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Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange
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Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752). This special issue belongs to the section "Visual Arts".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2024) | Viewed by 17935

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Margarita Voulgaropoulou

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
The Faculty of History, Ruhr University Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany
Interests: Byzantine; post-Byzantine; european art

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Separated by fluid boundaries and marked by stark ethnic and confessional divisions, the worlds of the Christian East and Western Europe did not develop in a vacuum but maintained centuries-long reciprocal contacts and osmotic relationships that shaped their respective cultural and artistic traditions. First under Byzantine and then under Ottoman rule, Orthodox Christians came into close contacts with their European counterparts either through peaceful encounters, such as trade and diplomacy, or through warfare, crusading, political and religious conflicts, as well as the migration waves that followed. These extensive networks of communication and exchange fostered an intense mobility of people and objects, as well as a constant circulation of knowledge, trends, and ideas between the Orthodox lands of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, and the Catholic states of Central and Western Europe. Along with written sources, the material evidence of these enduring exchanges includes objects, such as portable artworks, devotional icons, manuscripts, liturgical objects, as well as monumental art and architecture.

The proposed special issue of Arts seeks to approach various aspects of the long-lasting interaction between the cultural and artistic traditions of the Christian East and West, focusing on themes such as the mobility of artists and patrons, cultural transfer, and appropriation, as well as artistic hybridity. By employing a broad chronological and geographical scope, this Special Issue invites contributions from a wide range of fields and disciplines, aiming to trace diachronic and trans-spatial aspects of the cultural contacts between Eastern and Western societies, and to challenge long-established historiographical notions regarding the East-West dichotomy.

Contributions have to address the topic of the Special Issue. Please read details at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts/instructions

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Margarita Voulgaropoulou
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • cross-cultural exchanges
  • migration
  • material culture
  • diplomacy
  • wall-paintings
  • icons
  • relics
  • manuscripts

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 12477 KiB  
Article
Rethinking the Medieval Visual Culture of Eastern Europe: Two Case Studies in Dialogue (Serbia and Wallachia)
by Maria Alessia Rossi and Alice Isabella Sullivan
Arts 2023, 12(6), 233; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12060233 - 4 Nov 2023
Viewed by 2238
Abstract
This article explores how the visual culture of Eastern Europe has been studied and often excluded from the grander narratives of art history and more specialized conversations due to political and cultural limitations, as well as bias in the field. The history and [...] Read more.
This article explores how the visual culture of Eastern Europe has been studied and often excluded from the grander narratives of art history and more specialized conversations due to political and cultural limitations, as well as bias in the field. The history and visual culture of Eastern Europe have been shaped by contacts with Byzantium, transforming, in local contexts, aspects of the rich legacy of the empire before and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This study expands and theorizes the eclectic visual cultures of Eastern Europe during the late medieval period by focusing on two ecclesiastical buildings of the 14th century built under princely and noble patronage in regions of North Macedonia and Wallachia, respectively: the Church of St George at Staro Nagoričane, near Skopje, modern-day North Macedonia (1315–17) and Cozia Monastery in Călimănești, Wallachia, modern-day Romania (founded 1388). The 14th century was a transformative period for the regions to the north and south of the Danube River, establishing the contacts that were to develop further during the 15th century and especially after 1453. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange)
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52 pages, 15462 KiB  
Article
La Serenissima in Cyprus: Aspects of Venetian Art on the Edge of a Maritime Empire, 1474/89–1570/1
by Anthi Andronikou
Arts 2023, 12(5), 186; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050186 - 31 Aug 2023
Viewed by 3049
Abstract
This article investigates the manifestation of Venetian visual culture of the Renaissance in the island of Cyprus, which, between 1474/89 and 1570/1, stood as one of Venice’s Mediterranean colonies. To date, scholarship on panel and wall painting production of Venetian Cyprus has devoted [...] Read more.
This article investigates the manifestation of Venetian visual culture of the Renaissance in the island of Cyprus, which, between 1474/89 and 1570/1, stood as one of Venice’s Mediterranean colonies. To date, scholarship on panel and wall painting production of Venetian Cyprus has devoted careful attention to the infiltration of Italian details and styles in the broader sense—mainly drawn from the Italian Middle Ages—thus failing to notice any correlations between Cypriot visual arts and contemporary Venetian. In this study, I aim to provide an overarching perspective that will illuminate the presence and assimilation of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venetian visual vocabulary in Cypriot artistic capital. With an emphasis on devotional painting, I will examine iconographic schemes, such as the Man of Sorrows and the Holy Conversation, and facets of stylistic and iconographic correspondences between the two territories. I will also probe the architectural function, purpose, and tenor of lunette-shaped panels in Cyprus and collate them with their Venetian equivalents. Put simply, I hope to flesh out the artistic contact Cypriot artists and their sponsors maintained with Venice rather than with Italy as a whole. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange)
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36 pages, 14589 KiB  
Article
Saint Mamas at Exeles: An Unusual Case of Ritual Piety on Karpathos
by Angeliki Katsioti and Nikolaos Mastrochristos
Arts 2023, 12(4), 176; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040176 - 15 Aug 2023
Viewed by 2342
Abstract
The church of Saint Mamas is a small, domed structure that lies close to Menetes village in Karpathos. It preserves most of its painted decoration, consisting of the scene of the Ascension of Christ on the dome and saintly figures on the rest [...] Read more.
The church of Saint Mamas is a small, domed structure that lies close to Menetes village in Karpathos. It preserves most of its painted decoration, consisting of the scene of the Ascension of Christ on the dome and saintly figures on the rest of the surfaces. A dedicatory inscription, read here for the first time, dates the frescoes to 1312/3 and places them in the broader context of precisely dated monuments. Certain features of the iconographic program, such as the presence of healer saints (Panteleemon and Kyprianos) but mostly of the officiating Pope Sylvester and the passage used in the codex of Christ Pantocrator on the apse of the altar, lead us to interesting conclusions concerning, among other things, the perception of anti-Latin propaganda in the islands of the South Aegean. Also, the stylistic affinities between the art of Karpathos and Crete corroborate the diachronic interrelations between the two islands. The church of Saint Mamas is an exceptional example and one of the few Byzantine-decorated monuments that survive on the island. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange)
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17 pages, 2548 KiB  
Article
Post-Byzantine Cretan Icon Painting: Demand and Supply Revisited
by Angeliki Lymberopoulou
Arts 2023, 12(4), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040139 - 4 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1999
Abstract
Since Manolis Chatzidakis’s pivotal publications on post-Byzantine Cretan icon painting in the 1970s, research in the field is, by now, very well established. In turn, these studies have demonstrated the contribution of Venetian Crete’s artistic production to European culture. Despite Giorgio Vasari’s condemnations [...] Read more.
Since Manolis Chatzidakis’s pivotal publications on post-Byzantine Cretan icon painting in the 1970s, research in the field is, by now, very well established. In turn, these studies have demonstrated the contribution of Venetian Crete’s artistic production to European culture. Despite Giorgio Vasari’s condemnations of the ‘Greek style’, Byzantine icons remained popular in Renaissance Europe among Western patrons. Research on Venetian Crete has greatly benefitted from the survival of its archives, presently housed in Venice (Archivio di Stato di Venezia), an incredibly rich and invaluable source of information. One of the best-known published and referenced documents from these archives, supporting the wider popularity and dissemination of Cretan icons, is a contract offered to three Cretan painters dated 4 July 1499 concerning the production and delivery of 700 icons of the Virgin in just 42 days, by 15 August 1499, the day of the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin. This paper revisits the information the famous contract provides with the aim to scrutinise it further. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange)
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21 pages, 32617 KiB  
Article
Artistic, Commercial, and Confessional Exchanges between Venetian Crete and Western Europe: The Multiple Lives of an Icon of the Virgin and Child from Harvard Art Museums
by Margarita Voulgaropoulou
Arts 2023, 12(4), 130; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040130 - 26 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1896
Abstract
In the collections of the Harvard Art Museums there is an icon of the Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Roch. Although a typical product of Cretan icon painting of the turn of the sixteenth century, the icon stands out [...] Read more.
In the collections of the Harvard Art Museums there is an icon of the Virgin and Child with Saints John the Baptist and Roch. Although a typical product of Cretan icon painting of the turn of the sixteenth century, the icon stands out from similar contemporary artworks due to its unusual subject matter and materiality. The iconographic analysis of the icon places it at the intersection of the Latin and Byzantine traditions and suggests that it was intended as a votive offering against the plague, featuring one of the earliest depictions of the anti-plague saint, Roch of Montpellier in Eastern Orthodox art. Examination of the verso of the icon further underscores the Western European associations of the panel. The presence of an elaborate incised design on the back side of the icon suggests that the wooden panel originated from a reused piece of furniture, in all probability, a fifteenth-century Italian chest. With this case study as a point of reference, this article discusses the commercial, artistic, and cross-confessional exchanges that took place in the ethnically and culturally pluralistic societies of Venice and its Mediterranean colonies, including the trans-confessional spread of cults, the dissemination of artistic trends, as well as the mutual transfer of artworks and objects of prestige, such as icons and chests. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange)
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12 pages, 9035 KiB  
Article
Lutheran Apocalyptic Imagery in the Orthodox Context
by Anita Paolicchi
Arts 2023, 12(3), 99; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030099 - 11 May 2023
Viewed by 1716
Abstract
Dürer’s Apocalypse was undoubtedly the prototype for the many apocalyptic representations that suddenly appeared in Central Europe by the end of the sixteenth century: the influence of Dürer’s Apocalypse extended far beyond the German borders, towards Western, Southern and Eastern countries. The Apocalypse [...] Read more.
Dürer’s Apocalypse was undoubtedly the prototype for the many apocalyptic representations that suddenly appeared in Central Europe by the end of the sixteenth century: the influence of Dürer’s Apocalypse extended far beyond the German borders, towards Western, Southern and Eastern countries. The Apocalypse text is extremely rich in symbols so that it could easily be enriched with additional meanings: Cranach’s reworking of Dürer’s iconographic model in the 1520s, under Luther’s personal guidance, became a key instrument of transmission of the Lutheran doctrine and anti-papal criticism. The reception of these prototypes in the Orthodox world followed different routes, as two different works of art can prove, namely, a cycle of frescoes on Mount Athos and a series of Gospel book covers made at the end of the seventeenth century by an unidentified Transylvanian Saxon Lutheran goldsmith. In the latter, the Cranach prototype, which was originally made with the purpose of transmitting the Lutheran doctrine, was brilliantly adapted by the goldsmith to a different context. The comparative analysis of the same scene by Dürer, Cranach and the Transylvanian goldsmith can be useful to show how art could be employed to transmit a religious and political message while adapting it to the specific needs and characteristics of a culturally and religiously different context. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange)
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22 pages, 386 KiB  
Article
The Past Is Evolutionary, the Future Is Byzantine: Kurt Weitzmann’s Contribution to the Research on Pictorial Narration
by Gyöngyvér Horváth
Arts 2023, 12(3), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030086 - 29 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1985
Abstract
In the Illustrations in Roll and Codex (1947), Kurt Weitzmann developed a methodological apparatus for studying Byzantine and medieval narrative book illumination. His approach had two important features: an evolutionary narrative typology that paid attention to the narrative strategies the painter chose for [...] Read more.
In the Illustrations in Roll and Codex (1947), Kurt Weitzmann developed a methodological apparatus for studying Byzantine and medieval narrative book illumination. His approach had two important features: an evolutionary narrative typology that paid attention to the narrative strategies the painter chose for presenting a story and a comparative narrative analysis that observed stories in illustrations in relation to their textual source. The focus of this paper is the personal and institutional background of this method, its context, dissemination, and legacy. Weitzmann advanced the study of pictorial storytelling through his pedagogical work and introduced it into the academic curriculum. Alongside stylistic analysis and iconography, it soon became an essential methodological tool in art history that constituted a link between the art of the Byzantine East and the Latin West. This approach also had a key influence on the style of his autobiographical writings. Weitzmann propagated the study of visual narratives through his extremely productive oeuvre and effective personal influence. In the dissemination of Weitzmann’s ideas, three institutions played a key role: Princeton University, Dumbarton Oaks, and the University of Chicago. Weitzmann’s circle made Byzantine studies the leading field for research into visual narratives over the period from around 1940 to 1980. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and European Art History and Cultural Interchange)
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