AVREA CONCISIS SVRGIT PICTVRA METALLIS: An Epistemological and Methodological Approximation of Early Christian (Inter)Textual Visuality
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
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| Description | While naturally indebted to Graeco-Roman heritage, especially in terms of formal/technical, rhetorical, and stylistic means, early Christian culture generated revolutionary concepts. The multimedia aesthetics of the decorative schemes of late antique churches in Rome – such as those in the apses of Saints Cosmas and Damian (526–530), San Lorenzo fuori le mura (579–590), Saint’Agnese fuori le mura (625–638), the San Venanzio Chapel in the Lateran Baptistery (640–642), and the Chapel of Saints Felicianus and Primus (642–649) – represent a true turning point in the history of visual culture. This marked the emergence of, among other things, two-dimensional conceptual (and shining) images, produced in mosaic and replacing three-dimensional mimetic sculptures of the “pagan” temples, which were accompanied by monumental golden inscriptions in Latin hexameters or elegiac couplets. This interdisciplinary lecture addresses the question of how to adequately investigate these text–image interactions and what their discursive and hermeneutic implications are. Based on selected evidence, its aim is to delineate a path to a complex understanding of this interplay between the textual and the visual, and the Christian and the classical. Combining theoretical tools of art history (esp. iconology and the ritual use of images), classical philology and literary studies (e.g. transtextuality, narrative theory, and exposed writing), and performance studies, the authors approach these artefacts from a cognitive perspective, i.e. taking into account the socially, historically, and culturally bound aspects of their reception. In this way, it is revealed how these decorative schemes containing classical echoes in both form and content may yield different interpretations depending on the cognitive background of those who are looking. |