Pindar Press – serie

This selection of twenty-one essays by Professor Kurz is a unique introduction to the art and culture of Europe and the Near East from the Renaissance onwards. His examination of the flow of artistic ideas and artefacts from Europe to the Islamic world is an important contribution to the study of the spread of Western European influence in this period; at the same time the reader is made aware of the extent of European borrowings from Islamic civilization, and the importance of a shared classical heritage. Characterized by an extensive acquaintance with both European and Islamic works of art, Professor Kurz's research in this field remains of fundamental importance. This volume also includes a number of important articles on several major figures in Renaissance and Baroque art, and a study of the patronage of the Emperor Rudolf II, previously available only in a Czech translation. The preface by Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich is both an introduction and a memoir. A bibliography of Otto Kurz's publications and an index are included. The volume is illustrated with 191 plates.

Since its first appearance over seventy years ago, this work has been recognised as one of the most important contributions to the study of the Byzantine churches of Istanbul, and a strikingly successful synthesis of scholarly research and scrupulous attention to architectural detail, with attention paid equally to the evidence of the historical sources and to the fabric of the actual buildings. The 123 original photographs which accompany the text are of considerable historical value, and the album of 58 architectural drawings by Adolphe Thiers contains detailed ground-plans and projections for each church. This album has been incorporated into the present volume in the form of folding folio plates, which preserve the scale and detail of the original. There is a new introduction by Professor Gilbert Dagron.

The two previous volumes in Dr. Fussell’s study of The Old English Farming Books have become the standard works of reference on the agricultural literature of England from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and their value for the study of the development of farming over this period is well recognized.With the appearance of the present volume, long-awaited by specialists in agricultural history, this study now reaches the nineteenth century. Dr. Fussell examines the books on agriculture published during the Napoleonic wars and the period immediately following. He gives a complete description of all the editions of these works printed during this period which are still to be found. The period saw a major increase in population, with a larger proportion employed in occupations that denied them any part in food production. These novel conditions promoted a greater interest in new methods of farming, since overseas competition was not effective in influencing the food producers, especially the grain producers who were still protected by the Corn Laws. The agricultural literature of the time provided the medium by which these new methods were disseminated.In the Appendices Dr. Fussell examines one of the main sources for the period, the publications of the Board of Agriculture on farming in England, Scotland and Wales (the‘County Reports’) and gives a valuable analysis of the individual contributions. There is a separate study of other works on farming issued by the Board.

Dr. Fussell’s theme is the evolution of the study of farming history, which as a branch of historiography is no more than two centuries old. He charts the development of interest in the history of rural life in England and Western Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, which has led to the acceptance of the subject as an important branch of historical research. This important work attempts to place the writers of agricultural history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries within their social context. It forms an integral continuation of Dr. Fussell's previous bibliographical studies, and provides an indispensable work of reference for students of the subject.

Professor White's work on late medieval and Renaissance Italian art needs no introduction. His early articles on Renaissance perspective led on to a book, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, which remains the standard work on the subject. His subsequent work on the reconstruction of such major works of art as Donatello's Padua altar and Duccio's Maestà has brought the methodology of reconstructing a damaged or altered work of art to a new level of scholarly seriousness. The present publication forms the first part of a two-volume edition of Professor White's studies which contains a total of two single and three double articles devoted to reconstructions. Between them they cover the methods, ranging from documentary and physical investigation to iconographic and stylistic analysis, which the author believes should be brought into play in tackling such problems. The selection of articles for this first volume has been made on the basis of chronology rather than method. The artists and their works dealt with here belong to the period of the Renaissance. Since both painting and sculpture are covered equally, the initial article, on the Paragone, the discussion as to primacy among the arts, is particularly appropriate. The Northern Renaissance is also featured, in the articles on Bruegel. Additional notes have been added at the end to review the subsequent literature on a number of the works of art dealt with.

