Útěk z Ruska
Deník (1920–1921)

The future poet, 14-year-old Irina Knorring, left the Russian Empire in November 1920 on one of the 126 ships carrying the remnants of the White Army from the Crimea. Writing a diary was her solace and joy on her difficult journey into exile. Despite the hardships she describes, however, her writings are not harrowing. They come across simply and directly, like a conversation with a loved one.Today Irina's diary is not only the personal story of a young girl from Kharkiv, but also offers an immediate insight into a bygone era and holds up a mirror to our own.

Podzimní mouchy
aneb Žena z dávných dob

In the short, Chekhovian-tinged novel Autumn Flies, the author portrays the decline of the Russian Karin family, whose world collapses in the heat of the revolution. Fleeing the Bolsheviks, the Karins take refuge in France, leaving only their old faithful nanny, Tatyana Ivanovna, in the family mansion. Eventually, she too follows in their footsteps and leaves the home that the Bolshevik regime has destroyed for good. Irène Némirovsky narrates sensitively but without exaggerated pathos the story of people experiencing the end of an era and the pain of losing their home and their loved ones. An aging nanny is the protector of memories of the old Russia, which fade in emigration and dissolve in the constant worry of making a living. With her death, the old world, too, is passing away. Although in moments of despair the heroes turn into languid and tired autumn flies that ‘[...] fly exhausted and irritable, crashing into windows and dragging their half-dead wings behind them’, in the end they too come to a bitter reconciliation with the new routine. The scope of the book is a reminder that a powerful effect can be achieved with few words. Indeed, the only criticism of the novel is that it is read so quickly. Probably in one sitting.

Průvodce rozvášněným Znojmem

History - not only of Central Europe - was written against the unique panorama of Znojmo as we know it, for instance, from Kraví hora. Art monuments discussed in this guide were thus created in a close dialogue with the joys and sorrows of their time. It might seem to the uninitiated viewer that these are mute witnesses, but the opposite is true - each one of Znojmo’s landmarks has a story to tell, often almost invisible, but all the more powerful. The chapters of this unconventional guide to the city are an attempt to introduce the reader not only to the artistic monuments, but also to the stories that took place within their walls. In addition, the individual buildings are not presented as separate “sights” but rather as organic parts of the whole. In our narrative, Znojmo becomes a real ecosystem in which artistic monuments have been linked to the stories of people - heroes as well as anonymous townspeople - who used them throughout the centuries. The aim of this book is to introduce the kind reader to Znojmo in a different way. We want the story of the town and its buildings entertain, move, and educate you.

Potenciál migrace
Hranice, karantény a osudy meziválečných uprchlíků

The political situation and escalating social tensions in the interwar Russia and Germany drove hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and forced them to seek refuge abroad. However, crossing the borders on the way to safety involved many difficulties. Among other things, refugees from Russia were hit by anti-epidemic measures designed to stop the deadly typhus wave. Similar measures stood in the way of German Jews fleeing Hitler a few years later. The flight across the border and the experience of emigration were also reflected in the lives and works of writers Irène Némirovsky and Hélène Iswolsky and art historians Nikodim Kondakov, André Grabar, Richard Krautheimer, and Ernst Kitzinger. Although they had to face numerous difficulties, life in exile also provided them with many new opportunities that greatly enriched the society that welcomed them. The book deals with events that are a hundred years old, but the themes it addresses - border closures, sanitary measures, and emigration - are still pressingly relevant today.

The Current State of Russian Folk Icon Painting
Nikodim P. Kondakov

In 1901 Nikodim Pavlovič Kondakov, one of the founders of art history in Russia and a specialist in medieval art, decided to undertake a surprising expedition. Driven by a desire to see first-hand the last places where devotional images - the famous icons - were produced in the traditional way, he braved the bumpy and uncertain roads of the Russian countryside. The book you hold in your hands, published for the first time in 1901 and now available to an international audience, is much more than an account of his trip. It guides the reader through pre-revolutionary Russia, as Kondakov travels in search of local production, seeking genuinely Orthodox manifestations of an art that he saw as a direct line stretching back to the medieval past. In his very personal style, Kondakov is ultimately on a mission to save the ancient art of icons, hoping to save an art form dwindling under competition from industrial production. Today, this book is more relevant than ever, since it questions the roots of Russian culture, tradition, and its feeling of exclusivity. Framed by the texts from leading scholars on Russian and Byzantine art, this volume is vividly illustrated by contemporary comic book artist Michele Foletti, giving life to the stories recalled by Kondakov.

