The opulence of Byzantine art, with its extravagant use of gold and silver, is well known. Highly skilled artists created powerful representations reflecting and promoting this society and its values in icons, illuminated manuscripts, and mosaics and wallpaintings placed in domed churches and public buildings. This complete introduction to the whole period and range of Byzantine art combines immense breadth with interesting historical detail. Robin Cormack overturns the myth that Byzantine...

The papers in this volume derive from the 29th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. This was held for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies in the University of London in March 1995, in order to complement the British Museum exhibition 'Byzantium. Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture'. The objective of the symposium was to explore the ways in which British scholars, travellers, novelists, architects, churchmen and critics came into contact with Byzantium, and how they perc...

Icons are among the most elusive subjects in the history of art, but at the same time their study constitutes possibly its fastest expanding field, and with the opening-up of the former Soviet Union many new objects are being discovered, studied and exhibited. In this book, Robin Cormack considers the icon as an integral document of society and gives us new insights into the nature of Byzantine art.Painting the Soul explores both the creation and the development of the ico...

In this book Allan Doig explores the interrelationship of liturgy and architecture from the Early Church to the close of the Middle Ages, taking into account social, economic, technical, theological and artistic factors. These are crucial to a proper understanding of ecclesiastical architecture of all periods, and together their study illuminates the study of liturgy. Buildings and their archaeology are standing indices of human activity, and the whole matrix of meaning they present is hig...

This book addresses the critical terminologies of place and space (and their role within medieval studies) in a considered and critical manner, presenting a scholarly introduction written by the editors alongside thematic case studies that address a wide range of visual and textual material. The chapters consider the extant visual and textual sources from the medieval period alongside contemporary scholarly discussions to examine place and space in their wider critical context, and are wri...

Mapping Medieval Geographies explores the ways in which geographical knowledge, ideas and traditions were formed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Leading scholars reveal the connections between Islamic, Christian, Biblical and Classical geographical traditions from Antiquity to the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. The book is divided into two parts: Part I focuses on the notion of geographical tradition and charts the evolution of celestial and earthly geography in terms of its intellec...

For more than a millennium, from its creation in 330 CE until its fall in 1453, the Byzantine Empire was a cradle of artistic effervescence that is only beginning to be rediscovered. Endowed with the rich heritage of Roman, Eastern, and Christian cultures, Byzantine artists developed an architectural and pictorial tradition, marked by symbolism, whose influence extended far beyond the borders of the Empire. Today, Italy, North Africa, and the Near East preserve the vestiges of this sophist...

Authority is an important concept in Byzantine culture whose myriad modes of implementation helped maintain the existence of the Byzantine state across so many centuries, binding together people from different ethnic groups, in different spheres of life and activities. Even though its significance to understanding the Byzantine world is so central, it is nonetheless imperfectly understood. The present volume brings together an international cast of scholars to explore this concept. The con...

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-FictionWinner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-FictionOne of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late...

Divided into themed sections, linked together with a chronology of the most important events in the life of the Vatican, Secrets of the Vatican includes:THE HISTORY OF THE VATICANThe rise of the Catholic church, from its inauspicious beginnings as a persecuted cult in Rome to its establishment as the world's largest organized religionHOUSES OF THE HOLYA look at the vast wealth of art, sculpture and literature collected in the Vatican Museums and some of the sc...

More than ever before, the Renaissance stands as one of the defining moments in world history. Between 1400 and 1600, European perceptions of society, culture, politics and even humanity itself emerged in ways that continue to affect not only Europe but the entire world. This wide-ranging exploration of the Renaissance sees the period as a time of unprecedented intellectual excitement and cultural experimentation and interaction on a global scale, alongside a darker side of religion, intol...