Late Medieval Art Research Articles

Adam Kraft’s Moving Sandstones

Adam Kraft, Albrecht Dürer’s contemporary in Nuremberg, worked in the material of sandstone to provide a comparable experience in carved relief about the Passion of Christ. Both artists began their work in Nuremberg around the same time, 1490, although the older Kraft actually predeceased Dürer by two full decades (1508/1528). But both Nuremberg artists shared a religious sentiment of late-medieval art as having a goal to evoke pious emotions through vivid, multi-figured narrative re-enactments. Kraft’s Stations of the Cross series simulates an imaginary pilgrimage in Jerusalem itself. Through their visual process, both Kraft and Dürer moved pious empathy in their—literally—moving viewers of Passion sequences.

NOTES ON THE BLOOD OF CHRIST IN DEVOTIONAL PANELS OF THE LAST JUDGMENT

This paper intends to briefly present theological aspects regarding the Last Judgment, the role of Christian images in Late Medieval art and, connecting both topics, iconographic changes and developments in Italian visual representations of the Last Judgment, particularly in panel paintings, by the end of the Middle Ages. We aim to relate these changes mostly to their expected religious functions in the stimulus of private devotion.

연대와 협력의 네트워크: 서유럽 페스트 시대 미술의 위로

There was a long-standing tradition in Christianity to emphasize mutual support and solidarity among community members in a time of pestilence. It had great resonance in visual culture as well-particularly between the late fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the bubonic plague constantly broke out in Western Europe. The images thematizing neighborly love and solidarity urged their viewers to offer a helping hand to fellow human beings. Simultaneously, they also reminded the viewers of the presence of the supporting community, often impalpable in the middle of a crisis. In so doing, the images offered relief and hope to those who suffered from the plague. While the key message remained the same, the thematic focus and visual strategies of those images changed over the course of time. In late medieval art, for example, communal penance to appease God’s anger or the charitable act to be rewarded by future salvation played a central role. Meanwhile, the concept of solidarity rooted in emotional bond between ordinary individuals in everyday life came to the foreground in sixteenth-century Lutheran visual culture. In the Roman Catholic church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, heroic representations of the saints, who dedicated themselves to attending the sick, moved and motivated the viewers to help the plague-stricken.

Shroud and Portrait of a Medieval Ruler

The research is concerning two unusual evidences of the late Medieval art, which could be seen in the Museum of the cathedral St. Stephan in Vienna. Both of them are related to Herzog Rudolf IV of Austria (1358 - 1365). One artefact in the museum is his silk gold woven shroud elaborated with especial mastership from Chinese silk in Tabriz, a city in present Iran. Especially important for this fabric is that thanks to the interwoven name of the ruler it could be dated precisely. The road of this Near East fabric to Europe and to the tomb of the Herzog in Vienna could be reconstructed. Rudolf IV died suddenly during the visit to his relative Bernabo Visconti in Milano who was one of the richest men in Europe by that time. Probably the fabric was brought across the Silk Road to Constantinople and further across the sea to Genova and to the city of silk Lucca and then to Milano. Such gold woven fabrics from the Islamic world could be found not rarely in the European ruler’s tombs. The second unusual object in the cathedral museum is a portrait of the Herzog. So far this portrait was attributed to a Prague artist. But it could be proved that it originated from Upper Italy and probably was painted by an artist from Verona who was associated to the society around the great humanist Francesco Petrarca. This portrait rises the question about the emergence of early ruler's portraits in Eu-rope and in this aspect is also related to achievements of the „Palaeologus Renaissance“ art in South – East Europe. The two objects are considered as expression forms of the ruler’s funeral culture of the late Medieval age. In the context formed by the comparative approach new possibilities for analysis are created which cross over the traditional methodology of History of Art.

A Carol by James Ryman in the Holkham Archives

Abstract A late fifteenth-century manorial notebook in the archives of the Earl of Leicester at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, has been found to contain a hitherto unnoticed and apparently unique late medieval English carol, based on the Latin hymn Te deum. Comparison with other examples of the genre suggests that its author is more likely than not to have been James Ryman, a Franciscan friar of Canterbury, and a prolific writer of carols. His oeuvre includes a number of compositions deriving from the Te deum, to some of which the Holkham text bears significant similarities. The owner of the notebook is identified as William Wayte Jr of Tittleshall, Norfolk, who is known to have served as an estate administrator and agent for the well-known Norfolk lawyer Sir Roger Townshend of Raynham (c.1430–1493). Certain provisions in Wayte’s will suggest that his interest in the carol may have been connected to a devotion on his part to the Trinity, which in late medieval art was often expressed through imagery drawn from the Te deum.

