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In the spring of 2003 I was hired as an assistant professor in medieval art at Stanford University. At that time both the school of Humanities & Sciences' dean's office and the Art library made a commitment to build up a research collection in Byzantine culture. This is a relatively new field for the University, since most teaching in medieval studies here focuses on the western Middle Ages.
Yet Byzantium held an important role in the eastern Mediterranean. In the early Middle Ages, this empire managed to sustain the continuity of the Roman political system of government and Roman law and integrate them into the Christian religion. As the East flourished and preserved Greek and Roman culture, the West disintegrated under barbarian attacks. Constantinople, the capital of the empire, was a magnet of culture. With the rise of Islam in the early seventh century, Byzantium lost its hold on the Holy Land and its rich provinces in Egypt. Although by now they were rivals competing for political supremacy, the Byzantine and Islamic worlds were in constant communication and economic and cultural exchange. Greek treatises on sciences were exported to Baghdad and translated into Arabic; and in turn stimulated the flourishing of Arab scientific thought. Similarly, the princely culture of the Arab courts was emulated in Constantinople. Byzantium, as the empire of the East, remained until the Fourth Crusade a land of riches and luxury, and a land that fascinated and lured the West. A better knowledge of Byzantium could improve our understanding of how a Christian empire communicated with Islam as well as how its culture gradually transformed a classical idiom to fit its new role in the East. As part of this ongoing effort to establish the field of Byzantine studies at Stanford, the Art library, led by its head librarian, Alex Ross, has enthusiastically begun to purchase and gather a collection. We have acquired dictionaries and reference materials as well as a series of rare facsimiles of Byzantine manuscripts. We have also purchased special albums of color as well as of black and white photographs, plans, and maps recording Byzantine buildings. In addition, we are expanding the collection of journals and periodicals to include the current Greek and Slavic scholarship in the field. Most of this material has been immediately integrated into the graduate and undergraduate teaching.
Students now have the rare opportunity to study Byzantine painting through facsimiles that reproduce the lush color and employ gold leaf to render the opulence of the originals. Similarly, mosaic decoration can be explored through high-resolution color photographs and close-ups of some of the most important Byzantine monuments in Constantinople and Greece. I am grateful to the Art library and the university for their efforts and hope they will continue to support and expand our Byzantine collection.
Bissera V. Pentcheva
Bissera V. Pentcheva is an assistant professor in the department of Art & Art History. She received her BA from Dartmouth College and PhD from the department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. She was a fellow of the Onassis Foundation at the National Institute for Byzantine Studies in Athens, Greece. Her first book, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press, December 2005) focuses on the civic cult of the Mother of God and explores how relics and icons carried in war and in triumphal and liturgical processions shaped imperial power and defined Byzantine cultural identity. Her new book project, Sensual Splendor: The Icon in Byzantium explores the role of the five senses-sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste-in the experience of medieval objects. Preliminary findings will appear in her articles: "Epigrams on Icons" in Art and Text in Byzantine Culture, ed. L. James (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and "The Performative Icon" in Performing Byzantium, ed. M. Mullett (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming). Pentcheva will continue this research as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow in Munich, Germany in fall 2006.
Courses taught include Virginity and Power: Mary in the Middle Ages; Medieval Image Theory; Age of Cathedrals; and Byzantine Art and Architecture.
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