The gothic screen
Subtitle: space, sculpture, and community in the cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200-1400
By: Jaqueline E. Jung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 282
ISBN-13: 9781107022959
Subjects: Christian art and symbolism; Themes, motives; Screens (Church decoration); Gothic Sculpture; Space (Architecture); HISTORY / Europe / General; History
Description: "This book reveals how Gothic choir screens, through both their architecture and sculpture, were vital vehicles of communication and shapers of community within the Christian church"--

"In the Catharijneconvent Museum in Utrecht there hangs a panel painting whose diminutive size belies the magnificence of its contents (Plate I). Supporting a soaring canopy of rib vaults, two rows of polished marble columns mark the outer boundaries of the picture; their lower halves are concealed, however, by luminous winged altarpieces - most opened to display their gilt interiors, one decorated with paintings, and one still closed. But the sumptuousness of these material accoutrements carries little weight to the twenty-two tonsured men who fill the central space. With hands tucked into their gleaming white robes and mouths gently open as if in song, they gaze in quiet admiration at the Virgin Mary, dazzling with her loose golden locks and glittering crown, her gown of brocaded gold and purple velvet mantle, and the luminous infant she proffers to St. Dominic, the foremost friar. Whereas the phalanx of men forms a symmetrical buffer around the maiden and baby on the church's central axis, the scene is not wholly static. Following the steep orthogonals created jointly by architecture and figures, we discover the beginnings of movement as the two men farthest from our standpoint, thus deepest in the pictorial space, prepare to enter the choir"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; Part I. The Screen as Sculpture: 1. The choir screen as partition; 2. The choir screen as bridge; 3. The choir screen as frame; Part II. The Sculpture on the Screen: 4. Women, men and the social order; 5. Jews, Christians and the question of the individual; 6. Nobles, peasants and the vernacular mode; Epilogue.