Spiritual seeing
Subtitle: picturing God's invisibility in medieval art
By: Herbert L. Kessler.
Series: The Middle Ages series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 265
Subjects: Christian art and symbolism -- Medieval, 500-1500.; Image (Theology) -- History of doctrines -- Middle Ages, 600-1500.
Description: "In Spiritual Seeing, Kessler explores ways in which the medieval debate about the functions and limits of images influenced the production of sacred art. Offering a new interpretation of Christian images as mediators between the human and the sacred, Kessler considers how the creators of images in Byzantium and the Latin West were able to situate art at the boundary between the physical and the spiritual worlds.

He examines the ways in which images acquired such legitimacy that sacred art became a privileged metaphor for divine revelation. Portraits of Christ, in particular, took on central importance. Throughout the book, Kessler also considers the lingering anxiety about the capacity of human sight to apprehend the divine in images. In so doing, he discloses the artful dodges devised to deal with the controversy of picturing God's invisibility in material form."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.