Abstract

An eminent scholar of Carolingian history, Rosamond McKitterick, recently remarked that for specialists in Carolingian art it is currently “unfashionable to link manuscript images with anything the artist has seen in real life.” Clearly, there have been important exceptions to this observation, but it has some ring of truth; indeed, it could be expanded into the contention that art historians are reluctant not only to associate imagery of the period with what its artists might have seen but even to connect it with what the artists might otherwise have known of situations or events in contemporary society