Flavia Vanni

This article focuses on three Byzantine capitals acquired by Edwin Freshfield and later donated to the church of the Wisdom of God in Lower Kingswood, which provide us with two ways to see through Byzantium. The first looks at their original Constantinopolitan context lost at the time of their acquisition. The second reflects on how Byzantine materials attracted wealthy Western European collectors, who combined antiquarian curiosity with the quest for the authentic Christian faith. Their privileged status allowed them both to possess these witnesses of the sacred past and even to project their own image to posterity as being analogous to that of Byzantine patrons.

The following chapter investigates the role of Byzantine influence in the stucco decoration of the churches of Santa Maria in Valle at Cividale del Friuli and of San Salvatore in Brescia (Italy) by focusing on technique aspects. This topic is worth discussion in the context of the examination of ‘global Byzantium’ because of the Byzantine influence that some scholars attribute to these buildings. While the analysis of style has been used to suggest a Byzantine cultural milieu, the chemical composition of the stucco mixture was sometimes interpreted as a proof for the presence of artisans from Islamic territories. Through the analysis of modelling, casting and fixing stucco, this chapter argues that the artisans active in Cividale and Brescia were local, trained in an artistic environment that was permeated with the legacy of Late Antique culture which was following, at this stage, a similar path as in the Byzantine empire before moving to a different direction in the following centuries.

The book TALE OF A RIVER CITY is as a collective work that aims to narrate the complex history between Antakya's inhabitants and the Asi River running through the city that has shaped Antakya's urban life and its reception for millennia. The book outlines the collaborative, interdisciplinary work of five researchers coming from different academic backgrounds ranging from anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, and city planning, and articulates stories merging into the flow of the Asi River from Antakya's foundation until today. The book adopts a historical narrative method, which will be expanded upon five chronologically ordered chapters employing a kaleidoscope of perspectives from diverse sources, including books, articles, travelers' notes, myths, drawings, maps, photographs to mediate understanding the changing urban-water relations in the historical context.

This paper discusses the scarce, but crucial evidence for plaster reliefs in Constantinople between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries. While many plaster reliefs survived in the Balkan peninsula, there is room to confirm that they were also used in the capital. Plaster reliefs were a quick substitution for marble, but could also answer aesthetic needs and architectural conventions that continued from Late Antiquity in to Middle and Late Byzantine architecture, even with some changes.

Lo stucco in funzione decorativa viene utilizzato, fin dall’antichità, accanto a materiali più durevoli e preziosi come il marmo e i mosaici, come provano le numerose testimonianze ampiamente indagate sia dell’Occidente medievale sia dell’Oriente sasanide e successivamente musulmano.
Se, invece, si volge lo sguardo ai monumenti dei territori del- l’impero bizantino il quadro appare più disgregato e gli esempi più celebri e studiati restano quelli di età protobizantina, in particolare di V e VI secolo. Gli stucchi mediobizantini invece non hanno goduto di particolare fortuna critica né tantomeno di studi sistematici. È lecito dunque chiedersi se tale situazione derivi dall’effettiva scarsità di testimonianze, o piuttosto dallo stato frammentario delle conoscenze.
In questa sede, verranno presentati i preliminari risultati di un censimento degli stucchi medio-bizantini ristretto, per il momento, all’area della penisola balcanica che mostra come lo stucco fosse un materiale frequentemente utilizzato all’interno degli edifici bizantini fra l’843 e il 1204. Tuttavia tali testimonianze sono state pubblicate, perlopiù, in monografie su singoli monumenti, o in studi sulla scultura di specifiche regioni, mentre raramente sono state oggetto di studi specialistici . Di conseguenza, non sono rimaste inedite, ma non sono state neanche valutate adeguatamente nella loro peculiarità e nel loro contesto di appartenenza. Riconoscere la loro peculiarità non significa isolarle dal resto del programma decorativo cui esse necessariamente appartengono, ma è tuttavia premessa indispensabile per la comprensione del ruolo che svolgevano all’interno di tale programma e per il modo in cui esse erano percepite ed utilizzate da maestranze e committenti.

