Portrayed on the Heart

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A sweeping and original study of the structuring of sanctity in pictorial hagiography, Hahn’s book teases out the sophisticated rhetoric and imaginative independence of the illustrations to medieval lives of the saints. In systematically surveying the many ways in which narrative imagery reached out to and responded to a variety of audiences, Portrayed on the Heart will take its place among the most compelling studies of medieval narrative in any medium.—Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany and Nuns As Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent In her superb analysis of the development of hagiographic pictorial narrative, Cynthia Hahn has achieved both historical precision and critical nuance. It is the very best sort of interdisciplinary work, showing the complex symbiosis of visual and textual narrative. This is one of the handful of best books I have read about medieval sanctity. Thomas Head, editor of Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology Cynthia Hahn's Portrayed on the Heart, richly and beautifully illustrated, is both scholarly and entertaining. It is an interpretive feat that makes hagiographic manuscripts come alive as a dynamic dialogue between text and image. In a sophisticated application of narrative theory to illustrated manuscripts, Hahn shows how images "speak" to a medieval audience, elicit responses that are more emotional than those to a written text, and function as devotional objects. Far from being "mere" illustrations, images can reshape the textual presentation of a saint, make visible spiritual struggles, turn readers into witnesses to sanctity, and even play a role in canonization proceedings. This is a wonderful book that deserves a wide readership. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Reading Myth: Classical Mythology and its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature