France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades »

Daniel H. Weiss is dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and former chair of the Department of the History of Art at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of numerous articles and four books on the art of the Middle Ages and winner of the Van Courtland Elliott Prize of the Medieval Academy of America. Lisa Mahoney is a Mellon dissertation fellow in the humanities and graduate student in the history of art at the Johns Hopkins University.

Twelve of the 13 essays of this volume, by well-known scholars of the Crusades, were first presented at a conference held in March 2000 at Johns Hopkins U. (where both editors are based), called "Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades; France and the Holy Land." The additional paper is by Anthony Cutler (Penn State U.), on the influence of Islamic art as evidenced in gift exchange. Other topics include the Crusader use of the French Gothic ribbed vault as a stylistic rather than architectural element, by Robert Ousterhout (U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); the political policies towards the Crusader States of three French kings, by Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge U., UK); Crusader and western representations of Heracles, by Gustav Kühnel (Tel Aviv U., Israel); and the relation between Crusader and indigenous artisans in Acre, by David Jacoby (Hebrew U., Israel). Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR