Medieval Art by Sharon Gallagher

Medieval Art

by Sharon Gallagher

Tudor Publishing Company, 1969, [First Edition], illustrated colour plates throughout, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, ex-library with stamps to title page, end flyleaf and back endpapers, sticker to back endpapers, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners  (see photographs)

“Many streams flowed into what we call Medieval art – classical naturalism, Oriental color, Egyptian designs, barbarian carvings – but they were all untied and transformed by an overwhelming single force, the Christian faith.  Medieval art is primarily the art of this faith.  Its subjects are most often scenes from the Gospels or the lives of the Saints.  The major patron, both in the East and the West, is the church.  Whether the result is a Russian icon or an Irish manuscript, we feel behind them the consistent force of an ordered spiritual realm of common belief.
The 91 magnificent full-colour reproductions in this volume provide only a glimpse – but a dazzling one – of the incredible treasures that were produced from one end of Europe to the other over a period of more than ten centuries.  Many of them are well known masterpieces: illuminations from the Echternach Gospels and the Book of Kells, enamels from Limoges, a passage from Bayeux Tapestry, mosaics from Byzantium; others are lesser known – icons from Yugoslavia, textiles from Christian Egypt, cave paintings from Armenia.  But together they provide a wide-ranging panorama of the multifaceted and everchanging variety of Medieval art.”