Middle Byzantine Aesthetics Of Power And The Incomparability Of Islamic Art: The Architectural Ekphraseis Of Nikolaos Mesarites
The Palace Revolt of John Komnenos by Nikolaos Mesarites, an author of the middle Byzantine period , contains a passage that briefly describes an Islamic-style building, the Mouchroutas, which was part of the imperial palace complex in Constantinoples. Scholars typically treat the passage as a descriptive document upon which to base hypothetical reconstructions of the Mouchroutas. While the archaeological potentials of the ekphrasis are unusually rich, a focus on these aspects of the text has obscured other possible interpretations, in particular its significance as a record of the Byzantine reception of Islamic art. The building marks an intriguing instance of artistic emulation in the midst of a predominantly adversarial political relationship. The kiosk tiles are executed in mināʾī, a highly refined overglaze technique of polychrome painting more commonly found in ceramic vessels. Keywords: Byzantine aesthetics; ekphrasis; Islamic art; John Komnenos; Mouchroutas; Nikolaos Mesarites
Style and Ideology in Byzantine Imperial Art
The study of style in Byzantine art has an interest for historians as well as connoisseurs. In imperial art, two contrasting conventions of encomium can be distinguished, both having counterparts in court panegyrics. The first is the metaphorical visualization of the emperor as a garden of the graces; this type of encomium lent itself to expression in classical forms. Examples include the Paris Psalter in art, and ekphraseis by John Geometres and Constantine the Rhodian in literature. A second type of panegyric praised the emperor as a diagram of supernatural qualities; this convention could give rise to images which were highly abstract, as may be seen in the frontispiece pages of MS. Coislin 79 in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The stylistic features of the imperial portraits in this manuscript relate them both to angels and to the visual signs of Christ's divinity--the same relationships were expressed in contemporary panegyrics. Similar characteristics can be seen in the famous mosaics of Constantine Monomachos and Zoe and of John II Comnenos and Irene in Hagia Sophia, where there is a change in style between the two mosaics echoing a shift in the language of court panegyrics over the same period.
Remarques en marge du Coislin 79 : les trois eunuques et le problème du donateur
Probleme des personnages impliques dans la copie, l'ornementation et l'offrande de ce ms. qui contient des homelies de Jean Chrysostome| ms. du XI s.| Jean metropolite de Side, copiste| Michel VII Doukas, destinataire| un peintre anonyme| un moine Sabas, utilisant le ms. pour l'offrir a l'empereur Nicephore Botaniates (le ms. n'avait pas ete offert a Michel VII, car le metropolite Jean etait tombe en disgrâce)| retouche et redisposition de l'iconographie a l'initiative de Sabas