Xavier Barral I. Altet

The Bayeux Tapestry is impressive in its initial richness and, almost a thousand years after it was made, miraculously preserved. Entirely needle-embroidered in coloured woolen threads, it recounts the conquest of the Kingdom of England by Duke William of Normandy. The universal significance of this secular masterpiece from the eleventh century has earned it a place on UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” register. This beautiful book unfolds the whole work with accompanying detailed commentaries. It provides an update on current research, bringing together two erudite points of view from both sides of the Channel.

La portalada del monestir de santa Maria de Ripoll es, indiscutiblement, un dels monuments romanics mes importants de Catalunya i de tota Europa. Aixo s'ha traduit, al llarg del temps, en una llarga serie de treballs cientifics, aixi com d'accions de conservacio-restauracio, que son testimonis del reconeixement dels seus valors patrimonials i fins i tot identitaris. La portalada de Ripoll. Creacio, conservacio i recuperacio agrupa una vintena de treballs cientifics de diferents autors, que troben el seu origen en el simposi internacional homonim celebrat a Ripoll l'any 2013, i que ofereixen mirades diferents i complementaries sobre la portalada i sobre altres obres d'art relacionades amb ella des dels punts de vista de la historia de l'art medieval, la conservacio-restauracio i la recuperacio del monument en el marc de la Catalunya contemporania.

This volume was born from a desire to leave a tangible trace of the scholarly encounters that have taken place in the past two years at the Center for Early Medieval Studies of the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. Speaking in various forums Xavier Barral i Altet, Nicolas Bock, Valentina Cantone, Herbert Kessler, Serena Romano and Elisabetta Scirocco have sparked exciting discussions of what continues to be known as a Middle Age. The common denominator that unites all of the scholarly work presented was the dialogue between the medieval "present" and the antique world: from Venice through Campania to Milan, from Constantinople to Burgundy, there emerged an intellectual and visual experience that suggests the medieval period was a uniquely fertile moment for engagement with the heritage of antiquity, filtered and mediated in different ways, but ever present. The purpose of this volume is to understand why and how patterns, images and ideas from the mythical (but visible) ancient past were received throughout the medieval millennium. We seek, that is, to understand why, hic et nunc, clients and workshops deliberately chose to speak in a "classicizing" aesthetic language, or to appropriate concepts belonging to the antique tradition wholesale.