Search results for ""Pindar Press""

Per Jonas Nordhagen's work on the frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome is of fundamental importance to the study of early medieval art in Italy. This volume brings together for the first time Professor Nordhagen's work on medieval Roman mosaics and fresco painting. The book begins with a section on Mosaics and Techniques, covering the mosaic techniques in use during this period in Rome. The subsequent section, on S. Maria Antiqua, includes the author's papers on the fresco decoration of this church, one of the most important monuments of early medieval art in Italy. There follows a selection of papers on iconography, derived from a study of the subjects treated in the mosaic and fresco cycles of this period. Four subsequent articles deal with various themes involved in studying the art of the early medieval period in Rome, and its links with the art of the British Isles. The author has added supplementary notes to correct mistakes in the earlier articles, and to draw attention to subsequent research on the monuments.

Read more less

This volume bring together John Beckwith's papers on medieval and Byzantine art. They focus on those subjects which the author made his own, Coptic and Byzantine "textiles, Western European and Constantinopolitan ivory carving, and Byzantine metalwork. A final section includes a number of studies on cultural diffusion, from Islam and Byzantium to Western Europe, in the early Middle Ages.

Read more less

In this third volume the regions covered are to the south and east of the Taurus range, beginning with the Upper and Lower Euphrates, which includes the Byzantine and Turkish buildings of Harput, Malatya and the Keban region, where there are also a number of churches and monastic sites. The following section, on the Tigris region, runs from the Taurus to the Tur 'Abdin, a historic centre of Syrian monasticism. In Diyarbakr and Mardin there are many important Christian and Islamic monuments. This was the centre of the medieval Artukid kingdom.

Read more less

The work of G. D. Hobson on the history of bookbinding, in particular English medieval and Renaissance bindings, is well known. His studies on Romanesque English bookbinding marked a pioneer effort to trace the development of the art of binding in early medieval England, and remain the fundamental introduction to the subject. Similarly, his celebrated study of blind-stamped panels in the English Renaissance book-trade has become a classic. The author's interests also extended to French bindings, and his work on Parisian bookbinding in the first quarter of the sixteenth century is of great importance; it is reprinted here with a number of his other studies on Grolier bindings. The collection of these articles in one volume, with an introduction by A.R.A. Hobson, represents not only a valuable introduction to the work of one of the major authorities on English bookbinding, but also a compendium of some of the most outstanding contributions to the subject.

Read more less

The development of landscape painting in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has attracted considerable attention. The art of Gainsborough, Stubbs, Constable, Turner and the Norwich School is accepted as part of the British heritage, and the countryside as depicted by these artists is familiar not only to the specialist, but to most of us today. Nevertheless, this was an artificial landscape, one that had been created by the improving farmers of the period. The changes in the British landscape as a result of the new farming methods introduced by the agricultural revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the theme of Dr. Fussell's study. The author examines the introduction of the new methods of farming in the seventeenth century, the growing adoption of the new systems that led to the numerous Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth century, the consequent transformation of the countryside, and the growth of demand for landscape painting among the nobility and richer landowners.

Read more less

This second volume of Dr. Rhodes' Studies covers the wider field of early printing in Western Europe outside of Italy. The spread of printing in England receives considerable attention, especially in the case of the London and Oxford presses. There are separate sections on printing in France, Germany, Spain and the Low Countries over this period. Of particular importance is the final series of articles on early collectors of printed books in Western Europe, which deals equally with the collectors and their libraries, including, in this case, the Italian collections.

Read more less

Dr. Fussell’s theme is the evolution of the study of farming history, which as a branch of historiography is no more than two centuries old. He charts the development of interest in the history of rural life in England and Western Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, which has led to the acceptance of the subject as an important branch of historical research. This important work attempts to place the writers of agricultural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries within their social context. It forms an integral continuation of Dr. Fussell's previous bibliographical studies, and provides an indispensable work of reference for students of the subject.

Read more less

Since its first appearance over seventy years ago, this work has been recognised as one of the most important contributions to the study of the Byzantine churches of Istanbul, and a strikingly successful synthesis of scholarly research and scrupulous attention to architectural detail, with attention paid equally to the evidence of the historical sources and to the fabric of the actual buildings. The 123 original photographs which accompany the text are of considerable historical value, and the album of 58 architectural drawings by Adolphe Thiers contains detailed ground-plans and projections for each church. This album has been incorporated into the present volume in the form of folding folio plates, which preserve the scale and detail of the original. There is a new introduction by Professor Gilbert Dagron.

Read more less

Professor Fernie's research has done much to clarify the development of architecture in England and France from the Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian periods, through the Romanesque to the development of Gothic. Of particular interest has been his studies of architectural proportions and systems of length during this period. This volume make available thirty studies published over the last twenty years on buildings as varied as the pre-Conquest Abbey at Westminster and the church of St Magnus at Egilsay. There are two studies on sculpture, and a number of studies on the St. Gall plan and architectural proportions in English churches. The author has contributed additional notes and an index.

