Picturing Death 1200-1600

Picturing Death: 1200-1600 explores the visual culture of mortality over the course of four centuries that witnessed a remarkable flourishing of imagery focused on the themes of death, dying, and the afterlife. In doing so, this volume sheds light on issues that unite two periods--the Middle Ages and the Renaissance--that are often understood as diametrically opposed. The studies collected here cover a broad visual terrain, from tomb sculpture to painted altarpieces, from manuscripts to printed books, and from minute carved objects to large-scale architecture. Taken together, they present a picture of the ways that images have helped humans understand their own mortality, and have incorporated the deceased into the communities of the living.

Contributors: Jessica Barker, Katherine Boivin, Peter Bovenmyer, Xavier Dectot, Maja Dujakovic, Brigit Ferguson, Alison C. Fleming, Fredrika Jacobs, Henrike C. Lange, Robert Marcoux, Walter S. Melion, Stephen Perkinson, Johanna Scheel, Mary Silcox, Judith Steinhoff, and Noa Turel.

Stephen Perkinson, Ph.D. (1998), Northwestern University, is Professor of Art History and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Bowdoin College. He is the author of The Likeness of the King (Chicago, 2009) and The Ivory Mirror (Yale, 2017).

Noa Turel, Ph.D. (2012), University of California, Santa Barbara, is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is the author of Living Pictures: Jan van Eyck and Painting’s First Century (Yale, 2020).