The Virgin Mary embodied power rather than maternal tenderness in the Byzantine world. Known as the Mother of God, she became a guarantor of military victory and hence of imperial …
Medieval Toledo is famous as a center of Arabic learning and as a home to sizable Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Yet its cathedral—one of the largest, richest, and best …
Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline? Rather than provide a definitive answer to this question, this book defines the parameters of the debate and proposes ways of …
Reliquaries, one of the central art forms of the Middle Ages, have recently been the object of much interest among historians and artists. Until now, however, they have had no …
In 1256, the countess of Provence, Beatrice of Savoy, enlisted her personal physician to create a health handbook to share with her daughters. Written in French and known as the …
No story is more central to Western culture than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, and none better demonstrates the power of representation in shaping religious …
Siena of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was one of the great cities of Europe and its artists—Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti—were among those …
This easily accessible volume, which grew out of a series of lectures presented at the Smithsonian Institution in 1991, aims to provide a coherent introduction to Byzantine culture …
To write about works that cannot be sensually perceived involves considerable strain. Absent the object, art historians must stretch their methods to, or even past, the breaking …
Today we take the word “icon” to mean “a sign,” or we equate it with portraits of Christ and the saints. In The Sensual Icon, Bissera Pentcheva demonstrates how icons originally …
