Volume 22, Number 2 · February 20, 1975
Artifices of Eternity
By Peter Brown, Sabine MacCormack
The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700): Vol. 2, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine
by Jaroslav Pelikan
University of Chicago Press, 329 pp., $16.50
Venezia e Bizanzio
by Sergio Bettini and others
Electa Editrice (Venice), 224, 131 plates pp., $18.75
Icons and their History
by David Talbot Rice, by Tamara Talbot Rice
The Overlook Press, 192, 191 plates pp., $35.00
Armenian Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery
by Sirarpie Der Nersessian
Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore), 108, 243 plates pp., $52.00
The Celtic Churches: A History, AD 200 to 1200
by John T. McNeill
University of Chicago Press, 289 pp., $10.00
Irish Medieval Figure Sculpture, 1200-1600
by John Hunt
Irish University Press (Dublin) and Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications, Vol. 2, 340 plates and index pp., $70.00
The Book of Kells
with a study of the manuscript by Françoise Henry
Knopf, 226, 201 plates pp., $65.00
Any visitor to a museum or art gallery will in due course come to realize the extent to which medieval Christianity in its varying forms fostered the growth of visual art. The books reviewed here are a testimony to some of its manifestations. Françoise Henry presents new reproductions of large parts of the great Gospel Book of Kells, now preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. Icons of Byzantium and Eastern Europe, scattered in museums throughout the world, are catalogued and ingeniously dated by David and Tamara Talbot Rice. The catalogue of the exhibition of 1974, 'Venice and Byzantium,' reminds us that in San Marco in Venice we have a living museum of the art of Constantinople at its peak. Sirarpie Der Nersessian has commented on eleven of the luxuriant manuscripts of the Armenian communities scattered throughout the Near East, now preserved in the Walters Art Gallery. The humble craftsmanship of the tombs of Ireland from 1200 to 1600 catalogued by John Hunt provides us with an index to the difference between great art and the day-to-day demands of craftsmanship in a provincial culture. Furthermore, we have guides to the very different societies that produced such art: the masterly survey of Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700), can be fruitfully contrasted with the northern world evoked in the enthusiastic narrative of Professor John T. McNeill; The Celtic Churches: A History, AD 200 to 1200.
Review, 4697 words
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