Byzantine sources rarely address women in relation to art, yet numerous art objects from the eastern Roman Empire demonstrate the powerful agency of women across the Mediterranean.
After introducing Byzantium and the concept of agency, this course will examine a curated selection of artefacts from the early decades of fourth century CE, when Constantinople was founded, to the middle of the fifteenth century, when the Ottomans conquered the city. The course will include object-based seminar/discussions and select visits to relevant collections. It will introduce the concept of agency as the chain of relations linking art patrons and art recipients via artists, prototypes, as well as practices and materials, and will reveal how women’s roles can be indexed in different stages of this chain of relations. In order to do so the course will use a multidisciplinary lens to discuss sculptures, mosaics, painted and carved decorations as well as manuscript illuminations, textiles, jewellery, archaeological remains, and architecture.
The course will consider connections between Byzantine empresses and noble women such as Galla Placidia, Theodora, Irene of Hungary, and Anna Palaiologina but will also extend its analysis to objects linked to the invisible laywomen of Byzantine society. Who were the women related to these objects? What social space did they inhabit? How and when were their intellectual contributions received? By answering these questions, the course will show how their lives matter in understanding Byzantium, a socio-political entity that shaped the history of the European continent. The course will offer two visits at collections focused on Byzantium and women, one of which at the British Museum.