Overview

This book investigates the 'owner portrait' in the context of late medieval devotional books primarily from France and England. These mirror-like pictures of praying book owners respond to and help develop a growing concern with visibility and self-scrutiny that characterized the religious life of the laity after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The image of the praying book owner translated pre-existing representational strategies concerned with the authority and spiritual efficacy of pictures and books, such as the Holy Face and the donor image, into a more intimate and reflexive mode of address in Psalters and Books of Hours created for lay users. Alexa Sand demonstrates how this transformation had profound implications for devotional practices and for the performance of gender and class identity in the striving, aristocratic world of late medieval France and England.

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9781139424769

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'Sand's valuable contribution to the field of medieval art history offers an exemplary entree for students and scholars who seek insight into the visual potency of illuminated manuscripts.' The American Historical Review Sand's valuable contribution to the field of medieval art history offers an exemplary entree for students and scholars who seek insight into the visual potency of illuminated manuscripts. The American Historical Review

'Sand's valuable contribution to the field of medieval art history offers an exemplary entree for students and scholars who seek insight into the visual potency of illuminated manuscripts.' The American Historical Review

Author Information

Alexa Sand is Associate Professor of Art History at Caine College of the Arts, Utah State University. She has published articles in The Art Bulletin, Gesta, Yale French Studies, Word and Image, the Huntington Library Quarterly, Studies in Iconography, and a number of edited essay collections. She is the recipient of the ACLS Charles Ryskamp Fellowship and the AAUW American Fellowship for Publication. She was recently the Gilbert and Ursula Farfel Fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

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