About the Author

Robert S. Nelson is Distinguished Professor of Art History and History of Culture at the University of Chicago as well as the current chair of the Committee on the History of Culture. He is the coeditor of Critical Terms for Art History, second edition, and Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"[Nelson's story] is a majestic one, the recovery of Byzantine civilization in the consciousness of the West. . . . With the Byzantine revival brought into focus . . . one can more readily see how a lost and reviled world served as a vital school for art and literature in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries."--Joseph Connors "New York Review of Books"

"[Nelson's] account is never boring. The illustrations are eloquent. . . . The book is a delight to read, to handle and to browse through."--Peter Clark "Asian Studies"

"Nelson's remarkable achievement is a cultural and intellectual history more nearly than an architectural one. . . . His book doubles, brillinatly, as a historiographic essay illuminating a larger context for the growth and particular shape of the Byzantine specialization. . . . Nelson's insightful, intelligent, timely, and illuminating analysis will find satisfying readers among historians and cultural critics in many fields."--Sally M. Promey "Journal of Religion"

"This fascinating investigation . . . amasses a wealth of documentation. . . . Intelligently and beautifully written, and well produced with 119 figures and ten color plates, the important monograph . . . should appeal to the scholar and the general reader alike."--W. Eugene Kleinbauer "Catholic Historical Review"

"Thought-provoking, entertaining, informative, and very readable throughout."--Robert Ousterhout "Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians"

"Well-researched and gracefully written, this book demonstrates that Hagia Sophia has been repeatedly re-imagined both rhetorically and visually, as political and artistic climates have shifted. . . . This revealing examination of the cultural construction of meaning makes an important contribution to the study of religious architecture."--Jeanne Halgren Kilde "Religious Studies Review"

"The architectural history of the Great Church is here taken for granted: instead the author addresses the structure as a modern monument, recounting the history of its reception. . . . This well illustrated volume . . . is a weighty and rewarding path of approach to one of Christianity's greatest monuments."-- "Art & Christianity"