Ars Sacra

This book deals with the art of church treasuries and cloisters in the early middle ages in Europe - the work of goldsmiths, ivory carvers, bronze casters, enamellers and wood carvers. These so-called 'Minor Arts' played a major creative role alongside the other pictorial arts and architectural sculpture.

The book traces the unbroken development of the Sacred Arts and their interrelationships throughout Europe from the Renovatio of the arts - the 'Rebirth of Antiquity' - encouraged under the Emperor Charlemagne in the late eighth century, until a renewed and fresh appreciation of the natural world - the Gothic - began to replace the powerful stylisations and the last vestiges of the classical tradition of the Romanesque in the early thirteenth century.

About the Author

Lasko grew up in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. His father, Leo Lasko, was a prominent figure in the German film industry and a Jew. The younger Lasko knew the avant-garde and Bauhaus sensibilities first hand. With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, Lasko's father retired to Paris, but returned Germany believing the threat to Jews had passed. Leo Lasko fled again in 1936, this time to England and the family, including Peter, his mother, Wally, and sister, followed in 1937. Lasko first considered being a painter and attended Hammersmith and St Martin's School of Art, but switched to art history at Birkbeck College, under the guidance of Nikolaus Pevsner (q.v.). Lasko was admitted to the Courtauld Institute in 1946. His German background won him friends with the refugee art historians at the University of London and the Warburg. He became a British subject in 1948, marrying Lyn Norman the same year. Lasko graduated from the University of London in 1949. He was appointed assistant keeper in the department of British and medieval antiquities of the British Museum in 1950