The sixteen papers collected in this volume explore points of contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic worlds between c. 1000 and c. 1250. They arise from a conference organised by the British Archaeological Association in Palermo in 2012, and reflect its interest in patterns of cultural exchange across the Mediterranean, ranging from the importation of artefacts – textiles, ceramics, ivories and metalwork for the most part – to a specific desire to recruit eastern artists or emulate eastern Mediterranean buildings.
The individual essays cover a wide range of topics and media: from the ways in which the Cappella Palatina in Palermo fostered contacts between Muslim artists and Christian models, the importance of dress and textiles in the wider world of Mediterranean design, and the possible use of muslim-trained sculptors in the emergent architectural sculpture of late-11th-century northern Spain, to the significance of western saints in the development of Bethlehem as a pilgrimage centre and of eastern painters and techniques in the proliferation of panel painting in Catalonia around 1200. There are studies of buildings and the ideological purpose behind them at Canosa (Apulia), Feldebrő (Hungary), and Charroux (Aquitaine), comparative studies of the domed churches of western France, significant reappraisals of the porphyry tombs in Palermo cathedral, the pictorial programme adopted in the Baptistery at Parma, and of the chapter-house paintings at Sigena, and wide-ranging papers on the migration of images of exotic creatures across the Mediterranean and on that most elusive and apparently Mediteranean of objects – the Oliphant. The volume concludes with a study of the emergence of a supra-regional style of architectural sculpture in the western Mediterranean and evident in Barcelona, Tarragona and Provence.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
JAROSLAV FOLDA Twelfth-Century Crusader Art in Bethlehem and Jerusalem: Points of Contact between Europe and the Crusader Kingdom
MARIAM ROSSER-OWEN The Oliphant: A Call for a Shift of Perspective
JEREMY JOHNS Muslim Artists and Christian Models in the Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo
FRANCESCA ANZELMO Dress and Textiles on the Twelfth-Century Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo
ROSA BACILE The Norman Porphyry Workshop in Palermo c. 1140-83
MARK JOHNSON The Mausoleum of Bohemund at Canosa and the Architectural Setting of Ruler Tombs in Norman Italy
ERIC FERNIE The Date, Iconography and Dedication of the Cathedral of Canosa
LUDOVICO GEYMONAT Preparing for the End: The Great Devotion of 1233 and Painting in the Baptistery at Parma
BELA SZOLST SZAKACS Hungary, Byzantium, Italy: Architectural Connections in the 11th Century
JOHN MCNEILL Building Jerusalem in Western France: The Case of St-Sauveur at Charroux
CLAUDE ANDRAULT-SCHMITT A Western Interpretation of an Oriental Scheme: The Domed Churches of Romanesque Aquitaine
GERARDO BOTO The Migration of Mediterranean Images: Strange Creatures in Spanish Buildings and Scriptoria between the 9th and 11th Centuries
ROSE WALKER Sculptors in Medieval Spain following the 1085 Fall of Toledo
DULCE OCON The Paintings of the Chapter-House of Sigena and the Art of the Crusader Kingdoms
MANUEL CASTINEIRAS Catalan Panel Painting Around 1200, The Eastern Mediterranean and Byzantium
JORDI CAMPS Catalonia, Provence and the Holy Land: Late 12th-Century Sculpture in Barcelona
A third volume, based on the British Archaeological Associations’s 2014 Conference in Barcelona, will explore Romanesque Patrons and Processes.