Introduction

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The Foundations of Christian Art: Illustrated takes the reader on a pilgrimage through the history of Christian art, focusing especially upon its architecture, iconography, illumination, and the arts and crafts guilds, but always returning to the fundamental genius of Christianity, which gave meaning to the art.

“Titus Burckhardt is an exponent of the permanent, the timeless; a domain which makes the use of the word ‘historian’ redundant in a modern context. Burckhardt has done more than any other single author in the past 50, if not 100, years to recover the essential principles of the purpose of the arts—that is, if you accept the premise that the arts are more than mere hedonism and ‘individual expression’...Due to his intrinsically spiritual nature, Burckhardt has revealed insight after insight into Christian symbolism and craft practice.”

—Keith Critchlow