Kategoria BISAC: Art >> History - Medieval

A complete alchemy manuscript in 36 full page color plates

Ars Notoria Sive Flores Aurei (The Art of Magic or Golden Flowers) is attributed to Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15-100), a Greek neo-Pythagorean ascetic and philosopher from the town of Tyana in Cappadocia in Asia Minor. It is a practical text in which direct knowledge is sought by means of incantation. Its numerous prayers include long series of invented and exotic names as well as instructions for their use. The present manuscript, created in France c. 1225, is held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,...

A complete manuscript in 42 full page color plates

Arithmetic books are practical textbooks used for mathematical calculation. The oldest preserved examples are of Indian and Arabic origin and date from around the 10th century. The earliest known European examples are from early 13th century Italy and were used as an aid for commerce. The present text, which includes tables for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, was created in Bavaria / Austria in 1510. It is currently held by Heidelberg University Library.

A complete illuminated manuscript in 60 full page color plates

The Regia Carmina is a poem of praise for Robert of Anjou King of Naples (1278-1343) from the town of Prato in Tuscany. It beseeches the King to protect Prato, to unite Italy under his rule, and to restore the papacy to Rome from Avignon, where it had relocated 30 years earlier. The poem's author, Convenevole da Prato (c.1270-1338) was a writer, ambassador and educator and is well known as the boyhood teacher of Petrarch. The manuscript's illuminator, Pacino da Bonaguida (c.1300-c.1350) was a prolific Florentine...

Picturing the True Form investigates the long-neglected visual culture of Daoism, China's primary indigenous religion, from the tenth through thirteenth centuries with references to both earlier and later times. In this richly illustrated book, Shih-Shan Susan Huang provides a comprehensive mapping of Daoist images in various media, including Dunhuang manuscripts, funerary artifacts, and paintings, as well as other charts, illustrations, and talismans preserved in the fifteenth-century Daoist Canon. True form (zhenxing), the key concept behind Daoist visuality, is not static,...

A complete illuminated manuscript in 101 full page color plates

Splendor Solis (The Splendor of the Sun) is regarded as the classic illuminated manuscript on alchemy. It sets forth the philosophy of alchemy, in which the alchemist intervenes in the mechanics of creation while at all times remaining in harmony with nature and supporting its growth. The manuscript was traditionally attributed to Salomon Trismosin, the alleged teacher of Paracelsus, but the real author remains unknown. Twenty copies of the manuscript exist worldwide. The earliest version, dated 1532-1535, is...

Begun in 1951 by monks at the abbey of La Pierre-qui-Vire in Burgundy, the Zodiaque publications consisted of a triennial journal and multiple series of books, including the most famous: La Nuit des temps. The editors' goal was to renew sacred art for twentieth-century viewers by making connections between the direct, "primitive" character of pre-Gothic religious art and an emerging modernist aesthetic. Focusing almost exclusively on Romanesque architecture and sculptural decoration, Zodiaque revived the style's richness and variety, bringing to light monuments lost to popular currency and...

Bildliche Darstellungen des Propheten Mohammed gab es in Europa schon lange vor dem sogenannten "Karikaturenstreit." Bereits im fruhen Buchdruck erscheint Mohammed als Personifikation der abendlandischen Vorstellungen vom Islam und zugleich als eine faszinierende, schillernde Figur von gesellschaftlicher Relevanz. Anhand von Druckgraphiken in Koranubersetzungen und Biographien des Propheten aus funf Jahrhunderten beschreibt die Studie die Konstanten und Wandlungen der Mohammedbilder in ihrem jeweiligen historischen Kontext. Damit leistet das Buch einen bildwissenschaftlichen Beitrag zur...

In the Middle Ages, the life story of Alexander the Great was a well-traveled tale. Known in numerous versions, many of them derived from the ancient Greek Alexander Romance, it was told and re-told throughout Europe, India, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The essays collected in Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages examine these remarkable legends not merely as stories of conquest and discovery, but also as representations of otherness, migration, translation, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora.

Alongside studies of the Alexander legend in medieval and early modern...

In A Saving Science, Eric Ramirez-Weaver explores the significance of early medieval astronomy in the Frankish empire, using as his lens an astronomical masterpiece, the deluxe manuscript of the Handbook of 809, painted in roughly 830 for Bishop Drogo of Metz, one of Charlemagne's sons. Created in an age in which careful study of the heavens served a liturgical purpose--to reckon Christian feast days and seasons accurately and thus reflect a "heavenly" order--the diagrams of celestial bodies in the Handbook of 809 are extraordinary signifiers of the intersection...

The cult of the Christ Child flourished in late medieval Europe across lay and religious, as well as geographic and cultural boundaries. Depictions of Christ's boyhood are found throughout popular culture, visual art, and literature. The Christ Child in Medieval Culture is the first interdisciplinary investigation of how representations of the Christ Child were conceptualized and employed in this period.

The contributors to this unique volume analyse depictions of the Christ Child through a variety of frameworks, including the interplay of mortality and divinity, the...