Berardi, Carlo

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Research Title: The Komnenian Aristocracy and the Chivalric Ideal: An Art Historical Perspective

Mr. Berardi is a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), having entered its Department of History of Art in 2017. His dissertation project explores the cross-pollination of ideas surrounding strategies of aristocratic self-representation and the reframing of the visual and literary discourse around martial values in the twelfth-century Mediterranean, with a special focus on Byzantium and on the relationship between the Komnenian elites and their Christian neighbors (mainly Westerners, both in Europe and in the Crusader States, but also Georgians, Southern Slavs, and Rus’). Born and raised in Palermo (Sicily), Mr. Berardi has always been fascinated by the dynamics of Trans-Mediterranean cultural and artistic exchange. His other academic interests include Court Culture, Chivalry, Ekphrasis and Visual Rhetoric, Damnatio Memoriae, Portability and Practices of Gift-Exchange.