Street corners, guild halls, government offices, and confraternity centers contained paintings that made the city of Florence a visual jewel at precisely the time of its emergence as an international cultural leader. This book considers the paintings that were made specifically for consideration by lay viewers, as well as the way they could have been interpreted by audiences who approached them with specific perspectives. Their belief in the power of images, their understanding of the persuasiveness of pictures, and their acceptance of the utterly vital role that art could play as a propagator of civic, corporate, and individual identity made lay viewers keenly aware of the paintings in their midst. Those pictures affirmed the piety of the people for whom they were made in an age of social and political upheaval, as the city experimented with an imperfect form of republicanism that often failed to adhere to its declared aspirations.

Fifty Early Medieval Things introduces readers to the material culture of late antique and early medieval Europe, north Africa, and western Asia. Ranging from Iran to Ireland and from Sweden to Tunisia, Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey, and Paolo Squatriti present fifty objects-artifacts, structures, and archaeological features-created between the fourth and eleventh centuries, an ostensibly "Dark Age" whose cultural richness and complexity is often underappreciated. Each thing introduces important themes in the social, political, cultural, religious, and economic history of the postclassical era. Some of the things, like a simple ard (plow) unearthed in Germany, illustrate changing cultural and technological horizons in the immediate aftermath of Rome's collapse; others, like the Arabic coin found in a Viking burial mound, indicate the interconnectedness of cultures in this period. Objects such as the Book of Kells and the palace-city of Anjar in present-day Jordan represent significant artistic and cultural achievements; more quotidian items (a bone comb, an oil lamp, a handful of chestnuts) belong to the material culture of everyday life. In their thing-by-thing descriptions, the authors connect each object to both specific local conditions and to the broader influences that shaped the first millennium AD, and also explore their use in modern scholarly interpretations, with suggestions for further reading. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Fifty Early Medieval Things demonstrates how to read objects in ways that make the distant past understandable and approachable.

From the bestselling author of Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, a captivating account of the last surviving relic of Thomas Becket The assassination of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 is one of the most famous events in European history. It inspired the largest pilgrim site in medieval Europe and many works of literature from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Anouilh's Becket. In a brilliant piece of historical detective work, Christopher de Hamel here identifies the only surviving relic from Becket's shrine: the Anglo-Saxon Psalter which he cherished throughout his time as Archbishop of Canterbury, and which he may even have been holding when he was murdered. Beautifully illustrated and published to coincide with the 850th anniversary of the death of Thomas Becket, this is an exciting rediscovery of one of the most evocative artefacts of medieval England.

More than any other secular story of the Middle Ages, the tale of Tristan and Isolde fascinated its audience. Adaptations in poetry, prose, and drama were widespread in western European vernacular languages. Visual portrayals of the story appear not only in manuscripts and printed books but in individual pictures and pictorial narratives, and on an amazing array of objects including stained glass, wall paintings, tiles, tapestries, ivory boxes, combs, mirrors, shoes, and misericords.The pan-European and cross-media nature of the surviving medieval evidence is not adequately reflected in current Tristan scholarship, which largely follows disciplinary and linguistic lines. The contributors to "Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde" seek to address this problem by opening a cross-disciplinary dialogue and by proposing a new set of intellectual coordinates--the concepts of materiality and visuality--without losing sight of the historical specificity or the aesthetic character of individual works of art and literature. Their theoretical paradigm allows them to survey the richness of the surviving evidence from a variety of disciplinary approaches, while offering new perspectives on the nature of representation in medieval culture. Enriched by numerous illustrations, this volume is an important examination of the story of Tristan and Isolde in the European context of its visual and textual transmission. "Comprehensive and cutting edge, "Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde "defines the moment in the history of Tristan scholarship. The essays, gathered from both sides of the Atlantic, enrich and expand the key concepts of materiality and visuality to account for the proliferation of the Tristan story in an astonishing range of media. The collection gives scholars in several disciplines the tools to explore the productive connections between the verbal and the visual in medieval culture." --Sarah Westphal-Wihl, Washington University in St. Louis

