Few works of art better illustrate the splendor of eleventh-century painting than the manuscript often referred to as the “precious gospels” of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, with its ...peculiar combination of sophistication and naïveté, its dramatically gesturing figures, and the saturated colors of its densely ornamented surfaces. In The Bernward Gospels , Jennifer Kingsley offers the first interpretive study of the pictorial program of this famed manuscript and considers how the gospel book conditioned contemporary and future viewers to remember the bishop. The codex constructs a complex image of a minister caring for his diocese not only through a life of service but also by means of his exceptional artistic patronage; of a bishop exercising the sacerdotal authority of his office; and of a man fundamentally preoccupied with his own salvation and desire to unite with God through both his sight and touch. Kingsley insightfully demonstrates how this prominent member of the early medieval episcopate presented his role to the saints and to the communities called upon to remember him.
Museums and universities have natural connections. Yet with few exceptions, collaborations between them segregate each partner to its traditional sphere of activity. This article presents a practicum ...course model that blurs and overlaps the distinctive roles of the museum and university in productive and mutually beneficial ways. In particular, working with undergraduates on an applied project with public relevance invites us to reconsider university and museum spaces as labs or studios. This offers strategies for bringing into the museum content that may be ambiguous, sensitive, polarizing, academic, or run contrary to accepted beliefs. This article shares lessons learned over five years of developing partnerships between the Johns Hopkins University and various sized independent and university museums and other heritage organizations such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, Jewish Museum of Maryland, Baltimore National Heritage Area and the Maryland Zoo. It illustrates these lessons with two case studies, one focused on a project at a national institution, the other on a partnership with a university historic house.
Few works of art better illustrate the splendor of
eleventh-century painting than the manuscript often referred to as
the "precious gospels" of Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, with its
peculiar ...combination of sophistication and naïveté, its
dramatically gesturing figures, and the saturated colors of its
densely ornamented surfaces. In The Bernward Gospels ,
Jennifer Kingsley offers the first interpretive study of the
pictorial program of this famed manuscript and considers how the
gospel book conditioned contemporary and future viewers to remember
the bishop. The codex constructs a complex image of a minister
caring for his diocese not only through a life of service but also
by means of his exceptional artistic patronage; of a bishop
exercising the sacerdotal authority of his office; and of a man
fundamentally preoccupied with his own salvation and desire to
unite with God through both his sight and touch. Kingsley
insightfully demonstrates how this prominent member of the early
medieval episcopate presented his role to the saints and to the
communities called upon to remember him.
The Gospel book known to German scholars as the "precious" Gospels of St. Bernward of Hildesheim was produced under the direction of the early eleventh-century bishop ofthat name, a patron perhaps ...better known for a pair of bronze doors that represent the most complex bronze casting project since Antiquity. Despite the manuscript's renown, many questions remain about the Bernward Gospels and the meaning of its miniatures both individually and as parts of a program. The dedicatory painting is the key to understanding the manuscript's pictures in that it anticipates, on the one hand, the bishop's liturgical commemoration and, on the other, the monks' intercessory prayers by engaging the praxis o/memoria, the multivalent medieval term for memory that refers equally to mnemotechnics and liturgical commemoration. The codex draws on the cognitive and ritual processes of both in order to decorate an object of particular symbolic power, the Gospels, venerated as the Word of God made flesh, namely, the Incarnate Christ. It does so most notably by translating a well-known medieval formula, the treasury list, into pictorial form and by emphasizing the symbolic power of its objects to make the saints present and accessible. The Gospel book's capacity to project the bishop's memory is predicated on that symbolic power.
Deals with the early 11th-century illustrated gospels created at St. Michael's Abbey in Hildesheim, Germany, under the direction of bishop Bernward. Argues that the "Noli me tangere" imagery depicted ...in the Bernward Gospels "is not about visionary experience, but rather about tactile perception and the tangibility of the sacred. The painting is part of a series that develops a pictorial exegesis on the nature of touch and its role in apprehending the divine." Abridged Publication Abstract
SIGHT Kingsley, Jennifer P
The Bernward Gospels,
05/2016
Book Chapter
Among the ideas treated in the Bernward Gospels is the spiritual perception of the divine. The manuscript explores this concept in two related groups of miniatures that adopt contrasting pictorial ...styles.¹ One mode, considered in this chapter, is characterized by a representational tendency that is static, frontal, hieratic, and symmetrical; it treats the nature of sight.² Paintings of this type elaborate themes that intersect with those of the dedication painting, most notably by emphasizing the hoped-for eternal reward intrinsic to the operation of the gift pro anima and by placing Christological imagines at the heart of that process.³ The other
