Routledge Handbook of Byzantine Visual Culture in the Danube Regions, 1300-1600

This volume aims to broaden and nuance knowledge about the history, art, culture, and heritage of Eastern Europe relative to Byzantium. From the thirteenth century to the decades after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the regions of the Danube River stood at the intersection of different traditions, and the river itself has served as a marker of connection and division, as well as a site of cultural contact and negotiation.

The Routledge Handbook of Byzantine Visual Culture in the Danube Regions, 1300–1600 brings to light the interconnectedness of this broad geographical area too often either studied in parts or neglected altogether, emphasizing its shared history and heritage of the regions of modern Greece, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Czechia. The aim is to challenge established perceptions of what constitutes ideological and historical facets of the past, as well as Byzantine and post-Byzantine cultural and artistic production in a region of the world that has yet to establish a firm footing on the map of art history.

The 24 chapters offer a fresh and original approach to the history, literature, and art history of the Danube regions, thus being accessible to students thematically, chronologically, or by case study; each part can be read independently or explored as part of a whole.

Maria Alessia Rossi, PhD, is an Art History Specialist at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. She is the author of Visualizing Christ’s Miracles in Late Byzantium: Art, Theology, and Court Culture (2024). She also co-edited Late Byzantium Reconsidered: The Arts of the Palaiologan Era in the Mediterranean (2019), Byzantium in Eastern European Visual Culture in the Late Middle Ages (2020), and Eclecticism in Late Medieval Visual Culture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Cultural Spheres (2021). Rossi is the co-founder of the initiative North of Byzantium and the digital platform Mapping Eastern Europe.

Alice Isabella Sullivan, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture and the Director of Graduate Studies at Tufts University, specializing in the artistic production of Eastern Europe and the Byzantine-Slavic cultural spheres. She is the author of The Eclectic Visual Culture of Medieval Moldavia (2023) and co-editor of several volumes. In addition, she is co-director of the Sinai Digital Archive and co-founder of North of Byzantium and Mapping Eastern Europe—two initiatives that explore the history, art, and culture of the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern Europe during the medieval and early modern periods.