Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art
Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art

Author: Anna Cecilia Olovsdotter

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-12-17

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 3110546507

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It has long been an accepted assumption that the abstracted mode of visual representation that emerged in late antiquity reflected a collective shift from the outer-directed and ’material’ world-view of classical antiquity to an inner-directed, ’spiritual’ mentality informed by Christianity: the purpose of this volume is to offer a more nuanced and diverse image of the nature and meanings of abstraction and symbolism in late antique and early medieval art, beyond normative intepretation models, and from a number of different methodological and interpretative perspectives. In ten chapters, ten authors specialised in various fields of late-antique and Byzantine art explore the historiographical background of the ’spiritual’ interpretation paradigm, neuroscientific and theological dimensions of Christian visual aesthetics, meanings and motive factors behind apparently wholly abstract and aniconic compositions, symbolic motifs and schemes for visualising cosmic order and the cosmic state of Christ, and the re-use of symbolic Greco-Roman themes in Christian contexts. The result is a multi-focal image of late antique abstraction and symbolism that illuminates the heterogeneity and complexity of the phenomena and of their study.

Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art
Envisioning Worlds in Late Antique Art

Author: Anna Cecilia Olovsdotter

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-12-17

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 3110546841

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It has long been an accepted assumption that the abstracted mode of visual representation that emerged in late antiquity reflected a collective shift from the outer-directed and ’material’ world-view of classical antiquity to an inner-directed, ’spiritual’ mentality informed by Christianity: the purpose of this volume is to offer a more nuanced and diverse image of the nature and meanings of abstraction and symbolism in late antique and early medieval art, beyond normative intepretation models, and from a number of different methodological and interpretative perspectives. In ten chapters, ten authors specialised in various fields of late-antique and Byzantine art explore the historiographical background of the ’spiritual’ interpretation paradigm, neuroscientific and theological dimensions of Christian visual aesthetics, meanings and motive factors behind apparently wholly abstract and aniconic compositions, symbolic motifs and schemes for visualising cosmic order and the cosmic state of Christ, and the re-use of symbolic Greco-Roman themes in Christian contexts. The result is a multi-focal image of late antique abstraction and symbolism that illuminates the heterogeneity and complexity of the phenomena and of their study.

A Globalised Visual Culture?
A Globalised Visual Culture?

Author: Fabio Guidetti

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2020-07-31

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1789254493

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Late Antique artefacts, and the images they carry, attest to a highly connected visual culture from ca. 300 to 800 C.E. On the one hand, the same decorative motifs and iconographies are found across various genres of visual and material culture, irrespective of social and economic differences among their users – for instance in mosaics, architectural decoration, and luxury arts (silver plate, textiles, ivories), as well as in everyday objects such as tableware, lamps, and pilgrim vessels. On the other hand, they are also spread in geographically distant regions, mingled with local elements, far beyond the traditional borders of the classical world. At the same time, foreign motifs, especially of Germanic and Sasanian origin, are attested in Roman territories. This volume aims at investigating the reasons behind this seemingly globalised visual culture spread across the Late Antique world, both within the borders of the (former) Roman and (later) Byzantine Empire and beyond, bringing together diverse approaches characteristic of different national and disciplinary traditions. The presentation of a wide range of relevant case studies chosen from different geographical and cultural contexts exemplifies the vast scale of the phenomenon and demonstrates the benefit of addressing such a complex historical question with a combination of different theoretical approaches.

Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Author: Giselle de Nie

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-06

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1317142055

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Our imagination reveals our experience of ourselves and our world. The late philosopher of science and poetry Gaston Bachelard introduced the notion that each image that comes to mind spontaneously is a visual representation of the cognitive and affective pattern that is moving us at the time - often unconsciously. When such a mental image inspires a picture or text, it evokes in the mind of the reader or beholder a replication of the internal pattern that originally inspired the artist or writer. Thus mental images are rarely empty phantasies. Whereas intellectual concepts are conscious constructions of abstracted relations, mental images evoked by texts and pictures often point - like dreams - to pre-verbal experience that patterns itself through multiplying associations and analogies. These mental images can also manifest their own limits, pointing indirectly to experiences beyond what can be expressed and communicated. The six essays in this volume seek to uncover the dynamic patterns in verbal and pictorial images and to evaluate their potentialities and limitations. Thematically ordered according to their specific focus, the essays begin with material images and move on to increasing degrees of immateriality. The subjects treated are: verbal descriptions of an icon and of a statue; imaginative visions and auditions evoked by material depictions; verbal imagery describing imagined sculptures and scenes as compared with drawings of a moving historical pageant; drawings of symbolic figures representing subtle relationships between verbal expositions that cannot be syntactically represented; dream images that precipitate actual healing; and aural patterns in a sounded text that are experienced as 'images' of affective dynamisms.

Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World
Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World

Author: Eva R. Hoffman

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Published: 2007-04-23

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 9781405120722

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Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World isa much-needed teaching anthology that rethinks and broadens thescope of the stale and limiting classifications used for EarlyChristian-Byzantine visual arts. A comprehensive anthology offering a new approach to the visualarts classified as Early Christian-Byzantine Comprised of essays from experts in the field that integratethe newer, historiographical research into 'the canon' ofestablished scholarship Exposes the historical, geographical and cultural continuitiesand interactions in the visual arts of the late antique andmedieval Mediterranean world Covers an extensive range of topics, including the effect thatconverging cultures in late antiquity had on art, the culturalidentities that can be observed by looking at difference oftradition in visual art, and the variance of illuminations in holybooks

Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art
Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art

Author: Sarah Bassett

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-07-31

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781009466325

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How do we best see and understand the art of late antiquity? One of the perceived challenges of so doing is that this is a period whose visual production has been defined as stylistically abstract and emotionally spiritual, and therefore elusive. But this is a perception which - in her path-breaking new book - Sarah Bassett boldly challenges, offering two novel lines of interpretative inquiry. She first argues, by focusing on the art of late antiquity in late nineteenth-century Viennese intellectual and artistic circles, that that period's definition of late antique form was in fact a response to contemporaneous political concerns, anticipating modernist thinking and artistic practice. She then suggests that late antique viewers never actually abandoned a sense of those mimetic goals that characterized Greek and Roman habits of representation. This interpretative shift is transformative because it allows us to understand the full range and richness of late antique visual experience.

Interactions
Interactions

Author: Colum Hourihane

Publisher: Index of Christian Art Department of Art and Archeology Princeton

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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The medieval world does not end in Western Europe, and within the last twenty or so years some of the most stimulating art-historical discoveries have been made in the Near East. Moving beyond the confines of Jerusalem and Carthage, this volume considers the art of Armenia, Ethiopia, Coptic Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Mongol East in relation to Byzantium, Cyprus, Italy, and the West. The Christian arts of the Near East, long considered naïve and provincial, are now being reconsidered for their complex liturgical and theological significance. The essays in this essential reference volume cover topics ranging from the classically inspired Christian iconography of Jordan's mosaics, sources and influences of style in Jerusalem and the West, and stylistic interaction between Ethiopia and Egypt to wooden carvings from Coptic Egypt and manuscripts from Antioch as well as icon painting in Lebanon and Cairo. Specific case studies on ivories from the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Monastery Conservation Project, the Edessan Image of Christ, and the Marriage Charter of Otto II and Theophanu are accompanied by iconographical exposés of the Abgar Legend, the Biblical Sarah, and the Çintamani motif. The contributors are Susan H. Auth, Elizabeth S. Bolman, Erica Cruikshank Dodd, Anthony Cutler, Jaroslav Folda, Marilyn E. Heldman, Lucy-Anne Hunt, Mat Immerzeel, Adeline Jeudy, Catherine Jolivet-Lévy, Irma Karaulashvili, Hugo Meyer, Mati Meyer, William North, Michele Piccirillo, and Alexander Saminsky.