Civilisations: The Eye of Faith

Focusing on how art enabled increasingly large and complex societies to organise themselves through world religion, Mary Beard explores how such highly charged artefacts were the source of conflict as much as harmony.

The book begins in Angkor Wat, describing the spiritual harmony of 'heaven and earth' on the spring solstice, before looking at its iconoclastic change from Hindu temple to complex Buddhism. Mary Beard then considers India and the stunning Buddhist paintings of the rock cut monastery temple caves of Ajanta in Maharashtra - the "birth of Indian painting".

The power of Christianity in Europe is examined through the glittering Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna, and the celebrations of Holy Week in Seville, Spain, that demonstrate the devotion and passion of the people. The exquisite calligraphy of Islamic art shows how aniconic art and the removal (largely) of the human figure pointed to a different way of conveying the divine - seen also in the surprising vitality of Jewish book illumination - before coming back to the West with one of the most extraordinary and potent images of all religious art - the Isenheim Altarpiece.