Background
Kessler, Herbert Leon was born on July 20, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Ben and Bertha Kessler.
(Written over the course of a quarter century, the ninetee...)
Written over the course of a quarter century, the nineteen essays reprinted in this volume reflect a continuing belief in the seriousness and complexity of the relationship between pictures and texts in medieval art. Professor Kessler has grouped his studies in three sections: Pictures and Scripture includes those essays which consider the various ways in which Christian pictorial representations are in continuous and varying dialogue with holy writ in Byzantium and the medieval west. Pictures in Scripture is about illustrated manuscripts, with six essays dealing with the complicated processes used to construct meaning in depictions within the texts they illustrate. Pictures as Scriptures contains nine essays which deal with pictorial cycles unassociated with the texts they serve, primarily monumental narratives in the Synagogue at Dura Europos and on the walls of Italian churches. Notes added to each article update the bibliography and consider issues that have been discussed in subsequent scholarly literature. There is a new preface and a comprehensive index.
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(A Note About the Cover: "Evangeliary of St. Andreas of Co...)
A Note About the Cover: "Evangeliary of St. Andreas of Cologne." (AE 679, fol. 126v, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. Reprinted by permission). This eleventh-century manuscript demonstrates a trend of the High Middle Ages in which transcendental contemplation was initiated by abstract means. Here, thin washes of celestial colors elevate the animal flesh itself, the vellum on which words and pictures are elsewhere inscribed, to guide the viewer's thoughts from the physical world toward (though not all the way to) the invisible God. How did medieval people see art? How was it made, paid for, and used? Why was it necessary to social activities including teaching, civic processions, and missionary work, as well as to architecture and books? With 12 color plates and 54 plates in all, Seeing Medieval Art looks at art's functions and traces many crucial developments including the development of secular art and historical narrative, and the emergence of individual portraiture. This title launches a new UTP Higher Education series called Rethinking the Middle Ages, which is committed to re-examining the Middle Ages, its themes, institutions, people, and events with short studies that will provoke discussion among students and medievalists, and invite them to think about the middle ages in new and unusual ways. The editors, Paul Edward Dutton and John Shinners, invite suggestions and submissions. Academics please note that this is a title classified as having a restricted allocation of complimentary copies. Restricted titles remain available to adopters and to academics very likely to adopt in the coming semester. When adoption possibilities are less strong and/or further in the future, academics are requested to purchase the title, with the proviso that UTP Higher Education will happily refund the purchase price if the book is indeed adopted.
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( The sumptuously decorated First Bible of Charles the Ba...)
The sumptuously decorated First Bible of Charles the Bald may well be the most famous of all medieval manuscripts. The national library of France counts it as Number 1 among its thousands of Latin manuscripts. Despite its fame, however, the First Bible has remained a magnificent mystery, its poems largely unread and the connection between its poetry and paintings unexplored. In the first full study of its kind, Paul Edward Dutton and Herbert L. Kessler carefully investigate and integrate the Bible's words and pictures and arrive at some surprising discoveries: the identification of the poet, the context of the Bible's production, hands-on changes to the codex, and a new, more political reading of the First Bible's stunning paintings. The First Bible was made for Charles the Bald (840-877) at the monastery of Saint Martin at Tours. It contains four sets of dedicatory verses, seven sets of tituli or inscriptions associated directly with paintings, eight full-page illuminations, and a host of decorated initials and minor illustrations. This study begins with an analysis of the poetry in the codex. Dutton and Kessler identify the probable poet of the new poems and argue that the great Bible was likely made in the summer or early autumn of 845. They reveal textual evidence for a series of late changes to the codex in November 845 as it was rushed to completion. Further, they reinterpret the paintings in the light of the political poetry accompanying them, and they detect the principal architect of the Bible Charles the Bald finally received. The Poetry and Paintings of the First Bible of Charles the Bald will appeal to medievalists, historians, and art historians, as well as to anyone interested in how words and pictures interrelate, and how political messages are conveyed in art. Paul Edward Dutton is Professor of History and Humanities, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia. Herbert L. Kessler is Charlotte Bloomberg Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences and Chair of the Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University.
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("Experts and non-experts alike will find much to delight ...)
"Experts and non-experts alike will find much to delight and challenge them in Kessler's rich embroidery of text and image." - Mary Carruthers, New York University
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(Pope John Paul II declared the year 2000 a Jubilee year. ...)
Pope John Paul II declared the year 2000 a Jubilee year. This book looks at the first holy year in 1300, and the route of a prospective pilgrim, guiding the reader through medieval Rome and its treasures and rituals. It also discusses Rome's transformation from a Pagan to Christian city.
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(Exhibition catalog of rarely seen illuminated manuscripts...)
Exhibition catalog of rarely seen illuminated manuscripts held in private collections in the Chicago area. Softcover, 8.5 x 11 inches, 57 pages (unpaginated), 62 black and white illustrations, 2 full-color tipped-in, with extensive notes and Foreword by Herbert L. Kessler, Exhibition Curator.
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( If we cannot see God with our own eyes, for what purpos...)
If we cannot see God with our own eyes, for what purpose do we picture God in art? During the Middle Ages, the Second Commandment's warning against idolatry was largely set aside as the power of images became boldly and visibly evident. By the twelfth century, one Byzantine authority could even offer his own revision of the Commandment: "Thou shalt paint the likeness of Christ Himself." How and when, Herbert L. Kessler asks, was the Jewish prohibition of images in worship converted into a Christian imperative to picture God's invisibility once God had taken human form in the body of Jesus Christ? In Spiritual Seeing, Kessler explores ways in which the medieval debate about the functions and limits of images influenced the production of sacred art. Offering a new interpretation of Christian images as mediators between the human and the sacred, Kessler considers how the creators of images in Byzantium and the Latin West were able to situate art at the boundary between the physical and the spiritual worlds. He examines the ways in which images acquired such legitimacy that sacred art became a privileged metaphor for divine revelation. Portraits of Christ, in particular, took on central importance. Throughout the book, Kessler also considers the lingering anxiety about the capacity of human sight to apprehend the divine in images. In so doing, he discloses the artful dodges devised to deal with the controversy of picturing God's invisibility in material form.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812235606/?tag=2022091-20
educator art historian university administrator
Kessler, Herbert Leon was born on July 20, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Ben and Bertha Kessler.
AB, University of Chicago, 1961; Master of Fine Arts, Princeton University, 1963; Doctor of Philosophy, Princeton University, 1965.
Assistant professor University Chicago, 1965-1968. Associate professor, 1968-1973. Professor, 1973-1976.
Chairman department art, university director fine arts, 1973-1976. Professor Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, since 1976, chair department art, 1976-1989, 95-98. Guest professor Kunsthistorisches Institute, Florence, 2010, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, 1996-1997, dean School Arts and Sciences, 1998-1999.
Visiting professor Harvard University, 2000, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 2000. Croghan Bicentennial visiting professor Williams College, 2006, McDonald visiting professor, Emory University, 2007.
( If we cannot see God with our own eyes, for what purpos...)
(Written over the course of a quarter century, the ninetee...)
("Experts and non-experts alike will find much to delight ...)
( The Description for this book, The Cotton Genesis: The ...)
( The sumptuously decorated First Bible of Charles the Ba...)
(Exhibition catalog of rarely seen illuminated manuscripts...)
( The Description for this book, The Illustrated Bibles f...)
(Pope John Paul II declared the year 2000 a Jubilee year. ...)
(A Note About the Cover: "Evangeliary of St. Andreas of Co...)
Fellow Medieval Academy America (president since 2009), American Academy Arts and Sciences. Member College Art Association, Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Johanna Zacharias, April 24, 1976. 1 daughter, Morisa.