Scholars of medieval literature have shown how the presence of legal concepts—such issues as honor, justice, betrayal, and vengeance—is a constant in the narratives of this period. Yet far less attention has been paid to examining how these ideas were given visual expression in illuminated manuscripts of these texts, which helped disseminate knowledge of such legal practices as judicial duels among their aristocratic audience of kings, dukes, lords, and knights. This study focuses on the visualization of justice in Burgundian prose romances, tales whose plots are dominated by themes of crime and punishment. In particular, it discusses the interaction of text and image in two manuscripts of the mid-fifteenth-century Roman de Gérard de Nevers—a text belonging to the “wager cycle,” in which judicial proceedings are placed center stage—that were illustrated by the Wavrin Master and Loyset Liédet, respectively: Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 9631; and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 24378. Analysis of three key judicial episodes in the text, the wager itself and two trials by combat, reveals the very different interpretations of the work offered by these two artists. While Liédet is chiefly concerned with evoking the splendor and ceremony of the chivalric deeds that the tale recounts, the Wavrin Master brings out as fully as possible the legal lessons of the narrative, using iconographic conventions more familiar from manuscripts of canon and customary law texts and treatises on trial by battle.
{"title":"Visualizing Justice in Burgundian Prose Romance: The Roman de Gérard de Nevers Illuminated by the Wavrin Master and Loyset Liédet","authors":"Rosalind Brown‐Grant","doi":"10.1086/695774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/695774","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars of medieval literature have shown how the presence of legal concepts—such issues as honor, justice, betrayal, and vengeance—is a constant in the narratives of this period. Yet far less attention has been paid to examining how these ideas were given visual expression in illuminated manuscripts of these texts, which helped disseminate knowledge of such legal practices as judicial duels among their aristocratic audience of kings, dukes, lords, and knights. This study focuses on the visualization of justice in Burgundian prose romances, tales whose plots are dominated by themes of crime and punishment. In particular, it discusses the interaction of text and image in two manuscripts of the mid-fifteenth-century Roman de Gérard de Nevers—a text belonging to the “wager cycle,” in which judicial proceedings are placed center stage—that were illustrated by the Wavrin Master and Loyset Liédet, respectively: Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 9631; and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 24378. Analysis of three key judicial episodes in the text, the wager itself and two trials by combat, reveals the very different interpretations of the work offered by these two artists. While Liédet is chiefly concerned with evoking the splendor and ceremony of the chivalric deeds that the tale recounts, the Wavrin Master brings out as fully as possible the legal lessons of the narrative, using iconographic conventions more familiar from manuscripts of canon and customary law texts and treatises on trial by battle.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/695774","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48393379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article we investigate two medievalist enterprises built in the 1920s and 1930s: Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Both buildings were created as homes for wealthy industrialists—Raymond Pitcairn and John Hays Hammond Jr., respectively—and both are structures built in a medieval style that also incorporate actual medieval objects, including architectural fragments, stained glass, and sculpture. Although they do it somewhat differently, the two buildings resituate the art of the past in the present, reinterpreting the past but also reinventing the medieval objects through recontextualization. We examine these revivalist buildings as products of the trend of medievalism prevalent among collectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who conflated original and reproduction elements to create a pastiche of medieval and modern. Instead of searching for origins and privileging the “authentic,” however, we interrogate the very meaning of authenticity. The spoliated fragments of architectural salvage, sculpture, and glass function as relics of the Middle Ages, but they also transcend their identity as historical markers of the past. Resituated and regrouped in their new environments, the objects in these eclectic collections span centuries but work together to create richly evocative meanings that free them from the constraints of provenance. Glencairn and Hammond Castle provide experiences of the medieval world, ultimately reminding us that all interpretations of a period, whether scholarly or popular, are, in the end, reconstructions.