Poutní umění středověku jako tělesný zážitek
Krajina, poutník a poklad

Many people today imagine medieval pilgrimage as an almost fanatical religious act. This image is based on modern prejudices about medieval religion, which is usually associated with irrationality, manipulation, lack of tolerance, and even violence. But how did the medieval pilgrimage actually work? What did a medieval pilgrim and the world around him look like? And what is the relationship between pilgrimage and art? These are some of the questions this book seeks to answer. It accompanies medieval pilgrim on his journey through the countryside to his final destination, the interior of the pilgrimage church. It demonstrates how the sacred was experienced through all senses thanks to the art present, the smell of incense, the light of candles, or the pleasant coldness inside. One thing seems certain: in the pre-modern world, just like today, wandering was a life-changing experience that left no one indifferent.

Je (středověk) doba temna?
Umění, migrace a moc

In popular culture, the Middle Ages have often been represented as a dark period full of misery, while medieval art has been regarded decadent. If we, however, resolve to look closer, we encounter a much more lively and diverse world that cannot be characterized in few sentences, a world filled with light as much as with darkness. The authors of the book contemplate on early medieval art and visual cultures with the aim to refute the most widespread stereotypes related to the period. Did the fall of the Roman Empire and the Migration Period lead to a decline of artistic production? Was the medieval landscape interwoven with dark, dense, and dangerous forests, as we know them from the Robin Hood legends or the literary works of the Romanticism? Was the religious sphere strictly divided from the profane one not to be desecrated? Was the art's purpose solely to celebrate God, and were gold and precious stones instrumental only for the manifestation of the power and wealth of the Church? Authors seek to find answers to these and other questions and present the early Middle Ages rather as a colourful mosaic, a period of vivid cultural exchange and diversity, and, in certain sense, as a cradle of abstract and conceptual thinking. In the end, the main goal of the book is to answer, at least partially, the question in its title, i.e. were the Middle Ages a dark period of history?

Inventing Late Antique Reliquaries
Reception, Material History, and Dynamics of Interaction (4th-6th centuries CE)

The cult of saints, their relics, and devotion to their shrines is a phenomenon born in Late Antiquity that durably shaped medieval and modern practices across a broad geographical and cultural area spreading first throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. How was the creation of vessels for the holy remains of saints implemented during a culturally heterogenous period? Indeed, how could boxes of various shapes, sizes, and materials become containers to shelter sacred matter? What materials could be used in reliquaries’ making, and what images should adorn them? And how did reliquaries, with their geographical and social portability, contribute to the translocation of site-bound sanctity and the spread of saints’ and shrines’ networks across the Late Antique world? Tracing the medieval reliquary’s “pre-history”, this volume examines boxes bearing Christian images and patterns made between the fourth to the sixth century CE. It investigates how vessels adorned with images acquired meaning and power, exploring the dynamics of transformation that accompany both the creation of these objects and their long history of reuse, marginalization, and rediscovery.

Central Europe as a Meeting Point of Visual Cultures
Circulation of Persons, Artifacts, and Ideas

The end of World War I in 1918 meant a radical transformation of Central Europe: the multicultural space of former empires became divided into individual nation-states. This altered all spheres of life, deeply impacting the discipline of art history as well. The cosmopolitan vision of art history developed by figures from the Vienna School such as Franz Wickhoff and Alois Riegl was gradually replaced by new self-referential narratives. This nationalist tendency was reinforced by the division of Europe after World War II. In the wake of Jiří Kroupa's pioneering studies, this volume takes a truly transcultural approach to art produced in the Central European region from the 12th to the 20th century. Freed from national prejudices, a region shaped by the constant movement of people, ideas, and objects emerges.

Step by Step Towards the Sacred
Ritual, Movement, and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages

The articles published in this volume aim to contribute to the art historical debates on the role of visual culture within medieval rituals and how the latter were experienced bodily. The studies focus on the essential importance of movement within medieval religious practice and its impact on production, conception, perception, and use of artistic objects and architecture in the Middle Ages. At their core is the moving body, individual or collective, which enters into dialogue with the surrounding architectural or urban space, artefacts, and images, thus awakening their sacred potential with each and every step. Shifting attention to the movement of the worshipers and the objects themselves, this book wishes to instigate further discussion on various medieval visual cultures.

Mediální revoluce
Christianizace Evropy, Ravenna pátého století
a jak obrazy mění dějiny

The book provides an analysis of the factors that led to the fundamental transformation of European society within the framework of Christianization. It focuses especially on the role of ritual, the significance of mosaic as a new visual medium, and the innovative visual forms of the fourth and fifth centuries. Based on the mosaic decoration of the Orthodox Baptistery in Ravenna, it offers a complex analysis of rituals and their perception in the present and in the past.