Read more less

These two volumes collect and update Professor Stones’s papers on Arthurian manuscript illustration, one of her continuing passions. These essays explore aspects of the iconography of the romances of Chrétien de Troyes in French verse, the lengthy Lancelot-Grail romance in French prose, and other versions of the chivalrous exploits of King Arthur’s knights — the best-sellers of the Middle Ages. Illustrated copies of these romances survive in huge numbers from the early thirteenth century through the beginnings of print, and were read for their text and their pictures throughout the French-speaking world. Of special interest is the cultural context in which these popular works were made and disseminated, by scribes and artists whose work encompassed all kinds of books, for patrons whose collecting was wide-ranging, including secular books alongside works of liturgical and devotional interest.

Read more less

Trained in Italy, Greece, and the United States, the author has taught for over 35 years at Bryn Mawr College, and at other universities in the U.S. and abroad, receiving the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America for Distinguished Achievement. A pupil of Rhys Carpenter, she has devoted all her writing to Greek sculpture. The articles in this volume were selected from over 95 studies she has published. In addition, her books have surveyed the entire span of Greek sculpture from the Archaic to the Late Hellenistic period. The articles are here presented in the chronological order in which they first appeared, to document Profesor Ridgway's evolving views on the history of Greek sculpture. Preference has been given to those that were published in foreign journals and honorary volumes; two have been translated from the original Italian and one from French. Notes at the end of the book update all the studies.

Read more less

Barbara von Barghahn is Professor of Art History at George Washington University and a specialist in the art history of Portugal, Spain, and their colonial dominions, as well as Flanders (1400-1800). In 1993, she was conferred O Grão Comendador in the Portuguese Order of Prince Henry the Navigator. She has spent nearly a decade completing research about Jan van Eyck's diplomatic visits to the Iberian Peninsula. This manuscript investigates Van Eyck's patronage by the Crown of Portugal and his role as diplomat-painter of the Duchy of Burgundy following his first voyage to Lisbon in 1428-1429 when he painted two portraits of Infanta Isabella, who became the third wife of Philip the Good in 1430. New portrait identifications are provided in the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) and its iconographical prototype, the lost Fountain of Life. These altarpieces are analyzed with regard to King João I's conquest of Ceuta, achieved by his sons who were hailed as an"illustrious generation." Strong family ties between the dynastic houses of Avis and Lancaster explain Lusitania 's sustained fascination with Arthurian lore and the Grail quest. Several chapters of this book are overlaid with a chivalric veneer. A second "secret mission" to Portugal in 1437 by Jan van Eyck is postulated and this diplomatic visit is related to Prince Henrique the Navigator's expedition to Tangier and King Duarte's attempts to forge an alliance with Alfonso V of Aragon. Late Eyckian commissions are reviewed in light of this ill-fated crusade and additional new portraits are identified. The most significant artist of Renaissance Flanders appears to have been patronized as much by the House of Avis as by the Duchy of Burgundy.

Read more less

The Russian artist Kazimir Malevich was one of the great figures of twentieth-century art, and a pioneer of abstraction, whose painting The Black Square of 1915 has become an icon of modernism. Yet he is a creative figure about whom much still remains to be elucidated. Soviet scholarship ignored him for decades, and Western scholars were inevitably only able to work with the limited visual and documentary material that was available to them. It was only after the fall of Communism in 1991 that access to such material became easier. This book represents the fruits of the research that has been conducted since then by a range of Russian and Western scholars who have been able to shed vital new light on the artist's life, his training, his art, his career, his relationships with other artists and movements, and his theories.

Read more less

Islamic artists channeled their energies not into easel painting and large-scale sculpture, but rather into what Western scholars, obeying a very different hierarchy of art forms, rather disparagingly termed the "decorative arts" or even "the minor arts". In point of fact, some of the greatest masterpieces of Islamic art are in the media of ceramics, metalwork, textiles, ivory and glass. Often the images they bear express a complex set of meanings, for Islam inherited much material from the iconographic systems of earlier civilizations, notably those of the ancient Near East and of the classical world. Islam also developed its own distinctive vocabulary of signs and symbols. Accordingly, questions of iconography and meaning bulk large among the studies gathered together in the present volume. These studies, written over a period of almost thirty years, and taken from a wide variety of published sources, deal with aspects of the decorative arts from Spain to India and from the 7th to the 17th century. They focus in turn upon ceramics and metalwork; on coins, carpets and calligraphy; and on carving in wood and ivory. They are arranged under three headings. The first comprises general surveys of the field covering the content of these arts and confronting the challenges they present, such as the Islamic approach to three-dimensional sculpture. The second deals with questions of iconography and meaning, while the third comprises a series of studies devoted to specific media such as ivory, woodwork and numismatics. This volume therefore offers not only a general introduction to some of the problems posed by Islamic art, but also readings of key objects in an attempt to explore their meaning; and finally, an in-depth focus on individual objects representing specific genres and media.