In Search of the Sacred Image by Aidan Nichols, O.P.

Reviewed by: In Search of the Sacred Image by Aidan Nichols, O.P. Dianne Phillips Aidan Nichols, O.P. In Search of the Sacred Image Leominster: Gracewing, 2020 xii + 274 pages. Paperback. $22.50. Fr. Aidan Nichols’s most recent work on the role of art in the Christian tradition focuses on the revivals of Byzantine and late medieval style in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century religious art. Essentially a history of Christian art from 1800 to 1950, it surveys artists who rarely appear in the historiography of modern art. An admirer of the Byzantine icon as the consummate model of Christian imagery, Nichols begins his search for a pictorial tradition appropriate to the modern Western Church with a chapter on the revival of interest in the icons of the Old Believers in nineteenth-century Russia, and ends with a lengthy chapter on the French Catholic artist, Maurice Denis (1870–1943). Chapter one, on the revival of interest in medieval Russian icons, explores how their eschewal of the naturalism characteristic of Western art dating from the Renaissance to c. 1900 appealed to the aesthetic concerns of the European avant-garde. Artists like Matisse and Kandinsky responded enthusiastically to the rejection of spatial illusion, the simplified forms, and the symbolism that endowed Byzantine icons with a mystical aura that nineteenth-century academic and secular art lacked. Chapter two surveys the rediscovery of Italian and [End Page 200] Netherlandish late medieval style—the art of the “Primitives,” e.g., Giotto and Fra Angelico—among nineteenth-century European religious artists. Nichols traces the history of the Nazarenes, an influential group of mostly German artists who had resided in Rome in the early years of the movement. Chapter three discusses the revival of late medieval art and architecture in England, especially the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood whose members favored a veristic style, often rendering their subjects with acute precision and sometimes taking an historicist approach to biblical subjects. Chapter four, on the revival of hieratic art, returns to the subject of Byzantine style in nineteenth-century France, owed in part to the discoveries of French antiquarians in the eastern Mediterranean. Valued for its antiquity and therefore regarded as more authentically Christian, it was appropriated for church architecture, e.g., Sacré-Coeur. The scholarship of French Byzantinists on the style and iconography of Byzantine mosaics, frescoes, and icons, and their transmission to the West via Italy, had a notable impact. In his exploration of hieraticism, Nichols also devotes attention to the School of Beuron, whose members were affiliated with a congregation of Benedictine monasteries. They favored Archaic Greek and Ancient Egyptian style as characteristic of wisdom–oriented societies, producing religious works whose formal qualities anticipate Art Deco. Chapter five considers the promotion of Russian medieval icons as part of the state’s nationalist agenda and describes how the Soviets consciously cultivated the market for icons among Western collectors as a source of revenue. Nichols also examines the important role played by Russian émigré artists in France after the Revolution in the preservation of the Old Russian icon tradition. Many of the strands of the preceding chapters converge in the sixth chapter on the art and, even more, the writings, of Maurice Denis. Nichols asserts that “what Denis represents is probably the furthest a Western Catholic can go in the direction of a fully adequate sacred art, lacking as he or she does a background in the canonical iconography of Byzantine-Slav Orthodoxy, the most successful of all historic styles the Church has employed” (219). A devout Catholic and supporter of Maurras’s Action française, Denis deeply admired the symbolism of the Byzantine tradition and the art of Fra Angelico. [End Page 201] He appreciated the work of Puvis de Chavannes, Japanese prints, Gauguin and Cezanne, but rejected the naturalism of the Impressionists, the “pure painting” of Matisse, and the abstraction of Cubism. Travel to Rome increased his appreciation for classical composition and, later in life, he even embraced Venetian colorism and Baroque passion. In his writings on art, Denis grappled with the question of the relationship between art and nature, advocating for “‘Symbolism regenerated through objectivity’, or, again, ‘Symbolism leaning on nature and reason’ so...

