The Christian canon of scripture, known as the New Testament, excluded many of the church's traditional stories about its origins. Although not in the Bible, these popular stories have had a powerful influence on the church's traditions and theology, and a particularly marked effect on visual representations of Christian belief. This book provides a lucid introduction to the relationship between the apocryphal texts and the paintings, mosaics, and sculpture in which they are frequently paralleled, and which have been so significant in transmitting these non-Biblical stories to generations of churchgoers.

'Quid est sacramentum?' Visual Representation of Sacred Mysteries in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700 investigates how sacred mysteries (in Latin, sacramenta or mysteria) were visualized in a wide range of media, including illustrated religious literature such as catechisms, prayerbooks, meditative treatises, and emblem books, produced in Italy, France, and the Low Countries between ca. 1500 and 1700. The contributors ask why the mysteries of faith and, in particular, sacramental mysteries were construed as amenable to processes of representation and figuration, and why the resultant images were thought capable of engaging mortal eyes, minds, and hearts. Mysteries by their very nature appeal to the spirit, rather than to sense or reason, since they operate beyond the limitations of the human faculties; and yet, the visual and literary arts served as vehicles for the dissemination of these mysteries and for prompting reflection upon them. Contributors: David Areford, AnnMarie Micikas Bridges, Mette Birkedal Bruun, James Clifton, Anna Dlabackova, Wim Francois, Robert Kendrick, Aiden Kumler, Noria Litaker, Walter S. Melion, Lars Cyril Norgaard, Elizabeth Pastan, Donna Sadler, Alexa Sand, Tanya Tiffany, Lee Palmer Wandel, Geert Warner, Bronwen Wilson, and Elliott Wise.

The Christian canon of scripture, known as the New Testament, excluded many of the church's traditional stories about its origins. Although not in the Bible, these popular stories have had a powerful influence on the church's traditions and theology, and a particularly marked effect on visual representations of Christian belief. This book provides a lucid introduction to the relationship between the apocryphal texts and the paintings, mosaics, and sculpture in which they are frequently paralleled, and which have been so significant in transmitting these non-Biblical stories to generations of churchgoers.

This is a richly-illustrated study of 'The Oracles of the Three Shrines', the name given to a hanging scroll depicting three important Japanese shrine-deities and their respective oracle texts. The scroll has evolved continuously in Japan for 600 years, so different examples of it offer a series of 'windows' on developments in Japanese religious belief and practice.

Gender, Piety, and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts is the first in-depth study of three textually and iconographically diverse Apocalypses illustrated in England in the first half of the fourteenth century by a single group of artists. It offers a close look at a group of illuminators previously on the fringe of art historical scholarship, challenging the commonly-held perception of them as mere craftsmen at a time when both audiences and methods of production were becoming increasingly varied. Analyzing the manuscripts' codicological features, visual and textual programmes, and social contexts, it explores the mechanisms of a fourteenth-century commercial workshop and traces the customization of these books of the same genre to the needs and expectations of varied readers, revealing the crucial influence of their female audience. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of English medieval art, medieval manuscripts, and the medieval Apocalypse, as well as medievalists interested in late medieval spirituality and theology, medieval religious and intellectual culture, book patronage and ownership, and female patronage and ownership.

Reviewers of a recent exhibition termed Federico Barocci (ca. 1533-1612), 'the greatest artist you've never heard of'. One of the first original iconographers of the Counter Reformation, Barocci was a remarkably inventive religious painter and draftsman, and the first Italian artist to incorporate extensive color into his drawings. The purpose of this volume is to offer new insights into Barocci's work and to accord this artist, the dates of whose career fall between the traditional Renaissance and Baroque periods, the critical attention he deserves. Employing a range of methodologies, the essays include new ideas on Barocci's masterpiece, the Entombment of Christ; fresh thinking about his use of color in his drawings and innovative design methods; insights into his approach to the nude; revelations on a key early patron; a consideration of the reasons behind some of his most original iconography; an analysis of his unusual approach to the marketing of his pictures; an exploration of some little-known aspects of his early production, such as his reliance on Italian majolica and contemporary sculpture in developing his compositions; and an examination of a key Barocci document, the post mortem inventory of his studio. A translated transcription of the inventory is included as an appendix.

This book contributes to the history of religions and Buddhist studies fields by focussing on what is a far too frequently ignored aspect of religious experience: visual images.

The full beauty and depth of 500 years of Sikh culture is explored in this lavishly illustrated collection of essays on the religion's art and literature. The collection is accompanied by more than 100 black-and-white photos and 24 color plates depicting the finest Sikh art, some of it reproduced for the first time.
Sikh culture emerged with the dawn of the modern age in a land that was a thoroughfare of invading armies, ideas, religions, and arts from the East and West. The poetry of scriptures, the illustrated life stores of Guru Nanak, the paintings from various early artistic schools and regions, the dazzling treasures of the Sikh Kingdoms, the romantic artworks of visiting European dignitaries, and the serenity of Sikh sacred architecture all provide doorways to this heroic and revolutionary faith. Journal excerpts, new translations of early twentieth-century poetry, popular poster art, and a depiction of the 1984 storming of the Golden Temple, add depth and originality to this fully accessible volume. Often overlooked, the importance of art, poetry and literature is crucial to our understanding of Sikh religions. Together this collection of remarkable essays and exquisite art illustrates the impact and value of Sikh culture-with its blend of tolerance, egalitarianism and rational mysticism-in the Modern Age.

The Neolithic period, when agriculture began and many monuments - including Stonehenge - were constructed, is an era fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities. Students of prehistory have long found the highly theoretical interpretations of the period perplexing and contradictory. Starting in the Mesolithic and carrying his analysis through to the late Bronze Age, Richard Bradley sheds light on this complex period and the changing consciousness of these prehistoric peoples. The book studies the importance of monuments tracing their history from their first creation to over 6000 years later. Part one discusses how monuments first developed and their role in developing a new sense of time and space among the inhabitants of prehistoric Europe. Other features of the prehistoric landscape - such as mounds and enclosures - across continental Europe are also examined. Part two studies how such monuments were modified and reinterpreted to suit the changing needs of society through a series of detailed case studies.

Based on a fresh reading of primary sources, Lindy Grant's comprehensive biography of Abbot Suger (1081-1151) provides a reassessment of a key figure of the twelfth century. Active in secular and religious affairs alike - Suger was Regent of France and also abbot of one of the most important abbeys in Europe during the time of the Gregorian reforms. But he is primarily remembered as a great artistic patron whose commissions included buildings in the new Gothic style. Lindy Grant reviews him in all these roles - and offers a corrective to the current tendency to exaggerate his role as architect of both French royal power and the new gothic form.

The Neolithic period, when agriculture began and many monuments - including Stonehenge - were constructed, is an era fraught with paradoxes and ambiguities. Students of prehistory have long found the highly theoretical interpretations of the period perplexing and contradictory. Starting in the Mesolithic and carrying his analysis through to the late Bronze Age, Richard Bradley sheds light on this complex period and the changing consciousness of these prehistoric peoples. The book studies the importance of monuments tracing their history from their first creation to over 60000 years later. Part one discusses how monuments first developed and their role in developing a new sense of time and space among the inhabitants of prehistoric Europe. Other features of the prehistoric landscape - such as mounds and enclosures - across continental Europe are also examined. Part two studies how such monuments were modified and reinterpreted to suit the changing needs of society through a series of detailed case studies.

One of the world s most respected writers on art investigates the very different ways painting has given form to the afterlife.

The idea of heaven on earth haunts the human imagination. The day will come, saybelievers, when the pain and confusion of mortal life will give way to a transfiguredcommunity. Such a vision of the world seems indelible. Even politics, some reckon, hasnot escaped from the realm of the sacred: its dreams of the future still borrow theirimagery from the prophets. In Heaven on Earth, T.J. Clark sets out to investigate thevery different ways painting has given form to the dream of God s kingdom come. Hegoes back to the late Middle Ages and Renaissance to Giotto in Padua, Bruegel facingthe horrors of religious war, Poussin painting the Sacraments, Veronese unfolding thehuman comedy. Was it to painting s advantage, is Clark s question, that in an age ofenforced orthodoxy (threats of hellfire, burnings at the stake) artists could reflect onthe powers and limitations of religion without putting their thoughts into words?

At the heart of the book stands Bruegel s ironic but tender picture of The Landof Cockaigne, and also Veronese s inscrutable Allegory of Love. The story ends withPicasso s Fall of Icarus, made for UNESCO in 1958, which already seems to signal perhaps to prescribe an age when all futures are dead.

