| In Imaging the Early Medieval Bible, five outstanding medievalists
challenge conventional wisdom on the beginnings of biblical illustration.
Traditionally, scholars have maintained that the subjects and format
of Bible illustration were largely determined by archetypes of the
earliest years of Christian artistic culture. Taken together, the
essays in this book present a convincing argument that illustrated
and decorated Bibles were shaped by ad hoc decisions that resulted
in a creative variety of approaches.
First, John Lowden asserts that biblical manuscript illumination
is more likely to have derived from, than to have inspired, biblical
monumental painting.
Katrin Kogman-Appel provides a thorough survey of the debate over
how Jewish motifs entered Christian art. In her discussion of Roman
manuscript art, Dorothy Verkerk proposes that the celebrated Ashburnham
Pentateuch, rather than the hypothetical Leo Bible proffered by
Koehler, should be taken as a witness to the capital's approach
to Bible illustration and the kind of model sent to the monastic
scriptoria north of the Alps. Lawrence Nees presents the northern
Bibles, Insular and Carolingian, as individual commissions for specific
donors made at certain specific moments in time. Finally, John Williams
studies the Bible of 960 in León, an ideal vehicle to examine
the premises underlying reigning theories of the evolution of Bible
illustration. Although its format and extensive imagery have been
taken as a sign that it reflected early stages of Bible illustration,
it stands revealed as owing little to pictorial traditions.
Taken together, these essays present a convincing argument that
illustrated and decorated Bibles were shaped by ad hoc decisions
that resulted in a creative variety of approaches. |
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