The Medieval Art Of Love

Romantic love as we know it today -- symbolized by hearts, roses, courting, chivalry, and more -- was invented in Europe in the Middle Ages. This thoroughly entertaining, sumptuously illustrated book explores the development of these ideas and shows how their depiction in paintings, tapestries, illuminations, and on luxurious objects taught Medieval men and women the art of love.Michael Camille explores the symbolic and social settings of love, the myths and paradoxes of love as an elite social code, and the erotic feelings sometimes aroused even by religious objects of desire. The textiles, ivories, chests, jewels, and girdles, given as gifts and love-tokens, demonstrate that there was nothing chaste or sublimated about Medieval love, every aspect of which was depicted by artists and described by poets without inhibition.Spanning such well-known works as the Unicorn Tapestries to images of lute-playing troubadors and maidens in walled castles, this is a truly original look at the age-old subject of human desire.

The social system of 'courtly love' soon spread after becoming popularized by the troubadours of southern France in the twelfth century. This book codifies life at Queen Eleanor's court at Poitiers between 1170 and 1174 into "one of those capital works which reflect the thought of a great epoch, which explain the secret of a civilization."

This refreshing new look at Medieval art conveys a very real sense of the impact of art on everyday life in Europe from 1000 to 1500. It examines the importance of art in the expression and spread of knowledge and ideas, including notions of the heroism and justice of war, and the dominant view of Christianity. Taking its starting point from issues of contemporary relevance, such as the environment, the identity of the artist, and the position of women, the book also highlights the attitudes and events specific to the sophisticated visual culture of the Middle Ages, and goes on to link this period to the Renaissance. The fascinating question of whether commercial and social activities between countries encouraged similar artistic taste and patronage, or contributed to the defining of cultural difference in Europe, is fully explored.

What do they all mean – the lascivious ape, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts? Michael Camille explores that riotous realm of marginal art, so often explained away as mere decoration or zany doodles, where resistance to social constraints flourished. Medieval image-makers focused attention on the underside of society, the excluded and the ejected. Peasants, servants, prostitutes and beggars all found their place, along with knights and clerics, engaged in impudent antics in the margins of prayer-books or, as gargoyles, on the outsides of churches. Camille brings us to an understanding of how marginality functioned in medieval culture and shows us just how scandalous, subversive, and amazing the art of the time could be.

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A triumph' Guardian 'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook 'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule. In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process. Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

In this authoritative, lively book, the celebrated Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas. Juxtaposing theology and science, poetry and mysticism, Eco explores the relationship that existed between the aesthetic theories and the artistic experience and practice of medieval culture. "[A] delightful study. . . . [Eco's] remarkably lucid and readable essay is full of contemporary relevance and informed by the energies of a man in love with his subject." --Robert Taylor, Boston Globe "The book lays out so many exciting ideas and interesting facts that readers will find it gripping." --Washington Post Book World "A lively introduction to the subject." --Michael Camille, The Burlington Magazine "If you want to become acquainted with medieval aesthetics, you will not find a more scrupulously researched, better written (or better translated), intelligent and illuminating introduction than Eco's short volume." --D. C. Barrett, Art Monthly

The intensely expressive art of the Middle Ages was created to awe, educate and connect the viewer to heaven. Its power reverberates to this day, even among the secular. But experiencing the full meaning and purpose of medieval art requires an understanding of its narrative content. This volume introduces the subjects and stories most frequently depicted in medieval art, many of them drawn from the Bible and other religious literature. Included among the thirty-eight representative works are brilliant altarpieces, stained-glass windows, intricate tapestries, carved wood sculptures, delicate ivories, and captivating manuscript illuminations, all drawn from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum, one of the world's most comprehensive collections of medieval art. Iconic masterworks such as the Merode Altarpiece, the Unicorn Tapestries, and the Belles Heures of the duc de Berry are featured along with less familiar work. Descriptions of the individual pieces highlight the context in which they were made, conveying their visual and technical nuances as well as their broader symbolic meaning. With its accessible informative discussions and superb full-color illustrations, How to Read Medieval Art explores the iconographic themes of the period, making them clearly recognizable and opening vistas onto history and literature, faith and devotion.

According to Charles Dickens, real love is “blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust . . . giving up your whole soul to the smiter.” Oscar Wilde said of love: “You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” And Rainer Maria Rilke advised: “Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” Like Dickens, Wilde, and Rilke, countless writers throughout history have attempted to encapsulate the essence of love through their words. But the theme of love is not restricted to the medium of the written word; love has also launched billions of images. The Look of Love is a celebration of love through the ages, gathering more than one hundred illustrations from the flirtatious to the kitsch, the charming to the ironic. The vintage imagery is drawn from a huge range of sources—fashion magazines, medieval illumination manuscripts, book covers, paintings, and cartoons—and it ranges from exquisite depictions of courtly love in the Middle Ages to the pulp novels of the twentieth century, from elves in fairyland to a honeymoon in space. Great lovers from literature—Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Vishnu and Lakshmi, among others—are lavishly represented alongside a host of first kisses, assignations in the garden, moonlight serenades, and walks down the aisle. A gorgeous pictorial survey of how artists from around the world and throughout time have visually imagined love, The Look of Love will make the perfect gift for any beloved with an eye for art.

This study seeks to define the medieval literary conventions governing allusions to certain Ovidian and Virgilian tales of love in the works of Boccaccio, Machaut, Froissart, and Chaucer. Using evidence from the Latin mythographers, it addresses several much-debated critical issues in medieval scholarship: questions of narrative voice, thematic unity, and purpose. Its principal contribution is to the discussion and evaluation of the French and Italian poems of love to which Chaucer was most heavily indebted. The author suggests that the love poems of Boccaccio, Machaut, and Froissart, rather than being ponderous didactic productions designed to instruct medieval audiences in the art of love, are true progeny of the Roman de la Rose,complex jeux d'esprit much closer in spirit and intention to the works of Chaucer than has been supposed.

This is a full-scale commentary devoted to the third book of Ovid's Ars Amatoria. It includes an Introduction, a revision of E. J. Kenney's Oxford text of the book, and detailed line-by-line and section-by-section commentary on the language and ideas of the text. Combining traditional philological scholarship with some of the concerns of more recent critics, both Introduction and commentary place particular emphasis on: the language of the text; the relationship of the book to the didactic, 'erotodidactic' and elegiac traditions; Ovid's usurpation of the lena's traditional role of erotic instructor of women; the poet's handling of the controversial subjects of cosmetics and personal adornment; and the literary and political significances of Ovid's unexpected emphasis in the text of Ars III on restraint and 'moderation'. The book will be of interest to all postgraduates and scholars working on Augustan poetry.