In-Between Words and Images: Marginalia decorata in Middle-Byzantine Manuscripts, workshop led by Kallirroe Linardou (Athens School of Fine Arts), Princeton University, February 21, 2017, 6:00 pm

Respondent: Charlie Barber

Medieval manuscripts deprived of illustrations or any kind of recognisable illumination, rarely attract the attention of art-historians. However, viewing a manuscript is actually important not just for accessing medieval versions of texts but also for seeing how written texts were staged and how they visually engaged with their reader/viewer. It is precisely this ‘stagecraft’ genius of eponymous and anonymous Byzantine scribes and the visual manipulation of the script that interest me here, as well as how such mechanisms were employed in order to articulate eloquent messages and to convey profound meaning. Along this line, I will discuss a middle-Byzantine example where the “staging” of the written text manifests the explicit wish of the scribe for it to be viewed also as image.

Kallirroe Linardou is an Assistant Professor in Byzantine and Medieval Art in the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Athens School of Fine Arts. A graduate of the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Ioannina, she completed her postgraduate and doctoral studies in the United Kingdom, at King’s College London and the University of Birmingham. She has published on Byzantine illuminated manuscripts and co-edited a book on Byzantine eating and dinning culture. Her research interests extend into twelfth-century imperial and aristocratic ideology as manifested in the patronage of the arts as well as the investigation of the visuality and iconicity of the script.