This richly illustrated volume offers a portrait of the varied and still unfamiliar world of medieval Spain.

This second volume in the World Art series illustrates the sweeping breadth and diversity of Europe's artistic history, from prehistoric cave drawings to 20th century abstraction. With an introductory essay, timeline and visually inviting two-page spreads, this volume offers superb color reproductions of important paintings, sculptures, tapestries, glasswork, mosaics and other European masterpieces accompanied by cogent commentary from renowned scholars. The fifty carefully selected works shown here give full expression to the spirit of the cultures in which they were created. Objects from the early Cycladic civilization, the Greek and Roman empires, medieval, Gothic and Renaissance periods are represented here, as well as more recent works from the 18th through 20th centuries. Portraits and secular paintings illustrate Europe's ascendance in the field of representational art, and its tradition of depicting the individual since the Renaissance. Including examples of modern art, this volume displays works in a wide variety of media showing the impressive range of creative achievements over thousands of years of artistic production. A fascinating survey that will be of interest to experts and students alike, this visual journey through European civilization offers a panoramic history of art that informed and transformed the West.

Earliest Christian art - Saints and holy places - Holy images - Artistic production for the wealthy - Icons & iconography.

This landmark volume combines classic and revisionist essays to explore the historiography of Sardinia’s exceptional transition from an island of the Byzantine empire to the rise of its own autonomous rulers, the iudikes, by the 1000s. In addition to Sardinia’s contacts with the Byzantines, Muslim North Africa and Spain, Lombard Italy, Genoa, Pisa, and the papacy, recent and older evidence is analysed through Latin, Greek and Arabic sources, vernacular charters and cartularies, the testimony of coinage, seals, onomastics and epigraphy as well as the Sardinia’s early medieval churches, arts, architecture and archaeology. The result is an important new critique of state formation at the margins of Byzantium, Islam, and the Latin West with the creation of lasting cultural, political and linguistic frontiers in the western Mediterranean. Contributors are Hervin Fernández-Aceves, Luciano Gallinari, Rossana Martorelli, Attilio Mastino, Alex Metcalfe, Marco Muresu, Michele Orrù, Andrea Pala, Giulio Paulis, Giovanni Strinna, Alberto Virdis, Maurizio Virdis, and Corrado Zedda.