Postcards on Parchment: The Social Lives of Medieval Books - Hardcover

Rudy, Kathryn M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300209894 ISBN 13: 9780300209891

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Medieval prayer books held not only the devotions and meditations of Christianity, but also housed, slipped between pages, sundry notes, reminders, and ephemera, such as pilgrims’ badges, sworn oaths, and small painted images. Many of these last items have been classified as manuscript illumination, but Kathryn M. Rudy argues that these pictures should be called, instead, parchment paintings, similar to postcards. In a delightful study identifying this group of images for the first time, Rudy delineates how these objects functioned apart from the books in which they were kept. Whereas manuscript illuminations were designed to provide a visual narrative to accompany a book’s text, parchment paintings offered a kind of autonomous currency for exchange between individuals—people who longed for saturated color in a gray world of wood, stone, and earth. These small, colorful pictures offered a brilliant reprieve, and Rudy shows how these intriguing and previously unfamiliar images were traded and cherished, shedding light into the everyday life and relationships of those in the medieval Low Countries. 

About this title

Book Description:

In a delightful study, Kathryn M. Rudy identifies a new category of imagery, shows how these intriguing pictures were traded and cherished, and sheds light on medieval everyday life.

About the Author:

Kathryn M. Rudy is senior lecturer in the School of Art at the University of St. Andrews. 

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0300209894
• ISBN 13: 9780300209891
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 362