Giants in the Medieval City
By (author) Assaf Pinkus
This book explores the role and function of the vision and the experience of the gigantic.
The visual landscape north of the Alps between the 14th and 16th centuries was shaped by colossal representations of epic and mythological giants, reincarnated and cast as Christian heroes. In contexts religious or lay, private or public, giants dominated urban spaces but also rural ones. They were painted on church facades and stood tall as sculptures in town squares. Rather than portraying specific characters from particular texts, the figures embodied the notion of “the gigantic” as it appeared in contemporary writings: superhuman creatures from foreign lands and liminal geographies, often associated with supernatural powers, magic, hypermasculinity, and, concomitantly, matriarchy. Since the naming and identity of these giants do not always correlate–thus destabilizing the images’ semiotics–the gap could be filled by fabricated memories of the ancient world. Hence, imagery of giants bridged mythological, biblical, and contemporary times, while producing novel political metaphors. This book explores the role and function of the vision and the experience of the gigantic. Executed “out of scale” and communicating ideas about excess, giants were experienced as physically and ethically abject and, at the same time, as magnificent, apotropaic, and redemptive; as such they came to embody the very notion of the medieval sublime.
- By (author) Assaf Pinkus
Other Titles in this Series
Viewing Greece
Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean: Papers Stimulated by the Exhibition 'Heaven & Earth, Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections'
Volume 11
The Art and Archaeology of Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus (1192-1571)
Recent Research and New Discoveries
Volume 12
Christ on the Cross
The Boston Crucifix and the Rise of Monumental Wood Sculpture, 970-1200
Volume 14
Fallen Idols, Risen Saints
Sainte Foy of Conques and the Revival of Monumental Sculpture in Medieval Art
Volume 7
Ritual, Gender, and Narrative in Late Medieval Italy
Fina Buzzacarini and the Baptistery of Padua
Volume 15
Similar Books
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination
Acts of the XXVII Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM, Trento 12-15 September 2023
Volume 31
Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia
History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
Tradition, Interpretation, and Change
Developments in the Liturgy of Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenaz
Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Studies from Western Europe and North Africa
Volume 44
