Flemish Miniatures from the 8th to the Mid-16th Century


Book Description

A beautiful overview of the development in style of the miniature. From the anonymous and modest early Romanesque illustrations to the luxurious late Gothic miniatures of Simon Marmion or Lucas Horenbout who, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, exported their Flemish masterpieces as far afield as Spain and Russia. Never before has the reader-viewer been presented with such a complete overview of the art of Flemish miniatures from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries. Never before has a book presented such a fascinating history of eight centuries of the art of miniatures from the Low Countries. Never before have so many miniatures - more then 600 colour illustrations - been reproduced in one book. This publication offers an overview of the style of the Flemish miniature, from the anonymous and modest early Romanesque illustrations to the luxurious late Gothic miniatures, some of which were exported as far afield as Spain and Russia.




Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context


Book Description

A companion to the Getty’s prize-winning exhibition catalogue Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, this volume contains thirteen selected papers presented at two conferences held in conjunction with that exhibition. The first was organized by the Getty Museum, and the second was held at the Courtauld Institute of Art under the sponsorship of the Courtauld Institute and the Royal Academy of Arts. Added here is an essay by Margaret Scott on the role of dress during the reign of Charles the Bold. Texts include Lorne Campbell’s research into Rogier van der Weyden’s work as an illuminator, Nancy Turner’s investigation of materials and methods of painting in Flemish manuscripts, and trenchant commentary by Jonathan Alexander and James Marrow on the state of current research on Flemish illumination. A recurring theme is the structure of collaboration in manuscript production. The essays also reveal an important new patron of manuscript illumination and address the role of illuminated manuscripts at the Burgundian court. A series of biographies of Burgundian scribes is featured.




Excavating the Medieval Image


Book Description

Medieval images, especially manuscript illuminations, have long been treated independently of the contexts in which they were created. These beautiful miniature paintings, frequently valued as keepers of documentary evidence or as curious artistic commodities, have only recently become the focus of art historians concerned with new questions related to artistic working methods, audience and the status of the visual in the Middle Ages and the modern era. Excavating the Medieval Image argues that the illuminated image is best understood as thoroughly integrated in the material context of the manuscript - and thus, integrated in a cultural context of production and reception. Seen in this way, the illuminated manuscript becomes a kind of archaeological site, which must be carefully unearthed layer by layer. The fourteen essays gathered here are written by scholars of both medieval and Renaissance art history, and demonstrate varied methodological approaches that combine the pursuits of traditional connoisseurship and iconography with those of critical theory and historiography. In addition, the authors contribute more broadly to important interdisciplinary issues such as the study of gender, text and image, and the history of literacy and the book.




Piety in Pieces


Book Description

Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?




Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe


Book Description

Nowadays, many take for granted that time is quantifiable and measurable; did the people of medieval Europe feel the same way? How was their perception of time influenced by their religious faith? How did their faith change over time? This book collects various attempts to trace changes to perceptions of time throughout medieval Europe by examining both how time was a spiritual experience for medieval people and how spiritual experiences changed over time in the Middle Ages. The essays in this volume demonstrate from a variety of perspectives that Christian faith was extremely malleable in the late-medieval period, and that various artists, scribes, and writers negotiated with their spiritual tradition. These are the “spiritual temporalities” of the medieval world, and by studying them we gain an understanding of how medieval culture was a dynamic gathering of different voices, movements, and beliefs, which constantly influenced and changed one another.




Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape


Book Description

In the early sixteenth century, Albrecht Altdorfer promoted landscape from its traditional role as background to its new place as the focal point of a picture. His paintings, drawings, and etchings appeared almost without warning and mysteriously disappeared from view just as suddenly. In Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, Christopher S. Wood shows how Altdorfer transformed what had been the mere setting for sacred and historical figures into a principal venue for stylish draftsmanship and idiosyncratic painterly effects. At the same time, his landscapes offered a densely textured interpretation of that quintessentially German locus—the forest interior. This revised and expanded second edition contains a new introduction, revised bibliography, and fifteen additional illustrations.







Made in Flanders


Book Description

The subject of this monograph is the prolific mid-fifteenth-century Flemish book illuminator whom Friedrich Winkler first identified and named in 1915 after a richly decorated copy of the statutes and privileges of Ghent and Flanders made for Philip the Good, duke of Burgungy (Vienna, Ost. National-bibl., Cod.2583). While no fewer than 15 codices and cuttings have been ascribed to the painter in the 80 years since Winkler's pioneering essay, there has been no published effort to date to order, analyze, and evaluate the work of the Ghent Privileges Master in the larger context of the history and arts of the Burgundian Netherlands. The monograph's essay is divided into five chapters. The first caracterizes the style of the Vienna Privileges itself and then carefully trace its origins and development. Compositional and iconographic sources, innovations, and problems are identified and analyzed in the second chapter; ancillary decoration -especially decorated initials and floral borders- are described and localized and collaborating miniaturists identified in the third. In the fourth chapter the stylistic evidence obtained in the first three chapters is joint together with that provided by texts and provenances in order to date and localize the subject books and leaves. The final chapter positions those codices and cuttings in the larger context of Flemish illumination in the time of Philip the Good. Following the essay are 334 figures and 141 comparative illustrations and a catalogue raisonne of 30 books and 24 leaves in the Privileges style. A decisive majority of the figures and illustrations have never before been reproduced in the scholarly literature; the physical characteristics, texts, miniatures, provenance, and bibliography of each codex and cutting are described in full detail in the catalogue. Following the latter are appendices that provide the readings and textual authorities for the Hours of the Virgin.




Drawings in Midwestern Collections


Book Description

Old master drawings kept in storage, their access limited to a few, will now be made widely accessible in this new series which will eventually include all drawings in some 70 midwestern collections. The first volume introduces a corpus of the rarest of European drawings through the year 1500, a time when artists had just begun to value drawings as works of art. It presents 30 entries written by 12 scholars, each a specialist in the art of the period, and each with immediate access to the artwork itself. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR