THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

 Peter Kidson, Paul Hamlyn LTD 1967.

The Art Of The Middle Ages in the West covers a period of a thousand years between 400 and 1400 with antiquity at one end and the Renaissance at the other.

It is a period rich in invention and astonishing in it’s variety, whose breadth and beauty are reflected here in two hundred magnificent illustrations, over half of which are in full colour.

In architecture it takes us from the simple stone churches of Saxon England to the soaring splendour of the great Gothic cathedrals; in painting form the exuberant miniatures of Northumbria to the work Giotto, the last of the medievals, the first of the Italian Renaissance.

It includes ivories, manuscripts, exquisite jewelled reliquaries, enamels, stained glass, Romanesque and Gothic sculpture.

In tracing the story of medieval art in the West the author explains to us how the essentially religious societies produced works in which Christianity was glorified, whether by a simple cross on an Irish hillside during the ‘Dark Ages’ – now not nearly so dark – or by the great abbeys at Cluny or St Dennis, the cathedrals of Durham or Canterbury, Chartres or Notre Dame. It is a period of splendid achievement, made vivid to us by the lucidity of the text and the rich variety of illustration.

Both the book and the dust jacket are in good condition.