Publisher description

Portraits and Prayers is a collection of early essays and word portraits by the American writer Gertrude Stein. Her subjects often provide a description of what she observed in her Saturday salons.

This book features 107 of the finest examples of illuminated pages from medieval and Renaissance Books of Hours. Roger Wieck's comprehensive text introduces the Book of Hours -- a "bestseller" for three hundred years -- to the general reader, discussing its iconography, the artists who illuminated this genre, and its role as a religious text in the lives of its owners. As a collection of both stirring words and inspiring images, the Book of Hours thus comprised a series of "painted prayers".

For 15 years, Daniel Epstein, a Marketing Director at one of the world's largest corporations, Procter & Gamble, traveled the world for business and for faith. Motivated by his own search to fill the "God-sized hole" in his life, he did not know where it would lead. He felt that if he did not develop some type of spiritual faith he would die. Born and raised a Jew, Daniel's challenges with relationships, work, and "life" forced him at age 36 to get on his knees and pray to a God he did not know, a higher power not specific to either his own Judaism or any religion, and ask for help. In order to keep his new found sense of faith alive and to gain from the experience of others, Daniel created a spiritual exercise out of interviewing people around the world about the role of faith in their lives. As a photographer, Daniel also captured a moment with each person in a black and white portrait meant to evoke their true spirit. In 2012, Daniel launched Portraits on Faith online as the largest documentary project on faith ever compiled by a single person. Over 100 of the 500 portraits shot have been published from 27 countries, which have been viewed over 300,000 times by people around the world. As a culmination of all the work that has to this moment, Daniel is publishing the first volume of Portraits in Faith, which include over 100 portraits, quotes, and reflections on faith from people spanning the world, from over 40 faith traditions and denominations.

This book contains over 80 paintings of Jesus Christ for the purposes of enjoying and meditating. Painting has always been associated with the life of the Church. From the time of the Catacombs it has been used in ecclesiastical ornamentation, and for centuries after Constantine, religious art was the only form of living art in the Christian world. Its fecundity has been wonderful and even now, although much diminished, is still important. Until the Renaissance, the Church exercised a veritable monopoly over this sphere. Profane painting in Europe dates only from the last five centuries and it took the lead only in the nineteenth century. It may, therefore, be said that throughout the Christian Era the history of painting has been that of religious painting.

Focuses on one of the most attractive features of late medieval manuscript illumination: the portrait of the book owner at prayer within the pages of her prayer-book.