Bernhard von Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in terram sanctam (Journey to the Holy Land), first published in 1486, is one of the seminal books of early printing and is especially renowned for the originality of its woodcuts. In Picturing Experience in the Early Printed Book, Elizabeth Ross considers the Peregrinatio from a variety of perspectives to explain its value for the cultural history of the period. Breydenbach, a high-ranking cleric in Mainz, recruited the painter Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht for a religious and artistic adventure in a political hot spot--a pilgrimage to research the peoples, places, plants, and animals of the Levant. The book they published after their return ambitiously engaged with the potential of the new print medium to give an account of their experience.

The Peregrinatio also aspired to rouse readers to a new crusade against Islam by depicting a contest in the Mediterranean between the Christian bastion of the city of Venice and the region's Muslim empires. This crusading rhetoric fit neatly with the state of the printing industry in Mainz, which largely subsisted as a tool for bishops' consolidation of authority, including selling the pope's plans to combat the Ottoman Empire.

Taking an artist on such an enterprise was unprecedented. Reuwich set a new benchmark for technical achievement with his woodcuts, notably a panorama of Venice that folds out to 1.62 meters in length and a foldout map that stretches from Damascus to Sudan around the first topographically accurate view of Jerusalem. The conception and execution of the Peregrinatio show how and why early printed books constructed new means of visual representation from existing ones--and how the form of a printed book emerged out of the interaction of eyewitness experience and medieval scholarship, real travel and spiritual pilgrimage, curiosity and fixed belief, texts and images.

Although the concept of patronage has long been central to medieval studies, it is still not well understood. In order to identify the person or institution responsible for the work, scholars have attempted to impose principles across a broad range of works to which they may or may not apply. In many cases this has prevented a full understanding of the work. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, the key to understanding patronage is to realize that a variety of contexts and situations may exist that prevent one definition from being imposed. The concept of patronage relates to issues such as gender, social and economic history, as well as the world of politics, and the many possible roles of the patron can range from paying for the work to designing it to using it. But we do not know what input the artist had, or how influential he or she may have been. The essays in this volume, from those that look at patronage from a theoretical perspective to individual case studies, highlight our need to look at the subject anew.
The contributors are Adelaide Bennett, Sheila Bonde, Jill Caskey, Robin Cormack, Anne Derbes, Aden Kumler, Claudine Lautier, Julian Luxford, Clark Maines, Nigel Morgan, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Stephen Perkinson, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Corine Schleif, and Benjamin Zweig.

Dynamic Splendor introduces a cycle of sixth-century mosaics little known to scholars, though they are comparable in quality and interest to famed mosaics in Italy and elsewhere. Ann Terry and Henry Maguire provide the first comprehensive account of the history and meaning of the mosaics along with the first high-quality photographic documentation of the ensemble.

It has only recently been possible to study the mosaics at Poreč closely, due to favorable conditions in Croatian Istria, where the mosaics reside, and to the discovery of the original restoration documents in Vienna and Trieste. Terry and Maguire have tracked the condition and restoration of these works, distinguishing between the original mosaics and later contributions. Beyond creating an important archival source, the authors consider the making of the mosaics, their thematic structure, their relationship to the cathedral complex, and their connection to the patron, Bishop Eufrasius, while drawing parallels with other renowned works.

Since its first appearance over seventy years ago, this work has been recognised as one of the most important contributions to the study of the Byzantine churches of Istanbul, and a strikingly successful synthesis of scholarly research and scrupulous attention to architectural detail, with attention paid equally to the evidence of the historical sources and to the fabric of the actual buildings. The 123 original photographs which accompany the text are of considerable historical value, and the album of 58 architectural drawings by Adolphe Thiers contains detailed ground-plans and projections for each church. This album has been incorporated into the present volume in the form of folding folio plates, which preserve the scale and detail of the original. There is a new introduction by Professor Gilbert Dagron. French text.

In 1256, the countess of Provence, Beatrice of Savoy, enlisted her personal physician to create a health handbook to share with her daughters. Written in French and known as the Regime du corps, this health guide would become popular and influential, with nearly seventy surviving copies made over the next two hundred years and translations in at least four other languages. In Visualizing Household Health, art historian Jennifer Borland uses the Regime to show how gender and health care converged within the medieval household. Visualizing Household Health explores the nature of the households portrayed in the Regime and how their members interacted with professionalized medicine. Borland focuses on several illustrated versions of the manuscript that contain historiated initials depicting simple scenes related to health care, such as patients' consultations with physicians, procedures like bloodletting, and foods and beverages recommended for good health. Borland argues that these images provide important details about the nature of women's agency in the home-and offer highly compelling evidence that women enacted multiple types of health care. Additionally, she contends, the Regime opens a window onto the history of medieval women as owners, patrons, and readers of books. Interdisciplinary in scope, this book broadens notions of the medieval medical community and the role of women in medieval health care. It will be welcomed by scholars and students of women's history, art history, book history, and the history of medicine.

Chretien de Troyes was France's great medieval poet--inventor of the genre of courtly romance and popularizer of the Arthurian legend. The forty-four surviving manuscripts of his work (ten of them illuminated) pose a number of questions about who used these books and in what way. In "Sealed in Parchment," Sandra Hindman scrutinizes both text and images to reveal what the manuscripts can tell us about medieval society and politics.

The concept of the medieval city is fixed in the modern imagination, conjuring visions of fortified walls, towering churches, and winding streets. In Riemenschneider in Rothenburg, Katherine M. Boivin investigates how medieval urban planning and artistic programming worked together to form dynamic environments, demonstrating the agency of objects, styles, and spaces in mapping the late medieval city. Using altarpieces by the famed medieval artist Tilman Riemenschneider as touchstones for her argument, Boivin explores how artwork in Germany’s preeminent medieval city, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, deliberately propagated civic ideals. She argues that the numerous artistic pieces commissioned by the city’s elected council over the course of two centuries built upon one another, creating a cohesive structural network that attracted religious pilgrims and furthered the theological ideals of the parish church. By contextualizing some of Rothenburg’s most significant architectural and artistic works, such as St. James’s Church and Riemenschneider’s Altarpiece of the Holy Blood, Boivin shows how the city government employed these works to establish a local aesthetic that awed visitors, raising Rothenburg’s profile and putting it on the pilgrimage map of Europe. Carefully documented and convincingly argued, this book sheds important new light on the history of one of Germany’s major tourist destinations. It will be of considerable interest to medieval art historians and scholars working in the fields of cultural and urban history.

This book revives what was unique, strange and exciting about the variety of performances that took place in the realms of the French kings and Burgundian dukes. Laura Weigert brings together a wealth of visual artifacts and practices to explore this tradition of late medieval performance located not in 'theaters' but in churches, courts, and city streets and squares. By stressing the theatricality rather than the realism of fifteenth-century visual culture and the spectacular rather than the devotional nature of its effects, she offers a new way of thinking about late medieval representation and spectatorship. She shows how images that ostensibly document medieval performance instead revise its characteristic features to conform to a playgoing experience that was associated with classical antiquity. This retrospective vision of the late medieval performance tradition contributed to its demise in sixteenth-century France and promoted assumptions about medieval theater that continue to inform the contemporary disciplines of art and theater history.

This volume explores the importance of Norwich as the second city of England for 500 years. It addresses two of the most ambitious Romanesque buildings in Europe: cathedral and castle, and illuminates the role of Norwich-based designers and makers in the region.

