Product Description

Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England is a remarkable work which offers a new perspective on the history of medieval art in England. Professor Marks, one of Britain's foremost art historians, examines a totally neglected but hugely important aspect of the visual culture of medieval England. Superbly illustrated throughout in both colour and black and white, it has much to interest and fascinate anyone interested in the Middle Ages. Instead of concentrating on style, the images in alabaster, stone and wood are located within the society that used them, hence they are examined in terms of function, audience, patronage and production. The approach is anything but insular and English trends are viewed within the context of Western European developments. This ground breaking new work not only offers an important contribution to current art-historical methodologies; it also serves as a primer for all those seeking to understand the visual and mental world of the Middle Ages. Professor Marks brings this neglected aspect of medieval art to a wide audience and in doing so, illuminates an aspect of English culture which would otherwise be lost to both this and future generations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81833 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

About the Author
Richard Marks is Professor of Medieval Stained Glass and Director of History of Art at the University of York. He is currently International President of the British Academy's International Committee of the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi project.

Customer Reviews

Interesting, intelligent, readable and well illustrated
An absorbing, scholarly and readable account of pre-reformation practice in the English Church in the matter of statutues and other devotional images of saints. Each chapter takes a different English parish church or other place of worship as an example, and material from church accounts, wills, and other sources is intelligently used to explain how medieval men and women worshipped their favoured saints through the use of images, candles, special church services, special architectural features (such as niches, rood screens, corbels) and the like. There are numerous illustrations which are well linked to the text, although most of them are in black and white. The typeface is a bit small, but this may be because the book has turned out longer (according to the acknowledgements) than originally expected: it is certainly a rich and thorough piece of work. Although a work of scholarship, it leaves the general reader with a vivid picture of the religious experience of English people in the later middle ages which, as well as having its own interest, also contributes to our understanding of religion, history, art and society. The author is plainly very sympathetic to the religious beliefs of this period, but this does not obtrude into the text until the very end, which makes no attempt to hide a degree of regret for the passing of what we would now see as Catholic (or, at least, pre-Protestant) England.