El sabueso medieval. Fuentes e iconografía desde su origen hasta los tratados cinegéticos del siglo XIV

El sabueso es un perro de rastro utilizado por los pueblos celtas desde la Antigüedad. No hemos conservado apenas referencias documentales o artísticas de sabuesos durante la Alta Edad Media. A partir del siglo del siglo XIII podemos tener una idea clara de la morfología y utilidad de los sabuesos a través de las enciclopedias, tratados de caza e imágenes artísticas. El arte y los manuscritos ilustrados de la Baja Edad Media demuestran que fue el perro más preciado por reyes y nobles en virtud de sus cualidades cinegéticas, hasta el punto en que se convirtió en el protagonista de la montería medieval.

Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals <i>Documents</i> (1929–31) and <i>Minotaure</i> (1933–39)

The avant-garde movement Surrealism claimed historical figures as supposed ancesters, as is well known, but also interacted with the past, and especially art of the past, in other ways. This article explores the reception of the European Middle Ages in French Surrealism, in particular medieval art, by means of a case study: illustrations of medieval and early-modern Western art in the surrealist periodicals Documents (1929-1931) and Minotaure (1933-1939). The cerebral and contrary Documents challenged the canon of art by actively looking at the margins of European art, reproducing medieval art from a wide variety of periods and geographic locations, and in very differing media, including jewelry and vessels, murals, bronze church doors, and manuscript illuminations. The glossy art review Minotaure, which came with coloured inserts, was more conventional in its selection, reproducing primarily late-medieval and renaissance art works, mainly (panel) paintings. However, the intention is just as contrary, as late-medieval and renaissance art in Minotaure is framed in terms of surrealist aesthetics in a manner undermining the conventional canon. In Documents medieval art primarily serves to makes points about style and iconography, which is often posited as primitive or exotic. In Minotaure, medieval art serves to make points about Surrealism, about the oneiric qualities of form or iconography. Both periodicals offered an interesting array of medieval and renaissance art and introduced this art into the surrealist discours.

‘A revolution in art’: Maria Callcott on Poussin, Painting, and the Primitives

In 1845 the Athenaeum bemoaned the loss to the nation of an ‘exquisite fragment’ by Filippino Lippi: the Angel Adoring once owned by the painter Augustus Wall Callcott and his wife Maria (1785–1842). This early painting, probably bought by Maria herself, epitomizes the revolutionary ideas set out in her publications on art. Initially known for her travel writing, she launched her art historical career in 1820 with a pioneering biography of Nicolas Poussin. A friend of painters such as Thomas Lawrence and J. M. W. Turner, she was especially close to Charles Eastlake and shared his desire to promote late medieval and early Renaissance art. On honeymoon in 1827 and 1828, Maria viewed such Primitive works in Germany and Italy, meeting the curators and artists who were producing a ‘revolution’ in taste. The trip resulted in Maria’s groundbreaking Essays Towards the History of Painting (1836). Prevented by ill health from making a substantial published contribution to the history of art, Maria Callcott influenced artistic debates of the day through her informal salon in Kensington. This article examines how she used her personal networks and travel experience to reassess works by the old masters, challenging conventional ideas, while also helping to combat prejudice against the female connoisseur.

“To the honour and worship of Almighty God and his saints:” Lay Patronage at All Saints’ Parish Church, Bristol

Countless objects across England were destroyed, leaving comparably few traces of late medieval art, architecture, and religious practice for examination today. Written documents, however, were not an active target of the Reformation. In some cases they are the best resource available for understanding and imagining the appearance, importance, and role of parish churches in the late medieval era. They provide glimpses of very personal relationships between the laity and the churches they used, and help to discern some of the ways in which benefactors could actively shape the interiors of these buildings to assert their authority within the community, and obtain prayers for salvation after death. Additionally, the laity helped form the congregation’s sensory perception of the Mass through donations of objects that engaged sight, touch, and sound. This will be demonstrated through the use of primary source texts written in fifteenth century English and accompanying modern translations of those texts, surviving artistic and architectural elements, and secondary interpretations of medieval documents. Original fifteenth century wills, churchwarden accounts, and inventories can be extremely thorough and difficult to follow; therefore, this research requires careful close reading of a high volume of documents spanning decades. Constructing a visual narrative based solely on written word is challenging, yet ultimately rewarding in cases in which a church’s religious art objects do not survive. Doing so can lead to significant revelations about the realities of late medieval religion.

