Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium

Using epigrammatic poetry as a framework, investigates the interplay between art and religious devotion in the later Byzantine period.

Ivan Drpi? (Author)

9781316606094, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 August 2021

530 pages, 104 b/w illus. 16 colour illus.
24.4 x 16.8 x 2.9 cm, 0.91 kg

'This publication, which is based on the author’s Ph.D. thesis, marks a new level of intellectual engagement with epigrams written for donors who commissioned icons or new precious metal covers for older icons. … This is an important and very substantial book exploring the framing of Byzantine art by texts, and it offers some good insights into possible links between words and images.' Robin Cormack, The Burlington Magazine

This book explores the nexus of art, personal piety, and self-representation in the last centuries of Byzantium. Spanning the period from around 1100 to around 1450, it focuses upon the evidence of verse inscriptions, or epigrams, on works of art. Epigrammatic poetry, Professor Drpi? argues, constitutes a critical - if largely neglected - source for reconstructing aesthetic and socio-cultural discourses that informed the making, use, and perception of art in the Byzantine world. Bringing together art-historical and literary modes of analysis, the book examines epigrams and other related texts alongside an array of objects, including icons, reliquaries, ecclesiastical textiles, mosaics, and entire church buildings. By attending to such diverse topics as devotional self-fashioning, the aesthetics of adornment, sacred giving, and the erotics of the icon, this study offers a penetrating and highly original account of Byzantine art and its place in Byzantine society and religious life.

Introduction
1. From composition to performance: epigrams in context
2. The patron's 'I'
3. Kosmos
4. Golden words
5. Devotional gifts
6. The erotics of devotion
7. Image of the Beloved
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Church history [HRCC2], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], European history [HBJD], History of art: Byzantine & Medieval art c 500 CE to c 1400 [ACK]