• Bacci Michele
• Scepanovic Vesna

What did medieval people think about their art? This seminar aims to review the most important texts that, in the West as in Byzantium and the Islamic world, describe works of art and architecture and offer comments on their aesthetic qualities, functions and modes of interpretation.

Active and constant participation in the discussion of the topics presented; reading of the recommended texts; preparation of an oral presentation based on the results of research work; drafting of a written paper taking into account the observations made during the discussions.

Barber, Charles, and Papaioannou, Eustratios, eds., Michael Psellus on Literature and Art. A Byzantine Perspective on Aesthetics, Notre Dame 2017

Barber, Charles, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding in Eleventh-Century Byzantium, Leiden 2007

Barber, Charles, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm, Princeton 2002

Barber, Charles, Reading Michael Psellos, Leiden 2006

Bigham, Steven, Early Christian Attitudes about Images, Rollinsford 2004

Brunello, Franco, ed., De arte illuminandi e altri trattati sulla tecnica della miniatura medievale, Padova: Neri Pozza, 1990

Carruthers, Mary, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200, Cambridge 1998

Carruthers, Mary, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages, Oxford 2013

Davis-Weyer, Caecilia, ed., Early Medieval Art 300-1150: Sources and Documents, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1986

Dietl, Albert, Die Sprache der Signatur: Die mittelalterlichen Kunstinschriften Italiens, Berlin und München 2009

Egeria, Journey to the Holy Land, Turnhout 2020

Frisch, Teresa Grace, ed., Gothic Art 1140-c. 1450: Sources and Documents, Toronto 1987

Gregorius, The Marvels of Rome, transl. John Osborne, Turnhout 1987

Heidi Gearhart, Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art, University Park 2017

Kessler, Herbert L., Neither God nor Man. Words, Images, and the Medieval Anxiety about Art, Freiburg im Br.: Rombach 2007

L’abbé Suger, le manifeste gothique de Saint-Denis et la pensée victorine, ed. Dominique Poirel, Turnhout 2001.

Levi, Donata, Il discorso sull’arte. Dalla tarda antichità a Ghiberti, Milano-Torino 2010

Liber miraculorum sancte Fidis, ed. Luca Robertini, Spoleto 1994

Mango, Cyril, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453, Toronto 1986

Miedema, Nine, Die römischen Kirchen im Spätmittelalter nach den „Indulgentiae ecclesiarum urbis Romae“, Tübingen 2001

Miedema, Nine, Rompilgerführer in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit: Die „Indulgentiae ecclesiarum urbis Romae“, Tübingen 2003

Panofsky, Erwin, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis, Princeton 1946

Pringle, Denys, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187-1291, Farnham 2012.

Rudolf, Conrad, Artistic Change at St-Denis: Abbot Suger’s Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy over Art, Princeton 1990

Rudolf, Conrad, The “Things of Greater Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Apologia” and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art, Philadelphia 1990.

Rudolf, Conrad, The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge 2014

Saint John of Damascus, Writings, Washington, DC 1970

Schlosser, Julius von, Quellenbuch zur Kunstgeschichte des abendländischen Mittelalters, Wien 1896

Schlosser, Julius von, Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der karolingischen Kunst, Wien 1892

The Book of Sainte Foy, transl. Pamela Sheingorn, Philadelphia 1995

The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt: A New Critical Edition and Color Facsimile, Farnham 2009

Theophilus Presbyter, De diversis artibus, ed. and transl. C. R. Dodwell, New York 1961

Theophilus Presbyter, Traité des divers arts, Lyon : Editions du Cosmogone, 1998

Wilkinson, John, Jerusalem Pilgrimage before the Crusades, Warminster 1977

Wilkinson, John, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099-1185, London 1988