The Metamorphosis of the Gods

Publisher's full maroon cloth with embossed gilt lettering on cover and spine. Profusely illustrated with B&W photographs. In slipcase. Through the civilizations of Greece and Byzantium and Europe Malraux traces successive changes not only in the meaning of art but in its uses. One loses a sense of one period growing out of another and substitutes instead an awareness of forces that produced change beyond the definable worldly factors. Malraux reaches back into pre- history, to ancient empires Minean and Mycenacean and Egyptian and Hittite; and forward to the classic eres as the Sophists undermined the prestige of the gods and the tyranny of reality lept Rome from true art. With the Byzantium overlordship came the linking and kinship between Christian and Oriental forms. A religious ferment was at work. Mosaics- not painting- took the place of the antique sculptures. Manuscript illumination- Coptic miniatures- the art of the illuminated book, all were directed to a limited few, the book loving elite. But with the religious revival of the 11th century, and the Crusades, architecture and sculpture found new birth. The Romanesque period established a new relationship between man and God and man and the world in which he lived:- the religion of love, as the sacred found expression in human terms. Two centuries- and another change. With the 14th century came the emergence of purely secular figures- and sculpture in its turn was challenged by painting -- as it had supplanted mosaics. The feudal hierarchy was yielding to an urban way of life. This book expands- it opens wider still- the scope of the "Museum without Walls" which is Malraux' great gift to an art-hungry world. This is a superb translation by Stuart Gilbert of a work destined to take a permanent place. The volume is in perfect, pristine condition, unmarked, tight, square and clean. The unclipped dust jacket has some slight creases at the upper edges of the flaps, light rubbing to spine ends and tips. In a good slipcase with a short split on the top edge, light rubbing and sunfading to covers, edges. AS NEW/ VERY GOOD+. . B&W Photographs. 8vo 8" - 9" tall. 400 pp

Product Info

Publisher: Doubleday & Company

Year: 1960

Type: New

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

RoundTableBooksLLC

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Website: https://www.roundtablebooks.com

Country: United States