{"title":"Integrated Pasts: Glencairn Museum and Hammond Castle","authors":"Jennifer Borland, M. Easton","doi":"10.1086/695775","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/695775","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we investigate two medievalist enterprises built in the 1920s and 1930s: Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, and Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Both buildings were created as homes for wealthy industrialists—Raymond Pitcairn and John Hays Hammond Jr., respectively—and both are structures built in a medieval style that also incorporate actual medieval objects, including architectural fragments, stained glass, and sculpture. Although they do it somewhat differently, the two buildings resituate the art of the past in the present, reinterpreting the past but also reinventing the medieval objects through recontextualization. We examine these revivalist buildings as products of the trend of medievalism prevalent among collectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who conflated original and reproduction elements to create a pastiche of medieval and modern. Instead of searching for origins and privileging the “authentic,” however, we interrogate the very meaning of authenticity. The spoliated fragments of architectural salvage, sculpture, and glass function as relics of the Middle Ages, but they also transcend their identity as historical markers of the past. Resituated and regrouped in their new environments, the objects in these eclectic collections span centuries but work together to create richly evocative meanings that free them from the constraints of provenance. Glencairn and Hammond Castle provide experiences of the medieval world, ultimately reminding us that all interpretations of a period, whether scholarly or popular, are, in the end, reconstructions.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/695775","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46591259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the iconography of militarized violence in Christian art as a reflection of turbulence and peacemaking during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Despite the message of peace urged by Christ’s Beatitudes, churches of that time displayed depictions of violent disputes between individuals and groups in a wide array of examples on both the exterior and the interior, often in positions available to clergy and laity for viewing and instruction. Focusing especially on Spain, we offer a survey of these representations and an analysis of the message they conveyed to viewers. The pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela had a major role in connecting France and Spain and their religious and artistic communities, but other factors, such as the Gregorian reform and the frontier conflict against the Islamic South, are considered as well. Although the iconography has often been associated with such pacifist movements as the Peace and the Truce of God, we argue that these images assert the Church’s active role in earthly justice, whose methods utilized violent means. The involvement of the Church in the struggle for precedence over the secular nobility resulted in conflicts about landed power and patronage, with the ordeal by combat used to settle legal disputes and find justice. Depictions of confronted warriors, and particularly the inclusion of an intervening figure, expressed not the Church’s banning of conflict but its adoption of a judicial method to impose its rule and uphold the virtue of divine justice.
{"title":"Justice, Conflict, and Dispute Resolution in Romanesque Art: The Ecclesiastical Message in Spain","authors":"J. F. Powers, L. Attreed","doi":"10.1086/695771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/695771","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the iconography of militarized violence in Christian art as a reflection of turbulence and peacemaking during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Despite the message of peace urged by Christ’s Beatitudes, churches of that time displayed depictions of violent disputes between individuals and groups in a wide array of examples on both the exterior and the interior, often in positions available to clergy and laity for viewing and instruction. Focusing especially on Spain, we offer a survey of these representations and an analysis of the message they conveyed to viewers. The pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela had a major role in connecting France and Spain and their religious and artistic communities, but other factors, such as the Gregorian reform and the frontier conflict against the Islamic South, are considered as well. Although the iconography has often been associated with such pacifist movements as the Peace and the Truce of God, we argue that these images assert the Church’s active role in earthly justice, whose methods utilized violent means. The involvement of the Church in the struggle for precedence over the secular nobility resulted in conflicts about landed power and patronage, with the ordeal by combat used to settle legal disputes and find justice. Depictions of confronted warriors, and particularly the inclusion of an intervening figure, expressed not the Church’s banning of conflict but its adoption of a judicial method to impose its rule and uphold the virtue of divine justice.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/695771","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49175478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A late fourteenth-century painted triptych by the Sienese painter Bartolo di Fredi, now in a private collection in London, depicts the Virgin Mary with the Sienese patron saint Ansanus. It is one of several painted wooden tabernacles that originally incorporated saints’ relics visibly into their surfaces. These tabernacles participate in a discourse around media, materiality, representation, and re-presentation. Through their combinations of bodily matter and varied artistic media, they raise questions and encourage thought about the relationships between different types of matter and among visuality, materiality, and reality. The tabernacles use a multiplicity of materials to represent the effects of other, more precious substances, such as painted and gilded wood for gold and colored glass for precious jewels. This seems to make an explicit devotional and theological point, highlighting the real value of the saints’ relics in contrast with the apparent preciousness of the painted, gilded, and embellished surfaces. I suggest that paying attention to the materiality of the various elements of the tabernacles offers additional possibilities for consideration of their use and reception. I propose that the London tabernacle was created in Siena in the wake of the newly reinvigorated cult of relics that followed the acquisition by the hospital of Sta. Maria della Scala of a major collection of relics from Byzantium. At the same time, the tabernacle responds to the continuing cult of the Virgin in Siena and to the long-standing desire to link relics of the saints with images of the Virgin.
