The visual culture of later Byzantium (c.1081-c.1350)

Abstract

"In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual."--Publisher's description.

Contents

Part I. Art, aesthetics, and literature: Notions of the image in later Byzantium ; Artists and patrons ; Eikon and iconography in art and literature ; Materials ; Seeing spaces : responses to the built environment ; Art and devotion in later Byzantium ; Memory and art -- Part II. [Part I]: Beauty: introduction: Everyday beauty ; Natural beauty ; Human beauty ; Artistic beauty ; Part II. Literature, art, and aesthetics: Counting down : inventories ; Describing, experiencing, narrating : the use of Ekphrasis ; Speaking : Ethopoiia ; Instructing and dedicating : epigrams on works of art ; Reading : book epigrams ; Inscribing : later Byzantine epigraphic culture ; Lamenting : tomb epigrams.