ABSTRACT
An illustrated manuscript, now in Oxford, offers a surprising point of intersection in the relationships between three cities: Mistra (in the Peloponnese of Greece), Venice, and Famagusta (the major port city of Cyprus during the later Middle Ages). The Commentary on Job (Oxford, Bodleian, Laud. gr. 86), written in Greek in the sixteenth century, shows the continued artistic flexibility and fusion in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. The Oxford Job manuscript has been attributed to production in Venice.1 Stylistic details of the figures, however, as well as paleographic evidence, suggest a relationship with imagery and texts being produced outside of Venice2 (Figure 2.1 = Plate 3, Figure 2.2, Figure 2.3 = Plate 4). The historical context, including the Oxford Job manuscript’s relationship with its fourteenth-century model from the Peloponnese (Paris, BNF, gr. 135), as well as the manuscript’s relationship with fresco painting and manuscripts produced in late fifteenth-century Cyprus, suggests the possibility of an Eastern Mediterranean production particularly on the island of Cyprus.3
