Responding Icons and Miraculous Images? Is There a Theology for Mosaics?
The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in its 2022–2023 lecture series.
The ‘theology of icons’ is well-discussed in Byzantine Studies: the role that religious images played in Byzantine life; the relationships between the icon, the worshipper and the divine; debates about the representation of the divine. How do these ideas play out with mosaics however, which are not easy to understand as live lines of communication with the divine in the same way that icons (when understood as panel paintings) are? How can we think about mosaics as icons, or is this the wrong question?
Liz James is a Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex