Publisher Description

This work tells the story of Crusader art, focusing on the full range of Crusader painting (manuscript illumination, frescos, mosaics and icon painting) as providing the most significant continuous surviving evidence for the development of Crusader art.

The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098-1187 examines the art and architecture produced for the Crusaders in Syria-Palestine during the first century of their quest to recapture Jerusalem. Commissioned by kings and queens, patriarchs and bishops, knights and merchants, who came as pilgrims or settlers to the Holy Land, it is an art of manuscript illumination, fresco painting, mosaics, stone sculpture, metalwork, ivory carving, coins and seals by artists trained in the Latin West, and the Byzantine and Islamic East. Combining the stylistic and iconographic traditions of these regions, Crusader art defies easy categorization: indeed, it is a unique phenomenon within the spectrum of medieval art.

The fullest but controversial account of The Lionhearted's 1187-92 pilgrimage and holy war, translated from an 1864 edition published as part of William Stubbs' Chronicles and Memorial of the Reign of Richard I. Scholars have been wary of using it despite its detail because of doubt as to its authorship, its poor Latin, and its considerable length. The narrative begins with Saladin's attack on the kingdom of Jerusalem and ends with Richard's return to England to curb his brother John's ambitions. The edition was prepared specifically for college students, but is accessible to general readers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR