A Cornucopia for a Polymath: Studies in Archaeology, Architecture and Art History for John Burnett Mitchell

This book celebrates John Mitchell on his 80th birthday. The festschrift brings together some of his army of undergraduate and graduate students, his fellow-travellers in the bi-ways of art history, his companions and colleagues on archaeological excavations and also a few admirers who have simply revelled in his friendship. The breadth of papers speaks volumes. John Mitchell describes himself as a jobbing art historian. It is a modest explanation to his peers as to why, while still working on the art historical canon from Anglo-Saxon bibles and crosses to Rembrandt, he has ventured far and wide into a field that he likes to describe, with a chuckle, as knick-knacks. This cornucopia of interests, as this volume attests, is quite simply remarkable. He has mastered Roman mosaics, late antique architecture and amulets, Umayadd painting, the familiar and unfamiliar quotidian objects of the early Middle Ages from nails to trap-door hinges and, if occasion demanded, flints used in Lombard contexts, as well as coins of all periods. It is not at all an exaggeration to describe him as a polymath. His excitement about the past is infectious. These are the hallmarks of someone who thrillingly pursues meaning in everything as far as it is possible. No matter what the object might be, his eye dwells longingly on its creation and its wider social significance. In sum, John Mitchell defies categorisation in the age of the corporate academy.

Table of Contents:
Preface   Finding meaning in images, objects and buildings ‘You just have to look closer’: a partial biography of John Burnett Mitchell – Elizabeth Mitchell Flower Power: the Garland as a Floating Signifier – Jane Chick Hexapteryga: The Versatile Deacons of Byzantine Cyprus – Richard Maguire Selecting, Arranging, Dressing and Aging the Saints in S. Apollinare Nuovo – Bryan Ward-Perkins The Church of San Zeno at Bardolino, the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’, and the Sources for Simulated Architecture in ‘Court School’ Manuscripts – John Osborne Trittico Siciliano. 3. Il ‘modello inglese’ nei codici da Messina della Biblioteca Nazionale di Madrid (ed altri) – Valentino Pace Diasporic artefacts re-connected: the case for St John and the Sea – T. A. (Sandy) Heslop Under Construction: On Two Twelfth-Century Images of Book Production – Beatrice Kitzinger The Triumph of Earsham – Paul Williamson Michelangelo and Spolia – Joseph Connors The Past and the Palette: Art, Archaeology, and the ‘Plausible Realities’ of the 17th-Century Dutch Republic – James Symonds Connoisseurs and Antiquaries, or early histories of caricature in Britain – Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius Victorian and Edwardian House Names in Southeast England, or Queen Victoria in Bungay. A Preliminary Study – Stefan Muthesius Small finds: the point of the needle – Victoria Mitchell   From Combs to Churches: The Archaeology of Northern Europe From Roman Town to Anglo-Saxon Church: the origins of St Edmund’s at Caistor-by-Norwich – Will Bowden Ever decreasing circles and other pictorial mysteries at Tintagel, Cornwall – Jacqueline Nowakowski Combs, Beads and Protection: Grave 210 from Eriswell, Suffolk – Ian Riddler Voyager et échanger entre les VIIe et XIe siècles : des objets francs en Angleterre / des objets anglo-saxons en Francie – Amélie Berthon A ‘new’ Virgin Mary in Mercia: The Platytera at Deerhurst (Gloucs.) – Francesca Dell’Acqua The Sheffield Cross – biography and significance – John Moreland Status and planning of architectural groups in early medieval England – Anastasia Moskvina Urban parish churches dedicated to St Cuthbert in eastern and northern England: exploration of a curious phenomenon – Brian Ayers   Exploring the Archaeology of the Mediterranean and Middle East Aphrodite Anadyomene: A Roman hairpin (acus crinalis) finial from the Roman Forum at Butrint – David R. Hernandez Is it ‘a kind of magic’? A bronze magic nail from the environs of Sofiana (central-southern Sicily) in its archaeological context – Emanuele Vaccaro Soft stone items found in Yughbī, a site of the early Islamic period in Qatar – José C. Carvajal López The Ninth-Century Monastic Treasury at San Vincenzo al Volturno? – Richard Hodges The Octopus that turned into a Flounder and two Eels – The story of the Vrina Plain Basilica mosaic – Simon Greenslade and Sarah Leppard Bombs, Beer, or Body Lotion? New Light on an Enigma in Islamic Archaeology – Joanita Vroom Elementary, Mitchell: the Lombards, Anselm of Nonantola and the invention of mortadella. – Cesare Poppi Not just for decoration. The ceramics on the bell tower of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome – Sauro Gelichi Full Circle: Recollections and Reflections of Herbert Samuel Toms and the Pitt-Rivers way of Archaeology – Oliver Gilkes An archon’s tower at Middle Byzantine Sopot, southern Albania – Nevila Molla   Reflections From Correctness to Communities of Friends: aesthetics and the end of getting art right at the origins of modern art criticism, or, chapter 1 of an unwritten history of art criticism – Sam Rose Behind Closed Doors: Transparency and Legitimacy in Public Policy Making – Polly Mitchell Three historical oddities: the fall of the Roman Empire in AD 476, the year zero at the BC/AD divide, and the continent of Europe – Eric Fernie What John Mitchell doesn’t know about Bells – Elisabeth de Bièvre and John Onians

About the Author :
Jane Chick is an Associate of the School of History and Art History at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. She has published on late antique mosaics and is Honorary editor of the journal ‘Mosaic’. Richard Hodges is the Emeritus President of The American University of Rome, who has excavated at Butrint, Albania and San Vincenzo al Volturno, Italy, and published on early Medieval economics. Ian Riddler is a material culture specialist who has published widely on objects and waste of antler, bone, horn and ivory of Neolithic to medieval date.