Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries the Western world witnessed a glorious flowering of the pictorial arts. In this lavishly illustrated book, C.R. Dodwell provides a comprehensive guide to all forms of this art--from wall and panel paintings to stained glass windows, mosaics, and embroidery--and sets them against the historical and theological influences of the age. Dodwell describes the rise and development of some of the great styles of the Middle Ages: Carolingian art, which ranged from the splendid illuminations appropriate to an emperor's court to drawings of great delicacy; Anglo-Saxon art, which had a rare vitality and finesse; Ottonian art with its political and spiritual messages; the colorful Mozarabic art of Spain, which had added vigor through its interaction with the barbaric Visigoths; and the art of Italy, influenced by the styles of Byzantium and the West. Dodwell concludes with an examination of the universal Romanesque style of the twelfth century that extended from the Scandinavian countries in the north to Jerusalem in the south. His book--which includes the first exhaustive discussion of the painters and craftsmen of the time, incorporates the latest research, and is filled with new ideas about the relations among the arts, history, and theology of the period--will be an invaluable resource for both art historians and students of the Middle Ages.

This is the first comprehensive study of Greek language ordinary chants (Gloria/Doxa, Credo/Pisteuo, Sanctus/Hagios and Agnus Dei/Amnos tu theu) in Western manuscripts from the 9th to 14th centuries. These chants – known as “Missa Graeca” – have been the subject of academic research for over a hundred years. So far, however, research has been almost exclusively from a Western point of view, without knowledge of the Byzantine sources. For the first time, this book presents an in-depth analysis of these chants and their historical, linguistic and theological-liturgical environment from a Byzantine perspective. The new approach enables the author to refute numerous (and largely contradictory) theories on the origin and development of the Missa Graeca and provides new answers to old questions.

Architectural sculpture, virtually abandoned for five hundred years following the demise of the Roman Empire, was revivified on the portals of Romanesque churches in eleventh and twelfth-century France and Spain. Long overdue is a reappraisal of those images whose aesthetic of rendering the invisible visible establish them as valuable witnesses to the culture of Europe in the Middle Ages. Countless losses, mutilation through wilful destruction, centuries of accumulated grime, and a dearth of studies in English have impeded the deserved realization and appreciation of these magnificent works of art. Through illustration and illuminative interpretation, Romanesque Sculpture An Ecstatic Art fills the void by tracing the beginnings, maturation, and efflorescence of monumental sculptured facades in the short-lived Romanesque era. Depictions on them are mirrors of the age: sophisticated theological messages, monastic life, the cult of relics, pilgrimages, crusades and politics. The survey considers too the sculptors, mostly anonymous, who in adapting models from several media - both antique and current - created a unique visual vocabulary. The beauty of the sculptures comes to the fore. The stones live ...

This is the second volume of one of the finest general introductions to the medieval world of recent times, first published in French by Armand Colin. Volume II begins at the turn of the millennium and covers the extraordinary rebirth of Europe, in terms of demographic expansion, agrarian settlement and organisation, the establishment of towns and villages, the ascendancy of the feudal system, the appearance of formal states and kingdoms, and the dramatic controlling ascendancy of the western Church. In the east, despite the external appearance of grandeur, the Islamic countries were being torn apart by mutual rivalry, while the Byzantime empire lost massive border territories through political and economic incompetence. Full coverage is given to both east and west, and their artistic heritage is displayed lavishly in many of the colour plates. A comprehensive bibliography is also included.

These essays address how narratives unfolded in time and space when a body or object moved through premodern architectural or natural environments. Such narratives encompass interpretations of topography, change in built environments over time, and spaces for public assembly.

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.

"The sixteen papers collected in this volume explore points of contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic worlds between c. 1000 and c. 1250. They arise from a conference organized by the British Archaeological Association in Palermo in 2012, and reflect its interest in patterns of cultural exchange across the Mediterranean, ranging from the importation of artefacts - textiles, ceramics, ivories and metalwork for the most part - to a specific desire to recruit eastern artists or emulate eastern Mediterranean buildings. The individual essays cover a wide range of topics and media: from the ways in which the Cappella Palatina in Palermo fostered contacts between Muslim artists and Christian models, the importance of dress and textiles in the wider world of Mediterranean design, and the possible use of Muslim-trained sculptors in the emergent architectural sculpture of late-11th-century northern Spain, to the significance of western saints in the development of Bethlehem as a pilgrimage centre and of eastern painters and techniques in the proliferation of panel painting in Catalonia around 1200. There are studies of buildings and the ideological purpose behind them at Canosa (Apulia), Feldebro (Hungary) and Charroux (Aquitaine), comparative studies of the domed churches of western France, significant reappraisals of the porphyry tombs in Palermo cathedral, the pictorial programme adopted in the Baptistery at Parma, and of the chapter-house paintings at Sigena, and wide-ranging papers on the migration of images of exotic creatures across the Mediterranean and on that most elusive and apparently Mediteranean of objects - the Oliphant. The volume concludes with a study of the emergence of a supra-regional style of architectural sculpture in the western Mediterranean and evident in Barcelona, Tarragona and Provence. It is a third volume, based on the British Archaeological Association's 2014 Conference in Barcelona, will explore Romanesque Patrons and Processes."

In the first book of its kind, art information expert Lois Swan Jones discusses how to locate visual and textual information on the Internet and how to evaluate and supplement that information with material from other formats--print sources, CD-ROMS, documentary videos, and microfiche sets--to produce excellent research results. The book is divided into three sections: Basic Information Formats; Types of Websites and How to Find Them; and How to Use Web Information. Jones discusses the strengths and limitations of Websites; scholarly and basic information resources are noted; and search strategies for finding pertinent Websites are included. Art Information and the Internet also discusses research methodology for studying art-historical styles, artists working in various media, individual works of art, and non-Western cultures--as well as art education, writing about art, problems of copyright, and issues concerning the buying and selling of art. This title will be periodically updated.

The first comprehensive study of the European book in the historical period known as the 'long twelfth century' (1075-1225).