Conference - The Sacred Image Between Revealing and Concealing: New Directions in the Interpretation of the Sacred in Ancient and Medieval Art

Date: 

Thursday, April 20, 2017 (All day) to Friday, April 21, 2017 (All day)

Location: 

Naumburg Room, Fogg Museum, 32 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138

A two-day international symposium highlighting new research on the interpretation of the sacred in ancient and medieval art, with a keynote address by François Lissarague (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) and presentations by Milette Gaifman (Yale University), Jeffrey Hamburger (Harvard University), John Hamilton (Harvard University), Henriette Hofmann (University of Basel), Pierre-Alain Mariaux (University of Neuchâtel), Ioannis Mylonopoulos (Columbia University), Laura Nasrallah (Harvard University), Felipe Pereda (Harvard University) Verity Platt (Cornell University), Barbara Schellewald (University of Basel), Sophie Schweinfurth (University of Zürich), James Simpson (Harvard University), Adrian Stähli (Harvard University), and Gerard Wildgruber (Basel University). Co-sponsored by Eikones/Basel University, Swissnex Boston, the Harvard University Department of the Classics, and the Harvard University Department of the History of Art and Architecture.

 

Registration is required: https://sacredimage.eventbrite.com

 

Program 

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Fogg Museum, The Naumburg Room (2nd floor)

12:30 pm      Introductory remarks by the conference organizers: Adrian Stähli (Harvard University, Department of the Classics), Jeffrey F. Hamburger (Harvard University, Department of History of Art and Architecture), and Gerald Wildgruber (University of Basel, Graduate School Eikones)

1:10 pm     Ioannis Mylonopoulos (Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology)

When the Gods Became Objects: The Materiality of the Divine Image in Ancient Greece
The paper will explore the various materials used for the construction of divine imagery in ancient Greece and their possible meanings. Attention will be drawn not only to popular materials such as marble, bronze, gold, and ivory, but also to silver, dark stone variations, clay, and even gypsum, to which ancient sources also refer, albeit more infrequently. In the paper, particular emphasis will be placed on wooden images and the notion of “ancientness.” The Greco-Roman evidence will be viewed within a heuristic framework informed by thing theory and contemporary approaches to materiality, cognition, and perception.

1:50 pm     Gerald Wildgruber (University of Basel, Graduate School Eikones)


The “mechane” of the Ancients: Two Accounts of Tragedy as Interaction with the Gods
This paper presents two interpretations, one ancient, and one modern, of the “mechane” of Greek tragedy, i.e., the formal techniques of representation specific to this art form: an epigram on dance and its figures by Phrynichos – a founding figure of Attic Tragedy – and Hölderlin’s meditation on Sophocles that accompanied his famous translation of Sophocles’s plays. Hölderlin’s remarks on tragedy help to clarify fundamental differences between the Greek’s relation to the sacred compared to our own, especially with regard to the action of ca­tharsis so central to Tragedy. Catharsis implies a practical conception of art works, which poses the further problem of whether or not such art can be retrospectively understood.

2:30 pm     Verity Platt (Cornell University, Department of Classics)

Framing the Sacred: Boundary and Ritual in Hellenistic Votive Reliefs
Focusing on a scene of theoxenia in a votive relief from Thessaly, this paper interrogates the diverse ways in which formal framing devices contain, construct, invoke, and celebrate the divine. Far from extraneous to the figural ‘content’ that they border, such devices perform a kind of visual theology that is a critical component of Greek religious practice.

3:10 pm     Coffee break

3:35 pm     Sophie Schweinfurth (University of Zürich, Kunsthistorisches Institut)

Christian Ruler and Divine Emperor? Some Methodological Remarks on the Problem of Analyzing Imperial Representation under Constantine the Great
It is something like a methodological commonplace in art history that art reflects the ‘Zeitgeist’ of its period (see Wölfflin, Riegl, Panofsky). What do we do when the seminal literary sources oppose the artefactual evidence? The talk is dedicated to this inconsistency characterizing imperial representation under Constantine the Great.

4:15 pm     Laura Nasrallah (Harvard University, Divinity School)

‘My mind hesitates about what it should be quiet about’: Vision and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity
This paper focuses on early Christian interpretation of the story of Ezekiel’s vision and on late antique mosaics. In doing so it explores a variety of opinions about seeing God, scriptural interpretation, and optics in late antiquity.

