Elena Boeck | DePaul University (original) (raw)
Books by Elena Boeck
The Bronze Horseman of Justinian in Constantinople: The Cross-Cultural Biography of a Mediterranean Monument, 2021
Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was... more Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was crowned with arguably the largest metal equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire’s bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian’s column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have undervalued its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. This book analyzes Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons to provide an engrossing and pioneering biography of a contested medieval monument during the millennium of its life.
Two lavish, illustrated histories confronted and contested the Byzantine model of empire. The Mad... more Two lavish, illustrated histories confronted and contested the Byzantine model of empire. The Madrid Skylitzes was created at the court of Roger II of Sicily in the mid-twelfth century. The Vatican Manasses was produced for Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria in the mid-fourteenth century. Through close analysis of how each chronicle was methodically manipulated, this study argues that Byzantine history was selectively re-imagined to suit the interests of outsiders. The Madrid Skylitzes foregrounds regicides, rebellions, and palace intrigue in order to subvert the divinely ordained image of order that Byzantine rulers preferred to project. The Vatican Manasses presents Byzantium as a platform for the accession of Ivan Alexander to the throne of the Third Rome, the last and final world-empire. Imagining the Byzantine Past demonstrates how distinct visions of empire generated diverging versions of Byzantium's past in the aftermath of the Crusades.
Papers by Elena Boeck
![Research paper thumbnail of Making the Roman Past(s) Come Alive. Manuel Chrysoloras, Cyriac of Ancona, and Andrea Mantegna's Triumphs of Caesar [corrected proof]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/78519277/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe, ed. Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff (Dumbarton Oaks), 2021
Andrea Mantegna's much-admired nine-panel monumental cycle Triumphs of Caesar (1480s-1506?) celeb... more Andrea Mantegna's much-admired nine-panel monumental cycle Triumphs of Caesar (1480s-1506?) celebrates imperial power by visualizing in meticulous detail a Roman triumph. Though their precise historical subject remains elusive, the panels are replete with careful representations of authentic, known ancient objects. At the same time, a triumphal column surmounted by a colossal bronze horseman that features prominently on one of the panels remains a historiographic mystery. I argue here that the legacy of two intellectuals steeped in knowledge of Byzantium, Manuel Chrysoloras and Cyriac of Ancona, provided the inspiration for this prominent elevated horseman. Memories of the triumphal column of Justinian, the Constantinopolitan signifier of empire, were instrumental in Mantegna's decision to populate his historical landscape of old Rome with a colossal monument. Mantegna inserted the column into his monumental vision of ancient Rome to elide the historical space between the Old and the New Rome, and in doing so implicitly expanded the category of monuments redolent of Rome's imperial past.
Manteqna's antiquarian relocation of Constantinople's greatest imperial monument to Rome brought Manuel Chrysoloras's ideas full circle. Chrysoloras elevated monuments of the past as worthy evidence. Cyriac of Ancona made them worthy of admiration, demonstrating their value to antiquarian pursuits and alerting scholars to the enormous importance of visual and epigraphic evidence. After the fall of Constantinople, the lost monument was granted new life in intellectual spaces between the real and the imagined, the antiquarian and the allegorical. It took Andrea Mantegna to give this lost monument a place in history. Taking the greatest and most cross-culturally significant Byzantine sculptural monument, he projected it back into the past of Rome and into a vision of Roman and Western history cherished by antiquarians.
Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity, ed. Roland Betancourt and Maria Taroutina (Brill, 2015), Aug 2015
Victorien Sardou's Theodora (first staged in 1884) introduced mass audiences to Byzantium and lit... more Victorien Sardou's Theodora (first staged in 1884) introduced mass audiences to Byzantium and literally created Byzantine realities for its spectators. This play was the most successful collaboration between Victorien Sardou and the tremendously celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. In the process of selling scandal, murder, intrigue, grand spectacle, opulent costumes, and dangerous liaisons, the seductive performance of Byzantine decadence actively shaped indexical, iconic, and ontological frameworks for the Byzantine empire within Euro-American visual and cultural discourse. Acclaimed as the greatest spectacle of the nineteenth century, the play also became a major bane for scholars of Byzantine studies, for it actively participated in positioning Byzantium within an established system of knowledge. Was it Greek or Roman, familiar or hybrid, barbaric or civilized, Oriental or another Other?
The image of Theodora perpetuated by Sardou would become firmly ensconced in the popular imagination, despite the best efforts of his critics. Sardou, Sarah Bernhardt, and their sumptuous Byzantine spectacle created a long-lasting impression upon the popular and academic imagination. Rather than scorn Sardou's play for its warped vision of Byzantium, Byzantinists should embrace it as a didactic example for probing how we, too, frame, claim, and re-frame Byzantium based on our own fashions, scholarly preoccupations, and shifting paradigms. Sardou serves as a useful reminder that, ultimately, we all create our own vision of Byzantium and we all get the Theodora we deserve.
![Research paper thumbnail of Fantasy, Supremacy, Domes, and Dames: Charlemagne Goes to Constantinople [uncorrected proofs]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/58243566/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean. History and Heritage, ed. Danielle Slootjes and Mariette Verhoevenn, 2019
A fascinating, overlooked medieval French romance, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à ... more A fascinating, overlooked medieval French romance, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople, made Byzantium the focus of ribaldry and ridicule. Through the hyperbolic looking glass of comedy, it made the destruction of Constantinople both imaginable and desirable. This text can be profitably studied as evidence of geopolitical competition, as a discourse on contemporary debates about imperial primacy and as a violent fantasy, which prefigures the conquest of Constantinople, by the Crusaders in 1204. Because it distills complicated geopolitical and cross-cultural confrontations into a simplified format, the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne offers rich material for analyzing both the reception of Byzantium and the emergence of colonial fantasies of supremacy.
Afterlives of Byzantine Monuments in Post-Byzantine Times, 2021
The concept of 'afterlife' functions as a productive metaphor for shaping scholarly inquiries dev... more The concept of 'afterlife' functions as a productive metaphor for shaping scholarly inquiries devoted to Byzantium's ruptures and genitures, legacies and continuities, long shadows and persistent shades of grey. Exploring Byzantium's afterlives can variously involve latency, tenacity, and vivacity. Latency encapsulates the potential for Byzantine ideas, concepts, frames and forms to become actualized once again. Time lags could even enhance their perceived authenticity, authority or value. Tenacity points to persistence against unfair odds or changing circumstances. Vivacity can mean either the continuation of Byzantine forms or the conscious revival or selective recovery of 'Byzantine' ideals. A silent conspiracy across the ages united caretakers, stake-holders, artists, copyists and pious enthusiasts who were committed to proposition that Byzantium was not dead to them.
The concept of 'post-Byzantine' is a far more complicated construct that the concept of Byzantium's 'afterlives'. Is 'Post-Byzantine' a period or a process? Is it one preeminent act of political extinction (1453) or a series of interconnected moments unfolding in different places, at different speeds, with differing intellectual valences? Can one concept simultaneously encompass both aggressive appropriations of the Byzantine legacy and protective, defensive invocations of it? Even if we can agree on when Byzantium was consigned to the past, we still have to find nuanced ways of analyzing how Byzantium became consigned to the past.
From Istanbul to Byzantium. Paths to Rediscovery, 1800-1955, ed. Brigitte Pitarakis, 2021
An auspicious event for the history of Byzantine studies took place in 1884. It was of lasting i... more An auspicious event for the history of Byzantine studies took place in 1884. It was of lasting importance for shaping scholarly understanding of an iconic monument of Istanbul. The first comprehensive scholarly study and extensive photographic corpus of the Chora mosaics were completed that year. The key protagonists in this event were the Russian Byzantinist Nikodim Kondakov and his collaborator, the French photographer Jean Xavier Raoult. The pairing of cutting-edge, photographic technology with Russian scholarly expertise rescued the Chora mosaics from claims of Western influence and forever cemented their centrality in the corpus of Byzantine art.
The Eloquence of Art: Studies in Honour of Henry Maguire, ed. Andrea Olsen Lam and Rossitza Schroeder, 2020
In 1892 a marvel of bibliophile luxury boldly attempted to shift the international discourse on B... more In 1892 a marvel of bibliophile luxury boldly attempted to shift the international discourse on Byzantine art. It was the publication of the collection of enamels belonging to a wealthy Russian collector Alexander Zwenigorodskoi. Though now nearly forgotten, this book remains the most authoritative and comprehensive academic study of Byzantine enamels. Written by Nikodim Kondakov and dedicated to Tsar Alexander III, it was a tour de force of imperial Russia's Byzantium. A decade in the making, cleverly marketed and ostentatiously celebrated, the book exemplifies the best achievements of chromolithography. This study outlines the biography of this object, discusses its narrative framing of Byzantium, and touches upon the competitive world of nineteenth-century collectors and scholars. The Byzantium of this book was not only the intellectual foundation of the Russian empire, it was also the center of its cultural memory. Here Byzantium mirrors the breadth of the Russian empire, and incorporates 'Russo-Byzantine' and 'Russo-Georgian' into its territory. The book also provides an intellectual place for a productive relationship between East and West.
Afterlives of Byzantine Monuments in Post-Byzantine Times, Études Byzantines et Post-Byzantines, Nouvelle série Tome III (X), 2021
Nikodim Kondakov's visit to the former Chora Monastery (Kariye Camii) in 1880 marked a crucial fi... more Nikodim Kondakov's visit to the former Chora Monastery (Kariye Camii) in 1880 marked a crucial first step towards the emancipation of late Byzantine art from a Western framework of devaluation and appropriation. Kondakov, a great art historian of the Russian empire, was the first scholar to substantively publish and analyze the Chora mosaics. He allowed Byzantium creative agency and independent development outside the purview of western medieval art. His passionate exposition of the Chora mosaics as a glorious example of flourishing Byzantine art contested attempts to appropriate them as a western cultural accomplishment and associate them with the schools of Giotto or Duccio.
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 33/1 (2009): 17-41, 2009
In the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript (BN, Vitr. 26-2) representations of the Orthodox triumph over ... more In the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript (BN, Vitr. 26-2) representations of the Orthodox triumph over iconoclast heresy range from startlingly novel to seemingly incoherent. While previous studies have posited that the visual programme of the chronicle originates in Comnenian Constantinople, this article argues that the visual narrative is out of place in a climate of rigorous Comnenian Orthodoxy. The visual narrative actively restructures and revisions Byzantine history: iconoclast arch-villains such as John the Grammarian are assigned symbols of sanctity, Orthodox heroes such as patriarch Methodios and empress Theodora are obscured and misrepresented, and important events in the chronicle are turned into visual voids.
Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 25/3 (2009): 243-57, 2009
This article showcases a cloak-and-dagger visual sequence of imperial murder. The unique imagery... more This article showcases a cloak-and-dagger visual sequence of imperial murder. The unique imagery is found in the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript, the most ambitious illustrated history produced in the Mediterranean between late antiquity and the thirteenth century. Its illustrations were executed in Sicily at the court of Roger II in Palermo around the middle of the twelfth century.
Employing approaches developed in narrative theory and insights derived from studies of translation and adaptation, this article analyzes how the visual narrative selectively 'foregrounds' the bloody drama of the demise of emperor Leo V at the hands of his challenger Michael the Amorian. In this dialogic adaptation, an episode of Byzantine history was creatively restaged for visual display to a Sicilian audience. Produced in a place that was conversant in Byzantine culture, yet not bound by its political, ideological or representational constraints, the visual narrative navigates a novel third way between the Byzantine text and the manuscript's Sicilian context.
History as Literature in Byzantium, ed. Ruth Macrides, 2010
This article examines distinct approaches to visualizing Byzantine history in the Madrid Skylitze... more This article examines distinct approaches to visualizing Byzantine history in the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript and the Vatican Manasses manuscript. The two manuscripts carry a cumbersome analytical burden, since they constitute the most extensive surviving evidence for illuminated histories in Byzantium. Four case studies presented here evaluate how the ideological strategies of their pictorial narratives diverge. They reveal that each manuscript presents a distinct, dynamic, and culturally-specific interplay between text and image, visualization and politics.
The Art Bulletin, Sep 2009
The princely space in the turrets of St. Sophia in Kiev, the grandest Orthodox church of the elev... more The princely space in the turrets of St. Sophia in Kiev, the grandest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, is decorated with an image of the hippodrome, the primary public space for the display of imperial power in Constantinople. It formed a necessary link in a chain of Kievan grandeur, which aggrandized its prince and branded the city the preeminent political and cultural capital for a fledgling Rus' principality. It served as a backdrop for courtly show, communicated messages of sophisticated connoisseurship to visiting dignitaries, and affirmed Rus' membership among the exalted group of the established kings.
The largest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, St. Sophia of Kiev, challenges the boundarie... more The largest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, St. Sophia of Kiev, challenges the boundaries between the sacred and profane spheres. It unites under one roof carefully constructed representations of the sounds, movements, amusements and merriments of the Byzantine court and invocations of the stillness, silence and tears of Orthodox piety. These two irreconcilable realms were brought into dialogue for prince Jaroslav the 'Wise' (died 1054), a second generation Christian who prevailed over his rivals after decades of fratricidal conflict. While in Byzantium these two spheres had long ago established a clear modus vivendi, in Iaroslav's Rus' their relationship was just being formulated. St. Sophia of Kiev had to adapt to its prince. This building created a new balance between the sacred and profane spheres, in which Christian decorum had to accommodate the princely patron.