This thesis offers the first synthetic evaluation of Byzantine stucco between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries. It brings together the results of disparate studies, with new material and textual evidence, to write, for the first time, a coherent narrative of the history of Byzantine stucco during the Middle and the Late Byzantine periods. This thesis demonstrates the uninterrupted use of stucco in Byzantine architecture from the Late Antique period onwards. It sheds light on the techniques used by Byzantine artisans to work stucco and examines their social and legal status in Byzantine society, providing a nuanced vision of both the skills and incomes of people in this period. A wide range of Byzantine patrons chose to decorate their buildings with stucco: from emperors to local officers and ordinary people. They used stucco to convey statements of authority or to underline their participation in networks of power. After having analysed stucco in Byzantine society, the thesis turns to wider Mediterranean stucco production, and examines differences and commonalities between Byzantine stucco and that produced in Medieval Italy and the different regions under Islamic reigns.
This thesis is an initial framework. This framework is threefold: the single building, the broader context of Byzantine art, and the stucco production in the Mediterranean. The case-by- case approach used revealed how the study of stucco, in combination with the rest of the materials used in architecture, is crucial to understand the history of buildings and the communities behind them. It is the interaction between micro and macro contexts that provides the core for understanding stucco in Byzantine architecture. This interaction is also what makes stucco a diagnostic material, which provides us with a new insight into Byzantine architecture.

Nicholas Melvani’s book is a significant contribution to Byzantine Studies that evaluates material not systematically considered since Grabar’s and Fıratlı’s volumes on Byzantine sculpture. Melvani also usefully locates Late Byzantine sculpture within a historical framework and considers it from different perspectives. As the author clearly states in the Introduction, his methodology consists of analysing Late Byzantine sculpture by studying the original context, considering the relation of sculpture to the rest of the building and its decoration, and then looking at the evidence from the written sources (both internal inscriptions and texts) (pp. 5–6). This ‘composite’ methodology has already produced valuable results in recent art-historical and archaeological studies, and Melvani’s book provides additional support for the use of this approach. The first chapter explores the evidence from the written sources, which shows a renewed interest in sculpture on the part of members of the upper levels of society. According to Melvani, this interest was connected to a new antiquarian taste inaugurated by the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, who was ‘rebuilding’ the Empire after the recapture of Constantinople (1261), and referred directly to the glorious Early Christian past. Moreover, the frequent presence of inscriptions and monograms on works of sculpture indicates that Palaiologan patrons understood sculpture as an appropriate medium for conveying expressions of their own identities, thus confirming their important role in Late Byzantine society. Issues of technique, materials, tools, and workshops are analysed in the second chapter. Melvani’s discussion of the exploitation of quarries provides a fascinating insight into economic history, showing that in the Late Byzantine period local materials were preferred to imported ones, and that only foreign merchants (especially Italians) were used to import specific marbles and stones by sea. This leads Melvani to conclude that hinterland transport routes were not easily viable. Chapter 3 illustrates the most frequent typologies of sculptural works as well as their role within building decoration. The use of spolia, and in particular materials removed from Early Christian monuments, in Late Byzantine buildings, is a key point of this chapter because this was a consequence of economic, political, and aesthetic choices. The author rightly stresses that the use of spolia implies a careful organisation of building decoration and considerable technical skills. In Late Byzantine buildings, sculpture specially commissioned for the monument was placed in dialogue with spolia from previous periods. This does not, however, mean that Late Byzantine sculptors lacked creativity; in many ways, in fact, as Melvani argues, it demonstrates remarkable synthetic flexibility. My only small quibble with this section of the book concerns Melvani’s discussion of sculptures on façades, where he follows Safram’s thesis that the sculpted arches in the Parigoritissa of Arta come from a previous portal. In fact, the debate about the provenance of these carvings from a portal is still ongoing. Through a detailed analysis of iconographies in both representational and decorative carvings (chapter 4), Melvani shows how sculpture and painting were deeply interwoven and complemented each other in the decorative programmes of churches. Figurative sculpture was more

