Each volume includes all the necessary materials for the comprehensive study of a work of art: An illustration section showing the complete work of art, details, preliminary studies, and iconographic sources; An introductory essay by the editor; Documents and literary sources; Critical essays from the art-historical literature.

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. This shared ideal, while often generating conflict during the four centuries of the empires' coexistence (224-642), also drove exchange, especially the means and methods Roman and Persian sovereigns used to project their notions of universal rule: elaborate systems of ritual and their cultures' visual, architectural, and urban environments. Matthew Canepa explores the artistic, ritual, and ideological interactions between Rome and the Iranian world under the Sasanian dynasty, the last great Persian dynasty before Islam. He analyzes how these two hostile systems of sacred universal sovereignty not only co-existed, but fostered cross-cultural exchange and communication despite their undying rivalry. 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.

Over the centuries, European debate about the nature and status of images of God and sacred figures has often upset the established order and shaken societies to their core. Out of this debate, an identifiable doctrine has emerged of the image in general and of the divine image in particular. This fascinating work concentrates on these historical arguments, from the period of Late Antiquity up to the great and classic defenses of images by St. John of Damascus and Theodore of Studion. Icon extends beyond the immediate concerns of religion, philosophy, aesthetics, history, and art, to engage them all.

For hundreds of years the Bactrian camel ploughed a lonely furrow across the vast wilderness of Asia. This bizarre-looking, temperamental yet hardy creature here came into its own as the core goods vehicle, resolutely and reliably transporting to China - over huge and unforgiving distances - fine things from the West while taking treasures out of the Middle Kingdom in return. Where the chariot, wagon and other wheeled conveyances proved useless amidst the shifting desert dunes, the surefooted progress of the camel - archetypal 'ship of the Silk Road' - now reigned supreme. The Bactrian camel was a subject that appealed particularly to Chinese artists because of its association with the exotic trade to mysterious Western lands. In his lavishly illustrated volume, Angus Forsyth explores diverse jade pieces depicting this iconic beast of burden. Almost one hundred separate objects are included, many of which have not been seen in print before. At the same time the author offers the full historical background to his subject. The book will have a strong appeal to collectors and art historians alike.

In the rapidly changing world of the early Middle Ages, depictions of the cosmos represented a consistent point of reference across the three dominant states-the Frankish, Byzantine, and Islamic Empires. As these empires diverged from their Greco-Roman roots between 700 and 1000 A.D. and established distinctive medieval artistic traditions, cosmic imagery created a web of visual continuity, though local meanings of these images varied greatly. Benjamin Anderson uses thrones, tables, mantles, frescoes, and manuscripts to show how cosmological motifs informed relationships between individuals, especially the ruling elite, and communities, demonstrating how domestic and global politics informed the production and reception of these depictions. The first book to consider such imagery across the dramatically diverse cultures of Western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Middle East, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art illuminates the distinctions between the cosmological art of these three cultural spheres, and reasserts the centrality of astronomical imagery to the study of art history.

A revelatory study exploring wood’s many material, ecological, and symbolic meanings in the religious art of medieval Germany In late medieval Germany, wood was a material laden with significance. It was an important part of the local environment and economy, as well as an object of religious devotion in and of itself.  Gregory C. Bryda examines the multiple meanings of wood and greenery within religious art—as a material, as a feature of agrarian life, and as a symbol of the cross, whose wood has resonances with other iconographies in the liturgy. Bryda discusses how influential artists such as Matthias Grünewald, known for the Isenheim Altarpiece, and the renowned sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider exploited wood’s multivalent nature to connect spiritual themes to the lived environment outside church walls. Exploring the complex visual and material culture of the period, this lavishly illustrated volume features works ranging from monumental altarpieces to portable pictures and offers a fresh understanding of how wood in art functioned to unlock the mysteries of faith and the natural world in both liturgy and everyday life.

Framing the Church takes a nontraditional approach to the study of the hallmark of French Gothic architecture: the buttress. In a series of case studies spanning approximately five hundred years and incorporating some of Gothic France’s most significant monuments, Maile S. Hutterer examines the aesthetics, social processes, and iconography of flying buttresses and buttress piers to explain how they supported the church both symbolically and structurally. Surrounding all or part of a building with periodically spaced massive piers, the buttressing frame defines an edge that simultaneously maintains permeability, creating an intermediary space around the structure. Making extensive use of archival sources, Hutterer argues that the areas between the buttresses distinguished the consecrated, sacred ground of the church interior from its unconsecrated, nonsacred surroundings, a division that was of increasing concern to theologians in the High Middle Ages. She traces how, over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, artists and patrons increasingly associated buttressing frames with sacred places through the incorporation of sculptural programs related to theology, processions, and protection. In this way, buttressing frames mediated the interaction between visitor and building and participated in the liturgical and ritual purpose of the church’s structure. Original and persuasive, this book illuminates the buttresses’ social and religious meaning for medieval viewers by introducing architectural iconography to a form that is primarily understood in terms of its structural utility. It will be welcomed by students and scholars of medieval architecture and medieval French history.

