Research Catalog

Title

The benedictional of Æthelwold / by Robert Deshman.

Author

Deshman, Robert.

Publication

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1995]

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Holdings

Details

Description

xxiii, 287 pages, 120 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 29 cm.

Summary

• In this significant contribution to the study of illuminated manuscripts, Robert Deshman explores in detail one of the great works of medieval art, the sumptuously illustrated Benedictional commissioned by the powerful Anglo-Saxon bishop, AEthelwold of Winchester (963-84). A seminal work in the formation of the "Winchester style," the manuscript embodies a highly intricate and often novel presentation of images.
• Deshman considers the iconography, style, ornament, and text against the backdrop of their pictorial, literary, and liturgical sources.
• This enables him then to anchor the work within the patron's historical and cultural context: his monastic reforms, his culting of saints, his political ideals, the ideological connotations of earlier artistic styles - and, most important, his unusual hermeneutic modes of thought and visualization, wherein extremely abstruse theological concepts are reified in clouds, architecture, drapery, and even ornament.
• Employing traditional art historical tools, Deshman nonetheless develops an innovative methodological thesis, that specific visual and conceptual motifs run through the large and varied cycle of images, tying them together in a complex, multilayered program. This programmatic pictorial technique, "cycle symbolism," occurs in an exceptionally systematic fashion in AEthelwold's manuscript, but was used widely in medieval art.
• Deshman's analysis offers a new way of looking at and understanding picture cycles, one that has fundamental methodological implications for the entire field of manuscript illumination.

Series Statement

Studies in manuscript illumination ; no. 9

Uniform Title

Studies in manuscript illumination ; no. 9.

Subject

• Aethelwold, Saint, Bishop of Winchester, approximately 908-984
• Catholic Church > Texts > Illustrations
• British Library
• Benedictional of Aethelwold > Illustrations
• Benedictionals > Illustrations
• Illumination of books and manuscripts, Anglo-Saxon > Winchester
• Illumination of books and manuscripts, Romanesque > Winchester

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-279) and index.

Contents

Ch. 1. The Miniatures of the Infancy and Baptism of Christ -- Ch. 2. The Miniatures of the Later Life of Christ -- Ch. 3. The Miniatures of the Saints -- Ch. 4. The Sources and Structure of the Cycle -- Ch. 5. The Monastic Program -- Ch. 6. The Royal Program -- Ch. 7. The Benedictional and the Winchester Style -- Ch. 8. Conclusions -- Appendix 1. Description, Reconstruction, and Date of the Benedictional of AEthelwold -- Appendix 2. The Copy Relationship to the Brunswick Casket -- Appendix 3. The Copy Relationship to the Benedictional of Archbishop Robert.

ISBN

0691043868 (CL : alk. paper)

LCCN

94036661

OCLC

• 31207227
• ocm31207227

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries