Cambridge University Library's collection of illuminated manuscripts is of international significance. It originates in the medieval university and stands alongside the holdings of the colleges and the Fitzwilliam Museum. The University Library contains major European examples of medieval illumination from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, with acknowledged masterpieces of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance book art, as well as illuminated literary texts, including the first complete Chaucer manuscript. This catalogue provides scholars and researchers easy access to the University Library's illuminated manuscripts, evaluating the importance of many of them for the very first time. It contains descriptions of famous manuscripts, for example the Life of Edward the Confessor attributed to Matthew Paris, as well as hundreds of lesser-known items. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the catalogue contains descriptions of individual manuscripts with up-to-date assessments of their style, origins and importance, together with bibliographical references.

Spirited Prospect: A Portable History of Western Art from the Paleolithic to the Modern Era is a lively, scholarly survey of the great artists, works, and movements that make up the history of Western art. Within the text, important questions are addressed: What is art, and who is an artist? What is the West, and what is the Canon? Is the Western Canon closed or exclusionary? Why is it more important than ever for individuals to engage and understand it? Readers are escorted on a concise, chronological tour of Western visual culture, beginning with the first art produced before written history. They learn about the great ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Italy; the advent of Christianity and its manifestations in Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art; and the fragmentation of old traditions and the proliferation of new artistic choices that characterize the Enlightenment and the Modern Era. The revised second edition features improved formatting, juxtaposition, sizing, and spacing of images throughout. Spirited Prospect is an ideal textbook for introductory courses in the history of art, as well as courses in studio art and Western civilization at all levels.

Fourteenth-century Europe was ravaged by famine, war, and, most devastatingly, the Black Plague. These widespread crises inspired a mystical religiosity, which emphasized both ecstatic joy and extreme suffering, producing emotionally charged and often graphic depictions of the Crucifixion and the martyrdoms of the saints.
While the great boom of cathedral building that had marked the previous century waned, cathedrals continued to serve as the centers of religious life and artistic creation. Wealthy patrons sponsored the production of elaborate altarpieces, as well as smaller panel paintings and religious statues for private devotional use. A growing literate elite created a demand for both richly decorated prayer books and volumes on secular topics. In Italy, the foremost Sienese painter, Duccio, sought to synthesize northern, Gothic influences with eastern, Byzantine ones, while the groundbreaking Florentine Giotto moved toward the depiction of three-dimensional figures in his wall paintings.
This third volume in the Art through the Centuries series highlights the most noteworthy concepts, geographic centers, and artists of this turbulent century. Important facts about the subjects under discussion are summarized in the margins of each entry, and salient features of the illustrated artworks are identified and discussed.

A riveting exploration of how the Fatimid dynasty carefully orchestrated an architectural program that proclaimed their legitimacy This groundbreaking study investigates the early architecture of the Fatimids, an Ismaili Shi'i Muslim dynasty that dominated the Mediterranean world from the 10th to the 12th century. This period, considered a golden age of multicultural and interfaith tolerance, witnessed the construction of iconic structures, including Cairo's al-Azhar and al-Hakim mosques and crucial renovations to Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock and Aqsa Mosque. However, it also featured large-scale destruction of churches under the notorious reign of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, most notably the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Jennifer A. Pruitt offers a new interpretation of these and other key moments in the history of Islamic architecture, using newly available medieval primary sources by Ismaili writers and rarely considered Arabic Christian sources. Building the Caliphate contextualizes early Fatimid architecture within the wider Mediterranean and Islamic world and demonstrates how rulers manipulated architectural form and urban topographies to express political legitimacy on a global stage.

A World Perspective of Art History: Ancient Art History from the First Artists to the 14th Century - Volume One provides students with a worldwide, integrated introduction to art. The book features a distinct emphasis on women, minorities, and civilizations around the world using a coordinated time sequence and comparing art in multiple cultures simultaneously. Students discover art and culture from a global perspective and are encouraged to connect their own cultures with key learnings. The material is presented in historical time sequences based on the rise and fall of various civilizations and how they created art and architecture during that time. Students are introduced to the early art of around 50,000 BCE and encouraged to consider why these original artists created their works. Additional units progress chronologically and show how art evolved in step with developed settlements. The book introduces great structures erected during the Bronze Age and demonstrates how the Iron Age influenced the art of ancient Greece. Students read about trade, the rise of empires, the dawn of deities, and how each of these historical developments profoundly impacted the type of art created during each time period. The final unit focuses on the end of ancient civilizations. Featuring a uniquely inclusive approach, A World Perspective of Art History is an ideal resource for courses in art history and art appreciation.

The latest British Archaeological Association transactions report on the conference volumes at Beverley in 1983. Papers provide the latest thoughts on topics at Beverley Minster and in the surrounding area. Contributions include: Pre-Conquest Sculpture (J Lang); pre-13th century Beverley (R Morris & E Cambridge); 12th century sculpture from Bridlington (M Thurlby); Bridlington Augustinian church and cloister in the 12th century (J A Franklin); stained glass of Beverley Minster (D O'Connor); East Riding sepulchal monuments (B & M Gittos); St Peter's Church, Howden (N Coldstream); the Percy tomb workshop (N Dawton); architectural development of Patrington Church (J Maddison); Beverley in conflict: Archbishop Neville and the Minster Clergy, 1381-8 (R B Dobson); monumental brasses in the 14th and 15th centuries (S Badham); the misericords in Beveley Minster (C Grossinger).

This is the first book to explore the emergence and function of a novel pictorial format in the Middle Ages, the vita icon, which displayed the magnified portrait of a saint framed by scenes from his or her life. The vita icon was used for depicting the most popular figures in the Orthodox calendar and, in the Latin West, was deployed most vigorously in the service of Francis of Assisi. This book offers a compelling account of how this type of image embodied and challenged the prevailing structures of vision, representation and sanctity in Byzantium and among the Franciscans in Italy between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Paroma Chatterjee uncovers the complexities of the philosophical and theological issues that had long engaged both the medieval East and West, such as the fraught relations between words and images, relics and icons, a representation and its subject, and the very nature of holy presence.