This book teaches the reader how to look at medieval art–which aspects of architecture, sculpture, or painting are important and for what reasons. It includes the art and building of what is now Western Europe from the second to the fifteenth centuries.

In this study of the rare twelfth-century treatise On Diverse Arts, Heidi C. Gearhart explores the unique system of values that guided artists of the High Middle Ages as they created their works. Written in northern Germany by a monk known only by the pseudonym Theophilus, On Diverse Arts is the only known complete tract on art to survive from the period. It contains three books, each with a richly religious prologue, describing the arts of painting, glass, and metalwork. Gearhart places this one-of-a-kind treatise in context alongside works by other monastic and literary thinkers of the time and presents a new reading of the text itself. Examining the earliest manuscripts, she reveals a carefully ordered, sophisticated work that aligns the making of art with the virtues of a spiritual life. On Diverse Arts, Gearhart shows, articulated a distinctly medieval theory of art that accounted for the entire process of production—from thought and preparation to the acquisition of material, the execution of work, the creation of form, and the practice of seeing. An important new perspective on one of the most significant texts in art history and the first study of its kind available in English, Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art provides fresh insight into the principles and values of medieval art making. Scholars of art history, medieval studies, and Christianity will find Gearhart’s book especially edifying and valuable.

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Designed as a quick-reference source to the topics, symbols, themes, and stories most frequently found in early Christian, western medieval, and Byzantine art, this work describes topics that include names and narratives drawn from the Bible and apocrypha, the lives of saints, and numerous other textual sources. Authors whose works were frequently illustrated or who were influential on the visual arts are treated, as are selected art historical terms and events of significance for the arts. Cross-references alert readers to alternate titles and related topics, and the majority of entries cite a pictorial example. These are keyed to standard texts for easy viewing access. The dictionary begins with Aaron and ends with Zoomorphic Decoration. This dictionary focuses on the medieval period and the distinctive ways in which the subjects and symbols referenced in the work evolved and developed during the Middle Ages, resulting in a unique overview of the evolution, development, popularity, and transformations that took place in medieval artistic iconography. The introduction provides chronological, thematic, and bibliographic surveys to supplement the 500 individual entries; the bibliography directs the readers to more detailed studies. The work also includes names and topics not always found in art reference sources, for example, authors whose works were frequently illustrated, or who were influential on the visual arts, and historical events of significance for the arts.