Labyrinths

Details one of the greatest Gothic buildings in the world, the Cathedral of Notre Dame at Chartres, France, exploring its history, its structure, and its glass artistry.

Modeled on the highly successful Norton Critical Editions, this series offers illuminating introductions to major monuments of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Each volume includes all the necessary materials for the comprehensive study of a work of art: An illustration section showing the complete work of art, details, preliminary studies, and iconographic sources; An introductory essay by the editor; Documents and literary sources; Critical essays from the art-historical literature.

An historical and descriptive account with 11 plates [in pocket] (3 of which are coloured and represent ʻThe northern roseʾ, ʻThe tree of Jesseʾ, ʻThe belle verrièreʾ)

At Chartres Cathedral, for the first time in medieval art, the lowest register of stained-glass windows depicts working artisans and merchants instead of noble and clerical donors. Jane Welch Williams challenges the prevailing view that pious town tradesmen donated these windows. In Bread, Wine, and Money, she uncovers a deep antagonism between the trades and the cathedral clergy in Chartres; the windows, she argues, portray not town tradesmen but trusted individuals that the fearful clergy had taken into the cloister as their own serfs. Williams weaves a tight net of historical circumstances, iconographic traditions, exegetical implications, political motivations, and liturgical functions to explain the imagery in the windows of the trades.

The great Gothic cathedrals of Europe are among the most astonishing achievements of Western culture. Evoking feelings of awe and humility, they make us want to understand what inspired the people who had the audacity to build them. This engrossing book surveys an era that has fired the historical imagination for centuries. In it Robert A. Scott explores why medieval people built Gothic cathedrals, how they built them, what conception of the divine lay behind their creation, and how religious and secular leaders used cathedrals for social and political purposes.

This engaging study introduces the reader to one of the greatest achievements of Western art: the climactic phase of Gothic architecture in the first half of the thirteenth century. Through a comparative analysis of the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, and Amiens, the author illuminates the technical, theological, artistic, and social factors that formed the High Gothic synthesis. Drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, he successively characterizes the different parts of the Gothic cathedral and describes the human context of the three great buildings.

The touchstones of Gothic monumental art in France - the abbey church of Saint-Denis and the cathedrals of Chartres, Reims, and Bourges - form the core of this collection dedicated to the memory of Anne Prache. The essays reflect the impact of Prache’s career, both as a scholar of wide-ranging interests and as a builder of bridges between the French and American academic communities. Thus the authors include scholars in France and the United States, both academics and museum professionals, while the thematic matrix of the book, divided into architecture, stained glass, and sculpture, reflects the multiple media explored by Prache during her long career.

Surviving fragments of information about Pythagoras (born ca. 570 BCE) gave rise to a growing set of legends about this famous sage and his followers, whose reputations throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages have never before been studied systematically. This book is the first to examine the unified concepts of harmony, proportion, form, and order that were attributed to Pythagoras in the millennium after his death and the important developments to which they led in art, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, music, medicine, morals, religion, law, alchemy, and the occult sciences

A very rare and exceptional work upon the sacred proportions of the gothic cathedrals.

Illuminates the construction, architectural style, histories, and beauty of thirty-three medieval cathedrals.

For modern listeners, the sounds of Gregorian chant are compelling, with words and rhythms that seem at once familiar and remote. Even without a musical background or knowledge of the religious significance of Gregorian chant, listeners respond to the unique qualities of this music. Richard L. Crocker, a world-renowned authority on chant, offers in this book an eloquent introduction to the history and meaning of the Gregorian chant. He explains how Gregorian chant began, what functions and meanings it had over time, who heard it and where, and how it was composed, learned, written down, and handed on.

Manuscript sources and the diversity of the musical traditions they preserve form the focus of this collection of eighteen essays on Gregorian Chant. Ruth Steiner investigates chants of various types: invitatory tones and antiphons, responsories and prosulae, Mass chants and chants of the Divine Office. Numerous illustrations showing pages from chant manuscripts are included.

This extensive survey describes the evolutionary processes of its long history as well as its definition and terminology, the structure of the liturgy, the texts, the notation, the rhythm, the tonality, and the methods and forms of psalmody.