锡耶纳画家巴尔托罗·迪·弗雷迪(Bartolo di Fredi)在14世纪晚期创作的一幅三联画，描绘了圣母玛利亚和锡耶纳守护神安萨努斯(Ansanus)。它是几个彩绘的木制帐篷之一，最初将圣徒的遗物明显地融入其表面。这些帐篷参与了围绕媒介、物质性、再现和再呈现的讨论。通过对物质和各种艺术媒介的结合，他们提出了问题，并鼓励人们思考不同类型的物质之间的关系，以及视觉、物质和现实之间的关系。这些帐篷使用多种材料来代表其他更珍贵的物质的效果，比如用彩绘和镀金的木头来代表黄金，用彩色玻璃来代表珍贵的珠宝。这似乎表明了一个明确的信仰和神学观点，突出了圣徒遗物的真正价值，与表面上的绘画、镀金和装饰形成鲜明对比。我建议，关注帐篷各种元素的物质性，为考虑它们的使用和接待提供了额外的可能性。我认为伦敦神龛是在锡耶纳被斯塔医院收购后，随着文物崇拜的重新焕发活力而在锡耶纳创建的。来自拜占庭的主要文物收藏的玛丽亚德拉斯卡拉。与此同时，帐幕回应了锡耶纳对圣母的持续崇拜，以及将圣徒的遗物与圣母的形象联系起来的长期愿望。
{"title":"Matter and Materiality in an Italian Reliquary Triptych","authors":"B. Williamson","doi":"10.1086/695772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/695772","url":null,"abstract":"A late fourteenth-century painted triptych by the Sienese painter Bartolo di Fredi, now in a private collection in London, depicts the Virgin Mary with the Sienese patron saint Ansanus. It is one of several painted wooden tabernacles that originally incorporated saints’ relics visibly into their surfaces. These tabernacles participate in a discourse around media, materiality, representation, and re-presentation. Through their combinations of bodily matter and varied artistic media, they raise questions and encourage thought about the relationships between different types of matter and among visuality, materiality, and reality. The tabernacles use a multiplicity of materials to represent the effects of other, more precious substances, such as painted and gilded wood for gold and colored glass for precious jewels. This seems to make an explicit devotional and theological point, highlighting the real value of the saints’ relics in contrast with the apparent preciousness of the painted, gilded, and embellished surfaces. I suggest that paying attention to the materiality of the various elements of the tabernacles offers additional possibilities for consideration of their use and reception. I propose that the London tabernacle was created in Siena in the wake of the newly reinvigorated cult of relics that followed the acquisition by the hospital of Sta. Maria della Scala of a major collection of relics from Byzantium. At the same time, the tabernacle responds to the continuing cult of the Virgin in Siena and to the long-standing desire to link relics of the saints with images of the Virgin.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/695772","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47651604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
n the early 2000s I took many trips across rural Europe with Regnerus Steensma, my colleague at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), in search of country churches rich in medieval furnishings. Our assumption that the Middle Ages are preserved most tangibly in the splendid isolation of remote parish churches was confirmed time and again. We were amazed by the interior ensembles on the island of Gotland, delighted by the the imposing chancel screens of Devon, impressed by the soaring altarpieces of southern Aragon, intrigued by the Romanesque pievi (rural baptismal churches) of Tuscany, and overwhelmed by the Gothic splendor of Middle Franconia. The density of wellpreserved examples varies greatly from country to country, and Norway was not on our list until relatively late in the project. In June 2007 we planned a visit to the wooden stave churches along the Sognefjord and the valleys of eastern Norway before heading south toward Oslo. We began the trip in Bergen, on the country’s west coast, where we visited the local universitymuseum before venturing into the hinterland. We knew that its collections included more than twenty rare painted altar frontals from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; they had been the subject of an exhaustive research project several years earlier. Because a general catalogue of the collections had not been published, however, and the Internet was not as developed as it is today, we had only a vague idea of what to expect. Stepping over the threshold into the half-dark exhibition rooms of the kirkekunstsamling—the church art collection—wewere instantly blown away (Fig. 1). To the left and right were Romanesque church furnishings of painted wood, a variety of object types we had hardly ever seen before. In addition to the colorful painted frontals, we saw a number of polychromed Virgin and
