"What is distinctive about medieval drawings? How do they differ from Renaissance drawings? Which have shaped our definition and perception of the form? Why were drawings so often chosen to illustrate manuscripts and how did they evolve throughout the period? Who were the artists responsible for them? These and other questions are addressed in this volume, which accompanies a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that is the first to consider the accomplishments of the medieval draftsman in depth." "The subject is explored in texts that will enlighten the general reader and scholar alike. Melanie Holcomb's essay is devoted to the history, aesthetics, and uses of medieval drawings, subjects developed further by Dr. Holcomb and thirteen other experts in forty-nine entries that treat the works in the exhibition. The essay takes a chronological tour through the Western Middle Ages,examining drawings made in settings as diverse as ninth-century monastic scriptoria and the fourteenth-century French court. The authors discuss the pervasive and persistent taste for drawing in the Middle Ages, focusing on several areas at moments when drawing was a particularly favored medium, such as Carolingian Europe, Anglo-Saxon England, and twelfth-century Regensburg and Salzburg."--BOOK JACKET.