Much recent research in Mediterranean studies has focused on the culture of islands, and Cyprus has emerged as the quintessential crossroads between East and West and a locus of impressively rich historical and cultural heritages. Lorenzo Calvelli's new book is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on medieval and renaissance Cyprus and an ambitious volume certain to be of great assistance to many researchers in the field of Cyprus studies specifically and eastern Mediterranean studies in general.

Calvelli analyzes a wide range of primary texts of medieval and Renaissance-era travelers to Cyprus, the corpus of which goes well beyond those found in Cobham's early but still useful collection Exerpta Cypria (1908). The author's extensive commentaries on these writings provide a useful context for readers hoping to understand the development of the idea of Cyprus and its place in history, art history, and antiquarianism. In addition, Calvelli's volume is a significant contribution to scholarship that deals with the medieval and renaissance perceptions of the antique past in peripheral contexts.

The author has divided the book into two parts, each with two chapters. The first part deals with the observations of travelers in the Lusignan or medieval era (chapter 1) and the voyagers who visited during the relatively brief period of Venetian rule on Cyprus from 1489 to 1571 (chapter 2). Calvelli also subdivides his chapters into subsections where the primary texts are categorized under the headings of Travelers, Scholars, or Proto-Archaeologists (“Viaggiatori,” “Eruditi,” and “Archeologi”), thus revealing the sets of concerns of each group and how the sense of the past might be influenced by their specific attitudes. In these first two chapters, Calvelli astutely examines the attitudes of the early writers, such as Willibrand von Oldenburg and Felix Faber, whose narratives construct a myth of Cyprus embodying a proto-archaeological sense of Cyprus's antique heritage and the island's mythological appeal. Calvelli's analysis paints a portrait of an island suffused with antiquity — or many antiquities, Greco-Roman, early Christian, and Byzantine — where the past seems to have a particular tangibility due to the prevalence of its numerous material remains. Calvelli artfully reveals these aspects in the second part of his book, where he presents two case studies of antiquarian interest for people of the medieval and renaissance periods: Saint Catherine of Alexandria's so-called prison near Salamis-Famagusta and the temple of Aphrodite at Paphos. What emerges is the sense of Cyprus as a place where myth, history, and the antique past exist in a complex historiography. Christian and pagan, crusade and pilgrimage, Latin and Byzantine, medieval and Renaissance, antique and contemporary; all seem to weave together in a tapestry of material cultures and mythologies. Calvelli's texts also reveal the tension between medieval attitudes, Renaissance (humanist) attitudes, and even proto-archaeological–antiquarian attitudes among those who discuss the story of St Catherine and her cult on Cyprus. Calvelli's chapter on St Catherine of Alexandria and the ruins of Greco-Roman Salamis is a particularly satisfying case study of the range of issues, where the ancient greatness of Salamis is equated with the greatness of Famagusta. If only medieval and renaissance travelers had known that yet another great city, Enkomi, flourished in that very same area in the Bronze Age around 1300 bce; each successive urban center founding the other and each achieving, in turn, legendary status. The last chapter not only deals with the mythology of Venus at Paphos but on Cyprus in general and how Cyprus, as the birthplace of Venus, is the home of myriad legends about her.

Calvelli also reveals how the Venetians, who fashioned certain mythologies about themselves and their empire, used Venus to develop and reiterate affinities between Venice and their colonial holdings, such as Cyprus and Crete, through the deployment of spolia and other specialized or readapted iconographies.

Calvelli's book is an exceptionally well-researched piece of scholarship which will long be of value for those interested in medieval and Renaissance Cyprus.