Jean Hubert, Jean Porcher, W. F. Volbach
Europe of the Invasions.
George Braziller, 1969. The Arts of Mankind. First edition. Translation by Stuart Gilbert and James Emmons. xv/387 pages.
Large-format volume, measuring approximately 9.25" x 11.25", is bound in red cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book is new. Price-clipped dust jacket is in fine condition.  Illustrated throughout in black-and-white and color, including fold-out color plates, plus fold-out maps at rear. Volume is housed in cardboard slipcase (9.25" x 12").
This is the twelfth volume of this series.
"During the second half of the third century A.D., the Barbarians began to overrun the frontiers of the Roman Empire and to establish themselves in the West. These peoples -- Franks, Huns, Goths, Vandals, Saxons and Lombards -- scarcely understood the Roman civilization which they had overthrown: they were ill equipped to create artistic forms adequate to the needs of the new European cultures. And yet, adapting themselves to the religion and way of life of the conquered they made both as patrons and as artists a crucial contribution to European art.
They excelled in those crafts to which centuries of nomadic existence had accustomed them: personal funerary  ornaments, weapons and armor, cloissoné gold work. Book illumination was also to reach unsurpassed heights, especially in the hands of English and Irish monks. Stone sculpture yielded masterpieces, such as the tombs in the crypt at Jouarre. And, from the basilicas of fourth-century Gaul onward, progress in religious architecture laid the foundations for the great rebirth of arts in the ninth century, the Carolingian renaissance.
The text is divided into four sections: on architecture and sculpture (by Jean Hubert), book illumination (by Jean Pocher) and funerary art (by W. F. Volbach), with an extensive final documentary section which contains chronological tables, a large bibliography, iconographical information and an annotated index."