Between the 5th and the 12th century, the Adriatic Sea served as mediator of cultural and artistic exchange and transformations of mosaics between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, between Constantinople and the ports of Ravenna, Poreč, Torcello, and Venice. This course will focus on the visual properties, production, and patronage of some of the most spectacular monuments of the Roman and medieval world. On the one hand it will explore the topics and symbolical meaning of the mosaics, and on the other hand their economic, social, and political functions in their historical perspective.
Learning outcomes of the course
Reading task: analyzing an article.
Task in situ: a short presentation
Written essay. A 5 page analysis of the artwork presented in-situ
Teaching and evaluation methods
Presence: 10 %
Presentation: 30 %
Essay: 60 %
Andreescu-Treadgold Irina and Warren Treadgold: “Procopius and the Imperial Panels of S.Vitale,” Art Bulletin LXXIX (1997): 708–23.
Barber, Charles : “The imperial panels at San Vitale: a reconsideration,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 14 (1990): 19–42.
Bassett, Sarah E.: “Style and Meaning in the Imperial Panels at San Vitale,” Artibus et Historiae no. 57 (2008): 49-57
Bolgia, Claudia: “The Mosaics of Gregory IV at S. Marco, Rome: Papal Response to Venice, Byzantium, and the Carolingians,” Speculum 81, no. 1 (2006): 1–34.
Bovini, Giuseppe: Ravenna: Art and History (Ravenna: Longo, 1979). Büchsel, Martin, Herbert Kessler, and Rebecca Müller (eds.): The Atrium of San Marco in Venice: The Genesis and Medieval Reality of the Genesis Mosaics (Berlin: Reimer, 2015).
Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf: Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010).
Demus, Otto: The Mosaic Decoration of San Marco, Venice. Edited by Herbert Kessler. Chicago: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
— “Studies among the Torcello Mosaics-I,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 82,
no. 483 (1943): 136-32.
— “Studies among the Torcello Mosaics-II,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
84, no. 491 (1944a): 39–45.
—“Studies among the Torcello Mosaics-III,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 85, no. 497 (1944b): 195–200.
Elsner, Jas: Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Howell Jolly, Penny: Made in God's Image? Eve and Adam in the Genesis Mosaics at San Marco, Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
Karem, Marina: “The Mosaics of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello,” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1991.
Lane Fox, Robin: “Art and the Beholder: The Apse Mosaic of St. Apollinare in Classe,” Byzantinische Forschung XXI. Bosphorus. Essays in Honour of Cyril Mango, eds. Stephanos Efthymiadis et al. (Oxford, 1995), 247–51.
Mackie, Gillian: “New Light on the So-Called Saint Laurence Panel at the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna,” Gesta 26 (1990), 54–60.
Massimiliano, David. Eternal Ravenna: From the Etruscans to the Venetians, edited by Christina Cawthra, translated by, Jo-Ann Titmarsh (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).
Mathews, Thomas, F.: The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
Simson, Otto von: Sacred Fortress. Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1948).Swift Ellen and Anne Alwis: “The Role of Late Antique Art in Early Christian Worship: A Reconsideration of the Iconography of the ‘Starry Sky’,” Papers of the British School at
Rome 78, (2010): 193–217, 352–354.
Urbano, Arthur: “Donation, Dedication, and Damnatio Memoriae: The Catholic Reconciliation of Ravenna and the Church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 13, no. 1 (2005): 71–110.
Verhoeven, Mariëtte: The Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna: Transformations and Memory (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).
Wharton, Annabel Jane: “Ritual and Reconstructed Meaning: The Neonian Baptistery in Ravenna,” Art Bulletin 69, no. 3 (1987): 358–75.
—Refiguring the Post Classical City: Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem, and
Ravenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)