The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture

Opulent jeweled objects ranked among the most accomplished works of art in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, precious stones were the subject of more profound considerations about the powers of nature and the splendors of heaven. Beyond a visual regime that put a premium on brilliant materiality, how can we account for the ubiquity of gems in medieval thought?

In The Mineral and the Visual, art historian Brigitte Buettner examines the social roles, cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in secular medieval art. Exploring the layered roles played by gems in aesthetic, social, intellectual, and economic practices, Buettner focuses on three significant categories of art: the jeweled crown, the pictorialized lapidary, and the illustrated travel account. The global gem trade brought coveted jewels from the Indies to goldsmiths' workshops in Paris, fashionable bodies in London, and the crowns of kings across Europe, and Buettner shows that Europe's literal and metaphorical enrichment was predicated on the importation of gems and ideas from Byzantium, the Islamic world, Persia, and India.

Original and cross-disciplinary, The Mineral and the Visual engages important methodological questions about materiality from a historical perspective. It will be especially useful to scholars and students interested in medieval art history, material culture, and medieval history.