The Gothic Screen
Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca.1200–1400

This book reveals how Gothic choir screens, through both their architecture and sculpture, were vital vehicles of communication and shapers of community within the Christian church.

Jacqueline E. Jung (Author)

9781107022959, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 December 2012

328 pages, 180 b/w illus. 30 colour illus.
28.7 x 22 x 2 cm, 1.17 kg

"At the turn of this century, Jacqueline Jung published an influential article on choir screens in Gothic great churches. She has been regarded as the leading Anglo-American specialist on these furnishings ever since, a status maintained through publication of subsequent essays. Now, at last, her monograph on the topic has arrived in the form of an authoritative statement of the role of screens as space-co-ordinating, performative, psychology-conditioning objects."
Julian Luxford, The Burlington Magazine

At the heart of Gothic cathedrals, the threshold between nave and sanctuary was marked by the choir screen, a partitioning structure of special complexity, grandeur, and beauty. At once a canopy for altars, a stage for performance, a pedestal for crucifixes and reliquaries, and a ground for spectacular arrays of narrative and iconic sculptures, the choir screen profoundly shaped the spaces of liturgy and social interaction for the diverse communities, both clerical and lay, who shared the church interior. For the first time, this book draws together the most important examples - some fully extant, others known through fragments and graphic sources - from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century France and Germany. Through analyses of both their architectural and sculptural components, Jacqueline E. Jung reveals how these furnishings, far from being barricades or hindrances, were vital vehicles of communication and shapers of a community centered on Christian rituals and stories.

Introduction
Part I. The Screen as Sculpture: 1. The choir screen as partition
2. The choir screen as bridge
3. The choir screen as frame
Part II. The Sculpture on the Screen: 4. Women, men, and the social order
5. Jews, Christians, and the question of the individual
6. Nobles, peasants, and the vernacular mode
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], European history [HBJD], History [HB], The arts [A]