This second volume of Professor Kurz's studies completes the comprehensive selection in Vol. I with a further thirty articles, published over forty years, and showing the extraordinary breadth of the author's interests. It begins with eight studies on Classical, Byzantine and Islamie art, continues to the Renaissanee and Baroque in Italy and Northern Europe, and ends with an entertaining section on the restoration, misattribution and faking of works of art. In these two volumes all of Professor Kurz's major studies are now available. Whether they throw fresh light on an old problem, or bring to attention an unnoticed work, they remain stimulating, and always highly intertaining. A sixteen-page memoir of Otto Kurz by Professor Sir Ernst Gombrich is included here as a preface to this second volume.

The Tur 'Abdin is a mountainous region in the south-east of modern Turkey, and is architecturally one of the most interesting areas for the study of early Christian architecture. In two journeys into the Tur 'Abdin early in this century, Gertrude Bell examined the more important monastic sites. Her two reports on these journeys, published in 1910 and 1913, made available for the first time a full study of the Christian architecture of the region, and her photographs are particularly valuable since many of the churches have since been destroyed or suffered considerable damage. In the present volume these two seminal studies are reprinted, with the addition of over a hundred and twenty previously unpublished photographs of these monuments from the Bell archive. Gertrude Bell's text is printed as originally published, but has been up-dated by Marlia Mundell Mango with extensive notes which draw attention to subsequent work. The editor has also added an extensive Catalogue of sites and monuments visited by Bell in and around the Tur 'Abdin; this provides an alphabetical gazetteer to all of the sites mentioned in Bell's text, and supplies information about other sites and monuments visited by Bell, but of which she did not publish her photographs. The entries in this sixty-page Catalogue give the relevant information from Bell's published work for each monument; a bibliography of other work on it; building dates from inscriptions and texts; changes to the monument since visited by Bell; and a short summary of publications on the monument. Marlia Mundell Mango has also added a short glossary; a list of dated monuments in the region from A.D. 200-1500; an administrative list of provinces, metropolitan bishoprics and bishoprics covering the ecclesiastical administration of the region in late antiquity; a detailed map which incorporates most of this new information; a bibliography with a survey of archaeological and historical work on the Christian monuments of northern Mesopotamia and a total of 256 of Bell's plates, of which 128 are published here for the first time.

Edward Garrison's work on early Italian panels resulted in the publication in 1949 of the first comprehensive index of Romanesque Italian panel painting, which remains the standard work of reference on the subject. Subsequently, his four-volume Studies in the History of Medieval Italian Painting, published in Florence between 1953 and 1962, represents the most considerable body of research yet published on Italian miniature and panel painting from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. These two volumes collect together all the author's articles on Italian fresco and panel painting which have been published in art-historical journals since 1945. This provides both an indispensable supplement to the author's earlier Studies in the History of Medieval Italian Painting, and in including three successive Addenda to his Index of Italian Romanesque Panel Paintings, also serves the function of updating the earlier publications.

Edward Garrison's work on early Italian panels resulted in the publication in 1949 of the first comprehensive index of Romanesque Italian panel painting, which remains the standard work of reference on the subject. Subsequently, his four-volume Studies in the History of Medieval Italian Painting, published in Florence between 1953 and 1962, represents the most considerable body of research yet published on Italian miniature and panel painting from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. These two volumes collect together all the author's articles on Italian fresco and panel painting which have been published in art-historical journals since 1945. This provides both an indispensable supplement to the author's earlier Studies in the History of Medieval Italian Painting, and in including three successive Addenda to his Index of Italian Romanesque Panel Paintings, also serves the function of updating the earlier publications.

In this second volume of Professor White's studies, the emphasis shifts to Italian art in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the major figures who were responsible for the decisive changes in painting and sculpture that were to lead on to the Renaissance. Here again, however, there is the same concern with the actual monuments. The author devotes two major studies to the reconstruction of the "original appearance of Duccio's Maestà and of Nicola Pisano's Perugia Fountain. An important new study of the physical evidence for Cimabue's work at Assisi shows the value of an understanding of the working processes involved there. This conviction that the starting point in a thorough investigation into the original appearance or development of any work of art lies in the observation of the physical evidence is central to Professor White's approach, whether this may be the arrangement of panels on a polyptych, or the scrutiny of giornate on a painted ceiling.

