Full name: Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral

Author: Philip Ball Year: 2008 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Art, Non Fiction, Philosophy Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780061154294 9780061154300 0061154296 006115430X

Chartres Cathedral, south of Paris, is revered as one of the most beautiful and profound works of art in the Western canon. But what did it mean to those who constructed it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? And why, during this period, did Europeans begin to build churches in a new style, at such immense height and with such glorious play of light, in the soaring manner we now call Gothic? Universe of Stone shows that the Gothic cathedrals encode a far-reaching shift in the way medieval thinkers perceived their relationship with their world. For the first time, they began to believe in an orderly, rational world that could be investigated and understood. This change marked the beginning of Western science and also the start of a long and, indeed, unfinished struggle to reconcile faith and reason. By embedding the cathedral in the culture of the twelfth century--its schools of philosophy and science, its trades and technologies, its politics and religious debates--Philip Ball makes sense of the visual and emotional power of Chartres. Beautifully illustrated and written, filled with astonishing insight, Universe of Stone argues that Chartres is a sublime expression of the originality and vitality of a true "first renaissance," one that occurred long before the birth of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Francis Bacon. Similar books: Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams Cathedral by David Macaulay The Last Duel by Eric Jager The Knight, the Lady and the Priest by Georges Duby Castle by David Macaulay Built to Last by David Macaulay The Medieval Fortress by J. E. Kaufmann The Secret Lives of Buildings by Edward Hollis The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours The Merovingian Kingdoms by Ian Wood Life in a Medieval City by Joseph Gies The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama Bright Earth by Philip Ball The Nude by Kenneth Clark The Shape of Time by George Kubler Techniques of the Observer by Jonathan Crary The Tears of Eros by Georges Bataille Modernism by Peter Gay The Devil's Doctor by Philip Ball