Byzantine News

From NY Times: All images of public-domain artworks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection — about 375,000 — are now free for anyone to use however they may please.The museum announced on Tuesday that it had changed its open access policy to allow free, unrestricted use of any images of artworks in the public domain, using the license designation Creative Commons Zero, known as CC0. Click here to access the collection

An exhibition on late antique textile is opened in Manhattan: The Spring exhibition, Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity, offers intimate glimpses into the lives of those who commissioned and used textiles and more sweeping views across Late Antique society (roughly third to seventh century CE). The exhibition brings together over fifty textiles of diverse materials, techniques, and motifs to explore how clothing and cloth furnishings expressed ideals of self, society, and culture. By their valuable materials and virtuoso execution, the textiles displayed their owners’ wealth and discernment. To modern viewers, the materials and techniques also attest to developments around the Mediterranean world and farther east along the routes of the silk trade. The Late Antique owners, in choosing from a vast repertory of motifs, represented (hopefully more than actually) the prosperity and well-being of their households. The owners represented themselves through the d...

A great resource, the online interface of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, has published several images and historical introductions of Byzantine objects. Here is an example of a page from an Illuminated Gospel, late 14th centuryEthiopia, Highland region: This illuminated manuscript of the Four Gospels was created at a monastic center in northern Ethiopia. Twenty full-page paintings depict scenes from the life of Christ and four portraits of the evangelists introduce the respective Gospel texts. The New Testament was translated from Greek into Geez, the classical language of Ethiopia, in the sixth century. Both this text and its pictorial format draw upon Byzantine prototypes, which were transformed into a local idiom of expression. Stylistically consistent, the paintings reflect the hands of two distinct artists. The color scheme consists of red, yellow, green, and blue. A stylized uniformity is reflected in the abbreviated definition of facial features and the bold lin...

The Svetlana Tomeković Database of Byzantine Art is available online. Click here for more

Les Enluminures opens its Fall show in November with an exhibition and catalogue entitled "Byzantium and the West: Jewelry in the First Millennium." The exhibition assembles approximately 40 objects made of precious metals and including rings, pendants, earrings, and brooches from the third to the tenth centuries and explores the interrelationships between East and West during the first millennium. Click here for more info

A Byzantine art masterpiece: the David Plates This beautiful and exceptionally important set of nine silver plates, dated 629 to 630, was discovered with two other silver plates in 1902 in Karavas in northern Cyprus (see Map 2). The plates were found hidden near a small horde of gold jewelry. Most of this treasure came to the Metropolitan Museum from the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. Six of the David Plates are in the Metropolitan’s collection and are on view in the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art on the first floor (in the long corridor gallery on the right of the Grand Staircase, as approached from the Great Hall). The other three plates are in the collection of the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia, Cyprus. In eleven scenes, David is summoned from his flock of sheep to meet the prophet Samuel; he is anointed the new king of Israel by Samuel (since King Saul of Israel is no longer in God’s favor); David argues with his brother Eliab after he comes into Saul’s camp...

An article by Ioli Kalavrezou: Ioli Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Byzantine Icons in Steatite, I-II, Revue des etudes byzantines, 1986.  Click here to read it online.

From the New York Times And another article on the same exhibition.

A recent article on the Met exhibition, Byzantium and Islam : As the Arab Spring roiled the Middle East last year, curators at the Metropolitan Museum were watching anxiously. They were preparing an exhibition on art from southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire, including a swath of countries from Tunisia to Syria that were now suddenly consumed by revolutionary protests. The movement and its unprecedented demands for freedom captured the world's attention. It also made for unfortunate timing on the museum's loan requests. Read more here .

Neil MacGregor's world history as told through objects is describing how people expressed devotion and connection with the divine in the 14th and 15th centuries. Today he is with an icon from Constantinople that looks back in history to celebrate the overthrow of iconoclasm and the restoration of holy images in AD 843 - a moment of triumph for the Orthodox branch of the Christian Church. This icon shows the annual festival of orthodoxy celebrated on the first Sunday of Lent, with historical figures of that time and a famous depiction of the Virgin Mary. The American artist Bill Viola responds to the icon and describes the special characteristics of religious painting. And the historian Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the often troubled relationship between the Church and the images it has produced. Listen here for the programme from the BBC 4.

Tonia Kiousopoulou, Emperor or Manager: Power and Political Ideology in Byzantium before 1453 Byzantium in the 15th century is too easily dismissed as the anachronistic tail end of an ancient ecumenical empire, whose only achievements, apart from the heroic last stand of Constantinople in 1453, were the contribution of literary Hellenism to Renaissance humanism, and the preservation of Orthodoxy from the encroachment of Catholicism. This book argues that in struggling to survive as a small fortified enclave at the heart of Ottoman territory, Byzantium adopted the social structure and political ideology of a secular, territorial city-state on the Italian model. It thus presents the empire of the last Palaiologoi in an entirely new light. Emma Maayan Fanar, Revelation through the Alphabet. Aniconism and Illustrated Initial Letters in Byzantine Artistic Imagination The book explores aniconic tendencies in the post-iconoclastic lectionaries, with special emphasis on illuminated ini...

At the end of March 2012, a major exhibition on Byzantium and its relations with and impacts on the medieval world will open at the Schallaburg in Lower Austria. Scientific partner of the exhibition is the Institute for Byzantine Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. From the description of the exhibition: "The Byzantine Empire has been brought back to life at the Schallaburg Castle, more than 550 years after its downfall. The exhibition spotlights important aspects of Byzantine culture and society. The elaborate works of art that emerged from the workshops of the empire are on display for the first time in Austria, showing the gold, silk, and ivory crafting techniques that have remained unmatched over the centuries. However, not only the splendor of the "Golden Byzantium" is on exhibit, but also the everyday living habits of its people." For more information click here.

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