Over the past fifty years, Françoise Henry has been the leading authority on the history of early Irish art. A pupil of Henri Focillon, she united two traditions of scholarship, one French and one Irish, and her understanding of the European context within which the art of early Christian Ireland developed has had a profound influence on subsequent research. These three volumes bring together the articles that Dr. Henry published on Irish art and its European links. The first volume is concerned with enamel and metalwork, a field in which the author specialized from the beginning. Émailleurs d'Occident looks at Western enamels, among which the Irish examples figure prominently, and the development of Irish enamelling is treated separately in the following study. Metalwork is also featured, in the form of a number of Dr. Henry's important studies on hanging-bowls, croziers, and chalices. Volume I contents include: Preface by C. Curle; Enamels; Émailleurs d'Occident; Irish Enamels of the Dark Ages and their Relation to the Cloisonné Techniques; Hanging Bowls, with Supplement; A Bronze Escutcheon Found in the River Bann; On Some Early Christian Objects in the Ulster Museum; Deux objets de bronze irlandais au Musée des Antiquités Nationales; Le calice trouvé a Derrynaflan; Les crosses pre-romanes; The Effects of the Viking Invasion on Irish Art; Additional Notes; Index.

The development of landscape painting in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has attracted considerable attention. The art of Gainsborough, Stubbs, Constable, Turner and the Norwich School is accepted as part of the British heritage, and the countryside as depicted by these artists is familiar not only to the specialist, but to most of us today. Nevertheless, this was an artificial landscape, one that had been created by the improving farmers of the period. The changes in the British landscape as a result of the new farming methods introduced by the agricultural revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the theme of Dr. Fussell's study. The author examines the introduction of the new methods of farming in the seventeenth century, the growing adoption of the new systems that led to the numerous Enclosure Acts of the eighteenth century, the consequent transformation of the countryside, and the growth of demand for landscape painting among the nobility and richer landowners.

This selection of sixteen studies by Dr Fussell covers English topography and farming over a period of three hundred years, from the Tudor era to the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. The first study reprinted here is a 56-page bibliographical guide to works on English travel and topography from 1500-1815, published over forty years ago and now recognized as a basic reference book. Its republication in this volume will be welcomed by bibliographers and collectors alike. This is complemented by fourteen of the author's articles on the farming and landscape of England, published over a period of forty years, covering the changes in farming practice in this country during the Tudor and Stuart periods. and the agricultural revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This volume thus presents a unique selection of work on the development of English farming, and the consequent change in the landscape, over the most significant period in the history of British agriculture, a period that led to the creation of both the landscape and the farming systems that are still with us to-day.

This fourth volume of Dr. Fussell’s bibliography covers the period from the foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society of England to the agricultural repercussions of the abolition of the Corn Laws. The twenty years featured in this volume saw the publication of an enormous number of farming tracts and studies, reflecting the spread of the agricultural revolution across England and the final creation of the present-day system of agricultural production.

This second volume of Basil Gray's studies covers his work on Chinese ceramics and on Islamic art. Appropriately, Chinese ceramics proved the most potent medium in introducing Islamic artists to the motifs of Chinese painting, in view of their wide popularity in the Middle East. The articles on Islamic art were written over a period of forty years. Early studies on Persian manuscript painting of the Mongol period are followed by papers on Turkish and Indian manuscript illumination, and general studies on Chinese influence in Persian painting, and on textiles and glass.

Basil Gray's publications on Chinese and Islamic art have done much to introduce these subjects to a European public. This first volume deals with Chinese painting and luxury art. An introductory section on Chinese art attempts to chart the aesthetic and philosophical ideas that lie at the roots of Chinese culture, and which have succeeded in dictating the development of this highly individual civilization. A second section, on Chinese painting, examines the early development of Chinese scroll painting and its subsequent influence on Japanese and European artists. The influence of Chinese painting on the earliest Western visitors to the court at Peking and on subsequent European collectors, is of particular interest. The third section deals with lacquer and metalwork, and includes a number of studies which attempt to answer problems of attribution and influence. The volume concludes with two reports on the museums of modern China and Japan.

Over the past fifty years, Françoise Henry has been the leading authority on the history of early Irish art. A pupil of Henri Focillon, she united two traditions of scholarship, one French and one Irish, and her understanding of the European context within which the art of early Christian Ireland developed has had a profound influence on subsequent research. These three volumes bring together the articles that Dr. Henry published on Irish art and its European links. The first volume is concerned with enamel and metalwork, a field in which the author specialized from the beginning. Émailleurs d'Occident looks at Western enamels, among which the Irish examples figure prominently, and the development of Irish enamelling is treated separately in the following study. Metalwork is also featured, in the form of a number of Dr. Henry's important studies on hanging-bowls, croziers, and chalices. The second volume deals with Irish manuscript illumination. Since a number of the articles reprinted here were published in collaboration with Geneviève Marsh-Micheli, this volume, as Françoise Henry wished, is published as a joint work, and includes an independent article by Mrs. Marsh-Micheli on the Irish manuscripts of St. Gall and Reichenau. The manuscripts dealt with here cover the entire span of Christian Celtic art in Ireland, from the earliest works of the seventh and eighth centuries to the later manuscripts of the period between the Norman Conquest and the final collapse of Gaelic civilisation in Ireland in the late sixteenth century. There are joint studies of Irish manuscripts in Continental and English collections, and a valuable review by Françoise Henry of the facsimile edition of the Book of Lindisfarne. The third volume of Françoise Henry's Studies features her papers on early Christian architecture and sculpture in Ireland. They include one of the author's earliest contributions, Les origines de l'iconographie irlandaise, and the subject of Irish sculpture, particularly the high crosses and cross-slabs, remained one of Françoise Henry's main interests. Her list of dated inscriptions on early Irish graveslabs helps to provide a chronology for this type of monument that is of unique value. The author's studies of the monastic sites represent a particularly valuable contribution to the archaeology of early Christian Ireland. This comprises the results of nearly fifty years of field-work in some of the more inaccessible areas of Ireland. Two of the papers reprinted here carry the study of Irish sculpture into the post-Norman period, with notes on the carved decoration of the Irish Cistercian monasteries, and a figure in Lismore Cathedral.

This last volume of The Old English Farming Books brings the series up to 1900, and was completed shortly before the author’s death this year. It covers the period of intensive farming in the late nineteenth century, and the spread of agricultural education and textbooks. Science and technology are finally beginning to replace the old methods with new practices, and the improving farmers formed a ready market for books offering the new knowledge. The completion of G. E. Fussell’s Old English Farming Books in five volumes provides a complete bibliographical guide to the literature on English farming over five centuries, from 1523 to 1900, and is a fitting memorial to the work of the author, one of the great figures in the study of the history of farming.

The Alexander Romance, a fabulous pseudo-history of the life of Alexander the Great compiled in late Antiquity, was one of the most popular secular texts in Europe during the Middle Ages. Its subsequent influence on the development of French and German literature has been significant. Professor Ross was a leading authority on the history and transmission of the Latin and French versions of the Romance, and his work has done much to clarify the spread of the Alexander legend in medieval European literature. This volume brings together all of David Ross's papers on the Alexander Romance, dealing separately with the Latin versions and their French and German reworkings. These include the first publication of a number of original texts in Latin and in German. There is also a valuable section on the development of the accompanying picture-cycle to the Romance, which derives from late-antique sources.

George Henderson's work on English biblical illumination has thrown new light on the sources of some of the most celebrated Anglo-Saxon and Norman illustrated manuscripts and helped to place the astonishing creativity and skill of the artists who worked on these manuscripts within the developing tradition of Bible illumination in the Middle Ages. These two volumes make available Professor Henderson's studies published over twenty years. In the first volume, he traces the links with late-antique pictorial sources, and compares the innovations in interpreting the Bible text with contemporary developments in other artistic media. He also deals with those works of art from the Anglo-Saxon period known from historical sources but now lost, and with the influence that the art of this early period exerted on a later period, the seventeenth century, and its religious disputes. The second volume of Professor Henderson's studies deals mainly with the celebrated Anglo-French illuminated Apocalypses of the thirteenth century. The principal manuscripts are all covered, and the iconographic programmes are examined in detail. Two articles draw attention to newly-discovered fragments of other Apocalypse manuscripts. The volume also includes a number of the author's studies on medieval English seals, where the iconography is often of considerable art-historical importance.

