On the interior decoration of Byzantine cathedrals, see Otto Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration: Aspects of Monumental Art in Byzantium (Boston: Boston Book & Art Shop, 1955).
On political symbolism in art, architecture, and ritual at court: Daniel Rowland, "Two Cultures, One Throne Room: Secular Courtiers and Orthodox Culture in the Golden Hall of the Moscow Kremlin," in Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene, eds., Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 33-57, "Architecture, Image, and Ritual in the Throne Rooms of Muscovy, 1550-1650: A Preliminary Survey," in Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell Martin, and Daniel B. Rowland, eds., Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey (Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica, 2008), 53-71 and his "Biblical Military Imagery in the Political Culture of Early Modern Russia: The Blessed Host of the Heavenly Tsar," in Michael S. Flier and Daniel B. Rowland, eds., Medieval Russian Culture, Vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 182-212; Michael S. Flier, "Political Ideas and Rituals," in Maureen Perrie, ed., Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 387-408, and his "The Throne of Monomakh: Ivan the Terrible and the Architectonics of Destiny," in James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland, eds., Architectures of Russian Identity, 1500—Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 21-33.
On the concept of symbolic center, see Clifford Geertz, "Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power," in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 121-46. On tsars' pilgrimages, see my "Pilgrimage, Procession and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth-Century Russian Politics," in Flier and Rowland, eds., Medieval Russian Culture, 163-81.
On advice giving and Muscovite political ideology: Daniel Rowland, "The Problem of Advice in Muscovite Tales about the Time of Troubles," Russian History 6 (1979): 259-83, "Did Muscovite Literary Ideology Place Limits on the Power of the Tsar (1540s-1660s)?" Russian Review 49 (1990): 125-55 and his "Muscovy," in Howell A. Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, and Simon Hodson, eds., European Political Thought, 1450—1700: Religion, Law and Philosophy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 267-99. Works linking ideology and court politics: N. S. Kollmann, Kinship and Politics and By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999); Sergei Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors: Ritualized Consultations in Muscovite Political Culture, 1350s—1570s (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2000); Russell Martin, A Bride for the Tsar: Bride-Shows and Marriage Politics in Early Modern Russia (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012). For medieval and early modern European parallels: Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Cedric Michon, ed., Conseils & Conseillers dans l'europe de la Renaissance: V. 1450—V. 1550 (Tours: Presses Universitaires Francois Rabelais de Tours, 2012).
On women at court: Isolde Thyret, Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001); my two essays "The Seclusion of Elite Muscovite Women," Russian History 10 (1983): 170-87 and "Women's Honor in Early Modern Russia," in Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, and Christine D. Worobec, eds., Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 60-73.
On portraiture in late seventeenth-century Russia, see Lindsey A. J. Hughes, "Images of the Elite: A Reconsideration of the Portrait in Seventeenth-Century Russia," in Von Moskau nach St. Petersburg: Das russische Reich im 17. Jahrhundert, in Forschungen zur osteuro- paischen Geschichte 56 (2000): 167-85 and her Sophia, Regent of Russia, 1657-1704 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990).