Late Byzantium Reconsidered: The Arts of the Palaiologan Era in the Mediterranean

Abstract

The volume Late Byzantium Reconsidered presents a collection of studies centered on a topic that attracts great interest. Actually, the title suggests that we have a study on the transitional epoch from the Late Middle Ages to modern times in the context of the Mediterranean, viewed through “Byzantine” eyes. Of course, this “sight” could be found all around the Mediterranean area, but especially in its eastern part and in southern Italy. On the one hand, the volume is obviously related to the era of the Palaeologian dynasty (its starting point is defined as the Reconquista of Constantinople by the Romaioi), but on the other hand, it surpasses the year of the Fall of the City and touches on some decades where we find the beginning of new phenomena.The book consists of twelve chapters, complemented by a foreword, acknowledgments, notes on contributors, an introduction, and a general index. The introduction presents the volume’s key concepts/problems: decline and reconsidering, centered mainly on the artistic production of the Palaeologian epoch. All the participants touch on, in one way or another, the topic of the volume, and the result is a real collective monography.The first chapter by Niels Gaul presents a panorama of life in the collapsed 1204 empire and the rise of the local self-identity of (certain) cities. This process exalted the importance of some local shrines and stories of miraculous events that could provide solidarity, along with an idea of stability, in a quite fragmented society. The accent is put on the long and “pious” (as the author called it) reign of Andronicus II Palaeologus and on two case studies that help further our understanding of the whole epoch.The second chapter by Ivana Jevtić touches on the central topic of the entire volume. The Palaeologian epoch is obviously a period of crisis of the empire, which has fallen at its end with the Ottoman conquest, but we are not able to say the same about the quite prosperous cultural, spiritual, and artistic life during the last two centuries of Byzantium. The author chose an original manner to present this situation: by seeking and discovering some parallels between two periods of decline, fall, and end, as well as continuity throughout late antiquity and late Byzantium. On that basis and centered on three main criteria—production, the artists, and creativity—Ivana Jevtić proposes a conceptual chapter that deals with the very notion of “decline” and discloses the legacy of the so-called Palaeologian art.The problem of decline is also central in the chapter by Cecily Hilsdale. Based on some representations of late Byzantine art, the author proposes an interesting study on the differences between the concepts of “decline” and “crisis.” The author arrives at the general conclusion of the volume that the people whom we call “Byzantines” had no idea about the end of their eternal empire.Maria Alessia Rossi, one of the volume’s editors, turns back in her chapter to the early Palaeologian epoch and the pacifist politics of Andronicus II, aiming at reconciliation with the Orthodox Church after the Union of Lyon II that reflected strongly on the whole cultural sphere. In this respect, we could again follow the references to the miraculous and the diffusion of anti-Latin treatises, an important phenomenon of the epoch.Andrew Griebeler’s study is dedicated to the raised production of scientific books with illustrations during the Palaeologian period—botanical, geographical, astronomical, medical, pharmaceutical, and occult texts. The overview of this interesting material allows the author to underline several important characteristics that set apart the Palaeologian scientific illustration from the other groups of deluxe codices, made predominantly for the needs of the church.The question of decline raised by this volume is reconsidered in the next chapter as well, in which Ludovic Bender uses landscape archaeology perspectives to observe the construction, decoration, and renovation of church buildings in the south-eastern region of the Peloponnese—Laconia. The author shares the view that churches erected in the countryside should be considered as a marker of growth and decline on an equal footing with the building programs of the rich elite of Mystras, the Byzantine capital of the region from the mid-thirteenth century to the fall to the Ottomans in 1460.In the seventh chapter, George Makris pays attention to the religious institutions of the peripheral urban sites as well, choosing as a case study Sozopolis, one of the most important ports of the Black Sea, which remained under Byzantine control until the fall of the empire. The focus is on the monastery of Saint John Prodromos on the homonymous small island near Sozopolis, as well as the monastery of Saints Kyrikos and Ioulitta.In the following chapter, Angeliki Lymperopoulou turns back to the question of the development of art in the periphery during a period of decline and to the problem of the evaluation of this art as expressed in different publications of some eminent Byzantinists, examining regional Cretan art from the end of the thirteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth. Limberopoulou focuses on several examples of cross-cultural Catholic–Orthodox interactions, as revealed by certain iconographic peculiarities, and on unique artistic elements, traced in the monumental paintings of the regions remote to the major centers on the island. Further in the chapter, she chooses to compare a monument from regional Crete with a Constantinopolitan one. Such a provocative approach increases readers’ attention; meanwhile, the analysis of additional data from other remote monuments on Crete certainly helps to view in a different light the character of the provincial art during the age of the Palaeologoi.Livia Bevilacqua’s study concerns portable devotional objects from the churches of the Venetian communities in the eastern Mediterranean cities in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. The focus remains upon the Catholic churches on the island of Negroponte (Euboea) and the church of San Marco in particular, for which Bevilacqua uses two inventory reports, preserved in the State Archive of Venice.The influence of the phenomenon that we call “Byzantium” on renaissance Italy is well known and studied in detail. That is why we have to admire the study of Andrea Mattielli, one of the volume’s editors, in chapter ten of the volume. It is accomplished through a case study on the fresco “Procession of the Magi” by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi Palace in Florence—an original approach with interesting results. Usually, the topic of the influence of Byzantium on renaissance Italy touches on the religion, philosophy, and related domains, but here, the author has chosen to follow the institutional influence of Constantinople.Chapter 11 of the volume, by Lilyana Yordanova, is dedicated to Tsar John Alexander, who could be called the main Bulgarian ruler during the Palaeologian era. The author tries to resolve many problems through two case studies of two illuminated manuscripts: the Vatican copy of the Chronicle of Constantine Manasses and the so-called “London Gospel” from the collection of the British Museum. They are clearly famous (especially in Bulgarian milieus) and not at all neglected. We are even afraid that they are overinterpreted. We would say that the choice of the case studies is correct, and the similar approach as in some other chapters and other studies is to be admired. The influence of the historical circumstances and of the difficult family relations around Tsar John Alexander is obvious, and it can be followed through images and letters. The author proposes her observations and certainly prepared her text in full harmony with the topic of the volume.The last chapter in the volume, by Tatiana Bardashova, is dedicated to the rulers of Trebizond, who belonged to the Grand Komnenoi family, and, more specifically, to the claims of Trapezuntine emperors to the legacy of Byzantium, expressed through their portraits. After a survey of the known literary and visual material concerning the portraits of the Grand Komnenoi, Bardashova logically considers them as a visual representation of imperial power.The studies on Byzantium and its periphery during the Late Middle Ages already gathered solid and rich material that requires a generalization but also needs a reformulation and new look on the debated, but already classical, ideas of Dimitri Obolensky and Nicolae Iorga, such as Byzantine Commonwealth or Byzance après Byzance. The volume Late Byzantium Reconsidered suggests such a goal of conceptualization, remaining mostly in the area of the Palaeologian cultural situation, which is not a deficiency at all. On the contrary, it provides valuable studies on the period and opens the interest to wider scholarly areas. This is probably the supreme worth of a study.