Reaching its peak in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Romanesque movement was marked by a peculiar, vivid, and often monumental expressiveness in architecture and fine arts. The main centres were located in Italy, France, the German-language countries, Spain, and England, though the voices of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe expressed themselves distinctly in the genre, which patterned itself on antique and Byzantine art. Despite untold losses, countless Romanesque masterpieces remain preserved today. Highlights include: Frescoes in Galliano near Cantu, Sant'Angelo in Formis, Saint Chef, Saint-Savin-sur Gartempe, Lambach, S. Pietro al Monte near Civate, S. Clemente in Rome, from S. Maria de Tahull, Berze-la-Ville, Tavant, Panteon de los Reyes in Leon, Castel Appiano, from Sigena; the golden Altar-Piece from Lisbjerg; the Bayeux Tapestry; stained glasses in the Cathedral of Augsburg and Le Mans, mosaics in S. Clemete, Rome, and in S. Marco, Venice; coloured panels und crosses from La Seo de Urgel, Sarzana and the panted ceiling in St. Michael, Hildesheim; sculptures in Souillac, Autun, Santiago de Compostela; and examples of metalwork, of manuscripts and enamels. Each book in TASCHEN's "Basic Genre" series features: a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period, and a selection of the most important works of the epoch; each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a reference work, portrait of the artist, and/or citations.

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

1928. This volume grew out of Lowell lectures delivered at Boston, Massachusetts. Contents: Monastic Artists (1); Monastic Artists (2); Monastic Artists (3); The Lay Artist; Four Self-Characterizations; The Freemasons; The Mason's Mark; The Hand-Grip; Eton and King's College; From Prentice to Master; Wander Years; Symbolism; The People's Mind; The Poor Man's Bible; Art and Religion; Architectural Finance; The Puritan Revolt; Reformation or Renaissance?; Protestantism and Art; The Roots of the Renaissance; Renaissance and Destruction; Renaissance and Construction (1); and Renaissance and Construction (2).

Surviving fragments of information about Pythagoras (born ca. 570 BCE) gave rise to a growing set of legends about this famous sage and his followers, whose reputations throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages have never before been studied systematically. This book is the first to examine the unified concepts of harmony, proportion, form, and order that were attributed to Pythagoras in the millennium after his death and the important developments to which they led in art, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, music, medicine, morals, religion, law, alchemy, and the occult sciences. In this profusely illustrated book, Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier sets out the panorama of Pythagoras's influence and that of Christian and Jewish thinkers who followed his ideas in the Greek, Roman, early Christian, and medieval worlds. In illuminating this tradition of thought, Joost-Gaugier shows how the influence of Pythagoreanism was far broader than is usually realized, and that it affected the development of ancient and medieval art and architecture from Greek and Roman temples to Gothic cathedrals.Joost-Gaugier demonstrates that Pythagoreanism—centered on the dim memory of a single person that endured for centuries and grew ever-greater—inspired a new language for artists and architects, enabling them to be "modern."

Old St Peter's Basilica in Rome stood for over eleven centuries until it was demolished to make room for today's church on the same Vatican site. Its last eyewitness, Maffeo Vegio, explained to the Roman hierarchy how revival of the papacy, whose prestige after the exile to Avignon had been diminished, was inseparable from a renewed awareness of the primacy of Peter's Church. To make his case, Vegio wrote a history founded on credible written and visual evidence. The text guides us through the building's true story in its material reality, undistorted by medieval guides. This was its living memory and a visualization of the continuity of Roman history into modern times. This volume makes available the first complete English translation of Vegio's text. Accompanied by full-color digital reconstructions of the Basilica as it appeared in Vegio's day.

1885. Illustrated with 92 plates. The book's purpose is to collect and arrange, in chronological order, the principal forms that have been used symbolically in the different periods of Art. Its chief aim is to lead to a better understanding of the many treasures of Art and Antiquity that are to be found wherever our wanderings may lead us, by assisting persons to read their meaning and to look through the Symbol to the thing signified by it.

Text in English and French. The aim of this book, by utilizing modern photography, is to illustrate the cathedral on a scale not before attempted. Although this collection is not exhaustive, the authors claim it is fairly representative. It deals mainly with the sculptures on the doorway, although there are views of the general architecture and a few subjects from the interior. Over 120 photographs, fully indexed.

This book is a collection of specially-commissioned art-historical essays on the theme of manuscript studies by some of the world's leading art historians and curators of manuscripts. It is expected to be even more successful and well-received than the comparable volume from University of Exeter Press, The Art of the Book: Its Place in Medieval Worship, edited by Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir. The contributors are writing on their particular area of manuscript study, with the Wharncliffe Hours and the Book of Kells among the important manuscripts discussed. Their essays are written in honor of Margaret M. Manion, Professor Emeritus, Department of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne. Margaret Manion has an international reputation for her work in the field of art history. Her many publications include a facsimile edition of The Wharncliffe Hours (Thames & Hudson) and Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections (with Vera F. Vines, Thames & Hudson).

