DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Green Man

Paul Hardwick author Kathleen Basford author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published:1st Jan '78

Should be back in stock very soon

The Green Man cover

Delightful, oft-reprinted guide to the foliate heads so common in medieval sculpture. This was the first-ever monograph dedicated to the Green Man. The Green Man, the image of the foliate head or the head of a man sprouting leaves, is probably the most common of all motifs in medieval sculpture. Nevertheless, the significance of the image lay largely unregarded until KathleenBasford published this book - the first monograph of the Green Man in any language -and thereby earned the lasting gratitude of scholars in many fields, from art history and folklore to current environmental studies. This book has opened up new avenues of research, not only into medieval man's understanding of nature, and into conceptions of death, rebirth and resurrection in the middle ages, but also into our concern today with ecology and our relationship with the green world. It is therefore a work of living scholarship and its publication in paperback will be greatly and justly welcomed.

The rarest, most recondite and fascinating art book, which is a folklore and magic book as well... An incredibly thorough study, with every example illustrated, of the weird foliate heads or masks found in the medieval churches and cathedrals of Western Europe, with leaves sprouting from them. * THE TIMES *

ISBN: 9780859914970

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 434g

128 pages