International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Lioba Theis
, 
Change of Sacred Spaces in the 13
th
Century: The Impact of Light
Tassos Papacostas
, 
The Use of Sacred Space by a Society in Motion
Jasmina S. Ćirić
, 
Brickwork and Facade Narratology: 
The Apse of the Church of St. John the Forerunner in the Convent of Lips in Constantinople
Catherine Vanderheyde
, 
Architectural Sculpture during the 13
th
Century: Innovation and Regional Identities
Olga Karagiorgou
, 
Sealing Practices in the 13
th
-Century Byzantium: Changing Habits and Possible Causes

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30
Naomi Ruth Pitamber
SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby BC, Canada;
[e-mail]
Loss, Memory, and Exile: 
Innovation and Simulation in Laskarid Art and Architecture
This paper discusses and analyzes for the first time examples of art and architecture from 
the Laskarid period (1204-1261) that either simulate or innovate the traditional Byzantine artistic 
canon. Here, I study both a handful of key architectural examples, as well as the fragmentary remains 
of Laskarid fresco painting both in their original contexts of the church of Hagia Sophia in Nicaea 
and the Nicaean city walls and elsewhere, which can be used to connect the artistic developments 
before the Fourth Crusade in 1204 to the efflorescence of Palaiologan painting in Constantinople 
after 1261. While the examples are in ruins and badly-preserved, frescoes from this period warrant 
critical study, particularly given how they have been invoked in secondary scholarship as the new 
metropolitan art, replacing that of Constantinople, while all along they have never themselves 
been studied or described. Examples include frescoes from Nicaea, Pergamon, Anaïa, Nymphaion, 
Thessaloniki, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, Patmos, and elsewhere. Reconstructed and detailed here for the 
first time, the few remaining examples of Laskarid fresco painting are presented and reconstructed to 
an extent that future publications on thirteenth-century painting in the northeastern Mediterranean 
can make use of the examples and my chronology. Abundant comparisons with art in other centers 
outside the Laskarid realm – namely Trebizond, Arta, Thessaloniki and Serbia and Bulgaria – extend 
the reach of Laskarid arts beyond its borders.