Byzantine Art and Italian Panel Painting The Virgin and Child Hodegetria and the Art of Chrysography

The Virgin and Child Hodegetria was a widely venerated Byzantine image depicting the Virgin holding and pointing to her son as the way to salvation. In this book, Jaroslav Folda traces the appropriation of this image by thirteenth-century Crusader and central Italian painters, where the Virgin Mary is transformed from the human mother of god, the Theotokos, of Byzantine icons, to the resplendent Madonna radiant in her heavenly home with Christ and the angels. This transformation, Folda demonstrates, was brought about by using chrysography, or golden highlighting, which came to be used on both the Virgin and Child. This book shows the important role played by Crusader painters in bringing about this shift and in disseminating the new imagery to Central Italy. By focusing on the Virgin and Child Hodegetria, Folda reveals complex artistic interchanges and influences extending across the Mediterranean from Byzantium and the Holy Land to Italy.

1. Introduction: radiance and reflection: chrysography in Byzantine icons; 2. The radiance of Byzantine icons: the reinvention of chrysography after iconoclasm; 3. The introduction of chrysography on Crusader icons; 4. Icon or altarpiece in the Latin East and Tuscany: innovative panels in the third quarter of the thirteenth century; 5. Images of the Virgin and Child Hodegetria enthroned with chrysography by central Italian painters: Coppo di Marcovaldo to Guido da Siena; 6. Images of the Virgin and Child Hodegetria enthroned with chrysography by central Italian painters: Duccio and Cimabue; 7. Techniques for chrysography in thirteenth-century panel painting Lucy J. Wrapson; Addendum: chrysography investigation: report summary on XRF tests conducted at the National Gallery of Art on three panels Adele Wright.

Jaroslav Folda is the N. Ferebee Taylor Professor of the History of Art, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His major publications include The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Crusader Art in the Holy Land, From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Crusader Art: The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1099–1291 (2008).