The results of the restoration of paintings dating back to the 1220s are being displayed on a new website. The paintings inside Lakenheath’s St Mary the Virgin church were discovered in 1864 but had been damaged by leaks in the roof and a build up of dirt. Project manager Matthew Champion said he hoped the…
The story of how the Louvre purchased a painting by medieval master Jean Malouel for €7.8 million ($10 million) begins, improbably enough, in 1985 in the small town of Vic-le-Comte in south-central France (population: 4,700). The parish priest, trying to raise money to install a heating system in the church, decided to sell various bric-a-brac…
The job of art historians is to discover the origins of artwork, but when it comes to art from early medieval periods, historians find themselves in a world shrouded with mystery. “We’ve got objects, but no fancy story to attach to them,” said Sigrid Danielson, in her lecture titled “Art History and the Early Medieval…
The Bellarmine Museum of Art at Fairfield University is home to the new art exhibit “Kells to Clonmacnoise: Medieval Irish Art in Context,” which features several valuable replicas and reproductions of important Irish works of art. On Monday, April 18, Fairfield debuted the exhibit with an opening reception in Bellarmine Hall. The university provided refreshments…
For those who consider museum-going a secular religion, here’s a meta-experience: “Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe” opens Feb. 13 at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and features 133 objects linked to medieval Europe’s pilgrims – the ones who worshiped saints’ remains the way we worship the “Mona Lisa.” Co-organized…
The macabre encounter of skeletons mocking the living has haunted Case Western Reserve University art historian Elina Gertsman’s imagination since childhood walks with her grandfather through the St. Nicholas Church in Tallinn (now the Art Museum of Estonia). That childhood fascination led to Gertsman’s newly published book, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages:…
In the Middle Ages, there were no mandatory birth certificates, and many records have crumbled to dust. However, it is believed that in 1445, in a working-class district of Florence, a boy was born to the family of the tanner Mariano di Vanni Filipepi. The boy’s birth date was calculated from a note in the…
Historian Cynthia Robinson of Cornell University will deliver the annual Riggsby Lecture on Medieval Mediterranean History and Culture at 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 15, in the Hodges Library auditorium at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Robinson’s lecture is titled “Who’s That Girl?: Cross-Cultural Narrative, Mysticism and the Lady on the Alhambra Ceilings,” and is presented…
Art museums are victims of their own success, although it’s hard to feel sorry for them. To curry favor at the box office, they’ve convinced a generation of visitors that blockbuster exhibitions are defined by how many Egyptian mummies or paintings by Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso they can corral in one place. “Treasures of…
As a major launching pad for young artists and designers, the Rhode Island School of Design is necessarily focused on the future. It’s a place where the cutting-edge is commonplace. But on Friday, the past, not the future, will take center stage as the school’s Museum of Art unveils two newly renovated gallery areas —…
A Little known branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a superb art collection and a magical getaway in Manhattan. Jenny Arsenault likes to imagine she’s legendary medieval maiden Lady of Shalott when she visits The Cloisters, and it’s easy to understand why. The 21-year-old art student from Washington Heights is just a short…
This fall, UT Dallas students will have an unprecedented opportunity to learn about The Mourners medieval sculpture exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art from an all-star roster of scholars. Dr. Rick Brettell, the UT Dallas Margaret McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetics, will teach the course jointly with two SMU medieval literature and…
With a swing that would be welcome among today’s Orioles, a robed fellow wielding a bat-like stick aims for a ball being tossed by a similarly attired pal. A man and woman sporting long conical hats square off at backgammon. A couple of monks play blind man’s bluff. Boys out on a wintry Flemish meadow…
Associate Professor of Art History Stephen Perkinson’s book The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France (University of Chicago Press, 2009) has just won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize For The Best First Book in Intellectual History from the Journal of History of Ideas. The book upends several well-established theories…
