This edited volume programmatically reconsiders the creative contribution of the littoral and insular regions of Maritime Asia to shaping new paradigms in the Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture of the mediaeval Asian world. Far from being a mere southern conduit for the maritime circulation of Indic religions, in the period from ca. the 7th to the 14th century those regions transformed across mainland and island polities the rituals, icons, and architecture that embodied these religious insights with a dynamism that often eclipsed the established cultural centres in Northern India, Central Asia, and mainland China. This collective body of work brings together new research aiming to recalibrate the importance of these innovations in art and architecture, thereby highlighting the cultural creativity of the monsoon-influenced Southern rim of the Asian landmass.

The four books of St. Augustin On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana, iv libri) are a compend of exegetical theology to guide the reader in the understanding and interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, according to the analogy of faith. The first three books were written A. D. 397; the fourth was added 426.

A True Story of Art, Angels and Miracles
When Reverends Keith and his wife Francesca Richardson opened their angel themed gift store, Things From Heaven, in 1995 they had only $5,000 in working capital; everyone thought they would fail. Against all odds their store flourished and became the world's most important art gallery for internationally famous angel artist Andy Lakey. Keith and Francesca were even more surprised when they found that Lakey's art opened their customers spiritually and allowed them to receive miraculous healings and messages from deceased loved ones on the other side.
Doorways to Heaven recounts the Richardson's amazing journey of opening their improbable angel themed gift store (which has now been in business for over fifteen years). It also describes the medical miracles and spiritual communications they and others have experienced when they touch and pray with Andy Lakey's art.
Andy Lakey is the world's most famous angel artist. His art is in the Vatican as well as collections of movie stars, political leaders and European royalty. What makes Lakey's art unique is that its paint is raised so the blind can appreciate it. Lakey donates many of his artworks to organizations for the blind throughout the world. His favorite charity is The Blind Children's Center in Los Angeles, California.
In 1990, Andy Lakey received a formal request for a painting from then Pope John Paul II. The Pope wanted a piece of art at the Vatican that blind people could appreciate. The painting Lakey donated is now visited and described during many tours of the Vatican.
Andy Lakey's art continues to be popular with art collectors throughout the world. It has been featured on numerous television programs including ABC's Good Morning America, Fox Television's Miracles in the Making, NBC'sAngels the Mysterious Messengers, TNN's The Life and Times of Angel Encounters and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Some of Andy Lakey's most famous collectors include: Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, Prince Albert of Monaco, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Princess Margaret of Great Britain, King Hussein of Jordan, Kelsey Grammar, Patty Duke, Naomi Judd, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones, Micky Mantel, Arnold Palmer and General Chuck Yeager.
Along with being internationally famous, Lakey's art is also considered to be quite spiritual. Many people who come in contact with this art initially feel a heat or tingling sensation. When actress/singer Shari Belafonte touched one of Andy Lakey's paintings on the television program Life Styles, she claimed she had felt a sensation go up her arm which felt like a burst of energy; she said she then knew there was something special about Lakey and his art. Shari went on to say that it was enduring and enlightening to see that one of the stories portrayed on TV was real.

The definitive volumes celebrating the collections of the Hermitage Museum. For nearly 250 years the State Hermitage has been one of Europe's most palatial museums. It encompasses more than three million works of art and artifacts displayed within a spectacular architectural ensemble, the heart of which is the famed Winter Palace. The two volumes of "The Hermitage Collections" capture the masterpieces and discuss the history that make this world-famous institution a cultural destination and a global treasure. Many of its rarely reproduced works are included in these two volumes, such as The Raphael Loggias (as copied from the Vatican), Michelangelo's Crouching Boy, The Gonzaga Cameo, Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna with a Flower (The Benois Madonna), and Titian's St. Sebastian. The Hermitage collections were developed beginning in 1764 by Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. Today, the Hermitage collections constitute one of the great art museums of the world.

This new guidebook introduces readers to Buddhist art through the celebrated collections of the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art in Washington, DC. Paths to Perfection explores Buddhist art and its history across cultures. An intriguing look at artistic responses to one of the world's great religions.

