Noel, William

views updated

Noel, William

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Curator, historian, writer, and editor. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, curator of manuscripts and rare books, 1997—.

WRITINGS:

The Harley Psalter, Cambridge University Press (London, England), 1995.

(Editor, with Koert van der Horst and Wilhelmina C.M. Wustefeld) The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David, Harvey Miller (London, England), 1996.

(Cataloger, with Paul Binski) Medieval Seal Matrices in the Schøyen Collection, Sutton (Stroud, England), 2001.

(Editor, with Paul Binski) New Offerings, Ancient Treasures: Studies in Medieval Art for George Henderson, Sutton (Stroud, England), 2001.

(Editor, with Daniel Weiss) The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible, Third Millennium Pub. (London, England), 2002.

(With Reviel Netz) The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist, Da Capo Press (New York, NY, 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

A library curator of manuscripts and rare books, William Noel has authored or edited several studies dealing with medieval manuscripts and their illumination. In The Harley Psalter, Noel provides a study of the making of an illustrated manuscript that was produced at Christ Church in Canterbury, England, in the mid-eleventh century. "There were many ways of decorating a book of Psalms, but none was more elaborate than that employed in the Harley Psalter," the author writes in the book's introduction. Noel notes later in the introduction: "The Harley Psalter is one of the glories of Anglo-Saxon art surviving from the century before the Norman Conquest."

With a meticulous examination of over seventy drawings in the manuscript, the author analyses how the artists and scribes interacted with their exemplars, or earlier examples or works, in the making of the manuscript. In the process, he shows how the Harley Psalter is undoubtedly a crucial work for understanding the development of art, script, and book making during what many consider to be the "golden age" of book illumination.

"The enormous strength of this study is the intensity with which Noel has examined and interpreted the physical evidence of the manuscript itself," Richard Gameson wrote in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. "With this as his foundation he sets out with new clarity and authority the sequence of production, the relationships between the different phases of work, and makes extremely worthwhile observations about the ad hoc nature of various procedures."

Noel and coeditors Koert van der Horst and Wilhelmina C.M. Wustefeld present a series of essays on the Utrecht Psalter in The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David. "One of the great treasures of the Middle Ages is the Utrecht Psalter," noted Dominic Marner in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Marner added, "The lyricism of its drawings and elegance of its script have been the object of much admiration by modern historians."

The book, published in conjunction with a major exhibition of the psalter held in Utrecht, Netherlands, includes five essays and a catalogue. "The book is a lavish production indeed, and presents some new and exciting material concerning such an enigmatic manuscript," Marner elaborated. "No expense has been spared in providing the viewer with many colour illustrations."

Noel edited New Offerings, Ancient Treasures: Studies in Medieval Art for George Henderson with Paul Binski. Resulting from a Festschrift, a volume of text written by various authors in honor of a scholar, held for one of Britain's leading historians of medieval art, the book includes a broad look at medieval art, covering subjects such as eighth-century high crosses, the life of St. Cuthbert, and the role of sculpture and statues in late medieval popular devotion. Nigel Saul, writing in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, noted that many of the essays "are concerned with specialist art historical subjects." Saul added: "Others, however, will be of wider appeal."

Noel wrote The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist with Reviel Netz. In the book, Noel and Netz describe the discovery of the lost works of Archimedes, a Greek mathematician, as part of a palimpsest from a medieval prayer book created during the thirteenth century. The texts were uncovered by the use of X-ray beams that revealed Archimedes's writing that lay hidden underneath a Christian monk's prayer writings; the monk had previously scrubbed off the old text before writing over it. In their book, the authors provide a revealing look at the full range of mathematical discoveries that were found.

Writing in the preface of The Archimedes Codex, the authors note: "This is the true and remarkable story of the book and the texts its contains. It reveals how these texts survived the centuries, how they were discovered, how they disappeared again, and how they eventually found a champion. This is also the story of how patient conservation, cutting-edge technology, and dedicated scholarship brought the erased texts back to light. When they started in 1999, the members of the team working on the book had little idea of what they would uncover. By the time they finished, they had discovered completely new texts from the ancient world and had changed the history of science."

The Archimedes Codex has received numerous favorable reviews. In a review for the Curled Up with a Good Book Web site, Dave Roy noted: "The contribu- tions of both authors make The Archimedes Codex what it is. While the math part can get a little slow at times, overall the topic is a fascinating one, and both Netz and Noel are able to entice the reader to follow along with them on this unknown trail (whether mathematical or historical)." Gilbert Taylor, writing in Booklist referred to the book as "a thrilling story of the ancient world lost, found, and explained."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Noel, William, The Harley Psalter, Cambridge University Press (London, England), 1995.

Noel, William, and Reviel Netz, The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist, Da Capo Press (New York, NY), 2007.

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April, 1998, C.M. Kaufmann, review of The Harley Psalter, p. 495.

Booklist, September 15, 2007, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book Is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist, p. 10.

Choice, September, 2003, T.A. Chavez, "Medieval Mastery: Book Illumination from Charlemagne to Charles the Bold, 800-1475," p. 133.

Internet Bookwatch, January, 2008, review of The Archimedes Codex.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, July, 1997, Richard Gameson, review of The Harley Psalter, p. 540; July, 1998, Dominic Marner, review of The Utrecht Psalter in Medieval Art: Picturing the Psalms of David, p. 524; January, 2003, Nigel Saul, review of New Offerings, Ancient Treasures: Studies in Medieval Art for George Henderson, p. 114.

Mathematics, February, 2008, Paul J. Campbell, review of The Archimedes Codex, p. 70.

Nature, November 15, 2007, Brian Clegg, "Archimedes' Secrets Revealed," p. 352.

Publishers Weekly, July 23, 2007, review of The Archimedes Codex, p. 57.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2008, review of The Archimedes Codex.

Science News, December 15, 2007, review of The Archimedes Codex, p. 383.

Times Literary Supplement, August 16, 1996, review of The Harley Psalter, p. 32; October 12, 2007, Andrew Benedict-Nelson, review of The Archimedes Codex, p. 34.

USA Today, Paul Sakuma, "Beams Reveal Archimedes' Hidden Writings."