Stone Sculpture

2021 ◽  
pp. 442-456
Author(s):  
Sarah T. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Stone Sculpture ◽  
Architectural Tradition

Decorative stone sculpture is one of the most enduring and prestigious forms of decoration in Byzantine buildings of all kinds and from the empire’s whole history. Whether serving as support critical to infrastructure, or as pure adornment, this sculpture was a hallmark of the Byzantine architectural tradition. Often, it indicated the highest levels of patronage. Sculpted stone elements used in the decoration of buildings often included columns, capitals, and entablature blocks; moldings; cornices; window and door frames; fountains; sarcophagi and architectonic frames for arcosolia, or niche tombs; furnishings, including church altars, ciboria, ambos, baptismal fonts, and templon screens, as well as domestic items such as tables, seating, and shelving; and decorated stone panels displaying dedicatory or commemorative inscriptions.

Sigurðr, Þórr and Ragnarök and their Christian Counterparts

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Manu Braithwaite-Westoby
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
The Bible ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Stone Sculpture ◽  
Popular Subject ◽  
New Religion

Few scholars would deny that some Old Norse myths have Christian counterparts, a phenomenon first noticed by nineteenth-century archaeologists and antiquarians in their observations of Anglo-Scandinavian stone sculpture in northern England. It is strange, therefore, that despite this long tradition, there is no systematic study on the topic. While this ambition is unfortunately outside the scope of this article, it does seek to address a number of Old Norse myths/legends and place them in conjunction with their Christian counterparts. One of the most important myths for Anglo-Scandinavian craftsmen was probably Sigurðr, who has an obvious parallel in Christ. The apocalyptic narrative in Voluspa known as Ragnarök was also a very popular subject and has a clear cognate in the apocalyptic sections of the Bible. Þórr and the Miðgarðsormr, though less appealing to artists, strongly recalls accounts of the conflict between Christ and Satan or Leviathan. This article uses a theoretical methodology called ‘figural interpretation’ to examine the Old Norse myths and explore how they reflect certain myths from the new religion. While distinctly art historical in approach, this article also invokes some Old Norse texts where relevant, which may themselves have been influenced by Christian thinking.

Notes on Some Mosques in Eastern and Western Saudi Arabia

1980 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. D. King
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Islamic Architecture ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Architectural Tradition

In studies of Islamic architecture dealing with the earliest periods, a natural emphasis has fallen on the mosques of the Holy Cities of Arabia, the Ḥaramayn, whenever the architecture of the Arabian Peninsula has been discussed. In later periods, extensions and restorations in the Ḥaram in Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet in al-Madīna have likewise been discussed, but until recent times, little has been said of any other Arabian mosques. As far as mosques beyond the Ḥaramayn are concerned, this neglect has been caused largely by their inaccessibility; but as a result of the imbalance, students of Islamic architecture have been left to judge Arabia by the Prophet's Mosque, which was only truly Arabian at its foundation, and the Ḥaram and the Ka'ba, which were always unique in Islam in terms both of religion and of architecture. As for later extensions and restorations of either mosque, these tell more of the development of Islamic architectural style and taste beyond the Peninsula than of any Arabian religious architectural tradition.

Poet of the Medieval Modern

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
In Parenthesis ◽  
Stone Sculpture

The early Middle Ages provided twentieth-century poets with the material to reimagine and rework local, religious, and national identities in their writing. Poet of the Medieval Modern focuses on a key figure within this tradition, the Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones (1895–1974), and represents the first extended study of the influence of early medieval culture and history from England on Jones and his novel-length late modernist poem The Anathemata (1952). The Anathemata, the second major poetic project after In Parenthesis (1937), fuses Jones’s visual and verbal arts to write a Catholic history of Britain as told through the history of man-as-artist. Drawing on unpublished archival material including manuscripts, sketches, correspondence, and, most significantly, the marginalia from David Jones’s Library, Poet of the Medieval Modern reads with Jones in order to trouble the distinction we make between poetry and scholarship. Placing this underappreciated figure firmly at the centre of new developments in modernist and medieval studies, Poet of the Medieval Modern brings the two fields into dialogue and argues that Jones uses the textual and material culture of the early Middle Ages—including Old English prose and poetry, Anglo-Latin hagiography, early medieval stone sculpture, manuscripts, and historiography—to re-envision British Catholic identity in the twentieth-century long poem. In The Anathemata Jones returned to the English record to seek out those moments where the histories of the Welsh had been elided or erased. At a time when the Middle Ages are increasingly weaponized in far-right and nationalist political discourse, the book offers a timely discussion of how the early medieval past has been resourced to both shore up and challenge English hegemonies across modern British culture.

