Norman Sicily: Building a Court of Wonders
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08 Dec
10 Dec
2026
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Aesthetics, Criticism and Theory (ACT)
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Various Scholars
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Image: Coronation Mantle of Roger II, 1133/34. Norman Sicily
In the eleventh century, a small band of Norman adventurers seized Sicily from its Arab rulers and built, almost by accident, one of the most extraordinary courts in medieval history. Under King Roger II, Palermo became a city where Latin Christians, Greek Orthodox clergy, and Arab Muslim scholars worked, worshipped, and built extraordinary cathedrals, palaces and civic buildings side by side. Mosaics in Byzantine gold sat beneath Arabic muqarnas ceilings carved with hunting scenes and courtly pleasures. Royal charters were issued in Latin, Greek, and Arabic on the same page. In this three-lecture series, we trace how Norman Sicily's art and architecture, from the Cappella Palatina to the cathedrals of Monreale, the unique textile arts and the pioneering arts of Islamic map making, gave visual form to a court that ruled not by erasing difference but by absorbing it, producing a hybrid culture unlike anything else in the medieval Mediterranean.
The series moves from the conquest and its immediate aftermath through the height of Norman royal patronage, examining how king, church, and craftsman together built a visual language equal to the kingdom's improbable diversity. Through the series, we also examine what became of this fragile synthesis after the Normans, and what Sicily's afterlife as a crossroads can still tell us about the limits and possibilities of cultural plurality.
Duration -
December 8, 9, 10, 2026
Timing: Lecture: 6:30 - 8:30 pm IST
Fees
Rs. 3,000 (For student discounts registrations kindly email info@jp-india.org)
Registrations will open on 01-Nov-2026
Lisa Reilly
Lisa Reilly is the Commonwealth Professor of Architectural History and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Architectural History at the University of Virginia. Her most recent book is Norman Visual Culture: Art, Power & Dynastic Ambition (Cambridge University Press: 2020). In 2027, she will be the Slater Fellow at the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies and University College at Durham University where she will continue her research on the Romanesque context of Durham. Professor Reilly received her B.A. from Vassar College, her M.A. in Medieval Studies from the University of York and her Ph.D. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. She is currently writing a Corpus Vitrearum volume on the stained glass of the late medieval parish church, St. Michael le Belfrey, York, with Mary Shepard. She was the Fulbright Fellow in the History of Art at the University of York in 2015.
Yossef Rapoport
Yossef Rapoport is professor of Islamic history at Queen Mary University London. He has published widely on the social and cultural history of the Arabic-speaking Middle East in its Middle Ages, from 1000 to 1500 CE. His monographs include Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society; Islamic Maps; and Becoming Arab: The Formation of Arab Identity in the Medieval Middle East. He obtained a PhD from Princeton University in 2002, and between 2002 and 2005 was employed as post-doctoral researcher on the Medieval Islamic Views of the Cosmos project, led by Professor Emilie Savage-Smith of Oxford University. This project was dedicated to the study of a newly discovered Fatimid cosmography, which has led to his interest in Islamic maps and will form part of the lecture.