John Beckwith, M.A., F.B.A., F.S.A., read Modern History at Oxford with special studies in Medieval History. In 1948 he was appointed Assistant Keeper in the Department of Textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he specialized in medieval textiles; in 1955 he moved to the Department of Architecture and Sculpture, where he became Keeper, pursing his study of medieval sculpture with particular emphasis on ivory carving. He has lectured at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University, the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, and elsewhere. He was selected for the English Committee of several Council of Europe exhibitions. He also collaborated on the 1958 Exhibition of Masterpieces of Byzantine Art. His publications range from specialized essays and monographs on medieval ivory carvings and textiles to more general surveys which include The Art of Constantinople, 1961; Coptic Sculpture, 1963; Early Medieval Art, 1964; and Ivory Carvings in Early Medieval England, 1972, on which was based his exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum with the same title in 1974. As Slade Professor of the Fine Arts at Oxford in 1978–9 his lectures were entitled Early Medieval Art and the Imperial Ideal. John Beckwith died in 1991.

Book details

Description: Early Christian and Byzantine Art

BOOKEarly Christian and Byzantine Art

John Beckwith

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00042

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14004

Yale University Press/Pelican History of Art

Written by distinguished art historian John Beckwith, this book presents an appreciation of early Christian and Byzantine Art as a sublime expression of religious thought and feeling. Beckwith argues that Byzantine art is both static and dynamic: static in the sense that once an image was established it was felt that no improvement was necessary; dynamic in the sense that there was never one style and these styles or modes were constantly changing. The story is not only complex in its unravelling, but ranges widely over various media: mosaic, wall painting and painted panels, sculpture in marble and ivory, manuscript illumination, gold, silver, and precious stones, jewelry, silk and rich vestments.

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Author

John Beckwith

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date September 1986 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300052961

EISBN 9780300223859

Illustrations 316

Print Status in print

Publisher (out of print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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