"Detecting numerous occasions when Joseph is invoked for protection from plague, foreign invasion, and threat to the Church, the author emphasizes the contemporary currency - in both theology and art - of the Maria-Ecclesia typology and concomitant conceptualization of St. Joseph as heroic protector of Mary and the Church. Here challenged are the long-held view of the saint's unimportance prior to the Counter Reformation and old assumption that pre-Tridentine images were often intended to demean him."--BOOK JACKET.

Images that tell the story of salvation illustrate saints in various scenes. They are often depicted by an emblem or icon. It used to be that we knew enough about the saints to recognize them in images or artworks without much trouble, but it is becoming a struggle. understanding the saints. This text explains such things as why so many of the saints appear in images with Jesus and the Virgin Mary, yet remain unnamed, which symbols are associated with each saint, and what their roles were in Christian salvation. work of popular religious culture and anthropology.

The altarpiece is one of the most distinctive and remarkable art forms of the Renaissance period. It is difficult to imagine an artist of the time--whether painter or sculptor, major or minor--who did not produce at least one. Though many have been displaced or dismembered, a substantial proportion of these works still survive. Despite the volume of material available, no serious attempt has ever been made to examine the whole subject in depth until now. The Italian Renaissance Altarpiece is the first comprehensive study of the genre to examine its content and subject matter in real detail, from the origins of the altarpiece in the 13th century to the time of Caravaggio in the early 1600s. It discusses major developments in the history of these objects throughout Italy, covers the three key categories of Renaissance altarpiece--"immagini" (icons), "historie" (narratives), and "misteri" (mysteries)--and is illustrated with 250 beautiful reproductions of the artworks.

The fourteenth century in Italy, the age of Giotto, Dante, and Boccaccio, widely known as the trecento, was a pivotal moment in art history and in European culture. The studies in this volume present new approaches to art in this important but often neglected period of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Scholars at various stages in their careers discuss a wide range of topics including architecture, cultural exchange, materiality, politics, patronage, and devotion, contributing to a new understanding of how art was made and experienced in this nodal century. These papers were originally presented at the Andrew Ladis Trecento Conference held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in November of 2018.

Frame Work explores how framing devices in the art of Renaissance Italy respond, and appeal, to viewers in their social, religious, and political context.

This is the first book which gives a general overview of women as subject-matter in Italian Renaissance painting. It presents a view of the interaction between artist and patron, and also of the function of these paintings in Italian society of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Using letters, poems, and treatises, it examines through the eyes of the contemporary viewer the way women were represented in paintings.

Stories of the torture and execution of beautiful Christian women first appeared in late antiquity and proliferated during the early Middle Ages. A thousand years later, virgin martyrs were still the most popular female saints. Their legends, in countless retellings through the centuries, preserved a standard plot—the heroine resists a pagan suitor, endures cruelties inflicted by her rejected lover or outraged family, works miracles, and dies for Christ. That sequence was embellished by incidents emblematic of the specific saint: Juliana's battle with the devil, Barbara's immurement in the tower, Katherine's encounter with spiked wheels. Karen A. Winstead examines this seemingly static story form and discovers subtle shifts in the representation of the virgin martyrs, as their legends were adapted for changing audiences in late medieval England.