Blessed and Beautiful

This book offers a powerful and searching meditation on the lives of the saints and the images of them painted by Renaissance artists in Italy. Robert Kiely, a distinguished scholar of modernist literature and a historian and critic of exceptional sensibility, has a keen eye and uncanny ability to capture details of significance and to prompt the reader to look again and to see with fresh eyes that the lives of saints and the Renaissance depictions of them are anything but dull, uniform, or narrowly orthodox. His beautifully written and thoughtful book treats saints seriously as human religious figures (not icons of perfection), brought to life by great Italian paintings in dialogue with scripture, legend, and poetry. Wise, learned, and readable, and offering a rare combination of insight into religion, literature, and art, this ravishingly illustrated and vividly written volume should be by your side whenever you pick up a classic text, look at a Renaissance painting, or spend a few moments in private meditation or prayer.

ISBN 0300162774   Pages 288 ISBN13 9780300162776 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 1175 Publisher Yale University Press   Published in New Haven Imprint Yale University Press   Height (mm) 254 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 165 Publication date 20 Aug 2010   Spine width (mm) 31 DEWEY 759.5   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC22

		Acknowledgments
		Introduction Choosing the "Beautiful Ones"		1
1		The Standing of Mary
		Opus Formosior		15
2		A Saint for All Seasons
		Taking Liberties with John the Baptist		51
3		Recovering Mary Magdalene and the Dignity of Woman
		Apostola Apostolorum		83
4		Manliness and Saintliness
		The Cases of Mark, Sebastian, and Rocco		109
5		The Pearls of Saint Lawrence
		What Ruskin Sees When He Looks at a Picture		145
6		Imagining Augustine Imagining
		Or A Theologian's Toothache		171
7		Sodoma's Saint Benedict
		Out in the Cloister		201
8		Further Considerations of The Holy Stigmata of Saint Francis
		Where Was Brother Leo?		227
9		The Saint Who Lost Her Head
		Or who's Afraid of Catherine of Siena?		257
10		Saints Fair and Fearsome
		Louis of Toulouse and Bernardino da Siena		281
		Epilogue Pace e Bene		317
		Notes		321
		Photograph credits		332
		General index		333
		List of works of art reproduced, by saint		341

"Kiely's book is best for readers interested in both artistic and literary depictions of the saints and for libraries focusing on art history or religion."--Martha Smith, --Martha Smith "Library Journal "

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