"The Christian canon of scripture, known as the New Testament, excluded many of the church's traditional stories about its origins. This book provides a lucid introduction to the relationship between the apocryphal texts and the paintings, mosaics, and sculpture in which they are frequently paralleled, and which have been so significant in transmitting these non-Biblical stories to generations of churchgoers. It reveals the enduring power of the Christian apocrypha in both text and art, and displays the artworks themselves in a new light. The volume contains more than 100 plates, and numerous extracts from the apocryphal texts."--Jacket.