Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions
Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions

Book Project by Maria Alessia Rossi, Princeton University and Alice Isabella Sullivan, Tufts University

Overview

M. A. Rossi and A. I. Sullivan, eds. Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Traditions. Sense, Matter and Medium: New Approaches to Medieval Material and Literary Culture, volume 6. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.

A two-day international symposium titled “Eclecticism at the Edges: Medieval Art and Architecture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Cultural Spheres (ca. 1300–1550)” (Princeton University, 5–6 April 2019) sits at the root of this publication. This volume builds upon the new worldwide interest in the global Middle Ages. It investigates the prismatic heritage and eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, while challenging the temporal and geographical parameters of the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and early-modern art. Contact and interchange between primarily the Latin, Greek, and Slavic cultural spheres resulted in local assimilations of select elements that reshaped the artistic landscapes of regions of the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Mountains, and further north. The specificities of each region, and, in modern times, politics and nationalistic approaches, have reinforced the tendency to treat them separately, preventing scholars from questioning whether the visual output could be considered as an expression of a shared history. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework of this volume provides a holistic view of the visual culture of these regions by addressing issues of transmission and appropriation, as well as notions of cross-cultural contact, while putting on the global map of art history the eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe.



Table of Contents:
Ivan Stevović, Foreword

Maria Alessia Rossi and Alice Isabella Sullivan, Introduction

NEGOTIATING TRADITIONS
Jelena Erdeljan, Cross-Cultural and Transcultural Entanglement and Visual Culture in Eastern Europe, ca. 1300–1550

Ida Sinkević, Serbian Royal Mausolea: A Quest for Cultural Identity

Dragoș Gh. Năstăsoiu, Byzantine Forms and Catholic Patrons in Late Medieval Transylvania

Elena N. Boeck, Buttressing Orthodoxy: Imagining Hagia Sophia and Celebrating Constantinople in Sixteenth-Century Russia

Theocharis Tsampouras, Eclecticism and Originality in the Early Post-Byzantine Art of the Ottoman Balkans

SHIFTING ICONOGRAPHIES
Ágnes Kriza, Pro or Contra Filioque? Trinitarian Synthronoi Images at the Crossroads of the Catholic West and the Orthodox East (ca. 1300–1500)

Krisztina Ilko, The Dormition of the Virgin Between East and West: Artistic Exchange and Innovation in Medieval Wall Paintings from Slovakia

Vlad Bedros, The “Hybrid” Iconography of the Agnus Dei in Moldavian Wall Paintings

Nazar Kozak, The Akathistos on the Move and the Geography of Post-Byzantine Art

Mateusz J. Ferens, The Crucified Monk at the Edge of Traditions

PATTERNS OF PATRONAGE
Marek Walczak, “Sic enim Constantinus . . .” The Equestrian Portrait of King Ladislaus Jagiełło in the Holy Trinity Chapel at the Castle of Lublin (1418)

Christos Stavrakos, Donors, Patrons, and Benefactors in Medieval Epirus Between the Great Empires: A Society in Change or Continuity?

Gianvito Campobasso, Albanian Votive Images as Media of Transcultural Interaction Between Tradition and Innovation

Dimitrios Liakos, Toward a New Era: Patronage and Luxury Endowments to Mount Athos (Fourteenth to Mid-Sixteenth Centuries)

Ovidiu Olar, A Murderer Among the Seraphim: Lăpușneanu’s Transfiguration Embroideries