No serious art-historical library should be without it. [The publisher] is to be congratulated for taking on this epic venture. BURLINGTON MAGAZINE. The fifty years between 1130 and 1180 produced some of the most original and evocative capitals of the middle ages - a period that was largely responsible for the evolution of the Gothic style. But despite the fact that many are hard to examine in situ and are often too dark to observe closely, they have rarely been published before. These volumes will therefore be widely welcomed. The 7,600 illustrations they contain cover, in large and exquisite detail,nearly every capital; they include the multitude of works in the great cathedrals and abbeys of the time, including Chartres, Laon, Noyon, Paris, Saint-Denis, Senlis and Sens. The staggering range of individual creativity shows aculture able to reinvent itself in a rare and exciting way. The publication of the fourth and fifth volumes in the sequence completes the photographic archive of foliate carving from the Paris Basin during the formative two centuries in which architecture and the techniques of building were transformed. They are also the foundation for subsequent volumes which will establish a chronology for Early Gothic architecture and sculpture, as well as technological developments in rib vaults and construction methods. Dr JOHN JAMES is a world authority on medieval architecture, and author of over sixty books and articles.

This collection of papers, first delivered at the BAA's annual conference in 2002, celebrates medieval Rochester, including both cathedral and castle, an outstanding pair of surviving monuments to the power of contemporary church and state. The contributions demonstrate the great interest of these understudied buildings, their furnishings, and historical and archaeological contexts: from the rich documentary evidence for the Anglo-Saxon town to the substantial surviving fabric of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. Shrines, monuments, woodwork and seals are all fully covered, as well as the medieval monks themselves. There is also a piece on Archbishop Courtenay's foundation of the nearby collegiate church at Maidstone, Kent.

One of Europe's greatest artistic treasures, the Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. For all its fame, its origins and story are complex and somewhat cloudy. Though many assume it was commissioned by Bishop Odo--William's ruthless half-brother--it may also have been financed by Harold's dynamic sister Edith, who was juggling for a place in the new court. In this intriguing study, medieval art historian Carola Hicks investigates the miracle of the tapestry's making--including the unique stitches, dyes, and strange details in the margins--as well as its complicated past. For centuries it lay ignored in Bayeux cathedral until its discovery in the 18th century. It quickly became a symbol of power: townsfolk saved it during the French Revolution, Napoleon displayed it to promote his own conquest, and the Nazis strove to make it their own. Packed with thrilling stories, this history shows how every great work of art has a life of its own.

Siena of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was one of the great cities of Europe and its artists--Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti--were among those who reshaped the nature and place of painting first in Italy, then across Europe. Drawing on the extraordinary riches of Sienese archives, on early unpublished secondary sources, and on the recent work of historians, Hayden Maginnis situates early Sienese painters within their society and their city and provides the first comprehensive account of the economic, social, religious, and intellectual world of Siena's artists.

Where did painters live? How much were they paid? What was their social status? Were painters aware of the novel importance of thirteenth-century optics? Were the famous Sienese painters isolated figures, surrounded by a few secondary figures, or were they part of a larger community? These and a host of related questions structure Maginnis's book, which demonstrates how firmly painters' lives were embedded in the values and customs of their society and how important the particular character of their society was for the patronage artists received. The World of the Early Sienese Painter is the second volume of a trilogy Maginnis began with Painting in the Age of Giotto (1997). The third volume will turn from the broad social and cultural history of the present book to a history of early Sienese painting.

