Traditional histories of medieval art and architecture often privilege the moment of a work’s creation, yet surviving works designated as "medieval" have long and expansive lives. Many have extended prehistories emerging from their sites and contexts of creation, and most have undergone a variety of interventions, including adaptations and restorations, since coming into being. The lives of these works have been further extended through historiography, museum exhibitions, and digital media. Inspired by the literary category of biography and the methods of longue durée historians, the introduction and seventeen chapters of this volume provide an extended meditation on the longevity of medieval works of art and the aspect of time as a factor in shaping our interpretations of them. While the metaphor of "lives" invokes associations with the origin of the discipline of art history, focus is shifted away from temporal constraints of a single human lifespan or generation to consider the continued lives of medieval works even into our present moment. Chapters on works from the modern countries of Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany are drawn together here by the thematic threads of essence and continuity, transformation, memory and oblivion, and restoration. Together, they tell an object-oriented history of art and architecture that is necessarily entangled with numerous individuals and institutions.
Author(s): Jennifer M. Feltman, Sarah Thompson
Series: AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 322
City: Abingdon
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
List of Color Plates
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Why the Long Lives of Medieval Art and Architecture? An Introduction
PART I ESSENCE AND CONTINUITY
1 How Long Are the Lives of Medieval Buildings? Framing Spatio-temporalities in the Study of the Built World
2 Lost in Translation: Destroyed Sculpture, Invented Images, and the Long Life of the Virgin of Le Puy
3 Flying Pigs, Fiery Whirlwinds, and a 300-Year-Old Virgin: Costume and Continuity in a Sacred Performance
PART II TRANSFORMATION
4 San Quirce de Burgos: One Medieval Transformation in the Life of a Romanesque Church
5 Recycling Santa Tecla: The Demolition and Continued Life of an Early Christian Basilica
6 Picturing the Long Life of Notre-Dame de Louviers
7 Reuse, Recycle? The Long Life of an Unfinished French Book of Hours
PART III NARRATION
8 Resurrecting the Medieval Altar: Iberian Virgins in the Gothic Castilian Imagination and in Contemporary Museum Contexts
9 The Portal from Coulangé: A Peripatetic Journey
10 Ownership, Censorship, and Digital Repatriation: Excavating Layers of History in the Carrow Psalter
PART IV MEMORY AND OBLIVION
11 Restoration, Revival, Remembrance: The Nineteenth-Century Lives of the Lorenzetti Chapter House Frescoes from San Francesco, Siena
12 The Victory Cross Redux: Ritual, Memory, and Politics in the Aftermath of the Spanish Civil War
13 The Magdeburg Rider on Display in Modern Germany
PART V RESTORATION
14 The Salvage of the Benevento Bronze Doors After World War II
15 Preservation, Restoration, and the Tomb of the “Founder” at Salisbury
16 Understanding the Restoration at Chartres
17 The Power of Absence: The Missing North Tower of Saint-Denis
Index