Read more less

As early as the 1950s, Professor Irving Lavin was recognized as a major voice in American art history. His sustained production of seminal scholarly contributions have left their mark on an astonishingly wide range of -subjects and fields. Bringing these far-reaching publications together will not only provide a valuable resource to scholars and -students, but will also underscore fundamental themes in the history of art - historicism, the art of commemoration, the relationship between style and meaning, the -intelligence of artists - themes that define the role of the visual arts in human communication. Irving Lavin is best known for his array of fundamental publications on the Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). These include new discoveries and studies on the master's prodigious childhood, his architecture and -portraiture, his invention of caricature, his depictions of religious faith and political leadership, his work in the -theatre, his attitude toward death and the role of the artist in the creation of a modern sense of social responsibility. All of Professor Lavin's papers on Bernini are here brought together in three volumes. The studies have been reset and in many cases up-dated, and there is a comprehensive index.

Read more less

Bernini at Saint Peter's may be a unique case in history: a single artist in change of a grandiose monument in a continuous state of creativity under constantly changing patrons and a variety of projects, for nearly six decades. This book argues that a continuous thread of thought may be discerned underlying and connecting the vicissitudes of this spectacular display. From first to last, Gianlorenzo Bernini conceived of Saint Peter's as a pilgrimage church, a kind of pilgrimage of human life, his own and of the believers who visited the basilica to worship and give testimony. Irving Lavin is professor emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is one of the most distinguished and honoured art historians in the United States. Professor Lavin is best known for his series of fundamental publications on the Baroque artist Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). These include new discoveries and studies on the master's prodigious early life, his architecture and portraiture, his invention of caricature, his depictions of religious faith and political leadership, his work in the theatre, his attitude towards death and the role of the artist in the creation of a modem sense of social responsibility.

Read more less

Alison Stones has taught History of Art and Architecture in the USA since 1969 and has enjoyed Visiting Fellowships at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Paris. She is a specialist in illuminated manuscripts, co-authoring Les Manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes (1993), The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago de Compostela, A Critical Edition (1998), and writing Le Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BNF n.a.fr. 16251) (1997), and Gautier de Coinci, Miracles, Music and Manuscripts (2006). Her four-volume study, Manuscripts Illuminated in France, Gothic Manuscripts 1260-1320 was published in 2013 and 2014. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Fulbright Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a Correspondant étranger honoraire of the Société nationale des Antiquaires de France and a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. These two volumes collect and update Professor Stones's papers on Arthurian manuscript illustration, one of her continuing passions. These essays explore aspects of the iconography of the romances of Chrétien de Troyes in French verse, the lengthy Lancelot-Grail romance in French prose, and other versions of the chivalrous exploits of King Arthur's knights - the best-sellers of the Middle Ages. Illustrated copies of these romances survive in huge numbers from the early thirteenth century through the beginnings of print, and were read for their text and their pictures throughout the French-speaking world. Of special interest is the cultural context in which these popular works were made and disseminated, by scribes and artists whose work encompassed all kinds of books, for patrons whose collecting was wide-ranging, including secular books alongside works of liturgical and devotional interest.

Read more less

Since turning to the field of Jewish art over twenty years ago, Vivian Mann has concentrated on investigating Jewish ceremonial art within the dual contexts of Jewish law, and the history of decorative arts in general, including the ceremonial art made for the Church and the Mosque. The introduction to this volume considers classic rabbinic attitudes toward art and its relationship to spirituality. The remaining essays are divided into three groups: the first concerns medieval ceremonial art; the second, articles on the Jewish art of Muslim lands beginning with the early Middle Ages; and the third consists of essays on Judaica during the periods of the Renaissance and rococo.

Read more less

Dr Jean Michel Massing is a Reader in the History of Art and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. The first volume of Studies in Imagery, Text and Images, consists of 25 "studies grouped under four sections: Classical Art and its Nachleben; Symbolic Languages; Saints and Devils; Comets, Dreams and Stars. The topics include the Celto-Roman "goddess Epona, the Calumny of Apelles and its reconstructions, the Triumph of Caesar, proverb illustration, the art of memory, emblematic and didactic imagery, the temptations of St Anthony, as well as dreams and celestial phenomena. They span a wide range of periods, from classical antiquity to the nineteenth century. Vol. 2, The World Discovered, deals variously with the relationship of European with non-European cultures, cartography in medieval and early modern times, the representation of foreign lands and people, and the collecting of exotic artefacts. A central theme involves the imagery of black Africans from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century.

Read more less

Dr Jean Michel Massing is a Reader in the History of Art and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. The first volume of Studies in Imagery, Text and Images, consists of 25 "studies grouped under four sections: Classical Art and its Nachleben; Symbolic Languages; Saints and Devils; Comets, Dreams and Stars. The topics include the Celto-Roman "goddess Epona, the Calumny of Apelles and its reconstructions, the Triumph of Caesar, proverb illustration, the art of memory, emblematic and didactic imagery, the temptations of St Anthony, as well as dreams and celestial phenomena. They span a wide range of periods, from classical antiquity to the nineteenth century. Vol. 2, The World Discovered, deals variously with the relationship of European with non-European cultures, cartography in medieval and early modern times, the representation of foreign lands and people, and the collecting of exotic artefacts. A central theme involves the imagery of black Africans from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century.

Read more less

The late Donald King (d. 1998) was the founding father of textile studies in England. His knowledge of the technology and history of textiles of all periods across many lands remains unsurpassed. An erudite and yet modest scholar, he did much to promote the academic understanding of textiles, both in this country and abroad. His role as Keeper of Textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, allowed first-hand technical analysis of a large number of medieval and later textiles over a very wide range of techniques. This laid the foundations for his abiding interest in textile techniques, which was allied to his fascination with textile terminology as it appeared in documentary sources. Much of his museum scholarship found its way into publications such as the Victoria and Albert Museum Bulletin and Hali magazine. From 1977 onwards, as President of C.I.E.T.A. (the International organisation for the study of early textiles), he led a powerful lobby of textile specialists, including all the major museum keepers of textiles across the globe. His scholarship during this period was well represented through detailed and erudite articles of technical, art historical and contextual significance, published in the C.I.E.T.A. Bulletin. His twin role as scholar and textile keeper represented the meeting of the academic and the museum worlds across textile studies. This publication gathers together for the first time a representative selection of Donald King's scholarship, in seventeen studies written and published over the period 1960-1999. Seven of the papers are grouped to illustrate the wide range of techniques across which he was able to publish (woven IX; embroidered X, XI; tapestry XII; printed XIIIand pile/carpet techniques XIV, XV). Three further papers (II, III, VIII) illustrate his tremendous facility for close technical analysis of his materials, whilst his linguistic gifts, which allowed him to solve the intricate puzzles posed by textile terminology used in medieval sources, are celebrated in four further papers (IV-VII). Study II shows how he integrated these different avenues of approach into the intricate textile method that he developed. Two more papers have been included, to illustrate Donald King's notable ability to communicate his enthusiasm and expertise about textiles to a wide audience. The study entitled 'Magic in the Web' (XVII) was designed to engage the general public and it was received with tremendous enthusiasm both as a lecture and as a published piece. The paper on 'Early Textiles with Hunting subjects in the Keir collection', (I) served both the academic and the museum world, and it illustrated for the connoisseur what could be learnt by those engaged in building up private collections of medieval textiles.

Read more less

Since turning to the field of Jewish art over twenty years ago, Vivian Mann has concentrated on investigating Jewish ceremonial art within the dual contexts of Jewish law, and the history of decorative arts in general, including the ceremonial art made for the Church and the Mosque. The introduction to this volume considers classic rabbinic attitudes toward art and its relationship to spirituality. The remaining essays are divided into three groups: the first concerns medieval ceremonial art; the second, articles on the Jewish art of Muslim lands beginning with the early Middle Ages; and the third consists of essays on Judaica during the periods of the Renaissance and rococo.

Read more less

For thirty years John Onians has been trying to expand and deepen the discipline of art history. His books, Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age (1979), Bearers of Meaning. The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1988) and Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece and Rome (1999), sought to extend the understanding of art as an aspect of culture, while his current project, A Natural History of Art, is designed to show how that understanding can be further enhanced by the recognition that art, like all of culture, is based in human neurobiology, and so in nature. He has also been active as a founding editor of the journal Art History in 1978, in setting up the World Art Research Programme at the University of East Anglia in 1994 and becoming the first Director of Research and Academic Programs at the Clark Art Institute in 1997. The present volume gathers together a selection of the editorials, articles, conference papers and essays, though which he has furthered his own attempts to renew art history and participated in those of others. They reflect the influence of many personal contacts built up during three decades of teaching and lecturing in many countries in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.

Read more less

A prominent scholar of Baroque painting, Richard Spear has explored a wide range of cultural, iconographic, connoisseurial, and conservation problems in his publications, many of which arose from two of his earliest research projects: organization of an international loan-exhibition, Caravaggio and His Followers, and his dissertation on the Bolognese painter, Domenichino, which resulted in a two-volume monograph with catalogue raisonné. His directorship of the Oberlin College museum strengthened his view that the work of art is the essential fact of inquiry, regardless of the approaches he has taken to interpreting the art of Domenichino, Guido Reni, Guercino, Artemisia Gentileschi, Georges de La Tour, and Poussin, among other 17th-century artists. As Editor-in-Chief of the Art Bulletin (1985-88) he commissioned essays on "the state of research" in Western art history, whose varied methodologies and interdisciplinarity underpin his recent writings, notably The "Divine" Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni. This volume brings together more than thirty of Richard Spear's most important articles and selected chapters from his main books, organized in three sections, Caravaggio and Caravaggism, Italy and France, and Bolognese Painters. The author provides important addenda and retrospective critical reflections on each of the essays.

