The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E.Byzantine imperial imagery is commonly perceived as a static system. In contrast to this common portrayal, this book draws attention to its openness and responsiveness to other artistic traditions. Through a close examination of significant objects and monuments created over a 350-year period, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, Alicia Walker shows how the visual articulation of Byzantine imperial power not only maintained a visual vocabulary inherited from Greco-Roman antiquity and the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also innovated on these artistic precedents by incorporating styles and forms from contemporary foreign cultures, specifically the Sasanian, Chinese and Islamic worlds. In addition to art and architecture, this book explores historical accounts and literary works as well as records of ceremonial practices, thereby demonstrating how texts, ritual and images operated as integrated agents of imperial power. Walker offers new ways to think about cross-cultural interaction in the Middle Ages and explores the diverse ways in which imperial images employed foreign elements in order to express particularly Byzantine meanings. |
Contents
Introduction Imaging Emperor and Empire in the Middle Byzantine Era | 1 |
Chapter One Emulation | 20 |
Chapter Two Appropriation | 45 |
Chapter Three Parity | 80 |
Chapter Four Expropriation | 108 |
Chapter Five Incomparability | 144 |
Conclusion | 165 |
Appendix | 175 |
Notes | 177 |
231 | |
255 | |
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The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle ... Alicia Walker Limited preview - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
Abbasid aesthetic Alexander Kazhdan Alexander Romance Alexander’s Arab artistic Baghdad Basil Book of Gifts Brubaker and Haldon Byzantine and Islamic Byzantine art Byzantine court Byzantine emperor Byzantine Empire Byzantine Silk Byzantium caliph Cambridge ceremonial Christian Constantine VII Constantinople cultural Cutler Darmstadt Casket decorated depicting diplomatic gifts Dumbarton Oaks dynasty early ekphrasis elements emulation exotic Fatimid feng huang figures foreign Grabar Greek Herakles History hunt hunters Ibn alZubayr icon Iconoclast iconography identity imperial art imperial image imperial imagery Islamic art ivory Komnenian Komnenos L’Empereur Macedonian medieval Islamic Mesarites Michael Michael III middle Byzantine imperial military models motifs Museum Muslim ninth objects and monuments ofJohn ofthe Byzantine palace panels Persian Plaque rhetorical Roman Roman-Byzantine royal ruler Sasanian scene Seal of Solomon Seljuq Seljuqs of Rum Solomon stylistic tenth century textiles Theophilos Theophilos’s throne tion tradition Troyes Casket twelfth century Umayyad University Press viewer visual