These essays explore questions posed by modern students of medieval art: what (and how) did representational codes signify for a medieval audience?; what control did the artist or patron have?; and what accounts for the renewed interest in medieval art during the 20th century?

These essays explore some of the general question that have been posed by modern students of medieval art: what (and how) did representational codes signify for a medieval audience; what control did the artist or patron have?; what roles did women play?; and what accounts for the renewed interest in medieval art during the 20th century?The essay s do not have a unitary purpose or theory, rather, the author's concern is to avoid the diplacement of one view of a work of art with another through superior truth-claims, thus adding to rich layers of multivalence. While exploring the questions above, the author maintains that the past can be used as a laboratory for the exploration of human behaviours and conditions.

Medieval views of "art" versus modern analysis: De convenientia et cohaerentia antiqui et novi Operis - medieval conservation, restoration, pastiche and forgery
Images of divine order and the third mode of seeing
"The simple perception of matter" and the representation of narrative, ca. 1180-1280
The rationalization of sight and the authority of visions? - A feminist (re)vision. Designers, patrons and ideologies: Conflicts between regnum and sacerdotium as reflected in a Canterbury psalter of ca. 1215
Anchoress, abbess and queen - donors and patrons or intercessors and matrons?
Gender symbolism and text image relationships - Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias
Hildegard as designer of the illustrations to her works. Modern and post-modern views of medieval: Broadening the definitions of "art": the reception of medieval works in the context of post-impressionist movements
The politics of conservation and the role of the Corpus Vitrearum in the preservation of stained glass windows
Learning from Forest Lawn
Artistic integration in Gothic buildings: a postmodern construct?
Obscenity and alterity - images that shock and offend us/them, now/then?
The feminist project - pressuring the medieval object.