Read more less

Lilian Armstrong is Professor of Art at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and a specialist on Venetian Renaissance book illumination. She is the author of The Paintings and Drawings of Marco Zoppo and Renaissance Miniature Painters and Classical Imagery: The Master of the Putti and His Venetian Workshop, and she was a major contributor to the exhibition catalogue The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 (ed. by Jonathan Alexander). Her publications have focussed particularly on the transition from illuminated manuscripts to the hand-illuminated early printed book in Venice. The present volume collects Professor Armstrong's papers on miniaturists active in Venice and Northern Italy in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and on the impact of the new invention of printing on these artists and their patrons. Included are papers on Marco Zoppo, primarily a monumental"painter, who nevertheless also painted in manuscripts and incunables. The studies variously identify miniaturists and designers of woodcuts through stylistic groupings, trace iconographic traditions for Pliny's Natural History and Petrarch's De viris illustribus, demonstrate the importance of heraldry for studying patronage of Venetian printed books, and explore the distribution of Venetian incunables throughout Europe based on analysis of their decoration.

Read more less

Over the last fifty years Professor Cornelius Vermeule, formerly curator of Classical Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, has consolidated his reputation as one of the foremost American authorities on Graeco-Roman art. His published work has covered the entire period from Mycenean to Byzantine art, and his papers have included studies of metalwork, sculpture, numismatics and the history of collecting. His studies have been particularly concerned however with Greek and Roman sculpture, especially that of the Roman Empire. These four volumes are designed to make available the most important of Professor Vermeule's contributions to periodicals. Volume I covers studies published between 1953 and 1964, and volume II continues the selection up to 1973. Volume III contains studies published between 1974 and 1984, and volume IV brings the selection up to 1995. Each volume has a new preface by Professor Vermeule and a comprehensive index.

Read more less

A pupil of André Grabar, Tania Velmans has worked for over thirty years on the art of the Byzantine empire and its wider diffusion throughout the neighbouring Slavic lands. This volume makes available sixteen of the author's studies divided into four sections. The first examines the development of such themes as the Fountain of Life and the Akathistos cycle in Byzantium, and their radiation throughout the Slavic world, and looks at other Byzantine-derived subjects in the art of Western Europe. The second group of studies looks at iconographic developments within the Byzantine Empire. A third section looks at later Western influence on Byzantine and medieval Slav art. The final section deals with drawings and bookbinding. French text.

Read more less

Maylis Baylé has had the advantage of a dual training in history and the history of art. She is a director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Université de Paris I), author of a work on the Romanesque sculpture of Normandy, and an authority in the field of Romanesque monumental art. A method of rigorous analysis that "integrates physical examination and stylistic study has "enabled her to follow the activity and the advances of the workshops of sculptors in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, particularly in Normandy, their links with English art well before 1066, and the importance of Burgundy and the Île-de-France in the transmission of artistic developments. The sculpture of the eleventh century is closely related to the styles of miniature painting and the luxury arts these "rapports are maintained for a long time in Normandy, England and Scandinavia, where they persist well beyond the end of the Romanesque period. These contacts between scriptoria and sculptors, along with an obvious community of styles between the various forms of artistic creation, constitute a recurring 'leitmotiv' through this collection of articles and lead to a new approach to Romanesque art. Another aspect of Maylis Baylé's work relates to "techniques of construction and the history of medieval "architecture, with several points of interest: the artistic revival around the year 1000 and the relations attested then between Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Beauvais and England, and the structure of walls and techniques of vaulting. Monographs of monuments constituting significant stages of this "development, in Normandy, the Loire, Champagne and the Bourbonnais illustrate various aspects of these problems. For some earlier articles, Dr Baylé has added a scientific and bibliographical update.

Read more less

Andrew Ladis is Franklin Professor of Art History at the University of Georgia. Over the course of the last twenty years he has written extensively on Italian art. In addition to books on Taddeo Gaddi and on the Brancacci Chapel, he has made notable contributions to the study of early Italian painting and sculpture with essays on such figures as Giovanni Pisano, Giotto, Jacopo del Casentino, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Niccolò di Tommaso. But the range of his interests, made apparent by this collection, extends far beyond fourteenth-century Florence and Siena to encompass Tuscan painting of the fifteenth century, Renaissance maiolica, the writings of Giorgio Vasari, biography, and modern historiography. Further, the assembled essays and book reviews embrace a wide array of art historical problems, such as connoisseurship, patronage, workshop procedure, and the relationship between form and meaning. Of particular note is a major interpretive essay on one of the key monuments of the Renaissance, the mural decoration of the Brancacci Chapel painted by Masaccio, Masolino, and Filippino Lippi. Appearing here in revised form, this study is newly accompanied by a copious number of illustrations, including some never before published.

