Details

Subject(s)

• Art, Medieval [Browse]
• Life cycle, Human, in art [Browse]

Related name

• American Council of Learned Societies [Browse]

Series

• ACLS Humanities E-Book. [More in this series]
• Princeton Legacy Library ; 5449

Summary note

Elizabeth Sears here combines rich visual material and textual evidence to reveal the sophistication, warmth, and humor of medieval speculations about the ages of man. Medieval artists illustrated this theme, establishing the convention that each of life's phases in turn was to be represented by the figure of a man (or, rarely, a woman) who revealed his age through size, posture, gesture, and attribute. But in selecting the number of ages to be depicted--three, four, five, six, seven, ten, or twelve--and in determining the contexts in which the cycles should appear, painters and sculptors were heirs to longstanding intellectual traditions. Ideas promulgated by ancient and medieval natural historians, physicians, and astrologers, and by biblical exegetes and popular moralists, receive detailed treatment in this wide-ranging study. Professor Sears traces the diffusion of well-established schemes of age division from the seclusion of the early medieval schools into wider circles in the later Middle Ages and examines the increasing use of the theme as a structure of edifying discourse, both in art and literature. Elizabeth Sears is Assistant Professor of Art History at Princeton University. Originally published in 1986.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Notes

• Includes indexes.
• Revision of thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1982.

Bibliographic references

Bibliography: p. [207]-220.

Source of description

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

Language note

English

Contents

• Front matter
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One
• I. The Seasons Of Life
• II. Sevens In The Life Cycle
• III. The Ages Of Man And The Ages Of World History
• IV. Times Of Conversion In The Human Life
• Part Two
• V. Popular Cosmology
• VI. The Ages Of Man In The Preacher's Repertory
• VII. The Moralized Life In Images
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index Of Manuscripts
• Index
• Plates

Show 17 more Contents items

ISBN

• 0-691-65559-6
• 0-691-19810-1

OCLC

• 1086308707
• 1088337231

Doi

• 10.1515/9780691198101

Statement on language in description

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