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ScholarWorks > Arts & Sciences > Medieval Institute Publications > STUDIES_IN_ICONOGRAPHY > Vol. 46 (2025)

 

Abstract

The inscriptions that customarily label images in Byzantine mosaic are a neglected source of information about the working methods of mosaicists in the Middle Byzantine period. Pronunciation shifts since the Classical period, when Greek orthography was standardized, meant that consistently correct spelling was difficult to achieve without an advanced education, despite widespread literacy at a more basic level of Greek. The spelling of the inscriptions is meticulously correct in certain high-status mosaic programs, here described as “zones of vigilance,” whereas in other programs the inscriptions are spelled phonetically according to the prevailing medieval pronunciations of Greek. The distribution of orthographic errors suggests that in programs largely free of errors, spelling was checked by some educated figure as the artists laid the mosaics rather than dictated in advance. Programs with a high number of phonetic spellings call into question the possibility, often proposed in older literature, that the mosaicists were working from model books, since in that case one would expect to find the correct spellings at hand for copying. While scrupulously correct orthography suggests careful oversight at monuments such as Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and Nea Moni on Chios, the irregularities of spelling in the inscriptions of other, equally sophisticated mosaic programs suggest that artists enjoyed a surprising degree of autonomy as they created these cycles of images. In other words, the presence of non-standard spellings in inscriptions prompts us to rethink assumptions about how tightly artists’ work was controlled by the Church and by their patrons.

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