Major work is distinguished by an intensity of inspiration and an overwhelming sense of personal vision. This merging of inspiration and vision permits the creation of a classic oeuvre whose creator is deemed to be a 'master of his craft, ' or perhaps better, 'a seminal mind.' Such is the work of the historian of religious, Mirceas Eliade. In his lifelong quest to understand the presence of the Sacred throughout human history, Eliade has been fascinated by two central themes: Creation and Time.

A collection of essays concerning religion and art, including contributions by Barbara Novak, Leo Steinberg, Paul Tillich, Wassily Kandinsky, John Dixon Jr., David Tracy, Joshua Taylor, and Langdon B. Gilkey.

Christian Romanticism was a response to social changes within nineteenth-century American culture, including women's literacy, spiritual domesticity, and the idealization of childhood. This book examines the work of three artists of the first American landscape tradition -- Washington Alston, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Edwin Church -- and two clergymen -- Horace Bushnell and Henry Ward Beecher. It assesses their understanding of the artist as a social and moral teacher, the didactic role of art in society more generally, and a God who acts in history. The author finds that the art of Allston,...

Christian art is rich, complex and heavily invested with symbolism. The painting reproduced on the cover of this book is a case in point. Who are the central figures' (A glance at the entry under 'Baptism' will enlighten those who are unsure). And, perhaps more challenging, how can we identify the fourteen saints around them' Do the flowers at Jesus' feet have a special significance' The Dictionary of Christian Art provides the answers, giving the modern reader access to the pictorial tradition that was once the common visual vocabulary of western Europeans. There are over 1,000 entries, from...