Last year (1925) the Olaus Petri Endowment greatly honoured the author by inviting him to deliver a few lectures on Origen at the University of Upsala. It was agreed that they should be published and we now offer them to the public exactly as they were delievered. There could be no question of expounding the entire thought of Origen in eight conferences. We have been compelled to pass over more than one important doctrine - for instance, his ideas on the Gnosis. Still less was it possible to set forth in these lectures the enormous mass of documents upon which our exposition of the theology of Origen is based.

More than 350 beautiful color photographs and a descriptive text depict 18th to mid-20th century Mexican devotional art including danced masks, devils and angels, santos, milagritos, retablos, and ex-votos. These religious items were used in ceremonies both at home and church, and include wood carvings, as well as clay, stone, metal, and paper items. Seven essays include a major new work by historian and scholar Gloria Fraser Giffords, who, along with Tom Pirazzini, edited the essays. Other essays are by Philip Wrench, Roberto G. Cruz Floriano, Janet Brady Esser, Martha J. Egan, and Joanna Stuhr cover ing the history, symbolism, and uses of Mexican devotional art, as well as the methods of manufacture. For historians, folk art connoiseurs, and those who have an interest in Mexican culture, this is an essential and welcome new volume.

The studies in which history of art and theatre are considered together are few, and none to date investigate the evolution of the representation of clouds from the early Renaissance to the Baroque period. This book reconsiders the origin of Italian Renaissance and Baroque cloud compositions while including the theatrical tradition as one of their most important sources. By examining visual sources such as paintings, frescos and stage designs, together with letters, guild-ledgers, descriptions of performances and relevant treatises, a new methodology to approach the development of this early modern visuality is offered. The result is an historical reconstruction where multiple factors are seen as facets of a single process which led to the development of Italy's visual culture. The book also offers new insights into Leonardo da Vinci's theatrical works, Raphael's Disputa, Vasari's Lives, and Pietro da Cortona's fresco paintings. The Spectacle of Clouds, 1439-1650 examines the different ways Heaven has been conceived, imagined and represented from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, crossing over into the fields of history, religion and philosophy.

Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni takes up the question of the issues involved in the formation of recent saints - or Beati moderni (modern Blesseds) as they were called - by the Jesuits and Oratorians in the new environment of increased strictures and censorship that developed after the Council of Trent with respect to legal canonization procedures and cultic devotion to the saints. Ruth Noyes focuses particularly on how the new regulations pertained to the creation of emerging cults of those not yet canonized, the so-called Beati moderni, such as Jesuit founders Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola, and Filippo Neri, founder of the Oratorians. Centrally involved in the book is the question of the fate and meaning of the two altarpiece paintings commissioned by the Oratorians from Peter Paul Rubens. The Congregation rejected his first altarpiece because it too specifically identified Filippo Neri as a cult figure to be venerated (before his actual canonization) and thus was caught up in the politics of cult formation and the papacy's desire to control such pre-canonization cults. The book demonstrates that Rubens' second altarpiece, although less overtly depicting Neri as a saint, was if anything more radical in the claims it made for him. Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni offers the first comparative study of Jesuit and Oratorian images of their respective would-be saints, and the controversy they ignited across Church hierarchies. It is also the first work to examine provocative Philippine imagery and demonstrate how its bold promotion specifically triggered the first wave of curial censure in 1602.

The face of John Wesley (1703-91), the Methodist leader, became one of the most familiar images in the English-speaking and transatlantic worlds through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After the dozen or so painted portraits made during his lifetime came numbers of posthumous portraits and moralising 'scene paintings', and hundreds of variations of prints. It was calculated that six million copies were produced of one print alone - an 1827 portrait by John Jackson R.A. as frontispiece for a hymn book. Illustrated by nearly one hundred images, many in colour, with a comprehensive appendix listing known Wesley images, this book offers a much-needed comprehensive and critical survey of one of the most influential religious and public figures of eighteenth-century Britain. Besides chapters on portraits from the life and after, scene paintings and prints, it explores aspects of Wesley's (and Methodism's) attitudes to art, and the personality cult which gathered around Wesley as Methodism expanded globally. It will be of interest to art historians as a treatment of an individual sitter and subject, as well as to scholars engaged in Wesley and Methodist studies. It is also significant for the field of material studies, given the spread and use of the image, on artefacts as well as on paper.