Dubitando: Studies in History and Culture in Honor of Donald Ostrowski
The St. Sophia cathedral in Kiev holds a key place in imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet s... more The St. Sophia cathedral in Kiev holds a key place in imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet scholarship as the starting point for a Rus' artistic tradition. This monument, not unjustly, has been viewed as a material embodiment of the Rus' principality's entrance into the broader Christian and European world. The "secular" frescoes of St. Sophia are unique, fascinating, and frustratingly incomplete. The monument's keystone position in foundational discourses has led scholars to creatively interpret limited evidence and to build grand structures on fragmentary and fragile foundations. This study explores the fertile terrain of scholarly ingenuity. It focuses on two failed attempts to find Rus' princesses on the walls of St. Sophia in order to provide a cautionary tale about the futility of basing grand conclusions on ambiguous and poorly preserved evidence.
Macedonia and the Balkans in the Byzantine Commonwealth, ed. Mitko Panov (Skopje, 2014), 2014
This article explores an important chapter in the visual memory and historical legacy of a key i... more This article explores an important chapter in the visual memory and historical legacy of a key imperial monument of Constantinople, the bronze equestrian statue of the emperor Justinian. The late-antique sculpture survived pillages of the Fourth Crusade to become a centerpiece of Constantinople's identity. Though it was destroyed by the Ottomans after the capture of Constantinople in 1453, its international renown outlived the physical monument. This study investigates how and why the bronze equestrian monument of Justinian was remembered in late-medieval Slavic images of Constantinople.
Manuscripta: A Journal of Manuscript Research 51/2 (2007): 181-208
Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria underwent a remarkable regal transformation within six years: while in... more Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria underwent a remarkable regal transformation within six years: while in a charter of 1342 he styled himself "tsar and autocrat of all Bulgarians," by 1348 he would become "tsar and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks." This study explores the patronage of Ivan Alexander (ruled 1331-71) in the context of his direct appropriation of the Byzantine legacy and considers how his claims to imperial authority over the Greeks were advanced in two very distinct illuminated books: a Tetraevangelion (Gospels) (London, BL, Add. Ms 39627) and a world history, the Chronicle of Constantine Manasses (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Vat. slav. 2). The two manuscripts present distinct narratives of legitimacy that visually and textually interweave the ruler and his family into a Byzantine framework.
This article discusses and contextualizes works of art from the Slavic world that were on display... more This article discusses and contextualizes works of art from the Slavic world that were on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition, Byzantium: Faith and Power (2004). The remarkable artworks on display in this exhibition were produced during a very dynamic and dramatic period in Byzantine history. While the empire was fragmented and gradually disintegrating, the allure and seduction of its culture remained powerful and palpable. It was also a period of complex cultural interaction and pervasive cultural synthesis, which unfolded against the backdrop of imminent Ottoman conquest. Cultural interaction was achieved in different ways: in contact, in conflict, in negotiations. The objects displayed in the exhibition embody complexities of these dialogues. Byzantium: Faith and Power defined its chronological boundaries from 1261, and the Byzantine recapture of Constantinople, to 1557, when the term “Byzantine” entered European discourse. One can argue that the latter boundary remains open since Orthodox culture, in Greece and in the Slavic countries, still preserves and celebrates the Byzantine legacy.
Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions, ed. Maria Alessia Rossi and Alice Isabella Sullivan, 2022
A large, multifigural icon of The Elevation of the Cross created in Russia in the sixteenth centu... more A large, multifigural icon of The Elevation of the Cross created in Russia in the sixteenth century offers a sophisticated architectural and ideological visualization of triumphant Orthodoxy in a world without Byzantium. Underscoring perpetual, performative harmony between ecclesiastical and imperial authorities, this icon also testifies that celebration of Orthodoxy took on new urgency in the post-Byzantine period. The Elevation of the Cross simultaneously celebrates Constantinople and elevates Russia. It deftly negotiates between tradition and innovation by instrumentalizing Constantinople as a link in the chain of Orthodox history.
The unusual icon represents Constantinople as both a visionary Orthodox ideal and as a physical, imperial city. The city is signified by an architectural pairing - the elaborate church of Hagia Sophia abutted by the sculpture of Justinian's horseman atop its tall column. For centuries this pairing was the foremost marvel of the city. The representation on the icon also accurately reflects the historical topography of Byzantine Constantinople - the two monuments stood in close proximity to each other. A unique representation of a buttress, shown in the upper left quadrant of the icon, supporting the dome of Hagia Sophia, commemorates the Russian contribution to the restoration of the Great Church during the Palaiologan period. Because Justinian's horseman was removed shortly after 1453, the icon also offers a timeless vision. Hagia Sophia and the column of Justinian are material embodiments of Tsar'grad, the imperial city. By anchoring the celebration of the cross in Constantinople, the icon creates a time-bending, transhistorical loop of commemoration.
It also makes space for both Byzantine and Muscovite historical actors. The icon diachronically envisions the Constantinopolitan roots of the feast of the Elevation of the Cross and depicts their liturgical flowering in Muscovy. It creates a political-ecclesiastical bridge between the Orthodox empire of the past and its successor. By constructing the image of Constantinople as it was before the city's fall to the Ottomans, the icon insists on an unsullied transfer of the Orthodox empire to the lands of Rus'. As such, it embodies a Russian view of Orthodox history, presenting translatio imperii by selectively engaging with the Byzantine past.
![Research paper thumbnail of More Numerous Than the Stars in Heaven An Early Eighteenth-Century Multimedia Compendium of Mariology [first proofs]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/56407139/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](in Amy Adams and Vera Szevzov, eds., Framing Mary: The Mother of God in Modern, Revolutionary, and Post-Soviet Russian Culture , 2018
An enormous, handwritten volume preserves a rich trove of narratives devoted to geographies of th... more An enormous, handwritten volume preserves a rich trove of narratives devoted to geographies of the sacred. This illustrated compendium of Mariology testifies to the tremendous cultural ferment in seventeenth-century Russia. Although in most historical narratives this period is consistently overshadowed by the intellectual output generated in the age of Peter the Great, it is important to recall that Russia's intellectual dialogue with distant knowledge, print culture, and encyclopedic scholarship began well before his reign. Orthodox intellectuals from Ukraine and Belarus served as a conduit for connecting literate Russians to Counter-Reformation discourses about the sacred. Well before the intense cultural exchanges that were carried out forcefully, often forcibly, by Peter, Russian intellectuals confronted and contested Western narratives that accorded little recognition to Russia in either the divine plan or the republic of letters.
The Bronze Horseman of Justinian in Constantinople: The Cross-Cultural Biography of a Mediterranean Monument, 2021
Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was... more Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was crowned with arguably the largest metal equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire’s bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian’s column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have undervalued its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. This book analyzes Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons to provide an engrossing and pioneering biography of a contested medieval monument during the millennium of its life.
Two lavish, illustrated histories confronted and contested the Byzantine model of empire. The Mad... more Two lavish, illustrated histories confronted and contested the Byzantine model of empire. The Madrid Skylitzes was created at the court of Roger II of Sicily in the mid-twelfth century. The Vatican Manasses was produced for Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria in the mid-fourteenth century. Through close analysis of how each chronicle was methodically manipulated, this study argues that Byzantine history was selectively re-imagined to suit the interests of outsiders. The Madrid Skylitzes foregrounds regicides, rebellions, and palace intrigue in order to subvert the divinely ordained image of order that Byzantine rulers preferred to project. The Vatican Manasses presents Byzantium as a platform for the accession of Ivan Alexander to the throne of the Third Rome, the last and final world-empire. Imagining the Byzantine Past demonstrates how distinct visions of empire generated diverging versions of Byzantium's past in the aftermath of the Crusades.
Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe, ed. Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff (Dumbarton Oaks), 2021
Andrea Mantegna's much-admired nine-panel monumental cycle Triumphs of Caesar (1480s-1506?) celeb... more Andrea Mantegna's much-admired nine-panel monumental cycle Triumphs of Caesar (1480s-1506?) celebrates imperial power by visualizing in meticulous detail a Roman triumph. Though their precise historical subject remains elusive, the panels are replete with careful representations of authentic, known ancient objects. At the same time, a triumphal column surmounted by a colossal bronze horseman that features prominently on one of the panels remains a historiographic mystery. I argue here that the legacy of two intellectuals steeped in knowledge of Byzantium, Manuel Chrysoloras and Cyriac of Ancona, provided the inspiration for this prominent elevated horseman. Memories of the triumphal column of Justinian, the Constantinopolitan signifier of empire, were instrumental in Mantegna's decision to populate his historical landscape of old Rome with a colossal monument. Mantegna inserted the column into his monumental vision of ancient Rome to elide the historical space between the Old and the New Rome, and in doing so implicitly expanded the category of monuments redolent of Rome's imperial past.
Manteqna's antiquarian relocation of Constantinople's greatest imperial monument to Rome brought Manuel Chrysoloras's ideas full circle. Chrysoloras elevated monuments of the past as worthy evidence. Cyriac of Ancona made them worthy of admiration, demonstrating their value to antiquarian pursuits and alerting scholars to the enormous importance of visual and epigraphic evidence. After the fall of Constantinople, the lost monument was granted new life in intellectual spaces between the real and the imagined, the antiquarian and the allegorical. It took Andrea Mantegna to give this lost monument a place in history. Taking the greatest and most cross-culturally significant Byzantine sculptural monument, he projected it back into the past of Rome and into a vision of Roman and Western history cherished by antiquarians.
Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity, ed. Roland Betancourt and Maria Taroutina (Brill, 2015), Aug 2015
Victorien Sardou's Theodora (first staged in 1884) introduced mass audiences to Byzantium and lit... more Victorien Sardou's Theodora (first staged in 1884) introduced mass audiences to Byzantium and literally created Byzantine realities for its spectators. This play was the most successful collaboration between Victorien Sardou and the tremendously celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. In the process of selling scandal, murder, intrigue, grand spectacle, opulent costumes, and dangerous liaisons, the seductive performance of Byzantine decadence actively shaped indexical, iconic, and ontological frameworks for the Byzantine empire within Euro-American visual and cultural discourse. Acclaimed as the greatest spectacle of the nineteenth century, the play also became a major bane for scholars of Byzantine studies, for it actively participated in positioning Byzantium within an established system of knowledge. Was it Greek or Roman, familiar or hybrid, barbaric or civilized, Oriental or another Other?
The image of Theodora perpetuated by Sardou would become firmly ensconced in the popular imagination, despite the best efforts of his critics. Sardou, Sarah Bernhardt, and their sumptuous Byzantine spectacle created a long-lasting impression upon the popular and academic imagination. Rather than scorn Sardou's play for its warped vision of Byzantium, Byzantinists should embrace it as a didactic example for probing how we, too, frame, claim, and re-frame Byzantium based on our own fashions, scholarly preoccupations, and shifting paradigms. Sardou serves as a useful reminder that, ultimately, we all create our own vision of Byzantium and we all get the Theodora we deserve.
Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean. History and Heritage, ed. Danielle Slootjes and Mariette Verhoevenn, 2019
A fascinating, overlooked medieval French romance, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à ... more A fascinating, overlooked medieval French romance, Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople, made Byzantium the focus of ribaldry and ridicule. Through the hyperbolic looking glass of comedy, it made the destruction of Constantinople both imaginable and desirable. This text can be profitably studied as evidence of geopolitical competition, as a discourse on contemporary debates about imperial primacy and as a violent fantasy, which prefigures the conquest of Constantinople, by the Crusaders in 1204. Because it distills complicated geopolitical and cross-cultural confrontations into a simplified format, the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne offers rich material for analyzing both the reception of Byzantium and the emergence of colonial fantasies of supremacy.
Afterlives of Byzantine Monuments in Post-Byzantine Times, 2021
The concept of 'afterlife' functions as a productive metaphor for shaping scholarly inquiries dev... more The concept of 'afterlife' functions as a productive metaphor for shaping scholarly inquiries devoted to Byzantium's ruptures and genitures, legacies and continuities, long shadows and persistent shades of grey. Exploring Byzantium's afterlives can variously involve latency, tenacity, and vivacity. Latency encapsulates the potential for Byzantine ideas, concepts, frames and forms to become actualized once again. Time lags could even enhance their perceived authenticity, authority or value. Tenacity points to persistence against unfair odds or changing circumstances. Vivacity can mean either the continuation of Byzantine forms or the conscious revival or selective recovery of 'Byzantine' ideals. A silent conspiracy across the ages united caretakers, stake-holders, artists, copyists and pious enthusiasts who were committed to proposition that Byzantium was not dead to them.
The concept of 'post-Byzantine' is a far more complicated construct that the concept of Byzantium's 'afterlives'. Is 'Post-Byzantine' a period or a process? Is it one preeminent act of political extinction (1453) or a series of interconnected moments unfolding in different places, at different speeds, with differing intellectual valences? Can one concept simultaneously encompass both aggressive appropriations of the Byzantine legacy and protective, defensive invocations of it? Even if we can agree on when Byzantium was consigned to the past, we still have to find nuanced ways of analyzing how Byzantium became consigned to the past.
From Istanbul to Byzantium. Paths to Rediscovery, 1800-1955, ed. Brigitte Pitarakis, 2021
An auspicious event for the history of Byzantine studies took place in 1884. It was of lasting i... more An auspicious event for the history of Byzantine studies took place in 1884. It was of lasting importance for shaping scholarly understanding of an iconic monument of Istanbul. The first comprehensive scholarly study and extensive photographic corpus of the Chora mosaics were completed that year. The key protagonists in this event were the Russian Byzantinist Nikodim Kondakov and his collaborator, the French photographer Jean Xavier Raoult. The pairing of cutting-edge, photographic technology with Russian scholarly expertise rescued the Chora mosaics from claims of Western influence and forever cemented their centrality in the corpus of Byzantine art.
The Eloquence of Art: Studies in Honour of Henry Maguire, ed. Andrea Olsen Lam and Rossitza Schroeder, 2020
In 1892 a marvel of bibliophile luxury boldly attempted to shift the international discourse on B... more In 1892 a marvel of bibliophile luxury boldly attempted to shift the international discourse on Byzantine art. It was the publication of the collection of enamels belonging to a wealthy Russian collector Alexander Zwenigorodskoi. Though now nearly forgotten, this book remains the most authoritative and comprehensive academic study of Byzantine enamels. Written by Nikodim Kondakov and dedicated to Tsar Alexander III, it was a tour de force of imperial Russia's Byzantium. A decade in the making, cleverly marketed and ostentatiously celebrated, the book exemplifies the best achievements of chromolithography. This study outlines the biography of this object, discusses its narrative framing of Byzantium, and touches upon the competitive world of nineteenth-century collectors and scholars. The Byzantium of this book was not only the intellectual foundation of the Russian empire, it was also the center of its cultural memory. Here Byzantium mirrors the breadth of the Russian empire, and incorporates 'Russo-Byzantine' and 'Russo-Georgian' into its territory. The book also provides an intellectual place for a productive relationship between East and West.
Afterlives of Byzantine Monuments in Post-Byzantine Times, Études Byzantines et Post-Byzantines, Nouvelle série Tome III (X), 2021
Nikodim Kondakov's visit to the former Chora Monastery (Kariye Camii) in 1880 marked a crucial fi... more Nikodim Kondakov's visit to the former Chora Monastery (Kariye Camii) in 1880 marked a crucial first step towards the emancipation of late Byzantine art from a Western framework of devaluation and appropriation. Kondakov, a great art historian of the Russian empire, was the first scholar to substantively publish and analyze the Chora mosaics. He allowed Byzantium creative agency and independent development outside the purview of western medieval art. His passionate exposition of the Chora mosaics as a glorious example of flourishing Byzantine art contested attempts to appropriate them as a western cultural accomplishment and associate them with the schools of Giotto or Duccio.
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 33/1 (2009): 17-41, 2009
In the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript (BN, Vitr. 26-2) representations of the Orthodox triumph over ... more In the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript (BN, Vitr. 26-2) representations of the Orthodox triumph over iconoclast heresy range from startlingly novel to seemingly incoherent. While previous studies have posited that the visual programme of the chronicle originates in Comnenian Constantinople, this article argues that the visual narrative is out of place in a climate of rigorous Comnenian Orthodoxy. The visual narrative actively restructures and revisions Byzantine history: iconoclast arch-villains such as John the Grammarian are assigned symbols of sanctity, Orthodox heroes such as patriarch Methodios and empress Theodora are obscured and misrepresented, and important events in the chronicle are turned into visual voids.
Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 25/3 (2009): 243-57, 2009
This article showcases a cloak-and-dagger visual sequence of imperial murder. The unique imagery... more This article showcases a cloak-and-dagger visual sequence of imperial murder. The unique imagery is found in the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript, the most ambitious illustrated history produced in the Mediterranean between late antiquity and the thirteenth century. Its illustrations were executed in Sicily at the court of Roger II in Palermo around the middle of the twelfth century.
Employing approaches developed in narrative theory and insights derived from studies of translation and adaptation, this article analyzes how the visual narrative selectively 'foregrounds' the bloody drama of the demise of emperor Leo V at the hands of his challenger Michael the Amorian. In this dialogic adaptation, an episode of Byzantine history was creatively restaged for visual display to a Sicilian audience. Produced in a place that was conversant in Byzantine culture, yet not bound by its political, ideological or representational constraints, the visual narrative navigates a novel third way between the Byzantine text and the manuscript's Sicilian context.
History as Literature in Byzantium, ed. Ruth Macrides, 2010
This article examines distinct approaches to visualizing Byzantine history in the Madrid Skylitze... more This article examines distinct approaches to visualizing Byzantine history in the Madrid Skylitzes manuscript and the Vatican Manasses manuscript. The two manuscripts carry a cumbersome analytical burden, since they constitute the most extensive surviving evidence for illuminated histories in Byzantium. Four case studies presented here evaluate how the ideological strategies of their pictorial narratives diverge. They reveal that each manuscript presents a distinct, dynamic, and culturally-specific interplay between text and image, visualization and politics.
The Art Bulletin, Sep 2009
The princely space in the turrets of St. Sophia in Kiev, the grandest Orthodox church of the elev... more The princely space in the turrets of St. Sophia in Kiev, the grandest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, is decorated with an image of the hippodrome, the primary public space for the display of imperial power in Constantinople. It formed a necessary link in a chain of Kievan grandeur, which aggrandized its prince and branded the city the preeminent political and cultural capital for a fledgling Rus' principality. It served as a backdrop for courtly show, communicated messages of sophisticated connoisseurship to visiting dignitaries, and affirmed Rus' membership among the exalted group of the established kings.
The largest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, St. Sophia of Kiev, challenges the boundarie... more The largest Orthodox church of the eleventh century, St. Sophia of Kiev, challenges the boundaries between the sacred and profane spheres. It unites under one roof carefully constructed representations of the sounds, movements, amusements and merriments of the Byzantine court and invocations of the stillness, silence and tears of Orthodox piety. These two irreconcilable realms were brought into dialogue for prince Jaroslav the 'Wise' (died 1054), a second generation Christian who prevailed over his rivals after decades of fratricidal conflict. While in Byzantium these two spheres had long ago established a clear modus vivendi, in Iaroslav's Rus' their relationship was just being formulated. St. Sophia of Kiev had to adapt to its prince. This building created a new balance between the sacred and profane spheres, in which Christian decorum had to accommodate the princely patron.
Dubitando: Studies in History and Culture in Honor of Donald Ostrowski
The St. Sophia cathedral in Kiev holds a key place in imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet s... more The St. Sophia cathedral in Kiev holds a key place in imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet scholarship as the starting point for a Rus' artistic tradition. This monument, not unjustly, has been viewed as a material embodiment of the Rus' principality's entrance into the broader Christian and European world. The "secular" frescoes of St. Sophia are unique, fascinating, and frustratingly incomplete. The monument's keystone position in foundational discourses has led scholars to creatively interpret limited evidence and to build grand structures on fragmentary and fragile foundations. This study explores the fertile terrain of scholarly ingenuity. It focuses on two failed attempts to find Rus' princesses on the walls of St. Sophia in order to provide a cautionary tale about the futility of basing grand conclusions on ambiguous and poorly preserved evidence.
Macedonia and the Balkans in the Byzantine Commonwealth, ed. Mitko Panov (Skopje, 2014), 2014
This article explores an important chapter in the visual memory and historical legacy of a key i... more This article explores an important chapter in the visual memory and historical legacy of a key imperial monument of Constantinople, the bronze equestrian statue of the emperor Justinian. The late-antique sculpture survived pillages of the Fourth Crusade to become a centerpiece of Constantinople's identity. Though it was destroyed by the Ottomans after the capture of Constantinople in 1453, its international renown outlived the physical monument. This study investigates how and why the bronze equestrian monument of Justinian was remembered in late-medieval Slavic images of Constantinople.
