Mark of Cain

Ruth Mellinkoff is Research Associate at the University of California's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and she is the author of The Mark of Cain (California, 1981) and The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought (California, 1970).

"Ruth Mellinkoff is an art historian who has done rather more, in this slim volume, than to expound the relationship between Scripture and imagination in the story of Cain and the mark God set on him. Her exposition is very skillful but has wider implications. It reminds us of the fascination of this legend, and of its extraordinary complexity. . . . This book does not claim to be a comprehensive or conclusive treatment of its subject: it is rather demonstrative and suggestive. In it however, Dr. Mellinkoff has found a theme, and expounded a thesis, that her colleagues will envy."