A arte da Bizantinística

Averil Cameron. Byzantine Matters. (2014) Princeton UP.

Recognition of the agendas lying behind many individual artworks designed to expound and claim their various versions of orthodox doctrine, and their capacity to enunciate complex theological themes in visual terms, has been part of the move among Byzantine art historians toward a highly contextual exposition and away from stylistic analysis. To be a Byzantine art historian at this juncture requires a highly sophisticated theological awareness combined with the deployment of complex and often obscure theological texts. And since so much Byzantine writing of this kind remains imperfectly edited or is even unpublished, this means that they must be philologists, theologians, and liturgists too.