Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance
Title | Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance PDF eBook |
Author | Robert S. Nelson |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 269 |
Release | 2000 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 9780521652223 |
How do people understand vision and the act of seeing? What is the eye and how is it understood to be connected to the brain? How do people look at gods and how do the gods look at people? And what can images tell us about these processes? Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance examines the phenomenon of 'seeing' through a study of art works from ancient Mesopotamia, China, Africa and European works ranging from antiquity to the early modern period. It demonstrates that in ancient and distant societies, the act of seeing has been and is understood in diverse ways with consequences for the production of art, the practice of religion, and the individual's perception of her world and herself. Treating diverse cultures and using a variety of methods from the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, this book exposes the cultural contexts in which visual perception develops.
A Companion to Medieval Art
Title | A Companion to Medieval Art PDF eBook |
Author | Conrad Rudolph |
Publisher | John Wiley & Sons |
Total Pages | 1040 |
Release | 2019-05-07 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 1119077729 |
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.
Beholding Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Title | Beholding Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF eBook |
Author | Allie Terry-Fritsch |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 298 |
Release | 2017-07-05 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 1351574248 |
Interested in the ways in which medieval and early modern communities have acted as participants, observers, and interpreters of events and how they ascribed meaning to them, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection explore the concept of beholding and the experiences of individual and collective beholders of violence during the period. Addressing a range of medieval and early modern art forms, including visual images, material objects, literary texts, and performances, the contributors examine the complexities of viewing and the production of knowledge within cultural, political, and theological contexts. In considering new methods to examine the process of beholding violence and the beholder's perspective, this volume addresses such questions as: How does the process of beholding function in different aesthetic conditions? Can we speak of such a thing as the 'period eye' or an acculturated gaze of the viewer? If so, does this particularize the gaze, or does it risk universalizing perception? How do violence and pleasure intersect within the visual and literary arts? How can an understanding of violence in cultural representation serve as means of knowing the past and as means of understanding and potentially altering the present?
Compelling Visuality
Title | Compelling Visuality PDF eBook |
Author | Claire J. Farago |
Publisher | U of Minnesota Press |
Total Pages | 260 |
Release | 2003 |
Genre | Art and history |
ISBN | 9781452906157 |
Saints and Spectacle
Title | Saints and Spectacle PDF eBook |
Author | Carolyn L. Connor |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | |
Release | 2016-03-01 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 0190614145 |
Saints and Spectacle examines the origins and reception of the Middle Byzantine program of mosaic decoration. This complex and colorful system of images covers the walls and vaults of churches with figures and compositions seen against a dazzling gold ground. The surviving eleventh-century churches with their wall and vault mosaics largely intact, Hosios Loukas, Nea Moni and Daphni in Greece, pose the challenge of how, when and where this complex and gloriously conceived system was created. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Connor explores the urban culture and context of church-building in Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, during the century following the end of Iconoclasm, of around 843 to 950. The application of an innovative frame of reference, through ritual studies, helps recreate the likely scenario in which the medium of mosaics attained its highest potential, in the mosaiced Byzantine church. For mosaics were enlisted to convey a religious and political message that was too nuanced to be expressed in any other way. At a time of revival of learning and the arts, and development of ceremonial practices, the Byzantine emperor and patriarch were united in creating a solution to the problem of consolidating the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire. It was through promoting a vision of the unchallengeable authority residing in God and his earthly representative, the emperor. The beliefs and processional practices affirming the protective role of the saints in which the entire city participated, were critical to the reception of this vision by the populace as well as the court. Mosaics were a luxury medium that was ideally situated aesthetically to convey a message at a particularly important historical moment--a brilliant solution to a problem that was to subtly unite an empire for centuries to come. Supported by a wealth of testimony from literary sources, Saints and Spectacle brings the Middle Byzantine church to life as the witness to a compelling and fascinating drama.
Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East
Title | Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East PDF eBook |
Author | Ömür Harmanşah |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 373 |
Release | 2013-03-18 |
Genre | Architecture |
ISBN | 1107027942 |
This book investigates the practice of constructing cities in the ancient Near East, bringing together architecture and cultural history.
Patristic Perspectives on Luke’s Transfiguration
Title | Patristic Perspectives on Luke’s Transfiguration PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Anthony |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Total Pages | 256 |
Release | 2022-03-24 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0567699765 |
Peter Anthony explores how visionary elements in Luke's Gospel had a particular influence on early interpretation of the Transfiguration, by examining the rich hermeneutical traditions that emerged - particularly in the Latin West - as the Transfiguration was first depicted visually in art. Anthony begins by comparing the visual and visionary culture of antiquity with that of the present, and their differing interpretations of the Transfiguration. He then examines the Transfiguration texts in the synoptic gospels and their interpretation in modern scholarship, and the reception of the Transfiguration in 2 Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter and the Acts of Peter, Tertullian and Origen. Proceeding to look at interpretations found in the Greek East and the Latin West, Anthony finally discusses the earliest visual depictions of the Transfiguration from the sixth century onward, drawn from a wealth of different art forms. Anthony concludes that early commentators' and artists' understanding of how we see and visualise, and therefore, how the Transfiguration was apprehended, is closer to that of the writers of the New Testament than many modern interpreters' is.