The Psalter Of Robert De Lisle In The British Library

One of the major examples of 14th-century English illumination, the Psalter of Robert de Lisle is among the outstanding treasures in the British Library. The new paperback edition includes the complete illustration cycle reproduced in colour, each miniature being accompanied by the same detailed introductory text as in the original edition. The illustrations are preceded by a compre- hensive introduction treating the style and iconography of the miniatures in the context of contemporary English painting, analysing the pictorial and textual components of the unusual and elaborate moral and theological dia- grams, and offering conclusions about patronage, date and provenance. An appendix provides a handlist of more than thirty manuscripts containing the same group of diagrams, known as the Speculum theologie, with a group of additional copies research since the first edition. This edition also has a new preface and postscript which evaluate recent research bearing on the manuscript, as well as an updated bibliography. 'The Psalter is one of the masterpieces of English Gothic Illumination from the first half of the four- teenth century ... Sandler's book is a welcome contribution to the Literature.'

Originally published in 1986, this is an investigation of one particular aspect of what is usually called the Ages of Man. Human beings seem always to have divided up their lives into separate stages: this book argues that the medieval understanding of the age in the middle of man's life was very different from contemporary ideas. Middle age in the Middle Ages did not have dim and negative associations. Instead, it was typically perceived as a 'perfect' age, an age of fulfilment which reached its consummation in the redemption brought about by Christ in his perfect age. The implications of this for medieval understanding of the series of the ages are discussed here for the first time.

When she died in 2016, Dr Jennifer O’Reilly left behind a body of published and unpublished work in three areas of medieval studies: the iconography of the Gospel Books produced in early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England; the writings of Bede and his older Irish contemporary, Adomnán of Iona; and the early lives of Thomas Becket. In these three areas she explored the connections between historical texts, artistic images and biblical exegesis. This volume brings together seventeen essays, published between 1984 and 2013, on the interplay of texts and images in medieval art. Most focus on the manuscript art of early medieval Ireland and England. The first section includes four studies of the Codex Amiatinus, produced in Northumbria in the monastic community of Bede. The second section contains seven essays on the iconography and text of the Book of Kells. In the third section there are five studies of Anglo-Saxon Art, examined in the context of the Benedictine Reform. A concluding essay, on the medieval iconography of the two trees in Eden, traces the development of a motif from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages.(CS1080)

An introduction to the history and techniques of manuscript illumination that offers a thorough and accessible historical overview of techniques and processes, illustrated with examples, diagrams, and photographs of craftspeople at work.

Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays is centred upon the five extant English mystery cycles with a view to examining the cyclic form they share. It is based upon consideration of the differences between the texts and upon the underlying assumptions governing this dramatic form. The cycles are extensively compared with practices in the cyclic dramas of France, the German-speaking areas, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain in the late middle ages and the early modern period. There is also a unique and innovative bridging with iconographical material from a range of artistic modes giving further insight into the structure and organisation of cyclic form. Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays should be of interest to undergraduate students and to more experienced researchers in the early drama and the study of visual images and artefacts.

Gender, Piety, and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts is the first in-depth study of three textually and iconographically diverse Apocalypses illustrated in England in the first half of the fourteenth century by a single group of artists. It offers a close look at a group of illuminators previously on the fringe of art historical scholarship, challenging the commonly-held perception of them as mere craftsmen at a time when both audiences and methods of production were becoming increasingly varied. Analyzing the manuscripts? codicological features, visual and textual programmes, and social contexts, it explores the mechanisms of a fourteenth-century commercial workshop and traces the customization of these books of the same genre to the needs and expectations of varied readers, revealing the crucial influence of their female audience. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of English medieval art, medieval manuscripts, and the medieval Apocalypse, as well as medievalists interested in late medieval spirituality and theology, medieval religious and intellectual culture, book patronage and ownership, and female patronage and ownership.

Winner of the 2022 Charles Rufus Morey Award from the College Art Association Guided by Aristotelian theories, medieval philosophers believed that nature abhors a vacuum. Medieval art, according to modern scholars, abhors the same. The notion of horror vacui—the fear of empty space—is thus often construed as a definitive feature of Gothic material culture. In The Absent Image, Elina Gertsman argues that Gothic art, in its attempts to grapple with the unrepresentability of the invisible, actively engages emptiness, voids, gaps, holes, and erasures. Exploring complex conversations among medieval philosophy, physics, mathematics, piety, and image-making, Gertsman considers the concept of nothingness in concert with the imaginary, revealing profoundly inventive approaches to emptiness in late medieval visual culture, from ingenious images of the world’s creation ex nihilo to figurations of absence as a replacement for the invisible forces of conception and death. Innovative and challenging, this book will find its primary audience with students and scholars of art, religion, physics, philosophy, and mathematics. It will be particularly welcomed by those interested in phenomenological and cross-disciplinary approaches to the visual culture of the later Middle Ages.