This is the first book to examine the full range of the evidence for Irish charms, from medieval to modern times. As Ireland has one of the oldest literatures in Europe, and also one of the most comprehensively recorded folklore traditions, it affords a uniquely rich body of evidence for such an investigation. The collection includes surveys of broad aspects of the subject (charm scholarship, charms in medieval tales, modern narrative charms, nineteenth-century charm documentation); dossiers of the evidence for specific charms (a headache charm, a nightmare charm, charms against bleeding); a study comparing the curses of saints with those of poets; and an account of a newly discovered manuscript of a toothache charm. The practices of a contemporary healer are described on the basis of recent fieldwork, and the connection between charms and storytelling is foregrounded in chapters on the textual amulet known as the Leabhar Eoin, on the belief that witches steal butter, and on the nature of the belief that effects supernatural cures.

The splendor of Gothic art can be seen in the magnificent cathedrals of Notre Dame, Chartres, Rouen, Salisbury and Lincoln and in their sculpture. But also between 1140 and 1400 a vast quantity of very fine paintings, stained glass, manuscript illuminations, metalwork and tapestries were produced. Andrew Martindale writes of all these great achievements in one of the best available concise surveys of this highly creative period in Western art.

The ways of war in the Middle Ages never cease to fascinate. There is a glamour associated with knights in shining armour, colourful tournaments and heroic deeds which appeals to the modern imagination. Because medieval warfare had its colourful side it is easy to overlook the face that war was a very serious business in an age when brute force was the recognised way of settling a quarrel, and conflict formed a normal way of life at every level of society. This book illustrates the art of war with dozens of medieval images from books and manuscripts, and reveals a wealth of social and military background on heraldry, armour, knights and chivalry, castles, sieges, and the arrival of gunpowder. This new edition is completely revised with a selection of new illustrations from the British Library's medieval manuscripts.

For the people of Byzantium, their architectural works, frescoes, mosaics, ivories, chalices, bejewelled gospel covers and qlany other opulent works of art were the material proof of their greatness and power over the Mediterranean states. The vast range of these riches is illustrated in this complete account of Byzantine art from the reign of Justinian to the fall of Constantinople. David Talbot Rice, one of the greatest authorities on Byzantine art, travelled as far afield as the rock churches of Cappadocia and Cilicia, the tufa monuments of Armenia and Georgia, and the thirteenth-century ceramic factories of Bulgaria, now buried in the alluvial mud of the Danube. His book is a masterly survey of an art of magnificence and power that belonged to a great and sophisticated society.

In the Middle Ages, religious crusaders took up arms, prayed, bade farewell to their families, and marched off to fight in holy wars. These Christian soldiers also created accounts of their lives in lyric poetry, putting words to the experience of personal sacrifice and the pious struggle associated with holy war. The crusaders affirmed their commitment to fighting to claim a distant land while revealing their feelings as they left behind their loved ones, homes, and earthly duties. Their poems and related visual works offer us insight into the crusaders' lives and values at the boundaries of earthly and spiritual duties, body and soul, holy devotion and courtly love. In The Subject of Crusade, Marisa Galvez offers a nuanced view of holy war and crusade poetry, reading these lyric works within a wider conversation with religion and culture. Arguing for an interdisciplinary treatment of crusade lyric, she shows how such poems are crucial for understanding the crusades as a complex cultural and historical phenomenon. Placing them in conversation with chronicles, knightly handbooks, artworks, and confessional and pastoral texts, she identifies a particular "crusade idiom" that emerged out of the conflict between pious and earthly duties. Galvez fashions an expanded understanding of the creative works made by crusaders to reveal their experiences, desires, ideologies, and reasons for taking up the cross.

Exploring issues of artist patronage, luxury craftsmanship, holy men and women, the decorated word, monasteries, secular courts, and the expressive and didactic roles of artistic creation, Lawrence Nees presents early Christian art within the late Roman tradition and the arts of the newly established kingdoms of northern Europe not as opposites, but as different aspects of a larger historical situation. This approach reveals the onset of an exciting new visual relationship between the church and the populace throughout medieval Europe, restoring a previously marginalized subject to a central status in our artistic and cultural heritage.

Four essays on the oldest church in Istanbul. The Monastery of Stoudios was built in the fifth century in Constantinople and for centuries constituted one of the most significant monasteries of the Byzantine capital. Today, only the church of the monastic complex-which was converted into a mosque in the Ottoman Period-survives. The chapters of this book complement different aspects of the Monastry of Stoudios based on primary sources. Esra Kudde explores its architectural characteristics and provides detailed documentation; Nicholas Melvani provides a meticulous study of its Byzantine history and evaluates its elements of architectural sculpture; and Tarkan Okcuoglu narrates the Ottoman history of the complex.

The Golden Legend is one of the central texts of the Middle Ages, a superb summary of saints’ lives and religious festivals which decisively influenced the imagery of poetry, painting and stained glass.

By creating a single-volume sourcebook of all the core Christian stories, Jacobus de Voragine (c.1229-98) attracted a huge audience right across Europe. Chaucer adapted the section on St Cecilia in his Canterbury Tales and Caxton published an expanded English version in 1483. This selection of over 70 biographies ranges from the first Apostles and Roman martyrs to near-contemporaries like St Dominic, Francis of Assisi and Princess Elizabeth of Hungary. Witnesses to the true faith withstand terrible tortures and reduce their persecutors to mockery. Reformed prostitutes win divine forgiveness, while other women live disguised as monks or nobly resist lustful tyrants. Jacobus’ book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand medieval imagery, art and thought; this fine new translation captures both its vigour and variety.

When we sing lines in which a fifteenth-century musician uses ethereal polyphony to complain mundanely about money or hoarseness, more than half a millennium melts away. Equally intriguing are moments in which we experience solmization puns. These familiar worries and surprising jests break down temporal distances, humanizing the lives and endeavors of our musical forebears. Yet many instances of self-reference occur within otherwise serious pieces. Are these simply in-jokes, or are there more meaningful messages we risk neglecting if we dismiss them as comic relief? Music historian Jane D. Hatter takes seriously the pervasiveness of these features. Divided into two sections, this study considers pieces with self-referential features in the texts separately from discussions of pieces based on musical self-referential elements. Examining connections between self-referential repertoire from the years 1450-1530 and similar self-referential creations for painters' guilds, reveals musicians' agency in forming the first communities of early modern composers.

This focused volume presents a deep exploration and new interpretations of the winter paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569). By applying new methodological approaches and interdisciplinary research to these masterpieces of Flemish Renaissance art, including Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap (1565) and The Census at Bethlehem (1566), both at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the book offers an enhanced understanding of the painter's relationship to his time and the extent to which his winter landscapes were meant to reflect real-life situations. After tracing how these paintings have been understood over time, the essays propose new insights into such issues as whether Bruegel depicts the plight of the local populace during winter and whether The Census at Bethlehem challenges or reaffirms central power structures. Abundantly illustrated, Bruegel's Winter Scenes is both a thorough examination and a celebration of these widely admired images. Distributed for Mercatorfonds.

In "Miserere Mei, "Clare Costley King'oo examines the critical importance of the Penitential Psalms in England between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. During this period, the Penitential Psalms inspired an enormous amount of creative and intellectual work: in addition to being copied and illustrated in Books of Hours and other prayer books, they were expounded in commentaries, imitated in vernacular translations and paraphrases, rendered into lyric poetry, and even modified for singing. "Miserere Mei "explores these numerous transformations in materiality and genre. Combining the resources of close literary analysis with those of the history of the book, it reveals not only that the Penitential Psalms lay at the heart of Reformation-age debates over the nature of repentance, but also, and more significantly, that they constituted a site of theological, political, artistic, and poetic engagementacross the many polarities that are often said to separate late medieval from early modern culture."Miserere Mei "features twenty-five illustrations and provides new analyses of works based on the Penitential Psalms by several key writers of the time, including Richard Maidstone, Thomas Brampton, John Fisher, Martin Luther, Sir Thomas Wyatt, George Gascoigne, Sir John Harington, and Richard Verstegan. It will be of value to anyone interested in the interpretation, adaptation, and appropriation of biblical literature; the development of religious plurality in the West; the emergence of modernity; and the periodization of Western culture. Students and scholars in the fields of literature, religion, history, art history, and the history of material texts will find "Miserere Mei" particularly instructive and compelling. "Seldom have I read a first book of such subtlety and sustained by such learning, particularly welcome for the way it so easily and gracefully crosses the artificial barriers we raise between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This is an original and often touching study of biblical materials that have seen a surge of interest. Those interested in the Psalms, in art history, in David, in translation, to say nothing of early modern sexuality, should rush to read it." --Anne Lake Prescott, Barnard College and Columbia University

