Editing Mise en abyme (section)

==Medieval examples==
[[File:Istanbul.Hagia Sophia075.jpg|thumb|300px|Southwestern entrance mosaic of [[Hagia Sophia]], [[Constantinople]], depicting both Hagia Sophia itself and Constantinople, both offered to Jesus and the Virgin Mary]]
{{Further|Mathematics and art}}

While [[art historian]]s working on the early-modern period adopted this phrase and interpreted it as showing artistic "self-awareness", medievalists tended not to use it.{{Citation needed|date=September 2010}} Many examples, however, can be found in the pre-modern era, as in a [[mosaic]] from the [[Hagia Sophia]] dated to the year 944. To the left, [[Justinian I]] offers the [[Mary (mother of Jesus)|Virgin Mary]] the Hagia Sophia, which contains the mosaic itself. To the right, [[Constantine I]] offers the city of [[Constantinople]] (now known as Istanbul), which itself contains the Hagia Sophia.

More medieval examples can be found in the collection of articles ''Medieval mise-en-abyme: the object depicted within itself'',<ref name='mise'/> in which Jersey Ellis conjectures that the self-references sometimes are used to strengthen the symbolism of gift-giving by documenting the act of giving on the object itself. An example of this self-referential gift-giving appears in the [[Stefaneschi Triptych]] in the [[Vatican Museum]], which features Cardinal [[Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi]] as the giver of the altarpiece.<ref>[http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/PIN/PIN_Sala02_03.html Giotto di Bondone and assistants: Stefaneschi triptych<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>