This title was first published in 2001: Paolo Veronese: Piety and Display in an Age of Religious Reform examines the large body of religious paintings with which Veronese (1528 -1588) played a crucial role in shaping Venetian piety. With 117 illustrations (26 in colour) Richard Cocke sets Veronese's work into context, arguing his mastery of narrative has long been neglected, largely as a result of Sir Joshua Reynolds's criticism in his Discourses. The new expressiveness of Veronese's work in his final decade is linked with the decrees of the Council of Trent, which resulted in an enhanced display of paintings in Venetian palaces during the 1570s, matched by the renewed decorative schemes in the city's churches.

At sixty-two meters the Leshan Buddha in southwest China is the world's tallest premodern statue. Carved out of a riverside cliff in the eighth century, it has evolved from a religious center to a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular tourist destination. But this Buddha does not stand alone: Sichuan is home to many cave temples with such monumental sculptures, part of a centuries-long tradition of art-making intricately tied to how local inhabitants made use of their natural resources with purpose and creativity. These examples of art embedded in nature have altered landscapes and have influenced the behaviors, values, and worldviews of users through multiple cycles of revival, restoration, and recreation. As hybrid spaces that are at once natural and artificial, they embody the interaction of art and the environment over a long period of time. This far-ranging study of cave temples in Sichuan shows that they are part of the world's sustainable future, as their continued presence is a reminder of the urgency to preserve culture as part of today's response to climate change. Temples in the Cliffside brings art history into close dialogue with current discourse on environmental issues and contributes to a new understanding of the ecological impact of artistic monuments.

A social history of reception, this study focuses on sacred art and Catholicism in Rome during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The five altarpieces examined here were painted by artists who are admired today - Caravaggio, Guercino, and Guido Reni - and by the less renowned but once influential Tommaso Laureti and Andrea Commodi. By shifting attention from artistic intentionality to reception, Pamela Jones reintegrates these altarpieces into the urban fabric of early modern Rome, allowing us to see the five paintings anew through the eyes of their original audiences, both women and men, rich and poor, pious and impious. Because Italian churchmen relied, after the Council of Trent, on public altarpieces more than any other type of contemporary painting in their attempts to reform and inspire Catholic society, it is on altarpieces that Pamela Jones centers her inquiry. Through detailed study of evidence in many genres - including not only painting, prints, and art criticism, but also cheap pamphlets, drama, sermons, devotional tracts, rules of religious orders, pilgrimages, rituals, diaries, and letters - Jones shows how various beholders made meaning of the altarpieces in their aesthetic, devotional, social, and charitable dimensions. This study presents early modern Catholicism and its art in an entirely new light by addressing the responses of members of all social classes - not just elites - to art created for the public. It also provides a more accurate view of the range of religious ideas that circulated in early modern Rome by bringing to bear both officially sanctioned religious art and literature and unauthorized but widely disseminated cheap pamphlets and prints that were published without the mandatory religious permission. On this basis, Jones helps to illuminate further the insurmountable problems churchmen faced when attempting to channel the power of sacred art to elicit orthodox responses.

Fully illustrated in colour and black and white, Images of the Mother of God complements the successful exhibition catalogue of the 'Mother of God' exhibition at the Benaki Museum in Athens. It brings together the work of leading international authorities and younger scholars to provide a wide-ranging survey of how the Theotokos was perceived in the Byzantine world. It embraces the disciplines of art historians, archaeologists, traditional and feminist historians, as well as theologians, philologists and social anthropologists. Images of the Mother of God will appeal not just to those interested in Byzantine art and culture, but also to scholars of Western Europe in the Middle Ages who are looking for comparative materials in their own work.

The Sister Chapel (1974-78) was an important collaborative installation that materialized at the height of the women's art movement. Conceived as a nonhierarchical, secular commemoration of female role models, The Sister Chapel consisted of an eighteen-foot abstract ceiling that hung above a circular arrangement of eleven monumental canvases, each depicting the standing figure of a heroic woman. The choice of subject was left entirely to the creator of each work. As a result, the paintings formed a visually cohesive group without compromising the individuality of the artists. Contemporary and historical women, deities, and conceptual figures were portrayed by distinguished New York painters-Alice Neel, May Stevens, and Sylvia Sleigh-as well as their accomplished but less prominent colleagues. Among the role models depicted were Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Betty Friedan, Joan of Arc, and a female incarnation of God. Although last exhibited in 1980, The Sister Chapel has lingered in the minds of art historians who continue to note its significance as an exemplar of feminist collaboration. Based on previously-unpublished archival materials and featuring dozens of rarely-seen works of art, this comprehensive study details the fascinating history of The Sister Chapel, its constituent paintings, and its ambitious creators.