The touchstones of Gothic monumental art in France - the abbey church of Saint-Denis and the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, and Bourges - form the core of this collection dedicated to the memory of Anne Prache. The essays reflect the impact of Prache's career, both as a scholar of wide-ranging interests and as a builder of bridges between the French and American academic communities. Thus the authors include scholars in France and the United States, both academics and museum professionals, while the thematic matrix of the book, divided into architecture, stained glass, and sculpture, reflects the multiple media explored by Prache during her long career. The essays employ a varied range of methodologies to explore Gothic monuments. The chapters in the architectural section include an intensive archeological analysis of the foundations of Reims Cathedral, the close reading of a late medieval literary text for a symbolic understanding of Paris, and essays that explore the medieval use of practical geometry in designing entire buildings and their components. Saint-Denis, Reims, and Chartres, all monuments studied by Prache, are discussed in the next part, on stained glass. These chapters demonstrate how old problems can be clarified by new evidence, whether from the accessibility of previously unknown archival information, for Reims, or through revelations that arise from restoration, at Chartres. These essays also include a study showing the complexity of making attributions for the storied glass of Saint-Denis. The final set of essays likewise takes different approaches to sculpture, whether constructing links to the liturgy at Reims, or discussing the meaning of a sculptural ensemble studied by Prache early in her career, the cloister of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux in ChAclons-en-Champagne, or scrupulously examining the faAade sculpture at Bourges Cathedral for insights into the design process. As a whole, the volume provides a window onto key directions in the study of

This study deals with the iconographic theme of imperial Byzantine 'heavenly coronation', or Andre Grabar's couronnement symbolique, with particular attention to fine arts and numismatics. This theme, along with the rituals of imperial investiture, represents the concept of divine kingship in figurative terms, a significant ideological premise for Byzantine theocracy. The book is structured in seven chapters, investigating both the origination and conclusion of the iconographical subject and its political derivations. It attempts to assemble all the known images of the 'heavenly coronation' theme and to explain its political and iconographical roots.

Princeton University first started collecting Western manuscripts in 1876 and continues to this day with the specific aim of developing a research and teaching tool. That unique collection of medieval manuscripts forms the nucleus of this collection of essays. Stretching from Ottonian to the late Gothic-early Renaissance periods, these studies examine the secular as well as the religious and look at a variety of themes, from the book of hours to the grisaille manuscript. The studies all attempt to place the university's collection in the broader framework of manuscript studies, and a number of them deal with general topics not represented within the manuscript library. Written by some of the most celebrated scholars in the field, the studies make every effort to help us understand the power of the written and illuminated word.
The contributors are Adelaide Bennett, Walter Cahn, Marc Michael Epstein, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Henry Mayr-Harting, Elizabeth Moodey, Stella Panayotova, Virginia Reinburg, Mary Rouse, Richard Rouse, Lucy Freeman Sandler, Don C. Skemer, Anne Rudloff Stanton, and Patricia Stirnemann.

Today we take the word “icon” to mean “a sign,” or we equate it with portraits of Christ and the saints. In The Sensual Icon, Bissera Pentcheva demonstrates how icons originally manifested the presence of the Holy Spirit in matter. Christ was the ideal icon, emerging through the Incarnation; so, too, were the bodies of the stylites (column-saints) penetrated by the divine pneuma (breath or spirit), or the Eucharist, or the Justinianic space of Hagia Sophia filled with the reverberations of chants and the smoke of incense. Iconoclasm (726–843) challenged these Spirit-centered definitions of the icon, eventually restricting the word to mean only the lifeless imprint (typos) of Christ’s visual characteristics on matter. By the tenth century, mixed-media relief icons in gold, repoussé, enamel, and filigree offered a new paradigm. The sun’s rays or flickering candlelight, stirred by drafts of air and human breath, animated the rich surfaces of these objects; changing shadows endowed their eyes with life. The Byzantines called this spectacle of polymorphous appearance poikilia, that is, presence effects sensually experienced. These icons enabled viewers in Constantinople to detect animation in phenomenal changes rather than in pictorial or sculptural naturalism. “Liveliness,” as the goal of the Byzantine mixed-media relief icon, thus challenges the Renaissance ideal of “lifelikeness,” which dominated the Western artistic tradition before the arrival of the modern. Through a close examination of works of art and primary texts and language associated with these objects, and through her new photographs and film capturing their changing appearances, Pentcheva uncovers the icons’ power to transform the viewer from observer to participant, communing with the divine.

Abraham, son of Terah or Azar and husband of Sarah, is one of the pivotal figures of the Old Testament and is generally seen as the founder of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. He was a rich source of inspiration in all three faiths for artists of the medieval period. His life narrative from birth to death is richly recorded in a variety of media dating from the early Christian period to the end of the sixteenth century. As varied as they are numerous, the images in all three faiths show Abraham as father, husband, lover, warrior, politician, refugee, and traveler but most importantly as the symbol par excellence of steadfastness in faith. Featuring the extensive files from the Index of Christian Art, this volume also includes contributions from The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art by Ariella Amar and Michel Sternthal and a catalogue of Islamic imagery compiled by Rachel Milstein.

This is the first volume from the Index of Christian Art to include not only images from the rich Christian holdings but also from Judaism and Islam. Covering media from enamels to terra cotta, each entry gives specific information on the object's current location, source, date, and artist, where this is known.

Trained as an archaeologist and art historian and being a practising painter, Professor Galavaris has been able to relate diverse disciplines in his work, as shown by the wide range of his numerous publications. He moves from the early history of the eucharistic bread in the Orthodox Church, the dramatic impact of the Liturgy on illuminated Byzantine manuscripts, to the role of the icon in: the life of the Church, the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and the European painting of the 20th century. He is a leading authority on the study of the relationship between worship, Liturgy and art. Whether it is the cult of the Byzantine Emperor or the Eucharistic Liturgy, manifested in numismatics, illuminated manuscripts, icons, church lights (candles and oil lamps) - all witnesses of the creative forces of the Byzantine artist - Galavaris' interests are symbols, forms and their meaning. He investigates their contribution to worship, to the visual shaping of the Liturgy and how they reveal the freedom and the mission of the artist in realizing the Unseen in everyday life. The 31 studies in the present volume, published over 40 years (5 of them appear in English for the first time) are brought together with an introduction, annotations and an index. The volume contributes essentially to our knowledge of the spirituality of the Eastern Church.

Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture represents the first art historical consideration of the patronage of the Ottonian Emperors Otto III (983-1002) and Henry II (1002-1024). Author Eliza Garrison analyzes liturgical artworks created for both rulers with the larger goal of addressing the ways in which individual art objects and the collections to which they belonged were perceived as elements of a material historical narrative and as portraits. Since these objects and images had the capacity to stand in for the ruler in his physical absence, she argues, they also performed political functions that were bound to their ritualized use in the liturgy not only during the ruler's lifetime, but even after his death. Garrison investigates how treasury objects could relay officially sanctioned information in a manner that texts alone could not, offering the first full length exploration of this central phenomenon of the Ottonian era.

No story is more central to Western culture than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and none better demonstrates the power of representation in shaping religious faith and practice. The incidence of Passion imagery in diverse media is fundamental to the histories of Christian piety, church politics, and art in European and American societies. At the same time, the visualization and reenactment of Christ's suffering has for centuries been the principal engine generating popular perceptions of Jews and Judaism. The provocative essays collected here, written by eminent scholars with an eye toward the nonspecialist reader, broadly survey the depiction and dramatization of the Passion and consider the significance of this representational focus for both Christians and Jews. This anthology provides a unique, multifaceted overview of a subject of enduring importance in today's religiously pluralistic societies.

Contributors include Robin Blaetz, Stephen Campbell, Jody Enders, Christopher Fuller, James Marrow, Walter Melion, David Morgan, David Nirenberg, Adele Reinhartz, Miri Rubin, Lisa Saltzman, and Marc Saperstein.

As a 'biography' of the fourteenth-century illustrated Bible of Clement VII, an opposition pope in Avignon from 1378-94, this social history traces the Bible's production in Naples (c. 1330) through its changing ownership and meaning in Avignon (c. 1340-1405) to its presentation as a gift to Alfonso, King of Aragon (c. 1424). The author's novel approach, based on solid art historical and anthropological methodologies, allows her to assess the object's evolving significance and the use of such a Bible to enhance the power and prestige of its princely and papal owners. Through archival sources, the author pinpoints the physical location and privileged treatment of the Clement Bible over a century. The author considers how the Bible's contexts in the collection of a bishop, several popes, and a king demonstrate the value of the Bible as an exchange commodity. The Bible was undoubtedly valued for the aesthetic quality of its 200+ luxurious images. Additionally, the author argues that its iconography, especially Jerusalem and visionary scenes, augments its worth as a reflection of contemporary political and religious issues. Its images offered biblical precedents, its style represented associations with certain artists and regions in Italy, and its past provided links to important collections. Fleck's examination of the art production around the Bible in Naples and Avignon further illuminates the manuscript's role as a reflection of the court cultures in those cities. Adding to recent art historical scholarship focusing on the taste and signature styles in late medieval and Renaissance courts, this study provides new information about workshop practices and techniques. In these two court cities, the author analyzes styles associated with different artists, different patrons, and even with different rooms of the rulers' palaces, offering new findings relevant to current scholarship, not only in art history but also in court and collection studies.

