Art and Society in the Middle Ages

the long version

"Georges Duby, one of France's greatest medieval historians, returns to one of the themes central to his work and dear to his heart. Over the thousand years from the fifth to the fifteenth century, he traces the evolution of artistic forms in parallel with that of the material and cultural structures of society, in the belief that this will lead to a better understanding of both." "Duby traces shifts in the centres of artistic production and changes in the nature and status of those who promoted works of art and those who produced them, while at the same time emphasizing the crucial continuities that still gave the art of medieval Europe a basic unity, despite the emergence of national characteristics."--Jacket.