Pushed to the height of its illusionistic powers during the first centuries of the Roman Empire, sculpture was largely abandoned with the ascendancy of Christianity, as the apparent animation of the material image and practices associated with sculpture were considered both superstitious and idolatrous. In Pygmalion's Power, Thomas E. A. Dale argues that the reintroduction of architectural sculpture after a hiatus of some seven hundred years arose with the particular goal of engaging the senses in a Christian religious experience. Since the term "Romanesque" was coined in the nineteenth century, the reintroduction of stone sculpture around the mid-eleventh century has been explained as a revivalist phenomenon, one predicated on the desire to claim the authority of ancient Rome. In this study, Dale proposes an alternative theory. Covering a broad range of sculpture types-including autonomous cult statuary in wood and metal, funerary sculpture, architectural sculpture, and portraiture-Dale shows how the revitalized art form was part of a broader shift in emphasis toward spiritual embodiment and affective piety during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Adding fresh insight to scholarship on the Romanesque, Pygmalion's Power borrows from trends in cultural anthropology to demonstrate the power and potential of these sculptures to produce emotional effects that made them an important sensory part of the religious culture of the era.

At the height of the Victorian period, a passion for the Gothic style swept England and spread far beyond. Gothic architecture, associated with the social and cultural ideals of the Middle Ages, was seen as a means of remaking the modern world. In this lucid exposition, Chris Brooks unravels the layers of meaning that Gothic held for its many reinventors, from the political uses of Gothic history in the seventeenth century to Barry and Pugin's Houses of Parliament in the mid-nineteenth. Yet the Gothic revival is not just manifest in buildings continually recreated; it has taken the form of poetry and fiction, of painting and sculpture, of movies and video games, of Gothic music and Gothic punk. This is the first book to deal comprehensively with the whole scope of the Gothic Revival.

Verse inscriptions in stone appeared in abundance on the facades of Romanesque churches in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Marking the place where medieval worshippers were transported from secular to sacred space, portal verse inscriptions provide important, and often overlooked, insights into the dynamic function of the portals and their art. The Allegory of the Church is the first full-length study of Romanesque verse inscriptions in the context of church portals and portal sculpture, and is the product of a twenty-year study. Calvin B. Kendall demonstrates how these inscriptions served to express the role of the church building as a concrete allegory of Christ and the Church. Describing them in detail, he traces the history and nature of the changes in allegorical interpretation of the inscriptions until, as medieval assumptions about language and rhetoric changed, they were finally abandoned by Gothic artists. An exemplary work of interdisciplinary scholarship, The Allegory of the Church includes a detailed catalogue of Romanesque verse inscriptions.

This collection looks beyond the literary, religious, and philosophical aspects of Chaucer’s texts to a new mode of interdisciplinary scholarship: one that celebrates the richness of Chaucer’s visual poetics. The twelve illustrated essays make connections between Chaucer’s texts and various forms of visual data, both medieval and modern. Basing their approach on contemporary understandings of interplay between text and image, the contributors examine a wealth of visual material, from medieval art and iconographical signs to interpretations of Chaucer rendered by contemporary artists. The result uncovers interdisciplinary potential that deepens and informs our understanding of Chaucer’s poetry in an age in which digitization makes available a wealth of facsimiles and other visual resources. A learned assessment of imagery and Chaucer’s work that opens exciting new paths of scholarship, Chaucer: Visual Approaches will be welcomed by scholars of literature, art history, and medieval and early modern studies. The contributors are Jessica Brantley, Joyce Coleman, Carolyn P. Collette, Alexandra Cook, Susanna Fein, Maidie Hilmo, Laura Kendrick, Ashby Kinch, David Raybin, Martha Rust, Sarah Stanbury, and Kathryn R. Vulić.

This volume assesses how current approaches to iconology and iconography break new ground in understanding the signification and reception of medieval images, both in their own time and in the modern world. Framed by critical essays that apply explicitly historiographical and sociopolitical perspectives to key moments in the evolution of the field, the volume's case studies focus on how iconographic meaning is shaped by factors such as medieval modes of dialectical thought, the problem of representing time, the movement of the viewer in space, the fragmentation and injury of both image and subject, and the complex strategy of comparing distant cultural paradigms. The contributions are linked by a commitment to understanding how medieval images made meaning; to highlighting the heuristic value of new perspectives and methods in exploring the work of the image in both the Middle Ages and our own time; and to recognizing how subtle entanglements between scholarship and society can provoke mutual and unexpected transformations in both. Collectively, the essays demonstrate the expansiveness, flexibility, and dynamism of iconographic studies as a scholarly field that is still heartily engaged in the challenge of its own remaking. Along with the volume editors, the contributors include Madeline H. Caviness, Beatrice Kitzinger, Aden Kumler, Christopher R. Lakey, Glenn Peers, Jennifer Purtle, and Elizabeth Sears.

