Ars Sacra, 800-1200 (The Yale University Press Pelican History of Art Series)

If you've had the opportunity to visit some of the museums in Europe, you'll have run across many of these pieces (indeed, I have taken photos of many of these pieces myself in person at the museums). What you WON'T find is the background on the pieces, and that's where this book comes in. Part of Yale University's extremely high quality series on art and architecture, the book contains a prodigious amount of text on the background of these pieces. It's a scholarly work, replete with detailed references, but it is still readable by the layperson.For example, look at the front cover of this book. You see a gold eagle with a black body. I've seen this piece in person over the last twenty years in the Louvre in Paris (in the medieval "Objets d'Arts" section, of course, and it has always been one of my favorite pieces. The background, however, is every much as fascinating as the piece itself. If you look closely, you'll see the body is a ceramic vase to which gold wings, feet, and neck and head have been added. It's background? The vase is from the 3rd century, and is a Roman work. But sometime in the 10th or 11th century, someone took that vase and cast all the gold parts to it, turning that vase into a gorgeous eagle. So, the work is either 1,000 years old, or 2,000 years old, depending on how you "interpret" it!The book is filled with high quality photos, of which I would estimate is approximately 50% color and 50% black and white. Many are full page sized. Like all the Yale books in this series, the book is printed on very heavy semi gloss paper, so it it fairly heavy, but this adds to its value as an art book. Its really a gorgeous piece of work, and if you have interested in medieval art, it's one note to be missed. Five stars.