explained? Why do we find the most fascinating theoretical concepts of images in a culture that sticks to two-dimensional icons often venerated as cult-images that are copied and repeated, but only randomly varied? And why does a groundbreaking change in the culture of images - the revival of monumental sculpture - happen in a context that provides more restrained theoretical reflections upon images in their immediate theological, liturgical and artistic contexts? These are some of the questions that this book seeks to answer.The analysis and contextualization of the revival of monumental sculpture includes reflections on liturgy, architecture, materiality of minor arts and reliquaries, medieval theories of perception, and gift exchange and its impact upon practices of image veneration, aesthetics and political participation. Drawing on the historical investigation of specific objects and texts between the ninth and the eleventh century, the book outlines an occidental history of image culture, visuality and fiction, claiming that only images possess modes of visualizing what in the discourse of medieval theology can never be addressed and revealed.

Ce livre presente une etude historique et culturel sur l'art figuration humaine et le portrait dans un contexte islamique medieval base sur des sources litteraires et iconographiques. Avec: Sheila Blair; Eloise Brac de la Perriere; Oleg Grabar; Kata Keresztely; Mika Natif; Yves Porter; Houari Touati This book presents an art historical and cultural study of human figuration and portraiture in a medieval islamic context, based on literary and iconographic sources. With contributions by: Sheila Blair; Eloise Brac de la Perriere; Oleg Grabar; Kata Keresztely; Mika Natif; Yves Porter; Houari Touati

With its rich symbolism, complex narrative, and stunning imagery, the Apocalypse, or Revelation of John, is arguably the most memorable book in the Christian Bible. In Apocalypse Illuminated, Richard Emmerson explores how this striking visionary text is represented across seven centuries of medieval illustrations. Focusing on twenty-five of the most renowned illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts, from the earliest extant Carolingian ones produced in the ninth century to the deluxe Apocalypse made for the dukes of Savoy and completed in 1490, Emmerson examines not only how they illustrate the biblical text, but also how they interpret it for specific and increasingly diverse audiences. He discusses what this imagery shows us about expectations for the Apocalypse as the year 1000 approached, its relationship to Spanish monasticism on the Christian-Muslim frontier and to thirteenth-century Joachimist prophetic beliefs, and the polemical reinterpretations of Revelation that arose at the end of the Middle Ages. The resulting study includes historical and stylistic comparisons, highlights innovative features, and traces iconographic continuities over time, including the recurring apocalyptic patterns, events, figures, and motifs that characterize Apocalypse illustrations throughout the Middle Ages. Gorgeously illustrated and written in lively and accessible prose, this is a masterful analysis of over seven hundred years of Apocalypse manuscripts by one of the most preeminent scholars of medieval apocalypticism.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF IRELAND is an authoritative and fully illustrated survey that encompasses the period from the early Middle Ages to the end of the 20th century. The five volumes explore all aspects of Irish art - from high crosses to installation art, from illuminated manuscripts to Georgian houses and Modernist churches, from tapestries and sculptures to oil paintings, photographs and video art. This monumental project provides new insights into every facet of the strength, depth and variety of Ireland's artistic and architectural heritage. MEDIEVAL c. 400-c. 1600 An unrivalled account of all aspects of the rich and varied visual culture of Ireland in the Middle Ages. Based on decades of original research, the book contains over 300 lively and informative essays and is magnificently illustrated. Readers will enjoy expanding their knowledge of medieval Ireland through explorations of the objects and buildings produced there and the people who created them. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in association with the Royal Irish Academy

Taking a new approach to medieval art, "Meaning in Motion" reveals the profound importance of movement in the physical, emotional, and intellectual experience of art and architecture in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the physical movement of objects and viewers, as well as movements of the mind, this richly illustrated collection of interdisciplinary essays explores a wide range of rituals, performances, works of art, and texts in which movement is crucial to meaning. These include liturgical and devotional practices, but also pilgrimage, reading techniques, and the use of art and allegory in late medieval courtly society. The contributors consider movement not only as a physical action but also as an active intellectual process involving the reception of images, one that creates layers of meaning through the multidimensional experience of objects and spaces, both real and imaginary. This novel approach to medieval art, building on the concept of agency and the understanding of ritual as a performative act, is influenced by two anthropological perspectives: Victor Turner's "processual" analysis of rites of passage and Alfred Gell's conception of the interactive relationship between art and the viewer as a process. The essays in this volume engage in an interdisciplinary discussion of the significance of movement for the making and perception of medieval art.

Winner of the 2022 Charles Rufus Morey Award from the College Art Association Guided by Aristotelian theories, medieval philosophers believed that nature abhors a vacuum. Medieval art, according to modern scholars, abhors the same. The notion of horror vacui—the fear of empty space—is thus often construed as a definitive feature of Gothic material culture. In The Absent Image, Elina Gertsman argues that Gothic art, in its attempts to grapple with the unrepresentability of the invisible, actively engages emptiness, voids, gaps, holes, and erasures. Exploring complex conversations among medieval philosophy, physics, mathematics, piety, and image-making, Gertsman considers the concept of nothingness in concert with the imaginary, revealing profoundly inventive approaches to emptiness in late medieval visual culture, from ingenious images of the world’s creation ex nihilo to figurations of absence as a replacement for the invisible forces of conception and death. Innovative and challenging, this book will find its primary audience with students and scholars of art, religion, physics, philosophy, and mathematics. It will be particularly welcomed by those interested in phenomenological and cross-disciplinary approaches to the visual culture of the later Middle Ages.

Pontius Pilate is one of the Bible's best-known villains--but up until the tenth century, artistic imagery appears to have consistently portrayed him as a benevolent Christian and holy symbol of baptism. For the first time, "Pontius Pilate, Anti-Semitism, and the Passion in Medieval Art" provides a complete look at the shifting visual and textual representations of Pilate throughout early Christian and medieval art. Colum Hourihane examines neglected and sometimes sympathetic portrayals, and shows how negative characterizations of Pilate, which were developed for political and religious purposes, reveal the anti-Semitism of the medieval period.

Hourihane indicates that in some artistic renderings, Pilate may have been a symbol of good, and in many, a figure of jurisprudence. Eastern traditions treated Pilate as a saint with his own feast day, but Western accounts from the tenth century changed him from a Roman to a Jew. Pilate became a vessel for anti-Semitism--his image acquired grotesque facial and physical characteristics, and his role in Christ's Passion grew to mythic proportions. By the fifteenth century, however, representations of Pilate came full circle to depict an aged and empathetic administrator.

Combining a wealth of previously unpublished sources with explorations of art historical developments, "Pontius Pilate, Anti-Semitism, and the Passion in Medieval Art" puts forth for the first time an encyclopedic portrait of a complex legend.

To write about works that cannot be sensually perceived involves considerable strain. Absent the object, art historians must stretch their methods to, or even past, the breaking point. This concise volume addresses the problems inherent in studying medieval works of art, artifacts, and monuments that have disappeared, have been destroyed, or perhaps never existed in the first place. The contributors to this volume are confronted with the full expanse of what they cannot see, handle, or know. Connecting object histories, the anthropology of images, and historiography, they seek to understand how people have made sense of the past by examining objects, images, and architectural and urban spaces. Intersecting these approaches is a deep current of reflection upon the theorization of historical analysis and the ways in which the past is inscribed into layers of evidence that are only ever revealed in the historian’s present tense. Highly original and theoretically sophisticated, this volume will stimulate debate among art historians about the critical practices used to confront the formative presence of destruction, loss, obscurity, and existential uncertainty within the history of art and the study of historical material and visual cultures. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Michele Bacci, Claudia Brittenham, Sonja Drimmer, Jaś Elsner, Peter Geimer, Danielle B. Joyner, Kristopher W. Kersey, Lena Liepe, Meekyung MacMurdie, and Michelle McCoy.

Kurt Weitzmann demonstrates that the postulated miniatures of the handbook that goes under the name of Apollodorus migrated into other texts, of which the commentary of Pseudo-Nonnus--attached to several homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus--and the Cynegetka of Pseudo-Oppian are the most important. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, European society confronted rapid monetization, a process that has been examined in depth by economic historians. Less well understood is the development of architecture to meet the needs of a burgeoning mercantile economy in the Late Middle Ages and early modern period. In this volume, Lauren Jacobi explores some of the repercussions of early capitalism through a study of the location and types of spaces that were used for banking and minting in Florence and other mercantile centers in Europe. Examining the historical relationships between banks and religious behavior, she also analyzes how urban geographies and architectural forms reveal moral attitudes toward money during the onset of capitalism. Jacobi's book offers new insights into the spaces and locations where pre-industrial European banking and minting transpired, as well as the impact of religious concerns and financial tools on those sites.

Throughout the history of imperial China, the educated elite used various means to criticize government policies and actions. During the Song dynasty (960-1278), some members of this elite found an elegant and subtle means of dissent: landscape painting.

By examining literary archetypes, the titles of paintings, contemporary inscriptions, and the historical context, Alfreda Murck shows that certain paintings expressed strong political opinions--some transparent, others deliberately concealed. She argues that the coding of messages in seemingly innocuous paintings was an important factor in the growing respect for painting among the educated elite and that the capacity of painting's systems of reference to allow scholars to express dissent with impunity contributed to the art's vitality and longevity.

A provocative study of the iconoclastic impulse in medieval and modern art. From late medieval reenactments of the Deposition from the Cross to Sol Lewitt's Buried Cube, Depositions is about taking down images and about images that anticipate being taken down. Foretelling their own depositions, as well as their re-elevations in contexts far from those in which they were made, the images studied in this book reveal themselves to be untimely-no truer to their first appearance than to their later reappearances. In Depositions, Amy Powell makes the case that late medieval paintings and ritual reenactments of the Deposition from the Cross not only picture the deposition of Christ (the Imago Dei) but also allegorize the deposition of the image as such and, in so doing, prefigure the lowering of "dead images" during the Protestant Reformation. Late medieval pre-figurations of Reformation iconoclasm anticipate, in turn, the repeated "deaths" of art since the advent of photography: that is the premise of the vignettes devoted to twentieth-century works of art that conclude each chapter of this book. In these vignettes, images that once stood in late medieval churches now find themselves among works of art from the more recent past with which they share certain formal characteristics. These surreal encounters compel us to reckon with affinities between images from different times and places. Turning pseudomorphosis-formal resemblance where there is no similarity of artistic intent-on its head, Powell explores what happens to our understanding of historically and conceptually distant works of art when they look alike.

Though immediately recognizable in public discourse as a modern state in a political "hot zone," Armenia has a material history and visual culture that reaches back to the Paleolithic era. This book presents a timely and much-needed survey of the arts of Armenia from antiquity to the early eighteenth century C.E. Divided chronologically, it brings into discussion a wide range of media, including architecture, stone sculpture, works in metal, wood, and cloth, manuscript illumination, and ceramic arts. Critically, The Art of Armenia presents this material within historical and archaeological contexts, incorporating the results of specialist literature in various languages. It also positions Armenian art within a range of broader comparative contexts including, but not limited to, the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, Byzantium, the Islamic world, Yuan-dynasty China, and seventeenth-century Europe. The Art of Armenia offers students, scholars, and heritage readers of the Armenian community something long desired but never before available: a complete and authoritative introduction to three thousand years of Armenian art, archaeology, architecture, and design.

Old St Peter's Basilica in Rome stood for over eleven centuries until it was demolished to make room for today's church on the same Vatican site. Its last eyewitness, Maffeo Vegio, explained to the Roman hierarchy how revival of the papacy, whose prestige after the exile to Avignon had been diminished, was inseparable from a renewed awareness of the primacy of Peter's Church. To make his case, Vegio wrote a history founded on credible written and visual evidence. The text guides us through the building's true story in its material reality, undistorted by medieval guides. This was its living memory and a visualization of the continuity of Roman history into modern times. This volume makes available the first complete English translation of Vegio's text. Accompanied by full-color digital reconstructions of the Basilica as it appeared in Vegio's day.

