Medieval visual art ignored accurate texts to keep the Saracen idol-worship stereotype

Evidence

The persistence of this image—across a wide variety of texts in numerous European languages—has surprised many modern critics and historians; it is all the more astonishing in that it persists in the face of more reliable information about Islam. A reader of William of Tyre’s Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, for example, would learn that the Saracens revered Muhammad as a prophet and rejected worship of idols. Yet an illuminator of one of the manuscripts of a French translation of William’s text tells a different story. He portrays a group of Saracens worshiping a naked, shield-bearing idol in the temple of Jerusalem (see illustration). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 719

Categorization

• XREF: Strong parallel to my notes on how images and text diverge in transmission; also connects to the general theme that stereotypes survive exposure to contrary evidence.
• SEED: Article angle: when images override text in cultural transmission — the manuscript illuminator who knew the text said Saracens were monotheists yet painted idol worship anyway — what this says about the stickiness of visual stereotypes.
• QUESTION: Why did the illuminator choose idol worship despite the text? Was it genre convention, audience expectation, or a template he simply reused? Worth chasing the scholarship on this manuscript.