Visualizing Christ's Miracles in Late Byzantium

Investigates the political and spiritual agenda behind monumental paintings of Christ's miracles in late Byzantine churches.

Explores the meanings and iconography of monumental paintings of Christ's miracles in late Byzantine churches, and demonstrates that, far from the formulaic ensembles they are often mistaken to be, these painted cycles were carefully and inventively crafted by the cultural milieu at a pivotal time in the early Palaiologan era.This book investigates the political and spiritual agenda behind monumental paintings of Christ's miracles in late Byzantine churches in Constantinople, Mystras, Thessaloniki, Mount Athos, Ohrid, and Kastoria. It is the first exhaustive examination of Christ's miracles in monumental decoration, offering a comparative and detailed analysis of their selection, grouping, and layout and redefining the significance of this diverse and unique iconography in the early Palaiologan period. Maria Alessia Rossi argues that these painted cycles were carefully and inventively crafted by the cultural milieu, secular and religious, surrounding Emperor Andronikos II (r. 1282–1328) at a time of ferment in the early Palaiologan era. Furthermore, by adopting an interdisciplinary approach, she demonstrates that the novel flowering of Christ's miracles in art was not an isolated phenomenon, but rather emerged as part of a larger surge in literary commissions, and reveals how miracles became a tool to rewrite history and promote Orthodoxy.