Byzantium, the Caucasus and artistic borders in the medieval world

Image: Lamaria church in Svaneti, Georgia, with Mt Shkhara behind. Photo: Antony Eastmond

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP.

This lecture will consider some of the issues raised by trying to write a ‘national’ history of art in the twenty-first century. Eastmond will address the questions he is facing as he tries to write a history of the arts of Georgia in the Caucasus. How do we define the borders and benefits of a ‘national’ art, particularly as art history takes an increasingly global and transnational turn? What value is there in defining an art by geography, language, religion and/or ethnicity? And how can we deal with the fuzzy and porous borders that demarcate political, cultural and religious space in the middle ages? Eastmond will evaluate the risks of his approach, and try to defend his belief that it is possible to write a national art history without nationalism.

Antony Eastmond is AG Leventis Professor of Byzantine Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He is currently a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. He has worked extensively on the arts of Byzantium and the Caucasus, and on the fuzzy frontier between the Christian and Islamic worlds. Ironically his last book, Tamta’s World (2017), argued against the delimiting of art history by borders of language, ethnicity, religion or geography.

This is the last talk in the Fall 2025 Medieval Studies Seminar Series.