The Slow Breath of Stone: A Romanesque Love Story by Pamela Petro

An absorbing travel book, a meditation on geology, photography, Romanesque art, and the romance of physical decline, The Slow Breath of Stone throws a mirror on Europe of the Middle Ages and its hold on us today. In the years following the devastations of the first world war, a brilliant, young American couple, Kingsley and Lucy Porter, traveled to south-west France to document the abbeys and basilicas of the Romanesque period. Their extraordinary photographs revealed some of the most feverishly inventive stonescapes in Europe, stories chiselled from the Bible and nightmares: rams playing harps and devils eating men's brains; a female centaur pulling a mermaid's hair; women suckling snakes at their breasts. For the Porters, these were images of an imagined world that unlocked secrets of the 11th century but, menacingly, cast a dark shadow over their marriage. In The Slow Breath of Stone, Pamela Petro rents a car and, using the Porter's photographs and Lucy's journal as her map, retraces their journey through the wild landscapes of the Rouergue. This 2006 HarperCollins UK Hardback is in good condition. DJ.

ISBN: 9780002571470 SKU: 1392402 This image is of the actual book.

SKU: 1392402
Location: Travel