In "Believing and Seeing", Roland Recht argues that preoccupation with vision as a key to religious knowledge profoundly affected a broad range of late medieval works. In addition to the great cathedrals of France, Recht explores key religious buildings throughout Europe to reveal how their grand designs supported this profusion of images that made visible the signs of scripture. Reimagining these works as a link between devotional practices in the late Middle Ages and contemporaneous theories that deemed vision the basis of empirical truth, Recht provides students and scholars with a new lens through which to view Gothic art and architecture.

About the Author
Roland Recht is professor of art history at the University of Strasbourg. Mary Whittall (1937-2005) translated many books from French and German, including several for the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews
"Readers will be rewarded by Recht's brilliant analysis of Gothic architectural polychromy, stained glass, and stone sculpture, and should find the unity of Recht's 'vision' of the Gothic ultimately convincing." - Choice "Recht's book is especially at its most engaging when it opens up the treatment of images to suggest that ways of seeing, believing, and making constitute all together 'l'art des cathedrales.'" - Art Bulletin "An ambitious, broad-ranging study of the role and function of the image within the medieval church. This volume is of fundamental importance to the study of medieval art, and should become part of the intellectual apparatus of all who concern themselves with the religious image." - Times Higher Education"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226706078
Author Roland Recht
Format Paperback
Page Count 392
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 567g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 15mm * 2mm