ABSTRACT

In general, major developments in fine arts occur in the main centres of culture andlearning. As long as it was in Frankish hands, Jerusalem was indisputably the most important cultural centre in the Latin East. While, as already noted, Jerusalem and indeed the whole of the Latin East appear to have been fairly impoverished in many aspects of intellectual activity such as literature, philosophy and theology, this was certainly not the case for the plastic arts. Crusader sculpture, monumental painting and manuscript illumination, with their unique synthesis of Byzantine, western European and Levantine styles and iconography, have a place of their own in medieval art and are in no way inferior to comparable developments in European art.2