The church of Hagia Sophia in Trebizond, built by the emperor Manuel I Grand Komnenos (1238-63) in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade, is the finest surviving Byzantine imperial monument of its period. Art and Identity in Thirteenth-Century Byzantium, with extensive illustrations in colour and black-and-white, provides a new analysis of the architecture, sculptural decoration and extensive wall paintings in the church. Antony Eastmond situates the church in the context of political and cultural developments across the Byzantine world in this turbulent period, and examines questions of cultural interchange on the borders of the Christian and Muslim worlds of eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus and Persia. He argues that a new visualization of Byzantine imperial ideology emerged in Trebizond, determined as much by craftsmen and expectations of imperial power as by imperial decree; and that this was a credible alternative Byzantine identity to that developed in the empire of Nicaea.

Antony Eastmond is Reader in the History of Byzantine Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK

Contents: Preface; Introduction: the Byzantine empires in the 13th century; Hagia Sophia and its contexts; Architecture and the construction of identity; Trebizond as imperial capital: ceremonial and processions; Adam, exile and 'Byzantine' culture; Ornamental sculpture and cultural orientation: Trebizond, the Seljuqs, and the Caucasus; Wall paintings and politics: rebuilding empire?; Art, the liturgy and modernity; Manuel I Grand Komnenos: the embodiment of empire; Conclusion; Appendix of rulers; Bibliography; Index.