Owner portraits, images of women and men in prayer in the margins or initials of their devotional manuscripts, were an increasingly common inclusion in illuminated prayer books in the era of the book of hours (from about 1250 onwards). While most books with owner portraits represent a single figure only once, a small number of lavishly illuminated…[Read more]

The visibility of women in owner portraits from the early era of books of hours (ca. 1230–1350) reflected and shaped perceptions of literate prayer as a feminine activity. While owner portraits of men are comparatively rare, they are not unknown. Images of laymen and laywomen devotees in four illuminated manuscripts from northern France around 1…[Read more]

This chapter from a Festschrift for Susan Donahue Kuretsky represents a personal meditation on close looking, iconographical ambiguity, and the role of mentorship in art historical work.

A prominent opening in a psalter of circa 1290 from the region of Amiens juxtaposes two kneeling figures (Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 10435, fol. 137r). In the margin to the right of the Trinity initial opening Psalm 109, a woman kneels in prayer on a vine tendril next to a minuscule shield bearing the arms of the seigneur or lord of Clary…[Read more]

As the representation of specific, identifiable persons in art, portraiture often reflects ideas of selfhood or individuality while simultaneously participating in their construction. Since the introduction of physiognomic likeness into the visual language of western portraiture in the mid-fourteenth century, this quality has come to exemplify the…[Read more]