The Byzantine era was a time of the formation of the Abrahamic religions and a battleground for people's hearts and minds. This book shows that, during the time of the Byzantine Empire, the synagogues in Palaestina developed a visual language adhering to traditional literary sources. Until now, scholars believed that Judaism was oblivious to all art forms, regarding them as mere "decoration." This book shows that, contrary to those beliefs, Jewish art was, in fact, flourishing in this period. The visual language that emerged is a trope that utilizes literal and figurative readings to arrive at an inquisitive mixture-a probing language that facilitates learning. It is a visual language of "becoming," of inward introspection and outward scrutiny. This new analysis goes beyond the limits of compositional rules, and requires an analytical, as well as emotive, thought process, to form a cultural interpretation that reveals the hidden language. This means that some parts of Judaism and some parts of Christianity were in agreement despite the commandment of "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," and operated under the assumption that paintings were not necessarily the creation of idols. Thus, we see that the modern movements of art and architecture were not the first to deal with images through themes such as abstraction and denotation. The language developed during the Byzantine period could rival the best of such visual languages.

This groundbreaking collection of essays by a host of international authorities addresses the many aspects of the Danse Macabre, a subject that has been too often overlooked in Anglo-American scholarship. The Danse was once a major motif that occurred in many different media and spread across Europe in the course of the fifteenth century, from France to England, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Spain, Italy and Istria. Yet the Danse is hard to define because it mixes metaphors, such as dance, dialogue and violence. The Danse Macabre aimed to confront viewers and readers with the prospect of their own demise by showing how Death summons each and every one of us-whether high or low, young or old, rich or poor. It functioned both as a text and as a visual theme, and often in combination, while also lending itself well to performance. Now best known through the satirical woodcuts of Hans Holbein the Younger, the motif was one of several 'macabre' themes that developed alongside the moralising tale of the Three Living and the Three Dead and the stark depiction of the cadaver on tomb monuments. The Danse Macabre was influenced by earlier themes, but thanks to its versatility its own impact went much further. As this corpus of innovative research will show, the Danse inspired sculptors, portrait artists, authors and dramatists such as Shakespeare far more than has been recognised until now. From the mural in 1420s Paris and John Lydgate's poem to the subsequent dissemination in print, Mixed Metaphors will reveal the lasting influence of the Danse on European culture from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The early Christian and medieval mosaics in Italy are among the most artistic creations of their time. Richly endowed with magnificent color plates, this opulent volume draws on 19 outstanding mosaic decorations to present a comprehensive panorama of this spectacular form of art. Early Christian apse mosaics and mosaic cycles provided for monumental beginnings to Christian pictorial art. Although supplemented by new images since the 12th Century, the early Christian themes were held in high regard up through the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, the mosaic's stylistic devices already showed a transcendental-Christian compliant world view. The author's knowledge becomes apparent in his descriptions of the development of mosaic art in Italy, whose centers during the early years were found in Rome and Ravenna. Since the 6th century, the presentations see an increasingly byzantine influence. After a prolonged interruption there came a brief revival in Rome around the year 800, but mosaic art only reached full fruition during the 12th and 13th centuries when, in addition to Rome, mosaic cycles became evident in Venice, Sicily, and Florence. These drew heavily from byzantine inspiration. German text.

Medieval churchmen typically defended religious art as a form of "book" to teach the unlettered laity their faith, but in late medieval England, Lollard accusations of idolatry stimulated renewed debate over image worship. Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Ages places this dispute within the context of the religious beliefs and devotional practices of lay people, showing how they used and responded to holy images in their parish churches, at shrines, and in prayer books. Far more than substitutes for texts, holy images presented a junction of the material and spiritual, offering an increasingly literate laity access to the supernatural through the visual power of "beholding."

Das Werk ist die erste systematische Studie der illustrierten Homilien des wohl bedeutendsten byzantinischen Kirchenlehrers. Die bislang wenig oder gar nicht bekannten Manuskripte werden mittels neuer methodischer Ansatze prasentiert und in ihrem jeweiligen Entstehungskontext gewurdigt. Immer wieder eroffnet die Studie auch interessante Einblicke in die Organisation von Werkstatten der Buchproduktion. Im Mittelpunkt steht die stilistische und ikonographische Untersuchung der Miniaturen sowie die Analyse ihrer verschiedenartigen Textbezuge. Anhand zeitgenossischer Quellen werden auch die Benutzungsarten der Homiliare sowie der Rang des Johannes Chrysostomos und seiner Texte in Byzanz beschrieben.

