This book explores the viewing and sensorial contexts in which the bodies of kings and Michele Bacci

Michele Bacci is Professor of Medieval Art

a comparative perspective
Staging the Ruler’s Body in Medieval Cultures
queens were involved in the premodern societies of Europe, Asia, and Africa, relying on a
methodology that aims to overcoming the traditional boundaries between material studies,
Staging the Ruler’s Body History at the Fribourg University, Switzerland,
and a member of the Academia Europaea. His
art history, political theory, and Repräsentationsgeschichte. More specifically, it investigates
the multiple ways in which the ruler’s physical appearance was apprehended and invested in Medieval Cultures research has been focused on artistic interactions
in the Medieval Mediterranean and beyond, and
with visual, metaphorical, and emotional associations, as well as the dynamics whereby such the history of cult-objects and holy sites from a
mise-en-scène devices either were inspired by or worked as sources of inspiration for textual a comparative perspective phenomenological-comparative viewpoint. He is
and pictorial representations of royalty. The outcome is a multifaced analysis of the multiple, the author of numerous publications, including
imaginative, and terribly ambiguous ways in which, in past societies, the notion of a God- Il pennello dell’Evangelista (1998), The Many Faces of
driven, eternal, and transpersonal royal power came to be associated with the material bodies edited by Michele Bacci, Gohar Grigoryan Christ (2014), the Mystic Cave (2017), and Veneto-
of kings and queens, and of the impressive efforts made, in different cultures, to elude the Byzantine Artistic Interactions (2021).
conundrum of the latter’s weakness, transitoriness, and individual distinctiveness.
and Manuela Studer-Karlen
Gohar Grigoryan, Ph.D. (2017), University of
Fribourg, is currently senior researcher at the same
university within an SNSF-funded project. She is
the author of over two dozen peer-reviewed articles
on medieval Armenian art and history and of an
upcoming monograph on royal imagery in Cilician
Armenia.

Manuela Studer-Karlen, Ph.D. (2010), University

of Fribourg, is a Swiss National Science Foundation
(SNSF) Professor for Medieval Art at the University
in Bern. She has published a monograph on late
antique sarcophagi and recently her habilitation
has been published with the title: Christus Anapeson.
Image and Liturgy. Her research centres on the
history of visual-cultural processes in late antiquity,
the interactions among text, image and space in
Byzantine churches, medieval Georgian art,
and Gothic ivories.

King Lewon IV executing ‘just judgment’,

Assizes of Antioch, copied and illustrated by
Sargis Pitsak, Sis, 1331. Venice, Manuscript Library
of Mekhitarists, MS 107, fol. 1v.
9 781915 487087 Photo by Hrair Hawk Khatcherian.

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 Staging the Ruler’s Body in Medieval Cultures

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 Staging the Ruler’s Body
in Medieval Cultures
a comparative perspective

Edited by Michele Bacci,

Gohar Grigoryan
and Manuela Studer-Karlen

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 The Open Access Publication of this book was made possible by the Swiss National
Science Foundation. The present volume was printed with the financial support of
the Council of the University of Fribourg.

The book is a result of the research project funded by the Swiss National Science
Foundation: Royal Epiphanies: The King’s Body as Image and Its Mise-en-scène in the
Medieval Mediterranean (12th-14th Centuries).

Copyright © 2023 Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, Belgium.

This is an open access publication made available

under a cc by-nc 4.0 International License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, for commercial purposes, without the prior
permission of the publisher, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the
appropriate reprographics rights organization.

isbn 978-1-915487-08-7
d/2023/0095/177
doi 10.1484/m.hmsah-eb.5.134720
issn 2565-8409
Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

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 Contents

7 Acknowledgements

9 Michele Bacci University of Fribourg

The Ruler’s Multiple Bodies and Their Mise-en-Scène.
Some Introductory Remarks

25 Matthew P. Canepa University of California, Irvine

Staging the Body of the Lord of the Sevenfold World.
Methectic Spaces and Chiasmatic Viewing in Sasanian Iran

52 Natia Natsvlishvili Tbilisi, George Chubinashvili National Research Centre

for Georgian Art History and Heritage Preservation
Queen Consort Mariam Dadiani and Female Architectural Patronage
in Late Medieval Georgia

79 Gohar Grigoryan University of Fribourg

The ‘Just Judgement’ of King Lewon IV.
Representational Strategies of Righteous Rulership in Cilician Armenia

117 Jacopo Gnisci University College London

Royal Imagery and Devotional Spaces in Early Solomonic Ethiopia.
The Case of Gännätä Maryam

136 Antony Eastmond The Courtauld London

Staging as Metaphor. The King’s Body and the Theatricality of Power

156 Maria Parani University of Cyprus

Clothes maketh the emperor? Embodying and Performing Imperial Ideology
in Byzantium through Dress

173 Manuela Studer-Karlen University of Bern

Staging for Commemoration. The Cherubikos Hymnos

202 Eleonora Tioli Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa & University of Fribourg
The Khan in the West. The Reception of Mongol Political Power in the Texts
and Images of Medieval Latin Europe

225 Kayoko Ichikawa Japan Society for the Promotion of Science & University of Fribourg
Staging the Virgin Mary as the Ruler of the Sienese City-State

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 246 Mirko Vagnoni University of Sassari
Shaping the Face of Power. The Portraits of King Robert of Anjou (r. 1309-43)

263 Aleksandra Rutkowska University of Oxford

Staging the Royal Corpse. Reburials of Monarchical Bodies at the Basilica of San Isidoro in León

280 Sofía Fernández Pozzo University of Fribourg & Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona)
The Presence and Propaganda of Jaime the Conqueror of Aragon (r. 1213-76) in the Llibre dels Fets.
The Image, Action, and Rhetoric of a King

294 Marta Serrano-Coll Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona)- Templa

The Royal Presence of Pedro IV (r. 1336-87) in Contemporary Textual and Iconographic Sources

314 Sabine Sommerer University of Zurich

Staging the Absent King. Effects of Presence on Medieval Royal Thrones

343 Index of persons

348 Index of places

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 Acknowledgements

This book resulted from the international conference Staging the Ruler’s Body in Medieval
Cultures: A Comparative Perspective, which took place on 23-24 November 2020 at the University
of Fribourg in the framework of the research project Royal Epiphanies: The King’s Body as Image
and Its Mise-en-scène in the Medieval Mediterranean, funded by the Swiss National Science
Foundation. The event was organized with the support of the Conférence Universitaire de
Suisse occidentale (CUSO), the Mediävistisches Institut and the Institut du monde antique
et byzantin of the University of Fribourg, and the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean.
The publication of the present book was made possible by the financial support of the Swiss
National Science Foundation and the Council of the University of Fribourg. We warmly thank
all these institutions and, above all, the contributors of this volume. Our special thanks go to
Julia Oswald for her careful copy-editing, Adélaïde Mornod for help with the index, and Johan
van der Beke and the rest of the team at Brepols and Harvey Miller for their engagement in the
production of this book.

Michele Bacci, Gohar Grigoryan and Manuela Studer-Karlen

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