Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages

321 Pages·2020·16.02 MB·English

by  Maria Alessia Rossi, Alice Isabella Sullivan

Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages
East Central and Eastern Europe
in the Middle Ages, 450–1450
General Editors
Florin Curta and Dušan Zupka
VOLUME 65
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ecee
Byzantium in
Eastern European
Visual Culture in the
Late Middle Ages
Edited by
Maria Alessia Rossi
Alice Isabella Sullivan
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: From left to right, details of in-text Figs. 10.1, 8.1, 6.6, 2.2, and 5.6.
Figure 10.1 The Veglia Altar Frontal, ca. 1358, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2016 (photograph by
Danijel Ciković, by permission of Victoria and Albert Museum).
Figure 8.1 Church of the Annunciation, 1532–37, view from southeast, Moldovița Monastery, Moldavia,
Romania (photograph by Alice Isabella Sullivan).
Figure 6.6 Baptism of Christ, approx. date 1327–35, Church of Christ Pantokrator, Dečani Monastery, south
portal (photograph by Platoneum Publishing).
Figure 2.2 Crown attributed to Monomakh, The Moscow Kremlin State Historical and Cultural Museum
and Heritage Site (photograph by S. V. Baranov).
Figure 5.6 Marriage at Cana, detail of the two newlyweds, 1320–21, fresco. Monastery of Gračanica, naos,
west wall (photograph provided by BLAGO Fund, USA/Serbia, www.srpskoblago.org).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rossi, Maria Alessia, editor. | Sullivan, Alice Isabella, editor.
Title: Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the late Middle Ages
 / edited by Maria Alessia Rossi, Alice Isabella Sullivan.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2020] | Series: East Central and
 Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450, 1872-8103 ; volume 65 |
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020022163 (print) | LCCN 2020022164 (ebook) | ISBN
 9789004421363 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004421370 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Art, Medieval—Europe, Eastern—Byzantine influences. |
 Art, European—Europe. | Art and society—Europe, Eastern—History—To 1500. |
 Europe, Eastern—Civilization—Byzantine influences.
Classification: LCC N6750 .B99 2020 (print) | LCC N6750 (ebook) |
 DDC 709.02—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022163
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022164
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1872-8103
isbn 978-90-04-42136-3 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-42137-0 (e-book)
Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill
Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be
addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
Dedicated to Robin and Christian,
with love and gratitude
∵

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Illustrations x
Notes on Contributors xvi
Introduction 1
Maria Alessia Rossi and Alice Isabella Sullivan
1 The Allegory of Wisdom in Chrelja’s Tower Seen through Philotheos
Kokkinos 14
Justin L. Willson
2 How Byzantine Was the Moscow Inauguration of 1498? 36
Alexandra Vukovich
3 Intellectual Relationships between the Byzantine and Serbian Elites
during the Palaiologan Era 71
Elias Petrou
4 An Unexpected Image of Diplomacy in a Vatican Panel 91
Marija Mihajlovic-Shipley
5 Byzantine Heritage and Serbian Ruling Ideology in Early 14th-Century
Monumental Painting 119
Maria Alessia Rossi
6 Dečani between the Adriatic Littoral and Byzantium 143
Ida Sinkević
7 Triconch Churches Sponsored by Serbian and Wallachian Nobility 167
Jelena Bogdanović
8 Moldavian Art and Architecture between Byzantium and the West 200
Alice Isabella Sullivan
9 The Byzantine Tradition in Wallachian and Moldavian
Embroideries 232
Henry David Schilb
viii Contents
10 Rethinking the Veglia Altar Frontal from the Victoria and Albert
Museum and Its Patron 248
Danijel Ciković and Iva Jazbec Tomaić
Indices 281
Acknowledgments
This volume stems from two sessions organized at the 44th Byzantine Studies
Conference (4–7 October 2018; San Antonio, Texas) and titled “North of
Byzantium: Art and Architecture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and
Slavic Cultural Spheres, c.1300–c.1550 (I) and (II).” We are grateful to the au-
dience members at the conference for the thoughtful comments, questions,
and the lively discussion, and to the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and
Culture for sponsoring the sessions and for making possible this project from
beginning to end. We have also received individual and joint support, as well
as generous financial assistance for the research, writing, and revising stages
of this volume from the following institutions and organizations: The Index of
Medieval Art at Princeton University, a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship in
the History of Art from the American Council of Learned Societies, generously
supported by the Getty Foundation, as well as the VolkswagenStiftung and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In addition to the session speakers at the Byzantine Studies Conference,
and in efforts to enrich the topics and issues under consideration, we invited
other authors to contribute to this publication. We would like to thank all of
the contributors for their enthusiasm toward this project, and for their hard
work in bringing their individual essays to fruition. We also greatly appreci-
ate the unfailing support from the staff and editors at Brill, and in particular
Florin Curta and Dušan Zupka for accepting this volume for inclusion in the
series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450. A special
thanks to the anonymous reviewer for the thorough comments and sound
advice that helped improve the individual contributions and the volume as a
whole. Finally, we are deeply indebted to our copyeditor, Joseph Hannan, for
his invaluable assistance in helping us bring this project to completion and to
our indexer, Sever J. Voicu, for his time and effort.
This edited volume is the first publication to arise from our joint initiative—
North of Byzantium (NoB)—through which we aim to explore the rich history,
art, and culture of the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern
Europe between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. We are very grateful
to all of the mentors, scholars, and friends who have greeted us with encour-
agement from the very beginning, and to the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine
Art and Culture for believing in this project and supporting it with an initial
three-year grant.