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Biography of the medieval Mediterranean's most cross-culturally significant sculptural monument, the tallest in the pre-modern world.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Justinian's Entry into Constantinople: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered; 2. The Making of Justinian's Forum; 3. Defying a Defining Witness: The Bronze Horseman and the Buildings (De Aedificiis) of Prokopios; 4. The Horseman of Baghdad Responds to the Horseman of Constantinople; 5. Soothing Imperial Anxieties: Theophilos and the Restoration of Justinian's Crown; 6. Debating Justinian's Merits in the Tenth Century; 7. The Bronze Horseman and a Dark Hour for Humanity; 8. The Horseman Becomes Heraclius: Crusading Narratives of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries; 9. From Exile in Nicaea to Restoration of Constantinople; 10. A Learned Dialogue Across the Ages: Pachymeres Confronts Prokopios; 11. Orb-session: Constantinople's Future in the Bronze Horseman's Hand; 12. Justinian's Column and the Antiquarian Gaze: A Centuries-Old 'Secret' Exposed; 13. A Timeless Ideal: Constantinople in Slavonic Imagination of the Fourteenth to Fifteenth Centuries; 14. The Horseman Meets its End; 15. Horse as Historia, Byzantium as Allegory; 16. Shadowy Past and Menacing Future; 17. After the Fall: The Bronze Horseman and Eternal Tsar'grad; Postscript: The Horseman's Debut in Print.
About the author
Elena N. Boeck is Professor of History of Art and Architecture at DePaul University. Her publications explore intellectual exchange in the Mediterranean and unconventional, fascinating forms of engagement with Byzantium's legacy. She is the author of Imagining the Byzantine Past: The Perception of History in the Illustrated Manuscripts of Skylitzes and Manasses (Cambridge 2015). She held appointments as the Excellence Initiative Professor at Radboud University, and Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.
Summary
The Byzantine empire's bronze horseman towered over Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired international acclaim. This engrossing and pioneering biography demonstrates that the colossal, the exceptional, and the stationary can help us understand a global middle ages.