Read more less

Christopher Walter, in his research on Byzantine art, has been particularly concerned by the significative value of iconography. The Byzantines, perhaps more than other cultural groups, were aware that pictures could "speak". The form and content of their "message" is explored here in a series of twenty-six articles, together with the use to which this "message" could be put. The first group of six articles is concerned with manuscript illustration. The second group of six articles shows how pictures could be used for ecclesiological purposes, not only to set out the universal mission of the Church. and its relations with political authorities, but also the relations of a local Church with the ensemble. A third group of three articles is concerned with the use of pictures in order to instruct the faithful on the raison d'être of the liturgy. The fourth group of seven articles studies the use of pictures to make better known to the populace the role of saints in the life of terrestrial men. Finally two articles document the use of iconography on apotropaic objects like amulets. In an epilogue the author brings up to date the bibliography of the subjects studied in these articles.

Read more less

Asher Ovadiah is Professor of Art History at Tel Aviv University, and an authority on the Classical and Byzantine monuments of Israel. This selection of articles, published over the last twenty-five years, falls into four groups and is gathered around a number of common themes. A first group is concerned with the architecture of pagan temples, early churches, synagogues and a Roman theatre. A second deals with sculpture and reliefs, with the emphasis on iconography, style and symbolism, while a third group is concerned with mosaics in secular and religious contexts, with reference to the Classical heritage and anti-Classical trends, philosophical concepts and links with artistic centres. Finally, a fourth group treats the symbolic and allegorical significance of various works of art and Greek laudatory inscriptions.

Read more less

Over the past sixty-five years Ernst Kitzinger has been one of the foremost interpreters of the art of Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the medieval West. Beginning with his "influential doctoral dissertation, reprinted here, on early medieval painting in the city of Rome, where western and eastern Byzantine traditions met, one of his principal concerns has been the movement and exchange of artistic ideas and patterns around the Mediterranean. Painting and mosaics have always been central to his enquiry. One focus has been the mosaics of Norman Sicily, on which he has published numerous ground-breaking books and papers. All of Professor Kitzinger's essays on Norman Sicily are included here. Other areas in which he has made outstanding contributions are the arts of Late Antiquity, with a particular emphasis on floor mosaics, medieval Rome, Byzantium in the early and high Middle Ages, and the arts of Anglo-Saxon England. These two volumes include all of Professor Kitzinger's major essays, apart from an earlier selection reprinted in 1975. Each has a new preface by Professor Kitzinger, and comes with a comprehensive index.

Read more less

This volume complements Anna Muthesius' two earlier ground-breaking volumes in the field of silk as material culture: Studies in Byzantine and Islamic Silk Weaving and Studies in Silk in Byzantium. The publication highlights the fact that similar patterns of selection were at work in the acquisition of silks by secular and ecclesiastical bodies. These patterns of selection were governed not only by fashions of the time, but by access to international trade routes leading to the Great Silk Road linking the Near East to the Mediterranean. The surviving silks prove that Mediterranean/Near Eastern silk trade flourished continuously and for centuries prior to the thirteenth century, contrary to what has previously widely been assumed. It also highlights the crucial role of the Caucasian silk routes in accessing the Great Silk Road in the early period, and the contribution of Georgian (and Armenian) silk weaving after the thirteenth century. Above all, the book demonstrates how important it is to assess the impact of Near Eastern silk manufacture and distribution in relation to Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean silk production and trade.

Read more less

This is the first of two volumes that contains all of Professor Kitzinger's major essays on the art of Late Antiquity, accompanied by a new preface and a comprehensive index. The volume is divided into two sections; the first on Late Antique art includes: The story of Joseph on a Coptic textile; Notes on Coptic sculpture; Studies on late antique and Byzantine floor mosaics, including examples in Antioch and Bethlehem; The Cleveland marbles; Christian imagery and many more. The second section on Byzantine art includes: The Hellenistic heritage in Byzantine art; Byzantium and the West in the second half of the 12th century; The role of miniature painting in mural decoration; Artistic patronage in early Byzantium, and others.

Read more less

Dr. Avery has worked on Italian sculpture since he joined the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1966. His study continued during his career as Director of Christie's sculpture department (1979-1990) and since then as an independent consultant and historian. He has published extensively in this field, including his survey, Florentine Renaissance Sculpture (1970); Giambologna: the complete sculpture (1987); Donatello: an Introduction (1994); and Bernini, Genius of Baroque Rome (1997). A number of articles on Italian sculpture have been included in two successive volumes entitled Studies in European Sculpture (1981 and 1987). The present volume comprises further articles written over the decade since 1986, some on specific discoveries and others consisting of broader surveys of individual sculptors' activity or under-studied classes of Renaisance sculpture: bronze artefacts, such as seals and locks; and garden sculpture. Several are unpublished texts of lectures, or radical expansions of briefly published pieces.

Read more less

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) poet, painter, novelist, explorer, mountaineer, chess master, classical scholar and drug addict was the founder of a religion called thelema , which, he claimed, had superceded Christianity. John Symonds was Crowley's literary executor, and his biography of Aleister Crowley is the fullest account of the life of this most bizarre Englishman. The present edition has been considerably revised and augmented, and remains the standard work on Crowley.

