Professor
Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University
and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
“The Jewel in the Byzantine Crown: Eastern Emblems of Sovereignty in Early Medieval Spain”

Reassessing the long-debated relationship between Byzantine and western medieval art, Cecily Hilsdale examines the “Byzantinizing” aesthetic adopted beyond the borders of Byzantium, in early medieval Spain. Anchored by a hoard of seventh-century gem-encrusted golden votive crowns and processional crosses, she questions how and why the eastern Byzantine Empire was invoked visually in territories of the Iberian Peninsula at the opposite, western edge of the Mediterranean.