Cluny and the Origins of Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture
The Architecture, Sculpture and Narrative of the Avenas Master
by Edson C. Armi
Hardback (Published)
(March 2019)
ISBN: 9788891317452
8.46 x 10.98 inches
Price: $114.00
On back order
The role of individual sculptors in creating the ambulatory capitals in the largest basilica in Christendom at Cluny remains a mystery. The unresolved issue of individual creativity leaves open three important questions about this powerful abbey which controlled hundreds of monasteries throughout Europe in the eleventh century: What was the specific artistic context – the origin, training and career path of the major sculptors who worked at the mother church at the start of construction? What was the relationship, in time and influence, between the focal ambulatory capitals and similar sculptures at numerous local sites? And what role did artists play in determining the form and meaning of Cluny sculptures and related monuments? This book traces the career of a sculptor who worked on the earliest capitals in the abbey church at Cluny. It documents his artistic preferences at previous Burgundian projects, gathering a variety of evidence intended to be on the one hand precise, complex and subtle, and on the other convincingly repetitious. He treated gesture, pose, anatomy, drapery, foliage, architecture, background and space not only consistently but also in a complementary fashion. Plainly put, he blurred the traditional distinction between sculpture and architecture, displaying a rich and unique combination of artistic preferences even as he worked with different kinds of patrons on various subjects at numerous and diverse monuments. These findings are supported with high-resolution photographs taken at telling angles from high ladders and scaffolding. This version of the creative process at the mother church, in which the Cluniac brothers picked a local talent to carry out one of the most important sculptural commissions in Europe, differs markedly from the standard one based largely on presumed but undocumented artistic priorities of the monks. Prevailing theory assumes the monks had an international perspective when it came to art as they tried to establish at Cluny a new Rome as the centerpiece of their monastic empire. Rather than tap an experienced sculptor who worked in the indigenous masonry tradition, they would have looked toward foreign lands to find suitable artists who based their designs on high forms of art such as ivory, painting, and metalwork. C. Edson Armi Is a research professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written books on Cluniac architecture and sculpture, design and construction in Romanesque architecture, Gothic sculpture, and American car design. He received the Society of Architectural Historians Founders’ Award, the C.I.N.O.A. International Art History Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
- By (author) Edson C. Armi
Other Titles in this Series
Coptic Antiquities I
Stone Sculpture, Bronze Objects; Ceramic Coffin Lids and Vessels; Terracotta Statuettes, Bone, Wood, and Glass Artefacts. (Monumenta antiquitatis extra fines hungariae reperta, vol. II)
Volume 11
Monitoraggio e Manutenzione delle Aree Archeologiche
Cambiamenti climatici, dissesto idrogeologico, degrado chimico-ambientale
Volume 65
Orvieto La necropoli di Cannicella
Scavi della Fondazione per il Museo C. Faina e della Universita di Perugia (1977)
Volume 13
Il Paesaggio suburbano di Roma dall’antichita al medioevo
Il comprensorio tra le vie Latine ed Ardeatina dalle mura Aureliane al III miglio
Volume 27
Alle origini di Varese e del suo territorio
Le collezioni del sistema archeologico provinciale
Volume 44
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
La basilica ‘circiforme’ della via Ardeatina (Basilica Marci) a Roma
Campagne di scavo 1993-1996
Volume 68
Hellenistic and Roman Terracottas from Egypt
Monumenta Antiquitatis extra Fines Hungariae Reperta. Vol. IV
Volume 15
Il Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia
Origine e metamorfosi di un'istituzione museale del XIX secolo
Volume 38
La Serliana en el Imperio Romano
Paradigma de la arquitectura del poder. Una lectura de la arquitectura y la iconografia arquitectonica romanas
Volume 52
Similar Books
«Solazoxa festa, stradolze e stracomplia»
Festschrift für Raymund Wilhelm zum 65. Geburtstag mit Beiträgen zu Diskurstraditionen und mittelalterlicher Philologie
Volume 249
A Collaborative Tapestry in Honour of Shirley Ann Brown / Une fresque brodée en l’honneur de Shirley Ann Brown
The Bayeux Tapestry Seen by her Colleagues and Friends / La Tapisserie de Bayeux vue par ses collègues et amis
Balthasar Caymox of Nuremberg
Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes – Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies
Volume 51
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
ENTANGLED AFRICA
Intra-African Relations Between Rain Forest and Mediterranean from Around 4,000 BCE to 1,500 CE
Gold, Silver and Glass: Power Networks, Cultural Identities, Technology Transfers and Agency across the Old World (7th Century BC – 1st Century AD)
Proceedings of a Conference Held at the British Museum, 16–18 June 2023
