Publication details
AVREA CONCISIS SVRGIT PICTVRA METALLIS. An Epistemological and Methodological Approximation of Early Christian Multimedia Visuality
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Citation | |
| Description | One of the key instruments in the process of the Christianization of the Roman Empire was the visual arts. Shining images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and other biblical figures, martyr saints, and bishops, produced in mosaic and located at prominent places in early Christian churches, were frequently accompanied by impressive monumental inscriptions. Based on selected case studies from late antique Rome (4th–7th cent.), this interdisciplinary paper aims to delineate a path to a comprehensive understanding of such multimedia aesthetics, based on the multilayered and synergic relationship between text-as-image and image-proper with an implicit bearing on the Word made flesh rhetoric (Jo. 1, 1 – 14). Combining theoretical perspectives from art history and classical philology, the authors wish to reveal how these visual schemes containing classical echoes in both form and content may convey different meanings depending on the cognitive background of those who are looking. |