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3 books match the query 'Medieval Art'
Image on the Edge
The Margins of Medieval ArtMichael Camille
Reaktion Books, 2019
What do they all mean—the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, potbellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests, and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? A groundbreaking, celebrated study of marginalia in mediaeval art, Michael Camille’s Image on the Edge explores this riotous realm so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, a place where resistance to social constraints flourished. Along with their loftier subjects of knights and clerics, medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside of society, the excluded and the ejected. Peasants, servants, prostitutes, and beggars all found their place in their artworks, engaged in impudent antics in the margins of prayer-books or, as gargoyles, on the outsides of churches. Camille’s essays illuminate how marginality functioned in medieval culture, showing us just how scandalous, subversive, and amazing the art of the time could be.
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The Brummer Collection of Medieval Art
Duke University Museum of ArtCaroline Bruzelius and with Jill Meredith
Duke University Press, 1991
The Brummer Collection of Medieval Art in the Duke University Museum of Art is one of the finest to be found in any American university museum. It is remarkable for its breadth and the variety of objects represented, with works varying in scale from monumental stone pieces to small-scale objects in wood, ivory, or metal, and ranging from the seventh to eighth centuries through the sixteenth century. This fine catalog makes available for the first time this rich but little-known collection.
Five studies by leading art scholars focus on key works in the collection and contribute to a new understanding of the origins of many of the pieces. Two introductory essays comment on the character of the collection as a whole, its acquisition by Duke University, and its conservation. Finally, the catalog section discusses the more important pieces in the collection and is followed by a checklist of entries and smaller photographs of all other objects.
Five studies by leading art scholars focus on key works in the collection and contribute to a new understanding of the origins of many of the pieces. Two introductory essays comment on the character of the collection as a whole, its acquisition by Duke University, and its conservation. Finally, the catalog section discusses the more important pieces in the collection and is followed by a checklist of entries and smaller photographs of all other objects.
Contributors. Ilene H. Forsyth, Jean M. French, Dorothy F. Glass, Dieter Kimpel, Jill Meredith, Linda S. Roundhill
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The Medieval Art of Fear
Ravinder S. Binning
University of Chicago Press, 2026
A bold new approach to medieval art and architecture’s shaping of psychosomatic experience.
In the medieval world, experiences of fear attained a mystical significance: monks, urban publics, and even emperors pursued horror and grief to explore the limits of fantasy, sensation, and catharsis. In this book, Ravinder S. Binning examines an expansive archive ranging from poetry and scientific treatises to artistic works in ivory and crystal to recover an aesthetic tradition centered on optical tension, spatial suspense, and tactile experience.
Moving between early monastic spaces in Egypt and major urban centers like Constantinople from the fourth through the thirteenth centuries, The Medieval Art of Fear shows how the psychosomatic experience of fear became the deliberate object of mystical practices, meditation, and other embodied techniques across the medieval world. The result is a powerful exploration of the aesthetic effects behind some of the medieval world’s most ambitious works, whose influence extends well beyond the Middle Ages.
In the medieval world, experiences of fear attained a mystical significance: monks, urban publics, and even emperors pursued horror and grief to explore the limits of fantasy, sensation, and catharsis. In this book, Ravinder S. Binning examines an expansive archive ranging from poetry and scientific treatises to artistic works in ivory and crystal to recover an aesthetic tradition centered on optical tension, spatial suspense, and tactile experience.
Moving between early monastic spaces in Egypt and major urban centers like Constantinople from the fourth through the thirteenth centuries, The Medieval Art of Fear shows how the psychosomatic experience of fear became the deliberate object of mystical practices, meditation, and other embodied techniques across the medieval world. The result is a powerful exploration of the aesthetic effects behind some of the medieval world’s most ambitious works, whose influence extends well beyond the Middle Ages.
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