Read more less

The second part of a four-volume work which aims to make available the most important of Cornelius Vermeule's journal contributions over the last fifty years. This volume covers the years between 1965 and 1973 and includes papers on broad themes and specific works of art or discoveries, including Greek and Roman portraits in American collections, Etruscan, Greek and Roman statuary, terracottas and coinage, funerary monuments and American collectors and neoclassical sculptors. A handsome volume, well-illustrated throughout.

Read more less

Over the last fifty years Professor Cornelius Vermeule, formerly curator of Classical Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, has consolidated his reputation as one of the foremost American authorities on Graeco-Roman art. His published work has covered the entire period from Mycenean to Byzantine art, and his papers have included studies of metalwork, sculpture, numismatics and the history of collecting. His studies have been particularly concerned however with Greek and Roman sculpture, especially that of the Roman Empire. These four volumes are designed to make available the most important of Professor Vermeule's contributions to periodicals. Volume I covers studies published between 1953 and 1964, and volume II continues the selection up to 1973. Volume III contains studies published between 1974 and 1984, and volume IV brings the selection up to 1995. Each volume has a new preface by Professor Vermeule and a comprehensive index.

Read more less

The most important of Eliane Vergnolle's publications focus on the study of Romanesque art in France. In particular, she has concentrated on the period during which this type of art was born and has investigated the processes which, from the beginning of the 11th century onwards, led to the renewal of monumental sculpture in several regions. Having investigated previous methods of analysis, she has proposed a new way of looking at the chronological order of the first steps in this period, notably from the example of the exceptional workshop which created the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. Her study of the Corinthian capital and its multiple transformations came about from a greater understanding of the notion of the Renaissance of Antiquity, which recurs throughout the period. Other studies concentrate on the role of sculptural decoration in the buildings, as well as the genesis of certain forms of architectural structure. Much of this research has appeared in the form of monographic studies of important individual monuments. These nineteen studies are principally concerned with the Loire valley, the Berry, the Bourbonnais and Burgundy and they delineate the artistic landscape of those regions which were among the most precocious and the most inventive in the Capetian kingdom.

Read more less

Professor Seymour Howard's publications over the last forty years have introduced many innovative approaches to research in the history of art and archaeology. The arrangement of these two dozen essays in seven topical groups suggests their growth, origins, and relationships. Most of the studies deal with well-known canons of art from uncanonical points of view, which reflect the author's work as a practicing artist as well as his interdisciplinary training as a humanistic scholar. These rigorous and wide-ranging studies explore historic makings and meanings of graphic imagery, whose fundamental importance for understanding and communication has lost nothing of its power during the ascendance of literacy. The title essay and preface are new, as are the additional annotation and commentary; the author's bibliography and an index have been supplied.

Read more less

Romanesque sculpture in Burgundy has always been seen as central to our understanding of the history and culture of 11th and 12th century Europe, standing as it does at a cross-roads between north and south, with its rich agricultural and urban economies out of which grew some of the great monastic settlements of feudal Europe, including of course Cluny and the Cistercians. Neil Stratford has been Keeper of Medieval and Later Antiquities at the British Museum since 1975 and is recognised as a leading authority on Romanesque and Gothic art. Over the last twenty years he has published many articles on Romanesque Burgundy in a number of English and French journals. The most famous sculptures (above all the Cluny apse capitals and the Vézelay tympanum) have been studied, alongside unpublished and little known monuments. These two volumes brings together a selection of these studies, some published in English for the first time and with new photographs. All are updated with brief corrections and new comments from the author.

Read more less

For more than forty years William Watson has occupied a unique place in the study and teaching of Chinese art in Great Britain. Professor Watson's publications cover a wide field, his command of Chinese, Japanese, Russian and western languages giving access to the fullest literature on his subjects. The colloquies he organized at the Percival David Foundation achieved international repute, with results that remain on record. At the Royal Academy of Arts he took a leading part in the Chinese archaeological exhibition of 1972 which reinstated cultural relations between Britain and China. Also at the Royal Academy he was the instigator and chief organizer of the Japanese exhibition of 1982, in which for the first time the art of the Tokugawa period was comprehensively presented outside of Japan as enshrining the national genius. The present two volumes collect Professor Watson's main smaller publications made in the course of museum and university careers. Many are specific studies of works in terms of cultural context, dating and historical significance. They contain mainly writing on Chinese, Japanese and Korean subjects, in particular the bronze art, ceramics and sculpture of the T'ang and earlier periods. Painting is treated in some closely defined topics. Contents: Preface The Lathe in Antiquity Ancient Khorezm The Seligman Gift A Grave Guardian from Ch'ang Sha A Bronze Mirror from Shao Hsing Recent Discoveries in Chinese Archaeology I & II A Buddhist Patron of the Refectory Chinese Lacquered Wine-cups The Earliest Buddhist Images of Korea Sung Bronzes A Dated Buddhist Image of the Northern Wei Period A Jade Hatstand An Inscribed Jade Cup from Samarqand A Chinese Bronze Bell of the Fifth Century BC A Chinese Bronze Figure of the Fourth Century BC The Kingdom of Tien and the Dong Son Culture Inner Asia and China in the pre-Han Period Overlay and p'ing-t'o in T'ang Silverwork On T'ang Soft-glazed Pottery The Thai-British Archaeological Expedition Chinese Ceramics from Neolithic to T'ang History and Technological History Traditions of Material Culture in the Territory of Ch'u The Chinese Contribution to Nomad Culture in the pre-Han and early Han Periods

Read more less

These eight papers by Professor Martindale represent his major studies on the history of secular painting in medieval and early Renaissance Italy. Written over fifteen years, they focus attention on the evidence for secular decoration in this period. Covering Venice, Siena, and Mantegna's work in Mantua, this represents an important and often neglected aspect of early Italian art.

