Art and Society in the Middle Ages - by Georges Duby (Hardcover)

About the Book

In this beautifully written book, George's Duby, one of France's greatest medieval historians, returns to one of the central themes of his work - the relationship between art and society.

Book Synopsis

This short book concisely illustrates the difference between our purely aesthetic pleasure in a piece of art and the original functional purpose of that artwork. The medieval artist was a craftsman whose job was to produce art to order, as an offering to God, as a teaching aid to the population, or as an emblem of a secular or ecclesiastical wealth and authority. The Bayeaux Tapestry is just one example of art intended to teach a lesson and reflect power. Duby ranges widely across Europe, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, choosing examples to illustrate his theme - Visigothic dress fittings, Anglo-Saxon abbeys and manuscripts and shows the affects of the Vikings on art - in the way that a master can. The book concludes with the wealthy patrons of early Renaissance Europe who were the first collectors of art. A detailed chronology and bibliography accompanies the discussion.

From the Back Cover

In this beautifully written book, Georges Duby, one of France's greatest medieval historians, returns to one of the central themes of his work - the relationship between art and society. He traces the evolution of artistic forms from the fifth to the fifteenth century in parallel with the structural development of society, in order to create a better understanding of both.

Duby traces shifts in the centres of artistic production and changes in the nature and status of those who promoted works of art and those who produced them. At the same time, he emphasizes the crucial continuities that still gave the art of medieval Europe a basic unity, despite the emergence of national characteristics. Duby also reminds us that the way we approach these artistic forms today differs greatly from how they were first viewed. For us, they are works of art from which we expect and derive aesthetic pleasure; but for those who commissioned them or made them, their value was primarily functional - gifts offered to God, communications with the other world, or affirmations of power - and this remained the case throughout the Middle Ages.

This book will be of interest to students and academics in medieval history and history of art.

Review Quotes

Georges Duby was one of the leading medievalists of the twentieth century, a historian with a long-standing interest in art. This book compresses the knowledge of a lifetime into an elegant, lapidary essay packed with pewrceptive comments on both art and society, making it as indispensable for specialists as it is accessible to students and art-loving general readers.
Peter Burke

About the Author

Georges Duby, one of France's greatest medieval historians was Professor of History at the College de France.