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.

This book unravels the formation of the modern concept of cultural heritage by charting its colonial, postcolonial-nationalist and global trajectories. By bringing to light many unresearched dimensions of the twelfth-century Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat during its modern history, the study argues for a conceptual, connected history that unfolded within the transcultural interstices of European and Asian projects. With more than 1,400 black-and-white and colour illustrations of historic photographs, architectural plans and samples of public media, the monograph discusses the multiple lives of Angkor Wat over a 150-year-long period from the 1860s to the 2010s. Volume 1 (Angkor in France) reconceptualises the Orientalist, French-colonial 'discovery' of the temple in the nineteenth century and brings to light the manifold strategies at play in its physical representations as plaster cast substitutes in museums and as hybrid pavilions in universal and colonial exhibitions in Marseille and Paris from 1867 to 1937. Volume 2 (Angkor in Cambodia) covers, for the first time in this depth, the various on-site restoration efforts inside the 'Archaeological Park of Angkor' from 1907 until 1970, and the temple's gradual canonisation as a symbol of national identity during Cambodia's troublesome decolonisation (1953-89), from independence to Khmer Rouge terror and Vietnamese occupation, and, finally, as a global icon of UNESCO World Heritage since 1992 until today. Congratulations to our author Michael Falser who received the prestigious 2021 ICAS Book Prize in the "Ground Breaking Subject Matter" category.

Die Einzigartigkeit der Marksburg, auf einem Felskegel am rechten Rheinufer gelegen, besteht in ihrem mittelalterlichen Charakter, der trotz mancher Erganzungen uber die Jahrhunderte hinweg gewahrt werden konnte. Die Zwingermauern, die Kernburg und der Bergfried in ihrer Mitte bilden nach der Restaurierung durch den Deutschen Burgenverein, in dessen Hand sich die Burg seit 1900 befindet, eine beeindruckende, authentische Anlage. Vom westlichen Abschnitt des Zwingers aus lasst sich ein grossartiger Ausblick auf den Rhein und das Tal geniessen.

Petrarch intensively examined the visual arts of his time. He possessed a Madonna painting by Giotto and commissioned Simone Martini to create the unique frontispiece of his codex on Vergil. His works are key texts with respect to the discovery of the landscape and humanistic villa culture as well as the female portrait and the triumphant iconography of the Renaissance and the Baroque. The myth of the poet-prince associated with Petrarch has continued to offer a productive projection screen for both literati and artists up to modern times. The texts in the book open up new perspectives on central aspects of Petrarch's life and work and his importance as a charismatic phenomenon in the history of European art in a dialogue between literary studies and art history.

The book concerns a major medieval monument in an urban environment. It discusses previously overlooked material which calls into question the conventional reconstruction of the building history. Correspondingly, it offers a reappraisal of the building's transmutations over several periods, from the Romano-Christian to the Romanesque. It examines each building phase from several viewpoints: the historical circumstances of construction, the expectations of patrons, the urban preconditions of the time, the structural issues faced by the builders, architectural design, usage, fixtures, decorations, and the significance of all for contemporary and subsequent generations.

In a major departure from previous scholarship, this volume argues that the illustrations in the famous and widely influential Utrecht Psalter manuscript were inspired by a late antique Hebrew version of Psalms, rather than a Latin, Christian version of the text. Produced during the early ninth century in a workshop near Reims, France, the Utrecht Psalter is illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings in a lively style reminiscent of Hellenistic art. The motifs are largely literal renditions of words and phrases found in the book of Psalms. However, more than three dozen motifs cannot be explained by either the Latin text that accompanies the imagery or the commentaries of the church fathers. Through a close reading of the Hebrew Psalms, Pamela Berger demonstrates that these motifs can be explained only by the Hebrew text, the Jewish commentary, or Jewish art. Drawing comparisons between the “Hellenistic� style of the Psalter images and the style of late antique Galilean mosaics and using evidence from recent archaeological discoveries, Berger argues that the model for those Psalter illustrations dependent on the Hebrew text was produced in the Galilee. Pioneering and highly persuasive, this book resolves outstanding issues surrounding the origins of one of the most extensively studied illuminated manuscripts. It will be mandatory reading for many historians of medieval art and literature and for those interested in the Hebrew text of the book of Psalms.

What are the origins of the imagery and designs on common jewelry and portable artwork between late antiquity and the Middle Ages? These dynamic centuries encompass the transformation of the Greco-Roman world into the nascent kingdoms and medieval states upon which most modern European nations are based. But the choices of jewelry and other forms of personal expression amongst the lower classes in ancient times is notoriously difficult to contextualize for a number of reasons. Nonetheless, these precious articles were expressions of individual identity as well as signifiers of one's rites of passage. As such, they reflect not only the people who wore them, but also the social milieu and artistic trends impacting their lives at that moment in time. This new study assists in identifying the types, origins and routes of transmission of personal artwork, particularly finger rings, across Europe and Byzantium from late antiquity to the late middle ages, an area of study that has been neglected in previous works. Some of this material represents the first time relevant research from Central and Eastern Europe has been translated and made available to the general reader in the English speaking world.

In colorful detail, Calvin Lane explores the dynamic intersection between reform movements and everyday Christian practice from ca. 1000 to ca. 1800. Lowering the artificial boundaries between “the Middle Ages,� “the Reformation,� and “the Enlightenment,� Lane brings to life a series of reform programs each of which developed new sensibilities about what it meant to live the Christian life. Along this tour, Lane discusses music, art, pilgrimage, relics, architecture, heresy, martyrdom, patterns of personal prayer, changes in marriage and family life, connections between church bodies and governing authorities, and certainly worship. The thread that he finds running from the Benedictine revival in the eleventh century to the pietistic movements of the eighteenth is a passionate desire to return to a primitive era of Christianity, a time of imagined apostolic authenticity, even purity. In accessible language, he introduces readers to Cistercians and Calvinists, Franciscans and Jesuits, Lutherans and Jansenists, Moravians and Methodists to name but a few of the many reform movements studied in this book. Although Lane highlights their diversity, he argues that each movement rooted its characteristic practice – their spirituality – in an imaginative recovery of the apostolic life.

This important book [...] is a helpful guide to thinking with things and teaching with things. Each entry challenges the reader to approach objects as historical actors that can speak to the changes and continuities of life in the late antique and early medieval world. ― Early Medieval Europe 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.

In this study of the rare twelfth-century treatise On Diverse Arts, Heidi C. Gearhart explores the unique system of values that guided artists of the High Middle Ages as they created their works. Written in northern Germany by a monk known only by the pseudonym Theophilus, On Diverse Arts is the only known complete tract on art to survive from the period. It contains three books, each with a richly religious prologue, describing the arts of painting, glass, and metalwork. Gearhart places this one-of-a-kind treatise in context alongside works by other monastic and literary thinkers of the time and presents a new reading of the text itself. Examining the earliest manuscripts, she reveals a carefully ordered, sophisticated work that aligns the making of art with the virtues of a spiritual life. On Diverse Arts, Gearhart shows, articulated a distinctly medieval theory of art that accounted for the entire process of production—from thought and preparation to the acquisition of material, the execution of work, the creation of form, and the practice of seeing. An important new perspective on one of the most significant texts in art history and the first study of its kind available in English, Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art provides fresh insight into the principles and values of medieval art making. Scholars of art history, medieval studies, and Christianity will find Gearhart’s book especially edifying and valuable.