"The incidence of Passion imagery in diverse media is fundamental to the histories of Christian piety, church politics, and art in European and American societies. At the same time, the visualization and reenactment of Christ's suffering has for centuries been the principal engine generating popular perceptions of Jews and Judaism. The essays collected in this book, written by eminent scholars with an eye toward the nonspecialist reader, broadly survey the depiction and dramatization of the Passion and consider the significance of this representational focus for both Christians and Jews. This anthology provides a unique, multifaceted overview of a subject of enduring importance in today's religiously pluralistic societies."--BOOK JACKET.
This collection of original articles brings together for the first time the research on graffiti from a wide range of geographical and chronological contexts, and shows how they are interpreted in fields as diverse as archaeology, art history, museum studies, and sociology.
Pathos as Communicative Strategy in Late-Medieval Religious Drama and Art explores the strategies employed to trigger emotional responses in late-medieval dramatic texts from several Western European traditions, and juxtaposes these texts with artistic productions from the same areas, with an emphasis on Britain. The aim is to unravel the mechanisms through which pathos was produced and employed, mainly through the representation of pain and suffering, with mainly religious, but also political aims. The novelty of the book resides in its specific linguistic perspective, which highlights the recurrent use of words, structures and dialogic patterns in drama to reinforce messages on the salvific value of suffering, in synergy with visual messages produced in the same cultural milieu.
How does a visual artist manage to narrate a story, which has a sequential and therefore temporal progression, using a static medium consisting solely of spatial sign elements and, what is more, in a single image? This is the question on which this work is based, posed by its designer, Alberto Argenton, to whose memory it is dedicated. The first explanation usually given by scholars in the field is that the artist solves the problem by depicting the same character in a number of scenes, thus giving indirect evidence of events taking place at different times. This book shows that artists, in addition to the repetition of characters, devise other spatial perceptual-representational strategies for organising the episodes that constitute a story and, therefore, showing time. Resorting to the psychology of art of a Gestalt matrix, the book offers researchers, graduates, advanced undergraduates, and professionals a description of a large continuous pictorial narrative repertoire (1000 works) and an in-depth analysis of the perceptual-representational strategies employed by artists from the 6th to the 17th century in a group of 100 works narrating the story of Adam and Eve.
Late Medieval and Renaissance art was surprisingly pushy; its architecture demanded that people move through it in prescribed patterns, its sculptures played elaborate games alternating between concealment and revelation, while its paintings charged viewers with imaginatively moving through them. Viewers wanted to interact with artwork in emotional and/or performative ways. This inventive and personal interface between viewers and artists sometimes conflicted with the Church s prescribed devotional models, and in some cases it complemented them. Artists and patrons responded to the desire for both spontaneous and sanctioned interactions by creating original ways to amplify devotional experiences. The authors included here study the provocation and the reactions associated with medieval and Renaissance art and architecture. These essays trace the impetus towards interactivity from the points of view of their creators and those who used them.Contributors include: Mickey Abel, Alfred Acres, Kathleen Ashley, Viola Belghaus, Sarah Blick, Erika Boeckeler, Robert L.A. Clark, Lloyd DeWitt, Michelle Erhardt, Megan H. Foster-Campbell, Juan Luis González García, Laura D. Gelfand, Elina Gertsman, Walter S. Gibson, Margaret Goehring, Lex Hermans, Fredrika Jacobs, Annette LeZotte, Jane C. Long, Henry Luttikhuizen, Elizabeth Monroe, Scott B. Montgomery, Amy M. Morris, Vibeke Olson, Katherine Poole, Alexa Sand, Donna L. Sadler, Pamela Sheingorn, Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Anne Rudloff Stanton, Janet Snyder, Rita Tekippe, Mark Trowbridge, Mark S. Tucker, Kristen Van Ausdall, Susan Ward.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, texts about the recent and more distant past were produced in remarkable numbers in the lands controlled by the kings of England. This may be seen, in part, as a response to changing social and political circumstances in the wake of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The names of many of the twelfth and thirteenth-century historians are well known, and they include Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, Gerald of Wales, and Matthew Paris. Yet the manuscripts in which these works survive are also evidence for the involvement of many other people in the production of history, as patrons, scribes, and artists. Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World focuses on history books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to examine what they reveal about the creation, circulation, and reception of history in this period. In particular, this research concentrates on illuminated manuscripts. These volumes represent an additional investment of time, labour, and resources, and combinations of text and imagery shed light on engagements with the past as manuscripts were copied at specific times and places. Imagery could be used to reproduce the features of older sources, but it was also used to call attention to particular elements of a text, and to impose frameworks onto the past. As a result, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World has the potential to change the way in which we see the medieval past and its historians.
Grounded in archival sources, this interdisciplinary study explores the profound historical significance of the mausoleum of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy - the Chartreuse de Champmol. Although the monument is well known as the site of pivotal works of art by Claus Sluter, Melchior Broederlam, Jean de Beaumetz and others, until now art historians have not considered how these works functioned at the center of a complex social matrix. Sherry Lindquist here considers the sacred subjects of the various sculptures and paintings not merely as devotional tools or theological statements, but as profoundly influential social instruments that negotiated complex interactions of power. Lindquist's sophisticated discussion coordinates analysis of primary sources with the most up-to-date scholarship in the field of art history, not only with respect to late medieval Burgundian art, but also to more theoretical questions pertaining to reception.
This book reveals how Gothic choir screens, through both their architecture and sculpture, were vital vehicles of communication and shapers of community within the Christian church.
By the late Middle Ages, manifestations of Marian devotion had become multifaceted and covered all aspects of religious, private and personal life. Mary becomes a universal presence that accompanies the faithful on pilgrimage, in dreams, as holy visions, and as pictorial representations in church space and domestic interiors. The first part of the volume traces the development of Marian iconography in sculpture, panel paintings, and objects, such as seals, with particular emphasis on Italy, Slovenia and the Hungarian Kingdom. The second section traces the use of Marian devotion in relation to space, be that a country or territory, a monastery or church or personal space, and explores the use of space in shaping new liturgical practices, new Marian feasts and performances, and the bodily performance of ritual objects.