Wenceslas Coberghers Grundrissentwurf für die siebeneckige Marienwallfahrtskirche in Scherpenheuvel/Montaigu

Architectura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-73
Author(s):  
Anke Naujokat
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Floor Plan ◽  
Early Design ◽  
Ground Plan ◽  
Design Plan ◽  
Architectural Tradition

Abstract This paper examines an unusual heptagonal floor plan drawing held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The drawing is identified as an early design plan (ca. 1606) for the heptagonal Marian Pilgrimage church at Scherpenheuvel/Montaigu (Belgium). After describing the drawing in detail and attributing it to Wenzeslas Cobergher, the paper interprets the ground plan against the backdrop of the design process of the domed Sanctuary as well as in the broader context of Scherpenheuvel’s transformation into a symbolic and programmatic Pilgrimage ensemble by the sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands, Archduke Albert VII of Austria and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. With a view to the Italian architectural tradition, considerations are given to the ground plan’s geometry, its elevation and symbolic architectural motifs, before it is compared with the realized ground plan of the Pilgrimage church in Scherpenheuvel.

scholarly journals Uwagi na temat gdańskiego budownictwa publicznego drugiej połowy XVI i pierwszej połowy XVII wieku pod kątem zaopatrzenia w materiał kamieniarski

Porta Aurea ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 5-32
Author(s):  
Franciszek Skibiński
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Building Industry ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
Public Building ◽  
The Public ◽  
Stone Sculpture ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The City

Works of architecture and stone sculpture would never have been created without the existence of a supply network enabling access to assets crucial for their production, including stone. Based on archive quarries and analysis of existing works of architecture and stone sculpture, this article focuses on the importation of stone for the building and stonecutting industry in early modern Gdańsk. In the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century the city was experiencing an era of economic prosperity and became a major center of architecture and stone sculpture in the Baltic region and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Gdańsk authorities put much effort into securing suitable stone necessary to carry out their ambitious projects. Builders and sculptors based in the Baltic metropolis applied various kinds of stone imported from abroad, including limestone from Oland and Sweden, sandstone quarried in Bückeburg and Bentheim, Belgian marble, and English alabaster. The kind of stone most commonly used in local architecture and sculpture was, however, the sandstone from the Isle of Gotland. To obtain this material the city authorities often approached the Danish king, as revealed by numerous letters preserved in Gdańsk and Copenhagen archives. Each year several shipments of Gotland stone would arrive in the city, the amount of stone reaching up to 10,000 cubic feet. Some of the material destined for the public building works was then prepared by workers supervised by the ‘Bauknecht’. He was an official appointed by the city authorities to support the public building industry and to facilitate the work of specialized building and sculpting workshops by overlooking low-skilled workers and supply of materials. Some of the local builders and stonecutters were also involved in the importation of stone from Gotland. Besides carrying out major architectural and sculptural works, at least some of the guild masters running large workshops were engaged in the supply of necessary materials. For this reason, they had to maintain a network of professional contacts within the Baltic region and beyond. The most prominent among them was Willem van der Meer, called Barth, a stonecutter from Ghent established in Gdańsk. Between roughly 1590 and 1610, he supplied the city with a large amount of Gotland stone, including that used for the building of the Great Arsenal. Other important members of the local milieu engaged in the stone trade were Willem and Abraham van den Blocke as well as Wilhelm Richter, continuator of Van den Blocke’s enterprise often engaged by the city authorities. These findings broaden our understanding of the professional practices of builders and stone sculptors in Gdańsk and the Baltic region in the late 16th and in the 17th centuries.

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