Byzantium or Democracy?
Kondakov’s Legacy in Emigration: the Institutum Kondakovianum and André Grabar, 1925–1952

The notion of “Byzantium” has for centuries been associated with autocracy, totalitarianism, and suppression of freedom. It thus became the favored model for the Russian autocracy. In the nineteenth-century, Russian scholars working under Tsarist regimes were, either explicitly or tacitly, condoning and even supporting the ruling autocracy. After the Revolution of 1917, however, many of these effectively complicit intellectuals left Russia for Western democracies. This book shows how this experience affected the lives of intellectuals who fled and transformed their scholarship. Archival materials and writings from the time reveal how scholarship can move from aspiration to reality, as it did for the Russian émigrés until the crash of 1929 and the rise of Nazism in Germany. But how is this relevant today? Because it shows how scholarship and science must be understood as part of history, and because it illustrates the power of hope. As studied and presented by émigrés from Tsarist totalitarianism, “Byzantium” came to be a multinational screen onto which scholars projected not only frustrations but also dreams.

Teorie obrazu v raném křesťanství?
Výběr z textů pozdně antických myslitelů s komentářem.

Objects, relics, and migrants
The Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan and the cult of its saints (386-972)

The Ambrosian basilica in Milan, built first in the age of Ambrose (374–397) and radically reconstructed at the end of the eleventh century, is an extraordinary place of memoria, where many medieval objects and monuments are present.

By studying a few famous artworks preserved in the basilica, such as the Chapel San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro, the golden altar, and the ciborium of Saint Ambrose, this book explores interactions between the topology of the building and its objects, the relics the basilica was constructed around, and which have the notion “migrating”. In other words, we would like to analyse in the longue durée how the objects became understood as relics and materialized sanctity, derived from them, and served as an instrument of exclusion and instruction in their ethnically problematic context.

This volume presents a rich photographic material, which was made especially for this publication.

Studi sulla circolazione del mosaico in area nord-adriatica

Inventing Medieval Czechoslovakia 1918–1968
Between Slavs, Germans, and Totalitarian Regimes

Is it possible to "invent" the past? Through a series of studies, this volume explores the history of how this process occurred in Czechoslovakia within the period from about the end of the First World War until the 1960s. It focuses specifically on the re-invention of the "national" Middle Ages at the background of the meeting of different linguistic and ethnic groups — Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, and Russians — where one group would often negate, reshape, and ignore the point of view of the other, within an increasingly fractured political geography of the country.

The presented case studies show how research on medieval artworks and objects could become a fertile ground for the creation of ideological tools and narratives. In this way, understanding the historiography of art history also contributes to redefining Central Europe as a place of transcultural encounters and dialogues, beyond historical ruptures.

Jupiter, Kristus, Chalífa
Obrazy mocných a zrození středověku (IV.–VII. století)
[Jupiter, Christ, Caliph. Images of the Powerful Men and the Birth of the Middle Age (IV.–VII. century)]

The pagan god Jupiter Serapis, Jesus Christ, and Muslim caliphs – their appearances are unexpectedly close to one another. The authors contemplate what seems to be a paradox and ask: Why do these “arch-enemies” look almost the same? They first search for answers in specific historical circumstances – in the dramatic fall of Serapis in Alexandria, the breakthrough of Christianity as state religion and in the conquest of Syria by the Umayyads. However, the very way winners literally “steal” the faces of the defeated is rooted even deeper in history, as far back as the times of tribes and shamans, when rituals with the mask of an enemy were used as preparation for battle or celebration of victory. Yet, a wise ruler cannot be the one to excessively humiliate the defeated. What if adopting a given face also represented an effort to show inclusion and continuity? A look back to the distant past shows the power of images and how important it is to understand them. It also draws attention to the common roots of Mediterranean civilisations, from which – in the tension between conflicts and continuity – European culture arose.

Milan sans frontières
Le culte et la circulation des reliques ambrosiennes, l’art et l’architecture (IVe-VIe siècle)

This book is dedicated to the cultural transfer within the network woven by the Bishop Ambrose between the city of Milan and the Christian West. Generated by donations of relics, multiplied from the holy remains preserved in Milan, the cultural transfer consists mainly in the dissemination of architectural and figurative models and the creation of a recognizable sacred landscape around the Capital. This phenomenon opens up perspectives towards a more global reflection on the construction of identity through the cult of saints and its artistic manifestations between the 4th and 5th centuries. Also, by recognizing an important center of ecclesiastic influence next to the see of Rome, dominant in the scholarly literature, it contributes to the debate on the centre-periphery dichotomy. This book was published in the series In between. Images, Words, and Objects that promotes studies in art history within the framework of a broad, trans-disciplinary approach.

Ravenna: Sedes Imperii
Artistic Trajectories in the Late Antique Mediterranean

Ravenna was one of the most significant administrative, political, and religious centres of the late antique period. This book focuses on the period between the transfer of the imperial court to Ravenna (402) and the last western emperor Romulus Augustus’ deposition by the Germanic commander Odoacer (476), a period when Ravenna was the seat of western emperors. The book is premised on the author’s conviction that individual surviving examples of architecture, along with their decoration, sarcophagi, ivory, and gold objects, can be best understood not only by examining their historical context and iconography, but also looking at the very material of these objects and how their production was organised. The book therefore focuses primarily on craftsmen and their traditions, and deliberate breaks with tradition, and on the way workmen moved about the late antique world and thereby fostered the exchange and spread of technology and artistic models. It thus present Ravenna not as an isolated phenomenon (as Ravenna is very often presented in the literature) but as one of many players in the political, ecclesiastical, and social games of the late antique world.

Saint Foy Révelée
La plus ancienne statue médiévale à Conques

The booklet Sainte Foy révélée. La plus ancienne statue médiévale à Conques [Sainte Foy Revealed: The Oldest Medieval Statue in Conques] is the first in a series of three booklets in French dedicated to the presentation of various aspects of the cultural heritage of Conques, the abbey church and the treasures in particular, to a broad non-academic audience. This first booklet, richly illustrated with original photographs and illustrations produced in the first year of the project, focuses on the core of the sacred site of Conques and the goal of the pilgrim’s devotion: the golden statue-reliquary of Sainte Foy. This artistic object, which has fascinated pilgrims for centuries, is often presented only as an object of faith or as an artistic bravado; the booklet re-examines it within a network of stories and devotional practices and explains the significance of the reuse of the golden facein providing the iconic potential and authority of a fourth-century emperor to a young female martyr.The goal is thus not only to disseminate the scientific results of the project, but also to make the story of this unique statue known by regular visitors of Conques, be they pilgrims or tourists. Both the format and the style of these booklets are conceived to reach specifically this audience, while at the same time keeping the highest standards for the photographs and illustrations, as well as texts.

Aux Portes de la Jérusalem Céleste
Le tympan sculpté de Conques

Aux portes de la Jérusalem Céleste. Le tympan sculpté de Conques [At the Doors of Heavenly Jerusalem: The Sculpted Tympanum of Conques] is the second bookletin Frenchin the short series dedicated to a broad non-academic audience. With more illustrations than the first one, which are the fruit of a photographic campaign on the tympanum realized within the project, this booklet presents the most visible artwork accessible to the visitor’s gaze when arriving in front of the abbey-church: the richly adorned and polychrome tympanum presenting the scene of the Last Judgement. Sculpted at the beginning of the 12^th century, the portal is probably amongst the first of its type along the pilgrimage routes. The goal of the booklet is to present to a broad audience what perception the medieval pilgrims could have had of such an incredible artistic object, how they understood these sculptures and their theme, and what effect this liminal imagery could have had on them. It does so by explaining how a complex message of salvation is reinforced by sculpted images together with an elegant Latin poem which runs around and under them, borrowing from a variety of themes and concepts widespread in the broad and elite cultures of the 12^th and 13^th centuries.

Re-thinking, Re-making, Re-living Christian Origins

If there is one constant in the history of Christianity and especially of the Western Church, it is its deep desire to be connected with its own past. From the perspective of the longue durée, it might even be possible to state that a meditation on Christian origins was a common and widespread response used throughout history in the face of each great moment of crisis within the Church. In those situations, the rhetoric produced by the Church was always aimed at emphasizing a desire to return to these mythical roots, the ideal community, a pure and radical Christianity. The question underlying this book is the way in which this desire for the past provides the occasion to re-live, re-think and re-create Christian origins. More precisely, the crux of our work is to understand how this desire can transform and rewrite the past both in materiality – with restorations of ancient monuments – and in ideas – writing history. In this book, the main focus of attention is dedicated to three key moments, corresponding more or less to three crucial episodes in the history of the Catholic Church in the modern era. The first of these three is the Reformation and subsequent Counter-Reformation, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Second comes the moment in which the Catholic Church lost its temporal power during the Unification of Italy and the “spiritual” reaction culminating with the First Vatican Council (1869–1870). Lastly is the period before and after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which can be considered the most significant reaction of Catholicism towards modernity.

Contributors: N. Barbolani di Montauto, X. Barral i Altet, N. Bock, V. Cantone, S. Cracolici, A. Di Croce, S. D’Ovidio, I. Foletti, J. Gebhardt, M. Gianandrea, O. Jakubec, J. Klípa, V. Lucherini, F. Malesevic, S. Pierguidi, C. Piva, S. Rosenbergová, M. Santanicchia, E. Scirocco, I. Fiumi Sermattei, A. Tranchina.

