The Medieval Mediterranean has remained an important framework for scholars particularly since the publication of Horden and Purcell’s major work The Corrupting Sea. [1] In the subsequent twenty-five years, historians of various strains have employed the framework of this connective space, centered on the sea. As the author of the foreword of this volume, Mariam Rosser-Owen, points out, the Mediterranean can be a space for exploring cross-cultural interaction, and this framework increases interdisciplinary dialogue. The editors of the volume address Horden and Purcell’s work and draw from it the essential concepts of connectivity and fragmentation. To engage with these themes, the editors have pursued two further intersecting frames within which to explore art and material culture of the Mediterranean region.
The volume presents ten chapters that are linked by their use of microhistories. The premise is that by exploring the individual instance or object, one can project outward to an understanding of the general. I find microhistory an important method, especially for the study of medieval art history, where we often only have fragmentary material evidence. We carefully analyze one work of art, which is simultaneously unique in its visual and historical contexts and emblematic of a collection of “invisible” works, or objects that no longer exist. In their exploration of the Medieval Mediterranean through art objects and spaces, the authors in this volume tap into the duality of the fragmented micro-historical and the connected nature of the arts produced in and around the sea.
The second intersecting frame is that of religion. By focusing on religious art and material culture the editors have opened, as their subtitle suggests, an “aesthetic space for interreligious encounters in the Medieval Mediterranean.” While the focus on religious objects and environments might suggest a limitation, in fact the editors have presented an opportunity to see the interrelated and flexible within the arts of the Mediterranean. Their approach allows a dialogue between Latin, Armenian, Byzantine, and Islamic histories. They also rightfully acknowledge that the secular cannot be strictly separated from the religious in the pre-modern world, and thus some of the studies in this volume do intersect with the secular sphere.
The Foreword and Introduction of the volume both provide insights into the historiography and critique of Medieval Mediterranean Studies. The authors consider the place of Islamic Art within earlier scholarship of the Mediterranean. Rosser-Owen’s foreword points out that the historiographically-neglected areas of North Africa and the Byzantine east are both incorporated into the pan-regional approach of this volume. The editors De Giosa and Vryzidis offer an outline of scholarship of Christian-Islamic interchange since the early 1990s. They are expressly following the “pan-regional” approach of Rosser-Owen and an emphasis on regional variation, as advocated by Avinoam Shalem, specifically to avoid the over-generalization of the concept of Islamic Art. Their interest is in transcending “traditional barriers based on religion” (3).
The case studies are presented in three sections: “Islamo-Christian Mediterranean Trade and its Artistic Ramifications”; “Rituals and Liturgies: Objects, Meaning, and Decoration”; and “Monumental Legacies.” There is a series of sixteen pages of color plates as well as black and white images within each chapter. Each chapter is followed by endnotes and bibliography. The volume concludes with a list of contributors and short biographies for each. Overall, the volume is an exceptional contribution to the conversation about the many cultures of the Medieval Mediterranean. In what is often an unwieldy field, the editors have set out clear frameworks which help the reader find accessible glimpses into specific examples. The individual essays vary in thoroughness and quality, some leaving many open questions and neglected points of interest.
The first section is a collection of studies of portable arts including ceramics, textiles, book covers and more unusually, balsam oil. Maria Bormpoudaki presents the complex region of Crete as a former Byzantine space that adopted visual, material culture from Islam through the mobile medium of ceramics. The author offers visual analysis and critical reading of primary documents that relate to the transmission of ceramics from Egypt and Syria to Spain by way of Crete. After a long section on Iberian ceramics, the author offers a brief explanation for why Islamic ceramics were sought after for use as decoration in the architecture of Byzantine churches. This seems like an important point that could use further exploration.
Ana Cabrera Lafuente takes a technical approach to her study of Andalusi textiles in the second chapter of the volume. Using details of technique and materials, she works to untangle the origin and position of these textiles within the conversation regarding Andalusi versus Mudejar. The author suggests a possible workshop in the Languedoc region of France due to the combination of materials from Italy and techniques from Iberia, as well as important trade connections between the Kingdom of Aragon and Italy. The author also acknowledges the unknowable aspects of this study, noting that the work may have been created by either Christian or Muslim artisans, within Iberia or France. The chapter offers a helpful explanation of the evolution of terminology surrounding cultural products from Islamic Iberia. She also presents a short historiography of the topic which is critical of the dismissal of textiles as minor, mobile, sumptuary arts and the potential for Medieval Iberia to be isolated in scholarly research. The author presents a “view of Andalusi textiles as a pan-Mediterranean heritage that transcends religious divides” (64). Although an important contribution to the study of these textiles, the chapter is somewhat confusing regarding the myths that are purported to be debunked.
