This article reflects on how the transformation of natural sites into cultural spaces was perceived in medieval Armenia, as analysed in The History of the State of Sisakan, written by the bishop and historian Stepanos Orbelian (c. 1250–1304). Orbelian's text opens with the familiar theme of a natural environment being transformed from a desert into a paradise, and describes how monastic colonisation turned a wild landscape into a prosperous cultural and fertile place. Art and culture are presented as instruments that bring the environment closer to God's will: thanks to the monastic presence, the region was protected from floods and bad weather. However, human action cannot be seen as positive alone: various invasions by foreign forces should be seen as elements of rupture, damaging nature and culture in order to satisfy diabolical greed. By analysing textual data and architectural heritage, this text explores some of the questions raised within Ecocritical Art History, attempting to understand the issue of the 'exploitation' of natural sites in the past.

In the final decades of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth, Byzantium's legacy was mobilized as a moral, spiritual, and historical justification for Russia's imperial and expansionist ambitions. In this light, it becomes clear why, in the aftermath of the Crimean War, the Neo-Byzantine style emerged as a powerful mass-media expression of Russian imperial authority - deployed both to affirm the empire's historical legitimacy and to inspire its troops. By the late nineteenth century, however, a new aesthetic vocabulary had taken precedence: the Neo-Russian style, closely associated with the reign of Alexander iii. This shift in visual language reflects the broader political agenda of his rule, centered on the Russification of the empire. Yet, in the early twentieth century, the Neo-Byzantine style returned to prominence, a revival that must be read against the mounting international tensions that culminated in the First World War. Taken together, these oscillations reveal how neo-medieval styles became strategic vehicles for articulating - and promoting - the political ideas and ideologies of the Romanov Empire.

Talking about an alliance between Alexander Nevsky, the legendary prince who ruled the principality of Novgorod in the 13th century, and Joseph Stalin (1878–1953), the Bolshevik leader of the USSR, seems like an anachronism that is impossible to take seriously. Nonetheless, even if it existed above all on a metaphorical level, this alliance was in some ways really formed during World War II. Already at the end of the 1930s, with the situation in Europe becoming increasingly tense, the Soviet regime was preparing for a confrontation with Nazi Germany. The figure of the medieval sovereign therefore became the ideal prefiguration for this conflict: just as Prince Alexander had defeated the Teutonic knights, Stalin would triumph over Hitler. Once the conflict broke out, Alexander was elected as one of the imaginary champions of the Soviet cause: from cinema to the plastic arts, the image of the sovereign became a tool to galvanize the Russian "nation". After his victory, Stalin did not forget his "ally" who was immortalized in a golden mosaic in the Moscow subway.

The term “icon”, commonly used today to designate a sacred image, especially in the context of so-called Byzantine art, conceals a recent historiographical construction that is far removed from its Medieval meanings and uses. Our essay traces the history of this semantic construction from the rediscovery of wood paintings in 19th-century imperial Russia to their reinterpretation by the modernist avant-gardes and the art market in the 20th century. By exploring the shifting meanings of the word and the contexts that shaped its appropriation, we shed light on the aesthetic, political and identity issues underlying such a transformation. The icon thus emerges not only as an object of devotion and aesthetics but as the embodiment of the artificial construction of a fragmented artistic imaginary, vacillating between the affirmation of a national cultural heritage in the East and the modernist reinvention of a “universal” art in the West.

This essay concludes the European project Conques in the Global World, devoted to the longue dur & eacute;e of one of medieval Europe's most emblematic sites. It contends that no study of the Middle Ages, or of any historical period, can be complete without historiography as its foundation. The case of Conques demonstrates that the "medieval" is not a stable historical entity but a construct continually reshaped by the intellectual, political, and ideological forces that have reinterpreted it from the nineteenth century to today. From M & eacute;rim & eacute;e's and Formig & eacute;'s restorations to Soulages' modern interventions, Conques' material and symbolic identity emerges as a palimpsest of national, religious, and European aspirations. Beginning from the present and tracing backward through layers of reception, the essay positions historiography as both a critical and ethical tool: one that exposes how modern narratives fabricate the Middle Ages and, more broadly, how societies construct and mobilize their pasts. In this view, a reflexive and epistemologically conscious art history becomes indispensable to the preservation and understanding of cultural heritage in the contemporary world.

Vladimir Putin justifies his imperialist policy by use of the past. For him, Russia has always been an Empire and must remain so. The story of Russian imperialism has deep historical roots, and this book shows how Byzantium, the most powerful medieval and Christian empire, is repeatedly presented in Russian history as the source of the empire's imperial legitimacy. The author reflects on the role of art and the humanities (especially history and art history) within the power ambitions of regimes and political parties over the last two centuries as tools for the repeated reinvention of an empire's identity; an identity built on a multitude of invented pasts. Within this self-referential narrative, Byzantium becomes the ultimate authority justifying the aggression of the Russian state, and Orthodox belief becomes the bridge linking the medieval past with the present. One of the paradoxes of this narrative is the use of the same past by regimes as different as those of the last Romanovs, Stalin, and Putin, leading to a fundamental question: does this propaganda image really underlie the core identity of Russia?

This article investigates how one of the most eminent Byzantinists of the twentieth century, Andre Grabar (1896-1990), constructed his own methodology in a balanced dialogue between texts and images. At the very core of this study is his monograph L'empereur dans l'art byzantin (1936), which can be seen as emblematic of Grabar's approach. However, this article investigates not only Grabar's methodology but also his personal cultural background. I believe that this approach is necessary in the context of the epistemology of art history, since, as has been proven in other important studies, the interplay between history, social situations, and scholarship is crucial.

- Re-Inventing Late Antique and Early Medieval Armenia in World War ii Soviet Union - Until the end of Tsarist rule in Russia, scholars viewed Armenian art as a provincial manifestation of Byzantine art and an indistinguishable part of a pan-Caucasian production. In the 1920s, official outlets of Soviet scholarship continued to present the region's art as coming from a possibly transcultural and certainly marginal context. After World War ??, however, the discourse changed completely: Armenian art was recognized as the production of an autonomous people motivated by an exceptional national spirit. Such a transformed perspective can only be understood in the context of the relationship between scholarship and national politics in the Soviet Union in the interwar and wartime periods. The analysis of these sources also displays the very close relationship between research and politics (and more) under totalitarian regimes.

This collaborative volume explains the nineteenth and twentieth century marginalization of one of the major centers of medieval culture and creativity, the Southern Caucasus, through an in depth histo-riographical approach. Tracing research traditions created within different linguistic spheres (Russian, German, French, Italian, and English) across time, it shows how and to what extent the birth of art historical studies on the region were conditioned by geopolitical stakes and by the social and cul-tural perception of the modern regions. From the creation of the Russian Caucasus Viceroyalty in 1801 until the end of the Cold War in 1991, the volume dissects how the region’s medieval art was rediscov-ered, studied, and presented. In doing so, it decon-structs some of the most deeply rooted stereotypes of the discipline while at the same actively partici-pating in demarginalizing this region and affording it its rightful place in world art history.