"This is an intellectually ambitious, rigorously argued, and erudite book that explores visual strategies and their theoretical underpinnings of 'empty spaces' in medieval manuscripts. A must-read for scholars of medieval and northern Renaissance art and intellectual history."

--Nino Zchomelidse, author of Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy

"This is one of the most original books I have read--original in its conception and subject, in the materials studied and illustrated, in the numerous questions posed, and in its compelling conclusions. It is a potentially paradigm-shifting work that will affect how we perceive illustrated manuscripts and that should finally put to rest for art historians the 'intentional fallacy' long rejected by literary historians."

--Richard K. Emmerson, author of Apocalypse Illuminated: The Visual Exegesis of Revelation in Medieval Illustrated Manuscripts

"Gertsman makes a convincing argument, and at times shows a wonderful novelistic sensibility in describing the micro-dramas on display."

--Times Literary Supplement

"With a Midas-like touch, Elina Gertsman has a gift for turning her every subject into scholarly gold. The Absent Image is no exception."

--Brigitte Buettner Studies in Iconography

"Elina Gertsman's The Absent Image is a rarefied treat for connoisseurs - a kind of apophatic art history. She explores a phenomenon that is seldom studied: the voids, gaps and empty frames that manuscript artists used to represent the unrepresentable."

--Barbara Newman London Review of Books

"The book is amusing and thought-provoking in the best sense, and the lavish illustrations create much food for thought, not out of nothing but from a wealth of varied examples."

--Thomas Rainer CAA.Reviews

"Gertsman's book is absolutely brilliant, a paragon of scholarship to be held up as a model to students and colleagues alike."

--Lauren Mancia Medieval Review

"This brilliant book deftly turns on its head the assumption that visual engagement with emptiness is mainly a product of modernity."

--Robert Mills Speculum