{"title":"Encounter: The Kirkekunstsamling at the University Museum of Bergen","authors":"J. Kroesen","doi":"10.1086/695770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/695770","url":null,"abstract":"n the early 2000s I took many trips across rural Europe with Regnerus Steensma, my colleague at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), in search of country churches rich in medieval furnishings. Our assumption that the Middle Ages are preserved most tangibly in the splendid isolation of remote parish churches was confirmed time and again. We were amazed by the interior ensembles on the island of Gotland, delighted by the the imposing chancel screens of Devon, impressed by the soaring altarpieces of southern Aragon, intrigued by the Romanesque pievi (rural baptismal churches) of Tuscany, and overwhelmed by the Gothic splendor of Middle Franconia. The density of wellpreserved examples varies greatly from country to country, and Norway was not on our list until relatively late in the project. In June 2007 we planned a visit to the wooden stave churches along the Sognefjord and the valleys of eastern Norway before heading south toward Oslo. We began the trip in Bergen, on the country’s west coast, where we visited the local universitymuseum before venturing into the hinterland. We knew that its collections included more than twenty rare painted altar frontals from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; they had been the subject of an exhaustive research project several years earlier. Because a general catalogue of the collections had not been published, however, and the Internet was not as developed as it is today, we had only a vague idea of what to expect. Stepping over the threshold into the half-dark exhibition rooms of the kirkekunstsamling—the church art collection—wewere instantly blown away (Fig. 1). To the left and right were Romanesque church furnishings of painted wood, a variety of object types we had hardly ever seen before. In addition to the colorful painted frontals, we saw a number of polychromed Virgin and","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/695770","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46831122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses the value of unknown monuments as construed by the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, a catalogue of the monuments of Constantinople compiled, according to some scholars, in the eighth century. I contend that the Parastaseis imagines the topography of Constantinople as one composed of nodes of the unknown. I further argue that these unknown spaces and monuments articulated the city’s links to its ancient—if forgotten—past and thus played a critical role as markers of urban and historical continuity. In particular, ancient statues were associated with the longevity of the Byzantine Empire in a way that holy icons were not, because the former had never been subjected to the atrocities and debates regarding their validity that the latter had during Iconoclasm.
{"title":"Viewing the Unknown in Eighth-Century Constantinople","authors":"Paroma Chatterjee","doi":"10.1086/692801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/692801","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the value of unknown monuments as construed by the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, a catalogue of the monuments of Constantinople compiled, according to some scholars, in the eighth century. I contend that the Parastaseis imagines the topography of Constantinople as one composed of nodes of the unknown. I further argue that these unknown spaces and monuments articulated the city’s links to its ancient—if forgotten—past and thus played a critical role as markers of urban and historical continuity. In particular, ancient statues were associated with the longevity of the Byzantine Empire in a way that holy icons were not, because the former had never been subjected to the atrocities and debates regarding their validity that the latter had during Iconoclasm.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/692801","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42100308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The chrismon, the symbol based on the early Christian chi-rho monogram of Christ, is among the most intriguing yet poorly understood and contentious subjects in the study of “Romanesque” sculpture. It may be the most common symbolic subject in Romanesque art—hundreds of examples survive in the portal sculptures of southern French and northern Spanish churches—but the answers to fundamental questions about the chrismon’s meaning and purpose in eleventh- and twelfth-century sculpture are disputed. A vast body of largely unconsidered evidence for the chrismon points overwhelmingly to a new answer for the old questions: the chrismon was the chief consecration mark in the doorway of the church. It was designed to receive lustration with the chrismal oils by which the bishop sanctified the entryway to the church in the liturgy of dedication, preserving in durable form the ephemeral marks, gestures, and language of the rite of consecration. This insight offers new perspective on the interactive reception of Romanesque sculpture and on the origin and purposes of the art of sculpture itself—both on its slow maturation and growth during the eleventh century out of ancient liturgical marks, including the chrismon and other “signs over the threshold,” and its abiding functional connection to liturgy.
{"title":"The Chrismon and the Liturgy of Dedication in Romanesque Sculpture","authors":"P. Brown","doi":"10.1086/692803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/692803","url":null,"abstract":"The chrismon, the symbol based on the early Christian chi-rho monogram of Christ, is among the most intriguing yet poorly understood and contentious subjects in the study of “Romanesque” sculpture. It may be the most common symbolic subject in Romanesque art—hundreds of examples survive in the portal sculptures of southern French and northern Spanish churches—but the answers to fundamental questions about the chrismon’s meaning and purpose in eleventh- and twelfth-century sculpture are disputed. A vast body of largely unconsidered evidence for the chrismon points overwhelmingly to a new answer for the old questions: the chrismon was the chief consecration mark in the doorway of the church. It was designed to receive lustration with the chrismal oils by which the bishop sanctified the entryway to the church in the liturgy of dedication, preserving in durable form the ephemeral marks, gestures, and language of the rite of consecration. This insight offers new perspective on the interactive reception of Romanesque sculpture and on the origin and purposes of the art of sculpture itself—both on its slow maturation and growth during the eleventh century out of ancient liturgical marks, including the chrismon and other “signs over the threshold,” and its abiding functional connection to liturgy.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/692803","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41396385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In tracing the histories of two Greek copies of the complete works attributed to Dionysios the Areopagite, known as the Corpus Dionysiacum, this article considers the kind of agency exerted by medieval books as distinct from other art objects mobilized in the cross-cultural diplomatic arena. An examination of the entangled social lives of these two Byzantine books sent from Constantinople to the abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris as imperial gifts in the ninth and fifteenth centuries reveals their transformation over time as objects of translatio akin to sacred relics in the negotiation of political, hagiographic, and humanistic agendas, and, further, in the cultivation of medieval patrimony in the service of medieval kingship and modern statehood.
{"title":"Translatio and Objecthood: The Cultural Agendas of Two Greek Manuscripts at Saint-Denis","authors":"Cecily J. Hilsdale","doi":"10.1086/692805","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/692805","url":null,"abstract":"In tracing the histories of two Greek copies of the complete works attributed to Dionysios the Areopagite, known as the Corpus Dionysiacum, this article considers the kind of agency exerted by medieval books as distinct from other art objects mobilized in the cross-cultural diplomatic arena. An examination of the entangled social lives of these two Byzantine books sent from Constantinople to the abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris as imperial gifts in the ninth and fifteenth centuries reveals their transformation over time as objects of translatio akin to sacred relics in the negotiation of political, hagiographic, and humanistic agendas, and, further, in the cultivation of medieval patrimony in the service of medieval kingship and modern statehood.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/692805","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46644990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The use of poetry in inscriptions on luxury objects is a notable feature in the arts of the Islamicate world, particularly in the case of gifts, in which the verses articulate underlying social relations. Scholars often consider such inscriptions within a frame of literal reference, as alternative sources of documentary evidence and/or as ekphrastic descriptions of the object on which they appear. Moving beyond mimesis, this study takes up the figurative dimensions of poetry, exemplified here by the trope of prosopopeia, which gives a fictive voice to inanimate objects and allows the inscribed gifts to speak for themselves and to their recipients. The essay demonstrates the significance of recited and inscribed poetry in the gift economy of the Islamicate world. It shows the widespread nature of the phenomenon by outlining the history of poetic inscriptions, with special attention to the use of the first-person voice, from Graeco-Roman antiquity to Byzantium and on to the Islamicate world. Narrowing the focus to medieval Iberia, it offers a case study of a tenth-century ivory pyxis made near Umayyad Cordoba to test the value of introducing a theory of prosopopeia, and the analysis of poetic figuration more generally, to the study of luxury gifts in the Islamicate world. Prosopopeia, I argue, makes objects into subjects through the speaking “I,” and with the performance of subjectivity comes the construction of agency. In the case of the Umayyad pyxis, a reading attentive to the prosopopeia in the inscription helps restore agency to women in the gift exchange.
{"title":"Poetic Inscriptions and Gift Exchange in the Medieval Islamicate World","authors":"O. Bush","doi":"10.1086/692802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/692802","url":null,"abstract":"The use of poetry in inscriptions on luxury objects is a notable feature in the arts of the Islamicate world, particularly in the case of gifts, in which the verses articulate underlying social relations. Scholars often consider such inscriptions within a frame of literal reference, as alternative sources of documentary evidence and/or as ekphrastic descriptions of the object on which they appear. Moving beyond mimesis, this study takes up the figurative dimensions of poetry, exemplified here by the trope of prosopopeia, which gives a fictive voice to inanimate objects and allows the inscribed gifts to speak for themselves and to their recipients. The essay demonstrates the significance of recited and inscribed poetry in the gift economy of the Islamicate world. It shows the widespread nature of the phenomenon by outlining the history of poetic inscriptions, with special attention to the use of the first-person voice, from Graeco-Roman antiquity to Byzantium and on to the Islamicate world. Narrowing the focus to medieval Iberia, it offers a case study of a tenth-century ivory pyxis made near Umayyad Cordoba to test the value of introducing a theory of prosopopeia, and the analysis of poetic figuration more generally, to the study of luxury gifts in the Islamicate world. Prosopopeia, I argue, makes objects into subjects through the speaking “I,” and with the performance of subjectivity comes the construction of agency. In the case of the Umayyad pyxis, a reading attentive to the prosopopeia in the inscription helps restore agency to women in the gift exchange.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/692802","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41919739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on the Yeşil Külliye in Bursa, Turkey, built in 1419–24. Even though it is one of the major Ottoman monuments of the early fifteenth century, the complex—a mosque-zāviye, madrasa, mausoleum, bath, and kitchen—has not been viewed in the broader context of its time, when the political situation forced the Ottoman sultan to reposition his struggling empire between Anatolia, Timurid Central Asia, and the Balkans. Whereas early Ottoman architecture, from the emergence of the principality until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, has been reevaluated in recent years, the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries are only gradually receiving increased scholarly attention. The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, defeated by the Mongol conqueror Timur, was led into captivity after the battle of Ankara in 1402, and his son Mehmed Çelebi eventually emerged victorious from a civil war with his brothers. In 1413 he came to the throne as Mehmed I, ruling as sultan of the Ottoman Empire until his death in 1421. The Yeşil Külliye was a focus of Mehmed I’s patronage. I argue that the elaborate tile decoration of the mosque and mausoleum created a deliberate dialogue with both the Anatolian heritage of Seljuk architecture and the broader Persianate culture of post-Mongol Iran and Central Asia. With their varied techniques, color schemes, and visual references, the tiles signal the extent to which Ottoman visual culture in the early fifteenth century mirrored the constant renegotiation of power, rule, and representation that involved the sultan, his historians, and his builders.
{"title":"Seljuk Past and Timurid Present: Tile Decoration of the Yeşil Külliye in Bursa","authors":"Patricia Blessing","doi":"10.1086/692804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/692804","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the Yeşil Külliye in Bursa, Turkey, built in 1419–24. Even though it is one of the major Ottoman monuments of the early fifteenth century, the complex—a mosque-zāviye, madrasa, mausoleum, bath, and kitchen—has not been viewed in the broader context of its time, when the political situation forced the Ottoman sultan to reposition his struggling empire between Anatolia, Timurid Central Asia, and the Balkans. Whereas early Ottoman architecture, from the emergence of the principality until the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, has been reevaluated in recent years, the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries are only gradually receiving increased scholarly attention. The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, defeated by the Mongol conqueror Timur, was led into captivity after the battle of Ankara in 1402, and his son Mehmed Çelebi eventually emerged victorious from a civil war with his brothers. In 1413 he came to the throne as Mehmed I, ruling as sultan of the Ottoman Empire until his death in 1421. The Yeşil Külliye was a focus of Mehmed I’s patronage. I argue that the elaborate tile decoration of the mosque and mausoleum created a deliberate dialogue with both the Anatolian heritage of Seljuk architecture and the broader Persianate culture of post-Mongol Iran and Central Asia. With their varied techniques, color schemes, and visual references, the tiles signal the extent to which Ottoman visual culture in the early fifteenth century mirrored the constant renegotiation of power, rule, and representation that involved the sultan, his historians, and his builders.","PeriodicalId":43922,"journal":{"name":"GESTA-INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF MEDIEVAL ART","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/692804","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49331166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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