Other art forms
More general subjects:
More specific subjects:
Royal Jewels of Poland and Lithuania
Collections of the Jagiellon and Vasa Dynasts
This volume delves into the rich histories of the Jagiellon and Vasa dynasties shedding light on the profound interplay between jewellery and socio-political forces. Readers are invited into an era where jewellery bore multifaceted significance from symbolising power and piety to facilitating economic engagements. The royal perception of value extended beyond traditional treasures with a keen interest in animal-derived artefacts. These unconventional items such as elk hooves or eagle stones were highly esteemed reflecting both luxury’s diverse nature and the era’s cultural and mystical beliefs. Rather than merely cataloguing these artefacts this study animates them intertwining narratives of monarchs nobles craftsmen and the lands from which these treasures emerged. It delves into a world where a gem’s glint signifies might gold hints at empires’ expanse and a narwhal’s horn could determine kingdoms’ destinies. Jewellery has long held a central position in history particularly among the elite. These pieces were not simply decorative; they conveyed prestige societal position and authority. They symbolised both worldly and spiritual prominence enriched with a complex symbolism. Beyond showcasing wealth jewellery played crucial roles in diplomacy and politics. What meanings did these unique gems carry for their initial owners? This book uncovers the tales magnetism and mystery surrounding these jewellery collections. It paints a picture where jewellery transcends mere ornamentation serving as a powerful testament to influence devotion and grandeur.
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.
The Allure of Glazed Terracotta in Renaissance Italy
This book explores the role of glazed terracotta sculpture in Renaissance Italy from c. 1450 to the mid-1530s. In its brightness and intense colour glazed terracotta strongly attracted the viewer’s gaze. Its pure and radiant surfaces also had the power to raise the mind and soul of the faithful to contemplation of the divine. The quasi-magical process of firing earthenware coated with tin-based paste promoted initially by imports from the East was seized upon by Luca della Robbia who realised that glazed terracotta was the ideal vehicle for the numinous. He began to create sculptures in the medium in the 1430s and continued to produce them for the rest of his life. After Luca’s death his nephew Andrea della Robbia inherited his workshop in Florence and continued to develop the medium together with his sons. The book considers some of the large-scale altarpieces created by the Della Robbia family in parallel with a number of small-scale figures in glazed terracotta mostly made by unidentified sculptors. The captivating illustrations integrate these two categories of glazed terracotta sculpture into the history of Italian Renaissance art. By focusing on a specific artistic medium which stimulated piety in both ecclesiastical and domestic contexts this book offers new ways of thinking about the religious art of the Italian Renaissance. The links it establishes between lay devotion and the creation of religious images in glazed terracotta invite reassessment of habitual distinctions between private and public art.
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.
The Hidden Life of Textiles in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean
Contexts and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Islamic, Latinate and Eastern Christian Worlds
The book contains published papers of the conference 'Textiles & Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean: Paradigms of Contexts and Cross-Cultural Exchanges' of the British School at Athens held at the (Benaki) Museum of Islamic Art in 2016 as well as some new contributions.
The focus in this wide-ranging collection of studies by key scholars in the field is on textiles and their functions in various Mediterranean contexts (and beyond) during medieval and post-medieval times (ca. 10th-19th c.). The scope of the contributions encompasses archaeological anthropological and art historical perspectives on a great variety of subjects such as textiles from the Byzantine Empire and the Medieval Islamic World (e.g. Spain Mamluk Egypt Seljuk Anatolia) as well as the production and use of textiles in Italy the Ottoman Empire Armenia and Ethiopia. The volume offers a state-of-the-art of an often still hardly known area of study of textiles as historical and cultural sources of information which makes it essential reading for scholars and a larger audience alike.
The book includes contributions by Laura Rodríguez Peinado Ana Cabrera-Lafuente Avinoam Shalem Scott Redford Maria Sardi Vera-Simone Schulz Nikolaos Vryzidis Marielle Martiniani-Reber Elena Papastavrou Jacopo Gnisci and Dickran Kouymjian.
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.
Regards croisés sur le monument médiéval
Mélanges offerts à Claude Andrault-Schmitt
Claude Andrault-Schmitt a consacré la majeure partie de sa carrière d’enseignant-chercheur à l’étude des arts de l’ancien duché d’Aquitaine en accordant un intérêt particulier à l’architecture religieuse. Dans sa démarche intellectuelle elle s’est constamment interrogée sur les questions d’historiographie de méthodologie et d’épistémologie ce qui l’a amenée à défendre plusieurs principes qui lui sont chers : appliquer à l’architecture un vocabulaire adapté aux réalités et aux usages médiévaux se méfier des idées reçues héritées de l’historiographie et des étiquettes - à commencer par le traditionnel clivage entre le roman et le gothique - aborder les rapports entre les formes et les différentes fonctions d’une église et rassembler le plus grand nombre de disciplines autour d’un même édifice pour en comprendre toutes les facettes : historiens archéologues spécialistes des matériaux de l’épigraphie de l’iconographie musicologues.
À l’occasion de son départ à la retraite ses collègues et ses élèves ont souhaité lui rendre hommage en lui dédiant trente et une contributions reflétant ces différentes préoccupations regroupées dans quatre sections intitulées Contextualisations De l’archéologie monumentale à l’archéologie du bâti Les ordres réformés et Le décor monumental . Ces contributions forment ensemble un panorama très représentatif de l’état de la recherche actuelle dans ces différents domaines et des orientations encouragées par Claude Andrault-Schmitt que ce soit dans ses publications ou dans son enseignement.
The Power of Textiles
Tapestries of the Burgundian Dominions (1363–1477)
Textiles were used as markers of distinction throughout the Middle Ages and their production was of great economic importance to emerging and established polities. This book explores tapestry in one of the greatest textile producing regions the Burgundian Dominions c. 1363-1477. It uses documentary evidence to reconstruct and analyse the production manufacture and use of tapestry. It begins by identifying the suppliers of tapestry to the dukes of Burgundy and their ability to spin webs between city and court. It proceeds by considering the forms of tapestry and their functions for urban and courtly consumers. It then observes the ways in which tapestry constructed social relations as part of gift-giving strategies. It concludes by exploring what the re-use repair and remaking of tapestry reveals about its value to urban and courtly consumers. By taking an object-centred approach through documentary sources this book emphasises that the particular characteristics of tapestry shaped the strategies of those who supplied it and the ways it performed and constructed social relations. Thus the book offers a contribution to the historical understanding of textiles as objects that contributed to the projection of social status and the cultural construction of political authority in the Burgundian polity.
De l'iconographie racinienne, dessiner et peindre les passions
Les sujets des tragédies de Racine ont été transposés dans les arts visuels dès le XVII e siècle. Ils ont inspiré des tableaux à quelques peintres mais surtout ils ont agrémenté le livre à figures. Nous nous proposons d’étudier ces compositions dans un ensemble réunissant des œuvres exécutées de 1668 à 1815. Les représentations visuelles qui illustrent différents instants des pièces qui proposent des synthèses s’inscrivent dans des contextes de création témoins de la réception de Racine. Leur étude ne se départit ni des principes théoriques qui régissent les arts et le théâtre ni des convenances propres à chacun. En représentant les héros raciniens en montrant leurs corps malmenés par les passions les artistes ont instauré un dialogue entre le texte et l’image dont l’un des points de convergence est la quête de l’éloquence. Bien que leur inspiration littéraire s’inscrivît dans une longue tradition n’y avait-il pas une difficulté extrême à illustrer ces drames ? En effet comment se sont-ils approprié le vocabulaire visuel du poète quelle couleur ont-ils donnée aux lieux et aux costumes mais surtout par quel moyen ont-ils représenté les tensions et les passions ? Les artistes s’en sont acquittés avec une fortune inégale mais leurs œuvres méritent d’être étudiées analysées à la lumière des vers de Racine.
Biographie
Docteur en histoire de l’art moderne enseignante et conférencière ses recherches portent sur les rapports entre le texte et l’image. Cet essai prend appui sur les recherches entreprises dans le cadre de la thèse. De nombreux articles ont paru souvent consacrés à des problématiques iconographiques : « À la lueur d’une flamme Racine peintre de nocturnes » « Ornements et narrations le dialogue des motifs gravés » « Poétique racinienne et arts visuels » « De l’usage de la lettre dans la gravure d’illustration » « Le décor dans l’Histoire naturelle de Buffon » « Jacques de Sève illustrateur du théâtre de Racine ».
Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing
Textiles and their Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages
Christianity is a religion of clothing. To become a priest or a nun is to take the cloth. The Christian liturgy is intimately bound with veiling objects and revealing them. Cloths hide the altar making it all the more spectacular when it is revealed. Fragments of imported silk cradle the relic thereby giving identity to the dessicated bone. Much of that silk came from the east meaning that a material of Islamic origin was a primary signifier of sanctity in Christianity. Weaving Veiling and Dressing brings together twelve essays about text and textile about silk and wool about the formation of identity through fibre. The essays bring to light hitherto unseen material and for the first time establish the function of textiles as a culturally rich way to approach the Middle Ages. Textiles were omnipresent in the medieval church but have not survived well. To uncover their uses presence and meanings in the Middle Ages is to reconsider the period spun draped clothed shrouded and dressed. Textiles in particular were essential to the performance of devotion and of the liturgy. Brightly dyed cloth was a highly visible maker of meaning. While some aspects of culture have been studied namely the important tapestry industry as well as some of the repercussions and activities of cloth guilds other areas of textile studies in the period are yet to be studied. This book brings an interdisciplinary approach to new material drawing on art history anthropology medieval text history theology and gender and performance studies. It makes a compelling miscellany exploring the nature of Christianity in the largely uninvestigated field of text and textile interplay.
Decorations for the Holy Dead
Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints
Devotion to saints their cult and memory was enormously popular in medieval Europe. Factual evidence in the form of tombs shrines reliquaries pilgrimages vitae and souvenirs is legion and attests to the all-pervasive nature of the phenomenon. Despite the massive bibliography on hagiography few if any books are devoted entirely to the study of saints’ burial places. The purpose of the papers gathered here based on presentations sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds (1999) plus additional papers commissioned by the editors is to examine the interaction between the visual arts at specific loci sancti and saints’ cults and further to enquire whether a corpus of more unusual motifs appeared at saintly sites beyond the more predictable narrative symbolic and iconic representations of saints. The papers address the active role saints’ tombs and their embellishments assumed within the fabric of medieval society: rituals enacted at saints’ burial places altarpieces reliquaries cloister as shrine the aura of the venerable past secular burial near saints’ tombs and political and feminist elements in devotional practice. Monuments from Spain France Italy Greece Hungary and England are examined and the volume incorporates 104 illustrations.
The Emblem and Architecture: Studies in Applied Emblematics from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
This publication is a collection of essays on the function and significance of emblematic decoration of buildings in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century dealing with general issues involved in architectural emblematics while a number of the essays are case studies of specific types of building.
The emblematic decoration of buildings both secular and ecclesiastical was widespread in Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The function and significance of such decoration is however frequently overlooked. The two introductory essays seek to come to grips with the general issues involved in architectural emblematics. The remaining essays are case studies of specific types of building while the final two consider the relation of architecture to the book. The essays are revised versions of selected papers presented at an international conference on the subject held at the Canadian centre for Architecture in November 1994.