Artistic Practice, Materiality, and Ideology in the Medieval East Roman Empire and Neighboring Eastern Polities

This anthology foregrounds the complex interplay of artistic production, material conditions, and political conjuncture in East Roman Empire and the wider Orthodox Commonwealth. While art-historical research has long been shaped by the “visual” and “spatial” turns, this volume insists that a decisive advance lies in engaging the “material turn” through a perspective that grounds artworks in their historically specific material conditions rather than as autonomous agents. By interrogating how artworks emerge within historically specific material realities, this book situates epigraphy, image, and monument within the lived economies, institutions, and belief systems of the medieval East Roman world.The collection’s four sections map the many sites where matter and meaning intersect. Part I probes inscribed monuments in their urban settings, attending to staging, accessibility, and reception. Part II examines the construction of imperial, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical representation across diverse media. Part III turns to portrayals of imperial, lay, and churchwomen, exploring how gendered agency was mediated in sacred and secular spheres. Part IV expands the horizon to Armenia, Georgia, and Northern Mesopotamia, reframing center-periphery narratives through a transregional lens. An epilogue synthesizes these inquiries, showing how current approaches in art history theorize materiality.Aimed at scholars of Byzantine art, epigraphy, material culture, and interdisciplinary cultural studies, this volume also speaks to historians of late antiquity, medievalists, and specialists in visual studies. It offers fresh methodological insight, rigorous case studies, and a comparative reach that redefines how we understand the material and ideological contexts of art in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean.

About the Author

Mariana Bodnaruk is Assistant Professor in Ancient History at the Faculty of History of the University of Warsaw. They taught at Al-Quds Bard College, Central European University, Bard College, Masaryk University, and the University of Olomouc. Their research was published in Journal of Epigraphic Studies , Journal of Late Antiquity , Antichthon , Phoenix , and Byzantinoslavica . They authored An Empire of Elites: The Self-Representation of the Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman State in the Fourth Century AD (2026). Their research interests include epigraphy, art history, hagiography of the medieval East Roman Empire, as well as trans studies and queer Marxism.