During the European Middle Ages, diagrams provided a critical tool of analysis in cosmological and theological debates. In addition to drawing relationships among diverse areas of human knowledge and experience, diagrams themselves generated such knowledge in the first place. In Diagramming Devotion, Jeffrey F. Hamburger examines two monumental works that are diagrammatic to their core: aContinue reading “New Publication: Diagramming Devotion: Berthold of Nuremberg’s Transformation of Hrabanus Maurus’s Poems in Praise of the Cross, by Jeffrey F. Hamburger”
Category Archives: New Publications
New Publication: The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket, by Christopher de Hamel
From the bestselling author of Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, a captivating account of the last surviving relic of Thomas Becket.
Publication: Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience
Pushed to the height of its illusionistic powers during the first centuries of the Roman Empire, sculpture was largely abandoned with the ascendancy of Christianity, as the apparent animation of the material image and practices associated with sculpture were considered both superstitious and idolatrous. In Pygmalion’s Power, Thomas E. A. Dale argues that the reintroduction ofContinue reading “Publication: Pygmalion’s Power: Romanesque Sculpture, the Senses, and Religious Experience”
New Publication: Renaissance Meta-painting, Edited by Alexander Nagel and Péter Bokody
The volume offers an overview of metapictorial tendencies in book illumination, mural and panel painting during the Italian and Northern Renaissance. It examines visual forms of self-awareness in the changing context of Latin Christianity and claims the central role of the Renaissance in the establishment of the modern condition of art.
New Publication: Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity, edited by Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese
Drawing on Jewish history, literary studies, folklore, art history and the history of science, this book examines both the historical depiction of Jews as monsters and the creative use of monstrous beings in Jewish culture.
New Publication: The Ghent Altarpiece: Research and Conservation of the Exterior, Edited by Bart Fransen and Cyriel Stroo
The outer panels of the Ghent Altarpiece had been overpainted to a considerable extent. The virtuosity of the Eyckian technique and aesthetics remained hardly visible. And yet, this had never been observed before the start of the conservation treatment. By removing the overpaint, the tonal richness and the coherent rendering of light and space once again came to the fore.
New Publication: Lexique des stalles médiévales / Lexicon of Medieval Choir Stalls, by F. Billiet and E. C. Block
As well as an introduction that includes articles on the history and function of medieval choirstalls, the lexicon provides illustrated multilingual definitions of the elements used in the construction and decoration of the stalls. As with the illustrated bibles of the Middle Ages, this book includes the most beautiful of the works of art which decorate the medieval choir stalls in thirteen Catholic countries of Europe.
New Publication: Funerary Portraiture in Greater Roman Syria, edited by Michael Blömer and Rubina Raja
This volume provides a unique survey of locally produced funerary representations from across regions of ancient Syria, exploring material ranging from reliefs and statues in the round, to busts, mosaics, and paintings in order to offer a new and holistic approach to our understanding of ancient funerary portraiture.
New Publication: Les stratégies de la narration dans la peinture medieval: La représentation de l’Ancien Testament aux IVe-XIIe siècles, edited by Marcello Angheben
Depuis les débuts de l’art chrétien, l’Ancien Testament a reçu une place singulière dans le décor des églises comme dans l’illustration des manuscrits. Certaines formules conçues aux IVe-Ve siècles se sont imposées durant tout le Moyen Âge, comme celles de Saint-Pierre de Rome, et une influence encore plus large a longtemps été attribuée à la Genèse Cotton ou à son modèle.
New Publication: Seeking Transparency: Rock Crystals Across the Medieval Mediterranean, Edited by Cynthia Hahn and Avinoam Shalem
All the while, royal courts and wealthy churches were eager patrons for the luxurious objects given that rock crystal was valued as one of the most desirable and precious of all materials, ascribed mysterious origins and powers, and renowned for both rarity and clarity. This collection of essays reveals the global and cross-cultural histories of rock-crystal production in and even beyond the lands of the Mediterranean Sea.
Medieval Art Research 