The Crusades and Visual Culture (original) (raw)
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SHAPING IDENTITIES IN A HOLY LAND. CRUSADER ART IN THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM: PATRONS AND VIEWERS, 2024
In the 88 years between its establishment by the victorious armies of the First Crusade and its collapse following the disastrous defeat at Hattin, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was the site of vibrant artistic and architectural activity. As the crusaders rebuilt some of Christendom's most sacred churches, or embellished others with murals and mosaics, a unique and highly original art was created. Focusing on the sculptural, mosaic, and mural cycles adorning some of the most important shrines in the Kingdom (such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, The Basilica of the Annunciation, and the Church of the Nativity), this book offers a broad perspective of Crusader art and architecture. Among the many aspects discussed are competition among pilgrimage sites, crusader manipulation of biblical models, the image of the Muslim, and others. Building on recent developments in the fields of patronage studies and reception theory, the book offers a study of the complex ways in which Crusader art addressed its diverse audiences (Franks, indigenous eastern Christians, pilgrims) while serving the intentions of its patrons. Of particular interest to scholars and students of the Crusades and of Crusader art, as well as scholars and students of medieval art in general, this book will appeal to all those engaging with intercultural encounters, acculturation, Christian-Muslim relations, pilgrimage, the Holy Land, medieval devotion and theology, Byzantine art, reception theory and medieval patronage. Gil Fishhof teaches medieval and Crusader art at the Department of Art History, University of Haifa. His main areas of expertise are Romanesque art and architecture in France, art in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, art of the Cluniac order, and questions of medieval patronage and audiences. Together with Einat Segal and Assaf Pinkus, he has recently published the edited volume The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth-Where the Word Became Flesh (2020), and with Vardit Shoten-Hallel and Judith Bronstein the volume Settlement and Crusade in the 13th Century-Multidisciplinary Studies of the Latin East (2021).
sponsored art from the 12th century. Pilgrims to Bethlehem engaged local painters to provide icons that would commemorate their patron saints, linking the holy place of the birth of Christ with their European homeland. These large icons, which decorate columns of the nave and aisles of the Church of the Nativity, include a surprisingly diverse array of saintly fi gures that include cult images of the Virgin and Child, along with the images of apostles, bishops, deacons, ascetics, soldier-saints, holy kings and important female saints. On rare occasions the images of the pilgrims who may have commissioned the column paintings were also represented. Furthermore, in one independent instance there is a small devotional icon which links patron saints associated with the three great Christian pilgrimage sites at the time -Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela -ordered by an anonymous pilgrim who appears to have visited all three sites.
Commemorations of crusaders in the manuscripts of the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem
Journal of Medieval History, vol. 38, issue 3, 2012
This article examines two Georgian manuscripts from the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem which contain commemorations of crusaders. The documents contain information about the crusaders and the Templars, and are significant for the light they throw on relations between the crusaders and Eastern Christians. This paper demonstrates how the crusaders and Templars came to be recorded in the charters of the Monastery of the Holy Cross, Jerusalem. Crusaders and even members of the military orders often visited the monastery, offered donations and sought spiritual aid in the Eastern churches. An examination of the prosopography of those recorded at the Monastery of the Holy Cross reveals names familiar from crusader history as well as some hitherto unknown crusaders.
Crusader art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the fall of Acre, 1187-1291
2005
This book tells the story of the Architecture and the Figural Art produced for the Crusaders after the battle of Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, during the one hundred years that Acre was the capital of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1191-1291. It is an art sponsored by kings and queens, patriarchs and bishops, clergy, monks, friars, knights and soldiers, aristocrats and merchants, all men and women of means, who came as pilgrims, Crusaders, settlers, and men of commerce to the Holy Land. The artists are Franks and Italians born and/or resident in the Holy Land, Westerners who traveled to the Latin East, Eastern Christians, and even Muslims, who worked for Crusader patrons.
The Church of the Holy Cross and the Iconography of Kingship
1994
This paper examines the exterior and interior decorative programs of the Church of the Holy Cross at Ałt'amar, the tenth-century palace church of Gagik Artsruni, King of Vaspurakan. Although the church has been the subject of numerous studies, little attention has been given to the church's palatine function. In marked contrast, other medieval palace churches have been studied almost entirely in terms of their palatine function. When the decorative programs of the Church of the Holy Cross are analyzed in this palatine context, it can be demonstrated that they were designed to convey a unified royal message through repeated associations of particular elements--the King, Adam, and the Naming of the Animals. These associations characterize the nature of Gagik Artsruni's kingship by presenting the rule of Adam in Paradise as a paradigm to which Gagik's rule could be likened. This visual expression of the nature of Gagik's kingship has parallels in Byzantine traditions of imperial representation and with the princely imagery of Islamic court art.The motivation behind this presentation of the king can be connected to the circumstances surrounding Gagik Artsruni's rise to power, and to his claim to kingship based on political legitimacy and Christian piety.