Facsimile. Das aMatutinalbuch aus Scheyerno enthalt wichtige Zeugnisse romanischer Buchmalerei des fruhen 15. Jahrhunderts im eutschen Sprachraum und erweist sich durch die Vielfalt der beigebundenen Texte und Bilder als ein uber den liturgischen Raum hinaus bedeutendes Zeitdokument. Das Matutinale enstand zwischen 1215 und 1225 im Auftrag des Abtes Conrad I. im Kloster Scheyern und gehorte zu den ersten Ausstattungsgegestanden der neuen, Maria geweihten Kirche. Das groaformatige, reich illuminierte Buch war in erster Linie fur den nachtlichen Gottesdienst (Matutin) bestimmt - die Blatter zeigen die Spuren intensiver Benutzung, auch gelegentliche Wachs- oder Talgflecken. Der faksimilierte Bilderzyklus enthalt die monumentale Darstellung des apokalyptischen Weibes mit dem Drachen, aber auch andere ikonographisch und kunstlerisch bedeutende Miniaturen. Die wenigen bis heute veroffentlichten Miniaturen wurden wegen des auaergewohnlich groaen Formates des Buches stets verkleinert widergegeben. Nun erstmals in Originalgroae reproduziert, kommen Formenreichtum und Ausdruckskraft der Bilder voll zur Geltung.

Dieser Band enthalt 131 Katalognummern mit mittelalterlichen und fruhneuzeitlichen Inschriften der Stadt Wiesbaden und ihrer eingemeindeten Vororte bis zum Jahr 1700. Sowohl die im Original erhaltenen als auch die verlorenen, jedoch durch Abschriften, Zeichnungen oder Fotos uberlieferten Inschriften wurden in den Katalog aufgenommen. Die altesten Grabsteine des 5. bis 6. Jahrhunderts legen Zeugnis ab von dem Weiterleben christlicher Glaubenstradition in der germanischen Bevolkerung nach dem Ende der romischen Herrschaft am Rhein. Gegen Ende des Mittelalters setzt auch in Wiesbaden die allenthalben zu beobachtende Verdichtung des Materials ein. Der Kreis der Auftraggeber von Inschriften erweitert sich und umfasst nun Adlige, Amtleute, Pfarrer und ein Jahrhundert spater auch Burgerliche, die in der untergegangenen Mauritiuskirche und den Vororten ihre Denkmaler hinterliessen. Die Einleitung des Bandes stellt Bezuge zwischen dem Inschriftenbestand und der Stadtgeschichte her. Im Katalogteil werden die Inschriftentrager beschrieben, die Texte wiedergegeben, bei Bedarf mit Ubersetzungen versehen und eingehend besprochen. Register und ein ausfuhrlicher Tafelteil erganzen die Edition.

Documentation, belongs to facsimile edition.

Opicinus's drawings complicate many of our assumptions about medieval visual culture, and spark lines of inquiry into the interplay of religion and science, the practice of experimentation, the operations of allegory in the fourteenth century, and ultimately into the status of representation itself. In 1334, an Italian priest named Opicinus de Canistris fell ill and experienced a divine vision of continents and oceans transformed into human figures, a vision which inspired numerous drawings. While they relate closely to contemporary maps and seacharts, religious iconography, medical illustration, and cosmological diagrams, Opicinus's drawings cannot be assimilated to any of these categories. In their beautiful strangeness they complicate many of our assumptions about medieval visual culture, and spark lines of inquiry into the interplay of religion and science, the practice of experimentation, the operations of allegory in the fourteenth century, and ultimately into the status of representation itself.

Robert Deshman wove together a dense and tightly structured nexus of Early Christian, Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon, and Ottonian manuscript illuminations, ivories, textiles, mosaics, and wall paintings on the one hand, and contemporary exegetical, liturgical, and political writings on the other. In so doing, he ultimately demonstrated the intrinsic connections among visual culture, theology, philosophy, political theory, and ecclesiastic doctrine and practice. Although he used the word only once in his own writings, at the very end of his career, Deshman was truly an interdisciplinary scholar of the first order. The thirteen articles collected in this volume were published between 1971 and 1997 (four posthumously) in six different journals and four edited books. Reprinting them is meant not only to make the articles more accessible but also to present a cohesive body of work (primarily on Anglo-Saxon art) that as a whole has yet to be surpassed or methodologically replaced in the scholarly literature.