'Christus Medicus' in der frühchristlichen Sarkophagskulptur


Book Description

This study deals with the representation of Christ's Healing Miracles in early Christian sepulchral art from Provence and Northern Italy. It sees the imagery through the contemporary exegetical writings and tries thus to uncover new strata of symbolic significance in early Christian art. The aim of the work is to reveal the complex theological concepts reflected in the relief decoration of a small number of late fourth-century sarcophagi and to cast thus light upon the spiritual climate of the sphere the persons who commissioned them were part of. It also links the narrative structure of representations of medical treatment and miracle scenes in ancient art with the Christian images and establishes new formal and iconographic connexions.




The Grove Encyclopedia of Medieval Art and Architecture


Book Description

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.




Sculptures from Roman Syria II


Book Description

For the first time, this publication comprehensively documents and analyzes the Greek and Roman statuary discovered to date in the greater area of Syria. The text portion describes nearly all monuments in detail and classifies them in the context of the history of ancient sculpture. The associated volume of plates documents every item in detail, typically with four photographic views.




Alexandria and Alexandrianism


Book Description

One of the great seats of learning and repositories of knowledge in the ancient world, Alexandria, and the great school of thought to which it gave its name, made a vital contribution to the development of intellectual and cultural heritage in the Occidental world. This book brings together twenty papers delivered at a symposium held at the J. Paul Getty Museum on the subject of Alexandria and Alexandrianism. Subjects range from “The Library of Alexandria and Ancient Egyptian Learning” and “Alexander’s Alexandria” to “Alexandria and the Origins of Baroque Architecture.” With nearly two hundred illustrations, this handsome volume presents some of the world’s leading scholars on the continuing influence and fascination of this great city. The distinguished contributors include Peter Green, R. R. R. Smith, and the late Bernard Bothmer.




The Traditio Legis


Book Description

This monograph engages in a close reading of the traditio legis, highlighting its novelty and complexity to early Christian viewers. The image is analyzed as a conflation of two distinct forms of representation, each constructed of unusual and potentially multivalent elements.




Roman Imperial Statue Bases


Book Description

The study of Roman imperial statues has made remarkable strides in the last two decades. Yet the field's understandable focus on extant portraits has made it difficult to generalize accurately. Most notably, bronze was usually the material of choice, but its high scrap value meant that such statues were inevitably melted down, so that almost all surviving statues are of stone. By examining the much larger and more representative body of statue bases, Jakob Munk Hojte is here able to situate the statues themselves in context. This volume includes a catalogue of 2300 known statue bases from more than 800 sites within and without the Roman Empire. Moreover, since it covers a period of 250 years, it allows for the first time consistent geographic, chronological and commemorative patterns to emerge. Hojte finds among other things that imperial portrait statues are connected chiefly with urban centres; that they were raised continuously during a given reign, with a higher concentration a couple years after accession; that a primary purpose was often to advertise a donor's merits; and that they increased sixfold in frequency from Augustus to Hadrian, an increase attributable to community erections. Jakob Munk Hojte is post.doc. and research assistant at the Danish National Research Foundations Centre for Black Sea Studies.




Dress and Cultural Identity in the Rhine-Moselle Region of the Roman Empire


Book Description

This reivsed Phd thesis uses the large extant corpus of funerary art from the Rhine Moselle region, to examine and analyse the clothing depicted and to ask what they can tell us about cultural identity in this frontier region and how they can be used to explore concepts of Romanization.







The Garima Gospels


Book Description

The three Garima Gospels are the earliest surviving Ethiopian gospel books. They provide glimpses of lost late antique luxury gospel books and art of the fifth to seventh centuries, in the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia as well as in the Christian East. As this work shows, their artwork is closely related to Syriac, Armenian, Greek, and Georgian gospel books and to the art of late antique (Coptic) Egypt, Nubia, and Himyar (Yemen). Like most gospel manuscripts, the Garima Gospels contain ornately decorated canon tables which function as concordances of the different versions of the same material in the gospels. Analysis of these tables of numbered parallel passages, devised by Eusebius of Caesarea, contributes significantly to our understanding of the early development of the canonical four gospel collection. The origins and meanings of the decorated frames, portraits of the evangelists, Alexandrian circular pavilion, and unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are elucidated. The Garima texts and decoration demonstrate how a distinctive Christian culture developed in Aksumite Ethiopia, while also belonging to the mainstream late antique Mediterranean world. Lavishly illustrated in colour, this volume presents all of the Garima illuminated pages for the first time and extensive comparative material. It will be an essential resource for those studying late antique art and history, Ethiopia, eastern Christianity, New Testament textual criticism, and illuminated books.




Gospel Writing


Book Description

That there are four canonical versions of the one gospel story is often seen as a problem for Christian faith: where gospels multiply, so too do apparent contradictions that may seem to undermine their truth claims. In Gospel Writing Francis Watson argues that differences and tensions between canonical gospels represent opportunities for theological reflection, not problems for apologetics. Watson presents the formation of the fourfold gospel as the defining moment in the reception of early gospel literature -- and also of Jesus himself as the subject matter of that literature. As the canonical division sets four gospel texts alongside one another, the canon also creates a new, complex, textual entity more than the sum of its parts. A canonical gospel can no longer be regarded as a definitive, self-sufficient account of its subject matter. It must play its part within an intricate fourfold polyphony, and its meaning and significance are thereby transformed. In elaborating these claims, Watson proposes nothing less than a new paradigm for gospel studies — one that engages fully with the available noncanonical material so as to illuminate the historical and theological significance of the canonical.




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