Laskarid Architectural Production Revisited: The Question of Eclectic Style and What is Byzantine about Byzantine Architecture

Modern scholars were introduced to Laskarid architecture by the late Hans Buchwald in a seminal article published in 1979. Buchwald deserves much credit for compiling a large body of material and attempting to contextualize Laskarid architectural production, an area that remains largely detached from other architectural discussions of the Byzantine period. He contended that Laskarid architecture is “essentially eclectic” (with negative connotations implying impurity), which resulted in the lack of comparisons between twelfth-century Byzantine architecture in Constantinople and thirteenth-century Laskarid architecture in Anatolia. In this book chapter, I would like to review the Buchwaldian way of looking at the Laskarid architectural production to tackle what the “eclectic” style represents and signifies under the Laskarids. Discussing its distinctive symbolic and material references from twelfth-century Komnenian Constantinople, as well as the borrowings from neighboring civilizations, including the Seljuks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Epirote, Moreote, and Moravan evidence, I reframe the multicultural and vibrant architectural vocabulary. It was this significant eclectic (used vivaciously and positively) vocabulary that was transferred back to Constantinople following its restoration as the Byzantine capital in 1261.