Picturing death 1200-1600

Abstract

Picturing Death: 1200-1600 explores the visual culture of mortality over the course of four centuries that witnessed a remarkable flourishing of imagery focused on the themes of death, dying, and the afterlife. In doing so, this volume sheds light on issues that unite two periods--the Middle Ages and the Renaissance--that are often understood as diametrically opposed. The studies collected here cover a broad visual terrain, from tomb sculpture to painted altarpieces, from manuscripts to printed books, and from minute carved objects to large-scale architecture. Taken together, they present a picture of the ways that images have helped humans understand their own mortality, and have incorporated the deceased into the communities of the living.

Contents

Part 1. Housing the dead -- Part 2. Mortal anxieties and living paradoxes -- Part 3. The macabre, instrumentalized -- Part 4. Departure and persistence.