The provincial town of Ravenna in Northern Italy is famous for its Early Christian cultural heritage: churches and chapels, decorated with mosaics, which seem to have survived in their original state. However, these religious buildings, with famous examples like San Vitale, Sant'Apollinare in Classe and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, underwent many changes in the course of fifteen centuries of continuous use. This study takes the transformations of the monuments of Ravenna as a starting point to explore the city's attitude towards its religious cultural heritage throughout the centuries. Together with the local historiographical sources, dating from Medieval and the Early Modern times, they provide a picture of the manner in which Ravenna experienced, appropriated and imagined its past. The findings are elaborated in seven chapters, addressing respectively the cult of saints; the relationship with Rome and with Constantinople; the alleged controversy between Orthodoxy and Arianism; the post-Tridentine period; the lost monuments and the restorations at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. By considering Early Christian Ravenna from the context of cultural memory, involving both material and written sources, new insights are yielded on a frequently researched subject.

Medieval Toledo is famous as a center of Arabic learning and as a home to sizable Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Yet its cathedral—one of the largest, richest, and best preserved in all of Europe—is little known outside Spain. In Toledo Cathedral, Tom Nickson provides the first in-depth analysis of the cathedral’s art and architecture. Focusing on the early thirteenth to the late fourteenth centuries, he examines over two hundred years of change and consolidation, tracing the growth of the cathedral in the city as well as the evolution of sacred places within the cathedral itself. He goes on to consider this substantial monument in terms of its location in Toledo, Spain’s most cosmopolitan city in the medieval period. Nickson also addresses the importance and symbolic significance of Toledo’s cathedral to the city and the art and architecture of the medieval Iberian Peninsula, showing how it fits in with broader narratives of change in the arts, culture, and ideology of the late medieval period in Spain and in Mediterranean Europe as a whole.

Originally published in 1909, this book contains a guide in English and French to the sculptures of Chartres Cathedral. The text is illustrated with over one hundred photographic plates of the sculptures, with an explanation for each in both languages on the facing page. Some of the photographs included are among the earliest published examples of telephotography. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in French medieval sculpture, the cathedral at Chartres or the history of photography.

David--the greatest king of Israel, the founder of Jerusalem, and one of the pivotal figures of the Old Testament--was a rich source of inspiration for artists and their patrons throughout the medieval world. Regarded as a direct ancestor of Jesus, the "sweet psalmist of Israel" appears in countless works of art, from the Dura Europus paintings to the many illuminated psalters of the later medieval period. These depictions of David are as varied as they are numerous. He appears, among other roles, as musician, author, warrior, lover, shepherd, politician, worshipper, father, king, refugee, and mourner. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of the vast profusion of David images in both Byzantium and the West, providing an authoritative guide to the entire range of medieval depictions. With over 5,000 entries organized into more than 240 recognizable episodes from his richly illustrated life, the catalogue includes all of the David entries in the Index of Christian Art's card files and database.

The objects catalogued here range in date from the third to the fifteenth century, and represent fourteen different media, including frescoes, ivories, manuscripts, stained glass, sculpture, mosaics, and textiles. Each entry gives detailed information on the object's current location, date, and primary subject. The catalogue is enhanced by over a hundred photographs illustrating a wide range of episodes from David's life. An index allows the reader to browse the medieval world geographically for images of David still in situ, and the modern world for objects in museums, libraries, and other collections. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography on David in Early Christian, Byzantine, and Western medieval art.

The private archive of the Spinelli, acquired by Yale University's Beinecke Library in 1988, constitutes the largest fund of information about a Florentine family anywhere outside Italy. The Spinelli of Florence tells the story of these merchants and their ascent to social and economic prominence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This book gives an intimate portrait of daily life--the worlds of papal finance, silk and wool manufacturing, and household affairs--as recorded in letters and financial ledgers preserved for two hundred years since the extinction of the male line.

The fame of this family rests largely on the extraordinary success of one individual, Tommaso Spinelli, who broke into banking through the Alberti and Borromei organizations, later to serve as depository general under Pope Eugenius IV and financial officer to three subsequent popes. Tommaso sought to raise his status in society through ties of marriage and business rather than entering the political arena, which had led to the demise and exile of older, established Florentine families, notably the Peruzzi and Alberti. Like his contemporaries, Cosimo de'Medici, Giovanni Rucellai, and Francesco Sassetti, Tommaso poured his considerable wealth into the patronage of private palaces and villas in Rome and Florence, as well as through donations to the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce. Despite his reputation for magnificence, it was Tommaso's obeisance to the codes of religious decorum and his adherence to older artistic traditions that allowed him to commemorate himself and his family without censure.

The authors of this collaborative study, an architectural historian and economic historian, add significantly to our knowledge of private and papal banking, wool and silk manufacturing, and patronage of the arts. The Spinelli of Florence is important for scholars of history, economic history, social history, and art history.