Destroyed—Disappeared—Lost—Never Were

To write about works that cannot be sensually perceived involves considerable strain. Absent the object, art historians must stretch their methods to, or even past, the breaking point. This concise volume addresses the problems inherent in studying medieval works of art, artifacts, and monuments that have disappeared, have been destroyed, or perhaps never existed in the first place.

The contributors to this volume are confronted with the full expanse of what they cannot see, handle, or know. Connecting object histories, the anthropology of images, and historiography, they seek to understand how people have made sense of the past by examining objects, images, and architectural and urban spaces. Intersecting these approaches is a deep current of reflection upon the theorization of historical analysis and the ways in which the past is inscribed into layers of evidence that are only ever revealed in the historian’s present tense.

Highly original and theoretically sophisticated, this volume will stimulate debate among art historians about the critical practices used to confront the formative presence of destruction, loss, obscurity, and existential uncertainty within the history of art and the study of historical material and visual cultures.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Michele Bacci, Claudia Brittenham, Sonja Drimmer, Jaś Elsner, Peter Geimer, Danielle B. Joyner, Kristopher W. Kersey, Lena Liepe, Meekyung MacMurdie, and Michelle McCoy.

“Destroyed—Disappeared—Lost—Never Were is the sort of scholarship that begins to fill the literal lacunae cautiously avoided by premodern art historians for so long, but perhaps no longer.”—Elisa A. Foster, caa.reviews

“Destroyed—Disappeared—Lost—Never Were makes a fresh contribution to the field, one that dexterously balances historical perspectives and theoretical awareness. Its short essays cover a variety of topics with a global reach but with a common concern: how the ‘existential uncertainty’ resulting from works that are no longer extant or may never have existed outside verbal evocations has shaped and continues to shape the practice of art history.”—Brigitte Buettner, author of Boccaccio’s “Des cleres et nobles femmes”: Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript

“Both as a whole and as individual essays, the contents of Destroyed - Disappeared - Lost - Never Were contribute significantly to various urgent scholarly conversations in art history today. Highly original and written by experts in their respective fields, each of the book’s chapters focus on serious lacunae in the medieval discipline, unpacking them in creative ways in relation to both primary and secondary materials. Between them, these exciting essays offer novel readings of previously untreated objects, important revisions to existing historical and theoretical narratives, and original critiques of received historiographies.”—Jack Hartnell, author of Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages

“[A] cathartic book.”—William Chester Jordan, Mediaevistik

Beate Fricke is Professor of History of Art at the University of Bern. She is the author of Fallen Idols, Risen Saints: Saint Foy of Conques and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art and coeditor of The Public in the Picture: Involving the Beholder in Antique, Islamic, Byzantine, and Western Medieval and Renaissance Art.

Aden Kumler is Professor of Art History at the University of Basel. She is the author of Translating Truth: Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and England.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Destroyed—Disappeared—Lost—Never Were

Beate Fricke and Aden Kumler

1. Jerusalem’s Local Sancta and Their Perishable Frames

Michele Bacci

2. John Lloyd Stephens and the Lost Lintel of Kabah

Claudia Brittenham

3. The Sanguine Art: Four Fragments

Sonja Drimmer

4. The Dreamwork of Positivism: Archaeological Art History and the Imaginative Restoration of the Lost

Jaś Elsner

5. Finding Delight in Gardens Lost

Danielle B. Joyner

6. Impermanence, Futurity, and Loss in Twelfth-Century Japan

Kristopher W. Kersey

7. Lonely Bones: Relics sans Reliquaries

Lena Liepe

8. The Manuscript Machine: Assemblages and

Divisions in Jazarī’s Compendium

Meekyung MacMurdie

9. Cave and Camera: Shades of Loss in the

Library Cave of Dunhuang

Michelle McCoy

10. Mourning the Loss of Works / Praising Their Absence: A Response

Peter Geimer

List of Contributors

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Art History & Architecture

           Medieval

           Art Theory & Criticism

History

           Medieval

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Medieval Art and Architecture

           Medieval History