The History Book Club discussion
MEDIEVAL HISTORY
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MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE
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Liturgy and Architecture: From the Early Church to the Middle Ages
by Allan Doig (no photo)Synopsis:
In this book Allan Doig explores the interrelationship of liturgy and architecture from the Early Church to the close of the Middle Ages, taking into account social, economic, technical, theological and artistic factors. These are crucial to a proper understanding of ecclesiastical architecture of all periods, and together their study illuminates the study of liturgy. Buildings and their archaeology are standing indices of human activity, and the whole matrix of meaning they present is highly revealing of the larger meaning of ritual performance within, and movement through, their space. The excavation of the mid-third-century church at Dura Europos in the Syrian desert, the grandeur of Constantine's Imperial basilicas, the influence of the great pilgrimage sites, and the marvels of soaring Gothic cathedrals, all come alive in a new way when the space is animated by the liturgy for which they were built. Reviewing the most recent research in the area, and moving the debate forward, this study will be useful to liturgists, clergy, theologians, art and architectural historians, and those interested in the conservation of ecclesiastical structures built for the liturgy.
Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art
by
Michael CamilleSynopsis:
What do they all mean – the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? Michael Camille explores that riotous realm of marginal art, so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, where resistance to social constraints flourished.
Medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside of society, the excluded and the ejected. Peasants, servants, prostitutes and beggars all found their place, along with knights and clerics, engaged in impudent antics in the margins of prayer-books or, as gargoyles, on the outsides of churches. Camille brings us to an understanding of how marginality functioned in medieval culture and shows us just how scandalous, subversive, and amazing the art of the time could be.
The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire
by
Michael CamilleSynopsis:
Romantic love as we know it today was invented in the Middle Ages. Many ideas about love and the focus on the female as the object and the male as the subject of desire were developed by the poets and artists of the twelfth century onwards. Using a sumptuous array of well-known and less familiar images from the thirteenth century to the fifteenth, this book shows how images in paintings and on beautiful objects taught men and women about the art of love. The textiles, ivories, illuminations, chests, and jewels help reveal medieval life at its most profound moments. Given as gifts and love tokens, these objects were intimately connected with the bodies of their owners.
Mod
by Leo Steinberg (no photo)Synopsis:
Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation.
After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility.
Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition.
Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.
This revised and greatly expanded edition not only adduces new visual evidence, but deepens the theological argument and engages the controversy aroused by the book's first publication.
Mod
Bentley wrote: "I am sorry PE but this book is not on topic for the thread."I had posted it surmising there may have been some relevance to the topic what with the craftmanship discussed, the Edda and sagas quoted and commented by the author.
In any event, should it be relevant as a post here or elsewhere among the group discussions, this work is also available in English.
Mod
Can you think of a thread heading that might be more applicable and appropriate for the English version and I could consider to set it up - let me know.
Mod
by Leo Steinberg (no photo)Synopsis:
Originally published in 1983, Leo Steinberg's classic work has changed the viewing habits of a generation. After centuries of repression and censorship, the sexual component in thousands of revered icons of Christ is restored to visibility. Steinberg's evidence resides in the imagery of the overtly sexed Christ, in Infancy and again after death. Steinberg argues that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.
This revised and greatly expanded edition not only adduces new visual evidence, but deepens the theological argument and engages the controversy aroused by the book's first publication.
Mod
by
Michael CamilleSynopsis:
What do they all mean – the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? Michael Camille explores that riotous realm of marginal art, so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, where resistance to social constraints flourished.
Medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside of society, the excluded and the ejected. Peasants, servants, prostitutes and beggars all found their place, along with knights and clerics, engaged in impudent antics in the margins of prayer-books or, as gargoyles, on the outsides of churches. Camille brings us to an understanding of how marginality functioned in medieval culture and shows us just how scandalous, subversive, and amazing the art of the time could be
Mod
by Joseph Leo Koerner (no photo)Synopsis:
Examines the images used in Protestant church services during the period of their definition by Martin Luther. This title locates the conflict between verbal and visual communication in the emergence of a state-supported, state-supporting faith.
Mod
by Dorothy Verkerk (no photo)Synopsis:
The Ashburnham Pentateuch is an early medieval illuminated manuscript of the Old Testament whose pictures are among the oldest surviving and most extensive biblical illustrations. Dorothy Verkerk reveals how its colorful and complex illustrations of Genesis and Exodus explained important church teachings. She provides a key to understanding the relationship between the text and pictures. Arguing that the manuscript was created in Italy, Verkerk also solves a mystery that has baffled scholars over the last century.
Mod
by Alexander Nagel (no photo)Synopsis:
In this widely anticipated book, two leading contemporary art historians offer a subtle and profound reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance.
Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood examine the meanings, uses, and effects of chronologies, models of temporality, and notions of originality and repetition in Renaissance images and artifacts.
Anachronic Renaissance reveals a web of paths traveled by works and artists--a landscape obscured by art history's disciplinary compulsion to anchor its data securely in time.
The buildings, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and medals discussed were shaped by concerns about authenticity, about reference to prestigious origins and precedents, and about the implications of transposition from one medium to another. Byzantine icons taken to be Early Christian antiquities, the acheiropoieton (or -image made without hands-), the activities of spoliation and citation, differing approaches to art restoration, legends about movable buildings, and forgeries and pastiches: all of these emerge as basic conceptual structures of Renaissance art.
Although a work of art does bear witness to the moment of its fabrication, Nagel and Wood argue that it is equally important to understand its temporal instability: how it points away from that moment, backward to a remote ancestral origin, to a prior artifact or image, even to an origin outside of time, in divinity.
This book is not the story about the Renaissance, nor is it just a story. It imagines the infrastructure of many possible stories.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Anachronic Renaissance (other topics)Early Medieval Bible Illumination and the Ashburnham Pentateuch (other topics)
The Reformation of the Image (other topics)
Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (other topics)
The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Alexander Nagel (other topics)Dorothy Verkerk (other topics)
Joseph Leo Koerner (other topics)
Michael Camille (other topics)
Leo Steinberg (other topics)
More...
Synopsis:
In 1997 a conference on medieval art and architecture of the city of Glasgow and its environs, was held in the city itself. Many of the lectures, including some of the fourteen published here, were concerned with the archaeology and architecture of Glasgow Cathedral. The remaining papers focused on architectural sculpture and libraries and the wider artistic picture. Rather expensive for a paperback, but includes much specialist information.