The next chapter in this initial section of the volume is the most puzzling. It is less focused on an artistic work, but instead on the material of balsam oil. Balsam oil is presented as a non-essential, non-money-making commodity that represented “phenomenal interreligious encounter, cross-cultural exchange, and geographical mobility” (75). After a brief historiography of the topic, the author, Hani Hamza, reviews the documentary evidence of myths and legends regarding the oil, with an emphasis on critical reading of Arabic and Coptic sources. The chapter finally comes to a discussion of the use of the oil in a Mamluk context and concludes it was used primarily as a prestigious gift. The study is a true micro-history of a material aggrandized in written sources. This material connects a Christian legend through Coptic texts and the Mamluk elite gift giving, but it is unclear how else we are to read this example in broader terms. In the end we are left wondering how this oil is part of a Mamluk contribution to the Christian liturgy.
The final chapter in the first section of the book explores the influence of Islamic book binding on European book covers. Alison Ohta calls for a deeper understanding of the development of Islamic decoration and techniques of book covers to better understand their adoption by Italian book binders. While the author gives excellent details about the sumptuous (gilding and leather) book covers, the central question of why this artistic exchange in book binding technique and styles occurred is left unattended. Although gold leaf is noted as originally appearing in very early Islamic manuscript covers, and the distinct formula of a central medallion with four corner pieces is suggested as a Mamluk and Ottoman invention, some mention should be given to illuminated manuscripts which used gold leaf early in the Middle Ages, and treasure bindings (sculpted in precious metalwork with inset gems) to acknowledge that book binding was not as limited before the fifteenth century as presented. This could only enhance the study offered in this chapter and its subject of fifteenth-century artistic exchange between Mamluk and Ottoman workshops and Venetian bookbinders.
The second section of the volume addresses the literal and figural movement of art objects and their meanings. The co-authored fifth chapter of the volume is a rich and fascinating account of marble slabs inscribed with a Middle Byzantine theological edict, which resonates with antiquarian imagery, imperial ambitions of power, and doctrinal controversy. The slabs’ movement and reuse in a new context of an Ottoman sultan’s tomb opens questions about the perception of these slabs, and the purpose for their placement. The authors present evidence based on sources from Byzantine and Latin writers of the twelfth century, Ottoman writers of the sixteenth century, and contemporary accounts of the rediscovery of the slabs. Good summaries are paraphrased from the varied primary sources that provide insight into the history of these slabs. Faruk Bilici and Hélène Fragaki suggest that the Byzantine theological texts engraved on the marble slabs were perceived as talismanic and even magical. They state that this may have been considered as the slabs were incorporated into the intrados of the arch at the entrance to the mausoleum. Their placement upside down, so the Greek text was unseen, potentially subverted the talismanic properties of the slabs.
The sixth chapter, by Nikolaos Vryzidis and Paschalis Androudis, considers an intriguing object of fine metalwork. The two parts of the work include a Seljuk candlestick from eastern Anatolia in the thirteenth century, and a fourteenth-century cross from Venice, and passed through the Serbian court. These objects were joined in the monastery of St. Paul’s at Mount Athos in Greece. The authors begin by characterizing this time as the post-crusader era where “political fragmentation and cultural interconnectivity,” in which the “portability of objects facilitated the creation of aesthetic paradoxes” (178). They give a detailed description of the Seljuk candlestick made of bronze and inlaid with silver. The object the candlestick is connected with is given much less explanation apart from some basic iconography of the processional cross. It is unclear what the “non-Greek” inscriptions are on the cross, and its “Latinate otherness” (18) needs further explanation. The most successful part of the chapter is its focus on the context surrounding the merging of these two art objects. The authors outline the impact of Serbian influence on the Athos monastery of St. Paul, but the context which brought this Venetian cross into the Serbian orbit is not clear. The Venetian, Seljuk, and Serbian contexts seem to come together in a discussion of the double-headed eagle that appears on the candlestick, but the iconography also has strong resonance with Byzantine imperial symbolism. The chapter connects to the volume’s theme by exploring a micro context that shows us an instance of shared Islamic and Byzantine court features.
