{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.030877192982456142, 'fraction_numerical': 0.012280701754385965, 'mean_word_length': 4.989495798319328, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Cyprus and the Devotional Arts of Byzantium in the Era of the Crusades

Reviewing a collection of essays, whether a conference volume or, as in this case, a gathering of eleven essays written between 1980 and 2001, is always a delicate affair. A critical analysis of every article is virtually impossible and the listing of the titles of each of the components with a brief descriptive sentence or two is not an engaging method of review. Annemarie Weyl Carr presents the reader, or better scholars, with two decades of research and reflection on Byzantine art as it relates to Cyprus. Throughout, her profound physical and almost spiritual attachment to the island and its art, a relationship which began with her first visit to Cyprus in 1970, shines forth, at times passionately, at times with an openness that is disarming. This is especially the case when she proposes new ways of looking at old problems, usually in clear, emphatic prose, never dogmatically. Everywhere in the book the author is concerned with ‘‘influences’’ or ‘‘appropriations’’, as she likes to refer to them. Everywhere she takes time to present the problem of language and what we mean when we speak of style or manner and the significance or value of such accepted notions of borrowing, in the direct linear sense. The previously published articles are divided into two parts: ‘‘Cyprus and the ‘Decorative Style’’’, with five early works (published between 1980 and 1991), and, ‘‘Art in the Kingdom of Cyprus’’, with six articles (published between 1995 and 2001). She herself lays out very clearly the premises underlying the collection in a carefully written preface. The first offering, ‘‘A Group of Provincial Manuscripts from the Twelfth Century’’, could just as well have been entitled ‘‘The Decorative Style in Byzantine Manuscript Painting’’, since it tries to come to terms with a group of codices, which Weyl Carr through her research has expanded to include well over a hundred manuscripts from the twelfth century, of what was once a small core group associated with the Rockefeller–McCormick New Testament (University of Chicago, no. 965), published in a ground-breaking monograph in three volumes in 1932. The task is to identify as many as possible of the codices belonging to the group, describing their characteristics, and hardest of all providing them with a provenance. All of these works were produced outside the imperial capital, the style-setter for Byzantine painting. The history of the scholarship is presented in scrupulous detail; the manuscripts are separated into groups and through a series of themes their paleography, style, and iconography is carefully analysed. Cyprus is a favoured locality, but Palestine and Syria are also prominent in the analysis. Perhaps, Carr suggests, a term like Levantine might be the best descriptor, though