The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses - Hardcover

Koudounaris, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500251789 ISBN 13: 9780500251782

Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

In this tour de force of original cultural history, Paul Koudounaris takes the reader on an unprecedented international tour of macabre and devotional architectural masterpieces in nearly 20 countries. This is the first book to bring together the world’s most important charnel sites, ranging from the crypts of the Capuchin monasteries in Italy and the skull-encrusted columns of the ossuary in Évora in Portugal, to the strange tomb of a 1960s wealthy Peruvian nobleman decorated with the exhumed skeletons of his Spanish ancestors. Illustrated with specially taken photographs of sites rarely open to the public and forgotten archive images of others long destroyed, this mesmerising, shocking and deeply moving book is an essential memento mori for our modern age.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Dialogue with Death · 1. Ars Moriendi: The Early Charnel Houses · 2. The Golden Age: Counter-Reformation Macabre · 3. The Triumph of Death: Nineteenth-Century Visions in Bone · 4. Heavenly Souls: Spiritualism and Mythology in The Bone Pile · 5. Forget Me Not: Ossuaries as Commemorative Sites · 6. Resurrecting the Dead: Conservation and Reconstruction

About this title

Review:

. . . an astounding achievement, both as a literary and photographic work.

The photos of the skulls alone justify the purchase.

Koudounaris gracefully transcends mere ghastliness and ghoulishness to challenge cultural perceptions of death, both current and centuries old. The result is not only a highly original work of great visual beauty and rigorous scholarship but also a surprisingly intimate and tender meditation on what the author calls 'the dialogue with the dead.'

About the Author:

Paul Koudounaris has a doctorate in Art History from the University of California and has written widely on European ossuaries and charnel houses for both academic and popular journals.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0500251789
• ISBN 13: 9780500251782
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224