Publisher's Synopsis
This book draws on a range of documentary material which includes building contracts, saints' lives, chronicles, letters, account books, wills and early manufacturing codes to illustrate the development of art design and architecture in Britain during the period from the Middle Ages to 1689. Each group of documents is separately introduced and there are explanatory notes and a biographical glossary of people mentioned in the text.;Emphasis is given to artistic theories although the series is more directly concerned with the social and institutional environment in which the artists lived and worked - their day-to-day concerns, finances, technical problems and relations with patrons and the general public.;This book completes the author's four volume series "A documentary history of taste in Britain", which seeks to provide for students and historians of art what has long been available to other historians: a wealth of annotated original documentary material. The other volumes cover "The eighteenth century (1689-1789)", "The early nineteenth century (1789-1852)" and "The late Victorians (1852-1910)".
