The Living Icon in Byzantium and Italy: The Vita Image, Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries

ISBN-13: 9781107034969 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 297 str.

Paroma Chatterjee

Opis

The Living Icon in Byzantium and Italy is the first book to explore the emergence and function of a novel pictorial format in the Middle Ages, the vita icon, which displayed the magnified portrait of a saint framed by scenes from his or her life. The vita icon was used for depicting the most popular figures in the Orthodox calendar and, in the Latin West, was deployed most vigorously in the service of Francis of Assisi. This book offers a compelling account of how this type of image embodied and challenged the prevailing structures of vision, representation, and sanctity in Byzantium and among the Franciscans in Italy between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Through the lens of this format, Paroma Chatterjee uncovers the complexities of the philosophical and theological issues that had long engaged both the medieval East and West, such as the fraught relations between words and images, relics and icons, a representation and its subject, and the very nature of holy presence.

Recenzje

'… a thoughtful, nuanced, theoretically sophisticated, and provocative study that will challenge the reader.' Anne Derbes, Hood College

Spis treści

Introduction: the metaphor of the 'living icon'; 1. The saint in the text; 2. The saint in the image; 3. 'Wrought by the finger of God'; 4. Depicting Francis' secret; Epilogue: Francis in Constantinople.