Manuscripta: A Journal of Manuscript Research 51/2 (2007): 181-208
Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria underwent a remarkable regal transformation within six years: while in... more Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria underwent a remarkable regal transformation within six years: while in a charter of 1342 he styled himself "tsar and autocrat of all Bulgarians," by 1348 he would become "tsar and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks." This study explores the patronage of Ivan Alexander (ruled 1331-71) in the context of his direct appropriation of the Byzantine legacy and considers how his claims to imperial authority over the Greeks were advanced in two very distinct illuminated books: a Tetraevangelion (Gospels) (London, BL, Add. Ms 39627) and a world history, the Chronicle of Constantine Manasses (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Vat. slav. 2). The two manuscripts present distinct narratives of legitimacy that visually and textually interweave the ruler and his family into a Byzantine framework.
This article discusses and contextualizes works of art from the Slavic world that were on display... more This article discusses and contextualizes works of art from the Slavic world that were on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition, Byzantium: Faith and Power (2004). The remarkable artworks on display in this exhibition were produced during a very dynamic and dramatic period in Byzantine history. While the empire was fragmented and gradually disintegrating, the allure and seduction of its culture remained powerful and palpable. It was also a period of complex cultural interaction and pervasive cultural synthesis, which unfolded against the backdrop of imminent Ottoman conquest. Cultural interaction was achieved in different ways: in contact, in conflict, in negotiations. The objects displayed in the exhibition embody complexities of these dialogues. Byzantium: Faith and Power defined its chronological boundaries from 1261, and the Byzantine recapture of Constantinople, to 1557, when the term “Byzantine” entered European discourse. One can argue that the latter boundary remains open since Orthodox culture, in Greece and in the Slavic countries, still preserves and celebrates the Byzantine legacy.
Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions, ed. Maria Alessia Rossi and Alice Isabella Sullivan, 2022
A large, multifigural icon of The Elevation of the Cross created in Russia in the sixteenth centu... more A large, multifigural icon of The Elevation of the Cross created in Russia in the sixteenth century offers a sophisticated architectural and ideological visualization of triumphant Orthodoxy in a world without Byzantium. Underscoring perpetual, performative harmony between ecclesiastical and imperial authorities, this icon also testifies that celebration of Orthodoxy took on new urgency in the post-Byzantine period. The Elevation of the Cross simultaneously celebrates Constantinople and elevates Russia. It deftly negotiates between tradition and innovation by instrumentalizing Constantinople as a link in the chain of Orthodox history.
The unusual icon represents Constantinople as both a visionary Orthodox ideal and as a physical, imperial city. The city is signified by an architectural pairing - the elaborate church of Hagia Sophia abutted by the sculpture of Justinian's horseman atop its tall column. For centuries this pairing was the foremost marvel of the city. The representation on the icon also accurately reflects the historical topography of Byzantine Constantinople - the two monuments stood in close proximity to each other. A unique representation of a buttress, shown in the upper left quadrant of the icon, supporting the dome of Hagia Sophia, commemorates the Russian contribution to the restoration of the Great Church during the Palaiologan period. Because Justinian's horseman was removed shortly after 1453, the icon also offers a timeless vision. Hagia Sophia and the column of Justinian are material embodiments of Tsar'grad, the imperial city. By anchoring the celebration of the cross in Constantinople, the icon creates a time-bending, transhistorical loop of commemoration.
It also makes space for both Byzantine and Muscovite historical actors. The icon diachronically envisions the Constantinopolitan roots of the feast of the Elevation of the Cross and depicts their liturgical flowering in Muscovy. It creates a political-ecclesiastical bridge between the Orthodox empire of the past and its successor. By constructing the image of Constantinople as it was before the city's fall to the Ottomans, the icon insists on an unsullied transfer of the Orthodox empire to the lands of Rus'. As such, it embodies a Russian view of Orthodox history, presenting translatio imperii by selectively engaging with the Byzantine past.
in Amy Adams and Vera Szevzov, eds., Framing Mary: The Mother of God in Modern, Revolutionary, and Post-Soviet Russian Culture , 2018
An enormous, handwritten volume preserves a rich trove of narratives devoted to geographies of th... more An enormous, handwritten volume preserves a rich trove of narratives devoted to geographies of the sacred. This illustrated compendium of Mariology testifies to the tremendous cultural ferment in seventeenth-century Russia. Although in most historical narratives this period is consistently overshadowed by the intellectual output generated in the age of Peter the Great, it is important to recall that Russia's intellectual dialogue with distant knowledge, print culture, and encyclopedic scholarship began well before his reign. Orthodox intellectuals from Ukraine and Belarus served as a conduit for connecting literate Russians to Counter-Reformation discourses about the sacred. Well before the intense cultural exchanges that were carried out forcefully, often forcibly, by Peter, Russian intellectuals confronted and contested Western narratives that accorded little recognition to Russia in either the divine plan or the republic of letters.
Alter Icons: The Russian Icon and Modernity, ed. Jefferson Gatrall and Douglas Greenfield, 2010
This article examines the origin and diffusion of icons containing multiple, miracle-working imag... more This article examines the origin and diffusion of icons containing multiple, miracle-working images of the Virgin Mary in prerevolutionary Russia. This novel icon type can be traced to a specific period of transition in early modern Russian history. Highly unusual for their combination of numerous miniature images of miraculous Marian icons, these compendia also deviate from established assumptions about icons of the Virgin as central or large single-image panels, or as central and hieratic images. The article documents three significant stages in the development and reception of the compendium icon type: its emergence, rise to popularity, and final acceptance into official Orthodoxy. The compendia took on a variety of meanings as they came to fulfill different functions. First used in defense of embattled popular piety, they became a part of the patriotic culture of late Imperial Orthodoxy.
Poltava 1709: The Battle and the Myth, ed. Serhii Plokhy (Harvard, 2012)
This article investigates visual expressions of Peter I's ambitious refashioning of Russia throug... more This article investigates visual expressions of Peter I's ambitious refashioning of Russia through conquest and cultural transformation. It focuses on the interplay between tradition and innovation in imperial iconographies that acclaimed his first victory against the Ottoman forces at Azov (1696), celebrated his mature successes against King Charles XII in the long Northern War (1700-21), and reclaimed the legacy of his greatest triumph at Poltava (1709). By examining three previously neglected images (an icon, an engraving, and another icon) this paper analyzes how images of Peter's victories were framed, transformed, and, when necessary, reframed to commemorate his martial legacy. This article also focuses attention on three distinct cultural moments in order to highlight how the innovative Orthodox visual culture of Ukraine, which was so eagerly embraced on the eve of Peter's cultural revolution, eventually fell out of fashion in Russia.
This article also establishes that Peter assumed the appellation "Great" already in 1717, as opposed to the previously documented first use of the appellation dating to his imperial coronation in 1721.
