The crusades, whether realized or merely planned, had a profound impact on medieval and early modern societies. Numerous scholars in the fields of history and literature have explored the influence of crusading ideas, values, aspirations and anxieties in both the Latin States and Europe. However, there have been few studies dedicated to investigating how the crusading movement influenced and was reflected in medieval visual cultures. Written by scholars from around the world working in the domains of art history and history, the essays in this volume examine the ways in which ideas of crusading were realized in a broad variety of media (including manuscripts, cartography, sculpture, mural paintings, and metalwork). Arguing implicitly for recognition of the conceptual frameworks of crusades that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, the volume explores the pervasive influence and diverse expression of the crusading movement from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries.

In Visual Culture and Politics in the Baltic Sea Region, Kersti Markus examines how visual rhetoric was used by the Danish rulers as an instrument in establishing supremacy in the region during the Baltic crusades.

"Anthology [of] key texts that document the history of art over the past one thousand years"--P. [4] of cover.

An innovatory exploration of art and visual culture. Through carefully chosen themes and topics rather than through a general survey, the volumes approach the process of looking at works of art in terms of their audiences, functions and cross-cultural contexts. While focused on painting, sculpture and architecture, it also explores a wide range of visual culture in a variety of media and methods. "1000-1600: Medieval to Renaissance" includes essays on key themes of Medieval and Renaissance art, including the theory and function of religious art and a generic analysis of art at court. Explorations cover key canonical artists such as Simone Martini and Botticelli and key monuments including St Denis and Westminster Abbey, as well as less familiar examples.The first of three text books, published by Tate in association with the Open University, which insight for students of Art History, Art Theory and Humanities. Introduction Part 1: Visual cultures of medieval Christendom 1: Sacred art as the Bible of the Poor' 2: Sacred architecture, Gothic architecture 3: Sacred in secular, secular in sacred: the art of Simone Martini 4: To the Holy Land and back again: the art of the Crusades Part 2: The shifting contexts of Renaissance art 5: Art at court 6: Botticelli 7: Did women patrons have a Renaissance? Italy 1420-1520 8: From Candia to Toledo: El Greco and his art

This fully updated and expanded edition of The Crusades: A History provides an authoritative exploration of one of the most significant topics in medieval and religious history. From the First Crusade right up to the present day, Jonathan Riley-Smith and Susanna Throop investigate the phenomenon of crusading and the crusaders themselves. Now in its 4th edition, this landmark text includes: - A new and more balanced book structure with updated terminology designed to help instructors and students alike - Deliberate incorporation of a wider range of historical perspectives, including Byzantine and Islamic historiographies, crusading against Christians and within Europe, women and gender, and the crusades in the context of Afro-Eurasian history - A dramatically expanded discussion of crusading from the 16th through to the 21st century - A fully up-to-date bibliographic essay - Additional textboxes, maps, and images The Crusades: A History is the definitive text on the subject for students and scholars alike.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, games were not an idle pastime, but were in fact important tools for exploring, transmitting, enhancing, subverting, and challenging social practices and their rules. Their study, through both visual and material sources, offers a unique insight into medieval and early modern gaming culture, shedding light not only on why, where, when, with whom and in what conditions and circumstances people played games, but also on the variety of interpretations that they had of games and play. Representations of games, and of artefacts associated with games, also often served to communicate complex ideas on topics that ranged from war to love, and from politics to theology.00This volume offers a particular focus onto the type of games that required little or no physical exertion and that, consequently, all people could enjoy, regardless of age, gender, status, occupation, or religion. The representations and artefacts discussed here by contributors, who come from varied disciplines including history, literary studies, art history, and archaeology, cover a wide geographical and chronological range, from Spain to Scandinavia to the Ottoman Turkey and from the early medieval period to the seventeenth century and beyond. Far from offering the ?last word? on the subject, it is hoped that this volume will encourage further studies.

Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800 is the second in a set of four selections of studies by Oleg Grabar. Its focus is on the key centuries - the eleventh through fourteenth - during which the main directions of traditional Islamic art were created and developed and for which classical approaches of the History of Art were adopted. Manuscript illustrations and the arts of objects dominate the selection of articles, but there are also forays into later times like Mughal India and into definitions of area and period styles, as with the Mamluks in Egypt and the Ottomans, or into parallels between Islamic and Christian medieval arts.