Sculpture has for long been the Cinderella of Byzantine art, pushed aside by her sister arts, the splendour of mosaics and enamels, and the polychromy of panel paintings, manuscript illuminations, and frescoes. Now, however, Catherine Vanderheyde has begun the task of returning sculpture to its rightful place in Byzantine art history, even restoring some of its original colour in a beautifully illustrated survey primarily devoted to carvings in the post-iconoclastic period, from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

As the author acknowledges in her conclusion, a history of Byzantine sculpture is a challenging undertaking. The material is widely scattered, throughout the Balkans, Italy, and Turkey, not to mention the Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia, often hard of access, and fragmentary in condition. The dating is difficult, since many pieces are now out of their original contexts, and inscriptions rare. In addition, there are relatively few Byzantine texts that bear on sculpture, whereas there are many passages in ekphraseis, poetry, and saints’ lives relevant to mosaics, metalwork, and painting.

V. has an unrivalled knowledge of her subject, the result of many years of research and publication. She has conceived of her book as an up-to-date ‘guide’, the first comprehensive survey of the field since the two volumes published by André Grabar in 1963 and 1976 (Sculptures byzantines de Constantinople, IVe-Xe siècle, and Sculptures byzantines du Moyen Âge II (XIe-XIVe siècle), which readers will still need to consult for more detailed study of individual works. She covers all media of Byzantine sculpture, including stone, plaster, wood, and even ceramic, but, apart from a few comparative references, not small-scale carvings in gems and ivory. High and low relief carvings are discussed, as well as stone cut in the champlevé technique, inlaid with coloured stones, glass, and mastic. The text considers the application of relief sculpture to architectural elements, such as portals, capitals, and cornices, as well as tomb sculpture and liturgical furniture, including sanctuary screens, parapets, ciboria, ambos, and icon frames. V. also discusses sacred portrait icons carved in low relief, and considers their close relationship to painted images. The book is generously provided with excellent photographs, mostly in colour and many taken by the author.

Following a brief introduction containing reviews of the historiography and the historical background, V. devotes the first of part of the book to a chronological survey of Byzantine sculpture. Here she describes the general abandonment of sculpture in the round in favour of low relief carving, raising the issue of the reluctance of the Byzantines to represent their saints in the same manner as the pagans had portrayed their gods. Among other phenomena, she notes influences from metalwork and Islamic art, and the introduction of Latin motifs during the Palaiologan period, including heraldic elements. The book's second section begins with evidence for patronage, followed by a very useful account of the methods and organization of production. Using texts and inscriptions, the author introduces the various terms used to designate the workmen and describes their grouping into workshops. She examines the different materials used by the sculptors, together with their sources, whether from reuse or quarrying, which declined during the middle ages. She gives a very useful account of the tools employed by the sculptors, as well as the distinct techniques of carving that resulted from their use. The third section of the book is devoted primarily to iconography, including crosses of various kinds, animals, sacred portrait icons, portrayals of emperors and empresses, and finally profane subjects such as mythological characters, musicians and dancers. V. also discusses medieval variants of ancient capitals, such as the melon, basket and Corinthian types, as well as the apotropaic or in some cases symbolic significance of many of the motifs.

As is inevitable in the case of a relatively short survey of a large and complex field, each individual reader may think of one or more additions to the examples that the author has chosen to present. For instance, among the categories of carvings that the book does not consider are those that ornamented gardens, and especially fountains. This is one class of sculpture that was described in some detail by texts, even if relatively few carvings survive that can indisputably be connected with actual gardens or parks.Footnote ¹

Any survey of Byzantine sculpture is faced by the problem of definition, since the boundaries of the field are fuzzy. For example, should a carving be considered Byzantine if it is in a church in Greece, even if its sculptor was in all likelihood Italian (as in the Parigoritissa at Arta, pp. 68, 265, figs. 31, 178)? Conversely, how should we describe a carving attributed to a Byzantine artist, but working in Italy (see the Crucifixion icon in the Museo Civico of Venice, p. 259, fig. 173)? Many of the sculptures described in this book lie in liminal areas, where artistic identities blended in ways that are hard to disentangle. Nowhere is this more evident than in the corpus of sculptures presently immured in San Marco in Venice. V. suggests that the monumental Deesis on the south wall of the church was executed by a Venetian sculptor in the 13^th or 14^th century (pp. 254–5), whereas Otto Demus had claimed that it was carved in the 11th century and only brought from Constantinople to Venice after 1204. Even more controversial are the two roundels framing carvings of Byzantine emperors, now preserved at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Campo Angaran at Venice. Many have described these as imports from Byzantium, but V. sees the Dumbarton Oaks relief as ‘une main-d'oeuvre d'origine vénitienne’ (pp 268–9), following Elisabeth Piltz, who drew attention to mistakes in the rendering of the imperial costume.Footnote ² Recent studies of the ‘Byzantine’ reliefs attached to the south wall of the treasury of San Marco, which appeared too late for inclusion in this book, have shown that they were extensively recarved by Venetian sculptors, and even in some cases created anew.Footnote ³ The inclusion of such works in the canon suggests that ‘Byzantine sculpture’ was not an entity confined to the boundaries of the Byzantine empire, but, rather, a common vocabulary of formal characteristics and iconographies that could be produced in a variety of places by a variety of hands for a variety of purposes.

Such speculations are among many that follow from this rich introduction to a fascinating and complex field. The author is to be congratulated for producing a readable and coherent account of Byzantine sculpture, which is at the same time well informed, judicious, and illuminating.