128 pages, paperback, 295 x 240 mm, 130 colour illustrations
PRICE: £20.00
ISBN: 9 780955 339 30 1
‘Where have they come from? Where did you find them?’ These are some of the first questions we hear when people see medieval works of art like those assembled in this catalogue. Art from this period has been collected for at least 200 years, yet there is a perception that if it is not locked away in a monastery it has found its home in a museum long ago. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the richness and variety of what still lies unclaimed by history that makes this material so interesting.
The canon of what in medieval art is considered excellent was established long ago. Recent decades have witnesses a vigorous re-evaluation of this legacy and some of its keystones have begun to loosen. For example, the pre-eminence of Italian painting over that of Northern Europe is being questioned, and classes of objects once treated as peripheral, like stained glass, are moving back to centre stage. Works of art we could not see or knew nothing about are becomming visible, and it is exciting to reveal items to a wider public in this album.
Accompanied an exhibition at the Sam Fogg gallery in London in the Summer 2007, and in New York in late 2007.
These works of museum quality, from an anonymous collection (one of the most important currently in private hands), were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2005. Many of the objects in the catalogue will be well known to those familiar with the specialist literature, even if they were unaware of their whereabouts. More
In the winter of 1586, Hakob Jughayets'i, one of Armenia's most celebrated illuminators, completed work on a Gospel Book with an extensive and extraordinary programme of narrative miniatures and marginal figures. More
According to the Chaworth Roll, Egbert was ‘the first king of all England’, reigning 829–39. The Chaworth genealogical Roll of the kings of England was made in the 1320s for the Chaworth family, then it was brought up to date as far as Henry IV (1399–1413) and remained with Chaworth descendants until very recently. More
The selection consists of Qur’ans, illustrated Islamic manuscripts and scientific and religious manuscripts. All are handsomely illustrated and fully discussed. The manuscripts are from all parts of the Islamic world and represent the finest achievements of the form. More
This illuminated manuscript, a gradual of large size which the whole congregation of monks could see and read as they sang in choir (just as they are shown doing in an illustration in the manuscript itself), was previously unknown to scholars and has only recently come to light. It was clearly produced for a monastery of the Olivetan order, a branch of the Benedictines with a particular reverence for the Virgin Mary – probably Santa Maria di Baggio near Milan. More
This book is a complete catalogue and commentary on a remarkable series of 130 coloured drawings executed in North Italy, almost certainly Padua, in the 1450s by a group of artists in the circle of Andrea Mantegna. The drawings illustrate subjects from the Tacuinum Sanitatis or Table of Health. Subjects touched on include medicine, sport, farming, animal husbandry, natural history, shopping, cooking and manufacturing – constituting an extraordinary record of everyday life (and life style) in early Renaissance Italy. This manuscript is one of four known series of the kind, and the only one not published. More
This is the catalogue to an outstanding collection of Medieval art from a private collection. Ranging from paintings and sculpture to stained glass, manuscripts and caskets, many of the objects presented here are of absolute rarity, some are previously unpublished and - until recently - unknown. More
The unique character of Ethiopian art is the legacy of its situation high in the mountains on the Horn of Africa. Though remote and often isolated it evolved a tradition, going back to the fourth century AD, in response to contacts with Byzantine, European and Islamic cultures. More
Produced for the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, this book traces the development of the early Ottoman style under influence from their neighbours; the impact of the patronage of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror; and the development of the ‘classical’ style under his successor Bayezid II. A catalogue section provides beautiful illustrations of 41 masterpieces of bookbinding; with technical appendices, bibliography, concordance and index. More
This catalogue discusses and illustrates a wide variety of Chinese books, dating from the sixth to the nineteenth century -- some very rare. More
This book is devoted to a monumental and superbly illuminated very large early fourteenth-century Mamluk Qur’an in muhaqqaq script. It constitutes the final part (Juz’ 30) of a superb two-volume Qur’an of which the first volume is preserved in the National Museum in Damascus while the second volume, from which the present section originates, is widely dispersed. More