George Henderson's work on English biblical illumination has thrown new light on the sources of some of the most celebrated Anglo-Saxon and Norman illustrated manuscripts and helped to place the astonishing creativity and skill of the artists who worked on these manuscripts within the developing tradition of Bible illumination in the Middle Ages. These two volumes make available Professor Henderson's studies published over twenty years. In the first volume, he traces the links with late-antique pictorial sources, and compares the innovations in interpreting the Bible text with contemporary developments in other artistic media. He also deals with those works of art from the Anglo-Saxon period known from historical sources but now lost, and with the influence that the art of this early period exerted on a later period, the seventeenth century, and its religious disputes. The second volume of Professor Henderson's studies deals mainly with the celebrated Anglo-French illuminated Apocalypses of the thirteenth century. The principal manuscripts are all covered, and the iconographic programmes are examined in detail. Two articles draw attention to newly-discovered fragments of other Apocalypse manuscripts. The volume also includes a number of the author's studies on medieval English seals, where the iconography is often of considerable art-historical importance.

The publication of Professor Buchthal's work on Crusader miniature painting represented a landmark in medieval studies, and for nearly thirty years this book has remained the standard work of reference on the subject. For the first time the illuminated manuscripts produced in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem were assembled as a group, from the twelfth-century Melisende Psalter to the later manuscripts written in Acre, following the fall of Jerusalem itself. Professor Buchthal provides an exhaustive description of the individual manuscripts, with each miniature reproduced. The author's photographs have been used again for this reprint, to maintain the high quality of the original publication, and the format remains the same. Professor Buchthal's examination of the material remains unchallenged, and subsequent research has confirmed the links originally suggested with Byzantine, French and Italian illuminated manuscripts of the same period. The scope of this work, which includes a palaeographical and liturgical study of each of the manuscripts covered, set new standards for art-historical research, and it remains invaluable both as a detailed introduction to the manuscripts and as the most comprehensive study of Crusader miniature painting that has yet appeared. It has been almost unobtainable for a number of years, and this reprint will be welcomed by art-historians and manuscript specialists alike.

This book offers a comprehensive survey of descriptions of Constantinople written by visitors, from the pilgrims of the Middle Ages to the European travellers and diplomats of the 18th and 19th centuries. The author examines the evidence these accounts provide for the history of the city, and for monuments which have long disappeared. In its attractive synthesis of bibliographical, archaeological and historical detail, this work is a memorial to Ebersolt's scholarship and a personal tribute to the city itself.

Civilizations of great diversity have succeeded each other or co-existed in Eastern Turkey, and most of them have left monuments of high quality. Hittite, Urartian, Hellenistic, Roman, Syrian, Byzantine, Armenian, Arab, Seljuk and Ottoman, their remains are all represented in the region. These include some of the most important sites in Near Eastern archaeology, in regions in and near the heartland of the Hittite and Urartian cultures. The Hellenistic cities reflect the introduction of a new civilization, and the Roman and Byzantine empires included all or part of the region, with the prosperous feudal states of Georgia and Armenia on their borders. Besides the Byzantine, three great East Christian monastic traditions, Syrian, Georgian and Armenian, flourished here from the late fourth century onwards, and their monuments have left a permanent mark on the landscape. The Seljuk invasion, followed by the more recent period of Ottoman rule, led to the imposition of a new culture on the region, and its reflection in the monuments. Some of the finest Seljuk buildings are in Eastern Turkey, and the buildings of the Turkish states east of the Seljuk empire form much of the early history of Turkish architecture. The independent Greek empire of Trebizond and two of the four Crusader states lay in Eastern Turkey. The lands of the empires and the smaller medieval states were heavily fortified, and their castles and other fortifications are now spread over the region. The cultural diversity of its inheritance has made Eastern Turkey one of the most fascinating regions for archaeological and art-historical research. These four volumes provide the first comprehensive guide to all of the important historical sites of the region, the result of eight years of travel and research. The monuments are dealt with by geographical location, including a full description of each site, and details on how it can be reached. In the case of the more important monuments, a full bibliography of earlier work is provided. The ample provision of photographs and plans enhances the value of the author's detailed descriptions.

