, Brepols, 2023 Hardback, 242 pages, Size:178 x 254 mm, Illustrations:124 col., Language: English. ISBN 9782503601939.
Summary In the eighteenth through the early twentieth century, French nuns from various orders created miniature simulacra of the cells in which they slept, studied, and performed their devotions. Each diorama contains an effigy of the nun, a prie-Dieu, devotional objects such as a crucifix, handiwork, and artifacts to foster study and contemplation. This book examines the lives of the brides of Christ as depicted in these dioramas, proposing that the material objects found in the chambers trace the contours of the collective and individual identities of the nuns who created these cells. Viewed as a type of memoir, the cells furnish the sisters a stage upon which to rehearse the meaning of their lives. The dioramas create a tension between the private and public presentations of the self, between verisimilitude and self-fashioning, and between reality and representation. The book contextualizes the miniature cells within the larger discourse of gender, identity, self-representation, monastic devotion, and the power wielded by the aesthetics of scale. TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: The Nun's Cell: Mirror, Memoir and Metaphor in Convent Art Chapter 1: In Clausura Chapter 2: The Language of the Cells Chapter 3: Objects in Miniature Chapter 4: Memoir - Traces of a Nun's Life Chapter 5: Conclusion Bibliography
, Brill, 2015 Hardcover, 256pp., 16x24cm., ills. in col. and b/w. NEW. ISBN 9789004264113.
Grief binds the worshipers together in an adagio of sorrow as they encounter the sculptural representation of the Entombment of Christ. Located in funerary chapels, parish churches, cemeteries, and hospitals, these works embody the piety of the later Middle Ages. In this book, Donna Sadler examines the sculptural Entombments from Burgundy and Champagne through a variety of lenses, including performance theory, embodied perception, and the invocation of the absent presence of the Holy Sepulcher. The author demonstrates how the action of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus entombing Christ in the presence of the Marys and John operates in a commemorative and collective fashion: the worshiper enters the realm of the holy and becomes a participant in the biblical event.