Average customer rating: |
The Eucharist in Romanesque France: Iconography and Theology
Elizabeth Saxon Manufacturer: Boydell Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 1843832569 |
Book Description
During the Romanesque period in France, and accelerated by a growing introspection and consciousness of self-identity, a penitential focus was given to eucharistic piety. Population increase and prosperity brought greater tithe income to the Church, allowing new discipline and religious regulation in respect of the sacraments. The aim of this book is to bring together aspects of the multi-faceted penitential-eucharistic devotion, as revealed in theological writings and Mass commentaries, in Gregorian reform, in heretical circles both clerical and popular and in works of art, so that the reader can contemplate, through a wider juxtaposition than that usually practicable in more detailed specialised scholarship, something of the mood of the period. Just as the new scholastic writings impressed by their innovative creativity, the best late eleventh- and twelfth-century art was astonishingly vital and the comparison of art and textual works is central to the volume. Dr Elizabeth Saxon has recently retired from the staff of the Open University.
Average customer rating:
|
Romanesque & Gothic France: Art and Architecture
Viviane Minne-Seve , and Herve Kergall Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items: ASIN: 0810944367 |
Book Description
This superbly illustrated book is the only one of its kind to trace the history of Romanesque and Gothic architecture and sculpture in all of France, focusing especially on the exalted ecclesiastical structures-and the splendid sculpture, painting, illuminated manuscripts, and stained glass made for these churches, monasteries, abbeys, and cathedrals-created by inspired "builders for God."Touring France province by province, the authors discuss the landmarks of the period, such as Notre-Dame, Cluny, and the Cathedral of Chartres, all of which reflect the religious intensity of the medieval world. Whether exploring the religious history of Catholic France, the historical development of Romanesque and Gothic styles, or the lives and works of the builders and artists who sought to glorify God, this lavishly illustrated, carefully researched book is invaluable for scholars yet accessible for the general reader.
VIVIANE MINNE-SÈVE has taught at the Ecole d'Architecture in Geneva and is currently a professor at the Institut Suprieur de Tourisme in Paris. She specializes in the Romanesque period and has contributed to several Swiss and Italian publications.
HERVÉ KERGALL is a sculptor and a specialist in Gothic art who has written for many exhibition catalogues, often on the working methods of architects of the Romanesque and Gothic periods.
300 illustrations in full color, 50 maps, floor plans, and diagrams, 101/2 x 121/2"
Customer Reviews:
Doing Levert?.......2006-01-16
Great resource!!.......2001-02-01
Average customer rating:
|
Mediaeval: Patterns of the Romanesque Period (Agile Rabbit Editions)
Manufacturer: Pepin Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 9057680270 |
Customer Reviews:
Not for professional designers.......2006-10-23
Average customer rating:
|
Early Medieval Architecture (Oxford History of Art)
Roger Stalley Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0192842234 |
Book Description
The early middle ages were an exciting period in the history of European architecture, culminating in the development of the Romanesque style. Major architectural innovations were made during this time including the medieval castle, the church spire, and the monastic cloister. By avoiding the traditional emphasis on chronological development, Roger Stalley provides a radically new approach to the subject, exploring issues and themes rather than sequences and dates. In addition to analysing the language of the Romanesque, the book examines the engineering achievements of the builders, and clearly how the great monuments of the age were designed and constructed. Ranging from Gotland to Apulia, the richness and variety of European architecture is explored in terms of the social and religious aspirations of the time. Symbolic meanings associated with architecture are also thoroughly investigated. Written with style and humour, the lively text includes many quotations from ancient sources, providing a fascinating insight into the way that medieval buildings were created, and in the process enlivening study of this period.Customer Reviews:
Early Medieval Architecture.......2005-09-19
comprehensive and entertaining.......2003-01-07
Flagship Volume in New Art History Series.......2000-04-24
Both series are superbly well printed and illustrated; each includes maps, charts, timelines, and bibliographies. What Thames and Hudson's "World of Art" series did well for several decades, these two series are now achieving in a more strictly periodizing form, with greater emphasis on method and, in the case of Oxford, on Theory.
In both the Oxford and Everyman series, the most fascinating volumes are those which treat subjects broken down or combined in unusual ways. Thus, Alison Cole's "Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts" (l995) seeks to compare Naples, Urbino, Milan, Ferrara, and Mantua--- bringing relative clarity to a topic that most surveys tend to gloss over. Similarly, Loren Partridge's Everyman "The Renaissance in Rome" (1996) treats the Quattrocento and Cinquecento in the Eternal City, chapter by chapter, in terms of urban planning, churches, palaces, altarpieces, chapel decorations, and halls of state--- all in a single volume.
Before Stalley, the two Oxford volumes I had read were Jas Elsner's "Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph" and Craig Clunas's "Art in China". Both are by younger scholars and are massively imbued with new (politically correct) art history. Yet both books are filled with challenging and brilliant examples and new information. In fact, the China volume is written (like all of Clunas's work) from a perspective that is truly revolutionary in Chinese studies. At the end of the day, both Elsa and Clunas are so skilled, both as writers and historians, that even the jargon of the new art history is eclipsed by the sheer quality of the two works.
Roger Stalley, Professor of the History of Art, at Trinity College, Dublin, writes clearly, penetratingly, and without jargon. "Early Medieval Architecture" is deftly constructed, and the author claims that his chapters may be read "in almost any order". This may indeed be the case (I read straight through and could scarcely put the book aside). It comes, of course, as no small recommendation that Stalley was a student of Peter Kidson's.
What makes "Early Medieval Architecture" unique is the editorial decision to relegate the entire topic of "late" medieval building to a separate volume by Nicola Coldstream. Therefore, hardly a mention is made of "Gothic--- the question that Stalley addresses being: "What is Romanesque?" Like its subject the book is suitably austere, yet it is not without personality. The endnotes are unobtrusive, and there is a state- of-the-art Bibliographic Essay. All this is supplemented by some 150 varied and informative photographs and redrawn plans and building sections. There is virtually no attention to sculpture, as befits a scholar whose interests and sympathies are Cistercian; however, there is a sensitive underlying concern with the "language of architecture" itself, such that the book would give pleasure to any working architect.
Stalley has given us ten chapters starting with "The Christian Basilica", where his subject overlaps slightly with that of the Elsner's book. Appropriately, the argument returns again and again to Rome. The next chapter is an exercise in setting forth the architecture of the Carolingian Renaissance, where light is shed in an area of architectural history that for the novice is more typically hedged with exceptions and speculation. A third chapter pursues the "iconography of architecture" in Rome, Milan, Ravenna, and Jerusalem, as well as lesser-known places.
Chapter 4 is devoted to secular architecture and is somewhat revisionist in tone. The very fact that such an exercise is provided bodes well for the clarity of Stalley's enterprise, and there are numerous photographs throughout the book that succeed in demonstrating a relationship between ecclesiastical buildings and the architecture of feudalism.
Chapters 5 and 6 treat, respectively, the patron-as-builder and the builder-as-engineer. In this, the architectural expertise of certain early patrons is stressed, while the engineering argument is soft peddled, in the sense that techniques of vaulting are not allowed to dominate a more all-embracing explanation of the general integrity of the building fabric. As the author reminds us, the story of vaulting has too often been permitted to get out of hand, leading the discussion of early medieval structure well beyond what is warranted by evidence and probably away from what must have been the original aims and concerns of early medieval builders themselves, whether "engineers" or not.
Chapters 7 and 8 deal with the influences of pilgrimage and monasticism on early medieval building. Here a number of relevant statistics and medieval texts are cited that raise the discussion well above what is ordinarily expected to suffice the undergraduate reader. For example, the names of the seven major services or "offices" of Benedictine communal worship are set out and, where needed, explanation is offered. The discussion of the famous St. Gall plan is commendable in its detail, while the full-page photographic detail of the plan is printed in color to show the use of red ink on parchment. Included here is mention and illustration of the recently restored Cistercian abbey church at Fontenay, which as a caption points out, may reflect the destroyed mother house at Clairvaux.
The final two chapters are a magisterial recapitulation of the "Language of Architecture", starting off "During the course of the eleventh century a new architectural language emerged in western Europe...", and of its subsequent diversity throughout Europe. In summary, this is an exciting book that matches some of the recent strides forward in early medieval social and political history and provides a superlative discussion of a topic that has rarely been so coherently presented and illustrated in a single volume.
