Christian art
More general subjects:
L’Église et les églises
Iconographie du monde grégorien
Vers le milieu du xi e siècle le pape s’empare d’un projet à vocation universelle : la réforme de l'Église. L'initiative entraîne à de profonds changements de société et au renouvellement des formes et moyens d'expression architecturaux et iconographiques. Nouveau chapitre dans un débat ancien ouvert dans les années 1970 par Hélène Toubert et Ernst Kitzinger et sans cesse réinvesti par les spécialistes du roman l'ouvrage vise à mieux comprendre la réception artistique des idées de réforme à Rome en Italie et en France. L’enquête procède par cumul d’expériences acquises sur des monuments singuliers et emblématiques des XIe et XIIe siècles. Elle révèle la diversité des discours et des solutions en écho à leur temps et à leur lieu et montre aussi l’unité des répertoires iconographiques des systèmes de pensée et des enjeux tous liés au nouveau modèle de la société chrétienne.
The Nun’s Cell as Mirror, Memoir, and Metaphor in Convent Life
Study of the Models of Nuns’ Cells from the Collection of the Trésors de Ferveur
In the eighteenth through the early twentieth century French nuns from various orders created miniature simulacra of the cells in which they slept studied and performed their devotions. Each diorama contains an effigy of the nun a prie-Dieu devotional objects such as a crucifix handiwork and artifacts to foster study and contemplation. This book examines the lives of the brides of Christ as depicted in these dioramas proposing that the material objects found in the chambers trace the contours of the collective and individual identities of the nuns who created these cells. Viewed as a type of memoir the cells furnish the sisters a stage upon which to rehearse the meaning of their lives. The dioramas create a tension between the private and public presentations of the self between verisimilitude and self-fashioning and between reality and representation. The book contextualizes the miniature cells within the larger discourse of gender identity self-representation monastic devotion and the power wielded by the aesthetics of scale.
Images, signes et paroles dans l’Occident médiéval
Cet ouvrage rassemble dix contributions qui proposent des perspectives originales pour l’analyse conjointe des modes d’expression figurée de l'Occident médiéval. Menées tant par des « historiens de l’art » que par des « historiens » elles abordent la question de l’image-objet des signes alphabétiques et iconiques du lieu peint de la liturgie et de la prédication. Documents d’archives exégèse biblique sermons et récits hagiographiques sont exploités de manière fine et exhaustive pour rendre compte au plus près du contexte d’exécution des œuvres qu’elles soient inconnues ou célèbres. Ce sont alors les angles d’approches adoptés comme l’anthropologie des images ou les études transgenre mais aussi les relations complexes entre art architecture et rites qui enrichissent ici l’exploration et d’objets de culte - les lipsanothèques catalanes les linges de l’autel ou les ex-voto - et de panneaux peints - comme la Flagellation du Christ de Piero della Francesca - et des cycles de peintures décorant la Tour Ferrande à Pernes-les-Fontaines San Pellegrino à Bominaco et cinq chapelles de la Ligurie et du Piémont.
The Medieval Dominicans
Books, Buildings, Music, and Liturgy
The Order of Preachers has famously bred some of the leading intellectual lights of the Middle Ages. While Dominican achievements in theology philosophy languages law and sciences have attracted much scholarly interest their significant engagement with liturgy the visual arts and music remains relatively unexplored. These aspects and their manifold interconnections form the focal point of this interdisciplinary volume.
The different chapters examine how early Dominicans positioned themselves and interacted with their local communities where they drew their influences from and what impact the new Order had on various aspects of medieval life. The contributors to this volume address issues as diverse as the making and illustrating of books services for a king the disposition of liturgical space the creation of new liturgies and a Dominican-made music treatise. In doing so they seek to shed light on the actions and interactions of medieval Dominicans in the first centuries of the Order’s existence.
Christian Maps of the Holy Land
Images and Meanings
This book offers a way of reading maps of the Holy Land as visual imagery with religious connotations. Through a corpus of representative examples created between the sixth and the nineteenth centuries it studies the maps as iconic imagery of an iconic landscape and analyses their strategies to manifest the spiritual quality of the biblical topography to support religious tenets and to construct and preserve cultural memory.
Maps of the Holy Land have thus far been studied with methodologies such as cartography and historical geography while the main question addressed was the reliability of the maps as cartographic documents. Through another perspective and using the methodology of visual studies this book reveals that maps of the Holy Land constructed religious messages and were significant instruments through which different Christian cultures (Byzantine Catholic Protestant and Greek Orthodox) shaped their religious identities. It does not seek to ascertain how the maps delivered geographical information but rather how they utilized the geographical information in formulating religious and cultural values.
Through its examination of maps of the Holy Land this book thus explores both Christian visual culture and Christian spirituality throughout the centuries.
Les stratégies de la narration dans la peinture médiévale
La représentation de l’Ancien Testament aux iv e-xii e siècles
Depuis les débuts de l’art chrétien l’Ancien Testament a reçu une place singulièr dans le décor des églises comme dans l’illustration des manuscrits. Certaines formules conçues aux IVe-Ve siècles se sont imposées durant tout le Moyen Âge comme celles de Saint-Pierre de Rome et une influence encore plus large a longtemps été attribuée à la Genèse Cotton ou à son modèle. Les oeuvres médiévales ne reproduisent toutefois presque jamais servilement celles qui les ont précédées. Les concepteurs les ont constamment réélaborées pour des raisons probablement multiples : adapter la composition au cadre imposé par l’architecture ou le découpage du folio optimiser les ressorts de la narration pour en faciliter la lecture ou toucher plus efficacement la sensibilité du spectateur enchaîner les scènes pour entraîner le regard dans le sens de la lecture ou relier sémantiquement deux épisodes voisins induire un sens spécifique inspiré par la théologie ou la liturgie ou encore exprimer visuellement des ambitions institutionnelles voire politiques. Les quinze articles réunis dans cet ouvrage développent ces questionnements en les appliquant à des ensembles peints ou en mosaïque représentatifs de la période envisagée : les oeuvres conservées ou perdues des premiers siècles Saint-Pierre de Rome Saint-Paul-hors-les-Murs et leurs avatars médiévaux les bibles carolingiennes de Tours et celles de Ripoll Galliano les autres ensembles lombards Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe Château-Gontier Palerme et Monreale. Pour enrichir cette réflexion le champ d’investigation a été étendu aux cycles néotestamentaires des églises médiobyzantines et aux mosaïques de Saint-Marc de Venise. Dans la conclusion Herbert Kessler propose en effet une mise au point stimulante sur la délicate question de la Genèse Cotton en nuançant son influence sur le cycle vénitien. L’ouvrage offre ainsi un panorama très complet de la représentation de l’Ancien Testament et une réflexion foisonnante sur les stratégies de la narration.
The Art and Architecture of the Cistercians in Northern England, c. 1300–1540
The Cistercian abbeys of northern England provide some of the finest monastic remains in all of Europe and much has been written on their twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture. The present study is the first in-depth analysis of the art and architecture of these northern houses and nunneries in the late Middle Ages and questions many long-held opinions about the Order’s perceived decline during the period c.1300-1540. Extensive building works were conducted between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries at well-known abbeys such as Byland Fountains Kirkstall and Rievaulx and also at lesser-known houses including Calder and Holm Cultram and at many convents of Cistercian nuns. This study examines the motives of Cistercian patrons and the extent to which the Order continued to enjoy the benefaction of lay society.
Featuring over a hundred illustrations and eight colour plates this book demonstrates that the Cistercians remained at the forefront of late medieval artistic developments and also shows how the Order expressed its identity in its visual and material cultures until the end of the Middle Ages.
Ritual and Art across the Danish Reformation
Changing Interiors of Village Churches, 1450-1600
This volume presents a thorough study of the more than a thousand preserved Danish medieval rural parish churches. It traces the transformations of church interiors from c. 1450 to 1600 (thus covering both the emergence and impact of the Danish Reformation) by interpreting material changes within a broad historical perspective that highlights changes in religious practices and liturgy. The book explores the spatial and artistic implications of liturgy as well as the role of the congregation the donor and the clergy both in shaping and disrupting these interiors. It sets out to answer four basic questions: What did these rural churches look like by the middle of the fifteenth century? How did they change from the middle of the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth? How were they used and integrated into public as well as private ceremonies? And how may these churches have been perceived and experienced by the congregation and clergy?
