"The Garden of Love is an important subject in secular art of the fifteenth century, both in Italy and in northern Europe. The chief Italian examples were all painted in Tuscany in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. They depict a landscape consisting of a flowery meadow, a grove, and a great marble fountain, where lovers gather to sing, dance, and make love. Allied to the Garden of Love are variations on a horticultural theme--gardens for lovers celebrated in history, fountains of love, hunts set in a forest that conclude alongside a fountain. Sometimes, too, the Garden of Love becomes the setting for narratives and romances. In all these instances the Garden is more than a pleasing tapestry like backdrop: it serves as a visible symbol of the nature of love itself. This book illustrated with 97 excellent photographs, attempts to do two things ; to chart the history of the Garden of Love, and explain the significance it once had." -- Book jacket.

In Gardens of Love and the Limits of Morality in Early Netherlandish Art, Andrea Pearson charts the moralization of human bodies in late medieval and early modern visual culture, through paintings by Jan van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch, devotional prints and illustrated books, and the celebrated enclosed gardens of Mechelen among other works. Drawing on new archival evidence and innovative visual analysis to reframe familiar religious discourses, she demonstrates that depicted topographies advanced and sometimes resisted bodily critiques expressed in scripture, conduct literature, and even legislation. Governing many of these redemptive greenscapes were the figures of Christ and the Virgin Mary, archetypes of purity whose spiritual authority was impossible to ignore, yet whose mysteries posed innumerable moral challenges. The study reveals that bodily status was the fundamental problem of human salvation, in which artists, patrons, and viewers alike had an interpretive stake.

"Many famous artworks of the Italian Renaissance were made to celebrate love, marriage, and family. They were the pinnacles of a tradition, dating from early in the era, of commemorating betrothals, marriages, and the birth of children by commissioning extraordinary objects - maiolica, glassware, jewels, textiles, paintings - that were often also exchanged as gifts. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of artworks arising from Renaissance rituals of love and marriage and makes a major contribution to our understanding of Renaissance art in its broader cultural context. The impressive range of works gathered in these pages extends from birth trays painted in the early fifteenth century to large canvases on mythological themes that Titian painted in the mid-1500s. Each work of art would have been recognized by contemporary viewers for its prescribed function within the private, domestic domain."--BOOK JACKET.

The essays in this single-author collection are principally concerned with Madame Eglentyne, the demure and elegant prioress depicted in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Richard Rex contends that how we think about Chaucer as a Christian depends largely on our interpretation of the Prioress's Tale, which in turn is linked to the brilliant portrait of Madame Eglentyne in the General Prologue.

A study of the condition, subject, design, manufacture, ownership, and exhibitions for each tapestry or set of tapestries in the Museum's medieval tapestry collection. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art.

First published in 2004, Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia provides an introduction to the many and diverse facets of Italian civilization from the late Roman empire to the end of the fourteenth century. It presents in two volumes articles on a wide range of topics including history, literature, art, music, urban development, commerce and economics, social and political institutions, religion and hagiography, philosophy and science. This illustrated, A-Z reference is a cross-disciplinary resource and will be of key interest not only to students and scholars of history but also to those studying a range of subjects, as well as the general reader.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

"In its most basic form, the rosary is a series of prayers and meditations designed to bring the worshiper closer to God through the Virgin Mary. But, as Anne Winston-Allen shows, there was no single text of the rosary prayer: different versions, some in German and some in Latin, evolved over the course of the late Middle Ages as communities of believers experimented with their own forms. She also finds that rosary prayers were influenced by secular, even courtly literature that used images of the rose and rose garden; in the rosary, Mary is the Mystical Rose.".

Telling Images is a study of Chaucer's narrative art and its use of symbolic images in the visual arts of his time.