Bøker i Visualising the Middle Ages-serien

These studies explore aspects of Julian Gardner's wide range of interests and approaches, ranging from Parisian metalwork to the Wilton diptych, Franciscan iconography, the tomb of a leading theologian and several studies of the art of Rome and Northern Italy.

The papers in this volume question how perceptions of space influenced understandings of the body and its functions, illness and treatment, and the surrounding natural and built environments in relation to health in the classical and medieval periods.

During the middle ages, the head of St John the Baptist was widely venerated. According to the biblical text, John was beheaded at the order of Herod s stepdaughter, who is traditionally given the name Salome. His head was later found in Jerusalem. Legends concerning the discovery of this relic form the basis of an iconographic type in which the head of St John the Baptist is represented as an object. The phenomenon of the Johannessch ssel is the subject of this essay. Little is known about how exactly these objects functioned. How are we to understand this fascination with horror, death and decapitation? What phantasms does the artifact channel? Barbara Baert contextualizes the Johannessch ssel as a cultural phenomenon against the background of relic cults and the diverse artistic production that encompasses both high and low registers of medieval material culture. The Johannessch ssel puts the reader on the trail of archetypes regarding blood, sacrifice and genealogy. In this sense, the present essay also involves important anthropological points of departure. This publication offers the unique key to the Johannessch ssel as artifact, phenomenon, phantasm and medium. Barbara Baert studied Art History and Philosophy at the University Leuven and the University of Siena, Italy. In 2006 she founded the Iconology Research Group, an international and interdisciplinary platform for the study of the interpretation of images. Her disciplines concern Sacred Topography, Visual Anthropology, Relics and Devotion and Art Theory. Recent books are "Fluid Flesh. The Body, Religion and the Visual Arts" ((Ed.) 2009) and "Interspaces between Word, Gaze and Touch: The Bible and the Visual Medium in the Middle Ages: Collected essays on Noli me tangere, the Woman with the Haemorrhage, the Head of John the Baptist" (2011).

In Imago Mortis: Mediating Images of Death in Late Medieval Culture, Ashby Kinch argues that late medieval artists, writers, and patrons creatively adapted conventional death iconography in ways that ultimately affirm theiir artistic, social and political identities.

In Imagining the Text, James Brown examines ekphrasis, illuminated manuscripts, and the changing notions of courtly identity in Wirnt von Gravenberg's popular medieval German Arthurian romance Wigalois.

Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel analyses how Jerusalem is translated into the visual and material culture of Europe, and in what ways European encounters with the city have shaped its holy sites.

Byzantium/Modernism examines the cross-temporal interchange between Byzantium and modernism and articulates how and why Byzantine art and image theory can contribute to our understanding of modern and contemporary visual culture.