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. (shrink)

The articles contained in this volume are indicative of a new effort, in the best of current research on the early medieval west, to examine the period from new angles that more fully illumine its vitality and creativity than has been done in the past.