Études byzantines et post-byzantines III (X), 2021
The contributions to this volume focus on selective, strategic and self-conscious engagements wit... more The contributions to this volume focus on selective, strategic and self-conscious engagements with Byzantium. Rather than reiterate the familiar defensive responses to Renaissance innovation and Enlightenment derision, this volume prioritizes intellectual and cultural fashioning of the Byzantine legacy as proactive rather than defensive. Almost every paper points to some kind of engagement with a Byzantium that does not fully coincide with our modern constructions, but which seemed sensible in a particular historical context. Contributors are Charles Barber, Elena N. Boeck, Michalis Kappas, Ljubomir Milanović, Maria Alessia Rossi, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Mariëtte Verhoeven, and Sercan Yandim Aydin.
The Eloquence of Art: Essays in Honour of Henry Maguire, 2020
For those within the fields of art history and Byzantine studies, Professor Henry Maguire needs n... more For those within the fields of art history and Byzantine studies, Professor Henry Maguire needs no introduction. His publications transformed the way art historians approach medieval art through his insightful integration of rhetoric, poetry and non-canonical objects into the study of Byzantine art. His ground-breaking studies of Byzantine art that consider the natural world, magic, and imperial imagery, among other themes, have re-defined the ways medieval art is interpreted. From notable monuments to small-scale and privately-used objects, Maguire’s work has guided a generation of scholars to new conclusions about the place of art and its function in Byzantium. In this volume, twenty-three of Henry Maguire’s colleagues and friends have contributed papers in his honour, resulting in studies that reflect the broad range of his scholarly interests.
Haifa Center for Mediterranean History. May 24, 2022
This lecture is based on my new book, which explores seminal moments in the biography of a contes... more This lecture is based on my new book, which explores seminal moments in the biography of a contested medieval monument between ca. 500 C.E. and 1600 C.E. Justinian's triumphal column was the tallest, free-standing column of the pre-modern world, was crowned by the largest metal, equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire's bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian's column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have underappreciated its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. Its agency can be recovered from Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons. This lecture discusses some of the evidence analyzed in the book.
The Bronze Horseman of Justinian in Constantinople: The Cross-Cultural Biography of a Mediterranean Monument (Cambridge University Press), 2021
Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was... more Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was crowned with arguably the largest metal equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire’s bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian’s column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have undervalued its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. This book analyzes Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons to provide an engrossing and pioneering biography of a contested medieval monument during the millennium of its life.
Swedish Research Institute, Istanbul, December 2, 2019
This lecture explores seminal moments in the biography of the medieval Mediterranean’s most cross... more This lecture explores seminal moments in the biography of the medieval Mediterranean’s most cross-culturally significant sculptural monument. It was elevated by the emperor Justinian and placed on an enormous column next to the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Though it remained stationary, its international biography took many fascinating twists and turns. The Byzantine empire’s bronze horseman assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired international acclaim. An equestrian sculpture that started its life as a representation of a Theodosian emperor for centuries served as a statue of Justinian before ending its life as a curious pile of colossal fragments. Neutralized by Mehmed the Conqueror shortly after the fall of Constantinople, it was obliterated in the sixteenth century. Recovering the horseman’s story requires engaging an extensive array of sources and a variety of visual worlds: Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts; medieval pilgrimage, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives; Byzantine and medieval French vernacular poetry; Arabic and Ottoman literature; Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts; Florentine wedding chests; Venetian paintings; Russian icons; drawings and engravings by artists of various nationalities.
Public Lecture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 17 , 2019
The infamous label of ‘degenerate art’ was not conceived in Nazi Germany of the 1930s. A full cen... more The infamous label of ‘degenerate art’ was not conceived in Nazi Germany of the 1930s. A full century earlier such terminology was regularly applied to Byzantine Art in western European stylological scholarship. The art historical field is still shaped by perceptions of the Orthodox world as yet another Other. This lecture analyses the narrative trajectories of Byzantine and ‘Post-Byzantine’ art. In recent decades the discipline has successfully challenged the frameworks imposed upon it by others, but has imposed those same prejudiced frameworks on the nebulous category and chronologically unending entity of ‘Post-Byzantine Art.’ This lecture touches upon alterity, disability, inclusivity and creativity while addressing challenges that still face the field.
podcast Byzantium & Friends, 2019
BMCR, 2020
Troy was not consumed by flames, rather it was saved by a fire brigade. Hector did not die at th... more Troy was not consumed by flames, rather it was saved by a fire brigade. Hector did not die at the hand of Achilles, instead the two heroes made peace. Dido avoided suicide and parted with Aeneas quasi-amicably. Nineteenth-century British audiences of burlesque performances and other popular entertainments (such as a theatrical ‘hippodrama’ (126) of the siege of Troy) feasted on transformations of famous classical narratives while contemplating ebbs and flows in the fortunes of great empires. Laughs often concealed anxieties. If Troy was not destroyed, then Rome would not have subsequently been founded, implicitly jeopardizing the translatio imperii to Britain (262, 266).
Rachel Bryant Davies creates a deeply engaging, multifaceted and textured analysis of reception in nineteenth-century Britain through the prisms of Troy (the majority of the book) and Carthage (a limited case study, set up as antithesis to Troy). She calls these “paradigmatic ruined cities” (17) and argues that “…there was a wider, more complex circulation of knowledge about the Classics, among more socially varied spectators, than has previously been supposed.” (140). Bryant Davies ambitiously traces transformations of Troy in cultural imagination (primarily through Homer), explores its identification with defined physical places (finalized by Schliemann), and assigns it a prominent place in nineteenth-century popular culture through “the transfer of classical knowledge” (127).
Though the book makes a strong contribution to reception studies, analysis of cultural discourse in nineteenth-century Britain, and the history of popular culture, a few of its grander claims stem from modernist myopia and cannot be fully endorsed. According to Bryant Davies “This tradition of looking to the destruction of earlier cities to predict future destruction was most strikingly adopted within the nineteenth-century British cultural imagination.” (23). The fascination with Troy as a barometer for the ebbs and flows of history was not limited to nineteenth-century British audiences. Nor were the British the only Europeans to use the historical example of Troy to speak to their own anxieties and historical moment. A reader of this book would not be able to discern that the Trojan narrative was sensationally popular in both the literary and visual cultures of the medieval and early modern periods. From Madrid to Moscow for centuries Troy and its tragic heroes served as exempla of audacious ambition, ingenious savagery, reversals of fortune, convulsions of civilizations, and foundational moments and movements in history.
Renaissance Quarterly 73/1, 2020
This book is ambitious, fascinating, interdisciplinary, and frustrating. It is deeply erudite and... more This book is ambitious, fascinating, interdisciplinary, and frustrating. It is deeply erudite and highly idiosyncratic. The author seeks to initiate a new academic approach to Christian aesthetics. Instead, she succeeds in deploying an arsenal of new or seemingly sophisticated expressions for describing experiences and sensations familiar to anyone who has actively participated in an Eastern Orthodox liturgy. It takes courage to write about Hagia Sophia, Byzantium's greatest church and most exceptional monument. The book's goal is to explore the dynamics through which sacred space emerges in Hagia Sophia. This is the kind of book that will make more than an ephemeral ripple. Many will cite it, few will savor it, and graduate students will fear it.
In this study Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon seek to lay a new foundation for understanding one ... more In this study Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon seek to lay a new foundation for understanding one of the most complex, misunderstood, and interesting periods in the history of the Byzantine civilization. This comprehensive and confident study also strives to overturn the established narrative of the iconoclast period. The authors write: "We hope that, if we have achieved nothing else, we can say convincingly that the iconophile version of the history of eighth-and ninth-century Byzantium has at last been laid to rest" (799). Brubaker and Haldon consign the central tenets of most previous scholarship-the widespread destruction of icons, prohibitions regarding their production, the systematic persecution of icon veneration, and the tenacious resistance by iconophiles who were mercilessly hunted down, tortured, and killed-to the categories of iconophile fiction. As a result, for Brubaker and Haldon the iconoclast emperors emerge as (mostly) sensible policy makers, who primarily strive for consensus not strife. In this rewriting of Byzantine history, the villains seem less vile, the heroes less heroic, and the theologians largely irrelevant.
![Research paper thumbnail of [International Workshop] Inheriting Byzantium: Religion, Art and Literature in Pre-Modern Eastern Europe - 18 June 2018, University of Cologne, Alter Senatssaal](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/56514721/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](11.00 Introduction / Welcome 11.10 Panel I Charles Barber (Princeton University) Theophanes o... more 11.00 Introduction / Welcome
11.10 Panel I
Charles Barber (Princeton University)
Theophanes of Nicaea on the icon of the Transfiguration
Ágnes Kriza (University of Cologne)
The “eleventh-century watershed” in Byzantine art and the beginnings of apse decoration in medieval Rus’
Elena Boeck (DePaul University, Chicago)
From Pillar of Empire to Ghost Rider in the Sky: Russian responses to Justinian's Bronze Horseman between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
12.40 Lunch Break
14.10 Panel II
Brian Boeck (DePaul University, Chicago)
Crisis of Confidence: Explaining why Ivan the Terrible's enormous Illuminated Chronicle Compilation was never finished
Ovidiu Olar (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
The Missing Link: Seventeenth-century Moldavian and Wallachian manuscripts between Slavia Orthodoxa and the Greek-speaking Christianity
Aleksandr Lavrov (Université Paris-Sorbonne)
Die Gläubigen der Bistümer Vologda und Velikij Ustjug und der plötzliche Tod (vnezapnaja smert’) im siebzehnten und achtzehnten Jahrhundert
15.40 Coffee Break
16.00 Panel III
Cornelia Soldat (University of Cologne)
Type and Prototype – or: how to become the Chosen People
Justin Willson (Princeton University)
Seeing Nimbi in the fourteenth century in Byzantium
Christoph Witzenrath (University of Bonn)
Sari Saltuk and St. Nicholas between the Ottomans and Muscovy
Nataliia Sinkevych (University of Tübingen)
The cult of saints in early modern Ukrainian society
Conveners: Ágnes Kriza & Cornelia Soldat
Email: agnes.kriza@uni-koeln.de
For more information:
http://www.slavistik.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/2306.html
The Twelfth Congress of South-East European Studies, Bucharest, 2019
The Twelfth Congress of South-East European Studies. Bucharest, September 5, 2019. This day-long ... more The Twelfth Congress of South-East European Studies. Bucharest, September 5, 2019. This day-long group of papers investigates the afterlives of Byzantine monuments, memories and ideas in diverse societies and intellectual settings, ranging from Italy, Serbia, Wallachia, and Moldavia to Greece under Ottoman rule. Though the category of post-Byzantine is usually associated with 1453, it can be argued that various dates could be considered as starting points for productive discussions of the 'post-Byzantine.' The thirteen papers by scholars from several countries range in approaches from appropriation, to archaeology of knowledge, intellectual history, exchange, resistance and reception. Topics for discussion include stationary and portable, colossal and diminutive, public and private objects. These papers shed light on diverse constructions of Byzantium which emerged in the centuries after the empire's demise.
Fri, December 7, 2:30 to 4:15pm, Boston Marriott Copley Place, 5th, Vermont In Orthodox liturgic... more Fri, December 7, 2:30 to 4:15pm, Boston Marriott Copley Place, 5th, Vermont
In Orthodox liturgical tradition, the feast commemorating the defeat of Byzantine Iconoclasm (726-843) is called Triumph of Orthodoxy, the victory of true faith: it celebrates icons and icon veneration as symbols of Orthodoxy. What were the implications of this identification between icons and Orthodoxy for medieval Russian culture? How did this idea influence sacred imagery itself? What role did icons play in the formation of religious identity of Muscovy? This panel seeks to explore the significance of icons beyond art history, as manifestations and expression of faith in Muscovite period by investigating four texts of medieval Russian theological literature; by analyzing sixteenth-century visualizations of Byzantine Iconoclasm and by discovering a seventeenth-century illuminated compendium of Marian miracles.
Chair: Daniel B. Rowland, U of Kentucky
Papers:
David Maurice Goldfrank, Georgetown U: "Now You See Them, Now You Don’t: Four Windows into Images and Orthodox Identity in Early Rus’ and Muscovy"
Agnes Kriza, U of Cologne: "Icon, Orthodoxy, and Empire: Representations of Byzantine Iconoclasm during the Reign of Ivan the Terrible"
Elena Boeck, DePaul U: "Defending Orthodoxy in Muscovy with Catholic Geography: Russian Scribes and the Internationalization of the Mother of God"
Disc.: Michael S. Flier, Harvard U
This series explores the art, architecture, and visual culture of regions of the Balkan Peninsula... more This series explores the art, architecture, and visual culture of regions of the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Mountains, as well as early-modern Russia and Ruthenia between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through historically grounded examinations of the visual and cultural productions of these Eastern European territories, this series highlights the prismatic relationships between local traditions, the Byzantine heritage, and cultural forms adopted from other models. The local artistic productions ought to be considered individually and as part of larger networks, thus revealing the shared heritage of these regions and their indebtedness to artistic models adopted from elsewhere, and especially from Byzantium. In stressing the local specificity and the interconnectedness of these Eastern European geographical areas, this series aims to challenge established perceptions of what constitutes ideological and historical facets of the past, as well as scholarly notions of what can be identified as Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and early modern history, art, and culture.
This lecture is based on my new book, which explores seminal moments in the biography of a contes... more This lecture is based on my new book, which explores seminal moments in the biography of a contested medieval monument between ca. 500 C.E and 1600 C.E. Justinian’s triumphal column was the tallest, free-standing column of the pre-modern world was crowned by the largest metal, equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire’s bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian’s column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have underappreciated its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. Its agency can be recovered from Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons. This lecture discusses some of the evidence analyzed in the book.
Responder: Gil Fishhof