"This handbook offers a wide-ranging introduction to the richness and diversity of the arts in the Byzantine world. It includes thirty-eight essays by international authors, from prominent researchers to emerging scholars, on various issues and media. Discussions consider art created for religious purposes, to enhance and beautify the Orthodox liturgy and worship space, as well as art made to serve in royal and domestic contexts. While Byzantium is defined as the years 330-1453 CE, some chapters treat the aftermath and influence of Byzantine art on later periods. Arts covered include buildings and objects from the Eastern Mediterranean region, including the Balkans, Russia, North Africa, and the Near East. The volume brings together object-based considerations of themes and monuments which form the backbone of art history, with considerations drawing on many different methodologies-sociology, semiotics, anthropology, archaeology, reception theory, deconstruction theory, among others-all 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 rich field of study, offering a window into the world of this distinct and fascinating period of art"--

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.

Traces the history of Christian art in Bulgaria, from the founding of the nation to the present day.

The fourteen essays in this collection demonstrate a wide variety of approaches to the study of Byzantine architecture and its decoration, a reflection of both newer trends and traditional scholarship in the field. The variety is also a reflection of Professor Curcic’s wide interests, which he shares with his students. These include the analysis of recent archaeological discoveries; recovery of lost monuments through archival research and onsite examination of material remains; reconsidering traditional typological approaches often ignored in current scholarship; fresh interpretations of architectural features and designs; contextualization of monuments within the landscape; tracing historiographic trends; and mining neglected written sources for motives of patronage. The papers also range broadly in terms of chronology and geography, from the Early Christian through the post-Byzantine period and from Italy to Armenia. Three papers examine Early Christian monuments, and of these two expand the inquiry into their architectural afterlives. Others discuss later monuments in Byzantine territory and monuments in territories related to Byzantium such as Serbia, Armenia, and Norman Italy. No Orthodox church being complete without interior decoration, two papers discuss issues connected to frescoes in late medieval Balkan churches. Finally, one study investigates the continued influence of Byzantine palace architecture long after the fall of Constantinople.

A winged centaur with the spotted body of a leopard playing a lute; a naked man with an animal head; a goat-footed Pan; a four-bodied lion; sphinxes, and hippocamps. Few would associate these forms of art with the Byzantine era, a period dominated by religious art. However, an art of strikingly secular expression was not only common to Byzantine culture, but also key to defining it. In Other Icons, Eunice Dauterman Maguire and Henry Maguire offer the first comprehensive view of this "unofficial" Byzantine art, demonstrating the role it played and its dialogue with traditional Christian Byzantine art. This beautifully illustrated book creates an entirely new understanding of the whole of Byzantine art and culture. With its wide-ranging examples, the book vividly demonstrates how the surprise of this "profane" art is not only in its subjects of mythic creatures, exotic imagery, and eroticism, but also in the ubiquity and beauty of their placement--within churches and without, woven into silk, illuminated on manuscripts, engraved into pottery, painted in frescoes, and taking life in marble, bone, and ivory. By presenting and exploring this profane art for the first time in a scholarly book in English, Other Icons will change the way we look at the art of an entire era.

According to a longstanding interpretation, book religions are agents of textuality and logocentrism. This volume inverts the traditional perspective: its focus is on the strong dependency between scripture and aesthetics, holy books and material artworks, sacred texts and ritual performances. The contributions, written by a group of international specialists in Western, Byzantine, Islamic and Jewish Art, are committed to a comparative and transcultural approach. The authors reflect upon the different strategies of »clothing« sacred texts with precious materials and elaborate forms. They show how the pretypographic cultures of the Middle Ages used book ornaments as media for building a close relation between the divine words and their human audience. By exploring how art shapes the religious practice of books, and how the religious use of books shapes the evolution of artistic practices this book contributes to a new understanding of the deep nexus between sacred scripture and art.

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.