Volume 1

Sacred and legendary art / by Anna Jameson; ed., with additional notes, by Estelle M. Hurll, and abundantly illustrated with designs from ancient and modern art.

  • Jameson, Mrs. (Anna), 1794-1860.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sacred and legendary art / by Anna Jameson; ed., with additional notes, by Estelle M. Hurll, and abundantly illustrated with designs from ancient and modern art. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lime tliaii compressed into a few pages. Every reader, liow- ever, who is interested in the subject, may supply the omissions, follow out the suggestions, and enjoy the pleasure of discover- ing new exceptions, new analogies, for himself. With regard to the arrangement, I am afraid it will be found liable to objections ; but it is the best that, after long consideration and many changes, I could fix upon. It is not formal, nor technical, like that of a catalogue or a calendar, but intended to lead the fancy naturally from subject to subject as one opened upon another, with just sufficient order to keep the mind un- perplexed and the attention unfatigued amid a great diversity of objects, scenes, stories, and characters. Tlie authorities for the legends have been the “ Legenda Aurea ’’ of Voragine, in the old French and English transla- tions ; the “ Elos Sanctorum ” of Eibadeneira, in the old French translation; the ‘^Perfetto Legendario,” editions of Pome and Venice; the Legende delle Sante Vergini,” Flor- ence and Venice ; the large work of Baillet, “ Les Vies des Saints,” in thirty-two volumes, most useful for the historical authorities ; and Alban Butler’s “ Lives of the Saints.” ^ All these have been consulted for such particulars of circumstance and character as might illustrate the various representations, and then compressed into a narrative as clear as I could render it. The First Part contains the legends of the scriptural per- sonages and the primitive fathers. The Second Part contains those sainted personages who lived, or are supposed to have lived, in the first ages of Chris- tianity, and whos’e real history, founded on fact or tradition, has been so disguised by poetical embroidery, that they have in some sort the air of ideal beings. As I could not under- take to go through the ivhole calendar, nor yet to make my book a catalogue of pictures and statues, I have confined my- self to the saints most interesting and important, and (with very feiv exceptions) to those works of Art of which I could speak from my own knowledge. 1 [An edition of tin's work was published in New York in 1846.]