MA Arts Management, Policy and Practice / Course details

This course introduces students to the glorious imagery on the pages of many medieval books in the West, from the first regular appearances of a ‘rectangular object with pages’ in the fifth century to the time when printed books with printed images became relatively commonplace in the sixteenth century. In this period of over a thousand years, Christianity spread throughout the West and eventually bifurcated in the Reformation; battles were waged and alliances agreed over sovereignty and land; commerce and travel expanded; the learning, literature and politics of Antiquity were rediscovered; and Western printing was invented. This complex history was reflected on, responded to, and even shaped by the art found in the books of the societies that produced it. Many illustrated manuscript and early printed books survive, which makes it possible to engage with them as art-historical case-studies for exploring a raft of intellectual questions about the ways in which art, society, politics, religion and economics interacted in the Middle Ages. The survival of this art also promotes cultural enquiry into and understanding of later societies, including the effects of collecting and connoisseurship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the practices of conservation and curating in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Much of the course takes place at the John Rylands Library where students have access to the wonderful medieval books in its Special Collections.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• engage critically with artistic and cultural production in the Western Middle Ages, especially in relation to the imagery in medieval books
• recognize issues of interpretation affecting the study of images in medieval books
• understand and use specialist language relevant to the creation, use and later legacy of illustrated manuscript and early printed books
• relate the art in medieval books to wider debates about art

• Identify different types of sources for the study of art in manuscript and early printed books
• Explain key issues in the study of art in manuscript and early printed books including key genres, methods of production, workshop practices, patronage, the text-image relationship, collecting and conservation

• Analyse critically different types of sources
• Articulate intellectual arguments orally and in writing
• Show how political, religious and social contexts are relevant to interpretations of art
• Compare ideas about art in the Middle Ages with ideas about art in other periods

• Identify and evaluate different types of sources for discussing art and visual culture
• Identify and contextualize different modes of writing about art
• Read texts effectively
• Write essays that select, interpret and evaluate material in response to given questions

• Attend closely to visual, written and spoken evidence
• Communicate ideas in a logical and engaging manner, both orally and in writing
• Participate confidently and appropriately in group situations
• Manage time effectively
• Respond positively to constructive feedback

• Written and oral formative feedback for essay plan
• Written feedback for essay
• Oral feedback available during office hours or by appointment

Jonathan Alexander, The Painted Book in Renaissance Italy 1450–1600 (New Haven, 2016)

Diane E. Booton, Manuscripts, Market and the Transition to Print in Late Medieval Brittany (Farnham, 2010) 

Raymond Clemens & Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (London, 2007)

Christopher de Hamel, A History of the Illuminated Manuscript (London, 1994)

Debra Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries. Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge, 1995)

Michael Hunter (ed.), Printed Images in Early Modern Britain. Essays in Interpretation (Farnham, 2010) ·

Bernard J Muir (ed.), Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Art and Patronage (Exeter, 2002)

Virginia Reinburg, French Books of Hours. Making an Archive of Prayer, c. 1400–1600 (Cambridge, 2014)