Cothren, m.: picturing the celestial city: the medieval stained glass of beauvais cathedral. (hardcover)

The cathedral of Saint-Pierre in Beauvais, France, is most well-known like a failure–its choir vaults came crashing lower in 1284–and just secondarily because of its soaring beauty. This lavishly highlighted and stylishly written book represents the very first serious consider the stunning assortment of Medieval stained glass home windows which has always dominated the expertise of individuals who enter Beauvais Cathedral.

Chapter by chapter, Michael Cothren traces the glazing through four successive campaigns that bridged a lifetime between your 1240s and also the 1340s. The readers is transported in history, gaining fascinating understanding of exactly what the glazing of Beauvais really might have appeared as if in addition to what it really might have conveyed to individuals who frequented the cathedral. Resistant to the prevalent assumption these home windows are heavily restored, Cothren shows that they’re actually surprisingly well maintained, especially considering the cathedral’s infamous good reputation for architectural disaster.

More to the point, Cothren goes far to dismantle a lengthy-held misconception about medieval colored home windows, and even monumental medieval pictorial art generally: the concept it had been created and created as an alternative text for ignorant, illiterate folks, supplying on their behalf a "Bible from the Poor." Indeed, Cothren shows us that stained glass home windows, wealthy with shaded meanings, functioned a lot more like sermon than scripture. Being an ensemble, they produced a radiant interpretive backdrop that explicated and situated the performance from the Mass within this giant liturgical theater.

Reviews:

"[T]his can be a marvelous choice of both archival and up to date photographs that gives excellent visual documentation. . . . [T]his book . . . certainly constitutes probably the most accessible scholarly study from the 13th- and 14th- century glazing of Beauvais Cathedral up to now and it is likely lengthy to stay so. . . . Cothren hs not just labored the chronology from the glas brilliantly he presents it here with admirable clearness."–James Bugslag, Journal of Stained Glass

"Cothren’s agility in selecting the right means that to tease out a potential means to fix confirmed problem enables him to embrace the multifaceted approach essential to an awareness from the monument in general. His visual observations from the figural in addition to physiognomic style in every window, transported on a microanalytic level, elicit questions and suggestions that cause probably the most complete analysis from the glazing program of Beauvais to the present time."–Mary Weitzel Gibbons, Church History

Endorsements:

"Picturing the Celestial City is definitely the Medieval stained glass of Beauvais Cathedral in the foremost and only serious scholarly venture ever carried out, also it achieves this superbly. Beauvais is among the great French Medieval cathedrals discussed in each and every architectural survey–the tallest and also the ‘final’ among the series, its audacity checkmated through the collapse from the high vaults in 1284. Cothren includes a magnificent command from the growing body of research about this and bakes an enormous contribution towards the research. His scholarship is seem and thorough, and the writing is fluent, elegant, and convincing."–Meredith P. Lillich, Syracuse College

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Table of Contents:

Preface xi
Introduction 1
CHAPTER I: The Very First Campaign
Glazing the Virgin Chapel throughout the 1240s 5
CHAPTER II: The 2nd Campaign The Initial Glazing from the Upper Choir, ca. 1255-1265 101
CHAPTER III: The 3rd Campaign
Publish-Collapse Repair and Refurbishment in
Chapels throughout the 1290s 125
CHAPTER IV: The 4th Campaign Restorers and Creators, Working Upstairs and Lower within the 1340s 151
CONCLUSION 193
APPENDIX A: Transformation and Restoration from the Medieval Glazing: A History 201
APPENDIX B: Stained Glass in the Saint-John Chapel, Now within the Musée de Picardie, Amiens 207
APPENDIX C: The Homes of Roche Guyon and also the Chatelains of Beauvais within the Fourteenth Century 213
NOTES 215
BIBLIOGRAPHY 255
index 267
PHOTOGRAPH AND ILLUSTRATION credits 277

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