The British Archaeological Association's 2007 conference celebrated the material culture of medieval Coventry, the fourth wealthiest English city of the later middle ages. The nineteen papers collected in this volume set out to remedy the relative neglect in modern scholarship of the city's art, architecture and archaeology, as well as to encompass recent research on monuments in the vicinity. The scene is set by two papers on archaeological excavations in the historic city centre, especially since the 1970s, and a paper investigating the relationships between Coventry's building boom and economic conditions in the city in the later middle ages. Three papers on the Cathedral Priory of St Mary bring together new insights into the Romanesque cathedral church, the monastic buildings and the post-Dissolution history of the precinct, derived mainly from the results of the Phoenix Initiative excavations (19992003). Three more papers provide new architectural histories of the spectacular former parish church of St Michael, the fine Guildhall of St Mary and the remarkable surviving west range of the Coventry Charterhouse. The high-quality monumental art of the later medieval city is represented by papers on wall-painting (featuring the recently conserved Doom in Holy Trinity church), on the little-known Crucifixion mural at the Charterhouse, and on a reassessment of the working practices of the famous master-glazier, John Thornton. Two papers on a guild seal and on the glazing at Stanford on Avon parish church consider the evidence for Coventry as a regional workshop centre for high quality metalwork and glass-painting. Beyond the city, three papers deal with the development of Combe Abbey from Cistercian monastery to country house, with the Beauchamp family's hermitage at Guy's Cliffe, and with a newly identified stonemasons' workshop in the 'barn' at Kenilworth Abbey. Two further papers concern the architectural patronage of the earls and dukes of Lancaster in the 14th century at Kenilworth Castle and in the Newarke at Leicester Castle.

Richard L. Feigen has amassed a collection of Italian paintings that is widely admired for its depth and quality, especially for the works it features by the principal masters of the early Italian Renaissance. This beautifully illustrated catalogue of the complete collection presents rare masterpieces by artists from Bernardo Daddi to Fra Angelico, Orazio Gentileschi's Danae, Annibale Carracci's Virgin and Child, and precious, small-scale coppers by major Mannerist and Baroque masters. Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection catalogues more than fifty major works from the 14th to the 17th century, and is the first publication of this remarkable and important collection. Published in association with the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (5/28/10-9/12/10)

"Perspectives on Medieval Art: Learning through Looking" examines medieval culture from a number of different viewpoints to reveal how the art of the Middle Ages can provide a unique insight into the wider issues of medieval politics and culture. The essays also address the teaching of medieval art and architecture as well as examining society's longing for ecclesiastical drama. Contributions from leading theologians and historians variously study life and art in the Middle Ages, why the medieval period matters today and how medieval art speaks to a 21st-century audience. Scholars from different disciplines, including Thomas Cahill and Kathryn Kueny, consider individual works of art simultaneously and examine how medieval art is taught in divinity schools, university and college classrooms and museums.

Recent discussions on Byzantine art have been dominated by the question of representing realia. Among these, however, the way works of art reflect the daily life of women have not received much space or attention. The present book studies various images representing women's status and her performative tasks, and their significance from the fourth century to the fall of the Empire, through analysis of archaeological evidence and works of art. It addresses a wide range of questions, some pertaining both to pictorial traditions and to their late antique antecedents, others peculiar to changing and evolving Byzantine culture and mentality. The book aims to lift a veil from known and less known works of art and to present the rarely described picture of the daily life of women in Byzantine art over a very wide chronological span of time, in an effort to expand our knowledge of women in Byzantium and their realia.