The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay

The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay PDF Author: Kirk Ambrose
Publisher: PIMS
ISBN: 9780888441546
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"This scholarly work fundamentally changes the way we think about the monastic church of Vezelay and its sculptures. Kirk Ambrose provides a new account of the celebrated sculptural ensemble at this important French Romanesque monastic church. Whereas scholarly attention in the past has focused almost exclusively on the Pentecostal portal, Ambrose devotes most of his analysis to the nave capitals. He considers how these works intersect with various aspects of monastic culture, from poetry to a sign language used during observed periods of silence. From this study it emerges how many of the sculptures resonated with communal practices and with interpretive modes in use at the site." "Deeming the attempt to uncover an underlying or unifying program to be an anachronistic project, Ambrose explores historically specific ways this ensemble cohered for medieval viewers. Covering a range of themes, including hagiography, ornament, and violence, he develops alternative approaches for the examination of serial imagery. As a result, this book has broad implications for the study of eleventh- and twelfth-century art in the West."--BOOK JACKET.

The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay

The Nave Sculpture of Vézelay PDF Author: Kirk Ambrose
Publisher: PIMS
ISBN: 9780888441546
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"This scholarly work fundamentally changes the way we think about the monastic church of Vezelay and its sculptures. Kirk Ambrose provides a new account of the celebrated sculptural ensemble at this important French Romanesque monastic church. Whereas scholarly attention in the past has focused almost exclusively on the Pentecostal portal, Ambrose devotes most of his analysis to the nave capitals. He considers how these works intersect with various aspects of monastic culture, from poetry to a sign language used during observed periods of silence. From this study it emerges how many of the sculptures resonated with communal practices and with interpretive modes in use at the site." "Deeming the attempt to uncover an underlying or unifying program to be an anachronistic project, Ambrose explores historically specific ways this ensemble cohered for medieval viewers. Covering a range of themes, including hagiography, ornament, and violence, he develops alternative approaches for the examination of serial imagery. As a result, this book has broad implications for the study of eleventh- and twelfth-century art in the West."--BOOK JACKET.

Sculpture Programs in the Moissac Cloister

Sculpture Programs in the Moissac Cloister PDF Author: Leah Rutchick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capitals (Architecture), Romanesque
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Romanesque Tomb Effigies

Romanesque Tomb Effigies PDF Author: Shirin Fozi
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271089172
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Framed by evocative inscriptions, tumultuous historical events, and the ambiguities of Christian death, Romanesque tomb effigies were the first large-scale figural monuments for the departed in European art. In this book, Shirin Fozi explores these provocative markers of life and death, establishing early tomb figures as a coherent genre that hinged upon histories of failure and frustrated ambition. In sharp contrast to later recumbent funerary figures, none of the known European tomb effigies made before circa 1180 were commissioned by the people they represented, and all of the identifiable examples of these tombs were dedicated to individuals whose legacies were fraught rather than triumphant. Fozi draws on this evidence to argue that Romanesque effigies were created to address social rather than individual anxieties: they compensated for defeat by converting local losses into an expectation of eternal victory, comforting the embarrassed heirs of those whose histories were marked by misfortune and offering compensation for the disappointments of the world. Featuring numerous examples and engaging the visual, historical, and theological contexts that inform them, this groundbreaking work adds a fresh dimension to the study of monumental sculpture and the idea of the individual in the northern European Middle Ages. It will appeal to scholars of art history and medieval studies.

Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister

Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister PDF Author: Pamela Anne Patton
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820472683
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Praised as paradisiacal or denounced as impious fantasy, the sculpture of Romanesque cloisters played a powerful role in medieval monastic life. This book demonstrates how sculpture in the cloister, the physical and spiritual heart of the religious foundation, could be shrewdly configured to articulate the most influential ideals and experiences of its individual community. Taking as its focus the visually rich, highly organized narrative programs of three twelfth-century Spanish cloisters, this book reveals the power of such imagery to reflect and reinforce the social and spiritual preoccupations of its age.

Pygmalion’s Power

Pygmalion’s Power PDF Author: Thomas E. A. Dale
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271085185
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Pushed to the height of its illusionistic powers during the first centuries of the Roman Empire, sculpture was largely abandoned with the ascendancy of Christianity, as the apparent animation of the material image and practices associated with sculpture were considered both superstitious and idolatrous. In Pygmalion’s Power, Thomas E. A. Dale argues that the reintroduction of architectural sculpture after a hiatus of some seven hundred years arose with the particular goal of engaging the senses in a Christian religious experience. Since the term “Romanesque” was coined in the nineteenth century, the reintroduction of stone sculpture around the mid-eleventh century has been explained as a revivalist phenomenon, one predicated on the desire to claim the authority of ancient Rome. In this study, Dale proposes an alternative theory. Covering a broad range of sculpture types—including autonomous cult statuary in wood and metal, funerary sculpture, architectural sculpture, and portraiture—Dale shows how the revitalized art form was part of a broader shift in emphasis toward spiritual embodiment and affective piety during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Adding fresh insight to scholarship on the Romanesque, Pygmalion’s Power borrows from trends in cultural anthropology to demonstrate the power and potential of these sculptures to produce emotional effects that made them an important sensory part of the religious culture of the era.

Romanesque Sculpture

Romanesque Sculpture PDF Author: Millard Fillmore Hearn
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801493041
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-century Europe

The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-century Europe PDF Author: Kirk Ambrose
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 1843838311
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Richly-illustrated consideration of the meaning of the carvings of non-human beings, from centaurs to eagles, found in ecclesiastical settings. Representations of monsters and the monstrous are common in medieval art and architecture, from the grotesques in the borders of illuminated manuscripts to the symbol of the "green man", widespread in churches and cathedrals. These mysterious depictions are frequently interpreted as embodying or mitigating the fears symptomatic of a "dark age". This book, however, considers an alternative scenario: in what ways did monsters in twelfth-century sculpture help audiences envision, perhaps even achieve, various ambitions? Using examples of Romanesque sculpture from across Europe, with a focus on France and northern Portugal, the author suggests that medieval representations of monsterscould service ideals, whether intellectual, political, religious, and social, even as they could simultaneously articulate fears; he argues that their material presence energizes works of art in paradoxical, even contradictory ways. In this way, Romanesque monsters resist containment within modern interpretive categories and offer testimony to the density and nuance of the medieval imagination. KIRK AMBROSE is Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University of Colorado Boulder.

The Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac

The Romanesque Sculpture of Moissac PDF Author: Meyer Schapiro
Publisher: George Braziller
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description


Memory and Medieval Tomb

Memory and Medieval Tomb PDF Author: Elizabeth Valdez Del Alamo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351758039
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2000: Reverent memorial for the dead was the inspiration for the production of a significant category of artworks during the Middle Ages - artworks aimed as much at the laity as at the clergy, and intended to maintain, symbolically, the presence of the dead. Memoria, the term that describes the formal, liturgical memory of the dead, also includes artworks intended to house and honour the deceased. This book explores the ways in which medieval Christians sought to memorialize the deceased: with tombs, cenotaphs, altars and other furnishings connected to a real or symbolic burial site. A dozen essays analyze strategies for commemoration from the 4th to the 15th century: the means by which human memory could be activated or manipulated through the interaction between monuments, their setting, and the visitor. Building upon from the growing body of literature on memory in the Middle Ages, the collection focuses on the tomb monument and its context as a complex to define what is to be remembered, to fix memory, and to facilitate recollection. Remembering depended upon the emotionally charged interaction between the visitor, the funerary monument, strategically placed images or inscriptions, the liturgy and its participants. Commemorative artworks may consolidate social bonds as well as individual memory, as put forth in this volume. Parallels are drawn between mnemonic devices utilized in the Middle Ages, the design of monuments and contemporary scientific research in cognitive neuropsychology. The papers were originally presented at the 1994 meetings of the College Art Association and the International Congresses of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, and the University of Leeds, England, in 1995.

Legends in Limestone

Legends in Limestone PDF Author: Linda Seidel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226745155
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Whereas twelfth-century pilgrims flocked to the church of St-Lazare in Autun to visit the relics of its patron saint, present-day pilgrims journey there to admire its superb sculpture, said to have been created by the artist Gislebertus whose name is inscribed above one of the church doors. These two cults, of sculptor and of saint, form points of departure and arrival for Linda Seidel's study. Legends in Limestone reveals how "Gislebertus, sculptor" was discovered and subsequently sanctified over the course of the last century. Seidel makes a compelling case for the identification of the name with an ancestor of the local ducal family, invoked for his role in the acquisition of the precious relics. With the aid of evidence drawn from the richly carved decoration of the building, she demonstrates how medieval visitors would have read a different holy narrative in the church fabric, one that constructed before their eyes an account of their patron saint's life. Legends in Limestone, an absorbing study of one of France's most revered medieval monuments, provides fresh insights into modern and medieval interpretive practices.