Louis Francois Roubiliac, the most compelling sculptor in eighteenth-century Britain, was responsible for many complex and dramatic monuments that can be seen in Westminster Abbey and churches throughout the country. This book is not only the first extended treatment of the artist since 1928 but is also an exploration of tomb sculpture in the context of the period. The first section, written by David Bindman, discusses the reasons for the commissioning of tomb sculpture, ideas of death and the afterlife, the setting of the tomb, the themes that govern its imagery, and the negotiations between sculptor and patron. The second section, written by Malcolm Baker, examines in detail the processes involved in the design and making of the monuments. Through an analysis of the monuments themselves, the surviving models, and a range of documentary evidence, Baker considers Roubiliac's technical procedures and compares them to those of other sculptors in Britain and on the continent. The volume ends with a full catalogue raisonne of Roubiliac's known monuments. Each commission is discussed in detail, with full accounts of contemporary documentation, inscriptions, physical construction, and related models. By examining the particular social and religious conditions of the time it becomes possible to account not only for the distinctive features of Roubiliac's work and practice but also for how such theatrical works came to be accepted and admired. The book is fully illustrated, all the major works having been newly photographed to make visible details that are impossible to see under normal viewing conditions. Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

In 1975, when political scientist Benedict Anderson reached Wat Phai Rong Wua, a massive temple complex in rural Thailand conceived by Buddhist monk Luang Phor Khom, he felt he had wandered into a demented Disneyland. One of the world's most bizarre tourist attractions, Wat Phai Rong Wua was designed as a cautionary museum of sorts; its gruesome statues depict violent and torturous scenes that showcase what hell may be like. Over the next few decades, Anderson, who is best known for his work, Imagined Communities, found himself transfixed by this unusual amalgamation of objects, returning several times to see attractions like the largest metal-cast Buddha figure in the world and the Palace of a Hundred Spires. The concrete statuaries and perverse art in Luang Phor's personal museum of hell included, \u201cside by side, an upright human skeleton in a glass cabinet and a life-size replica of Michelangelo's gigantic nude David, wearing fashionable red underpants from the top of which poked part of a swollen, un-Florentine penis,\u201d alongside dozens of statues of evildoers being ferociously punished in their afterlife. In The Fate of Rural Hell, Anderson unravels the intrigue of this strange setting, endeavoring to discover what compels so many Thai visitors to travel to this popular spectacle and what order, if any, inspired its creation. At the same time, he notes in Wat Phai Rong Wua the unexpected effects of the gradual advance of capitalism into the far reaches of rural Asia. Both a one-of-a-kind travelogue and a penetrating look at the community that sustains it, The Fate of Rural Hell is sure to intrigue and inspire conversation as much as Wat Phai Rong Wua itself.

This is the first critical examination of Pablo Picasso's use of religious imagery and the religious import of many of his works with secular subject matter. Though Picasso was an avowed atheist, his work employs spiritual themes--and, often, traditional religious iconography. In five engagingly written, accessible chapters, Jane Daggett Dillenberger and John Handley address Picasso's cryptic 1930 painting of the Crucifixion; the artist's early life in the Catholic church; elements of transcendence in Guernica; Picasso's later, fraught relationship with the church, which commissioned him in the 1950s to paint murals for the Temple of Peace chapel in France; and the centrality of religious themes and imagery in bullfighting, the subject of countless Picasso drawings and paintings.

Few writers in the twentieth century were as creative and productive as Dorothy L. Sayers, the English playwright, novelist, and poet. Her justly renowned works include detective fiction featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, theological reflections, literary criticism, and her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Among the prominent themes of her work was the need for and challenges of developing community. Sayers, who was herself an active member of various writing groups throughout her lifetime, offers her readers visions of both fractured and harmonious communities. In this Hansen Lectureship volume, Christine Colon explores the role of community in Sayers's works. In particular, she considers how Sayers offers a vision of communities called to action, faith, and joy, and she reflects on how we also are called to live in community together. Based on the annual lecture series hosted at Wheaton College's Marion E. Wade Center, volumes in the Hansen Lectureship Series reflect on the imaginative work and lasting influence of seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award Our written words carry weight. Unfortunately, in today's cultural climate, our writing is too often laced with harsh judgments and vitriol rather than careful consideration and generosity. But might the Christian faith transform how we approach the task of writing? How might we love God and our neighbors through our writing? This book is not a style guide that teaches you where to place the comma and how to cite your sources (as important as those things are). Rather, it offers a vision for expressing one's faith through writing and for understanding writing itself as a spiritual practice that cultivates virtue. Under the guidance of two experienced Christian writers who draw on authors and artists throughout the church's history, we learn how we might embrace writing as an act of discipleship for today-and how we might faithfully bear the weight of our written words.

