ABSTRACT
Images from manuscripts now play an important role in forming perceptions of Byzantium.1 Emperor Basil 11 (976-1025), for example (Figure 6.1), is frequently brought before us in the form of reproductions of the full-page frontispiece in the Psalter in the Marciana Library in Venice (MS Marc. gr. Z. 17).2 The illustrated Chronicle of Skylitzes in Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional, MS vitr. 26-2), to take another example, is becoming a favoured source for present-day authors, editors or picture researchers who want to enliven a book's narrative or cover, since it includes many pictures of historical events and 'personalities'.3 Manuscripts in general are able to provide innumerable images of biblical scenes and figures, of saints and martyrdoms, of aristocrats or ascetics, even of agrarian tools or methods of bandaging, many executed with superlative craftsmanship in the costly materials and elegant styles that we readily recognize and term 'Byzantine'.
