In this volume Anthi Andronikou explores the social, cultural, religious and trade encounters between Italy and Cyprus during the late Middle Ages, from ca. 1200 -1400, and situates them within several Mediterranean contexts. Revealing the complex artistic exchange between the two regions for the first time, she probes the rich but neglected cultural interaction through comparison of the intriguing thirteenth-century wall paintings in rock-cut churches of Apulia and Basilicata, the puzzling panels of the Madonna della Madia and the Madonna di Andria, and painted chapels in Cyprus, Lebanon, and Syria. Andronikou also investigates fourteenth-century cross-currents that have not been adequately studied, notably the cult of Saint Aquinas in Cyprus, Crusader propaganda in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and a unique series of icons crafted by Venetian painters working in Cyprus. Offering new insights into Italian and Byzantine visual cultures, her book contributes to a broader understanding of cultural production and worldviews of the medieval Mediterranean.
Author(s): Anthi Andronikou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 431
City: Cambridge
Cover
Half-title page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
Note to the Reader
List of Abbreviations
Maps
Prologue – Whence and Whither: A Critical Review of Artistic Relations
One A Prosopography of Encounters
Italians in Cyprus: The Beginnings
Merchants and Trade
Church
Religious and Monastic Orders in Cyprus
Military Orders
Pilgrimage
Two Southern Italy, Cyprus, and the Holy Land: A Tale of Parallel Aesthetics?
Lost in Academic Taxonomies
Lusignan Cyprus and the Visual Colonisation of Apulia?
Serendipitous Encounters
Apulia and Cyprus: Towards a Historicity of Contacts
Three Deconstructing Myths: Transmutations of Madonna and Panagia between Italy and Cyprus
The Madonna della Madia in the Cathedral of Monopoli: Deciphering the Supplicants Conundrum
The Madonna della Madia: Stylistic and Iconographical Enquiries
The Madonna di Andria: A Painting Without Legends
Madonne and Panagie at the Crossroads of ‘Crusader Art’
Four Thomas Aquinas, the Dominicans, and Artistic Patronage in Trecento Cyprus
Giovanni Conti the Aesthete: ‘Il Ditto Buon Arcivescovo Fece in Vita Molti Beni’
The Chapel of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Nicosia: The Sources
Saint Thomas Aquinas: Vita Sancta and his Cypriot Associations
Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Visual Representations in Italian Art: A Brief Treatment
The Frescoes and Altarpiece in the Nicosia Cathedral: A Tentative Reconstruction
Style and Design of the Aquinas Frescoes and Altarpiece
Aquinas Chapel: Royal and Religious Patronage
Five The Peregrinations of a Cypriot King in Italian Material Culture, 1362–1368
A Chivalrous King Reclaims the Holy Land
‘The King of Cyprus … Was the Most Honourable Lord Riding the Best Horse’
A Cypriot Crusader in the Chapter House of Santa Maria Novella
Peter I Lusignan as King David
A Pious King on the Side of the Impenitent Thief?
The End of a Peregrination, The End of a Life
Six Art in the Interstices: Hybrid Italian Panels and Cypriot Nobility
A Critical Fortune at Play
Iconographic Negotiations
Stylistic Considerations
The Painters of the Pelendri Panels: In Search of an Identity
Function and Placement in Context
In Search of Patrons and Beholders: Pelendri and the Podocataros
Epilogue
Appendix 1 Italian Clerics in Cyprus (or Related to cyprus), c. 1250–1400
Appendix 2 The Cult of the Virgin Hodegetria in Southern Italy
Appendix 3 Saint Thomas Aquinas in Italian Art
Bibliography
Index
