An unusually fine work, long in the making, this heavily illustrated volume describes in detail the clothing and jewelry worn by the column figures of the early Gothic cathedrals, including those on Notre Dame de Chartres and the abbey church of Saint Denis, defining the unique style of this seminal era through close analysis of the dressing and presentation of the figures. Through her focus on the textiles that were so precisely represented in the stone sculpture, Snyder (art history, West Virginia U.) takes the study far beyond 12th-century France, describing at length the trade in silk and other textiles from Byzantium, Fatimid Egypt, and Sicily, among other lands, and the types of materials produced and imported. Her concluding chapter explores how textiles were understood and valued by medieval viewers, in part through analysis of descriptions in literature and other texts. The volume includes a wealth of b&w and color plates of excellent quality, an appendix on limestone quarries and limestone analysis, and a lengthy bibliography. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)