Subject of this book is the social and cultural history of Chinese art collecting during the early years of Mongol rule in China (the Yuan dynasty, 1276-1368). At the core of Weitz's book is a complete translation of the "Record of Clouds and Mist Passing Before One's Eyes (Yunyan guoyan lu)," an art catalog written by the Song dynasty loyalist Zhou Mi (1232-1298). This text contains detailed records of more than forty private art collections that the author saw in Hangzhou between 1275 and 1296. The careful annotations, scholarly introduction, and well-researched appendices help to broaden our understanding of the early care and transmission of artworks, the social dimensions of art collecting, and the development of a multi-ethnic society in Yuan China.

Barbaric Splendour: the use of image before and after Rome comprises a collection of essays comparing late Iron Age and Early Medieval art. Though this is an unconventional approach, there are obvious grounds for comparison. Images from both periods revel in complex compositions in which it is hard to distinguish figural elements from geometric patterns. Moreover, in both periods, images rarely stood alone and for their own sake. Instead, they decorated other forms of material culture, particularly items of personal adornment and weaponry. The key comparison, however, is the relationship of these images to those of Rome. Fundamentally, the book asks what making images meant on the fringe of an expanding or contracting empire, particularly as the art from both periods drew heavily from - but radically transformed - imperial imagery.

In this beautifully written book, Georges Duby, one of France's greatest medieval historians, returns to one of the central themes of his work - the relationship between art and society. He traces the evolution of artistic forms from the fifth to the fifteenth century in parallel with the structural development of society, in order to create a better understanding of both.

Duby traces shifts in the centres of artistic production and changes in the nature and status of those who promoted works of art and those who produced them. At the same time, he emphasizes the crucial continuities that still gave the art of medieval Europe a basic unity, despite the emergence of national characteristics. Duby also reminds us that the way we approach these artistic forms today differs greatly from how they were first viewed. For us, they are works of art from which we expect and derive aesthetic pleasure; but for those who commissioned them or made them, their value was primarily functional - gifts offered to God, communications with the other world, or affirmations of power - and this remained the case throughout the Middle Ages.

This book will be of interest to students and academics in medieval history and history of art.

Memory and Modernity focuses on the first project of the renowned nineteenth-century French architect and theorist Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the restoration of the Romanesque church of the Madeleine at Vezelay in Burgundy. This is the first book-length study to approach the work of Viollet-le-Duc from the perspective of institutional and social history.

Kevin D. Murphy situates the Vezelay restoration project within the government architectural bureaucracy that emerged in the July Monarchy. Drawing on extensive archival records, he describes the controversy that arose from the restoration process, as changes in the physical form of the church, its permitted uses, and its place in history provoked heated exchanges among the Burgundy region and Paris, the Catholic clergy and government officials.

Examining in detail the architect's transformation of the church of the Madeleine, the book also draws out the implications of the project for understanding Viollet-le-Duc's theoretical development. Murphy shows how Viollet-le-Duc's rationalist interpretation of medieval architecture informed the decisions that were made about the restoration, but also how that way of thinking was influenced by the architect's experience at Vezelay.

Now published in paperback, this fully-illustrated book explores the concept of the monster in the Middle Ages, examining its philosophical and theological roots and analysing its symbolic function in medieval literature and art. Fascinating and comprehensive, this study of the grotesque in medieval aesthetic expression successfully brings together medieval research and modern criticism.

In the 1320's AD the Emperor Constantine moved the capital of his Empire from Rome to Byzantium, which was renamed Conatantinople, and until its fall in 1453 remained a major artistic centre. Under successive emperors and empresses for more than a thousand years, artists, archtects and craftsmen produced superb and intriguing works ranging fom the grandest public buildings to the smallest and most personal items. Today this art is generally termed early Christian and Byzantine.

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.

Continuing from the year 817, reached in his The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes, Raymond Davis deals with the remaining ten biographies of the Liber Pontificalis down to 886, when compilation ceased. The 9th-century biographies, as a semi-official papal chronicle, are one of the most important sources for Italian history. Major themes preoccupying the popes of this period and their contemporary biographers were relations with the Carolingian and Byzantine Empires. In respect of the former, the popes were determined to maintain freedom of action while the Western emperors were concerned to exercise some influence in Rome. In the case of the Eastern Empire, the popes wished to maintain their independence, established in the previous century, yet to assert primacy over the Byzantine Church; hence their concern both to have their right to decide between claimants to the See of Constantinople acknowledged and to assert jurisdiction in territory disputed between East and West. Rome itself was under threat, and the Saracen invasion of 846 forms a high-point of the narrative.

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.

Two volume set The Second Council of Nicaea (787) decreed that religious images were to set up in churches and venerated. It thereby established the cult of icons as a central element in the piety of the Orthodox churches, as it has remained ever since. In the West its decrees received a new emphasis in the Counter-Reformation, in the defence of the role of art in religion. It is a text of prime importance for the iconoclast controversy of eighth-century Byzantium, one of the most explored and contested topics in Byzantine history. But it has also a more general significance - in the history of culture and the history of art. This edition offers the first translation that is based on the new critical edition of this text in the Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum series, and the first full commentary of this work that has ever been written. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers from a variety of disciplines.

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.