Medieval

The Diptych is an exquisite example of the International Gothic style, and its provokes many questopms on the image of Richard II and the meaning of its iconography. This handsome volume contains seventeen papers arising from a 1993 symposium at the National Gallery, examining questions of technique, imagery and artistic context.

People encounter architecture almost every day. Whether at home or outdoors, we take its presence for granted, forgetting how literally buildings structure our lives. This close connection between architecture and daily life was also true in the Middle Ages, from castles, cathedrals and country estates to towns and rural dwellings. While numerous medieval buildings survive to the present day, many more have disappeared. Some of the best records we have, representing the greatest achievements of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, can be found in illuminated manuscripts. This highly illustrated book offers an opportunity to look in detail at medieval architecture, as it appeared in contemporary manuscripts. It will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the history of buildings, and of the medieval period in particular.

A prized possession of the Cistercian convent of Marienbrunn in Rulle near Osnabrück in northern Germany was its richly illuminated gradual dating to c. 1300, which is of great significance in the history of medieval art for several reasons. With 52 historiated initials iconographically complex in their literary quotations from the liturgy, the manuscript ranks as one of the most lavishly decorated books of its type to survive. Painted in an elegant courtly Gothic style, it is ascribed in a prefatory inscription to the nun Gisela von Kersenbroeck, who wrote, notated, and decorated the manuscript "with golden letters and beautiful images." Such an encyclopedic listing of a scribe-artist's labors is unparalleled in medieval scribal colophons. The high quality of the miniatures ranks her among the most gifted women artists of the Middle Ages. Gisela is depicted in two self-portraits within the manuscript, in one of which she is leading the nuns of Rulle in singing the Christmas hymn, visual evidence that she was the choirmistress at this convent. The manuscript's images reflect the intellectual ambience of encloistered nuns who were steeped in the annual liturgical cycle of feasts with its associated bible readings, theological commentary, sermons, music, dramatic ritual, and artistic decoration. As it was used in the nuns' daily celebration of the mass, the book is an eloquent witness of the communal religious life of medieval women rather than their private meditations or mystical experiences.This study explores the imagery and texts associated with major feasts of the liturgical year and the novel ways in which music and text are woven into the artistic program of Gisela's manuscript. In particular, her book shows the seminal importance of the Easter celebration for convent life, as well over half of its illustrations are clustered in the Easter season; and the manuscript repeatedly gives artistic expression to the nuns' hopes of heaven.

This refreshing new look at Medieval art conveys a very real sense of the impact of art on everyday life in Europe from 1000 to 1500. It examines the importance of art in the expression and spread of knowledge and ideas, including notions of the heroism and justice of war, and the dominant view of Christianity.
Taking its starting point from issues of contemporary relevance, such as the environment, the identity of the artist, and the position of women, the book also highlights the attitudes and events specific to the sophisticated visual culture of the Middle Ages, and goes on to link this period to the Renaissance. The fascinating question of whether commercial and social activities between countries encouraged similar artistic taste and patronage, or contributed to the defining of cultural difference in Europe, is fully explored.

easts Factual and Fantastic features vivid and charming details from the wealth of manuscripts in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library, along with a lively text; together both word and image provide an accessible and delightful introduction to the imagination of the medieval world.

The patronage, making, preservation, and use of medieval manuscripts across cultures and across the centuries: essays by eminent scholars in the field of manuscript studies. The essays in this collection pertain to art history, medieval Latin culture both ecclesiastic and legal, the history of vernacular literatures, and the devotional practices of the laity. They reflect the patronage of authors and manuscript painters, from the royal through the monastic to the urban middle class, and they trace the sometimes astonishing afterlife of manuscripts. The subject matter of these studies ranges chronologically from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages, adding the emergent medievalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its geographic breadth extends through the major Western cultures and literatures, from England to Italy, Germany, and France. Its wide range in time and space reflects the lifetime of manuscript research, teaching, and collecting by its honorees, Richard and Mary Rouse. A particular emphasis distinguishes this volume from other such collections: its stress on the use, and usefulness, of medieval manuscripts in the teaching of most historical disciplines in Western culture, from the broad undergraduate survey (of art, literature, history) to the specialized graduate seminar. In the last half century, public colleges and universities have increasingly appreciated the pedagogical opportunities inherent in building, through gift and purchase, collections of medieval manuscripts, formerly thought to be the province only of wealthy private schools. No similar collection of manuscript studies exhibits so clearly the role of medieval manuscripts in teaching. The specialist authors represented in this volume have displayed, over the whole of their careers, an ability to combine the highest caliber of research with an eagerness to make their subject accessible to others through teaching and writing and public lectures. The essays offer the results of new and sometimes technical research, set forth in a manner intelligible not only to the expert but to the interested amateur.

The 150 Psalms of the Old Testament were the most important work of devotional literature in the Middle Ages. The Book of Psalms came to be transmitted not only as part of the Bible, but also, in the form of the psalter, as a text in its own right. The psalter came to be illustrated-often profusely-as an aid to devotion at an early stage in is history, and it was a book which was frequently found in the possession of lay people. This volume brings together 28 contributions dealing with the 800 years between the mid-eighth and mid-sixteenth centuries, a period in which the psalter was increasingly owned and used by the laity in the form of richly illuminated manuscripts. As early as the Carolingian period, the illumination of psalters went beyond a mere textual illustration, and developed a narrative iconography with biblical or hagiographical content, and it was largely this autonomous iconography which connected the Old Testament texts with the tenets of the Christian faith. Also the frequent scenes or cycles of King David do not present illustrations of the psalms, but rather of events told elsewhere in the Old Testament. Renderings of individual Christian believers can also be found from the Carolingian period onwards, and represent some of the most original achievements of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century psalter illumination. This book includes an index of psalter references, a topographical list, 460 illustrations, and a register of some 800 manuscripts.

This study of the two-volume Lambeth Bible, one of the premier Romanesque giant bibles, concerns itself with its textual makeup as well as its magnificent illumination. It reports the results of research on texts and imagery found in over a hundred English and continental Romanesque Bibles. Comparative study of the prefatory materials in these Bibles yielded significant new understandings of their importance and represents a major conclusion of this study. They are important aids in establishing places of origin of biblical manuscripts and in the study of the illumination chosen for them. Exhaustive study of the prologues, chapter lists, and other miscellaneous texts in both volumes of the Lambeth Bible and other English Bibles, has helped to establish that the Lambeth Bible was not made at St. Albans or at Christ Church, Canterbury, two of the sites often suggested for its production. Six beautiful miniatures and thirty-one historiated initials remain in the Lambeth Bible so examination of their iconography is a major aspect of this book. This study includes both a search for visual and textual models for the imagery used in the Lambeth Bible and an investigation of the significance of those subjects in the twelfth century. In a surprising number of cases a relationship existed between the prologue preceding a biblical book and the imagery with which it was illuminated. Thus what initially seemed to be isolated instances of drawing inspiration from the prologues was in fact a customary practice of the makers of the Lambeth Bible.