Gerhard Wolf

"In der europäischen Tradition sind Bilder ein privilegierter Gegenstand der Kunst, während nichtbildliche Artefakte in den kunstgeschichtlichen Klassifikationen meist als Kunsthandwerk angesprochen wurden. Derzeit gewinnen sie allerdings einen neuen Status: Die Bildwissenschaft hat den Kunstbegriff kritisch hinterfragt, während sich zugleich eine kulturwissenschaftliche Dingforschung etablierte. Die Zuschreibung 'Kunst' and Dinge oder Bilder, die mit Prozessen von Produktion, Display sowie Rezeption verbunden sind, wird folglich neu verhandelt. Die Beiträge der Arbeitsgruppe des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz (MPI), die zu Grundfragen der mediterranen und europäischen Kunstgeschichte forscht, entwerfen eine kritische Perspektive auf die Bildwissenschaft und die kulturwissenschaftliche Dingforschung. Die Begriffe Bild, Ding und Kunst stellen das dreidimensionale Koordinatensystem, in dem ihre Relationen, Überschneidungen, Gemeinsamkeiten oder Divergenzen ausgelotet werden. Denn in der absichtsvollen Abkehr von Dichotomien oder binären Oppositionen entfalten die Aufsätze des vorliegenden Bandes spielerisch das semantische Potenzial der titlegebenden Worte. Die Essays analysieren das Spannungsfeld von Ding- und Bilddiskurs, indem sie sich in historischen Fallstudien auf Ort und Rolle des Ästhetischen in diesem Feld konzentrieren."--P. of cover.

Museums covered in detail include the David Collection, Brooklyn Museum's Arts of the Islamic World Galleries, Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Hermitage Museum, British Museum, Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and the Museum of Islamic Art at the Pergamon Museum.

For half a century the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590), often described as the first anthropologist of the New World, worked with his indigenous colleagues at the Collegio Imperial at Tlatelolco (now Mexico City) on an encyclopedic compendium of the beliefs, rituals, language, arts, and economy of the vanishing culture of the Aztecs. Colors Between Two Worlds examines the most richly illustrated manuscript of this great ethnographic work, the Florentine Codex, which is in the collection of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, through the issue of color. The Codex reveals how the colors the Aztecs used in their artistic production and in everyday life, as well as the names they gave each color, illuminate their understanding of the world around them, from the weather to the curing of disease. The pigments and dyes that indigenous artists used to illustrate the Codex reflect a larger dialogue between native and European cultures, which the Florentine Codex records more fully than any surviving document from colonial New Spain.

Jerusalem, in her central role for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, became the setting for – or even the protagonist of – oral, written and pictorial narratives. These range from the Bible and Apocrypha, historical and hagiographical texts and legends to accounts of physical, imaginary or spiritual pilgrimage, and related images. Places in and around the city have been associated with narratives and vice versa. This collection of essays discusses the complex entanglements between Jerusalem, as a continuously redefined space, and her narratives, viewed from broad methodological and interdisciplinary perspectives. Studying the manifold ways in which narrative, space and place interact, is fundamental to the understanding of ‘loca sancta traditions’ and the processes of their location and translocation --

"Marble is a metamorphic stone that has been a material of choice and a subject of reflection for millennia. Its geology, history, and economics are well known, but its aesthetics remain understudied. This book sheds new light on the celebration and uses of marble in art and literature and on the iconic potential of the stone. Through empirical research centered on the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the present, it closely examines the artistic versatility of marble in its uses and re-uses, including the marble cladding of architecture, the carving of marble and painting on stone, their political and philosophical connotations, and the de- and re-materializing of marble made possible by digital technology"--

"The Salerno ivories clearly lie at the very heart of the complex nature of 'Mediterranean art' at a time of intense commercial and cultural exchange....So many essential questions are still subject to debate: whether they were commissioned by a pope, an archbishop, or a powerful secular ruler; if they were carved in the eleventh of twelfth century; if this occurred in Salerno, Amalfi, Palermo, or Rome, in a monastery, at a court, or in an independent workshop; if they were part of an archiepiscopal throne, an antependium, a set of doors, or a reliquary."--Preface, p. 10.

"This widely anticipated book offers the first systematic study of feather mosaics created in New Spain in the context of a broader creative exchange between Mesoamerican and European aesthetics and materials. Thirty-three scholars look at these unprecedented feather artworks that circulated all around the world in the 16th and 17th centuries from a range of vantage points including art history, anthropology, collecting and global history, natural history, archeology and conservation. Planned to complement a major international exhibition held at the National Museum of Art (MUNAL) in Mexico City in 2011, the book is organized thematically and includes 300 color plates illustrating feather mosaics with their astonishing details, as well as relevant paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, books, European illuminated manuscripts, Mesoamerican codices, and studies of natural history."--