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Color and Meaning in Byzantium
The aesthetics of early Christian and Byzantine art offer an area of insight into attitudes both to religion and to art, and to the place of art in religious devotion in this period. Color and the conceptual nature of color formed a key area in the definition of form in nature and art, and a means of justifying religious images as objects of devotion rather than idolatry. In a recent article, Patricia Cox Miller has shown how the aesthetics of light and brilliance in late antiquity played an intrinsic role in the transformation of human body parts into sacred Christian relics. She asserts that late antique Christians were concerned to create a religioaesthetic environment which allowed body parts to be treated as relics, and thus as spiritual and holy, rather than as idols, that is to say, material and earthly. Her aim is to show how the physical environment of relics, the buildings, and the decoration and furnishing of those buildings, with their stress on light and brilliance, served to create an intense, sensual environment that aimed to overcome the “spectre of idolatry.” Allied to the physical appearance of art, accounts of the experiences of viewing and participating in art, which we might label for convenience ekphraseis, formed a bond between the material and the spiritual, forming a bridge between the earthly and heavenly spheres which was both rhetorical and experiential.
History
Publication status
- Published
Journal
Journal of Early Christian StudiesISSN
1067-6341Publisher
Johns Hopkins University PressExternal DOI
Issue
2Volume
11Page range
223-233Department affiliated with
- Art History Publications
Full text available
- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2012-02-06Usage metrics
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