This collection of nineteen essays focuses on the ways in which, in England, France and Spain, the Renaissance made propagandistic, or aesthetic, use of the image in various spectacles. Under surface differences between genres, what emerges is a surprising similarity in tactics and response, which invites further questioning about image elaboration and its reception.

This collection of nineteen essays focuses on the ways in which, in England, France and Spain, the Renaissance made propagandistic, or aesthetic, use of the image in various spectacles. Under surface differences between genres, what emerges is a surprising similarity in tactics and response, which invites further questioning about image elaboration and its reception.

Deals with the history of eyeglasses from their invention in Italy ca. 1286 to the appearance of the telescope three cent. later. "By the end of the 16th cent. eyeglasses were as common in western and central Europe as desktop computers are in western developed countries today." Eyeglasses served an important technological function at both the intellectual and practical level, not only easing the textual studies of scholars but also easing the work of craftsmen/small bus. During the 15th cent. two crucial developments occurred: the ability to grind convex lenses for various levels of presbyopia and the ability to grind concave lenses for the correction of myopia. As a result, eyeglasses could be made almost to prescription by the early 17th cent. Illus.

The present volume contains eighteen papers of a conference devoted to iconography and emblem studies. The essays represent the state of research and are arranged according to the following aspects: Iconography and Ideology, Iconography and History, The World of Emblems and Occult Emblematics.

Christ's Crucifixion is one of the most recognized images in Western visual culture, and it has come to stand as a universal symbol of both suffering and salvation. But often overlooked in this symbolic language is the fact that ultimately the Crucifixion is a scene of capital punishment. In The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel, Mitchell Merback reconstructs the religious, legal, and historical context of the Crucifixion and of other images of public torture. The result is an account of a time when criminal justice and religion were entirely interrelated and punishment was a visual spectacle devoured by a popular audience.

Scholars have long recognized the significant role that confraternities, or lay brotherhoods, played in the religious life of medieval and early modern Catholicism. Taking a broad chronological and geographical approach, this collection of essays addresses the varied and fluid nature of confraternities and their relationship to wider society.

There has long been a need to introduce performing-arts enthusiasts and students to the fascinating field of iconography, both as manifested in art history and in its more pragmatic or applied forms. Yet relatively little systematic effort has been made to collect and interpret centuries of such visual evidence in the light of the best available art-historical information, combined with corroborating textual documentation and insights from the histories of performance disciplines. Aspiring iconographers of the performing arts need to be aware that there are often several levels of interpretation which great works of visual art will sustain. This book explores these levels of interpretation: a surface or literal reading, a deeper reading of the work which seeks to enter the mind of the artist and asks how and why he put a given work together, and the deepest reading of the work relating it to the artistic traditions and culture in which the artist lived. In expounding on these levels of iconographic interpretations four discourses by scholars active in the study of visual records are given in relation to traditions, techniques, and trends: performance in general (Katritzky), music (Heck), theatre (Erenstein), and dance (Smith). Effort is made to keep abreast of modern technology influencing iconographic representations as on the Internet and virtual reality.Thomas F. Heck is Professor of Musicology and Head of the Music and Dance Library at the Ohio State University.