Corals, Blood and Precious Pearls: The Materiality of a Late Medieval Textile

SummaryThis article undertakes an object-focused study of an embroidery of great visual and material complexity: The Bremnes Orphrey. Medieval embroideries were known for their rich and expressive materiality with costly silks, shimmering metal threads, precious stones and pearls. This was especially true for ecclesiastical textiles adorning the altar and clothing the clergy. Thus, ecclesiastical embroideries are particularly suited for material analysis inspired by the ‘material turn’ in medieval scholarship over the last few decades. More specifically, I intend to highlight the interplay between iconography and materiality in late medieval art.

Rome Award supported by the Roger and Ingrid Pilkington Charitable Trust: Santa Caterina at Galatina: late medieval art in Salento at the frontier of the Latin and Orthodox worlds

Rome Award supported by the Roger and Ingrid Pilkington Charitable Trust: Santa Caterina at Galatina: late medieval art in Salento at the frontier of the Latin and Orthodox worlds

Portraying Monks in Illuminated Service Books in the Fourteenth Century

생드니교회를 위해 제작된 14세기 중엽 채색 미사전서에 나타난 베네딕틴 수도승의 초상화는 중세 말기에 유행하는 수도원 구성원의 초상적 표현으로 이해할 수 있다. 같은 시기의 다른 채색 미사전서 혹은 찬송전서에도 주교, 대주교, 수녀원장, 수도원장을 비롯한 수도원 혹은 카톨릭 교회의 주요인물들이 이름과 함께 혹은 가문의 문장과 재현되어 종교인물의 초상적 표현도 세속군주 혹은 귀족 후원자들과 더불어 유행하였다고 볼 수 있다. 왕족 혹은 귀족의 초상과 다른 점은 본인의 개성보다는 본인이 속한 수도원의 집단정체성을 중시하여 초상화가 들어간 전례서가 교회 혹은 수도원에 다시 기증되어 다른 구성원들이 여러 세대에 걸쳐 사용할 수도 있다는 점이 주목할 만하다. 이런 점에서 개인의 추모를 목적으로 한 개인용 기도서와는 성격이 조금 다르다고 볼 수 있다.BR 14세기 채색 전례서에 나타나는 이러한 초상적 인물화는, 15세기 미술계에 중요한 장르로 대두하는 사실적인 초상화에 나타나는 유일무이한 개인적 재현은 아직 나타나지 않았기에 “초상화”라는 장르에 대입할 수는 없지만 이름 혹은 문장 등의 다른 기재를 통해 개인화를 시도하였다는 점은 중요하다. 15-16세기에 유화 혹은 조각 등에 자주 나타나는 사실적인 초상화 장르의 유행으로 나아가는 도입적인 단계라고 해석할 수 있다.

Material in Context: The Amber Head of Christ of the Wallace Collection Pax

This article undertakes an object-focused study of a single work of art of great material and visual complexity: the Wallace Collection pax. This object stimulates an important discussion on how the making, materials and form of a work of art are fundamental to unravelling the object’s function and meaning for a contemporary audience. In placing at the core of the object a rare example of a late medieval amber Vera icon, the Wallace Collection pax also opens up a wider discussion on the nature and popularity of amber as a material of artistic expression in the later Middle Ages. In basing this article on the physical and material history of the work of art, I hope to illustrate the importance of going back to first principles when undertaking object-based research, and I intend to highlight the complex interaction between material and form in late medieval art.

Illuminating Faith: The Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art by Roger S. Wieck

Reviewed by: Illuminating Faith: The Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art by Roger S. Wieck Dianne Phillips Roger S. Wieck Illuminating Faith: The Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art New York: Morgan Library and Museum in association with Scala Art Publishers, 2014 79pages. Paperback. $14.95. This slender but rich volume reproduces in color the manuscript illuminations and explanatory labels that constituted an exhibition organized by Roger Wieck at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York in the summer of 2013. The exhibition included 59 manuscript illuminations ranging from the late twelfth through the sixteenth centuries and four illustrations from printed books of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Most of the images [End Page 228] were produced in northern Europe and date to the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. Although the text that accompanies each illustration is very brief and directed to a general audience, the book provides a surprisingly comprehensive compendium of imagery relevant to the theology, liturgy, and spirituality of the Eucharist in the later middle ages. Unlike typical exhibition catalogues, it does not discuss artistic style and only rarely refers to patronage, instead focusing on the subject matter and religious meaning of the images. Given the parameters of the exhibition and the imagined audience, the single page of text introducing each of the six sections and the short descriptions (typically 8–10 lines of text) that accompany each illumination are clear and concise, although scholars of theology and liturgy will likely find them elementary and may object to Wieck’s use of “True” rather than “Real” Presence. The introduction to the exhibition provides a one-page explanation of the Eucharist and notes the important thirteenth-century events—the doctrine of transubstantiation articulated at Lateran IV and the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi—that prompted the efflorescence of eucharistic imagery in late medieval art. The six sections into which the illuminations are assigned demonstrate the range of the imagery. Section I, “Institution of the Eucharist,” includes representations of scriptural subjects pertinent to the Mass, especially the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, and the Crucifixion, as well as the devotional type of Christ as the Man of Sorrows and the allegorical image of the Mystic Winepress. Section II, “Celebration of the Mass,” includes illuminations that depict various moments in the Mass such as the elevation of the Host, the administration of Communion, and other less familiar images such as a c. 1520 altar card to be propped up against the back of the altar as an aid to the celebrant. Section III, “The Eucharist and the Old Testament,” focuses on typological images, including illustrations from the Speculum humanae salvationis and the Concordantiae caritatis. In Section IV, “Domestic Devotion to the Eucharist,” Wieck gathers illuminations that manifest what he characterizes as the late medieval desire for “ocular consumption” of the Eucharist as a substitute for infrequent reception. He asserts that annual reception of Communion by the laity was customary. However, annual reception was a minimum requirement prescribed at Lateran [End Page 229] IV, and recent scholars have suggested that urban laity received more frequently. In Section IV, the illuminations are all from books of Hours and include generic representations of the Mass and the exposition of the Eucharist in a tabernacle and monstrance, as well as a graphic devotional image whose close-up vertically-oriented view of the wound in Christ’s side that is placed beside the Imago pietatis is interpreted as an example of devotion to the lance wound as the site from which the Church was born, thus accounting for its vaginal appearance. Section V includes illuminations related to the Feast of Corpus Christi, the most dramatic of which is a panoramic cityscape of the Corpus Christi procession of Pope Paul III by the Renaissance artist, Giulio Clovio. In Section VI, “Eucharistic Miracles,” the illuminations date from the late fourteenth through sixteenth centuries and most represent the miraculous bleeding Host of Dijon given to Philip of Burgundy by Pope Eugenius IV in 1433. The introduction to this last section notes the increase in Eucharistic miracles in the late middle ages and their connection to the persecution of Jews. However, the illuminations throughout the...

The Spectacle of Clouds, 1439–1650: Italian Art and Theatre by Alessandra Buccheri

Reviewed by: The Spectacle of Clouds, 1439–1650: Italian Art and Theatre by Alessandra Buccheri Alice Isabella Sullivan Buccheri, Alessandra, The Spectacle of Clouds, 1439–1650: Italian Art and Theatre (Visual Culture in Early Modernity), Farnham, Ashgate, 2014; hardback; pp. 216; 55 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781472418838. This study addresses the representation of clouds in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, from the initial formulations in early fifteenth-century Florentine stage designs to the full development of cloud illusionism in Rome, in both theatre and fresco painting, during the first half of the seventeenth century. The author, Alessandra Buccheri, seeks to explain the origins of Roman Baroque cloud designs; at the crux of her main argument stands the relationship between the representation of clouds in religious stage designs and in Italian art. This is a study, therefore, that brings into dialogue histories of art and theatre. The nine chronologically arranged chapters address the ways in which cloud machinery and the theatrical heaven informed the painted formations of cloud illusionism from the early fifteenth century and through the middle of the seventeenth century. Chapter 1 addresses the representations and functions of clouds in late medieval art and theatre, with a focus on cloud machinery as a theatrical device. The second chapter considers the development, in the fifteenth century, of ‘heaven machinery’ and its subsequent adaptation in paintings by artists, such as Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lipi. Chapter 3 engages with Raphael’s and Correggio’s painted cloud structures and their distinct designs of illusionistic space (platform-clouds vs. bubble-clouds), along with the relationships of their respective modes of representation with religious theatre. Chapter 4’s discussion centres on the shift that took place in sixteenth-century Italy from religious plays to Vitruvian-inspired theatrical spaces. The intricate stage designs and props used in these spaces were designed through a series of working drawings and etchings that likely also served as inspiration for artists. The compositional and perspectival struggles of painting large-scale cloud formations in the second half of the sixteenth century, and the solutions Venetian artists, like Tintoretto, found in Florentine theatrical designs are addressed in Chapter 5. In the next chapter, Buccheri deals with the factors that contributed to the new cloud constructions seen in Rome at the turn of the seventeenth century that combined Correggio’s cloud structures and approaches to spatial illusionism with foreshortenings and aerial perspectives. Chapter 7 addresses the role of Tuscan artists in the development of cloud illusionism in seventeenth-century Rome, with a focus on Lodovico Cardi di Cigoli’s innovative contributions to cloud composition, in which heaven appeared as a series of platform-clouds devoid of architectonic barriers. Chapter 8 focuses on the work of Giovanni da San Giovanni and Giovanni [End Page 183] Lanfranco as pioneers of the Roman Baroque, although with distinct approaches to cloud illusionism. The last chapter serves as the conclusion. The Appendix provides two excerpts from Vasari, and the Bibliography contains both primary and secondary sources mostly in English and Italian. Alice Isabella Sullivan University of Michigan Copyright © 2016 Alice Isabella Sullivan

The Pre-Raphaelite Journey into the Middle Ages

Abstract The Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets rejected contemporary conventional style in art, and did not concern themselves with the representation of contemporary life either. They viewed the surrounding social life as sordid, and reached back to the Middle Ages both for technique and subject matter. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and later William Morris found inspiration in late medieval art and literature. They took their subjects from history, legend, religion or poetry, focusing on moral or psychological issues, and expressed fascination for beauty as a value of spiritual nature. This paper examines three of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s medieval fantasy pictures (The Tune of Seven Towers, The Blue Closet and A Christmas Carol), which prompt a meditative and imaginative response through their enigmatic references, and thus attest the mysterious feature of Pre-Raphaelite medieval imagery. The paper discusses their enigmatic nature in the light of William Morris’s early dream poems The Tune of Seven Towers and The Blue Closet, written on the relevant Rossetti pictures. A parallel reading of poem and picture evidences how Pre-Raphaelite medievalism in painting can invite the onlooker for an inner journey through exploring an imagined referential background.

Landscapes, Vegetation, and Folklore in Late Medieval Art: An Iconographic Study Based on Selected Austrian and South German Panel Paintings

This article examines the symbolism and realism of naturalistically depicted flowering plants in Late Gothic art from Southern Central Europe. A large number of fifteenth- to sixteenth-century pre-Reformation panel paintings with a landscape context were studied in order to learn about their plant species, the contexts the plants were shown in, and their symbolism in connection to religious subjects. Paintings were studied in groups of 1) roadsides and execution sites and 2) fenced meadows, gardens and courtyards. In addition, the seasonality of depicted plants was observed in the scenes of the Passion cycle and in the scene of the Visitation. The realism of these landscapes was manifested in these pictures by showing plants growing in places they belonged to naturally or culturally, and in seasons of religious feasts that the paintings were connected with. However, this realism was not consistent, but combined with plant metaphors and symbols, neatly associated to the subject, and recognised by plants’ overall frequency, placement, properties and naming. Plant names in late medieval and early modern herbals appeared to be a particularly good tool for understanding their possible meanings in paintings, assuming that the first question the late medieval viewer could have asked was: ‘What is this?’ The religious art of the period is rich in links between natural and cultural environments; from it we can learn about the diversity of past vegetation as well as the spirituality and poetics of the society.

A liquid history: Blood and animation in late medieval art

A liquid history: Blood and animation in late medieval art

Producción artística en la Baja Edad Media. Originalidad y/o copia.

During the last period of the Middle Ages, there was a marked increase in the production of art objects. This quantitative increase was made possible by the two forms of artistic production materialized in the period: the commissioned work by renowned artists and standardized production. Both coordinates put us in some aspects to consider in valuing the work of late medieval art as the concept of authorship and the originality and / or copy one.