Art History Research Lecture: Dr Anthi Andronikou Art in Between: Eastern Christian Visual Culture in the Islamic and Western Christian Worlds
Join us for Dr Anthi Andronikou Research Lecture on ‘Art in Between: Eastern Christian Visual Culture in the Islamic and Western Christian Worlds' and a wine reception afterwards at 79 North Street.
Abstract:
Except for recent scholarship that has provided a dynamic boost to the study of what we call “eastern Christian art”, the visual culture of eastern Christianity has been traditionally studied as a supplementary field and frequently as a satellite of more “mainstream” cultures, such as western European and Byzantine. However, the cultural production of eastern Christians in Syria and Egypt is, in fact, a dynamic entity, which develops artistic dialogues with neighbouring cultures, transmitting ideas, iconographies, and styles as far away as Cyprus and southern Italy, as well as closer to home through a visual language that expresses a different religion–that is, Islam. In this paper, I will examine thirteenth-century frescoes from southern Italy and portable objects from Syria to demonstrate that devotional art does not have to be at the centre of an empire, a sultanate, or any other political body to be innovative and influential, and that the most imaginative and creative artistic expressions occur at the intersections of cultures.
Biography:
Anthi Andronikou is Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Glasgow. Prior to that, she was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews and Mary Seeger O'Boyle Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton. She is the author of Italy, Cyprus, and Artistic Exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022) and co-editor (with Peter Humfrey) of The Pittas Collection: Mythological Paintings and Sculptures (Florence: Mandragora, 2019). Her research has appeared, among others, in the Art Bulletin, Artibus et Historiae, Journal of Medieval History, and Frankokratia. Anthi specializes in early modern and late medieval art from a global, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective, with a focus on the artistic contacts between Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. She has also an evolving fascination for Islamic art and early modern ecologies.