The Cross-Cultural Heritage of a Byzantine Reliquary

Szántó, Iván (2017) The Cross-Cultural Heritage of a Byzantine Reliquary. In: Traditional and Modern in Art and Education. University of Prishtina, Kosovska Mitrovica. (In Press)

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Abstract

A unique artifact from the late XIIth or XIIIth century, the staurotheke of the Cathedral Treasury of Esztergom has frequently been discussed in the context of Byzantine art during the Komnenian period. Being one of the highlights of later Byzantine cloisonné enamel work, its centerpiece, containing a relic of the True Cross, can justly be regarded as a classical example of its kind. However, it features other aspects through which the Byzantine makers of the staurotheke endeavored cross-cultural communication, and these aspects, which might reflect the shock of the Seljuq conquest of Anatolia, as well as the more recent Latin conquest of Constantinople, have not yet been sufficiently explored. Moreover, the object should not be regarded as a one-layered piece of art because it includes, on the one hand, an elaborate frame which has often but perhaps incorrectly been identified as a later addition by Balkan metalworkers, and, on the other hand, it also features a precious silk cover of the back, which is most probably the product of a Near Eastern loom. Taken together, the Esztergom reliquary, attributed in this study to the Empire of Trebizond, illustrates the ways in which a society can negotiate, using the creative visual language of an artifact, the perilous geopolitical constraints which were imposed on it by external forces.

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