Description
Book SynopsisExamines the social roles, cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in jeweled crowns, illustrated lapidaries, and illustrated travel accounts in the European Middle Ages.
Trade Review“Brigitte Buettner’s groundbreaking study marshals gem-encrusted jewels, lapidary knowledge, and medieval travelers’ accounts to forge a multifaceted understanding of the power of precious stones in medieval art and culture. Richly illustrated with uncommon images, The Mineral and the Visual is exciting and compelling, illuminating the intersection of geologic and artistic worlds, and the social meanings of precious stones, acquired from near and far, in the European Middle Ages.”
—Mariah Proctor-Tiffany caa.reviews
“The way the author combines stones with ideas . . . and the economics behind them over a longer period of time is innovative, and based on a richness in sources that is as dazzling as the medieval artworks discussed themselves.”
—Sigrid van Roode Bedouin Silver
“The author’s profound expertise and fresh methodological approach offer an important stimulus to further discussions and will doubtlessly inspire future research on the material world of the Middle Ages.”
—Melanie N. Reiter Sehepunkte
“The Mineral and the Visual meticulously reinstates the marvelousness of medieval gemstones, rendering them potent, pulsing, and alive, and authoritatively sets the terms for future scholarship.”
—Joseph Salvatore Ackley Speculum
“Buettner opens up perspectives for future research that go far beyond a secular interpretative horizon of pure materiality and natural knowledge—an excellent complement to Gemma spiritalis.”
—Gia Toussaint 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual
“Reading The Mineral and the Visual made me feel like a student again, filled with curiosity and excitement. This book is rich, interesting, complex, refreshing.”
—Elina Gertsman,author of The Absent Image: Lacunae in Medieval Books
“The Mineral and the Visual offers readers a rich and compelling journey through the world of medieval minerals. Of interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike, it advances theoretical and methodological discussions of materials and materiality and expands our ideas about stones, gems, and the natural world. Weaving together a vast array of sources, both textual and visual, Buettner’s study presents a new understanding of the field of discourse in which these fascinating objects operated.”
—Heidi Gearhart,author of Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art
“Buettner weaves together scintillating description, meticulous scholarship, and current theory to create an unrivaled picture of her subject. She makes the case that gems are the apex of materials: substances that are active, global, exotic (and paradisaical), kingly, and in all ways powerful.”
—Cynthia Hahn,author of Strange Beauty: Issues in the Making and Meaning of Reliquaries, 400-circa 1204
