Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Poetry in Byzantine Literature and Society (1081–1204)
- Part I Poetry and Twelfth-Century Literary Culture
- Part II Poetry and the School
- Part III Poetry, Patronage and Power
- 9 ‘Receiving Rich Gifts’: Negotiating Power in the Metrical Paratexts of the Vossianus Gr. Q1
- 10 The Poetics of Patronage: Constructing the Image of the Patron in Dedicatory Epigrams in Monumental Painting of the Komnenian Period in Greece
- 11 David as Model for the Emperor and his Poet: Theodore Prodromos and John II Komnenos
- Part IV New Texts, New Interpretations
- Index
10 - The Poetics of Patronage: Constructing the Image of the Patron in Dedicatory Epigrams in Monumental Painting of the Komnenian Period in Greece
from Part III - Poetry, Patronage and Power
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Poetry in Byzantine Literature and Society (1081–1204)
- Part I Poetry and Twelfth-Century Literary Culture
- Part II Poetry and the School
- Part III Poetry, Patronage and Power
- 9 ‘Receiving Rich Gifts’: Negotiating Power in the Metrical Paratexts of the Vossianus Gr. Q1
- 10 The Poetics of Patronage: Constructing the Image of the Patron in Dedicatory Epigrams in Monumental Painting of the Komnenian Period in Greece
- 11 David as Model for the Emperor and his Poet: Theodore Prodromos and John II Komnenos
- Part IV New Texts, New Interpretations
- Index
Summary
This chapter discusses dedicatory epigrams accompanying donor representations in monumental painting. The dedicatory inscription in the Vytoumas monastery (1161) in Thessaly is used to reconstruct the iconography of ktetoric compositions. The now-lost representation of Tarchaneiotes with his wife Zoe and the sebastos Andronikos, probably in a patronal Deesis composition, is reconstituted for the first time. The second epigram, surrounding the mosaic representation of the Deesis in the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos, is used to propose a new interpretation of the relationship between the hegumen Ioannikios and the monk Sophronios, probably the second patron, who completed the dedicatory composition started under Ioannikios. For the last epigrams, from the church of Saints Anargyroi in Kastoria (1180/90), the relationship between the poetic text, the symbolism of the space and the iconography is presented as a whole. These two epigrams are important for understanding the ideology of patronage and some of the problems that dedicatory inscriptions pose, namely the nature of the patron’s involvement in the creation of an epigram and the patron’s interaction with the painter.
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- Poetry in Byzantine Literature and Society (1081-1204)New Texts, New Approaches, pp. 256 - 282Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024