ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the thirteenth century the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia on the south-eastern border of the Byzantine empire was develop ing into a powerful independent state. Its immediate neighbours and rivals were the weakened Byzantine empire to which it owed nominal allegiance and the Crusader states with which it was extensively inter married. Studies of Cilician Armenian manuscript illumination have generally focused on its stylistic development, its relation to the Greater Armenian tradition of illumination and/or the influence of other artistic traditions upon works produced in Cilicia for the Armenian faith.1 This chapter argues that the Cilician royal portraits of the thirteenth century in the manuscripts ordered by, or for, the royal family or the catholicos of the Armenian church should also be understood as the embodiment of the rising dynastic ambitions of the state that reached its apex in the second half of the thirteenth century.
