Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings


Book Description

In this collaborative work seventeen international scholars use contemporary methodologies to address the ways in which we understand Gothic church buildings today. Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings discusses major monuments that have traditionally stood at the core of medieval art-historical studies: the cathedrals of Durham, Wells, Chartres, Reims, Poitiers, Strasbourg, and Naumburg, the abbey of Saint-Denis, and the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris. The contributors approach the subject from different specialties and methodologies within the field of art history, as well as from the disciplines of history, liturgical studies, and theology. Willibald Sauerl)nder's overview acknowledges that since the early nineteenth century scholars have been confronted with monuments that no longer perform their original functions. The moment of the creation of these great cages of stone, filled with images in metal, paint, glass, stone, and textiles, has passed as surely as Villon's `snows of yesteryear.' Artistic intentions shifted continuously over the centuries as these great buildings were adapted to new situations, historical, cultural, and religious. Once the settings for complex and diversified rituals of religious, social, and political dimensions, the buildings today stand in a completely different time frame and are experienced by a different audience. This volume addresses the hermeneutics of the development of scholarship concerning the Gothic church, reviewing the variable, but largely exclusive, agendas from the early nineteenth century to the present, including those of Viollet-le-Duc, Lef¦vre-Pontalis, M+le, Sedlmayr, Von Simson, Panofsky, Grodecki, and Bony. The conclusion is that there is no way to return to the original Gothic cathedral or the original audience. Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings reassesses the traditional canon through a new pluralism of approaches and presents the Gothic church as an intricate and complex living monument that has been evolving over eight centuries and more.




A Companion to Medieval Art


Book Description

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.




Gothic Architecture


Book Description

This magisterial study of Gothic architecture traces the meaning and development of the Gothic style through medieval churches across Europe. Ranging geographically from Poland to Portugal and from Sicily to Scotland and chronologically from 1093 to 1530, the book analyzes changes from Romanesque to Gothic as well as the evolution within the Gothic style and places these changes in the context of the creative spirit of the Middle Ages. In its breadth of outlook, its command of detail, and its theoretical enterprise, Frankl's book has few equals in the ambitious Pelican History of Art series. It is single-minded in its pursuit of the general principles that informed all aspects of Gothic architecture and its culture. In this edition Paul Crossley has revised the original text to take into account the proliferation of recent literature--books, reviews, exhibition catalogues, and periodicals--that have emerged in a variety of languages. New illustrations have also been included.




Believing and Seeing


Book Description

Developments in medieval science that elevated sight above the other senses found religious expression in the Christian emphasis on miracles, relics, and elaborate structures. In his incisive survey of Gothic art and architecture, Roland Recht argues that this preoccupation with vision as a key to religious knowledge profoundly affected a broad range of late medieval works. In addition to the great cathedrals of France, Recht explores key religious buildings throughout Europe to reveal how their grand designs supported this profusion of images that made visible the signs of scripture. Metalworkers, for example, fashioned intricate monstrances and reliquaries for the presentation of sacred articles, and technical advances in stained glass production allowed for more expressive renderings of holy objects. Sculptors, meanwhile, created increasingly naturalistic works and painters used multihued palettes to enhance their subjects’ lifelike qualities. Reimagining these works as a link between devotional practices in the late Middle Ages and contemporaneous theories that deemed vision the basis of empirical truth, Recht provides students and scholars with a new and powerful lens through which to view Gothic art and architecture.




Lateness and Modernity in Medieval Architecture


Book Description

This volume engages with notions of lateness and modernity in medieval architecture, broadly conceived geographically, temporally, methodologically, and theoretically. It aims to (re)situate secular and religious buildings from the 14th through the 16th centuries that are indebted to medieval building practices and designs, within the more established narratives of art and architectural history.




A Companion to Medieval Art


Book Description

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.




Framing the Church


Book Description

Examines Gothic architecture and the visual and cultural significance of the adoption of externalized buttressing systems in twelfth-century France. Demonstrates how buttressing frames operated as sites of display, points of transition, and mechanisms of demarcation.




Thirteenth-century Wall Painting of Salisbury Cathedral


Book Description

Revisionist study of the wall-paintings of Salisbury Cathedral, setting them in the context of thirteenth-century religious reform.




The Four Modes of Seeing


Book Description

Borrowing its title from Madeline Harrison Caviness's influential work on the modes of seeing articulated by the twelfth-century cleric Richard of Saint Victor, this interdisciplinary collection brings together the work of thirty scholars from England, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. Each author has contributed an original article that engages with ideas formulated in Caviness's wide-ranging scholarship. The historiographic introduction discusses themes in Caviness's publications and their importance for art historical and medieval studies today. The book's thematic matrix groups together essays concerned with: The Material Object, Documentary Reconstruction, Post-Disciplinary Approaches, Multiple Readings, Gender and Reception, Performativity, Text and Image, Collecting and Consumption, and Politics and Ideology. The contributors include curators, art historians, historians, and literary scholars. Their subjects range from medieval stained glass to the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival, the Sachsenspiegel, and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Many foreground issues of gender, reception, and textuality, which have permeated Caviness's scholarship. Some also present approaches to sites that have been the subject of important studies by Caviness, including Canterbury, Chartres, Reims, Saint-Denis, Sens, and Troyes. The volume offers a broad range of methodological approaches to key topics in the study of medieval imagery and thus highlights the vitality of the field today.




New Approaches to Medieval Architecture


Book Description

This collection of essays presents the exciting and innovative work being done in the field of medieval architectural history by scholars affiliated with AVISTA, one of the most active sponsors of such research in the Anglo-American scholarly community. These studies constitute a snapshot of the range of new interpretive strategies being deployed by researchers in the reassessment of previous scholarship and identification of new modes of inquiry. In recent years, the study of medieval architecture has been transformed by the emergence of new critical perspectives and new technologies. The contributors to this book are among those at the forefront of these developments. Several of the essays present dramatic reinterpretations of canonical monuments including the Abbey of Saint-Denis, Beauvais Cathedral and Notre-Dame in Paris. Others consider broader methodological issues such as the applications of geometry, workshop practice, and the shaping of historical narratives. Still others demonstrate how high-tech scanning and visualization methods can enhance our understanding of construction methods and the behavior of buildings. The publication of this collection of pioneering essays should foster further exploration by clarifying the state of research, by establishing specific historical arguments, and by providing models of inquiry to inspire emerging scholars.