No comments about The Bible in iron: Pictured stoves and stoveplates of the Pennsylvania Germans; notes on colonial firebacks in the United States, the ten-plate stove, ... furnaces in the United States and Canada.

No comments about Iconographic Index to New Testament Subjects Represented in Photographs and Slides of Paintings in the Visual Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University: ... Reference Library of the Humanities).

No comments about Religious Art in Italy Set (Siena and the Virgin/Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter).

No comments about The Benedictional of AEthelwold (Studies in Manuscript Illumination 9).

No comments about Art treasures of Slovenia.

No comments about Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art.

No comments about The decorative arts in the service of the church, (The arts of the church).

No comments about Symbols of the Spirit.

No comments about Legends of the monastic orders, (The writings on art of Anna Jameson, vol. III).

1 comments about Sign & symbols in Christian art: With illustrations from paintings of the Renaissance.

1. This was a much more interesting book than I thought it would be. My interest is in the art symbolism more than in the Roman Catholicism, but maybe you can't separate the one from the other. I was amazed at how much symbolism there is in the art, including animals and flowers, as well as in the priestly vestments, artifacts and religious objects.
   
   I found myself reading every page, and especially fascinated by the lives of the Roman Catholic saints and their `attributes' or symbols. There was Saint Christopher who, according to legend, carried a very heavy child across a river on his shoulders, only to find out that the child was the Christ child Himself who had apparently somehow transcended time and space to be there! There was St. Cecilia who had her [...] cut off in a torturous attempt to make her recant her faith; her attribute in the paintings is a serving platter with her [...] neatly situated on it, and she is the one carrying it! The typical Roman Catholic saint, if there is such a thing, was ascetic, celibate, performed or participated in a miracle, started or joined a Roman Catholic religious order, was tortured for the faith but unfazed or unhurt by it, and finally beheaded out of frustration by the torturers. St. Cecilia, for example, was so close to heaven she could hear the angels sing! St. Ambrose's attribute was a bee hive because when he was a baby a swarm of bees alighted on his mouth, `foretelling his future eloquence'! St. Lucy ripped her own eyes out because her eyes were so beautiful that she attracted keen attention from men!
   
   Another thing I noticed was the prominence of Mary. She is the only saint to have a aureole, along with God; an areole is a splendid light show emanating from the person, signifying holiness. She is represented in many biblical accounts such as the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the wedding feast at Cana, and various other events in Christ's life. She was also represented in many extra-biblical paintings such as her Immaculate Conception (declared to be born free of original sin by Pope Pius IX) , childhood, her death or `Dormition', and `Assumption' into heaven (declared to be infallibly true by Pope Pius XII in 1950), and as Queen of the Universe and Queen of Heaven and Earth. These are just a few of the extra-biblical Roman Catholic legends and monikers for Mary. Amazing!
   
   This was an interesting book for the lessons in Roman Catholicism as it was for the great art that it decodes for us. I found it bizarre but fascinating.