Believing and Seeing: The Art of Gothic Cathedrals

In Believing and Seeing, Roland Recht argues that preoccupation with vision as a key to religious knowledge profoundly affected a broad range of late medieval works. In addition to the great cathedrals of France, Recht explores key religious buildings throughout Europe to reveal how their grand designs supported this profusion of images that made visible the signs of scripture. Reimagining these works as a link between devotional practices in the late Middle Ages and contemporaneous theories that deemed vision the basis of empirical truth, Recht provides students and scholars with a new lens through which to view Gothic art and architecture. 

“Readers will be rewarded by Recht's brilliant analysis of Gothic architectural polychromy, stained glass, and stone sculpture, and should find the unity of Recht's 'vision' of the Gothic ultimately convincing.”—Choice

“Recht's book is especially at its most engaging when it opens up the treatment of images to suggest that ways of seeing, believing, and making constitute all together ‘l’art des cathedrales.’”—Art Bulletin