Throughout history the women of the Bible have figured prominently in a great wealth of occidental art and have inspired important themes in world literature, fables, legends, songs, and folk stories. This beautiful volume shows how the women of Scripture have been variously portrayed in art and literature throughout the centuries - even as it reinterprets these portrayals for people today. Here are the great women of the Bible, from Eve to Mary, as portrayed by artists from the early Christian period to the present day. Each sequence of illustrations - including photographs of sculptures, frescoes, panels, miniatures, and modern graphics - is accompanied by a detailed caption that clarifies the particular vision of each artist represented. The women of the Bible also appear here as they are depicted in texts from the Bible, the Apocrypha, Coptic literature, the Talmud, the Koran, and the treasury of religious legends. Further references have been culled from the great works of literature, from writers such as Dante, Goethe, Thomas Mann, Gustave Flaubert, and Oscar Wilde - men who were fascinated by the power of the biblical texts and who interpreted the female characters in new, creative ways.