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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > 500 CE to 1400 > General
New approaches to what is arguably the most famous artefact from
the Middle Ages. In the past two decades, scholarly assessment of
the Bayeux Tapestry has moved beyond studies of its sources and
analogues, dating, origin and purpose, and site of display. This
volume demonstrates the value of more recent interpretive
approaches to this famous and iconic artefact, by examining the
textile's materiality, visuality, reception and historiography, and
its constructions of gender, territory and cultural memory. The
essays it contains frame discussions vital to the future of
Tapestry scholarship and are complemented by a bibliography
covering three centuries of critical writings. Contributors:
Valerie Allen, Richard Brilliant, Shirley Ann Brown, Elizabeth
Carson Pastan, Madeline H. Cavines, Martin K. Foys, Michael John
Lewis, Karen Eileen Overbey, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dan Terkla,
Stephen D. White.
A radical reassessment of the role of movement, emotion, and the
viewing experience in Gothic sculpture Gothic cathedrals in
northern Europe dazzle visitors with arrays of sculpted saints,
angels, and noble patrons adorning their portals and interiors. In
this highly original and erudite volume, Jacqueline E. Jung
explores how medieval sculptors used a form of bodily
poetics-involving facial expression, gesture, stance, and
torsion-to create meanings beyond conventional iconography and to
subtly manipulate spatial dynamics, forging connections between the
sculptures and beholders. Filled with more than 500 images that
capture the suppleness and dynamism of cathedral sculpture, often
through multiple angles, Eloquent Bodies demonstrates how viewers
confronted and, in turn, were addressed by sculptures at major
cathedrals in France and Germany, from Chartres and Reims to
Strasbourg, Bamberg, Magdeburg, and Naumburg. Shedding new light on
the charismatic and kinetic qualities of Gothic sculpture, this
book also illuminates the ways artistic ingenuity and technical
skill converged to enliven sacred spaces.
57 colour illustrations. The Museum of Byzantine Culture is one of
the most important museums of Thessaloniki, a city with a powerful
Byzantine character and beauty. All aspects of Byzantine and
post-Byzantine art and history are represented through the display
of original artefacts, mainly from Thessaloniki, the most important
city of the Empire after Constantinople, but also from the wider
area of Macedonia. The collection numbers more than 46,000
artefacts, heirlooms and artworks dated between the 2nd and the
20th centuries, with over 3000 on permanent display.
Wall-paintings, mosaics, icons, marble architectural elements,
detached Early Christian tombs with their wall-paintings,
liturgical vessels, implements for personal adornment, but also
humble everyday artefacts and tools for professionals are
represented not only as artworks, but also as testimonies of the
culture that created them and of the human society that used them.
This short guide is a concise authoritative picture of the
permanent exhibition in the Museum, useful for visitors during
their visit to the Museum galleries, and as a memento of their
visit long afterwards.
The Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing (Book of the Deeds of
Jacques de Lalaing), a famous Flemish illuminated manuscript,
relays the audacious life of Jacques de Lalaing (1421-1453), a
story that reads more like a fast-paced adventure novel. Produced
in the tradition of chivalric biography, a genre developed in the
mid-fifteenth century to celebrate the great personalities of the
day, the manuscript's text and illuminations begin with a
magnificent frontispiece by the most acclaimed Flemish illuminator
of the sixteenth century, Simon Bening. A Knight for the Ages:
Jacques de Lalaing and the Art of Chivalry presents a kaleidoscopic
view of the manuscript with essays written by the world's leading
medievalists, adding rich texture and providing a greater
understanding of the many aspects of the manuscript's background,
creation, and reception, revealing for the first time the full
complexity of this illuminated romance. The texts are accompanied
by stunning reproductions of all of the manuscripts'
miniatures-never before published in colour-as well as a plot
summary and translations, allowing the reader to follow Jacques de
Lalaing on his knightly journeys and experience the thrilling
triumphs of his legendary tournaments and battles.
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.
Aside from Hagia Sophia, the monuments of the Byzantine East are
poorly understood today. This is in sharp contrast to the
well-known architectural marvels of Western Europes Middle Ages. In
this landmark survey, distinguished art historian Robert Ousterhout
introduces readers to the rich and diverse architectural traditions
of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean. The focus of the book is the
Byzantine (or East Roman) Empire (324-1453 CE), with its capital in
Constantinople, although the framework expands chronologically to
include the foundations of Christian architecture in Late Antiquity
and the legacy of Byzantine culture after the fall of
Constantinople in 1453. Geographically broad as well, this study
includes architectural developments in areas of Italy, the
Caucasus, the Near East, the Balkans, and Russia, as well as
related developments in early Islamic architecture. Alternating
chapters that address chronological or regionally-based
developments with thematic studies that focus on the larger
cultural concerns, the book presents the architectural developments
in a way that makes them accessible, interesting, and
intellectually stimulating. In doing so, it also explains why
medieval architecture in the East followed such a different
trajectory from that of the West. Lavishly illustrated with
hundreds of color photographs, maps, and line drawings, Eastern
Medieval Architecture will establish Byzantine traditions to be as
significant and admirable as those more familiar examples in
Western Europe, and serve as an invaluable resource for anyone
interested in architectural history, Byzantium, and the Middle
Ages.
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.
Like England's Arthur and France's Charlemagne, the Cid is Spain's
national hero, and for centuries he has served as an ideal model of
citizenship. All Spaniards are familiar with the story of the Cid
and the multifarious ways in which he is visualized. From
illuminations in medieval manuscripts to illustrations in
twenty-first-century editions, depictions of the Cid vary widely,
revealing just how much Spain's national identity has transformed
throughout the centuries. Uncovering the racial, gendered, and
political impacts of one of Spain's most legendary heroes,
Illustrating El Cid, 1498 to Today traces the development of more
than five centuries of illustrations and problematizes their
reception and circulation in Spain and abroad. By documenting the
evolution of visual representations of the Cid, their artists, and
their targeted readerships, Lauren Beck also uncovers how his
legend became a national projection of Spanish identity, one that
was shaped by foreign hands and even manipulated into propaganda by
the country's most recent dictator, Francisco Franco. Through
detailed analysis, Beck unsettles the presumption that chivalric
masculinity dominated the Cid's visualization, and points to how
women were represented with increasing modesty as readerships
became younger in modern times. An unprecedented exploration of
Spanish visual history, Illustrating El Cid, 1498 to Today yields
thought-provoking insights about the powerful ways in which
illustration shapes representations of gender, identity, and
ethnicity.
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