One of the finest works from the golden era of Flemish manuscript illumination, the Getty’s copy of the Romance of Gillion de Trazegnies tells of the adventures of a medieval nobleman. Part travelogue, part romance, and part epic, the text traces the exciting exploits of Gillion as he journeys to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, is imprisoned in Egypt and rises to the command of the Sultan’s armies, mistakenly becomes a bigamist first with a Christian and then a Muslim wife, and dies in battle as a glorious hero. The tale encompasses the most thrilling elements of the Western romance genre — love, villainy, loyalty, and war — set against the backdrop of the East. This lavishly illustrated volume reveals for the first time the complexity of this illuminated romance. A complete reproduction of the book’s illustrations and a partial translation of the text appear along with essays that explore the manuscript’s vibrant cultural, historical, and artistic contexts. The innovative illuminations, by the renowned artist Lieven van Lathem, juxtapose the reality of medieval Europe with an idealized vision of the East. This unusual pairing, found in the text and illustrations, is the source of a rich discussion of the fifteenth-century political situation in the West and the Crusades in the East.

This new Companion provides a broad and perceptive overview of the most important vernacular literary genre of the Middle Ages. Freshly commissioned, original chapters from seventeen leading scholars introduce students and general readers to the form's poetics, narrative voice and manuscript contexts, as well as its relationship to the Mediterranean world, race, gender and the emotions, among many other topics. Providing fresh perspectives on the first pan-European literary movement, essays range across a broad geographical area, including England, France, Italy, Germany and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a varied linguistic spectrum, including Arabic, Hebrew and Yiddish. Exploring the celebration of chivalric ideals and courtly refinements, the volume excavates the tensions and traumas lying beneath decorous surface appearances. An introduction, bibliography of texts and translations as well as chapter-by-chapter reading lists complete this essential guide.

This volume celebrates the storied career of Stephen N. Fliegel, the former Robert Bergman Curator of Medieval Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Authors of these essays, all leading curators in their fields, offer insights into curatorial practices by highlighting key objects in some of the most important medieval collections in North America and Europe: Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Louvre, the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, the Getty, the Groeningemuseum, The Morgan Library, Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, and, of course, the CMA, offering perspectives on the histories of collecting and display, artistic identity, and patronage, with special foci on Burgundian art, acquisition histories, and objects in the CMA.

The Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing (Book of the Deeds of Jacques de Lalaing), a famous Flemish illuminated manuscript, relays the audacious life of Jacques de Lalaing (1421–1453), a story that reads more like a fast-paced adventure novel. Produced in the tradition of chivalric biography, a genre developed in the mid-fifteenth century to celebrate the great personalities of the day, the manuscript’s text and illuminations begin with a magnificent frontispiece by the most acclaimed Flemish illuminator of the sixteenth century, Simon Bening. A Knight for the Ages: Jacques de Lalaing and the Art of Chivalry presents a kaleidoscopic view of the manuscript with essays written by the world’s leading medievalists, adding rich texture and providing a greater understanding of the many aspects of the manuscript’s background, creation, and reception, revealing for the first time the full complexity of this illuminated romance. The texts are accompanied by stunning reproductions of all of the manuscripts’ miniatures—never before published in color—as well as a plot summary and translations, allowing the reader to follow Jacques de Lalaing on his knightly journeys and experience the thrilling triumphs of his legendary tournaments and battles.

A new history of early global literature that treats translators as active agents mediating cultures. In this book, Zrinka Stahuljak challenges scholars in both medieval and translation studies to rethink how ideas and texts circulated in the medieval world. Whereas many view translators as mere conduits of authorial intention, Stahuljak proposes a new perspective rooted in a term from journalism: the fixer. With this language, Stahuljak captures the diverse, active roles medieval translators and interpreters played as mediators of entire cultures—insider informants, local guides, knowledge brokers, art distributors, and political players. Fixers offers nothing less than a new history of literature, art, translation, and social exchange from the perspective not of the author or state but of the fixer.

Maximilian I (1459–1519) skillfully crafted a public persona and personal mythology that eventually earned him the romantic sobriquet “Last Knight.” From the time he became duke of Burgundy at the age of eighteen until his death, his passion for the trappings and ideals of knighthood served his worldly ambitions, imaginative strategies, and resolute efforts to forge a legacy. A master of self-promotion, he ordered exceptional armor from the most celebrated armorers in Europe, as well as heroic autobiographical epics and lavish designs for prints. Indeed, Maximilian’s quest to secure his memory and expand his sphere of influence, despite chronic shortages of funds that left many of his most ambitious projects unfinished, was indomitable. Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Maximilian’s death, this catalogue is the first to examine the masterworks that he commissioned, revealing how art and armor contributed to the construction of Maximilian’s identity and aspirations, and to the politics of Europe at the dawn of the Renaissance. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}

This important and overdue book examines illuminated manuscripts and other book arts of the Global Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated or decorated books—like today’s museums—preserve a rich array of information about how premodern peoples conceived of and perceived the world, its many cultures, and everyone’s place in it. Often a Eurocentric field of study, manuscripts are prisms through which we can glimpse the interconnected global history of humanity. Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume’s multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas—an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages. Featuring more than 160 color illustrations, this wide-ranging and provocative collection is intended for all who are interested in engaging in a dialogue about how books and other textual objects contributed to world-making strategies from about 400 to 1600.

A celebration of the visual contributions of the bestiary--one of the most popular types of illuminated books during the Middle Ages--and an exploration of its lasting legacy. Brimming with lively animals both real and fantastic, the bestiary was one of the great illuminated manuscript traditions of the Middle Ages. Encompassing imaginary creatures such as the unicorn, siren, and griffin; exotic beasts including the tiger, elephant, and ape; as well as animals native to Europe like the beaver, dog, and hedgehog, the bestiary is a vibrant testimony to the medieval understanding of animals and their role in the world. So iconic were the stories and images of the bestiary that its beasts essentially escaped from the pages, appearing in a wide variety of manuscripts and other objects, including tapestries, ivories, metalwork, and sculpture. With over 270 color illustrations and contributions by twenty-five leading scholars, this gorgeous volume explores the bestiary and its widespread influence on medieval art and culture as well as on modern and contemporary artists like Pablo Picasso and Damien Hirst. Published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center May 14 to August 18, 2019.

This book explores our corporeal connections to the past by considering what three theoretical approaches - somaesthetics, posthumanism, and the uncanny - may reveal about both premodern and postmodern terms of embodiment. It takes as its point of departure a selection of fifteenth-century northern European Books of Hours - evocative objects designed at once to inscribe social status, to strengthen religious commitment, to entertain, to stimulate emotions, and to encourage discomfiting self-scrutiny. Studying their kaleidoscopically strange, moving, humorous, disturbing, and imaginative pages not only enables a window into relationships among bodies, images, and things in the past but also in our own internet era, where surprisingly popular memes drawn from such manuscripts constitute a part of our own visual culture. In negotiating theoretical, post-theoretical, and historical concerns, this book aims to contribute to an emerging and much-needed intersectional social history of art. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, medieval studies, Renaissance/early modern studies, gender studies, the history of the book, posthumanism, aesthetics, and the body.

This comprehensive and richly illustrated catalogue focuses on the finest illustrated manuscripts produced in Europe during the great epoch in Flemish illumination. During this aesthetically fertile period – beginning in 1467 with the reign of the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold and ending in 1561 with the death of the artist Simon Bening – the art of book painting was raised to a new level of sophistication. Sharing inspiration with the celebrated panel painters of the time, illuminators achieved astonishing innovations in the handling of color, light, texture, and space, creating a naturalistic style that would dominate tastes throughout Europe for nearly a century. Centering on the notable artists of the period – Simon Marmion, the Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy, Gerard David, Gerard Horenbout, Bening, and others – the catalogue examines both devotional and secular manuscript illumination within a broad context: the place of illuminators within the visual arts, including artistic exchange between book painters and panel painters; the role of court patronage and the emergence of personal libraries; and the international appeal of the new Flemish illumination style. Contributors to the catalogue include Maryan W. Ainsworth, curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; independent scholar Catherine Reynolds; and Elizabeth Morrison, assistant curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum. Illuminating the Renaissance is published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Getty Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the British Library to be held at the Getty Museum from June 17 to September 7, 2003, and at the Royal Academy of Arts from November 25, 2003 to February 22, 2004.