This collection of artwork from European comics master Sergio Toppi focuses on illustrations of biblical characters he drew during his lengthy collaboration with the journal Il Giornalino. Hundreds of character portraits and key scene illustrations from both the Old and New Testament are presented in Toppi's inimitable pen-and-ink style. Master artist Sergio Toppi depicts iconic scenes from the most widely read scripture in the world. Sergio Toppi's work has been hailed as an influence by such artistic masters as Sean Gordon Murphy and Walter Simonson. See his amazing vision for The Bible across many beautiful illustrations of biblical characters drawn during Toppi's lengthy collaboration with the journal Il Giornalino. Hundreds of character portraits and key scene illustrations from both the Old and New Testament are presented in Toppi's inimitable pen-and-ink style. From the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis through the many moving character tales throughout the Old Testament to the gospels and tales of the apostles in the New Testament, this stunningly illustrated volume will give new life and visual reference for some of the most familiar passages in the Bible.

Art collector Anil Relia had always admired the miniature paintings of the Nathdwara school, which grew out of the religious devotation of the Pushti Marg (Path of Grace). On one of his trips to this pilgrimage town, he encountered 'manorath' paintings, whose unusual visual elements attracted his attention immediately. Originally part of the Pushti Marg popular culture, manorath paintings were often commissioned by devout followers as an indelible record of a pilgrimage trip to Nathdwara. Manorath ("mind's vehicle") paintings are a visual representation of the pilgrim's wish to enter into mutual communication with a divine Pushti Marg icon. The popular manoraths in this collection, which employ mixed media and photo-realism techniques, illustrate worshippers in the presence of Shrinathji. These images had a deep emotional resonance for worshippers because they embodied both the corporeal pilgrimage to Nathdwara and also the inner devotional experience itself. As author Isabella Nardi demonstrates, the paintings in this collection are not merely souvenirs of a pilgrimage trip; they represent the worshipper's journey to Nathdwara for a 'darshan' with their beloved and revered deity. With pilgrims as patrons, these manoraths are truly portraits of devotion.

This text provide a concise and comparative study of the art of the world's great religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Taoism. It illustrated the unanimity of traditional forms and symbols and explains how sacred art can be identified by style and method. Burckhardt believed that the function of sacred art was to lead men to true freedom - and the release of the spirit from earthly bonds. This can be contrasted with post-Renaissance art, with its progressive abandonment of the soul.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
For the first time, all the major works of this beloved writer are gathered together in one hardcover volume.
Poet, artist, and mystic, Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 to a poor Christian family in Lebanon and immigrated to the United States as an adolescent. His masterpiece, " The Prophet," a book of poetic essays that he began while still a youth in Lebanon, is one of the most cherished books of our time and has sold millions of copies in more than twenty languages since its publication in 1923. But all of Gibran's works--essays, stories, parables, and prose poems--are imbued with equally powerful simplicity and wisdom, whether they are addressing marriage or children, friendship or grief, work or pleasure. Perhaps no other twentieth-century writer has touched the hearts and minds of so remarkably varied and widespread a readership.
Included in this volume are" The Prophet, The Wanderer, Jesus the Son of Man, A Tear and a Smile, Spirits Rebellious, Nymphs of the Valley, Prose Poems, The Garden of the Prophet, The Earth Gods, Sand and Foam, The Forerunner," and" The Madman."

The art of Hinduism constitutes one of the world's great traditions, as alive today as when the first images of Hindu gods were fashioned out of stone more than two thousand years ago. George Michell's invaluable survey looks at the entire period, covering shrines consecrated to Hindu cults as well as works of art that portray Hindu divinities, semidivine personalities, and mythological narratives.

Michell outlines the development of Hinduism and the principal iconic forms of its pantheon (the symbolic basis for Hindu religious architecture), and explains the system of royal patronage that led to the construction of so many temples and the commissioning of their attendant works of art. Then, in a broad chronological sweep, he demonstrates artistic continuities down to the present day in the different regions of the country, confirming the vibrancy of the visual world of Hinduism. The illustrations include Mamallapuram and other great temples, profound and beautiful works of sculpture such as Shiva dancing the eternal dance of creation and destruction, and exquisite paintings of the loves of Krishna.

