Publication details
The Upper Waters in Christian Cosmology, Between Historiography and Materiality Tribute to Andrej N. Grabar
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
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| Description | In 1957, André Grabar dedicated a seminal paper (La mer céleste dans l’iconographie carolingienne et romane) to mosaic decorations in the early Middle Ages, from Santa Costanza (4th century) to Santa Maria Maggiore (13th century), through manuscript illumination. In the analyzed mosaic decorations are represented, in the lower part, large bodies of water. The latter are full of life: small fish, birds, fishermen, are represented in these waters. As Grabar noted, this apparently very pagan iconographies, reminding Roman nymphea, are often present under theophanic images or below representations of the Heavenly spheres. Grabar concluded from these remarks that while being so full of antique memory, the function of the lower waters was to represent a physical and metaphorical division between the human world and the divine sphere. This concept was a widespread belief in Christian cosmology. Starting from this paper, we would like to investigate on the one hand the methodology of Grabar and the reason why, at that very point of his biography, he dedicated his research to this topic. On the other hand, we intend to propose a more complex reflexion about visual, physical, and perfomative barriers created in order to permit the access to the Heavenly vision within the sacred space of hierotopy of Late Antiquity. As we will try to demonstrate, Grabar’s proposition has indeed to be enlarged in a more complex scheme. The final step of our paper will then be to understand the part of the historicity in elaborating intellectual and art historical patterns. |
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