Download or read book The Octateuchs written by John Lowden and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have until now lacked a detailed study of the Octateuchs, a group of five illustrated Byzantine manuscripts that accompany the text of the first eight books of the Bible. Since the first historical studies of Early Christian and Byzantine art in the late nineteenth century, the Octateuchs have been considered important to hypotheses about the development of biblical illustration as well as to more detailed iconographic studies. John Lowden's study makes available much new information about the Octateuchs that includes a number of previously unpublished manuscript images and pages. Lowden examines the Octateuchs both individually and as a group, determining the relationships among them and offering many suggestions concerning the process of their creation. The author also covers topics ranging from antiquity to the Renaissance and takes up issues as diverse as the invention of illustration, the transmission of iconography, the role of archetypes and lost models, and the artist as copyist or inventor. His broader discussion includes individual works ranging from Dura Europos to the Sistine Chapel and art-historical constructs such as the Macedonian Renaissance. In addition, Lowden critically examines approaches to studies of such illustrations, specifically those of Kurt Weitzmann.
Download or read book The Old Testament in Byzantium written by Paul Magdalino and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Old Testament in Byzantium contains papers from a Dumbarton Oaks symposium based on an exhibition of early Bible manuscripts titled "In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000." Topics include manifestations of the holy books in Byzantine manuscript illustration, architecture, and government, as well as in Jewish Bible translations.
Download or read book A Companion to Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an overview of Byzantine manuscript illustration, a central branch of Byzantine art and culture. Just like written texts, illustrations bear witness to Byzantine material culture, imperial ideology and religious beliefs, as well as to the development and spread of Byzantine art. In this sense illustrated books reflect the society that produced and used them. Being portable, they could serve as diplomatic gifts or could be acquired by foreigners. In such cases they became “emissaries” of Byzantine art and culture in Western Europe and the Arabic world. The volume provides for the first time a comprehensive overview of the material, divided by text categories, including both secular and religious manuscripts, and analyses which texts were illustrated in Byzantium, and how. Contributors are Justine M. Andrews, Leslie Brubaker, Annemarie W. Carr, Elina Dobrynina, Maria Evangelatou, Maria Laura Tomea Gavazzoli, Markos Giannoulis, Cecily Hennessy, Ioli Kalavrezou, Maja Kominko, Sofia Kotzabassi, Stavros Lazaris, Kallirroe Linardou, Vasileios Marinis, Kathleen Maxwell, Georgi R. Parpulov, Nancy P. Ševčenko, Jean-Michel Spieser, Mika Takiguchi, Courtney Tomaselli, Marina Toumpouri, Nicolette S. Trahoulia, Vasiliki Tsamakda, and Elisabeth Yota.
Download or read book The World of Kosmas written by Maja Kominko and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New study of the Christian Topography, a sixth-century illustrated treatise, and its intellectual milieu.
Download or read book Imaging the Early Medieval Bible written by John Williams and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique exploration of the beginnings of biblical illustration and decoration.
Download or read book Literacy Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond written by Catherine Holmes and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volumes consider literacy, education and manuscript transmission in Byzantium and its neighbouring worlds, areas which to date have received surprisingly little sustained scholarly treatment among Byzantinists. Contributions include an overview, survey papers and individual case studies, many of which draw on recently discovered or rarely consulted sources: literary sources include astrological texts, saints' lives and florilegia as well as documentary texts, art and archaeological evidence. The contributors' fields reflect the interdisciplinary scope of this volume, covering history, art history, literary studies and palaeography. The volume looks in detail at Byzantium, but also includes papers on Rus, the Middle East, and the Jewish contribution. The book's eastern perspectives offer interesting comparisons and contrasts with the medieval West. The book is illustrated with plates showing illuminated manuscripts and archaeological artefacts. The contributors are Paul Botley, Simon Franklin, Catherine Holmes, Erica Hunter, John Lowden, Paul Magdalino, Margaret Mullett, Stefan Reif, Charlotte Roueche, Natalie Tchernetska, and Judith Waring.
Download or read book The Crescent on the Temple written by Pamela Berger and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Crescent on the Temple" by Pamela Berger elucidates an obscured tradition—how the Dome of the Rock came to stand for the Temple of Solomon in Christian, Muslim, and Jewish art. The crusaders called the Dome of the Rock the “Temple of the Lord,” while Muslim imagery depicted Solomon enthroned within the domed structure. Jews knew that the ancient Temple had been destroyed. Nevertheless, in their imagery, they commonly labeled the Muslim shrine “The Temple.” That domed “Temple” was often represented with a crescent on top. This iconography, long hidden in plain sight, reflects one aspect of an historical affinity between Jews and Muslims.