Frederick Buechner's Godric "retells the life of Godric of Finchale, a twelfth-century English holy man whose projects late in life included that of purifying his moral ambition of pride...Sin, spiritual yearning, rebirth, fierce asceticism--these hagiographic staples aren't easy to revitalize but Frederick Buechner goes at the task with intelligent intensity and a fine readiness to invent what history doesn't supply. He contrives a style of speech for his narrator--Godric himself--that's brisk and tough-sinewed...He avoids metaphysical fiddle, embedding his narrative in domestic reality--familiar affection, responsibilities, disasters...All on his own, Mr. Buechner has managed to reinvent projects of self-purification and of faith as piquant matter for contemporary fiction [in a book] notable for literary finish...Frederick Buechner is a very good writer indeed." -- Benjamin DeMott, The New York Times Book Review

"From the book's opening sentence...and sensible reader will be caught in Godric's grip...Godric glimmers brightly." -- Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek

"Godric is a memorable book...a marvelous gem of a book...destined to become a classic of its kind." -- Michael Heskett, Houston Chronicle

"In the extraordinary figure of Godric, both stubborn outsider and true child of God, both worldly and unworldly, Frederick Buechner has found an ideal means of exploring the nature of spirituality. Godric is a living battleground where God fights it out with the world, the Flesh, and the Devil." -- London Times Literary Supplement

"Wityh a poet's sensibly and a high reverent fancy, Frederick Buechner paints a memorable portrait." -- Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal

Our parish churches constitute a living patrimony without precise European parallel. Their cultural riches are astonishing, not only for their quality and quantity, but also their diversity and interest. Fine art and architecture here combine unpredictably with the functional, the curious and the naive, from prehistory to the present day, to form an unsung national museum which presents its contents in an everyday setting without curators or formal displays. Because church treasures usually remain in the buildings they were created for, properly interpreted they tell from thousands of local perspectives the history of the nation, its people and their changing religious observance. John Goodall's weekly series in Country Life has celebrated particular objects in or around churches that are of outstanding artistic, social or historical importance, to underline both the intrinsic interest of parish churches and the insights that they and their contents offer into English history of every period. Parish Church Treasures incorporates and significantly expands this material to tell afresh the remarkable history of the parish church. It celebrates the special character of churches as places to visit whilst providing an authoritative and up-to-date history at a time when the use and upkeep of these buildings and the care of their contents is highly contentious.

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.

Ten years of visionary artwork from a rare artist embraced by critics, spiritual leaders, and the general public during his lifetime.
* Includes essays on Grey's work by the renowned art critic Donald Kuspit and by Stephen Larsen, author of "Fire in the Mind: The Authorized Biography of Joseph Campbell."
* The long-awaited follow-up to "Sacred Mirrors."
Every once in a great while an artist emerges who does more than simply reflect the social trends of the time. These artists are able to transcend established thinking and help us redefine ourselves and our world. Today, a growing number of art critics, philosophers, and spiritual seekers believe they have found that vision in the art of Alex Grey.
"Transfigurations" is the eagerly awaited follow-up to "Sacred Mirrors," one of the most successful art books of the 1990s. It includes all of Grey's major works completed in the past decade, including the masterful seven-paneled altarpiece "Nature of Mind," called "the grand climax of Grey's art" by Donald Kuspit. Grey's portrayals of human beings blend scientific exactitude with visionary depictions of universal life energy, leading us on the soul's journey from material world encasement to recovery of our divinely illuminated core.

Saved by good fortune from the flames that engulfed the first Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner's wooden sculpture of the Christ - 'the Representative of Humanity' - standing between the adversary forces of Lucifer and Ahriman, remains intact and on display, although unfinished, to this day. Unique in the history of art, the Sculptural Group was deeply connected to Rudolf Steiner's inner being. The great Christian initiate even died by its side, having made efforts to work on the sculpture just days before he crossed the threshold. The essential source from which this work was created, says Sergei Prokofieff, '...lay in Rudolf Steiner's ego, in his spirit...It was only out of this intuitive connection of his own ego with the Christ Being that he was able to create this work of art.' Beginning with the Sculptural Group's early history, and Steiner's collaboration on its creation with Edith Maryon, Prokofieff enters into deeply esoteric perspectives, studying the artwork's relationship with the mysteries of the Holy Grail, the etherization of the blood, the Seventh Apocalyptic Seal, the Legend of the New Isis, as well as the being Anthroposophia.