Oggetti, reliquie, migranti
La basilica ambrosiana e il culto dei suoi santi (386-972)

The Ambrosian basilica in Milan, built first in the age of Ambrose (374–397) and radically reconstructed at the end of the eleventh century, is an extraordinary place of memoria, where many medieval objects and monuments are present.

By studying a few famous artworks preserved in the basilica, such as the Chapel San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro, the golden altar, and the ciborium of Saint Ambrose, this book explores interactions between the topology of the building and its objects, the relics the basilica was constructed around, and which have the notion “migrating”. In other words, we would like to analyse in the longue durée how the objects became understood as relics and materialized sanctity, derived from them, and served as an instrument of exclusion and instruction in their ethnically problematic context.

This volume presents a rich photographic material, which was made especially for this publication.

Plotinus and the Origins of Medieval Aesthetics

Plotinus and the Origins of Medieval Aesthetics, an iconic essay of byzantinist André Grabar, first published in 1945 in French, is here presented to the reader for the first time translated in English. It is preceded by an historiographical introduction by Adrien Palladino, presenting the genesis of the text, replacing it within the opus of the scholar, and assessing its relevance within the new horizons of the field of art history.

From Kodakov to Hans Belting Library / Od Kondakova ke knihovně Hanse Beltinga
Emigration and Byzantium – Bridges between Worlds / Emigrace a Byzanc – mosty mezi světy

This book is a summary of the contributions presented at the conference of the same name, which took place at the ceremonial opening of the Hans Belting Library in Brno.

Ženy u oltáře. Nikdy?

What was the role of women in the Church? Nowadays, women, not allowed to be consecrated, are found outside the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is made up of only consecrated individuals. But was it always like this? The book Ženy u oltáře. Nikdy? (Women at the Altar. Never?) looks to answer this question.

Migrating Art Historians
On the Sacred Ways

Is it possible to reconstruct the feeling of a medieval pilgrim walking towards the sacred? No, it is not. And yet, the experimental project Migrating Art Historians sought to delve into this impossibility. Journeying by foot over more than 1,500 km, twelve modern pilgrims – students and scholars from Masaryk University – reached some of the most impressive artistic monuments of medieval France.

One year later, this book presents their intellectual, human, and art historical theoretical know-how, transformed by the experience of their bodies. In this context, exhausted and activated bodies became instruments asking new questions to medieval artworks and sources. Structured as a walk along pilgrimage routes, this book presents firstly the landscape, followed by liminal zones, before leading the reader inside medieval churches and ultimately towards the sacred. Original scientific art historical research combines with personal engagement. What emerges is the subject confronted with the experience of medieval art.

Orient oder Rom?
History and Reception of a Historiographical Myth (1901-1970)

Today, the question of the origins of Christian aesthetics is no longer a topical issue in medieval art history, although a persuasive answer has never been formulated. One of the reasons for this oblivion deals with the looming figure of Josef Strzygowski, who published his pivotal volume Orient oder Rom in 1901, now discredited for its racial and proto-Nazi ideas. However, the debate does not concern Strzygowski alone: the prodromes of this critical concept go back to the nineteenth century, when the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires fought to control contested territories, and studies of the humanities mirrored these conflicts. This volume, originating in the urgency to reflect on this pivotal conundrum in our field, attempts to reconstruct the (mis)fortune of a question that, according to Alois Riegl, “is the most important and most trenchant one in the entire history of mankind to date”.

Ritualizing the City
Collective Performances as Aspects of Urban Construction from Constantine to Mao

The city has always been, and remains, the ideal place of collective rituality. It is the city that has hosted, since Antiquity, collective celebrations of victory, important religious ceremonies, but also ritual consecrations of the elite. Based on these essential notions, the aim of this book is to reflect on a specific issue: the interaction between ritual and city space. Our wish is to understand, in a multidisciplinary and cross-epochal approach, how a collective liturgy, civic or religious, can unfold within the public space and transform it. In addition to sacred buildings and seizures of power, the square and the streets become in this sense important identity-shaping loci. Bringing places of power to the street or the square – which are by definition liminal spaces – means entering into a dialogue constructed between those who organise the ritual, those who perform it and those who witness it. It seems that it is in compromise between the different components of society that collective rituals can happen within the public space. Therefore, it is no surprise that the crucial question for this book is the way in which this same space is adapted to the requirements of the ritual, or, on the contrary, how the ritual adapts to the space.

From Byzantium to Holy Russia
Nikodim Kondakov (1844-1925) and the Invention of the Icon

Tracing the life and work of Nikodim Kondakov, a pioneer in the field of late Antiquity and Byzantium in eastern Europe, this biography is a true tale of adventure. It follows the complicated and challenging events in Kondakov’s life before and after the Russian Revolution, from his humble beginnings to his university studies and analyzes his inspired creation of an innovative and precocious study of art history in Russia. From a brilliant and successful career to the trauma endured during the Russian Revolution, the story becomes one of wandering and dependence; nevertheless, and in spite of the shift in history and in his own life, Kondakov’s studies sketch a vast geography of Late Antique and medieval culture from the Mediterranean to the Urals. The work approaches distant horizons, giving a glimpse at the migrations from Asia and the inception of medieval Europe with its Christian values; and it travels the paths of history along trails marked by artifacts and monuments. Reconstructing the personal and existential events in Nikodim Kondakov’s life contributes to the understanding of a critical phase in the founding of art history and, more broadly, the histories of Russia and of the countries the scholar traversed during a long life filled with tribulations.

The Mystic Cave
A History of the Nativity Church at Bethlehem

The present work is the first monographic book published in English, since 1910, on the history of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem. In comparison to other Holy Land monuments, this particular site has undergone relatively minor alterations in the course of time. Spared from the destructions that affected other holy sites, such as the Holy Sepulchre, the basilica at Bethlehem stands out for its well-preserved architecture, dating from the late 6th century, and its exuberant mosaic décors completed in 1169, in the period of Crusader rule in Palestine. This book offers a general description of the vicissitudes of the holy site since its very beginnings in Late Antiquity until the present times, with a special focus on the ways in which the complex relationship between the underground holy site, the Nativity cave, housing the very spot of Christ’s birthplace and the manger, and the sumptuously decorated upper church, came to be variously negotiated in the course of time by means of different forms of mise-en-scène. The book is accompanied by a rich apparatus of colour illustrations, plans, and a bibliographic appendix.

The Fifth Century in Rome: Art, Liturgy, Patronage

With articles from Sible de Blaauw, Olof Brandt, Zuzana Frantová and Dale Kinney

The objective of this book is to draw attention to fifth-century Rome – to those hundred years which even today need to be looked at from different perspectives. It is a key moment, a border between worlds, far too important not to receive further attention.

The studies, presented together here, aim to respond to new demands: the art object remains at the centre, but with a new search for its context. This context would be unthinkable without the key concept of co-existence – between popular and elite culture, popes and emperors, pagans and Christians. As well as between liturgy – intrinsically necessary to the Christian world – and patronage – the intellectual project which stems from a cultural concept. Moreover, co-existence is crucial between the mindset of the Roman elites (the tradition inscribed in the city’s DNA), and new internal and external demands arising from this rich moment in the history of Rome.

The fifth-century, studied in this book, is the moment in which future and past meet, where Antique and Christian coincide. An artistic moment with a single identifying feature: its incredibly rich complexity.

Milano allo specchio
Da Costantino al Barbarossa l’autopercezione di una capitale

Autoreferentiality as a prism through which Late Antique and Medieval Milan can be read is the connecting theme underlying the seven essays in this book. Milan, the capital of the empire, known since the episcopate of Ambrose as a first-rate ecclesiastical metropole and a powerful commune, had exceptional long-lasting development. Nevertheless, its stratification – historical, cultural and material – has only been sporadically explored from an autoreferential perspective. Instead, the focus has been Medieval mentality and the city of Milan, where the tradition came to guarantee the key role of this place, which the Lombardian capital tended to use throughout the Middle Ages.

Immaterial patrimony and the material city – represented by the Basilica Ambrosiana, the pivot of the culture and conscience of the citizens – have been explored from a multidisciplinary point of view. The analysis of historians, archaeologists, art historians and philologists allows us to distinguish the nodal points of this mechanism, providing an innovative all-round vision to better understand what relationship Milan had with its own past, and how this very past constituted the continuity from which the image of the city was formed, to become a fundamental identity aggregator.

Ani Bůh ani člověk
Slova, obrazy a středověká úzkost z výtvarného umění

The Ani Bůh ani člověk (Neither God nor Man) is a recent work by Herbert L. Kessler. The first edition was published in 2007 as a part of an edition concerning literary sources for artworks. The main aim of this book is the question of legitimacy of depicting God in medieval visual art, and therefore, despite its small size, we can consider it as a synthesis of the author’s scholarly interests. The fisrt Czech translation of the volume is coming to our readers now. It was translated in an unconventional way. The book is a result of a collaboration of students of the Department of Art History, at the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University.

Zona Liminare
Il nartece di Santa Sabina a Roma, la sua porta e l'iniziazione cristiana

At the top of the Aventine Hill, the Basilica of Santa Sabina stands – one of the most significant monuments of the Late Ancient world. Its main entrance is composed of a spacious narthex, with extraordinary pieces of art, such as an ancient wooden door, a decorative imitation of marble from the fifth century, and an Early Medieval image of Theotokos. The narthex, long overlooked in the research, must have originally been a highly pompous space. However, the importance of the entire building does not reside in its pieces of art, but above all in the place, which the former was intended and created for. The narthex was very probably meant for catechumens and penitents, and must have been a very liminal zone, a world between worlds, the zone of physical and spiritual transition.

This volume attempts to explore this place as a whole, focusing on its historiography, archaeology and decorations, in order to reveal the face of the Late Antiquity, extraordinarily preserved. We would like to offer our reader a synergic view, to show how various coexisting media can lead to an exhaustive comprehension of a Late Antique artistic scene.

Zápisky z cest 4
Jižní Kavkaz

This book, intended for the admirers of the unique cultural heritage of the South Caucasus and Turkey, is the result of five field trips undertaken between 2015 and 2022 by students and teachers of the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno to the regions of present-day Armenia, Georgia, and Turkey – the area of the medieval kingdoms of Armenia and Iberia. The book contains short student texts devoted to the outstanding medieval monuments of the region and offering original insights as well as new research data. The number of monuments studied is exceptional, making the present volume one of the first within Czech as well as international environment to deal with the cultural heritage of the region in such a comprehensive way. Prefaced with a scholarly reflection on the specific features of the cultural heritage under examination – including the unique phenomenon of Armenian liturgical anterooms, the so-called gaviths, and the intriguing dialogue between culture and landscape, the book introduces the reader to more than thirty churches, their decorations, liturgical furnishings, and icons. Individual monuments are ordered geographically by modern provinces and regions to make the volume a helpful guide for travellers to this area.

Zápisky z cest 3
Moskva & Novgorod

In the third volume of Zápisky z cest (Notes from Journeys), we explore Moscow and Novgorod, as recorded by the group of teachers and students from the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno. In composing this publication based on their excursion in November 2014, they aimed to share their gathered knowledge to introduce the (mainly medieval) monuments located in these cities. Nevertheless, the result of their work is not just a simple guidebook to medieval artworks. The current political situation, era of stalinism, the avant-garde of the twentieth century and the reception of medieval art in the nineteenth century are reflected here as well. Moreover, in addition to the entries on crucial monuments of Moscow and Novgorod, the reader can find historiographical reflections and basic bibliographies on each of topics.

Zápisky z cest 2
Cefalù – Palermo – Monreale

In April 2014, a group of 22 students and teachers gathered in Palermo in Sicily. They were from four different institutions – the Universities of Brno, Lausanne and Vienna, and the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence. Their objective was to explore the monuments of the Sicilian Middle Ages, mainly those from the twelfth century. Excursion participants decided, in the footsteps of those on the previous excursion to the Balkans, to share their experiences with a broader public. Just as in the case of the first volume dedicated to the Balkans, this small book is an opuscule, with no ambition of being innovative. It should introduce one of the most interesting and beautiful cultures of the Mediterranean to the Czech public. The authors of most of the texts are students who participated in the excursion. They aimed to compose texts to engage the attention of both the academic and public sphere, and at the same time, they wanted to offer the chance to those interested to consult the best scholarly output on Sicily through a very rich bibliography.

The Antique Memory and the Middle Ages

This volume was born from a desire to leave a tangible trace of the scholarly encounters that have taken place in the past two years at the Center for Early Medieval Studies, Department of Art History, Masaryk University in Brno. Speaking in various forums – structured courses as well as stand-alone lectures – Xavier Barral i Altet, Nicolas Bock, Valentina Cantone, Herbert Kessler, Serena Romano, Elisabetta Scirocco, and Jean-Michel Spieser have sparked exciting discussions of what continues to be known as the Middle Ages.

The common denominator that unites all of the scholarly work presented here was the dialogue between the medieval "present" and the Antique world: from Venice to Campania to Milan, from Constantinople to Burgundy, there had emerged an intellectual and visual experience that suggests the medieval period was a uniquely fertile moment for the engagement with the heritage of Antiquity, filtered and mediated in different ways, but ever present.

The purpose of this volume is to understand why and how patterns, images and ideas from the mythical (but visible) ancient past were received throughout the medieval millennium. We seek to understand why, hic et nunc, clients and workshops deliberately chose to speak in a "classicizing" aesthetic language, and to appropriate concepts belonging to the Antique tradition wholesale.

