This study first examines the marginal repertoire in two well-known manuscripts, the Psalter of Guy de Dampierre and an Arthurian Romance, within their material and codicological contexts. This repertoire then provides a template for an extended study of the marginal motifs that appear in eighteen related manuscripts, which range from a Bible to illustrated versions of the encyclopedias of Vincent de Beauvais and Brunetto Latini. Considering the manuscript as a whole work of art, the marginalia’s physical relationship to nearby texts and images can shed light on the reception of these illuminated books by their medieval viewers.

This study first examines the marginal repertoire in two well-known manuscripts, the Psalter of Guy de Dampierre and an Arthurian Romance, within their material and codicological contexts. This repertoire then provides a template for an extended study of the marginal motifs that appear in eighteen related manuscripts, which range from a Bible to illustrated versions of the encyclopedias of Vincent de Beauvais and Brunetto Latini. Considering the manuscript as a whole work of art, the marginalia's physical relationship to nearby texts and images can shed light on the reception of these illuminated books by their medieval viewers.

The "Vows of the Peacock" - written in 1312 and dedicated to Thibaut de Bar, bishop of Liège - recounts how Alexander the Great comes to the aid of a family of aristocrats threatened by Indians. The poem remained popular throughout the fourteenth century and was soon followed by two sequels. Twenty-six illuminated manuscripts constitute part of a catalogue and concordance of all Peacock manuscripts. One of the most provocative, (PML, MS G24), has twenty-two miniatures which illustrate chivalry and courtly love, as epitomized in the text. An unusually high number of scurrilous marginalia, however, surround them. An interdisciplinary exploration of iconography, reception, image-text-marginalia dynamics, and context reveals their ultimate polysemy as scatological comedians and serious harbingers of sin.

This collection forges new ground in the discussion of aristocratic and royal women, their relationships with their objects, and medieval geography. It explores how women’s geographic and familial networks spread well beyond the borders that defined men’s sense of region and how the movement of their belongings can reveal essential information about how women navigated these often-disparate spaces. Beginning in early medieval Scandinavia, ranging from Byzantium to Rus', and multiple lands in Western Europe up to 1500, the essays span a great spatio-temporal range. Moreover, the types of objects extend from traditionally studied works like manuscripts and sculpture to liturgical and secular ceremonial instruments, icons, and articles of personal adornment, such as textiles and jewelry, even including shoes.

Addressing a strangely neglected key issue in the history of art, this volume engages the variety and complexity of medieval representations of the unclothed human body. The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art breaks ground by offering a variety of approaches to explore the meanings of both male and female nudity in European painting, manuscripts and sculpture ranging from the late antique era to the fifteenth century.

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.

The Getty Research Journal features the work of art historians, museum curators, and conservators around the world as part of Getty’s mission to promote the presentation, conservation, and interpretation of the world’s artistic legacy. Articles present original scholarship related to Getty collections, initiatives, and broad research interests. This issue features essays on a Parthian stag rhyton and new epigraphic and technical discoveries; gendered devotion and owner portraits in illuminated manuscripts from northern France around 1300; a technical analysis of heraldic devices in a missal from Renaissance Bologna; a new social and collective practice of drawing among French architect pensionnaires of the 1820s and 1830s at Pompeii; artist Malvina Hoffman’s representations of race during her travels to Southeastern Europe as part of her work with the American Yugo-Slav Relief; Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta’s painting Reverie—The Letter and the small-world sensation as a methodology for global art history; arguments that disprove the attribution of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s sculpture Head with Horns to artist Paul Gauguin; Head with Horns and Gauguin’s creative appropriation of objects; and the unpublished first draft of critic Clement Greenberg’s essay "Towards a Newer Laocoon."

Alison Stones has taught History of Art and Architecture in the USA since 1969 and has enjoyed Visiting Fellowships at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Paris. She is a specialist in illuminated manuscripts, co-authoring Les Manuscrits de Chretien de Troyes (1993), The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago de Compostela, A Critical Edition (1998), and writing Le Livre d'images de Madame Marie (Paris, BNF n.a.fr. 16251) (1997), and Gautier de Coinci, Miracles, Music and Manuscripts (2006). Her four-volume study, Manuscripts Illuminated in France, Gothic Manuscripts 1260-1320 was published in 2013 and 2014. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Fulbright Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a Correspondant etranger honoraire of the Societe nationale des Antiquaires de France and a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. These two volumes collect and update Professor Stones's papers on Arthurian manuscript illustration, one of her continuing passions. These essays explore aspects of the iconography of the romances of Chretien de Troyes in French verse, the lengthy Lancelot-Grail romance in French prose, and other versions of the chivalrous exploits of King Arthur's knights - the best-sellers of the Middle Ages. Illustrated copies of these romances survive in huge numbers from the early thirteenth century through the beginnings of print, and were read for their text and their pictures throughout the French-speaking world. Of special interest is the cultural context in which these popular works were made and disseminated, by scribes and artists whose work encompassed all kinds of books, for patrons whose collecting was wide-ranging, including secular books alongside works of liturgical and devotional interest.

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.

This book investigates the 'owner portrait' in the context of late medieval devotional books primarily from France and England. These mirror-like pictures of praying book owners respond to and help develop a growing concern with visibility and self-scrutiny that characterized the religious life of the laity after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The image of the praying book owner translated pre-existing representational strategies concerned with the authority and spiritual efficacy of pictures and books, such as the Holy Face and the donor image, into a more intimate and reflexive mode of address in Psalters and Books of Hours created for lay users. Alexa Sand demonstrates how this transformation had profound implications for devotional practices and for the performance of gender and class identity in the striving, aristocratic world of late medieval France and England.