This is the first book to investigate the place of color in Byzantine art. By engaging the issue on both a technical level--how colors were made, what colors were available--and a perceptual level--how these colors were seen and described--James offers a new approach to the study of color in art history. Including sixty-four color illustrations, most never before published, James's study offers a unique view of the details of Byzantine art.

This book records the many years of experience of George Kordis' use of egg tempera, which after many tests and research he combines with a specific type of sub-painting. It shows that this technique, which is a personal technological proposal, can be combined with the traditional Byzantine style, established for centuries in the Hellenic lands as the appropriate way for the rendering of Orthodox images.In the first chapters of the first part, the Byzantine painting system's visual autonomy is examined, with reference to the western naturalistic painting system and other contemporary artistic proposals. The foundation of the findings is attempted with an analysis of selected works of Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting. A detailed description of the egg tempera technique is given by sub-painting and evaluation based on its functionality in the Byzantine painting system.In the second part, the technique of egg tempera with sub-painting is presented on a laboratory level. More specifically, methods of preparation of the host (wood) are presented, gilding techniques, and mainly how landscapes, clothes, objects, faces, and compositions are painted with the technique of egg tempera with sub-painting. Also included are appendices from fresco paintings and icons painted with the method presented in the book.

"Explores the Byzantine aesthetic of fugitive appearances by placing and filming art objects in spaces of changing light, and by uncovering the shifting appearances expressed in poetry, descriptions of art, and liturgical performance"--Provided by publisher.

Using new methodological and theoretical approaches, A Companionto Byzantium presents an overview of the Byzantine world fromits inception in 330 A.D. to its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Provides an accessible overview of eleven centuries ofByzantine society Introduces the most recent scholarship that is transforming thefield of Byzantine studies Emphasizes Byzantium's social and cultural history, as well asits material culture Explores traditional topics and themes through freshperspectives

In this book, a distinguished team of authors explores the way space, place, architecture, and ritual interact to construct sacred experience in the historical cultures of the eastern Mediterranean. Essays address fundamental issues and features that enable buildings to perform as spiritually transformative spaces in ancient Greek, Roman, Jewish, early Christian, and Byzantine civilizations. Collectively they demonstrate the multiple ways in which works of architecture and their settings were active agents in the ritual process. Architecture did not merely host events; rather, it magnified and elevated them, interacting with rituals facilitating the construction of ceremony. This book examines comparatively the ways in which ideas and situations generated by the interaction of place, built environment, ritual action, and memory contributed to the cultural formulation of the sacred experience in different religious faiths.

A unique investigation into the aesthetics of colour in Islamic art revealing its deeper symbolic and mystical meanings. The experience of colour in Islamic visual culture has historically been overlooked. In this new approach, Idries Trevathan examines the language of colour in Islamic art and architecture in dialogue with its aesthetic contexts, offering insights into the pre-modern Muslim experience of interpreting colour. The seventeenth-century Shah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran, represents one of the finest examples of colour-use on a grand scale. Here, Trevathan examines the philosophical and mystical traditions that formed the mosque's backdrop. He shows how careful combinations of colour and design proportions in Islamic patterns expresses knowledge beyond that experienced in the corporeal world, offering another language with which to know and experience God. Colour thus becomes a spiritual language, calling for a re-consideration of how we read Islamic aesthetics.

This new publication brings together a range of leading scholars from Europe, America and the Middle East to discuss the most recent research in the field of Byzantine glass and mosaics in an interdisciplinary context. New Light on Old Glass explores how mosaics are perhaps the most outstanding examples of Byzantine art which survive; revealing changing aesthetics and issues surrounding the technical production of glass in medieval artistic practices. This is the first time that so many diverse papers, ranging from art history, archaeology, chemistry, physics and Byzantine studies have been assembled in one volume, and is the culmination of a five-year research programme on the Composition of Byzantine Glass Mosaic Tesserae, conducted by the University of Sussex in conjunction with the British Museum and sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust.

Paramount in the shaping of early Byzantine identity was the construction of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (532-537 CE). This book examines the edifice from the perspective of aesthetics to define the concept of beauty and the meaning of art in early Byzantium. Byzantine aesthetic thought is re-evaluated against late antique Neoplatonism and the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius that offer fundamental paradigms for the late antique attitude towards art and beauty. These metaphysical concepts of aesthetics are ultimately grounded in experiences of sensation and perception, and reflect the ways in which the world and reality were perceived and grasped, signifying the cultural identity of early Byzantium. There are different types of aesthetic data, those present in the aesthetic object and those found in aesthetic responses to the object. This study looks at the aesthetic data embodied in the sixth-century architectural structure and interior decoration of Hagia Sophia as well as in literary responses (ekphrasis) to the building. The purpose of the Byzantine ekphrasis was to convey by verbal means the same effects that the artefact itself would have caused. A literary analysis of these rhetorical descriptions recaptures the Byzantine perception and expectations, and at the same time reveals the cognitive processes triggered by the Great Church. The central aesthetic feature that emerges from sixth-century ekphraseis of Hagia Sophia is that of light. Light is described as the decisive element in the experience of the sacred space and light is simultaneously associated with the notion of wisdom. It is argued that the concepts of light and wisdom are interwoven programmatic elements that underlie the unique architecture and non-figurative decoration of Hagia Sophia. A similar concern for the phenomenon of light and its epistemological dimension is reflected in other contemporary monuments, testifying to the pervasiveness of these aesthetic values in early Byzantium.

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.

Sacred Shock attempts to lay bare the inner workings of Byzantine art by looking closely at the marginal or subsidiary areas in works of art.