Art and Archaeology in Byzantium and Beyond

Art and Archaeology in Byzantium and Beyond
Author: Dionysios Mourelatos
Publisher:
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: Archaeology
ISBN: 9781407356488

This volume offers 21 essays that cover a wide range of topics in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art and Archaeology.

The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture

The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture
Author: Ellen C. Schwartz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 665
Release: 2021-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197572200

Byzantine art has been an underappreciated field, often treated as an adjunct to the arts of the medieval West, if considered at all. In illustrating the richness and diversity of art in the Byzantine world, this handbook will help establish the subject as a distinct field worthy of serious inquiry. Essays consider Byzantine art as art made in the eastern Mediterranean world, including the Balkans, Russia, the Near East and north Africa, between the years 330 and 1453. Much of this art was made for religious purposes, created to enhance and beautify the Orthodox liturgy and worship space, as well as to serve in a royal or domestic context. Discussions in this volume will consider both aspects of this artistic creation, across a wide swath of geography and a long span of time. The volume marries older, object-based considerations of themes and monuments which form the backbone of art history, to considerations drawing on many different methodologies-sociology, semiotics, anthropology, archaeology, reception theory, deconstruction theory, and so on-in an up-to-date synthesis of scholarship on Byzantine art and architecture. The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Art and Architecture is a comprehensive overview of a particularly rich field of study, offering a window into the world of this fascinating and beautiful period of art.

Secular Byzantine Women

Secular Byzantine Women
Author: Sophia Germanidou
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2022-03-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 100053734X

Secular Byzantine Women examines female material culture during the Late Roman, Byzantine, and Post-Byzantine eras, to better understand the lives of ordinary and humble women during this period. Although recent scholarship has contributed greatly to our knowledge of Byzantine and medieval women, such research has largely focused on female saints, imperial figures, and prominent women of local communities. But what about secular and non-privileged women? Bringing together scholars from various fields, including archaeology, history, theology, anthropology, and ethnography, this volume seeks to answer this important question. The chapters examine the everyday lives of lay women, including their working routines, their clothing, and precious possessions. This book will appeal to scholars and students of Byzantine history, art, and archaeology, as well as those interested in gender and material culture studies.

Through a Glass Brightly

Through a Glass Brightly
Author: Chris Entwistle
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2016-09-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1785702734

The twenty-five papers in this volume cover diverse aspects of the material culture of the late Roman, Byzantine and Medieval periods, with particular emphasis on the metalwork and enamel of these times. Individual papers include major reinterpretations of objects in the British Museum's Byzantine collections as well as essays devoted to the Museum's recent acquisitions in this field. The volume celebrates the retirement of David Buckton, for over twenty years the curator of the British Museum's Early Christian and Byzantine collections and the National Icon Collection.

Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium

Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium
Author: Sharon E. J. Gerstel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2015-07-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0521851599

This is the first book to examine the late Byzantine village through written, archaeological and painted sources.

Byzantium and Islam

Byzantium and Islam
Author: Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588394573

This magnificent volume explores the epochal transformations and unexpected continuities in the Byzantine Empire from the 7th to the 9th century. At the beginning of the 7th century, the Empire's southern provinces, the vibrant, diverse areas of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, were at the crossroads of exchanges reaching from Spain to China. These regions experienced historic upheavals when their Christian and Jewish communities encountered the emerging Islamic world, and by the 9th century, an unprecedented cross- fertilization of cultures had taken place. This extraordinary age is brought vividly to life in insightful contributions by leading international scholars, accompanied by sumptuous illustrations of the period's most notable arts and artifacts. Resplendent images of authority, religion, and trade—embodied in precious metals, brilliant textiles, fine ivories, elaborate mosaics, manuscripts, and icons, many of them never before published— highlight the dynamic dialogue between the rich array of Byzantine styles and the newly forming Islamic aesthetic. With its masterful exploration of two centuries that would shape the emerging medieval world, this illuminating publication provides a unique interpretation of a period that still resonates today.

The Archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia

The Archaeology of Byzantine Anatolia
Author: Philipp Niewohner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2017-03-17
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0190610476

This book accounts for the tumultuous period of the fifth to eleventh centuries from the Fall of Rome and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire through the breakup of the Eastern Roman Empire and loss of pan-Mediterranean rule, until the Turks arrived and seized Anatolia. The volume is divided into a dozen syntheses that each addresses an issue of intrigue for the archaeology of Anatolia, and two dozen case studies on single sites that exemplify its richness. Anatolia was the only major part of the Roman Empire that did not fall in late antiquity; it remained steadfast under Roman rule through the eleventh century. Its personal history stands to elucidate both the emphatic impact of Roman administration in the wake of pan-Mediterranean collapse. Thanks to Byzantine archaeology, we now know that urban decline did not set in before the fifth century, after Anatolia had already be thoroughly Christianized in the course of the fourth century; we know now that urban decline, as it occurred from the fifth century onwards, was paired with rural prosperity, and an increase in the number, size, and quality of rural settlements and in rural population; that this ruralization was halted during the seventh to ninth centuries, when Anatolia was invaded first by the Persians, and then by the Arabs---and the population appears to have sought shelter behind new urban fortifications and in large cathedrals. Further, it elucidates that once the Arab threat had ended in the ninth century, this ruralization set in once more, and most cities seem to have been abandoned or reduced to villages during the ensuing time of seeming tranquility, whilst the countryside experienced renewed prosperity; that this trend was reversed yet again, when the Seljuk Turks appeared on the scene in the eleventh century, devastated the countryside and led to a revival and refortification of the former cities. This dynamic historical thread, traced across its extremes through the lens of Byzantine archaeology, speaks not only to the torrid narrative of Byzantine Anatolia, but to the enigmatic medievalization.

Reconstructing the Reality of Images

Reconstructing the Reality of Images
Author: Maria G. Parani
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 720
Release: 2003
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9789004124622

This examination of realia in Byzantine religious painting provides valuable information on Byzantine dress, household effects and implements, while introducing at the same time an alternative, literally 'objective', approach to the study of the formative processes of Byzantine art.