Citation

Nelson RS. Art Hist. 2007; 30(4): 489-502.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Association of Art Historians of Great Britain, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-8365.2007.00559.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A Byzantine Gospel Lectionary in Florence contains a detailed description of the liturgical rites on 1 September. The manuscript's illustration for that day is interpreted art historically and then read against that liturgy so as to distinguish the heuristic processes of the discipline from the empathetic vision of the person for whom the manuscript was made and used: the Patriarch of Constantinople. The display that art history assumes and creates is contrasted with a performative spectacle of the Middle Ages.