Read more less

Professor C. R. Dodwell wrote with authority on most aspects of Western European medieval art. From his doctoral work on The Canterbury School of Illumination, he continued to maintain a steady output of important publications until his death in 1994. This book brings together most of his major papers on the subject of Anglo-Saxon, French and Norman art, and includes the study of the Reichenau school he published with D. H. Turner. There are papers on the major English illuminated manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and studies of metalworking and the Bayeux tapestry. There is a preface by Paul Crossley. Papers include: The Bayeux Tapestry and the French Secular Epic; Un manuscrit enluminé de Jumiège au British Museum; Techniques of Manuscript Painting in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts; La miniature Anglo-Saxonne; The Final Copy of the Utrecht Psalter and its Relationship with the Utrecht and Eadwine Psalters; Gold Metallurgy in the Twelfth Century: the De Diversis Artibus of Theophilus the Monk; The Meaning of Sculptor in the Romanesque Period; Medieval Attitudes to the Artist; Seculars in Monasteries; Secular Artists; L'originalité iconographique de plusiers illustrations Anglo-Saxonnes de l'Ancien Testament; Losses of Anglo-Saxon Art in the Middle Ages; Reichenau Reconsidered: a Reassessment of the Place of Reichenau in Ottonian Art; A Bibliography of Professor Dodwell's Publications.

Read more less

The work of Ioannis Spatharakis on Byzantine manuscript painting has resulted in the standard corpus of dated illuminated Greek manuscripts, and an important survey of the history of the portrait in Byzantine manuscripts. His numerous papers published over the last twenty years have dealt with illuminated manuscripts from the era of Iconoclasm and the Macedonian Renaissance in the eighth and ninth centuries to the productions of the Palaeologan period in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These are reproduced here, along with a number of papers on iconographical themes, and unpublished studies of wall paintings in Crete. One paper is translated from Greek, and a number of others are published here for the first time.

Read more less

Professor Stalley began to explore Ireland's rich legacy of medieval art in 1969, at a time when it was little known by students abroad. From the start his principal aim was to discover how Irish art fitted into its European context, an aim which led to a series of important comparative studies on major European monuments, both Romanesque and Gothic. Having begun his career as a historian, the author has been concerned with the social and political implications of medieval art, particularly the effect of the racial divisions that existed in medieval Ireland. He has written about Irish cathedrals, as well as the buildings of the Cistercian monks and Franciscan friars. He has also investigated the royal programme of castle building in the thirteenth century. Other essays in this volume include a fascinating account of the repercussions of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, as well as a consideration of the influence of Viking styles on Hiberno-Romanesque sculpture. In recent years Professor Stalley has turned his attention to the high crosses, writing with authority on the iconography of these complex monuments. The opening essay in the volume is devoted to the patronage of Henry I's justiciar, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, whose cathedral at Sarum was destined to influence the course of Irish Romanesque.

Read more less

Viktor Nikitich Lazarev was one of the founders of the Russian school of art history, and a major figure in the study of Byzantine and early Russian art. Immensely productive, he combined teaching, museum work and scholarship throughout a long and eventful life. His studies on Byzantine painting, and its links with the art of his native Russia, were of great importance in helping to clarify the stylistic development of Byzantine painting, and in drawing attention to the Byzantine roots of medieval Italian painting. This volume contains all of Professor Lazarev's papers on Byzantine painting, published between 1925 and 1964. Six of the papers were originally published in Russian, and are translated into English here for the first time. There is a comprehensive index to the volume.

Read more less

Written over the course of a quarter century, the nineteen essays reprinted in this volume reflect a continuing belief in the seriousness and complexity of the relationship between pictures and texts in medieval art. Professor Kessler has grouped his studies in three sections: Pictures and Scripture includes those essays which consider the various ways in which Christian pictorial representations are in continuous and varying dialogue with holy writ in Byzantium and the medieval west. Pictures in Scripture is about illustrated manuscripts, with six essays dealing with the complicated processes used to construct meaning in depictions within the texts they illustrate. Pictures as Scriptures contains nine essays which deal with pictorial cycles unassociated with the texts they serve, primarily monumental narratives in the Synagogue at Dura Europos and on the walls of Italian churches. Notes added to each article update the bibliography and consider issues that have been discussed in subsequent scholarly literature. There is a new preface and a comprehensive index.

Read more less