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52 Art
September
400 pp. 280x220mm.
80 colour + 170 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-17660-5 £45.00*
The Miraculous Image
in Renaissance Florence
Megan Holmes
In Renaissance Florence, certain paintings and sculptures of the Virgin
Mary and Christ were believed to have extraordinary efficacy in
activating potent sacred intercession. Cults sprung up around these
‘miraculous images’ in the city and surrounding countryside beginning
in the late 13th century. In The Miraculous Image in Renaissance
Florence, Megan Holmes questions what distinguished these paintings
and sculptures from other similar sacred images, looking closely at their
material and formal properties, the process of enshrinement, and the
foundation legends and miracles associated with specific images.
Whereas some of the images presented in this fascinating book are well
known, such as Bernardo Daddi’s Madonna of Orsanmichele, many
others have been little studied until now. Holmes’s efforts centre on the
recovery and contextualisation of these revered images, reintegrating
them and their related cults into an art-historical account of the period.
By challenging prevailing views and offering a reassessment of the
Renaissance, this generously illustrated and comprehensive survey makes
a significant contribution to the field.
Megan Holmes is professor of the history of art at the University of
Michigan.
Religious Poverty, Visual Riches
Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy
in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
Joanna Cannon
The Dominican friars of late-medieval Italy were vowed to a life of
religious poverty. Yet their churches contained many visual riches, as this
groundbreaking study reveals. Works by supreme practitioners –
Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto and Simone Martini – are here set in a wider
Dominican context. The contents of major foundations – Siena, Pisa,
Perugia and Santa Maria Novella in Florence – are studied alongside less
well-known centres. For the first time these frescoes and panel paintings
are brought together with illuminated choir books, carved crucifixes,
goldsmith’s work, tombs and stained glass. At the heart of the book is
the Dominicans’ evolving relationship with the laity, expressed at first by
the partitioning of their churches, and subsequently by the everincreasing
sharing of space, and of the production and use of art.
Joanna Cannon’s magisterial study is informed by extensive new
research, using chronicles, legislation, liturgy, sermons and other sources
to explore the place of art in the lives of the friars and the urban laity of
Central Italy.
December
368 pp. 280x230mm.
80 colour + 200 b/w illus.
HB ISBN 978-0-300-18765-6 £45.00*
Joanna Cannon is reader in the history of art at the Courtauld Institute
of Art, University of London.