brian longreally interesting review of Trish Skinner's new book on Living with Disfigurement in early medieval Europe, with consideration of material from Ireland to Byzantium, and going into the 12th c.
"Images of faces abound in medieval art, and Skinner doesn’t overlook iconography as a potential source of evidence, but what we don’t have are detailed, naturalistic portraits of specific individuals from this period. An absence of actual faces – let alone disfigured ones – reflects the widespread conviction that appearances and essences were different and irreconcilable things."
this generalization seems a little broad to me, though I certainly can't think of any good counterexx