This book offers a novel perspective on one of the most important monuments of French Gothic architecture, the Sainte-Chapelle, constructed in Paris by King Louis IX of France between 1239 and 1248 especially to hold and to celebrate Christ's Crown of Thorns. Meredith Cohen argues that the chapel's architecture, decoration, and use conveyed the notion of sacral kingship to its audience in Paris and in greater Europe, thereby implicitly elevating the French king to the level of suzerain, and establishing an early visual precedent for the political theories of royal sovereignty and French absolutism. By setting the chapel within its broader urban and royal contexts, this book offers new insight into royal representation and the rise of Paris as a political and cultural capital in the thirteenth century.

This study of the spectacular ensemble of windows of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris- the first in-depth examination of the glass in nearly half a century- asks the question, are the scenes depicted in the stained glass comprehensible as story? Through an exhaustive study of textual and visual restoration records and extant authentic panels, Jordan posits reconstructions of the chapel's large-scale windows as they would have appeared in the 13th century. Jordan's work employs medieval understandings of narrative theory and practice to demonstrate a coherent and intertextual story of kingship in the windows' implicit antiphonal invocation of Biblical heroes and Capetian monarchy. Each chapter examines a formal aspect of the narratives depicted in the windows and elucidates it through comparison with similar techniques employed in medieval literature and articulated in the ars poetriae, rhetorical treatises devoted to the theory and practice of medieval storytelling. In the final chapter Jordan draws on both the narrative devices employed in the biblical windows and the evidence of her reconstuctions to argue for a new identification of the so-called Relics window as a Royal window chronicling the history of the kings of France. Jordan convincingly demonstrates that, far from a cacophonous assemblage of images, the Sainte-Chapelle glass adeptly employs a variety of fashionable narrative devices, and proposes that the chapel's Old Testament windows were manipulated in such a way as to craft from the biblical narratives a visual essay on kingship that articulates the foremost components of French medieval monarchic rule and the specifically Capetian claims to sacral kingship. In both its theoretical scope and the originality of its reconstructions of the windows, Visualizing Kingship provides an important contribution to Art History and intellectual history more generally.

The first contemporary, illustrated English-language book to reflect the history and beauty of Parisian churches.

The Image of Edessa, also later known as the Mandylion, was a relic of Christ, a cloth imprinted with his features which he had used to wipe his face, and subsequently used to cure King Agbar of Edessa, the first Christian ruler. This book collects and provides parallel translations of all the available written evidence for the image, along with detailed analysis of the history of the image. Guscin deftly seperates fact from legend, for while the story of King Agbar is certainly mythical, an image of some sort did definitely exist by the mid tenth century when it was translated to Constantinople.

For the seasoned Parisian traveller or the novice looking to get off the beaten track Cahill provides a roadmap to parts of the city most visitors will never seeIn a city that is the destination of millions of travelers every year, it can be difficult to find your way to its lovely, serene spaces. Away from the madding crowds, the gardens of Paris offer the balm of flowers, tall old trees, fountains, ponds, sculptures, with quiet Parisians reading Le Monde, taking the sun, relishing the peace. These places are often tucked away, off the beaten tourist track, and without a guide they're easy to miss: The Jardin de l'Atlantique, out of sight on the roof of Gare Montparnasse. The enchanting Jardin de la Vallee Suisse, invisible from the street, accessible only if you know how to find the path. The Square Boucicaut, its children's carousel hidden inside a grove of oak and maples. Square Batignolles, the shade of the old chestnut trees an inspiration to the painter edouard Manet and poet Paul Verlaine. Hidden Gardens of Paris features 40 such oases in quartiers both posh and plain, as well as dozens of others Nearby to the featured green space. It is arranged according to the geographic sections of the city Ile de la Cite, Left Bank, Right Bank, Western Paris, Eastern Paris a lively and informative guide that focuses on each place as a site of passionate cultural memory.