Words and artworks in the twelfth century and beyond. MS Marc. gr. 524 and the twelfth-century dedicatory epigrams on works of art (DPhil thesis) (original) (raw)
Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium
This book explores the nexus of art, personal piety, and self-representation in the last centuries of Byzantium. Spanning the period from around 1100 to around 1450, it focuses upon the evidence of verse inscriptions, or epigrams, on works of art. Epigrammatic poetry, Professor Drpić argues, constitutes a critical – if largely neglected – source for reconstructing aesthetic and socio-cultural discourses that informed the making, use, and perception of art in the Byzantine world. Bringing together art-historical and literary modes of analysis, the book examines epigrams and other related texts alongside an array of objects, including icons, reliquaries, ecclesiastical textiles, mosaics, and entire church buildings. By attending to such diverse topics as devotional self-fashioning, the aesthetics of adornment, sacred giving, and the erotics of the icon, this study offers a penetrating and highly original account of Byzantine art and its place in Byzantine society and religious life.
In the present article, we examine the linguistic characteristics of a Greek inscription from the Bachkovo refectory by introducing parallel texts, which could illuminate its genre peculiarities and give a larger context of its contents. Taken together, these texts clarify the mechanism of their appearance, which is one of the main problems in Byzantine epigraphy today. The reason for examining the inscription separately from the epigraphic repertoire of Bachkovo refectory is both its occupying an isolated place in the iconographic program of the monument and the lack of an accompanying image in a potential pair ‘word-image’ . Its self-sufficient function is determined also by the communicability of its specific location: the text is written on the internal side above the south entrance of the refectory, which is the most direct way to the inner courtyard and the catholicon. Since this was not the main official entrance of the refectory, the inscription was obviously meant only for ‘internal’ use by the monks in the monastery – this fact, by itself, reveals valuable information for defining its nature.