Exploring issues of artist patronage, luxury craftsmanship, holy men and women, the decorated word, monasteries, secular courts, and the expressive and didactic roles of artistic creation, Lawrence Nees presents early Christian art within the late Roman tradition and the arts of the newly established kingdoms of northern Europe not as opposites, but as different aspects of a larger historical situation. This approach reveals the onset of an exciting new visual relationship between the church and the populace throughout medieval Europe, restoring a previously marginalized subject to a central status in our artistic and cultural heritage.

Faces of Power and Piety is the second in the Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books that draw on manuscript illuminations in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library. Each volume focuses on a particular theme to provide an accessible and delightful introduction to the imagination of the medieval world. The vivid and charming faces featured in this volume include portraits of both illustrious historical figures and celebrated contemporaries. They reveal that medieval artists often disregarded physical appearance in favor of emphasizing qualities such as power and piety, capturing how their subjects wished to be remembered for the ages. Faces of Power and Piety also looks at the development of portraiture in the modern sense during the Renaissance, when likeness became an important component of portrait painting. An exhibition of the same name will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from August 12 through October 26, 2008.

An innovative examination of sixteenth-century Netherlandish drawing against the backdrop of the urban economic boom, the Protestant Reformation, and the Eighty Years' War Featuring works by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516), Jan Gossaert (c. 1478-1532), Maarten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569), Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), and others, this book positions drawing in the Low Countries in the sixteenth century as a dynamic, multifaceted practice. Drawings played roles as varied as the artists who made them: they were designs for prints, paintings, stained glass windows, decorative objects, and tapestries, as well as tools for presentation, translation, and the display of knowledge and virtuosity. The artists' diversified urban communities shaped their drawing practices, as did shifting cultural and political circumstances surrounding Protestant Reform and the Eighty Years' War. In addition to the book's four illuminating essays, many of the more than eighty catalogue entries-selected from the holdings of The Albertina Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art-present new research. Distributed for the Cleveland Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: The Cleveland Museum of Art (October 9, 2022-January 8, 2023) The Albertina Museum, Vienna (2023)

This study analyzes late medieval paintings of personified death in Bohemia, arguing that Bohemian iconography was distinct from the body of macabre painting found in other Central European regions during the same period. The author focuses on a variety of images from late medieval Bohemia, examining how they express the imagination, devotion, and anxieties surrounding death in the Middle Ages.

Emerging Iconographies of Medieval Rome examines the development of Christian iconographies that had not yet established themselves as canonical images, but which were being tried out in various ways in early Christian Rome. This book focuses on four different iconographical forms that appeared in Rome during the eighth and ninth centuries: the Anastasis, the Transfiguration, the Maria Regina, and the Sickness of Hezekiah-all of which were labeled "Byzantine" by major mid-twentieth century scholars. The trend has been to readily accede to the pronouncements of those prominent authors, subjugating these rich images to a grand narrative that privileges the East and turns Rome into an artistic backwater. In this study, Annie Montgomery Labatt reacts against traditional scholarship which presents Rome as merely an adjunct of the East. It studies medieval images with formal and stylistic analyses in combination with use of the writings of the patristics and early medieval thinkers. The experimentation and innovation in the Christian iconographies of Rome in the eighth and ninth centuries provides an affirmation of the artistic vibrancy of Rome in the period before a divided East and West. Labatt revisits and revives a lost and forgotten Rome-not as a peripheral adjunct of the East, but as a center of creativity and artistic innovation.