In this wide-ranging, eloquent book, Paul Binski sheds new light on one of the greatest periods of English art and architecture, offering ground-breaking arguments about the role of invention and the powers of Gothic art. His richly documented study locates what became known as the Decorated Style within patterns of commissioning, designing, and imagining whose origins lay in pre-Gothic art. By examining notions of what was extraordinary, re-evaluating medieval ideas of authorship, and restoring economic considerations to the debate, Binski sets English visual art of the early 14th century in a broad European context and also within the aesthetic discourses of the medieval period. The author, stressing the continuum between art and architecture, challenges understandings about agency, modernity, hierarchy, and marginality. His book makes a powerful case for the restoration of the category of the aesthetic to the understanding of medieval art. Generously illustrated with hundreds of images, Gothic Wonder traces the impact of English art in Continental Europe, ending with the Black Death and the literary uses of the architectural in works by Geoffrey Chaucer and other writers. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Focusing on 5 objects found in the main media at the time - ceramics, metalware, painting, architecture and textiles - Sheila S. Blair shows how artisans played with form, material and decoration to engage their audiences. She also shows how the reception of these objects has changed and that their present context has implications for our understanding of the past. Greater Iranian arts from the 10th to the 16th century are technically some of the finest produced anywhere. They are also intellectually engaging, showing the lively interaction between the verbal and the visual arts.

The Index of Christian Art, founded in 1917, is today recognized as the premier resource for Christian and medieval iconography up to 1400. To mark its eightieth anniversary, seventeen scholars contributed papers to this volume, which focuses on the Index's twin strengths: iconography and methodology. From the heterogeneous imagery of the Crusaders to the repellent iconography of social rejection, from the significance of gruesome torture scenes to the moral precepts that shaped the enigmatic Ashburnham Pentateuch, the studies in the first part of "Image and Belief" provide stimulating examples of recent research in iconography.

With the growing application of computer databases and the Internet to the field of art history, the process of describing and classifying the subjects of art has become even more important and controversial. The papers in the second part of this volume deal with this critical area, giving analytical proposals for improving art-historical standards through computerization. They also provide case histories of specific applications, including the use of a database of Dutch printers' devices to reveal the long-hidden meaning of a major painting by Rubens. Particular attention is given to the use of ICONCLASS in iconographic description and to demonstrations of the improved capabilities of the new Iconclass2000 browser.The contributors are Adelaide Bennett, Hans Brandhorst, James D'Emilio, Gerda Duifjes-Vellekoop, John Fleming, Jaroslav Folda, Giovanni Freni, Cynthia Hahn, Debra Hassig, Avril Henry, Lutz Heusinger, Andreas Petzold, Helene Roberts, Alison Stones, Carol Togneri, Peter van Huisstede, Jorgen van den Berg, and Dorothy Hoogland Verkerk."

The German mystic Gertrude the Great of Helfta (c.1256-1301) is a globally venerated saint who is still central to the Sacred Heart Devotion. Her visions were first recorded in Latin, and they inspired generations of readers in processes of creative rewriting. The vernacular copies of these redactions challenge the long-standing idea that translations do not bear the same literary or historical weight as the originals upon which they are based. In this study, Racha Kirakosian argues that manuscript transmission reveals how redactors serve as cultural agents. Examining the late medieval vernacular copies of Gertrude's visions, she demonstrates how redactors recast textual materials, reflected changes in piety, and generated new forms of devotional practices. She also shows how these texts served as a bridge between material culture, in the form of textiles and book illumination, and mysticism. Kirakosian's multi-faceted study is an important contribution to current debates on medieval manuscript culture, authorship, and translation as objects of study in their own right.

"Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art" explores the portable artifacts of eastern Mediterranean pilgrimage from the fifth to the seventh century, presenting them in the context of contemporary pilgrims texts and the archaeology of sacred sites. The book shows how the iconography and devotional piety of Byzantine pilgrimage art changed, and it surveys the material and social culture of pilgrimage. What did these early religious travelers take home with them and what did they leave behind? Where were these sacred souvenirs manufactured and what was their purpose? How did the images imprinted upon many of them help realize that purpose? The first edition of this pathbreaking book, published in 1982, established late antique pilgrimage and its artifacts as an important topic of study. In this revised, enlarged version, Gary Vikan significantly expands the narrative by situating the miraculous world of the early Byzantine pilgrim within the context of late antique magic and pre-Christian healing shrines, and by considering the trajectory of pilgrimage after the Arab conquest of the seventh century.

This public lecture is staged annually in memory of the ecclesiastic historian Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942), Adolf von Harnacks's successor as director of the Academy project The Greek Christian Authors of the First Centuries (GDS). The invited speaker is an internationally renowned scholar from the field of archeology, classical studies, history of religion, and patristics. The lectures address central topics of the history of ancient religion that are of relevance to the present day.