The description for this book, Studies in Religious Iconography: Religious Art in France, Volume 1: The Twelfth Century: A Study of the Origins of Medieval Iconography, will be forthcoming.


This is the second of three volumes of a classic series on French religious art, the monumental accomplishment of the eminent French scholar Emile Mâle (1862-1954). Mâle began his study with a single book on the thirteenth century, and only later turned to the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. This volume is, then, the centerpiece of the series.


This third volume turns to the late Middle Ages, when "the serene art of the 13th century was followed by the impassioned, sorrowful art of the 14th and 15th centuries." Confronted by Franciscan Christianity, painters and sculptors reacted to "poets who had the gift of tears," rather than to the "grave men nourished by doctrine" who had inspired artists of the 1200s. Viewing the reign of Charles VI as the beginning of the iconography of the late Middle Ages, Mâle focuses on the 15th century, but includes discussion of 16th-century works of art up to the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563.