Author : C. Edson Armi
Release : 2019
Genre : Cluniac sculpture
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Book Rating : 452/5 ( reviews)

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Cluny and the Origins of Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Cluny and the Origins of Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture write by C. Edson Armi. This book was released on 2019. Cluny and the Origins of Burgundian Romanesque Sculpture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.