5:00 pm     Surprise event for conference attendees.

6:00 pm     Keynote lecture at Harvard Hall, Room 102 (directions will be given in the course of the conference)

François Lissarrague (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Paris)
Ways of Visualizing the Divine in Ancient Greek Imagery
In this paper, I will try to analyze the various ways images of religious rituals integrate divine presence according to different modes, media and rites. The suggested typology of divine presence during rituals includes descriptive as well as narrative images and will take into account the tensions between these two different modes.

 

Friday, April 21, 2017

Fogg Museum, The Naumburg Room (2nd floor)

10:10 am   Milette Gaifman (Yale University, Department of Classics)

Jugs, Gods, and the Creation of the Sacred in Classical Greece
The paper will explore Classical Athenian jugs with depictions of the gods. By focusing on the relationship between the vessels’ imagery and their potential use, the paper will consider some of the complex relationships between instrumentality, visual representation and the creation of the sacred in Greek antiquity.

10:50 am   James Simpson (Harvard University, Department of English)

Idolatrous Images and the Psyche in Reformation England
The charge of idolatry spread rapidly and unpredictably through the evangelical nervous system in sixteenth-century England. It attached itself to every salvific form, both psychological and material, that was judged to be man-made, and without scriptural foundation. The first victim of that viral charge was religious visual culture. The first phase of that material destruction was, however, just the easy start, before a much more painful second sequence began. Iconoclastic hygiene around the absolutist God targeted all forms of idolatry, inclu­ding psychic imagination. In this paper I explain how the material image stepped back into the public domain from the ravaged psyche.

11:30 am   Felipe Pereda (Harvard University, Department of History of Art and Architecture)

Floating in the Sea” The Origin and Nature of Sacred Images in Early Modern Spain.
A number of important sacred crucifixes venerated in North Western Spain (Castile and Galicia) since the Late Middle Ages share a similar legend for their origin. They are attributed to Nicodemus, and all arrived at the coast floating in the sea. This paper will explore the roots of this ancient Mediterranean topos, how it was transfered to the Iberia Península, and what it tells us about the nature of sacred images in Early Modern Spain.

12:10 pm      Break

1:30 pm     Barbara Schellewald (University of Basel, Graduate School Eikones)

Gold(-Mosaics), Lapislazuli and All That Glitters: Staging Holiness
The paper will focus on the complex relationship between the material used for (or in) images, basic theoretical approaches, and the spatial organization of (or for) images. The study of a few examples from at least two different cultures will lead to the question of the shared potential between, on the one hand, material culture and, on the other, so-called “Bildwissenschaft”.

2:10 pm     Pierre-Alain Mariaux (University of Neuchâtel, Institut d’histoire de l’art et de muséologie)
“Significata magis significante placent”. Crafting the Sacred Through Ornament

2:50 pm     Coffee break

3:15 pm     Henriette Hofmann (University of Basel, Graduate School Eikones)

Order and its Deconstruction. On the Formation of Space by Frame-image Dynamics
The paper discusses the phenomenon of the frame and questions the functions frames have within medieval image systems. At the beginning of the 11th century, the bishop of Hildesheim commissioned the monumental bronze doors which feature an intellectually highly elaborate image cycle as well as an equally elaborate framing system. The frames appear to be of central relevance for the visualisation of spatial concepts, primarily by influencing the way the beholder experiences the very act of seeing itself.

3:55 pm     John Hamilton (Harvard University, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures)

Incarnationis Mysterium: Contemplation, Devotion and Disfiguration in Fra Angelico’s “Annunciation”
Fra Angelico’s Annunciation invites reflection on the limits of contemplation and devotion by presenting the unrepresentable and therefore disfiguring moment of divine incarnation. Through an investigation of this painting, one may arrive at a better understanding of the theological premises that motivate and frustrate any straightforward reading or interpretation.

4:35 pm     Closing remarks

6:00 pm     Panel discussion and evening reception at swissnex Boston, 420 Broadway, Cambridge.

New Directions in the Interpretation of Images: American and European Perspectives