The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to...

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Alicia Walker (Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania)

The Emperor and the World

Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries...

Alicia Walker (Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania)

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English

Cambridge University Press
30 April 2012

History of art: Byzantine & Medieval art; Art Treatments & Subjects; History; Classical history & classical civilisation; Early history: c 500 to c 1450&1500

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.

By: Alicia Walker (Bryn Mawr College Pennsylvania)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 260mm, Width: 185mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 760g
ISBN: 9781107004771
ISBN 10: 1107004772
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 30 April 2012
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: imaging emperor and empire in the middle Byzantine era; 1. Emulation: Islamic imports in the iconoclastic era: power, prestige, and the imperial image; 2. Appropriation: stylistic juxtaposition and the articulation of power: the Troyes Casket; 3. Parity: a Byzantine-Islamic community of kings: diplomatic gifts in The Book of Gifts and Rarities; 4. Expropriation: rhetorical images of the emperor and the articulation of difference: the Darmstadt Casket; 5. Incomparability: the Mouchroutas Hall and the aesthetics of imperial power; Conclusion.

Alicia Walker is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art at Bryn Mawr College. She is the recipient of research fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks and the Program for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, among others. She has published articles in The Art Bulletin, Gesta, Ars Orientalis and Muqarnas and is the co-editor (with Amanda Luyster) of Negotiating Secular and Sacred in Medieval Art.

Reviews for The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E.

In the most stimulating book on Byzantine art to be published in a long time, Walker(Bryn Mawr College) scrutinizes five objects, or clusters of objects, under the headings Emulation, Appropriation, Parity, 'Expropriation, and Incomparability. -- A. Cutler, Choice