Medieval

Manuscripts of the Silk Road

300 x 240 mm, paperback, 52 pages, 30 colour illustrations
PRICE: £20.00
ISBN: 978 0 953942 29 9

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For more than a thousand years, the paths of the Silk Road joined the distant empires of East Asia and the Mediterranean, forming a complex web of trade, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange between China, Central Asia, Persia, Tibet, India, the Near East and Europe.

Interest in the cultures of the Silk Road was renewed in the end of the nineteenth century. In 1907 Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943) made one of the most sensational archaeological finds of all time: at the Mogao Caves, also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, near Dunhuang, he discovered a library containing thousands of both religious and secular manuscripts dating from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. Most such documents have ended up in institutions like the British Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale and other national libraries in India, China and Japan.

In keeping with the diversity of the Dunhuang discoveries, this book consists of examples of manuscripts in Chinese, Khotanese, Bactrian, Gandhari, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic. The material provides a sense of the fruitful exchanges as well as bitter struggles in these regions over the centuries.

Art of the Armenians

On the far Eastern edge of the Christian world – often isolated or overwhelmed by Christian cultures – the Armenians have produced a distinctive artistic tradition. The collection assembled here opens with the objects from the great medieval periods in Greater Armenia and the Kingdom of Cilicia. Later centuries are represented by paintings and books created in communities dominated by other cultures or far from the homeland, like the series of manuscripts here from Constantinople. More

Islamic Calligraphy

The Islamic manuscripts and manuscript leaves gathered here are often of great antiquity, ranging from the eighth to the sixteenth century; most are in Kufic. There are also pottery, metalwork and woodwork examples bearing calligraphy. An impressive illustration of the many beauties of Islamic script. More

Picturing Piety: The Book of Hours

This catalogue of Books of Hours, the 'best seller' of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, presents two dozen Books of Hours mostly dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Examples from France, the Netherlands, and Belgium are presented chronologically with illustrations in colour for each entry. More

The Chaworth Roll

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

Art of the Middle Ages

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

Geometry in Gold: An Illuminated Mamlk Qu'ran Section

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

Un Graduale Olivetano: Un Percorso nella Miniatura Lombarda del Quattrocento

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 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

An Intimate Art: 12 Books of Hours for 2012

Books of Hours are probably the most famous of all medieval illuminated manuscripts. Presented here are twelve Books of Hours that date from the origins of the genre in the thirteenth century to its eclipse in the sixteenth century. Examples come from France, Italy and the Southern and Northern Netherlands and are by many notable artists, including Pietro da Pavia, Belbello da Pavia, the Masters of Zweder van Culenburg, the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, Willem Vrelant, Guillaume II le Roy and Jean Poyer. More

Jean de Carpentin's Book of Hours: The Genius of the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book

In the 1470s, one of the most innovative artists working in Bruges illuminated a Book of Hours for Jean Carpentin, lord of Gravile and prominent citizen of Normandy. Known as the Master of the Dresden Prayer Book after one of his other masterpieces, this artist and members of his workshop enriched the pages of Carpentin’s manuscript with miniatures, historiated initials and boldly coloured borders in which human figures, monsters and monkeys are framed by twisting branches of acanthus. More

Andre Beauneveu: 'No Equal in Any Land' - Artist to the courts of France and Flanders

"This sumptuously illustrated book, which accompanied the exhibition at the Groeningemuseum in Bruges in 2007–8, is an important new study of the late-fourteenth-century Valenciennes-born sculptor André Beauneveu whose surviving works deserve to be more widely known." (Church Monuments journal) The full scope of his talent was exploited by the celebrated royal patron Jean de Berry, for whom he produced manuscript illuminations, made designs for stained glass and oversaw the construction of his château at Mehun-sur-Yevre. However, it is primarily his very great skill in the handling of stone which gives Beauneveu such particular significance in the history of late medieval art. More

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