Arts and Humanities Commons^™

In Nectar and Illusion, Henry Maguire examines Byzantium's ambiguous relationship with nature in both art and literature. He demonstrates that after Iconoclasm, visual representations of the terrestrial world displayed in public settings were in "a constant tension between acceptance and denial," but "tended to flourish most abundantly in relatively inconspicuous locations," such as on small private objects. I build upon Maguire's work by examining the ways in which nature was invoked, represented, and utilized through epigrams, images, and materials in personal devotional contexts in the Middle Byzantine period.