Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions, eds. Maria Alessia Rossi and Alice Isabella Sullivan (Sense, Matter, Medium, 6) (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022). (original) (raw)

Abstract

This volume builds upon the new worldwide interest in the global Middle Ages. It investigates the prismatic heritage and eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, while challenging the temporal and geographical parameters of the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and early-modern art. Contact and interchange between primarily the Latin, Greek, and Slavic cultural spheres resulted in local assimilations of select elements that reshaped the artistic landscapes of regions of the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Mountains, and further north. The specificities of each region, and, in modern times, politics and nationalistic approaches, have reinforced the tendency to treat them separately, preventing scholars from questioning whether the visual output could be considered as an expression of a shared history. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework of this volume provides a holistic view of the visual culture of these regions by addressing issues of transmission and appropriation, as well as notions of cross-cultural contact, while putting on the global map of art history the eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe.

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References (11)

  1. Mateusz J. Ferens (PhD candidate, University of Wisconsin, Madison) is an art historian whose research interests include cultural exchange in the late Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods and iconological aspects of Byzantine art history. In particular, he explores topics related to identity, diaspora, hybridity, and collective memory.
  2. Krisztina Ilko (PhD, University of Cambridge, Pembroke College) specializes in the intersection of sacred art, cross-cultural exchange, and social history. She has held a Research Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2018-20) and currently serves as a Departmental Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. She has a particular interest in medieval Italy and Central Europe. She is the author of Medieval Wall Paintings in the Church of St. James in Želiezovce (in Slovak: Stredoveké nástenné maľby kostola Sv. Jakuba v Želiezovciach, Rožnava, 2018) and Wall Painting in Nitra in the Middle Ages (in Hungarian: Nyitra-vidéki falképfestészet a középkorban, Budapest, 2019). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695618-204
  3. Nazar Kozak (PhD, Lviv National Academy of Arts) is a senior research scholar in the Department of Art History at the Ethnology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His research concerns the visual culture, iconography, and art exchanges in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine cultural spheres. He has authored the book Image and Authority: Royal Portraits in the Art of Kyivan Rus' of the Eleventh Century (Lviv, 2007). He also works on contemporary activist art. Ágnes Kriza (PhD, University of Cologne) is the Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cologne, exploring the significance of anti-Latin visual polemics in medieval Russian art. Her research interests include medieval Russian, Byzantine, and post-Byzantine art, literature, and theology, with a focus on the interface between text and image. Her book on the fifteenth-century allegorical iconography of Sophia, Divine Wisdom, from Novgorod is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She is also the author of the monograph Medieval Russian Iconophile Texts, vol. 1: The Byzantine Heritage (Budapest, 2011) and several articles, including the award-winning "The Russian Gnadenstuhl," published in the Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes. Dimitrios Liakos (PhD, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) works at the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chalkidiki and Mount Athos, Ministry of Culture and Sports (Greece), and he teaches in the Faculty of Theology (School of Social Theology and Christian Culture, postgraduate study program, "Studies in the Spirituality, History, Art, and Music Tradition of Mount Athos") of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His research focuses mainly on Byzantine and post-Byzantine art and inscriptions on Mount Athos, but he is also interested in other regions, such as Albania, Crete, Cyprus, and the Dodecanese.
  4. Dragoş Gh. Năstăsoiu (PhD, Central European University, Budapest) is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Medieval Studies of the National Research University "Higher School of Economics" in Moscow (since 2018). He has held various scholarships, was CEMS Teaching Fellow in the Department of Art History at the Ivane Javakhishvili State University in Tbilisi (2012), and has taught seminars on medieval and modern art at the National University of Arts in Bucharest (2009/10). He is the author of Gothic Art in Romania (Bucharest, 2011) and co-author of Medieval Monuments on Târnave Valley (Bucharest, 2018).
  5. Ovidiu Olar (PhD, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris) is a senior researcher at the "N. Iorga" Institute of History of the Romanian Academy (Bucharest, 2010-present) and a postdoctoral researcher in the Balkan Studies Research Unit (HEMSEE project) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna, 2019-present). He has authored the book La boutique de Théophile: Les relations du patriarche de Constantinople Kyrillos Loukaris (1570-1638) avec la Réforme (Paris, 2019).
  6. Maria Alessia Rossi (PhD, The Courtauld Institute of Art) is an Art History Specialist at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. She co-edited Late Byzantium Reconsidered: The Arts of the Palaiologan Era in the Mediterranean (2019) and Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages (2020). Rossi is the co-founder of the initiative North of Byzantium (NoB) and the digital platform Mapping Eastern Europe. Currently, she is working on a monograph exploring the role of Christ's miracles in monumental art in late Byzantium.
  7. Ida Sinkević (PhD, Princeton University) is the Arthur J. '55 and Barbara S. Rothkopf Professor of Art History at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on Byzantine art and on the impact of medieval visual tradition on later periods. Her publications include multiple articles, a book titled The Church of St. Panteleimon at Nerezi: Architecture, Programme, Patronage (2000), and an edited volume, Knights in Shining Armor: Myth and Reality, 1450-1650 (2006).
  8. Christos Stavrakos (PhD, University of Vienna) is Professor of Byzantine History in the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Ioannina (Epirus) and director of the post-graduate program in Byzantine Studies. His publications and books (in German and English) center on Byzantine lead seals, coins, and Byzantine and post-Byzantine inscriptions. He is secretary of the International Commission of Byzantine Sigillography, and he is a collaborating author for Dumbarton Oaks's publication of their collection of lead seals.
  9. Ivan Stevović (PhD, University of Belgrade) is full professor in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. His publications include three books: Kalenić: The Virgin's Church in the Architecture of the Late Byzantine World (2006), Praevalis: The Making of Cultural Space of the Late Antique Province (2014), and The Byzantine Church: Forming the Architectural Image of Sanctity (2018). In 2012, he edited the collection of papers SYMMEIKTA.
  10. Alice Isabella Sullivan (PhD, University of Michigan) is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture at Tufts University, specializing in the artistic production of Eastern Europe and the Byzantine-Slavic cultural spheres. She has published in Art Bulletin, Speculum, and Gesta, among other venues, and is co-editor of Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages (2020). She is also co-founder of North of Byzantium (NoB) and Mapping Eastern Europe -two initiatives that explore the medieval history, art, and culture of the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern Europe.
  11. Theocharis Tsampouras (PhD, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) was appointed Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University (2014-15) and has since worked as an adjunct lecturer at Greek universities. Today, he is employed as an archaeologist for the Greek Ministry of Culture. Marek Walczak (PhD, Jagiellonian University) specializes in medieval art in Central Europe, with special emphasis on painting and sculpture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He is the director of the Institute of Art History of the Jagiellonian University and the head of the Institute's Department of Medieval Art.