Mediating presence: curtains in Middle and Late Byzantine imperial ceremonial and portraiture
Maria G. Parani
Curtains constituted a standard component of the scenography imperial ceremonies during Middle and Late Byzantine period. This paper explores how curtains were used to control ritualise sensory perceptual access sacred person emperor manipulate emotive response ritual performances. It also enquires into way in which curtains, both as material objects symbols, employed by those staging order articulate communicate messages regarding nature emperor's authority his special status vis-à-vis subjects. Paradoxically, performative symbolic potential that ensured curtains’ use led their exclusion from representation portraiture, since post-Iconoclastic art did not admit veiled secrets.
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies