The Christian of scripture, known as the New Testament, excluded many of the church's traditional stories about its origins. This book provides a lucid introduction to the relationship between the apocryphal texts and the paintings, mosaics, and sculpture in which they are frequently paralleled, and which have been so significant in transmitting these non-Biblical stories to generations of churchgoers. It reveals the enduring power of the Christian apocrypha in both text and art, and displays the artworks themselves in a new light. The volume contains more than 100 plates, and numerous extracts from the apocryphal texts.
This new study of early Christian apocrypha links their narratives with all sorts of Christian iconography inspired by them -- painting, sculpture, manuscript illustration, liturgical vessels, sarcophagii, and more. The major texts considered include the Protoevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Paul and Thekla, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the principal figures explored are Christ, His mother, Paul and Thekla (amazing how early and influential devotion to her is evident), and the evangelists and apostles. Though by definition the apocryphal texts under consideration were excluded from the canon of the New Testament, they exercised an enormous influence on the development of doctrine, worship, and devotion through the ages, and this is the first book we are aware of that examines the reciprocal influence of the literature and visual representation of it (a secondary theme of this book is that the art in some instances may have preceded and molded the literature connected with it).
This new study of early Christian apocrypha links their narratives with all sorts of Christian iconography inspired by them -- painting, sculpture, manuscript illustration, liturgical vessels, sarcophagii, and more. The major texts considered include the Protoevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Paul and Thekla, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the principal figures explored are Christ, His mother, Paul and Thekla (amazing how early and influential devotion to her is evident), and the evangelists and apostles. Though by definition the apocryphal texts under consideration were excluded from the canon of the New Testament, they exercised an enormous influence on the development of doctrine, worship, and devotion through the ages, and this is the first book we are aware of that examines the reciprocal influence of the literature and visual representation of it (a secondary theme of this book is that the art in some instances may have preceded and molded the literature connected with it).
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