Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium: Art and Culture 330 - 1453 (Variorum Collected Studies)

This volume consists of 15 articles published between 1991 and 2018. It falls into three sections, reflecting different areas of Liz James’s interests. The first section deals with light and colour and mosaics: four articles considering light and colour in mosaics and the making of mosaics, as well as the question of what it means to define mosaics as ‘Byzantine’, are reprinted. The second brings together four pieces on empresses: their relationships with female personifications and the Mother of God; their roles in founding and refounding buildings; and their employment as ciphers by some authors. Finally, seven papers cover a range of topics: what monumental images of saints in churches might have been for; what the differences between relics and icons might have been; how captions to images can be misleading; why touch was an important sense; how words can sometimes ‘just’ be decorative rather than for reading; why the materiality of objects makes a difference. There is also a brief section of additional notes and comments which add to, update and reflect on each piece now in 2024. Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium will be of interest to scholars and students alike interested in material culture, the depiction of regal women, and the use of relics and icons in the Byzantine Empire. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Figures 9 List of Abbreviations 11 Preface 12 Part 1 Light, Colour and Mosaics 14 1 What Colours Were Byzantine Mosaics? 16 2 Mosaic Matters. Questions of Manufacturing and Mosaicists in the Mosaics of San Marco, Venice 26 3 Made in Byzantium? Mosaics After 1204 42 4 Matters of Materiality in Byzantium. The Archangel Gabriel in Hagia Sophia, Constantinople 56 Part 2 Empresses 70 5 Good Luck and Good Fortune to the Queen of Cities: Empresses and Tyches in Byzantium 72 6 Making a Name: Reputation and Imperial Founding and Refounding in Constantinople 86 7 The Empress and the Virgin in Early Byzantium: Piety, Authority and Devotion 98 8 Ghosts in the Machine: The Lives and Deaths of Constantinian Imperial Women 107 Part 3 Materiality, Senses and Other Things 126 9 Monks, Monastic Art, the Sanctoral Cycle and the Middle Byzantine Church 128 10 Dry Bones and Painted Pictures: Relics and Icons in Byzantium 138 11 Art and Lies: Text, Image and Imagination in the Medieval World 147 12 Seeing is Believing but Words Tell No Lies: Captions Versus Images in the Libri Carolini and Byzantine Iconoclasm 158 13 ‘And Shall These Mute Stones Speak?’ Text as Art 174 14 Seeing’s Believing, but Feeling’s the Truth: Touch and the Meaning of Byzantine Art 192 15 Things: Art and Experience in Byzantium 205 Additional Notes and Comments 221 Index 231 Byzantine;,Art;,Mosaics;,Mother,of,God;,Icons;,Light;,Material,culture;,Relics;,Byzantium;,Iconoclasm Byzantine,Art,Mosaics,Mother of God,Icons,Light,Material culture,Relics,Byzantium,Iconoclasm