Angeliki Lymberopoulou and Rembrandt Duits, eds.

Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe

Byzantine Art and Renaissance Europe by Angeliki Lymberopoulou; Rembrandt Duits
Review by: Stefania Gerevini
Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 204-205
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America
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204

RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Angeliki Lymberopoulou and Rembrandt Duits, eds. Byzantine Art and

Renaissance Europe.
Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013. xxiv + 196 pp. $99.95. ISBN: 978-1-40942038-5.

As a result of increasing concerns toward traditional historical periodizations

and geocultural partitions, a number of books have seen the light in recent years
and 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 books
ambition is to bridge the conceptual gap that exists in the perception of Byzantine
and 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 twelfth
and the fifteenth centuries, while the following articles are dedicated to specific
cases of interchange between the Byzantine East and Western Europe in the same
period. The icon and its appropriation and emulation in the West are key themes
of the book.
Hans Bloemsma concerns himself with the lore of Byzantium in late medieval
Italian 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 to
the desire to enhance the sacred qualities of religious paintings.
The two central chapters are dedicated to Venice-dominated Crete, whose
importance as a site of artistic interaction this book overtly advocates. Angeliki
Lymberopoulou outlines the developments of church decoration in fourteenthand fifteenth-century Crete in relation to confessional antagonisms and shared
beliefs among the Orthodox and Catholic population of the island. Diana Newalls
stimulating essay turns instead to the vexed question of Cretan icons and their
appreciation in the West. Newall mines travelers memoirs to highlight the
prominent position of Venetian-dominated Crete along trade and pilgrimage
routes, 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 the
Mediterranean.
The two final chapters examine the status of Byzantine icons and of their copies
and adaptations in Northern Europe and in Italy. Kim Woods, in response to
Maryan W. Ainsworth (in Helen Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power [2004]),
studies Byzantine and Byzantinizing paintings in Prague, in the Burgundian
Netherlands, and in Isabel of Castiles Spain. Rembrandt Duits carefully scrutinizes
Florentine inventories to demonstrate that Byzantine icons, particularly in mosaic,
were highly valued by the Medici and other prominent Italian collectors in the
Quattrocento. This reevaluation allows Duits to challenge some consolidated art
historical assumptions in his conclusions namely, the notion that Vasaris

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REVIEWS

205

dismissive attitude toward the maniera greca should be accepted as representative

of a pervasive distaste for Byzantine art during the early Italian Renaissance.
Duitss final remarks are among the most perceptive passages of the book,
which explicitly aims to challenge the authority of Vasaris condemnation of the
maniera greca (1). Unfortunately, the reception of Byzantine art in the sixteenth
century receives insufficient attention in the volume, and this weakens its critique
of Vasaris verdict. Another flaw of the volume is its almost exclusive focus on
painting. The appropriation of Byzantine artifacts and artistic conventions in the
West also involved the circulation of manuscripts, relics, and portable arts in all
media. Byzantine architectural forms also remained privileged models in Venice
and 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 the
discipline.
Art historical research on Byzantine-Western interactions in postmedieval
times is still dispersed, and this volume should be welcomed as a useful, initial
attempt to recapitulate the state of the art and stimulate further research.
Collectively these essays remind us of the significance of pilgrimage, trade, and
diplomacy as catalysts of artistic interchange, and of the part played by Unionist
councils, 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 Byzantine
art, and trigger reflections on the evolving devotional and political implications
of its appropriation in postmedieval times. Finally, the volume succeeds in
integrating Crete in broad art historical narratives, and it opens a number of
areas of exploration for art historians including the quest for shared chronologies
and terminologies that may be acceptable to students of the Eastern, Western, and
Northern renaissances alike.

STEFANIA GEREVINI
The Courtauld Institute of Art

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