Rhetoric, Nature and Magic in Byzantine Art

Variorum
Henry Maguire
ISBN: 086078634X
price: $165.00   hardcover

Professor Maguire here studies three distinct but interrelated topics in Rhetoric, Nature and Magic in Byzantine Art. The first topic touches on the connections between Byzantine art and rhetoric, as illustrated by the imagery of both Church and State, and by ekphrastic descriptions of works of art, churches, palaces and parks. The second of these interrelated topics includes Byzantine attitudes towards nature as expressed in the art of textiles and floor mosaics and in literary descriptions of gardens. The last topic discusses the popular attitudes toward the supernatural, especially as shown in the evidence of mosaic pavements and domestic weavings from the early Byzantine period, and by the medieval reuse of classical sculptures.
In his consideration of Byzantine art and literature, the author ranges from the high art of the imperial court to the popular arts of everyday life, and from the discourses of theologians to the spells and incantations of the papyri, in each case exploring the richness and complexity of visual expression in Byzantium.
Contents: Acknowledgements; Preface; Sources of illustrations; Ekphrasis: Truth and convention in Byzantine descriptions of works of art; Originality in Byzantine art criticism; Early Christian and early Byzantine Art: The "half cone" vault of St. Stephen at Gaza; Adam and the animals: allegory and the literal sense in early Christian art; An early Christian marble relief at Kavala; Christians, pagans, and the representation of nature; The mantle of earth; Magic and geometry in early Christian floor mosaics and textiles; Middle and Late Byzantine Art: The cage of crosses: ancient and medieval sculptures on the "Little Metropolis" in Athens; A murderer among the angels: the frontispiece miniatures of Paris. Gr. 510 and the iconography of the archangels in Byzantine art; The art of comparing in Byzantium; Style and ideology in Byzantine imperial art; The mosaics of Nea Moni: an imperial reading; The iconography of Symeon with the Christ Child in Byzantine art; The self-conscious angel: character study in Byzantine paintings of the Annunciation; A description of the Aretai palace and its garden; The beauty of castles: a 10th-century description of a tower at Constantinople; Imperial gardens and the rhetoric of renewal; Index.