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Course A107: From Late Antiquity to Byzantium

Art in Late Antiquity

 

By now you should have visited the Royal Academy exhibition at least once.

Here is a selection of books for you to look at. One of the best things that you can do is visit as many museums as possible and look at objects - primarily the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert, but also, for example, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, or the Liverpool Art Gallery; visit the Vatican, in person or in cyberspace ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4, 5)look at the illustrations, in e.g. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity. Click here for the Compass database at the British Museum; see the exhibition material at the Metropolitan Museum; and check the pages at the Louvre.


D. Talbot Rice, Art of the Byzantine Era, chap. 1
J. Beckwith, The Art of Constantinople. An Introduction to Byzantine Art (London 1961)
- Early Christian and Byzantine Art (Pelican 1970, re-ed. 1980)
R. Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (Pelican, rev.1975)
E. Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the making (1977, re-ed. 1983)
C. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453. Sources and documents (Englewood Cliffs 1972)
- Byzantine Architecture (New York 1976)
K. Weitzman, ed., The Age of Spirituality (New York, 1979)
C. Walter, Art and ritual in the Byzantine Church (London 1982)
Robin Cormack, Writing in Gold (London 1985)
 
R. Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991)
A. M. Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, chap. 10, with Further Reading
L. Rodley, Byzantine Art and Architecture (CUP, 1994; pb)
David Buckton, Byzantium, exhibition catalogue (British Museum, 1994)
John Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge, 1994)
--- Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph (Oxford, 1998)
John Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (London, 1997)
Linda Safran, ed., Heaven on Earth: art and the Church in Byzantium (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State U.P., 1998)
Thomas F. Mathews,The art of Byzantium between antiquity and the Renaissance (London, 1998). 
--- The clash of gods a reinterpretation of early Christian art (Princeton, 1999)
Thomas Thelma K., Late antique Egyptian funerary sculpture: images for this world and the next (Princeton, 2000)
Late antiquity: art in context edd by J. Fleischer, J. Lund and M. Nielsen (Copenhagen, 2001)
Imperial art as Christian art, Christian art as imperial art : expression and meaning in art and architecture from Constantine to Justinian , edd. J. Rasmus Brandt, Olaf Steen]. (Roma : Bardi, 2001).
Chris Entwistle (ed.) Through a glass brightly : studies in Byzantine and medieval art and archaeology presented to David Buckton (Oxford, Oxbow, 2003).
R. Loverance, Byzantium (British Museum 2004) see BMCR review

Icons
Averil Cameron, 'Images of authority: élites and icons in late sixth century Byzantium', Past and Present 84 (1979) 3-35
(also in ead. Continuity and Change in sixth century Byzantium [London 1981])
Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul (London, 1997)
and see the webarchive at Fordham

 

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Page revised August 15, 2008