Pictures of the Mind: The Decor of 18th-Century Monastic Libraries

This interdisciplinary study deals with the iconography of I8th-century Baroque libraries in monasteries. Created during a time of transition they express concepts of the Baroque era as well as those of the Age of Reason. The meaning of their world of pictures, expressed during a late flowering of Baroque art, is unique to this period of library architecture and philosophy. The spreading of the Enlightenment brought an end to the Baroque's extended concept of libraries that included a picture component.  Ideas expressed in these monasteries' iconography were by the end of the 18th Century no longer understood. Most of these libraries were dissolved in the ensuing secularization process; yet much of their stunning imagery has endured, to recall and illustrate a distant historical period via its unique concept of library purpose and design.