Tiraz textiles are known through the medieval Islamic world as objects intimately connected to the caliphal system, produced in royal workshops, and gifted to important elite persons. In a clear and well-argued study, Arielle Winnik uses comparative evidence from Coptic manuscripts and wall paintings to show the distinctions in meaning and use between Christian and Islamic tiraz textiles. The use and decoration of these tiraz show, once again, the exchange and adaptability of artwork between Islamic and Christian communities.
The final section of the volume introduces us to architecture and its sculpture as it crosses between Christian and Muslim spaces and structures. Sami Luigi De Giosa focuses on an Egyptian context in the seventh chapter of the volume. Within this region during the Mamluk period, architectural elements were taken from Christian churches and reused in Islamic monuments. The author reviews some of the complex contexts for choosing to use or not to use Christian architectural elements. He provides a list of examples of reused Christian columns and capitals within mosques, madrasas, and cisterns built in the Mamluk era. The author discusses at length the Christian elements used with the Mosque of Al-Nasir Muhammad in Cairo. As in previous chapters in this volume, the author here considers talismanic use and subversion in the incorporation of Coptic capitals and columns. The conclusion echoes Bilici and Fragaki’s chapter, in stating that the reuse of artistic objects or architectural components can bring new life to the work.
The final two chapters move increasingly away from the Mediterranean Sea. Mediterranean Studies makes room for this broad view, particularly when the material or contexts intersect with people, things, and ideas that are central to the Mediterranean Sea. In chapter nine, Nino Simonishvili discusses regal images from a church in Oshki, part of medieval Georgia. He suggests that the tenth-century sculpture of the church of St. John the Baptist at the Monastery of Oshki shows cross-cultural input from Sasanian, Christian, and Islamic sources. We might add some reference to the near neighbor Armenia, whose artists also incorporated donor images in relief on the exterior of their church at Aghtamar. The author includes important contextual points of the Georgian military aid to the Byzantine Empire, and the location of the monastery near a major “Silk Road” or trade route between East Asia and West Asia. The donor portraits on the exterior show specific iconographic elements from the Byzantine court, and the author argues convincingly that the specific context for these patrons is evidence for the complex political meanings of the relief sculpture. As is often the case with imagery that falls within a cross-cultural milieu and is presented in a public space, the meanings are closely connected to political identity and legitimacy, as well as local traditions on the frontiers of Byzantium.
While the final chapter may initially seem outside the scope of the Mediterranean, the author deftly weaves together comparative examples from the Levant, Byzantium, and al-Andalus in Spain. Thus, Richard Piran McClary expands the microhistories of muqarnas in a thorough chapter which surveys many examples of the use of muqarnas in the specific region of eastern Anatolia and Northern Iraq. This was an interrelated area during the Middle Ages and the author provides a new view of this region beyond contemporary national boundaries. By focusing primarily on the stone-carved muqarnas in a variety of Christian Armenian, Byzantine, and Muslim spaces, the author asserts the fluid use of the form and its lack of denominational or confessional meanings. The meanings are thus specific to the regional and local contexts.
In conclusion, the volume edited by Drs. De Giosa and Vryzidis is an important contribution to the study of medieval art of the Mediterranean region. The volume has a mild emphasis on Egypt during the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, and the Christian (Coptic, Byzantine, Armenian or Georgian) examples occasionally take a back seat in these discussions. I find this perspective and emphasis refreshing and necessary. Often, the Iberian Peninsula and the Byzantine Empire dominate the discussion of Mediterranean art. The chapters in this volume incorporate these essential culture groups, but diversify the regions and artwork, presenting us with new examples and ideas. The use of microhistory is, for the most part, a successful lens that offers us a new way of exploring the simultaneously fragmented and connective regions around the Mediterranean. The volume will be useful to anyone interested in new content and perspectives on Medieval Mediterranean Art.
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Note:
1. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000).