Research Catalog

Title

Education in twelfth-century art and architecture : images of learning in Europe, c.1100-1220 / Laura Cleaver.

Author

Cleaver, Laura

Publication

• Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK ; Rochester, NY, USA : The Boydell Press, 2016.
• ©2016

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

ix, 229 pages : illustrations (some color); 26 cm.

Summary

On the facade of Chartres cathedral serene personifications of the arts of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy present passers-by with a vision of education as an improving process leading to greater knowledge of God. The arts proved a popular subject in medieval imagery, and were included in manuscripts, stained-glass and luxury metalwork objects as well as on the facades of churches. These idealized figures contrast with many textual accounts of education, in which authors recorded the hardships of student poverty and the temptations of drink and women to be found in the cities where teachers were increasingly establishing themselves. This book considers how and why education was explored in the art and architecture of the twelfth century. Through analysis of imagery in a wide range of media, it examines how teachers and students sought to use images to enhance their reputations and the status of their studies. It also investigates how the ideal models often set out in imagery compared with contemporary practice in an era that saw significant changes, beginning with a shift away from monastic education and culminating in the appearance of the first universities.

Series Statement

Boydell Studies in medieval art and architecture

Uniform Title

Boydell studies in medieval art and architecture

Subject

• 500-1500
• 1100-talet
• Education, Medieval, in art
• Scholars in art
• Learning and scholarship > Europe > History > Medieval, 500-1500

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages [200]-222) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction -- The liberal arts : making education visible -- Learning to read in texts and images -- Telling tales : art for the illiterate -- Learning to speak : the art of logic -- The image of the master -- The art of music -- Arithmetic and geometry in the classroom and beyond -- Looking at the heavens : astronomy in images -- Conclusion.

ISBN

• 9781783270859
• 1783270853

OCLC

• 946010842
• SCSB-10184982

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library