Features fifteen essays that involve the three a's of the title, art, agency, and appreciation. The first refers to the general subject matter of this book, Byzantine art, chiefly painting, of the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, the second to its often human-like agency, and the last to its historical reception.

Contents: Introduction. Later Byzantine Painting: The Church of the Chora and Palaiologan Art: Taxation with representation. Visual narrative and the political field of the Kariye Camii; The Chora and the Great Church: intervisuality in 14th-century Constantinople; Heavenly allies at the Chora; Tales of two cities: the patronage of early Palaeologan art and architecture in Constantinople and Thessaloniki. Manuscript Illumination: Theoktistos and associates in 12th-century Constantinople: an illustrated New Testament of 1133 A.D.; Relative size and comparative value in Byzantine illuminated manuscripts: some quantitative perspectives; The Palaeologina group: additional manuscripts and new questions; A Byzantine gospel book of 1262 A.D.: Paris, Gr. 117; A 13th-century Byzantine miniature in the Vatican library. Agency: Michael the Monk and his gospel book; The discourse of icons, then and now; To say and to see: ekphrasis and vision in Byzantium. Appreciation: The manuscripts of Antonios Malakes and the collecting and appreciation of illuminated books in the early Palaeologan period; The Italian appreciation and appropriation of illuminated Byzantine manuscripts, c. 1200-1450; Living on the Byzantine borders of Western art. Index.