In 1890, Robert W. Schultz and Sydney Barnsley spent two months at the monastery of Hosios Loukas, documenting the byzantine remains of the monastery on behalf of the newly established British School at Athens. Their notes and drawings produced the first documentation of the stucco cornices from the katholikon monastery and other monuments in Greece. In the following decades, the need to write the history of Byzantine art led scholars to focus on material traditionally associated with Byzantium (mosaics, wall paintings, marble), so stucco and other materials were left aside. However, with few exceptions, stucco continued to elude broader narratives of Byzantine art, being mainly confined to specific case studies. This paper addresses this gap by discussing the evidence for using stucco in middle and late byzantine religious buildings from a bird-eye perspective. Stucco was part of the decorative apparatus of Byzantine churches following the late antique tradition of ‘transitional’ material between marble cladding and mosaic-covered surfaces but also innovating and following new trends in middle Byzantine sculpture. This is visible from the use of stucco from string-course cornices to proskynetaria frames, capitals, tomb arcosolia, templa, and window transennae. At the same, the study of stucco and its workers forces us to re-think our contemporary, traditional categories of ‘painting’ and ‘sculpture’ and how they affect our perception of Byzantine material culture.
Link to the lecture recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOhi1mBf7hU

As a bustling epicentre of connectivity, the Eastern Mediterranean of the medieval world was a hub in the development of global communication networks. The papers in these linked sessions examine networks from the perspective of the people on the peripheries and how their local contexts situated them in wider systems. They consider how marginalised communities intersected and interacted with, shaped, and ultimately built networks. The speakers in the fourth session re-contextualised the role of different forms of marginalised labour in network building and expansion.

IT
La chiesa di Sant’Ambrogio a Montecorvino Rovella (SA), studiata e indagata archeologicamente negli anni ’80, da luglio 2017 è stata oggetto di due nuove campagne di studio da parte del team di ‘At the Crossroads of Empires’ (Università di Salerno-University of Birmingham).
Se, da una parte, le pitture murali dell’abside raffiguranti la Vergine con il Bambino fra santi milanesi, hanno attratto l’attenzione di vari studiosi, la decorazione aniconica che ricopre le pareti della navata non è stata analizzata in dettaglio. Quest’ultima, infatti, rivestiva un ruolo visivo fondamentale che consisteva nel direzionare lo sguardo del fedele verso il fulcro del programma teologico nell’abside, come dimostrato da Leal.
Questo paper si concentra su un aspetto della decorazione aniconica: la porta dipinta sulla parete nord che si contrappone all’ingresso sul lato meridionale (fig.1).
La porta è l’unico elemento che interrompe l’opus sectile dipinto (fig. 2). Le analisi multispettrali condotte da Gheroldi e Marazzani (Kos Arte-indagine) hanno mostrato l’uso di pigmenti oleosi per alcuni dettagli della porta. Questo aspetto tecnico è stato rilevato per l’abside ma non per il resto delle pitture aniconiche della navata. La porta dipinta è inoltre parzialmente in asse con una tomba sul lato settentrionale esterno all’edificio e potrebbe essere un'ulteriore prova del significato funerario della porta dipinta. È tuttavia interessante notare che i confronti iconografici più stretti si rilevano in sarcofagi romani e nelle pitture catacombali, ma non in contesti altomedievali.
Questo paper intende contestualizzare la porta dipinta nel quadro della tradizione classica e tardoantica, ed esplorare la materialità che la porta evoca attraverso i riferimenti formali a porte tardo antiche e altomedievali.

EN
The Church of Sant’Ambrogio at Montecorvino Rovella (SA), excavated and studied in the 1980s, since July 2017 has been the focus of two study campaigns of the project ‘At the Crossroads of
Empires’ (Università di Salerno-University of Birmingham).
While the ninth-century paintings in the apse (the Virgin and the saints) have benefitted from several studies, the aniconic decoration did not benefit of in-depth studies. The latter, as recently stressed by Leal, had a significant visual role in Sant’Ambrogio surrounding the medieval viewer at eye-level, and leaving the core of the theological message in the apse.
This paper focuses on an aspect of the aniconic decoration of Sant’Ambrogio that requires further consideration: the panelled door painted on the north wall, opposite the doorway (fig. 1).
The door is the only element which interrupts the painted opus sectile of the nave (fig. 2). The multispectral analysis carried out by Gheroldi and Marazzani (Kos Arte-indagine) shows details traced with oily based pigments, a technical aspect which have not been found in the painted opus sectile in the nave, but only in the apse. Since a tomb is laid against the exterior of the northern wall, in partial correspondence with the painted door, the latter may be an indicator of the funerary aspect of the church. Iconographic comparisons can be found on Roman sarcophagi and Late Antique catacombs but not in Early Medieval contexts.
This paper contextualises the iconography of the painted door of Sant’Ambrogio in the frame of the Classical and Late Antique tradition, and explores the materiality evoked by the door through its formal references to Late Antique and Early Medieval wooden and metallic doors.

This paper examines Byzantine attitudes towards the past and architectural heritage through a non-conventional category of material: plaster reliefs. Decorations made of carved or moulded plaster were frequently used in Middle and Late Byzantine buildings, as my PhD research demonstrates. Plaster/stucco reliefs are, in fact, attested in more than forty buildings dated between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, in a territory extended from Greece and the Balkans to Anatolia. In this paper I will present some case studies which show that stucco was used for restoring ancient architectural sculptures, as in the Panagia church at Hosios Loukas (tenth century), and for creating new decorations in open competition with the contemporary sculptural products, as in the Panagia Kosmosoteria in Feres (1152). Stucco was considered to be part of the past that needed to be preserved, as the fourteenth-century restorations in the Protaton church and of the Vatopedi katholikon (Mount Athos) show. Finally, proskynetaria frames made of stucco were part of the templon composed of marble spolia for the Peribleptos church in Mistra (1365-1374). This raises the question whether the proskynetaria were Middle Byzantine spolia too (Louvi 1980) or whether their style was intentionally imitating the more recent past (Grabar 1976).
The so-called ‘ephemeral’ materials, such as stucco, offer us a unique and dynamic perspective towards Byzantine attitudes to their cultural heritage (from  a sort of philological reconstruction to appropriation and reinterpretation). Long-lasting materials, such as marble and stone, were not the only media worthy to be transmitted or adapted to posterity and they were, indeed, charged with ideological messages.

The fame of Byzantine artisans was widespread in the Mediterranean world: rulers, clergymen and aristocrats called from Constantinople mosaicists, sculptors and blacksmiths for working in the Islamic and Christian territories. Some written sources list professions including stucco workers. They seem to point the existence of strict boundaries between professions; however, material evidence shows that such boundaries were easily crossed. My PhD thesis engages with techniques exchanges analysing the decoration made of stucco in Byzantine buildings. This material is suitable for the creation of reliefs which imitated marble sculptures as well as the haloes of painted figures. Is not always easy to distinguish whether stucco was worked by sculptors or by painters. In this presentation, I will address this issue through the evaluation of cornices of wall painted icons, a category of artefacts that can be both considered part of the sculptural as well as of the painted decoration.

The church of Saint John Eleimon (the Merciful) in Ligourio provides us with insights into the society of Peloponnese between the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century.
Thus, this paper deals with 'poverty' and common life from the double perspective of patronage and of building materials: the first part discusses the possible level of patronage of the church, while the second evaluates the presence of stucco as a convenient but not necessarily cheap choice.

Relations between Italy and Byzantium lasted during the whole life of the Byzantine empire, and the Italian art can provide us several examples of these interactions. Artistic exchanges across the Mediterranean can be seen through the direct contribution of Byzantine artisans and through the circulation of Byzantine iconographies, models, and technical traditions then absorbed and used by local artisans. This paper will explore these interactions from a particular perspective: the manufacturing of stucco. Stucco was a material both used in Byzantine territories and in the Early Medieval and Medieval Europe. Some well-known Italian Early Medieval examples, such as the church of Santa Maria in Valle at Cividale del Friuli, and the church of San Salvatore in Brescia were claimed to show an ‘Eastern’ influence and considered to be made by byzantine or ‘Syriac’ artisans. A recent study of David Knipp (2012) about the fragmentary stucco cornices of Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome has suggested that Coptic artisans, active in Rome during the second half of the sixth century, were probably the authors of these stucco elements. In this paper, Italian examples of the eight till the eleventh century will be presented and compared to the existing stuccoes preserved into buildings of Byzantine territories. This comparison will be carried out considering manufacturing and technique process, chemical composition and decorative patterns in order to evaluate whether it is possible to identify a direct action of Byzantine artisans in Italy or not. The mobility of artisans across the Mediterranean is well attested, but how much were Byzantine stucco artisans global?

The use of moulded stucco for the interior decoration of Byzantine buildings is a topic that lies in a grey area of scholarship. The lack of material evidence and its ephemeral nature could give the impression that stucco was not frequently used. However, a considerable number of churches show such decorations. In some cases, there is a double presence of both stucco and marble sculptural decoration that lead us to think about craftsmen and about building-site organization.
There was a specific production of stucco mouldings or sculptures? Were artisans who worked stucco specialized craftsmen? This paper focuses on passages from written sources of the Middle Byzantine period that provide glimpses of the artisans who worked gypsum and stucco within their contemporary society and allow us to visualize their artefacts.
“Human forms made of stucco” were current in the houses of the élites: Theodore Balsamon, in his Commentary of the Council in Trullo (12th century), complains about the “immoral practice” of decorating walls with indecorous scenes in stucco. In addition, people who ‘had to do’ with gypsum and stucco are mentioned in Regulation books, such as the Book of the Eparch, in the Life of Saint Lazarus, in some Lexika and, incidentally, in some passages of the Church Fathers. The emerging blurry picture induces a reflection on the value of written sources for visualizing Byzantine art and for understanding Byzantine artistic culture.

This communication is part of the panel ‘Global Byzantium: Transitional Relations, 500-1453’ and it will explore the material and textual evidence of Byzantine stucco decorations in comparison with contemporary examples in Norman Southern Italy.
The late eleventh and twelfth centuries is a period with considerable evidence of stucco pieces: a brief description of secular stuccoes is provided by the comment on canon 100 of the Council of Trullo (692) written by the canonist Theodore Balsamon in the 1170s; well-known material evidence is the capital revetments of the katholikon of the Panagia Kosmosoteira at Feres, and the proskynetaria of the katholikon of St. Panteleimon at Nerezi.
Stucco was also very widespread in Islamic art and, in addition, in Western art. Is it possible to see connections between the Byzantine stucco 'products' and those of Islamic and Western European culture? Can Byzantine stucco show relations and connections between the different cultures of the Mediterranean?
In order to answer this question, I will analyse and compare Byzantine stuccoes of the 11th and 12th century with stuccoes from Southern Italy dated between the late 11th and 12th century.
This comparison shows how the 'Byzantine' pieces examined are different from the Italian ones in: choice of decorative patterns, manufacturing process, and patronage.

La decorazione in stucco negli edifici mediobizantini non ha goduto di grande fortuna critica o di studi sistematici, come invece è avvenuto per gli stucchi in Occidente (in particolare quelli francesi, italiani, spagnoli e dell'area mitteleuropea fra V e XII secolo) e, in parte, nel Vicino Oriente (sasanidi, omayyadi, abbasidi).  È lecito chiedersi se ciò sia avvenuto per l'assenza di testimonianze consistenti o semplicemente per la scarsa attrattiva esercitata dal tema. Gli esempi finora rintracciati sembrano, invece, prospettare un panorama interessante e ricco di spunti che permette di osservare la decorazione di un edificio sotto diversi aspetti. Innanzitutto le decorazioni in stucco sono state individuate in edifici di una certa rilevanza, vale a dire fondazioni commissionate da personaggi della famiglia imperiale, oppure da regnanti che intendevano mettersi in competizione con l'impero bizantino. Anche laddove non si conosce la committenza, si è in presenza di edifici la cui importanza nella storia dell'arte bizantina è unanimemente riconosciuta. La maggior parte di queste decorazioni interagisce con gli arredi scultorei di pietra o di marmo, inducendo una riflessione sulle competenze di chi lavorava lo stucco e sul significato che esso doveva avere all'interno dell'apparato decorativo di un edificio.
Da itinerario poco frequentato sembra, quindi, che lo stucco di età mediobizantina sia un campo degno di uno studio approfondito e sistematico che può contribuire ad avere una percezione il più organica possibile della decorazione complessiva degli edifici e ad interrogarsi sull'organizzazione del cantiere e sulle ripartizioni dei compiti tra le diverse maestranze operanti.