The doctrine of the Incarnation was wellspring and catalyst for theories of images verbal, material, and spiritual. Section I, "Representing the Mystery of the Incarnation", takes up questions about the representability of the mystery. Section II, "Imago Dei and the Incarnate Word", investigates how Christ's status as the image of God was seen to license images material and spiritual. Section III, "Literary Figurations of the Incarnation", considers the verbal production of images contemplating the divine and human nature of Christ. Section IV, "Tranformative Analogies of Matter and Spirit", delves into ways that material properties and processes, in their effects on the beholder, were analogized to Christ's hypostasis. Section V, "Visualizing the Flesh of Christ", considers the relation between the Incarnation and the Passion.

"The Bible in the Latin West" is the first volume in a series that addresses the codicology of texts. In considering how and why the appearance of a manuscript changes over the centuries, Margaret T. Gibson introduces students to the study of manuscripts and to the wider range of information and expertise that can be brought to bear on the study of manuscripts as historical objects as well as texts. Here Gibson surveys the changes in the most important book in the western world, the Latin Bible. She begins the survey in late antiquity, discussing the volumes of the great senatorial houses of the 4th century and how they influenced the early great Bibles of northern Europe. The discussion then moves through the Carolingian period, with its increased interest in commentary to early vernacular versions, and goes on to reveal how in the 11th and 12th centuries the growing numbers of monastic and university readers made new demands on the texts which led to the inclusion of glosses and other scholarly apparatus. Later, the combined influences of increased literacy and growing wealth among the population called for vernacular translations and devotional aids such as Books of Hours. Gibson completes the survey with a look at early printed Bibles. A useful volume for anyone being introduced to the firsthand study of texts and their transmission, as well as for graduate students in history, English, modern languages, classics, and religious studies. "The Bible in the Latin West" contains an introductory survey.

A society's culture is a contributing factor to the structure and design of its architecture. As contemporary globalism brings about the evolution of the world, architectural style evolves along with it, which can be observed on an international scale. Cultural Influences on Architecture is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on the impact of culture on architecture through the aspects of planning and production, and highlights the importance of communicative dimension in design. Featuring exhaustive coverage on a variety of relevant perspectives and topics, such as the evolution of construction systems, benefits of nature-based architecture, and fundamentals of social capital, this publication is ideally designed for researchers, scholars, and students seeking current research on the connection between culture and architecture on a global level.

What is art; why should we value it; and what allows us to say that one work is better than another? Traditional answers have emphasized aesthetic form. But this has been challenged by institutional definitions of art and postmodern critique. The idea of distinctively artistic value based on aesthetic criteria is at best doubted, and at worst, rejected. This book, however, champions these notions in a new way. It does so through a rethink of the mimetic definition of art on the basis of factors which traditional answers neglect, namely the conceptual link between art's aesthetic value and 'non-exhibited' epistemological and historical relations. These factors converge on an expanded notion of the artistic image (a notion which can even encompass music, abstract art, and some conceptual idioms). The image's style serves to interpret its subject-matter. If this style is original (in comparative historical terms) it can manifest that special kind of aesthetic unity which we call art. Appreciation of this involves a heightened interaction of capacities (such as imagination and understanding) which are basic to knowledge and personal identity. By negotiating these factors, it is possible to define art and its canonic dimensions objectively, and to show that aforementioned sceptical alternatives are incomplete and self-contradictory.

'Painting contains a divine force which not only makes the absent present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.' Taking up Alberti's connection between divine power, mimesis and friendship, this study explores the artistry of the Utrecht portrait specialist Anthonis Mor. It considers Mor's work in relation to reformation debates, and to the challenges to dynastic authority that took place during his lifetime, tracing the breakdown and transformation of belief in 'friendship' or love as a means of binding abstract authority and the embodied world together. Although Mor succeeded Titian as principal portraitist to the Habsburgs, his ambition was not limited to portrayal in a narrow sense. His work enters into dialogue with the elevated conceptions of the artist being enunciated by his humanist friends, and with devotional and allegorical imagery. The book brings Mor's arresting vision to a wider public and reveals its centrality to a broader understanding of how authority was conceived and reshaped in the sixteenth-century.