Art, Nature, and the Body in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland

by Heather Pulliam

How did the living world – bodies, time, motion, and natural environment – frame the art of early medieval Britain and Ireland? In this study, Heather Pulliam investigates how the early medieval art produced in Britain and Ireland enabled Christian audiences to unite with and be 'dissolved' in an intangible divinity. Using phenomenological and eco-critical methodologies, she probes intersections between art objects, the living world, and the embodied eye. Pulliam analyses a range of objects that vary in scale, form, and function, including book shrines, brooches worn on the body, and reliquaries suspended in satchels. Today, such objects are discussed, displayed, and illustrated as static rather than mobile objects that human bodies wore and that accompanied them as they travelled through landscapes animated by changing weather, seasons, and time. Using the frame as a heuristic device, she questions how art historical studies approach medieval art and offers a new paradigm for understanding the role of sacred objects in popular devotion.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 19, 2026

About the author

Heather Pulliam is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love absolutely everything Heather writes, but because this subject is near and dear to my heart, I was anxiously awaiting this book and it delivered! She discusses a wide range of thematic aspects of insular art, but smoothly transitions from one to the next. Rather than being a survey, the approach taken by Pulliam allows for a more in depth understanding of the values at play and the embodied experience of insular art