art medieval

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2012, Hardcover, 112 pages. Fully half of this volume of Hal Foster's epic masterpiece -- again scanned from superb syndicate proofs -- is devoted to the remaining chapters of "The Winning of Aleta," a 20-month (!) epic in which Valiant obsessively pursues his bride to be. Not surprisingly this is followed by a sequence called "Matrimony," which ends with a newly wed queen adjusting to the luxurious, exciting court life at Camelot. But Val's marriage does not signal an end to his adventures. In "War in the Forest" Val is sent out to spy on encroaching Saxons -- unknowingly aided by Aleta, who, disguised as a small knight (and dubbed "Sir Puny") helps prevent disaster. But the 1946 strips end with Val and Aleta unable to return to Camelot and the displaced couple journeying to Thule. Half the strips in this volume also include the delightful "The Medieval Castle," Foster's chronicle of two young boys growing up during the time of the First Crusade -- but by the end of the 1945 strips this series has ended and the Valiant portion resumes its full-page glory.

Hardcover. Paris, Zodiaque, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 407 pages plus index. Color and b&w gravure plates, plans of medieval churches of France. French text. A clean, tight copy in a bright dust jacket.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 284 pages. In Rustic Cubism, Bruce Adams tells the fascinating story of Moly-Sabata, an art colony founded in the Rhone Valley during the height of French modernism by Cubist pioneer Albert Gleizes. Following his social and spiritual agenda of earthly labor and a Celtic-medievalist view of Christianity, Gleizes' disciples worked to fuse Cubism with a revival of ancient agrarian, artisanal traditions. The most important and committed member of this experimental commune was ceramicist Anne Dangar (1885-1951). Generously illustrated with photographs of the art and social milieu of the period, this captivating and original narrative makes a considerable contribution to our understanding of French modernism and early twentieth-century cultural politics as well as of the life of a most talented and intriguing female artist.

Softcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps, 490 pages. By explaining how to sire multicolored horses, produce nuts without shells, and create an egg the size of a human head, Giambattista Della Porta's Natural Magic (1559) conveys a fascination with tricks and illusions that makes it a work difficult for historians of science to take seriously. Yet, according to William Eamon, it is in the "how-to" books written by medieval alchemists, magicians, and artisans that modern science has its roots. These compilations of recipes on everything from parlor tricks through medical remedies to wool-dyeing fascinated medieval intellectuals because they promised access to esoteric "secrets of nature." In closely examining this rich but little-known source of literature, Eamon reveals that printing technology and popular culture had as great, if not stronger, an impact on early modern science as did the traditional academic disciplines. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 328 pages, 267 b&w and color illustrations. "The only comprehensive discussion available on materials, techniques, and condition issues in Western easel paintings from medieval times to the present. In detailed case studies of 25 paintings by artists from Giotto and Leonardo to Vermeer, Degas, and Pollock, the authors take the reader through the layers of a painting, from canvas or panel to varnish, in clear, readable language, de-mystifying the world of the conservator for art historians, dealers, collectors, or curators." Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Switzerland, Parkett Verlag, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Heavy paper covers in a bright color dust jacket. 209 pages, color and b&w illustrations, bilingual text - German and English. Sigmar Polke (born 1941) recently completed a series of 12 windows for the Grossmunster cathedral in Zurich, setting new standards for the mutual relationship between art and church. One group of seven Romanesque windows shows luminous mosaics of thinly sliced agate, some of it artificially colored, to produce pulsating blocks of back-lit color. Says Marina Warner, "The interior of rocks opens not only on unexpected colors... on once imprisoned now scintillating rays and gleams, but it also tunnels into the past, into the distant past of geological and cosmological millennia." For the remaining five windows, Polke designed images of figures from the Old Testament, based on medieval illuminations, which have themselves undergone transformation in the course of their long journey through time. Polke's figures now appear as radiantly contemporary icons created in colored glass, using a variety of traditional and customized techniques devised especially for this project. Minor wear to dj, lacks blue wrap-around band with title, clean copy.

Hardcover. London, William Pickering, 1st, 1835, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 298 pages. Black leather covers with gilt rules, faded gilt title on ribbed spine. All edges gilt. Covers with edgewear and the top 6th of the spine leather is gone. Marbled endpapers with bookplate inside front cover. Rear flyleaf with a chunk cut out. Interior is very good. Medieval and Renaissance French poetry, translated into English by an acclaimed poet, travel writer, historian, and painter. Louisa Costello (1799-1870), was an accomplished Anglo-Irish artist and prolific poet and author. She was also a fine miniature painter, and her illustrations show her exquisite sensibility. 4 beautifully hand-colored lithograph plates by the author. Not all copies contain these plates.

Softcover. NY, Picador/Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st US, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 398 pages, Illustrated in color and b&w. In 1922, Cyril Power, a fifty-year-old architect, left his family to work with the twenty-four-year-old Sybil Andrews. They would be together for twenty years. Both became famous for their dynamic, modernist linocuts-streamlined, full of movement and brilliant color, summing up the hectic interwar years. Yet at the same time, they looked back to medieval myths and early music, to country ways that were disappearing from sight. Jenny Uglow's Sybil & Cyril: Cutting Through Time traces their struggles and triumphs, conflicts and dreams, following them from Suffolk to London, from the New Forest to Vancouver Island. This is a world of futurists, surrealists, and pioneering abstraction, but also of the buzz of the new, of machines and speed, of shops and sport and dance, shining against the threat of depression and looming shadows of war. Remainder dot to top edge otherwise like new.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Clean, bright copy, 467 pages. Illustrated with 36 pages of historic Plates, b/w, on coated paper. One of the most famous works of history, Johan Huizinga presents a brilliant portrait of life, thought, and art in 14th and 15th century France and the Netherlands.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Clean, bright copy, 467 pages. Illustrated with 36 pages of historic Plates, b/w, on coated paper. One of the most famous works of history, Johan Huizinga presents a brilliant portrait of life, thought, and art in 14th and 15th century France and the Netherlands.

Hardcover. NY, University Books, reprint, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn and chipped dust jacket, original $10 price intact. 337 pages, b&w illustrations. An Influential occult study synthesizing medieval and Renaissance magical texts, ceremonial rites, conjurations, and ritual symbolism. One of Waite's most significant works on Western esotericism. A solid first University Books edition of a cornerstone 20th-Century occult text. Foreword by John C. Wilson. 1961 reissue of the Revised and expanded edition. The original version was titled "The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts" (London, 1898).

Lawrence, KS, Spencer Museum of Art, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 158 pages. Black & white illustrations throughout. No dust jacket.

Softcover. St. Cloud MN, North Star Press Of St. Cloud, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 276 pages, b&w illustrations. The Hooked X is a secret symbol first found on an inscribed slab of rock, dated 1362, unearthed by a farmer in Minnesota in 1898. This mysterious symbol inspired the author to pursue a nine-year investigation on both sides of the Atlantic that led to the discovery of other artifacts and clandestine documents indicative of secret trips to North America long before Columbus. The trail of evidence led to a deep plunge into the shadowy areas of Freemasonry and the Knights Templar that most brethren of these orders are unaware of. This incredible true story reveals untold secrets of North America that weave from medieval times through today, forever changing history as we know it. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, BlueBridge, 1st US, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 246 pages. This narrative history masterfully weaves together the sweeping events surrounding what has become known as the "Babylonian captivity" of the popes into the broader story of 14th-Century Europe?one of the most turbulent times in the continent's history. It was a time of fear, ferocity, and religious agony, which saw the suppression of the Knights Templar and the Cathars, the first onslaught of the plague, and the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. The century also produced some of the greatest writers and artists in the western tradition, including Giotto, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer. Central to this period was the movement of the papal seat from Rome to Avignon in the south of France, where seven successive popes held power from 1309 to 1377. The drama, intrigue, and tumult associated with the papacy in exile forms the perfect lens through which to clearly see a Europe making the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Arthur A. Levine Books, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 342 pages. Medieval life meets Arthurian magic in a novel that transcends boundaries of time and age, appealing to children of 9+ and older readers alike. The year is 1199, the place the Welsh Marches. Young Arthur de Caldicot is given a magical shining stone in which his legendary namesake is revealed. In 100 short chapters that brilliantly evoke life in a medieval manor, stories of the boy King Arthur begin to echo - and anticipate - the secrets and mysteries that emerge in his own life . . ." The winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Smarties Prize bronze award in 2001. First printing (with full number line including 1). Clean copy.

Softcover. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Softcover. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Color illustrations throughout.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Chronicle Books , 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Handcover, 96 pages. Being a bridesmaid is one of the greatest honors a dear friend can bestow. But actually wearing the dress the bride picks out? That's the true test of friendship. You Can Wear It Again pays loving tribute to fifty years of bridesmaids' dresses, as featured in real-life weddings. The product of both fashion trends and the bride's whims, bridesmaids' dresses may take the form of medieval costume, complete with wimple; slip dresses with real feathered wings to transform maids into true angels; or the ruffled peach taffeta with puff sleeves that so dominated the 1980s. Whatever the look, you can be sure it's been in and out of fashion more than once.