What do you think?
Rate this book
La miniatura medievale. Una introduzione
Prima che Otto Pächt vi si cimentasse con ingegnosa e sensibilissima perizia, si poteva ancora guardare alla miniatura medievale come a un genere artistico minore, da studiare negli stessi modi riservati al suo ascendente ritenuto più illustre, la pittura monumentale ad affresco o su tavola. Ma chi assisté nei tardi anni sessanta al ciclo di lezioni viennesi che è all'origine di questo libro ebbe il privilegio di "ascoltare con gli occhi" - sinestesia intellettuale prediletta da Pächt - una messe di immagini sfolgoranti per tonalità cromatiche e traboccanti di forme decorative, a cui veniva riconosciuto il rango autonomo di arte "maggiore", e con esso il diritto a un accesso metodologico peculiare. La vibrazione di allora si trasmette intatta ai lettori di oggi, davanti a un mondo figurativo che parla finalmente in un linguaggio proprio, quello del manoscritto decorato. Di Bibbie, Evangeliari, Salteri, Lezionari, Apocalissi, Sacramentari, Messali e opere con raffigurazioni didattiche Pächt analizza magistralmente ogni le forme e gli stili, la suggestiva ricchezza di iniziali, il vocabolario ornamentale e simbolico, le tendenze espressive, il peso dell'eredità tardoantica e bizantina, il rapporto simbiotico o tensivo tra scrittura e immagine, la funzione della cornice, il conflitto spaziale che si gioca all'interno della pagina. Presentazione di Jonathan J. G. Alexander. Postfazione di Fabrizio Crivello
Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 18, 2021
Testo fondamentale sull'argomento. Esaustivo e chiaro: diviso per argomenti, come le iniziali, i monogrammi, le immagini didattiche, ecc.
Molte immagini sono integrate nel testo in bianco e nero, appendice finale di immagini a colori.
Certo, se non si è interessati all'argomento, molto specifico, può risultare pesante.
Molte immagini sono integrate nel testo in bianco e nero, appendice finale di immagini a colori.
Certo, se non si è interessati all'argomento, molto specifico, può risultare pesante.
June 28, 2023
Chaotisch, onoverzichtelijk en in het algemeen moeilijk om door te komen. Weinig detail-informatie en bizarre overgangen. Al bij al wel wat opgestoken en dan vooral over "insular illumination".
September 1, 2023
Meraviglioso. Solo per fissati della materia
April 5, 2012
Quite boring book from my perspective, but it does put Insular Gospel art into its perfect context, and explain all key terms used to describe it. Three quotes:
{Christianity and the earliest books in the world}
Christianity, however, drew no distinction between the book as an instrument of communication and the message it conveyed. The book was the source of faith made palpable: it not only contained the Gospel it was the Gospel.
...
from the first century onwards there is evidence in Rome of the existence of books with pages (called membranae) which were probably of small format (libelli). It has recently been further established that the Christian community actively favoured codices in paper at an early date, certainly by the second century; in other words, there was a change towards the codex but to one made with cheap writing material. Christian literature appeared in cheap 'publications', Because these were the unostentatious books used in an underground sect whose members were also dedicated to unworldliness. Classical pagan literature continued to be issued in the form of rolls as it always has been. Indeed, it appears that up to the time when Christianity was officially recognized, Christians deliberately endorsed the codex in protest against pagan usage of the roll, not only classical but also Jewish, as in the Torah roll.
{best description of insular intertwining}
the idea of an endless intertwining (p60) of form, first manifested in northern animal ornament (fig. 76) with its nightmare of writhing organic life, linked by clenched teeth, each to the other, inter penetrating one another in a mortal struggle for existence. A war of all against all with aggression directed even against the aggressor's own body, which admittedly does not remain a body but it denatured to ribbon-work. In this vehement entanglement of forms, any free space is eliminated. Indeed, it is exactly this loss of space which gives the composition its characteristic terrifying force -- of ensnared creatures locked in hopeless and inescapable struggle. Now suddenly, in the Romanesque period, after several centuries, (p.61) the pagan concepts of interweaving re appear both in monumental sculpture and in illuminated manuscripts. If in sculpture we refer to a beast- column, tbhe most ingenious example of which come from southern France, Moissac and Souilac (fig.77), in illumination we can also speak of the beast initial as an imaginative varient of the figure initial.
{Anglo Saxon tradition}
"Anglo-Saxon illumination is a late flowering of Carolingian art; in it the assimilation of classical elements into a medieval hierarchy already begun by the Carolingians, was carried to its logical conclusion, long after Carolingian art itself had died in its continental places of learning, in France and in the Rhineland. Notable achievements in page design were not to be found in English illumination, as had happened once before in the pre-Carolingian period. Its significant contributions to the ornamentation and re-valuation of script have already been discussed.
{Christianity and the earliest books in the world}
Christianity, however, drew no distinction between the book as an instrument of communication and the message it conveyed. The book was the source of faith made palpable: it not only contained the Gospel it was the Gospel.
...
from the first century onwards there is evidence in Rome of the existence of books with pages (called membranae) which were probably of small format (libelli). It has recently been further established that the Christian community actively favoured codices in paper at an early date, certainly by the second century; in other words, there was a change towards the codex but to one made with cheap writing material. Christian literature appeared in cheap 'publications', Because these were the unostentatious books used in an underground sect whose members were also dedicated to unworldliness. Classical pagan literature continued to be issued in the form of rolls as it always has been. Indeed, it appears that up to the time when Christianity was officially recognized, Christians deliberately endorsed the codex in protest against pagan usage of the roll, not only classical but also Jewish, as in the Torah roll.
{best description of insular intertwining}
the idea of an endless intertwining (p60) of form, first manifested in northern animal ornament (fig. 76) with its nightmare of writhing organic life, linked by clenched teeth, each to the other, inter penetrating one another in a mortal struggle for existence. A war of all against all with aggression directed even against the aggressor's own body, which admittedly does not remain a body but it denatured to ribbon-work. In this vehement entanglement of forms, any free space is eliminated. Indeed, it is exactly this loss of space which gives the composition its characteristic terrifying force -- of ensnared creatures locked in hopeless and inescapable struggle. Now suddenly, in the Romanesque period, after several centuries, (p.61) the pagan concepts of interweaving re appear both in monumental sculpture and in illuminated manuscripts. If in sculpture we refer to a beast- column, tbhe most ingenious example of which come from southern France, Moissac and Souilac (fig.77), in illumination we can also speak of the beast initial as an imaginative varient of the figure initial.
{Anglo Saxon tradition}
"Anglo-Saxon illumination is a late flowering of Carolingian art; in it the assimilation of classical elements into a medieval hierarchy already begun by the Carolingians, was carried to its logical conclusion, long after Carolingian art itself had died in its continental places of learning, in France and in the Rhineland. Notable achievements in page design were not to be found in English illumination, as had happened once before in the pre-Carolingian period. Its significant contributions to the ornamentation and re-valuation of script have already been discussed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews