"Dismantles the religious, political, and geographic walls that have separated medieval art and architecture and treats not only western Europe but also the Byzantine Empire and the Islamicate world from ca. 200 CE to ca. 1450 CE. Includes a wide variety of art forms, from large architectural complexes to small amulets printed on paper"--

Drawing on new work published over the past twenty years, the author offers a history of building in Western Europe from 300 to 1200. Medieval castles, church spires, and monastic cloisters are just some of the areas covered.

Presents a chronological introduction to Medieval art, including stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, mural and panel paintings, metalwork, tapestries, sculpture, and architecture.

The architecture of the Middle Ages is still vividly present in the cities of Europe. This highly pictorial text provides information on medieval buildings, introducing the fundamentals and the unique features of the Romanesque and Gothic art of building, and especially of sacred buildings.

Earliest Christian art - Saints and holy places - Holy images - Artistic production for the wealthy - Icons & iconography.

Traditional histories of medieval art and architecture often privilege the moment of a work’s creation, yet surviving works designated as "medieval" have long and expansive lives. Many have extended prehistories emerging from their sites and contexts of creation, and most have undergone a variety of interventions, including adaptations and restorations, since coming into being. The lives of these works have been further extended through historiography, museum exhibitions, and digital media. Inspired by the literary category of biography and the methods of longue durée historians, the introduction and seventeen chapters of this volume provide an extended meditation on the longevity of medieval works of art and the aspect of time as a factor in shaping our interpretations of them. While the metaphor of "lives" invokes associations with the origin of the discipline of art history, focus is shifted away from temporal constraints of a single human lifespan or generation to consider the continued lives of medieval works even into our present moment. Chapters on works from the modern countries of Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany are drawn together here by the thematic threads of essence and continuity, transformation, memory and oblivion, and restoration. Together, they tell an object-oriented history of art and architecture that is necessarily entangled with numerous individuals and institutions.

A fully updated and comprehensive companion to Romanesque and Gothic art history This definitive reference brings together cutting-edge scholarship devoted to the Romanesque and Gothic traditions in Northern Europe and provides a clear analytical survey of what is happening in this major area of Western art history. The volume comprises original theoretical, historical, and historiographic essays written by renowned and emergent scholars who discuss the vibrancy of medieval art from both thematic and sub-disciplinary perspectives. Part of the Blackwell Companions to Art History, A Companion to Medieval Art, Second Edition features an international and ambitious range of contributions covering reception, formalism, Gregory the Great, pilgrimage art, gender, patronage, marginalized images, the concept of spolia, manuscript illumination, stained glass, Cistercian architecture, art of the crusader states, and more. Newly revised edition of a highly successful companion, including 11 new articles Comprehensive coverage ranging from vision, materiality, and the artist through to architecture, sculpture, and painting Contains full-color illustrations throughout, plus notes on the book’s many distinguished contributors A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, Second Edition is an exciting and varied study that provides essential reading for students and teachers of Medieval art.

Medieval architecture comprises much more than the traditional image of Gothic cathedrals and the castles of chivalry. A great variety of buildings--synagogues, halls, and barns--testify to the diverse communities and interests in western Europe in the centuries between 1150 and 1550. This book looks at their architecture from an entirely fresh perspective, shifting the emphasis away from such areas as France towards the creativity of other regions, including central Europe and Spain. Treating the subject thematically, Coldstream seeks out what all buildings, both religious and secular, have in common, and how they reflect the material and spiritual concerns of the people who built and used them. Furthermore, the author considers how and why, after four centuries of shaping the landscapes and urban patterns of Europe, medieval styles were superseded by classicism.

Discusses the techniques, uses, and aesthetics of medieval drawings; and reproduces work from more than fifty manuscripts produced between the ninth and early fourteenth century.