This second volume continues with a description of the fine Georgian monuments of the Tao region, including Ihan, Ök Vank, and Haho. The Pontus region comes next, the centre of the medieval Greek empire of Trebizond. The many Byzantine churches of Trabzon itself are covered, including Aya Sofya and the nearby monasteries of Sumela and Vazelon. The many surviving churches and castles of this period and later in the Pontus are also dealt with. There follows a survey of the early Turkish architecture of Erzurum and the surrounding district. The subsequent section, on Sivas and Tokat, deals with a rich selection of Seljuk monuments; the site of ancient Comana is also covered. The region of the Anti-Taurus contains interesting Byzantine castles. There are also Early Christian remains and medieval castles. The volume concludes with a study of the early Turkish monuments of the Upper Euphrates, in Divrigi and Erzincan, and the border castles of the 9th and 10th centuries.

In this third volume the regions covered are to the south and east of the Taurus range, beginning with the Upper and Lower Euphrates, which includes the Byzantine and Turkish buildings of Harput, Malatya and the Keban region, where there are also a number of churches and monastic sites. The following section, on the Tigris region, runs from the Taurus to the Tur 'Abdin, a historic centre of Syrian monasticism. In Diyarbakr and Mardin there are many important Christian and Islamic monuments. This was the centre of the medieval Artukid kingdom.

This volume brings together twenty-four of Ralph Pinder-Wilson's studies on Islamic art, published over thirty years. These deal mainly with the decorative arts - lustre pottery, bronze, jade and glass - a field in which the author is an eminent authority. The objects covered range from early Islamic glass and lustre ware to the ivories produced in Norman Sicily and later Persian bronzes. The art of Mughal India and Afghanistan is also covered, in a number of important studies on manuscripts produced for Persian and Mughal rulers from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Two major papers reprinted here range outside the usual field of the art historian. The first, a study of the Malcolm celestial globe, explores the history and iconography of Islamic depictions of the constellations ; the second, a study of the Persian garden from the Achaemenid to the Qajar period, explores the textual evidence, and discusses the influence of this type of garden on the visual arts.

Professor Sullivan is a leading authority on the art of China, and has published a number of standard works on both traditional and modern Chinese art. These two volumes bring together for the first time his papers on the subject, and include a number of important studies on the related art of South-East Asia. The first volume concentrates on traditional Chinese art. In its long and relatively uninterrupted development over a period of two thousand years, Chinese art can only be compared with the art of ancient Egypt. The author gives a resume of the stages of this development in his first paper, and isolates certain recurrent themes and attitudes in the four studies that follow. Other papers deal with screen and scroll painting in the early period, and with the excavation of a T'ang emperor's tomb. The period of the Ming and Ch'ing emperors is also covered, leading up to the first contacts with Western art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the work of European artists in China. The volume concludes with a number of Professor Sullivan's reviews of works by other scholars on Chinese art, and of exhibitions, and an appreciatlon of the work of Arthur Waley. There is a new preface and index, and the author has supplied additional notes to the original articles which draw attention to subsequent research.

This second volume of Professor Sullivan's studies covers his work on modern Chinese art and the art and archaeology of South-East Asia. The break between traditional Chinese painting and the European-influenced art of the twentieth century is charted in detail, with an introductory paper that explores the value of the traditional aesthetic for the future of China and East Asia. The developments in Chinese art in the twentieth century are then examined. The conflict between traditional values and new ideas in art, particularly the Marxist legacy of modern China, are dealt with in three further papers, and a final study is devoted to new trends in Chinese art following the trauma of the Cultural Revolution. The author's work on the art of South-East Asia is introduced by three studies on finds of Chinese export porcelain in this region. The close links between Chinese civilization and the native cultures is covered in detail, but as the following studies show, there was much that was original in the art of the region, and Indian elements were also important. The volume concludes with a study of the nineteenth-century Japanese painter, Tessai, whose debt to Chinese art was considerable. Additional notes again draw attention to subsequent work in the field.