Saints: A Visual Guide. This item is unavailable.Saints: A Visual Guide

There are plenty of guides to the saints, but this is the only one that will help you identify the saint that you are looking at.

Taking the 140 most popular and widely represented saints (from the earliest -- the apostles, up to Padre Pio and others from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) the authors provide brief accounts of the saint's achievements (or legend) and details of their conventional attributes -- usually tools of their trade or the instruments of their martyrdom. Then they provide a clear and unambiguous color representation of the saint, taken from sources the world over, often from popular imagery such as playing cards, inn signs, or advertisements, as well as from high and low art.

Usefully, there is a comprehensive reference index identifing saints by things associated with them -- from anchors (St. Clement) to wounds (St. Roch if in the leg, St. Rita if in the brow). Practical, attractive, and well-informed this little book will be invaluable for students and lovers of art of all ages.

Edward Mornin is professor emeritus of Germanic studies at the University of British Columbia.