Semantic Content and Utterance Context: A Spectrum of Approaches

Sources for Byzantine Art History

Volume 3: The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (1081–c.1350)

Foteini Spingou

University of Edinburgh

Description

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.

Key Features

• Gathers and presents in the original text and in translation a huge number of primary sources on Byzantine visual culture • Identifies the major cultural and social tendencies of later Byzantium • Suggests a new periodization of Byzantine cultural history which sheds light on the intellectual developments between the late eleventh and early fourteenth century

Contents

Part I. Art, Aesthetics and Literature: 1. Notions of the image in later Byzantium; 2. Artists and patrons; 3. Eikon and iconography in later Byzantium; 4. Materials; 5. Seeing spaces: responses to built environment; 6. Art and devotion; 7. Memory and art; 8. Beauty; Part II. Literature, Art and Aesthetics: 9. Counting down: inventories; 10. Describing, experiencing, narrating: the use of ekphrasis (ca. 1081–1330s); 11. Speaking: Ethopoiiae; 12. Instructing and dedicating: epigrams on works of art; 13. Reading: book epigrams; 14. Marking: later Byzantine epigraphic culture; 15. Lamenting: tomb epigrams and epitaphs.

Additional Information

Level: Academic researchers, graduate students Series: Sources for Byzantine Art History

August 2021 228 x 152 mm c.500pp 978-1-108-48305-6 Multiple copy pack £200.00 / US$260.00