Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art

Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art PDF

Author: Heidi C. Gearhart

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 519

ISBN-13: 0271079819

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In this study of the rare twelfth-century treatise On Diverse Arts, Heidi C. Gearhart explores the unique system of values that guided artists of the High Middle Ages as they created their works. Written in northern Germany by a monk known only by the pseudonym Theophilus, On Diverse Arts is the only known complete tract on art to survive from the period. It contains three books, each with a richly religious prologue, describing the arts of painting, glass, and metalwork. Gearhart places this one-of-a-kind treatise in context alongside works by other monastic and literary thinkers of the time and presents a new reading of the text itself. Examining the earliest manuscripts, she reveals a carefully ordered, sophisticated work that aligns the making of art with the virtues of a spiritual life. On Diverse Arts, Gearhart shows, articulated a distinctly medieval theory of art that accounted for the entire process of production—from thought and preparation to the acquisition of material, the execution of work, the creation of form, and the practice of seeing. An important new perspective on one of the most significant texts in art history and the first study of its kind available in English, Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art provides fresh insight into the principles and values of medieval art making. Scholars of art history, medieval studies, and Christianity will find Gearhart’s book especially edifying and valuable.

Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art

Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art PDF

Author: Heidi C. Gearhart

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2017-07-17

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0271079835

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In this study of the rare twelfth-century treatise On Diverse Arts, Heidi C. Gearhart explores the unique system of values that guided artists of the High Middle Ages as they created their works. Written in northern Germany by a monk known only by the pseudonym Theophilus, On Diverse Arts is the only known complete tract on art to survive from the period. It contains three books, each with a richly religious prologue, describing the arts of painting, glass, and metalwork. Gearhart places this one-of-a-kind treatise in context alongside works by other monastic and literary thinkers of the time and presents a new reading of the text itself. Examining the earliest manuscripts, she reveals a carefully ordered, sophisticated work that aligns the making of art with the virtues of a spiritual life. On Diverse Arts, Gearhart shows, articulated a distinctly medieval theory of art that accounted for the entire process of production—from thought and preparation to the acquisition of material, the execution of work, the creation of form, and the practice of seeing. An important new perspective on one of the most significant texts in art history and the first study of its kind available in English, Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art provides fresh insight into the principles and values of medieval art making. Scholars of art history, medieval studies, and Christianity will find Gearhart’s book especially edifying and valuable.

Philosophies of Work in the Platonic Tradition

Philosophies of Work in the Platonic Tradition PDF

Author: Jeffrey Hanson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-03-24

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1350150967

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The Platonic tradition affords extraordinary resources for thinking about the meaning and value of work. In this historical survey of the tradition, Jeffrey Hanson draws on the work of its major thinkers to explain why our contemporary vocabulary for appraising labor and its rewards is too narrow and cramped. By tracing out the Platonic lineage of work Hanson is able to argue why we should be explaining its value for appraising it as an element of a happy and flourishing human life, quite apart from its financial rewards. Beginning with Plato's extensive thinking about work's relationship to wisdom, Hanson covers the singularly powerful arguments of Augustine, who wrote the ancient world's only treatise dedicated to the topic of manual labor. He discusses Bernard of Clairvaux, introduces the priest-craftsman Theophilus Presbyter, and provides a study of work and leisure in the writings of Petrarch. Alongside Martin Luther, Hanson discusses John Ruskin and Simone Weil: two thinkers profoundly disturbed by the conditions of the working class in the rapidly industrializing economies of Europe. This original study of Plato and his inheritors' ideas provides practical suggestions for how to approach work in a socially responsible manner in the 21st century and reveals the benefits of linking work and morality.

A Benedictine Reader

A Benedictine Reader PDF

Author: Hugh B. Feiss

Publisher: Liturgical Press

Published: 2019-02-12

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 0879071753

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A Benedictine Reader, 530–1530, has been more than twenty years in the making. A collaboration of a dozen scholars, this project gives as broad and deep a sense of the reality of the first one thousand years of Benedictine monasticism as can be done in one volume, using primary sources in English translation. The texts included are drawn from many different genres and from several languages and areas of Europe. The introduction to each of the thirty-two chapters aims to situate each author and text and to make connections with other texts and studies within and outside the Reader. The general introduction summarizes the main ideas and practices that are present in the Rule of Saint Benedict and in the first thousand years of Benedictine monasticism while suggesting questions that a reader might bring to the texts.

