Jeffrey F Hamburger - Böcker

During the European Middle Ages, diagrams provided a critical tool of analysis in cosmological and theological debates. In addition to drawing relationships among diverse areas of human knowledge and experience, diagrams themselves generated such knowledge in the first place. In Diagramming Devotion, Jeffrey F. Hamburger examines two monumental works that are diagrammatic to their core: a famous set of picture poems of unrivaled complexity by the Carolingian monk Hrabanus Maurus, devoted to the praise of the cross, and a virtually unknown commentary on Hrabanus's work composed almost five hundred years later by the Dominican friar Berthold of Nuremberg. Berthold's profusely illustrated elaboration of Hrabnus translated his predecessor's poems into a series of almost one hundred diagrams. By examining Berthold of Nuremberg's transformation of a Carolingian classic, Hamburger brings modern and medieval visual culture into dialog, traces important changes in medieval visual culture, and introduces new ways of thinking about diagrams as an enduring visual and conceptual model.

Although the works of Pietro Lorenzetti (1280–1348) rank among the most famous of the fourteenth century, one of his panels, a small Crucifixion, has remained largely overlooked, despite its unique imagery. Combining three temporal horizons—past, present, and eschatological future—within an unparalleled allegorical presentation of the Crucifixion, this panel grants precedence to Clare of Assisi over Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order. Probably created for a nun, Lorenzetti’s painting turns abstruse allegory into a vehicle for a self-conscious meditation on the power of painting itself. In Flesh and Fabric: The Raiment of the Passion in a Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti, Jeffrey F. Hamburger explores the historical context of this panel as well as the subtleties of Pietro’s painting technique and iconographic imagination, enriching not only our understanding of one of the most innovative artists of the Trecento but also of Italian painting during one of its most generative periods. In addition to an iconographical analysis and historical contextualization of the panel, this volume includes a technical analysis that reveals the subtleties of the painting’s technique and reconstructs its original format, demonstrating that, from the start, this panel was a freestanding devotional image.

The Mind's Eye focuses on the relationships among art, theology, exegesis, and literature--issues long central to the study of medieval art, yet ripe for reconsideration. Essays by leading scholars from many fields examine the illustration of theological commentaries, the use of images to expound or disseminate doctrine, the role of images within theological discourse, the development of doctrine in response to images, and the place of vision and the visual in theological thought. At issue are the ways in which theologians responded to the images that we call art and in which images entered into dialogue with theological discourse. In what ways could medieval art be construed as argumentative in structure as well as in function? Are any of the modes of representation in medieval art analogous to those found in texts? In what ways did images function as vehicles, not merely vessels, of meaning and signification? To what extent can exegesis and other genres of theological discourse shed light on the form, as well as the content and function, of medieval images?These are only some of the challenging questions posed by this unprecedented and interdisciplinary collection, which provides a historical framework within which to reconsider the relationship between seeing and thinking, perception and the imagination in the Middle Ages.

A pair of leaves recently acquired by Houghton Library presents an opportunity to examine the illuminated sequence composed in honor of John the Evangelist, Verbum dei deo natum, within its broader cultural context. Written and illuminated at the Dominican nunnery of Paradies bei Soest in Westfalia as part of a set of liturgical books that are among the most elaborate of their kind from the entire Middle Ages, the richly decorated fragments promise to transform our understanding of the special place of Christ’s “beloved disciple” in fourteenth-century art, liturgy, theology, and mysticism.In addition to an introduction on art and liturgy in the Middle Ages, the interdisciplinary collection of essays includes contributions by musicologists, philologists, and art historians.

Beyond Words accompanies a collaborative exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; Harvard University's Houghton Library; and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Featuring illuminated manuscripts from nineteen Boston-area institutions, this catalog provides a sweeping overview of the history of the book in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as a guide to its production, illumination, functions, and readership. Entries by eighty-five international experts document, discuss, and reproduce more than two hundred and sixty manuscripts and early printed books, many of them little known before now. Beyond Words also explores the history of collecting such books in Boston, an uncharted chapter in the history of American taste. Of broad appeal to scholars and amateur enthusiasts alike, this catalog documents one of the most ambitious exhibitions of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts ever to take place in North America.

Focusing on production and patronage, this new volume features over 150 images of magnificently illustrated books and precious bindings, drawn largely from North American collections. The book's three sections are arranged chronologically, yet in each case with a different thematic focus. Opening with a look at the precedents set by the Carolingian forerunners of the Empire, the first section considers deluxe imperial manuscripts associated with the Ottonian emperors. The second section examines the role of imperial monasteries in the production of manuscripts, considering in particular the patronage of aristocratic elites. The final section offers a tour of imperial cities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, from Vienna and Prague to Augsburg and Nuremberg. This final stop considers the impact of Albrecht Durer and humanism on the arts of the book. The volume features a glossary, indexes, and maps showing the shifting borders of the Empire over 700 years.

Die Entdeckung der ältesten erhaltenen Handschrift, des Liber ordinarius, der mächtigen Abtei Nivelles, bedeutet einen wesentlichen Neufund für die wechselvolle Geschichte und religiöse Praxis des alten Damenstifts. Der Liber ordinarius und die inserierten Dokumente geben wertvolle Auskunft über das Zusammenwirken der Männer- und der Frauengemeinschaft in Nivelles und die Entwicklung des Äbtissinnenkults um die Heilige Gertrud.