Objects of Memory, Memory of Objects
The Artworks as a Vehicle of the Past in the Middle Ages

This publication presents the proceedings of an International PhD student conference, held on December 5–6, 2013, organized in cooperation with the Dipartimento dei Beni culturali: archeologia, storia dell'arte, del cinema e della musica, University of Padua (Italy), and the Centre of Early Medieval Studies, Department of Art History, Masaryk University in Brno. The central topic of the conference was the study of artworks which are intrinsically linked to the notion of memory. The aims of the organizers were twofold: first of all, to understand how icons, books, reliquaries and other artefacts became vehicles of meanings, which are now mostly incomprehensible, but must have been clear to its contemporary audiences, and second, to understand how these objects could have changed the memory of the places in which they were preserved. The essays in this book thus represent some of the perspectives by which an object can be seen in its historicity.

Heresy and Loyalty
The Ivory Diptych of Five Parts from the Cathedral Treasury in Milan

Two luxurious carved ivory panels, preserved in the cathedral treasury in Milan, are the subject of this monographic study. Determining their origin within the context of Ravenna’s artistic production and dating them more precisely was made possible by enamel, a specific goldsmith technique used. The object dates back to the reign of Majorianus, one of the last emperors of the Western Empire (457–461), and the episcopate of the bishop Neon (450–473). Moreover, a detailed iconological analysis implies that the Milan Diptych could be related to the figure of Pope Leon I the Great and his attempts to enact the results of the Council of Chalcedon, held in 451. Finally, by clarifying the relationship between Ravenna and Rome, it was possible to recognize the probable commissioner of the artefact as Neon I., the Bishop of Ravenna. With his demand, he could publicly claim his allegiance to the main objectives of Leon’s policies; the fight against the Monophysite heresy, and the will to maintain a strong hierarchy in the Church, whose unity was in severe danger in that era.

Zápisky z cest 1
Jižní Balkán: Ochrid, Kurbinovo, Kastoria, Soluň

This volume is the result of a scholarly journey to see the medieval monuments of Macedonia and Greece, organized in 2013 by the Centre for Early Medieval Studies at the Department of History of Art at Masaryk University in Brno. This synthetic “guide”, written by the students, introduces crucial medieval monuments located between Ochrid and Thessaloniki. All decorations and buildings are presented in the form of short entries, where every object is described and interpreted. There is a current bibliography under each entry for those interested in deeper research. Photographs, most of which taken in situ, accompany the entries. There is also a brief vocabulary of scholarly terminology at the reader’s disposal. At the end of the book, the reader can find a chronological summary of all the mosaics and paintings attached, with the artworks the authors of the book encountered during their journey. The publication is a useful instrument for getting to know the artistic production of the Balkans.

Byzantium, Russia and Europe
Meeting and Construction of Worlds

Articles

Ivan Foletti, Byzantium, Russia and Europe. Historiographical construction, mental space and reality
Jean-Michel Spieser, De Rome à Constantinople et d'un empire à l'autre
Ivan Foletti, Irene Quadri, Roma, l'Oriente e il mito della Traditio Legis
Vladimir Ivanovici, Windows and Church Space in Early Medieval Byzantium and West
Maria Raffaella Menna, Byzantium, Rome, Crusader Kingdoms. Exchanges and Artistic Interactions in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century
Zuzana Frantová, Kristýna Pecinová, The icon of Old Brno: a reconsideration
Denise Zaru, Gli affreschi della cappella carrarese a Padova: le origini bizantine della narrazione visiva di Guariento
Pavel Rakitin, Byzantine echoes in the nineteenth century press and in the writings of Russian intellectuals
Chiara Croci, L'immagine dell'arte bizantina nella storiografia occidentale di fine '800: il caso dei mosaici del battistero di San Giovanni in Fonte a Napoli
Silvia Pedone, Valentina Cantone, The pseudo-kufic ornament and the problem of crosscultural relationships between Byzantium and Islam

The Face of the Dead and the Early Christian World

Peter Brown has described the situation of the holy bodies in the Early Christian period like a “place between Earth and Heaven”. The principal aim of this book is precisely to deal with this intersection between two worlds, expressed by the Dead, and in particularly by his images, and his faces.

The first part of this book looks into the portrait and its function, and the reason for which Late Antiquity, following a custom it inherited from previous eras, covered itself with individual images of the deceased. As in previous eras, the portrait appears, above all, to be an attempt to express the individual in his or her entirety; the techniques and “instruments” perfected in the course of the 3rd century, however, lead to divergent formal and conceptual results.

The second question, answered more briefly, deals with the perception and representation of the dead body as a whole, defined by David Le Breton as “la souche identitaire de l'homme.” The question asked is a fundamental one, since we are confronted with humanity itself after its passage to that which lies beyond: whether the body becomes just a memory or whether it preserves the real presence of the man who it once was.