In honor of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante, geologist Ann C. Pizzorusso has published a new book, available in English and Italian on the gems Dante used as metaphors in the Divine Comedy. From a gemological point of view, the Divine Comedy is a veritable treasure trove: containing rubies, topazes, emeralds, sapphires,Continue reading “New Publication: The Gems of Dante’s Divine Comedy by Ann C. Pizzorusso”
Category Archives: New Publications
New Publication: Ficino and Fantasy – Imagination in Renaissance Art and Theory from Botticelli to Michelangelo by Marieke J.E. van den Doel
Did the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) influence the art of his time? Art historians have been fiercely debating this question for decades. This book starts with Ficino’s views on the imagination as a faculty of the soul, and shows how these ideas were part of a long philosophical tradition and inspired fresh insights. ThisContinue reading “New Publication: Ficino and Fantasy – Imagination in Renaissance Art and Theory from Botticelli to Michelangelo by Marieke J.E. van den Doel”
New Publication: The Subject of Crusade: Lyric, Romance and Materials,1150 to 1500, by Marisa Galvez
In the Middle Ages, religious crusaders took up arms, prayed, bade farewell to their families, and marched off to fight in holy wars. These Christian soldiers also created accounts of their lives in lyric poetry, putting words to the experience of personal sacrifice and the pious struggle associated with holy war. The crusaders affirmed theirContinue reading “New Publication: The Subject of Crusade: Lyric, Romance and Materials,1150 to 1500, by Marisa Galvez”
New Publication: Machines of the Mind: Personification in Medieval Literature, by Katharine Breen
In Machines of the Mind, Katharine Breen proposes that medieval personifications should be understood neither as failed novelistic characters nor as instruments of heavy-handed didacticism. She argues that personifications are instead powerful tools for thought that help us to remember andmanipulate complex ideas, testing them against existing moral and political paradigms. Specifically, different types of medievalContinue reading “New Publication: Machines of the Mind: Personification in Medieval Literature, by Katharine Breen”
New Publication: Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds – Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd , edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop
Dedicated to Erica Cruikshank Dodd, Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds offers new perspectives on the Christian and Muslim communities of the east Mediterranean from medieval to contemporary times. The contributors examine how people from diverse religious backgrounds adapted to their changing political landscapes and show that artistic patronage, consumption, and practices areContinue reading “New Publication: Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds – Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd , edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop”
New Publication: Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, edited by Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt
This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary examination of trans and genderqueer subjects in medieval hagiography. Scholarship has productively combined analysis of medieval literary texts with modern queer theory yet, too often, questions of gender are explored almost exclusively through a prism of sexuality, rather than gender identity. This volume moves beyond such limitations, foregrounding theContinue reading “New Publication: Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, edited by Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt”
New Publication: Byzantine Religious Law in Medieval Italy by James Morton
This new work from Oxford University Press is the first ever historical study of manuscripts of Byzantine religious law from medieval Italy. It offers a legal and institutional framework for reassessing relations between medieval Greek and Latin Christians. It includes identifications and descriptions of Italo-Greek canon law manuscripts, which will serve as the basis forContinue reading “New Publication: Byzantine Religious Law in Medieval Italy by James Morton”
New Publication: Right and Left in Early Christian and Medieval Art by Robert Couzin
Robert Couzin’s Right and Left in Early Christian and Medieval Art is the first in-depth study of handedness, position, and direction in the visual culture of Europe and Byzantium from the fourth to the fourteenth century. Heretofore largely unnoticed or ignored, the pre-eminence of the right and lapses or intentional departures from that norm in medieval imageryContinue reading “New Publication: Right and Left in Early Christian and Medieval Art by Robert Couzin”
New Publication: Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe, by Verena Krebs
This book explores why Ethiopian kings pursued long-distance diplomatic contacts with Latin Europe in the late Middle Ages. It traces the history of more than a dozen embassies dispatched to the Latin West by the kings of Solomonic Ethiopia, a powerful Christian kingdom in the medieval Horn of Africa. Drawing on sources from Europe, Ethiopia,Continue reading “New Publication: Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe, by Verena Krebs”
New Publication: New Horizons in Trecento Italian Art, edited by Bryan C. Keene and Karl Whittington
The fourteenth century in Italy, the age of Giotto, Dante, and Boccaccio, widely known as the trecento, was a pivotal moment in art history and in European culture. The studies in this volume present new approaches to art in this important but often neglected period of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Scholars atContinue reading “New Publication: New Horizons in Trecento Italian Art, edited by Bryan C. Keene and Karl Whittington”
Medieval Art Research 