Architecture And Visual Culture In The Late Antique And Medieval Mediterranean

The book comprises fourteen essays addressing issues of art and architecture as well as archaeology within the context of sacred space, broadly defined and encompassing a wide range of territories, methodologies, approaches, and scholarly concerns. Our point of departure is the built environment, with all that this encompasses, including religious and political ceremony, painted interiors and illuminated manuscripts, patronage, contested space, structural and environmental concerns, sensory properties, the written word as it pertains to architectural projects, and imagined spaces. In all, the scholars involved in this project find fresh approaches and uncover new meanings and interpretations in the material approached within this volume, including buildings and objects found from Europe to Asia, spanning from Late Antiquity through the end of the Middle Ages.

Late Antique artefacts, and the images they carry, attest to a highly connected visual culture from ca. 300 to 800 C.E. On the one hand, the same decorative motifs and iconographies are found across various genres of visual and material culture, irrespective of social and economic differences among their users – for instance in mosaics, architectural decoration, and luxury arts (silver plate, textiles, ivories), as well as in everyday objects such as tableware, lamps, and pilgrim vessels. On the other hand, they are also spread in geographically distant regions, mingled with local elements, far beyond the traditional borders of the classical world. At the same time, foreign motifs, especially of Germanic and Sasanian origin, are attested in Roman territories. This volume aims at investigating the reasons behind this seemingly globalised visual culture spread across the Late Antique world, both within the borders of the (former) Roman and (later) Byzantine Empire and beyond, bringing together diverse approaches characteristic of different national and disciplinary traditions. The presentation of a wide range of relevant case studies chosen from different geographical and cultural contexts exemplifies the vast scale of the phenomenon and demonstrates the benefit of addressing such a complex historical question with a combination of different theoretical approaches.

Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World is a much-needed teaching anthology that rethinks and broadens the scope of the stale and limiting classifications used for Early Christian-Byzantine visual arts. A comprehensive anthology offering a new approach to the visual arts classified as Early Christian-Byzantine Comprised of essays from experts in the field that integrate the newer, historiographical research into 'the canon' of established scholarship Exposes the historical, geographical and cultural continuities and interactions in the visual arts of the late antique and medieval Mediterranean world Covers an extensive range of topics, including the effect that converging cultures in late antiquity had on art, the cultural identities that can be observed by looking at difference of tradition in visual art, and the variance of illuminations in holy books

The church annexes of late antique Cyprus were bustling places of industry, producing olive oil, flour, bread, ceramics, and metal products. From its earliest centuries, the church was an economic player, participating in agricultural and artisanal production. More than a Church brings together architecture, ceramics, numismatics, landscape archaeology, and unpublished excavation material, alongside consideration of Cyprus’s dynamic and prosperous 4th–10th-century history. Keane offers a rich picture of the association between sacred buildings and agricultural and industrial facilities—comprehensively presenting, for the first time, the church’s economic role and impact in late antique Cyprus.

This book offers a range of views on spolia and appropriation in art and architecture from fourth-century Rome to the late twentieth century. Using case studies from different historical moments and cultures, contributors test the limits of spolia as a critical category and seek to define its specific character in relation to other forms of artistic appropriation. Several authors explore the ethical issues raised by spoliation and their implications for the evaluation and interpretation of new work made with spolia. The contemporary fascination with spolia is part of a larger cultural preoccupation with reuse, recycling, appropriation and re-presentation in the Western world. All of these practices speak to a desire to make use of pre-existing artifacts (objects, images, expressions) for contemporary purposes. Several essays in this volume focus on the distinction between spolia and other forms of reused objects. While some authors prefer to elide such distinctions, others insist that spolia entail some form of taking, often violent, and a diminution of the source from which they are removed. The book opens with an essay by the scholar most responsible for the popularity of spolia studies in the later twentieth century, Arnold Esch, whose seminal article 'Spolien' was published in 1969. Subsequent essays treat late Roman antiquity, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Middle Ages, medieval and modern attitudes to spolia in Southern Asia, the Italian Renaissance, the European Enlightenment, modern America, and contemporary architecture and visual culture.

This volume builds upon the new worldwide interest in the global Middle Ages. It investigates the prismatic heritage and eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, while challenging the temporal and geographical parameters of the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and early-modern art. Contact and interchange between primarily the Latin, Greek, and Slavic cultural spheres resulted in local assimilations of select elements that reshaped the artistic landscapes of regions of the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Mountains, and further north. The specificities of each region, and, in modern times, politics and nationalistic approaches, have reinforced the tendency to treat them separately, preventing scholars from questioning whether the visual output could be considered as an expression of a shared history. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework of this volume provides a holistic view of the visual culture of these regions by addressing issues of transmission and appropriation, as well as notions of cross-cultural contact, while putting on the global map of art history the eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe.

This is the first major study to comprehensively analyze the art and architecture of the archdiocese of Bari and Canosa during the Byzantine period and the upheaval of the Norman conquest. The book places Bari and Canosa in a Mediterranean context, arguing that international connections with the eastern Mediterranean were a continuous thread that shaped art and architecture throughout the Byzantine and Norman eras. Clare Vernon has examined a wide variety of media, including architecture, sculpture, metalwork, manuscripts, epigraphy and luxury portable objects, as well as patronage, to illustrate how cross-cultural encounters, the first crusade, slavery and continuities and disruptions in the relationship with Constantinople, shaped the visual culture of the archdiocese. From Byzantine to Norman Italy will appeal to students and scholars of Byzantine art, the medieval Mediterranean and the Italo-Norman world.

"How do we understand religious spaces? What is their role or function within specific religious traditions or with respect to religious experience? This handbook brings together thirty-seven authors addressing these questions, using a range of methods to analyze specific spaces or types of spaces around the world and across time. Their methods are grounded in many disciplines: religious studies and religion, anthropology, archaeology, architectural history and architecture, cultural and religious history, sociology, gender and women's studies, geography, and political science, resulting in a distinctly interdisciplinary collection. These essays are snapshots, each offering a specific way to think about the religious space(s) under consideration: Roman shrines, Jewish synagogues, Christian churches, Muslim and Catholic shrines, indigenous spaces in Central America and East Africa, cemeteries, memorials, and others. They are organized here by geographical region rather than tradition, to emphasized the cultural roots of religion and religious spaces. Several overarching principles emerge from these snapshots. The authors demonstrate that religious spaces are simultaneously individual and collective, personal, and social; that they are influenced by culture, tradition, and immediate circumstances; and that they participate in various relationships of power. Most importantly, these essays demonstrate that religious spaces do not simply provide a convenient background for religious action but are also constituent of religious meaning and religious experience, that is, they play an active role in creating, expressing, broadcasting, maintaining, and transforming religious meaning, experience"--