Opulent jeweled objects ranked among the most accomplished works of art in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, precious stones were the subject of more profound considerations about the powers of nature and the splendors of heaven. Beyond a visual regime that put a premium on brilliant materiality, how can we account for the ubiquity of gems in medieval thought? In The Mineral and the Visual, art historian Brigitte Buettner examines the social roles, cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in secular medieval art. Exploring the layered roles played by gems in aesthetic, social, intellectual, and economic practices, Buettner focuses on three significant categories of art: the jeweled crown, the pictorialized lapidary, and the illustrated travel account. The global gem trade brought coveted jewels from the Indies to goldsmiths' workshops in Paris, fashionable bodies in London, and the crowns of kings across Europe, and Buettner shows that Europe's literal and metaphorical enrichment was predicated on the importation of gems and ideas from Byzantium, the Islamic world, Persia, and India. Original and cross-disciplinary, The Mineral and the Visual engages important methodological questions about materiality from a historical perspective. It will be especially useful to scholars and students interested in medieval art history, material culture, and medieval history.
Brigitte Buettner is Louise I. Doyle '34 Professor of Art at Smith College. She is the author of Boccaccio's "Des cleres et nobles femmes": Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript.
"Reading The Mineral and the Visual made me feel like a student again, filled with curiosity and excitement. This book is rich, interesting, complex, refreshing." -Elina Gertsman, author of The Absent Image: Lacunae in Medieval Books "The Mineral and the Visual offers readers a rich and compelling journey through the world of medieval minerals. Of interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike, it advances theoretical and methodological discussions of materials and materiality and expands our ideas about stones, gems, and the natural world. Weaving together a vast array of sources, both textual and visual, Buettner's study presents a new understanding of the field of discourse in which these fascinating objects operated." -Heidi Gearhart, author of Theophilus and the Theory and Practice of Medieval Art
