{"title":"Trinita Kennedy","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"medieval-bologna-book-trinita-kennedy-9781911300816","title":"Medieval Bologna","description":"Accompanying an exhibition at the Frist Art Museum, this lavishly illustrated catalogue is the first major study in English about manuscript illumination, painting, and sculpture in the northern Italian city of Bologna between the years 1200 and 1400. By focusing on Bologna, Europe’s first university city, this publication aims to expand our understanding of art and its purposes in the medieval world.  Universities are a medieval invention, and Bologna has the distinction of having the oldest one in Europe. Its origins have been traced to the late 11th century, when masters and students started gathering in the city to study Roman law. The academic setting gave rise to Bologna’s unique artistic culture. Professors enjoyed high social status and were buried in impressive tombs carved with classroom scenes. Most importantly, teachers and students created a tremendous demand for books. By the mid-13th century, the city had become the preeminent center for manuscript production in Italy. Most books were made outside traditional monastic scriptoria, within a revolutionary commercial system involving stationers, parchment makers, scribes, illuminators, and clients. A new style of script, called the littera Bononiensis, distinguished Bolognese books, and the city’s illuminators were celebrated in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The legal textbooks produced in great numbers in the city are remarkable for their heft and size. In addition to illuminations, which include colorful narrative scenes, these manuscripts often contain in their margins the notes, corrections, and doodles of their original owners.  The seven essays in this publication – by academics, a conservator, curators, and a museum educator – create a rich context for the nearly seventy works of art in the exhibition, which are drawn primarily from American libraries, museums, and private collections. Many of these works have never been studied in depth or published before. The authors explore medieval Bologna – its porticoed streets, towers, communal buildings, main piazza, and mendicant churches – and how the city became a center for higher learning at the end of the Middle Ages. They describe the way books were made there, including identifying the pigments used by illuminators. The authors also discuss the illustrious foreign artists called to work in the city, most notably Cimabue and Giotto; the devastating impact of the Black Death; and the political resurgence of Bologna at the end of the 14th century that led to the construction of the Basilica of San Petronio, one of the largest churches in the world, in honor of the city’s patron saint.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49740937167121,"sku":"NGR9781911300816","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1911300814.jpg?v=1751433974"},{"product_id":"sanctity-pictured-book-trinita-kennedy-9781781300268","title":"Sanctity Pictured","description":"Italy in the thirteenth century was transformed by two new religious orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Whereas earlier religious orders had secluded themselves in monasteries in the countryside and lived off income from their property, the Dominicans and Franciscans settled in urban centers and lived as mendicants, or beggars, administering to the laity. The founding members of both orders took a vow of poverty, yet soon after their deaths their successors were building churches that rivaled cathedrals in size and splendor throughout Italy. The friars and nuns of these orders created a tremendous demand for works of all kinds - painted altarpieces, crucifixes, fresco cycles, illuminated choir books, and liturgical objects - to decorate their churches. The works they commissioned illustrate the lives of their saints and depict miracles such as Saint Francis preaching to the birds, Saint Dominic dividing a single loaf of bread into enough food to feed many hungry friars, and Saint Clare rescuing a child mauled by a wolf. These visual narratives are notable for their naturalistic treatment and the emphasis on expressive gestures to show human emotions, both of which were significant new developments in Italian art. This book accompanies an exhibition at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts featuring works of art from the collections of major American museums and libraries and of the Vatican. It is the first major study to examine the art of these rival religious orders together, exploring the ways in which they used art as propaganda to promote the charisma of their saints and to articulate their revolutionary concept of religious vocation. The essayists provide new insights into the significant contributions made by the Dominicans and the Franciscans to the artistic Renaissance in Italy during the period 1200 to 1550","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51859802947857,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51859803144465,"sku":"GOR009642450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781781300268.jpg?v=1753865180"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-trinita-kennedy.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}