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OverviewSpanning the backs of choir stalls above the heads of the canons and their officials, large-scale tapestries of saints' lives functioned as both architectural elements and pictorial narratives in the late Middle Ages. In an extensively illustrated book that features sixteen color plates, Laura Weigert examines the role of these tapestries in ritual performances. She situates individual tapestries within their architectural and ceremonial settings, arguing that the tapestries contributed to a process of storytelling in which the clerical elite of late medieval cities legitimated and defended their position in the social sphere.Weigert focuses on three of the most spectacular and little-studied tapestry series preserved from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Lives of Saints Piat and Eleutherius (Notre-Dame, Tournai), Life of Saint Steven (Saint-Steven, Auxerre [now Musee du Moyen Age, Paris]), and Life of Saints Gervasius and Protasius (Saint-Julien, Le Mans). Each of these tapestries, measuring over forty meters in length, included elements that have traditionally been defined as either lay or clerical. On the prescribed days when the tapestries were displayed, the liturgical performance for which they were the setting sought to merge the history and patron saint of the local community with the universal history of the Christian church. Weigert combines a detailed analysis of the narrative structure of individual images with a discussion of the particular social circumstances in which they were produced and perceived. Weaving Sacred Stories is thereby significant not only to the history of medieval art but also to art history and cultural studies in general. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Laura WeigertPublisher: Cornell University Press Imprint: Cornell University Press Dimensions: Width: 20.30cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 1.361kg ISBN: 9780801440083ISBN 10: 0801440084 Pages: 272 Publication Date: 25 March 2004 Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , General , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Awaiting stock  The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you. Table of ContentsReviewsIn Weaving Sacred Stories, Laura Weigert goes far to redress the lack of attention granted the fabrics and especially the tapestries that were a featured and highly valued adornment of churches in the later Middle Ages. Exploiting precious surviving evidence identifying patrons, narrators, and audiences as well as other circumstances of manufacture and reception, Weigert is able both to explicate narratives with wonderful precision and to give a vivid sense of the environment of the Gothic cathedral choirs in which the tapestries were hung. Cynthia Hahn, Florida State University Thanks to Laura Weigert, the interior of medieval cathedrals is no longer the large bare space-empty, cold, and silent-that it has become today. During the polyphony of feast days, the sanctuary and above all the choir are arrayed with immense tapestries that streak the walls with bright colors and express through their inscriptions the holy history that resonates in the voices of the cantors. The canons, situated in the choir stalls, are entirely enveloped by these images and by the stories of miracle and martyrdom in which they find the justification for their privileges. The warp and woof of the fabric do more than weave together the wool threads of the tapestry: at the same time they embrace, in a unique performance, the clerics dressed in their heavy vestments embroidered with gold, the sacred vessels, and the slow processions that wend their way around the choir. This book sets forth a total social history that reevaluates in a decisive manner objects that are too important to be left solely to historians of art or technology. -Jean-Claude Schmitt, Directeur d' tudes, l' cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris Thanks to Laura Weigert, the interior of medieval cathedrals is no longer the large bare space-empty, cold, and silent-that it has become today. During the polyphony of feast days, the sanctuary and above all the choir are arrayed with immense tapestries that streak the walls with bright colors and express through their inscriptions the holy history that resonates in the voices of the cantors. The canons, situated in the choir stalls, are entirely enveloped by these images and by the stories of miracle and martyrdom in which they find the justification for their privileges. The warp and woof of the fabric do more than weave together the wool threads of the tapestry: at the same time they embrace, in a unique performance, the clerics dressed in their heavy vestments embroidered with gold, the sacred vessels, and the slow processions that wend their way around the choir. This book sets forth a total social history that reevaluates in a decisive manner objects that are too important to be left solely to historians of art or technology. -Jean-Claude Schmitt, Directeur d'etudes, l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris Author InformationLaura Weigert is Assistant Professor of Art History and Humanities at Reed College. She is coauthor of Histoire de Saint Etienne and Judith et Holopherne. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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