The Lithic Garden: Nature and the Transformation of the Medieval Church

by Mailan S. Doquang

Overview

The Lithic Garden offers innovative perspectives on the role of ornament in medieval church design. Focusing on the foliate friezes articulating iconic French monuments such as Amiens Cathedral, it demonstrates that church builders strategically used organic motifs to integrate the interior and exterior of their structures, thus reinforcing the connections and distinctions between the entirety of the sacred edifice and the profane world beyond its boundaries. With this exquisitely illustrated monograph, Mailan S. Doquang argues that, contrary to widespread belief,
monumental flora was not just an extravagant embellishment or secondary byproduct, but a semantically-charged, critical design component that inflected the stratified spaces of churches in myriad ways. By situating the proliferation of foliate friezes within the context of the Crusades, The Lithic Garden provides insights into the networks of exchange between France, Byzantium, and the Levant, contributing to the "global turn" in art and architectural History.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190631796
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/12/2018
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 7.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Mailan S. Doquang holds a PhD in medieval architecture from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She has held lectureships at Princeton University, McGill University, and Ithaca College. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, and the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction

Chapter 1: The Foliate Frieze as Architectonic Framing Device
Chapter 2: Paradise Found
Chapter 3: The True Vine
Chapter 4: The Golden Vine

The Garden: An Afterword
Notes

Editorial Reviews

"Well written and persuasively argued, The Lithic Garden succeeds in bringing thoughtful, sustained consideration to an often overlooked, yet staple, motif in medieval architectural decoration." — Robert A. Maxwell, Church History

"The Lithic Garden is an important addition to recent scholarship that sees Gothic churches as dynamic entities, activated by physical movement and energized by ritual and mnemonic practices-and to larger scholarly currents that explore the relation of medieval art, observation, and the natural world. By positing that the foliate friezes of canonical Gothic buildings such as Cluny III and Amiens Cathedral had their conceptual origins in the Dome of the Rock and other great Islamic monuments- newly known to Western Christians in the course of the Crusades- Doquang opens up a new field of exploration for Gothic specialists who wish to be part of art history's global turn." — Jacqueline Jung, Yale University

From the Publisher