Presents evidence that the portals were carved by four master sculptors and five assistants in the middle 1140s

This study examines the development of Gothic sculpture throughout Europe. It discusses the most famous monuments, such as the cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens and Reims, Westminster Abbey and the Siena Duomo, and less familiar buildings in France, England, Italy, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia.

(The open access version of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.) The book proposes a reassessment of royal portraiture and its function in the Middle Ages via a comparative analysis of works from different areas of the Mediterranean world, where images are seen as only one outcome of wider and multifarious strategies for the public mise-en-scène of the rulers’ bodies. Its emphasis is on the ways in which medieval monarchs in different areas of the Mediterranean constructed their outward appearance and communicated it by means of a variety of rituals, object-types, and media. Contributors are Michele Bacci, Nicolas Bock, Gerardo Boto Varela, Branislav Cvetković, Sofia Fernández Pozzo, Gohar Grigoryan Savary, Elodie Leschot, Vinni Lucherini, Ioanna Rapti, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Marta Serrano-Coll, Lucinia Speciale, Manuela Studer-Karlen, Mirko Vagnoni, and Edda Vardanyan.

This volume offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in the celebrated 'Grove Dictionary of Art' and adding hundreds of new entries, it offers students, researchers and the general public a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient resource covering this field of major importance in the development of Western history and international art and architecture.

Richly illustrated, Early Gothic Column-Figure Sculpture in France is a comprehensive investigation of church portal sculpture installed between the 1130s and the 1170s. At more than twenty great churches, beginning at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis and extending around Paris from Provins in the east, south to Bourges and Dijon, and west to Chartres and Angers, larger than life-size statues of human figures were arranged along portal jambs, many carved as if wearing the dress of the highest ranks of French society. This study takes a close look at twelfth-century human figure sculpture, describing represented clothing, defining the language of textiles and dress that would have been legible in the twelfth-century, and investigating rationale and significance. The concepts conveyed through these extraordinary visual documents and the possible motivations of the patrons of portal programs with column-figures are examined through contemporaneous historical, textual, and visual evidence in various media. Appendices include analysis of sculpture production, and the transportation and fabrication in limestone from Paris. Janet Snyder's new study considers how patrons used sculpture to express and shape perceived reality, employing images of textiles and clothing that had political, economic, and social significances.

This is an English-language study on the architecture and art of medieval France of the Romanesque and Gothic periods between 1000-1500. In addition to essays on individual monuments there are general discussions of given periods and specific problems such as: why did Gothic come into being? Whitney Stoddard explores the interrelationship between all forms of medieval ecclesiastical art and characterization of the Gothic cathedral, which he believes to have an almost metaphysical basis.

The classic work on Gothic religious architecture, now with added illustrations and a new section by the author on rose windows No other monument of a culture so radically different from our own is as much a part of contemporary life as the Gothic cathedral. In this illuminating book, esteemed art historian Otto Georg von Simson explores how Gothic architecture is an expression of supernatural reality, and shows how, to those who designed and worshipped in the great cathedrals of France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this symbolic function of sacred architecture overshadowed all others. The Gothic Cathedral takes readers from the birth of the Gothic style with the Basilica of St.-Denis to the consummation of the form in the majestic Cathedral of Chartres, revealing how these incomparable architectural masterpieces embodied the spiritual and intellectual order of the medieval world.