This study seeks to establish a methodological framework that incorporates the disciplines of archaeology art history history and theology in order to facilitate an overall understanding of the architectural setting embracing spatial material and artistic elements within the church through liturgy.
Regina Cœli. Les images mariales et le culte des reliques
Entre Orient et Occident au Moyen Âge
Les images-reliquaires dont la singularité attire notre attention se définissent par la complexité de leur composition tant au point de vue artistique qu’au point de vue religieux. Il s’agit ici des peintures sur panneau de bois (plus rarement sur verre églomisé) ayant fonction de porte-reliques et décorées dans certains cas de pierres précieuses ou semi-précieuses. Le modèle de tableau-reliquaire : panneau unique diptyque et triptyque comprenant le portrait de la Vierge à l’Enfant enchâssé dans une large bordure incrustée de reliques se répandit particulièrement dans la péninsule italienne et par la suite en Europe centrale. Cependant les reliquaires polonais connus sur le territoire de la Petite-Pologne durant le xv e siècle jusqu’au début du siècle suivant ne sont mentionnés que de manière sporadique dans l’histoire de l’art. Ils sont apparus dans quelques articles mais sans avoir fait l’objet d’aucune analyse spécifique quant à leur contenu iconographique leur similarité formelle ainsi qu’à l’égard de leur usage dévotionnel. C’est pourquoi nous souhaitons les joindre aux créations semblables répandues dans l’art entre Orient et Occident au Moyen Âge. Dans la même optique il serait également intéressant de s’interroger sur la continuité de tels objets au-delà de l’époque médiévale.
Monuments & Memory: Christian Cult Buildings and Constructions of the Past
Essays in honour of Sible de Blaauw
This volume honours Sible de Blaauw on the occasion of his retirement from Radboud University. It is above all a tribute to an influential and respected voice in the field of early Christian art and architecture. Thirty-one authors have sought to provide their own unique answer to the question of how Christian cult buildings have played a role in cultural memory in different periods and in various geographical and cultural contexts. From its very onset this publication was envisioned as a parallel to De Blaauw’s own research interests: Rome and its monuments early Christianity Christian religious heritage liturgy and architecture continuity of tradition and memory. The contributions have been arranged according to three sections: Monuments - Places - Decoration & Liturgical Furnishing. Every essay addresses the memorial potential of Christian buildings of their location or of the accoutrement whether or not still in situ. Not surprisingly Rome re-appears frequently in all sections with Rome’s churches receiving special attention. Together the essays cover a period from Late Antiquity to modern times from Helena to Gerhard Richter from late antique poets to a Ravennesque mosaic in the 1930s. Thus this volume assumes the diachronic nature that characterizes De Blaauw’s own scholarship. The leitmotifs of Christian cult and material and immaterial constructions of the past tie together the sections as well as the book as a whole. Nevertheless the main binding element between the essays is their authors’ fondness and appreciation of Sible de Blaauw.
From Hus to Luther
Visual Culture in the Bohemian Reformation (1380-1620)
This book portrays a little-known phenomenon in Bohemian cultural and political history - the visual culture that grew up in the environment of Reformation churches in Bohemia from the time of the Hussites until the defeat of the Estates by the Habsburg coalition at White Mountain in 1620. It provides the first comprehensive overview of a forgotten era of artistic production over a period of approximately two hundred years when most of the population of Bohemia professed non-Catholic faiths.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a unique situation arose in Bohemia with five main Christian denominations (Utraquists Lutherans the Unity of Brethren Calvinists and Catholics) gradually coming to function alongside each other with a number of other religious groups also active. The main churches which had a fundamental influence on political stability in the state were the majority Utraquists and the minority Catholics. Yet the essays of this book establish that despite the particularities of the Bohemian situation the religious trends of Bohemia were an integral part of the process of Reformation across Europe.
Featuring over fifty illustrations including manuscript illumination panel painting and architecture the book also presents the surviving cultural products of the four non-Catholic Christian denominations ranging from the more moderate to radical Reformation cultures. The book also analyses the attitudes of these denominations to religious representations and illuminates their uses of visual media in religious and confessional communication. The book thus opens up both the Reformation culture of Bohemia and its artistic heritage to an international audience.