Neil MacGregor

"Focusing on images of Christ in high art and popular craft throughout the world - in galleries, churches, museums, private homes, catacombs, and market stalls - MacGregor traces the life of Christ and the development of Christian culture since his birth. He shows how some of the works reveal not only society's view of Christ and of itself but also the inner spiritual turmoil of their creators. MacGregor points to Michelangelo's successive sculptures of the Pietá, for example, in which the artist left a record of the evolution of his faith and of the anguish and doubt that colored his last days. In the same way, Rembrandt's reworking of his etching of the Crucifixion reveals not just his changing understanding of the event but also his darkening view of life. Throughout, MacGregor argues that images of Christ can still speak powerfully to believers and nonbelievers and that they are as important to us now as a way of understanding our lives as they were when they were made."--Jacket.

The Cyrus Cylinder is one of the most famous objects to have survived from the ancient world. The Cylinder was inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform on the orders of the Persian King Cyrus the Great (559-530BC) after he captured Babylon in 539BC. It is often referred to as the first bill of human rights as it appears to permit freedom of worship throughout the Persian Empire and to allow deported people to return to their homelands. It is valued by people all around the world as a symbol of tolerance and respect for different peoples and different faiths, so much so that a copy of the cylinder is on display in the United Nations building in New York. This catalogue is being published in conjunction with the first ever tour of the object to the United States, along with sixteen other objects from the British Museum's collection. The book discusses how these objects demonstrate the innovations initiated by Persian rule in the Ancient Near East (550 BC-331 BC), a prime example being a gold plaque from the Oxus Treasure with the representation of a priest that shows the spread of the Zoroastrian religion. The book offers a new authoritative translation of the Cyrus Cylinder by Irving Finkel and the publication of two fragments of a cuneiform tablet that show how the Cyrus Cylinder was most probably a proclamation and not just a foundation deposit.

"One of the central facts of human existence is that every known society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions--a faith, an ideology, a religion--that goes far beyond the life of the individual. These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity. They have a unique power to define--and to divide--us and are a driving force in the politics of much of the world today. Throughout history they have most often been, in the widest sense, religious. Yet this book is not a history of religion nor an argument in favor of faith. It is about the stories that give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in the world. Looking across history and around the globe, [this book] interrogates objects, places, and human activities to try to understand what shared beliefs can mean in the public life of a community or a nation, how they shape the relationship between the individual and the state, and how they help give us our sense of who we are. In deciding how we live with our gods, we also decide how to live with one another."--Dust jacket. "Until fairly recently, religion as a major influence on the nature of individual societies around the world seemed to be on the wane. Now, far from being marginalized, the relationship between faith and society has moved to the center of politics and global conversation. Neil MacGregor's new book traces the ways in which different societies have understood and articulated their places in the cosmic scheme. It examines mankind's beliefs not from the perspective of institutional religions but according to how shared narratives have shaped societies--and what happens when different narratives run up against each other. As he did in A History of the World in 100 Objects and Germany: Memories of a Nation, MacGregor brilliantly combines objects, places, and ideas to examine and, ultimately, illuminate these pressing contemporary concerns"--

Are there miscarriages of justice in art history? Neil MacGregor believes there are. However great an artist, if his name is lost he will not receive a fair verdict from posterity. No exhibition will be devoted to his work; no books will be written about him; he will not even figure in indexes. Among these neglected geniuses is the 15th-century painter known only as the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece. He may have been Netherlandish or German; he may or may not have been a monk. On stylistic grounds an oeuvre of half a dozen paintings, three of them large altarpieces, are attributed to him, and from them a vivid, if hypothetical, personality can be built up: emotional, compassionate, observant, original, humorous. All that is certain is that he was a great painter whose name, if known, would rank with Botticelli or Holbein. In A Victim of Anonymity, the Director of the National Gallery, London, corrects the judgment of history by demonstrating the power of this unacknowledged master. MacGregor makes us look closely at works that are all too easily passed over, showing us a peerless artist whose paintings derive their fame from nothing but their own superlative merits.

Neil MacGregor's radio series 'A History of the World in 100 Objects' has been a unique event that has set a benchmark for public service broadcasting in the UK and across the world. This book will be the tie-in to that event, reproducing the scripts describing the objects that made us who we are.