Italy, Cyprus, and Artistic Exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean

This book offers novel viewpoints and material on Byzantine and Italian arts from a comparative perspective.

Anthi Andronikou (Author)

9781316510926, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 September 2022

410 pages
26 x 18.5 x 2.4 cm, 1.06 kg

'[This study] provides a highly thought-provoking analysis that will be of interest both to art historians and to scholars researching cross-cultural exchange during this era. It sheds light on matters as diverse as the cult of saints, crusading propaganda, commerce and international politics. More importantly, it describes a long-term trajectory for the development of 'Crusader Art' across Italy and many areas of the eastern Mediterranean that encompasses and informs a whole range of developments, whether artistic, political, military, commercial or cultural. Elegantly written and enriched with many colour photographs, it represents a major addition to scholarship in this field.' Nicholas Morton, Al-Masaq

In this volume Anthi Andronikou explores the social, cultural, religious and trade encounters between Italy and Cyprus during the late Middle Ages, from ca. 1200 -1400, and situates them within several Mediterranean contexts. Revealing the complex artistic exchange between the two regions for the first time, she probes the rich but neglected cultural interaction through comparison of the intriguing thirteenth-century wall paintings in rock-cut churches of Apulia and Basilicata, the puzzling panels of the Madonna della Madia and the Madonna di Andria, and painted chapels in Cyprus, Lebanon, and Syria. Andronikou also investigates fourteenth-century cross-currents that have not been adequately studied, notably the cult of Saint Aquinas in Cyprus, Crusader propaganda in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and a unique series of icons crafted by Venetian painters working in Cyprus. Offering new insights into Italian and Byzantine visual cultures, her book contributes to a broader understanding of cultural production and worldviews of the medieval Mediterranean.

1. A prosopography of encounters
2. Southern Italy, Cyprus and the Holy Land: a tale of parallel aesthetics?
3. Deconstructing myths: transmutations of Madonna and Panagia between Italy and Cyprus
4. Thomas Aquinas, the Dominicans and artistic patronage in trecento Cyprus
5. The peregrinations of a Cypriot king in Italian material culture, 1362-1368
6. Art in the interstices: hybrid Italian panels and Cypriot nobility.

Subject Areas: Material culture [JFCD], Medieval history [HBLC1], European history [HBJD], History of art: Byzantine & Medieval art c 500 CE to c 1400 [ACK]