Staging the Ruler’s Body in Medieval Cultures

A Comparative Perspective

Edited by Michele Bacci Edited by Gohar Grigoryan Edited by Manuela Studer-Karlen

Book cover: Staging the Ruler’s Body in Medieval Cultures

Extent: 351, 351 pages

Publisher: Harvey Miller

Subjects: Art & Art History, Cultural Studies, Medieval Studies

Series: Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(October 2023)

ISBN: 9781915487087

Price: $94.00

In stock

The fifteen studies gathered in the book reflect on the mise-en-scene and representational devices of medieval rulers’ bodily appearances in Angevin, Aragonese, Armenian, Byzantine, Carolingian, English, Ethiopian, Georgian, Leonese, Sasanian and Sienese traditions.


This book explores the viewing and sensorial contexts in which the bodies of kings and queens were involved in the premodern societies of Europe, Asia, and Africa, relying on a methodology that aims to overcoming the traditional boundaries between material studies, art history, political theory, and Reprasentationsgeschichte. More specifically, it investigates the multiple ways in which the ruler’s physical appearance was apprehended and invested with visual, metaphorical, and emotional associations, as well as the dynamics whereby such mise-en-scene devices either were inspired by or worked as sources of inspiration for textual and pictorial representations of royalty. The outcome is a multifaced analysis of the multiple, imaginative, and terribly ambiguous ways in which, in past societies, the notion of a God-driven, eternal, and transpersonal royal power came to be associated with the material bodies of kings and queens, and of the impressive efforts made, in different cultures, to elude the conundrum of the latter’s weakness, transitoriness, and individual distinctiveness.

  • Edited by Michele Bacci
  • Edited by Gohar Grigoryan
  • Edited by Manuela Studer-Karlen