visual culture 307
languages—Greek, Latin, Arabic—then parallels aspects of the visual program of his
palace chapel and the demographic of the realm he ruled in twelfth-century Sicily.
Visual vocabularies, in other words, are equated with languages that in turn index
cultures. It would seem then that when faced with visual cultures that defy clear-cut
taxonomies, art history has turned to linguistic models in order to provide an account
of difference. Visual culture does not, however, index language in such a straightfor-
ward manner—it is not a transparent system of signs. Medieval artisans could be
trained to paint in the maniera greca or the maniera latina and could also combine
different styles to suit particular commissions and agendas—hence the methodologi-
cal danger inherent in the pursuit of identifying an artist’s origin or training from the
visual culture of the Crusader states, for example.
Fundamentally, to provide a history of medieval Mediterranean art is to recognize
a certain degree of inherent connectivity and to recognize that visual culture serves as
the very connective tissue among micro-regions as well as between such local and
more distant authority and visual agendas. A key methodological point emerges here.
Mediterranean art and architecture do not reflect these complex cultural relations in
a straightforward manner—rather they constitute those very relations. While the arts
of the Crusader Levant, for example, may exhibit diverse visual traditions—incor-
porating elements of local Levantine as well as European, Byzantine, even Islamic
visual idioms—they do not provide clear illustration for the relationships among the
representatives of those visual traditions. We should not read such visual cultures as
transparent markers of cultural identity, but rather recognize the central role they
assert in constructing those very social relations.
A Mediterranean history of visual culture: the Mediterranean
as an optic for art and architectureA spate of recent art historical literature on cross-cultural encounter provides a starting
point for outlining the contours of a history of Mediterranean visual culture with its
zones of interaction and fluid frontiers. But this, I would argue, is not the only way to
think about Mediterranean art and architecture. Another approach would be to treat
the Mediterranean as lens, optic, or even heuristic term that opens up new interpretive
territory. This approach is especially promising with regard to those more canonic
works of art and architecture. In reassessing those works that do find clear-cut art
historical definition and categorization, we are prompted to look at them anew
through a Mediterranean lens or optic. Such an optic privileges the relationship
between diversity on the local level (fragmentation) and a high degree of connectivity
(flow). To reassess visual culture through a Mediterranean optic, in other words,
would be to cast an eye to the micro-ecological level of interpretation—that is, to
attach meaning to the flows of raw materials, trade routes, labor, and technologies
across a wide and diverse terrain.
Such an approach, for example, could enliven a reading of Hagia Sophia as a
Mediterranean monument rather than merely a Byzantine one. Recall the contempo-
rary account of the diverse origins of the Great Church’s meadows of marble by Paul the
Silentiary. He maps the entire building, in fact, through a Mediterranean landscape:
as he narrates the different areas of the structure, he repeatedly lingers on the diverse