Download or read book Images of Cosmology in Jewish and Byzantine Art written by Shulamit Laderman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the design of the Tabernacle in the wilderness correspond to God’s blueprint of Creation? The Christian Topography, a sixth-century Byzantine Christian work, presents such a cosmology. Its theory is based on the “pattern” revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai when he was told to build the Tabernacle and its implements “after their pattern, which is being shown thee on the Mount.” (Exod. 25: 40). The book demonstrates, through texts and images, the motifs that link the Tabernacle and Creation. It traces the long chain of transmission that connects the Jewish and Christian traditions from Syria and ancient Israel to France and Spain from the first through the fourteenth century, revealing new models of interaction between Judaism and Christianity.
Download or read book Images of the Byzantine World written by Angeliki Lymberopoulou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main themes of this volume are the identification of 'visions', 'messages', and 'meanings' in various facets of Byzantine culture and the possible differences in the perception of these visions, messages and meanings as seen by their original audience and by modern scholars. The volume addresses the methodological question of how far interpretations should go - whether there is a tendency to read too much into too little or whether not enough attention is paid to apparent minutiae that may have been important in their historical context. As the essays span a wide chronological era, they also present a means of assessing the relative degrees of continuity and change in Byzantine visions, messages and meanings over time. Thus, as highlighted in the concluding section, the book discusses the validity of existing notions regarding the fluidity of Byzantine culture: when continuity was a matter of a rigid adherence to traditional values and when a manifestation of the ability to adapt old conventions to new circumstances, and it shows that in some respects, Byzantine cultural history may have been less fragmented than is usually assumed. Similarly, by reflecting not just on new interpretations, but also on the process of interpreting itself, the contributors demonstrate how research within Byzantine studies has evolved over the past thirty years from a set of narrowly defined individual disciplines into a broader exploration of interconnected cultural phenomena.
Download or read book An Obscure Portrait written by Mati Meyer and published by Pindar Press. This book was released on 2007-12-31 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent discussions on Byzantine art have been dominated by the question of representing realia. Among these, however, the way works of art reflect the daily life of women have not received much space or attention. The present book studies various images representing women's status and her performative tasks, and their significance from the fourth century to the fall of the Empire, through analysis of archaeological evidence and works of art. It addresses a wide range of questions, some pertaining both to pictorial traditions and to their late antique antecedents, others peculiar to changing and evolving Byzantine culture and mentality. The first chapter deals with the imagery of childbearing, starting with conception and concluding with the care given to the new born and the mother. The second chapter investigates motherhood imagery (breastfeeding, child care, and child-mother intimacy) and the portrayal of women as caretakers and managers of the household (preparing food, bringing water, carding and weaving, or working side by side with their husbands). The third chapter is dedicated to representations of women holding positions outside the house: midwives, maidservants, wet nurses, and mourners. Images of women engaged in disreputable occupations-dancers, musicians, prostitutes and courtesans - complete this chapter. The fourth chapter discusses images of women portrayed in the metaphorical margins - looking out from the gynaikon (the women's apartments), or at their private toilette; it also deals with representations of women who stray from the societal mainstream - concubines; adulteresses, women consenting to sexual acts or being coerced into them - considered symbolically as belonging to the margins of society. The book concludes with a discussion of the degree to which the visual material reliably reflects reality and changing attitudes toward women between Late Antiquity and late Byzantium; and further, to what extent it reveals embedded perceptions and conceptions of women, constructed by canonic regulations and imperial law, popular beliefs and accepted customs. The book aims to lift a veil from known and less known works of art and to present the rarely described picture of the daily life of women in Byzantine art over a very wide chronological span of time, in an effort to expand our knowledge of women in Byzantium and their realia.
Download or read book Wonderful Things Byzantium through its Art written by Liz James and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected in this book were delivered at the XLII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in London in 2009 to accompany the exhibition Byzantium 330-1453, at the Royal Academy. The exhibition was one of the most ambitious and complex exhibitions ever mounted at the Royal Academy, as well as one of the most popular, and the overall aim of the book is to reflect on the exhibition of Byzantine art, both as an academic and popular exercise, and through the choice and discussion of individual objects. Exhibitions present a very different picture of Byzantium and its culture from works of history. The choices of object for display, their arrangement, and the underlying aims of exhibition curators and designers mean that every exhibition presents a different picture of Byzantium. Particular emphases can be placed, whether on everyday life or high court culture; Constantinople or the provinces; or claims of continuity or change over the Byzantine millennium. The essays explore aspects of the image of Byzantium that results from these choices. Given the enormous popularity of exhibitions of Byzantine objects (continued after the completion of this volume by exhibitions in Paris, Bonn and Istanbul), art has become one of the most popular and accessible means of popularizing Byzantium to a wide public audience. Hitherto there has been no general consideration of either the historiography of Byzantine exhibitions or the ways in which they have been set up to present different aspects of Byzantine culture to an academic and general public. The essays are divided into 3 sections: Exhibiting Byzantium sets the 2009 exhibition into the context of other exhibitions of Byzantine art and considers the issues involved in curating and viewing such major collections of medieval art; Object Lessons offers a set of studies of individual objects that were in the exhibition; Byzantium through its Art moves to consider Byzantine art more widely, thinking about the different ways in which objects can be used to study Byzantine culture and society. These are preceded by an introduction by the editors which sets the volume in context.
Download or read book Talmuda de Eretz Israel written by Steven Fine and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-07-28 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine brings together an international community of historians, literature scholars and archaeologists to explore how the integrated study of rabbinic texts and archaeology increases our understanding of both types of evidence, and of the complex culture which they together reflect. This volume reflects a growing consensus that rabbinic culture was an “embodied” culture, presenting a series of case studies that demonstrate the value of archaeology for the contextualization of rabbinic literature. It steers away from later twentieth-century trends, particularly in North America, that stressed disjunction between archaeology and rabbinic literature, and seeks a more holistic approach.
Download or read book The New Cambridge History of the Bible Volume 2 From 600 to 1450 written by Richard Marsden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 1254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the development and use of the Bible from late Antiquity to the Reformation, tracing both its geographical and its intellectual journeys from its homelands throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean and into northern Europe. Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter's volume provides a balanced treatment of eastern and western biblical traditions, highlighting processes of transmission and modes of exegesis among Roman and Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims and illuminating the role of the Bible in medieval inter-religious dialogue. Translations into Ethiopic, Slavic, Armenian and Georgian vernaculars, as well as Romance and Germanic, are treated in detail, along with the theme of allegorized spirituality and established forms of glossing. The chapters take the study of Bible history beyond the cloisters of medieval monasteries and ecclesiastical schools to consider the influence of biblical texts on vernacular poetry, prose, drama, law and the visual arts of East and West.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint written by Alison G. Salvesen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 776 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Septuagint is the term commonly used to refer to the corpus of early Greek versions of Hebrew Scriptures. The collection is of immense importance in the history of both Judaism and Christianity. The renderings of individual books attest to the religious interests of the substantial Jewish population of Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and to the development of the Greek language in its Koine phase. The narrative ascribing the Septuagint's origins to the work of seventy translators in Alexandria attained legendary status among both Jews and Christians. The Septuagint was the version of Scripture most familiar to the writers of the New Testament, and became the authoritative Old Testament of the Greek and Latin Churches. In the early centuries of Christianity it was itself translated into several other languages, and it has had a continuing influence on the style and content of biblical translations. The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint features contributions from leading experts in the field considering the history and manuscript transmission of the version, and the study of translation technique and textual criticism. The collection provides surveys of previous and current research on individual books of the Septuagint corpus, on alternative Jewish Greek versions, the Christian 'daughter' translations, and reception in early Jewish and Christian writers. The Handbook also includes several conversations with related fields of interest such as New Testament studies, liturgy, and art history.
Download or read book The Great Mosque of Damascus written by Finbarr Flood and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focussing on the Great Mosque of Damascus, this volume discusses the scope and significance of the building campaign undertaken by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid b. ‘Abd al-Malik (86-96/705-15), and its implications for the development of early Islamic visual culture.
Download or read book Images of Leprosy written by Christine M. Boeckl and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From biblical times to the onset of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, leprosy was considered the worst human affliction, both medically and socially. Only fifty years ago, leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, was an incurable infectious illness, and it still remains a grave global concern. Recently, leprosy has generated attention in scholarly fields from medical science to the visual arts. This interdisciplinary art-historical survey on lepra and its visualization in sculpture, murals, stained glass, and other media provides new information on the history of art, medicine, religion, and European society. Christine M. Boeckl maintains that the various terrifying aspects of the disease dominated the visual narratives of historic and legendary figures stricken with leprosy. For rulers, beggars, saints, and sinners, the metaphor of leprosy becomes the background against which their captivating stories are projected.
Download or read book Byzantine Style Religion and Civilization written by Elizabeth Jeffreys and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A volume of cutting-edge essays written in honour of renowned Byzantinist Sir Steven Runciman.