David B. Stewart, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Average customer rating:
|
Pictorial Narrative In The Romanesque Cloister: Cloister Imagery and Religious Life in Medieval Spain (Hermeneutics of Art)
Pamela A. Patton Manufacturer: Peter Lang Publishing ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0820472689 |
Customer Reviews:
An Instant Classic!.......2005-11-28
Best Ever.......2004-11-23
Average customer rating:
|
Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800-1200 (The Yale University Press Pelican History of Art)
Kenneth J. Conant Manufacturer: Yale University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0300052987 |
Customer Reviews:
They write with a letter xalled carolingia.......1999-06-15
Average customer rating: |
Romanesque Architectural Sculpture: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
Meyer Schapiro Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0226750639 |
Book Description
Average customer rating:
|
The Splendor of the Word: medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library
J. J. G. Alexander Manufacturer: Harvey Miller ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items: ASIN: 190537500X |
Product Description
The New York Public Librarys collection of nearly three hundred Western European illuminated manuscripts is one of the largest in America but also one that is very little known. Dating from the turn of the tenth century unto well into the period of the Renaissance, these works give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who discovered ever-new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books through inventive and sometimes exuberant manipulations of all the elements of the book: form and format, layout, script, decoration, illustration, and binding. To introduce this magnificent collection and many of its most important works to scholars and the wider audience, The Splendor of the Word presents one hundred manuscripts of particular cultural, historical, and artistic significance, selected from the Librarys collection by three of the most distinguished scholars in the field Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Professor of Fine Arts at! the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, a specialist in early medieval, Romanesque, and Italian illuminated manuscripts; James H. Marrow, Professor Emeritus of Art History at Princeton University, a specialist in late medieval illuminated manuscripts; and Lucy Freeman Sandler, Professor of Art History Emerita at New York University, a specialist in Gothic illuminated manuscripts. The makers of medieval illuminated manuscripts invested their books with sparkle and visual energy. They did so to stimulate delight, imagination, and memoryto make of them objects that fascinate and charm as well as instruct. One need have no knowledge of medieval languages or habits of thought to appreciate the high quality and the aesthetic ebullience of the finely crafted manuscripts shown here, for the very first time, to anyone interested in the ways that books help to define the social, intellectual, and imaginative horizons of their users.Customer Reviews:
Nice, but ..........2007-02-18
Average customer rating: |
The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)
Peter Barnet , and Nancy Wu Manufacturer: Metropolitan Museum of Art ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0300111428 |
Book Description
The Cloisters is the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. This splendid new guide, richly illustrated with more than 175 color pictures, offers a broad introduction to the remarkable history of The Cloisters as well as a lively and informative discussion of the treasures within.
Average customer rating:
|
Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Rosemary J. Barrow Manufacturer: Phaidon Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items: ASIN: 071484358X |
Book Description
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), was one of the finest and most distinctive of the Victorian painters. Dutch-born, he moved to London in 1870 and became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea and sky. In this original study, Rosemary Barrow presents an absorbing and often amusing portrait of an exuberant personality who carved out a brilliant career for himself at the heart of London's artistic and cultural elite. But above all she subjects the paintings to a fresh scrutiny, and reveals that Alma-Tadema, a knowledgeable student of antiquity, repeatedly used literary and archaeological allusions in his paintings to play a game of interpretation with his viewers. Time and again the seeming innocence of the scenes he depicts is subverted by a mischievously placed inscription or statue, suggesting to the initiated a darker and usually risque meaning. Neglected after his death, Alma-Tadema's paintings are once again admired for their beauty and their remarkable mastery of light, colour and texture. With its intriguing insights into his personality and intentions, this book should provide a challenging reassessment of a major artist.Customer Reviews:
Illustrations not good enough.......2007-03-09
An Artist of Classical Antiquity .......2006-08-24
A Flowing and Finely Tuned View of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.......2005-10-02
Excellent coverage of this Victorian Painter.......2005-09-17
At last I found a great book about Alma Tadema.......2002-08-29
Books:
Recommended Books