The Object as a Process

The Object as a Process PDF

Author: Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen

Publisher: transcript Verlag

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 3839461146

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How does artistic practice lead to the production of knowledge? How does, in turn, artistic knowledge relate to its material base? How does contingent materiality guide the artist towards finding form and developing a statement? This volume is dedicated to the object as a process in order to offer new insights into the ways the object - broadly construed, comprising digital and other non-classical objects - becomes an active element in artistic practice.

A Companion to Medieval Art

A Companion to Medieval Art PDF

Author: Conrad Rudolph

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 1040

ISBN-13: 1119077729

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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.

The Worlds of Villard de Honnecourt: The Portfolio, Medieval Technology, and Gothic Monuments

The Worlds of Villard de Honnecourt: The Portfolio, Medieval Technology, and Gothic Monuments PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-12-12

Total Pages: 613

ISBN-13: 9004529101

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This book charts the past, present, and future of studies on medieval technology, art, and craft practices. Inspired by Villard’s enigmatic portfolio of artistic and engineering drawings, this collection explores the multiple facets of medieval building represented in this manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093). The book’s eighteen essays and two introductions showcase traditional and emergent methods for the study of medieval craft, demonstrating how these diverse approaches collectively amplify our understanding about how medieval people built, engineered, and represented their world. Contributions range from the analysis of words and images in Villard’s portfolio, to the close analysis of masonry, technological marvels, and gothic architecture, pointing the way toward new avenues for future scholarship to explore. Contributors are: Mickey Abel, Carl F. Barnes Jr., Robert Bork, George Brooks, Michael T. Davis, Amy Gillette, Erik Gustafson, Maile S. Hutterer, John James, William Sayers, Ellen Shortell, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Richard Alfred Sundt, Sarah Thompson, Steven A. Walton, Maggie M. Williams, Kathleen Wilson Ruffo, and Nancy Wu.

Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass

Investigations in Medieval Stained Glass PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-06-07

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 9004395717

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Mindful of already existing publications, the editors determined to foreground scholarly expertise and approaches to stained glass, as well as up-to-date bibliographies.

Image and Ornament in the Early Medieval West

Image and Ornament in the Early Medieval West PDF

Author: Matthias Friedrich

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 1009207725

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Scholarship often treats the post-Roman art produced in central and north-western Europe as representative of the pagan identities of the new 'Germanic' rulers of the early medieval world. In this book, Matthias Friedrich offers a critical reevaluation of the ethnic and religious categories of art that still inform our understanding of early medieval art and archaeology. He scrutinises early medieval visual culture by combining archaeological approaches with art historical methods based on contemporary theory. Friedrich examines the transformation of Roman imperial images, together with the contemporary, highly ornamented material culture that is epitomized by 'animal art.' Through a rigorous analysis of a range of objects, he demonstrates how these pathways produced an aesthetic that promoted variety (varietas), a cross-cultural concept that bridged the various ethnic and religious identities of post-Roman Europe and the Mediterranean worlds.

French Gothic Ivories

French Gothic Ivories PDF

Author: Sarah M. Guerin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 1078

ISBN-13: 1009041622

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This volume is the first to consider the golden century of Gothic ivory sculpture (1230-1330) in its material, theological, and artistic contexts. Providing a range of new sources and interpretations, Sarah Guérin charts the progressive development and deepening of material resonances expressed in these small-scale carvings. Guérin traces the journey of ivory tusks, from the intercontinental trade routes that delivered ivory tusks to northern Europe, to the workbenches of specialist artisans in medieval Paris, and, ultimately, the altars and private chapels in which these objects were venerated. She also studies the rich social lives and uses of a diverse range of art works fashioned from ivory, including standalone statuettes, diptychs, tabernacles, and altarpieces. Offering new insights into the resonances that ivory sculpture held for their makers and viewers, Guérin's study contributes to our understanding of the history of materials, craft, and later medieval devotional practices.