8/10/2019 Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/byzantine-art-and-renaissance-europe 1/3

Angeliki Lymberopoulou and Rembrandt Duits, eds. Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe by Angeliki Lymberopoulou; Rembrandt Duits

Review by: Stefania GereviniRenaissance Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 204-205Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676170 .

Accessed: 07/01/2015 11:00

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

 .JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of 

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

 .

The University of Chicago Press and Renaissance Society of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access to Renaissance Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 157.138.186.195 on Wed, 7 Jan 2015 11:00:43 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8/10/2019 Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/byzantine-art-and-renaissance-europe 2/3

 Angeliki Lymberopoulou and Rembrandt Duits, eds. Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe .Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013. xxiv   +  196 pp. $99.95. ISBN: 978-1-4094-2038-5.

 As a result of increasing concerns toward traditional historical periodizationsand geocultural partitions, a number of books have seen the light in recent yearsand attempt to widen or challenge conventional art historical divides. Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe  is one such volume. In the words of its editors, the book’sambition is ‘‘to bridge the conceptual gap that exists in the perception of Byzantineand Renaissance art’’ and ‘‘the academic one that separates the students of each

tradition’’ (3).The volume comprises six chapters and a general introduction. The first essay,by Lyn Rodley, summarily introduces the arts of Byzantium between the twelfthand the fifteenth centuries, while the following articles are dedicated to specificcases of interchange between the Byzantine East and Western Europe in the sameperiod. The icon and its appropriation and emulation in the West are key themesof the book.

Hans Bloemsma concerns himself with the lore of Byzantium in late medievalItalian painting. Duecento Byzantinism is explained as the result of a search for

emotionally engaging images on the part of Italian artists, while the continuing appeal of Byzantine hieratic forms and conventions in the Trecento is attributed tothe desire to enhance the sacred qualities of religious paintings.

The two central chapters are dedicated to Venice-dominated Crete, whoseimportance as a site of artistic interaction this book overtly advocates. AngelikiLymberopoulou outlines the developments of church decoration in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Crete in relation to confessional antagonisms and sharedbeliefs among the Orthodox and Catholic population of the island. Diana Newall’sstimulating essay turns instead to the vexed question of Cretan icons and theirappreciation in the West. Newall mines travelers’ memoirs to highlight theprominent position of Venetian-dominated Crete along trade and pilgrimageroutes, and recognizes the intense and multiethnic human traffic on the island,with the ensuing demand for copies of miraculous icons and pilgrimage souvenirs,as one of the reasons behind the widespread circulation of Cretan icons in theMediterranean.

The two final chapters examine the status of Byzantine icons and of their copiesand adaptations in Northern Europe and in Italy. Kim Woods, in response toMaryan W. Ainsworth (in Helen Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power  [2004]),studies Byzantine and Byzantinizing paintings in Prague, in the BurgundianNetherlands, and in Isabel of Castile’s Spain. Rembrandt Duits carefully scrutinizesFlorentine inventories to demonstrate that Byzantine icons, particularly in mosaic,were highly valued by the Medici and other prominent Italian collectors in theQuattrocento. This reevaluation allows Duits to challenge some consolidated arthistorical assumptions in his conclusions — namely, the notion that Vasari’s

RENAISSANCE Q UARTERLY 204

This content downloaded from 157.138.186.195 on Wed, 7 Jan 2015 11:00:43 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

8/10/2019 Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/byzantine-art-and-renaissance-europe 3/3

dismissive attitude toward the  maniera greca  should be accepted as representativeof a pervasive distaste for Byzantine art during the early Italian Renaissance.

Duits’s final remarks are among the most perceptive passages of the book,which explicitly aims to challenge the authority of Vasari’s condemnation of themaniera greca   (1). Unfortunately, the reception of Byzantine art in the sixteenthcentury receives insufficient attention in the volume, and this weakens its critiqueof Vasari’s verdict. Another flaw of the volume is its almost exclusive focus onpainting. The appropriation of Byzantine artifacts and artistic conventions in the

 West also involved the circulation of manuscripts, relics, and portable arts in allmedia. Byzantine architectural forms also remained privileged models in Veniceand elsewhere well into the sixteenth century. Examining a wider range of materials

would have further clarified how pervasive and multifaceted the artistic legacy of Byzantium was in the Renaissance, increasing the import of this volume for thediscipline.

 Art historical research on Byzantine-Western interactions in postmedievaltimes is still dispersed, and this volume should be welcomed as a useful, initialattempt to recapitulate the state of the art and stimulate further research.Collectively these essays remind us of the significance of pilgrimage, trade, anddiplomacy as catalysts of artistic interchange, and of the part played by Unionistcouncils, the Reformation, and the Council of Trent in facilitating or hindering 

exchanges between different Christian groups across the Mediterranean. They point to the dissimilarities between private and public collecting of Byzantineart, and trigger reflections on the evolving devotional and political implicationsof its appropriation in postmedieval times. Finally, the volume succeeds inintegrating Crete in broad art historical narratives, and it opens a number of areas of exploration for art historians — including the quest for shared chronologiesand terminologies that may be acceptable to students of the Eastern, Western, andNorthern renaissances alike.

STEFANIA  GEREVINI

The Courtauld Institute of Art

205REVIEWS

This content downloaded from 157.138.186.195 on Wed, 7 Jan 2015 11:00:43 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions