Virtue and Adornment in Byzantium: Beautiful Bodies in the Christian East

The Dr. John and Helen Collis Lecture

Tags For: Virtue and Adornment In Byzantium: Beautiful Bodies In the Christian East
  • Lecture
  • Ticket Required
Sunday, September 28, 2025, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Alicia Walker, Professor of History of Art and Director of the Graduate Group in Classics, Archaeology, and History of Art at Bryn Mawr College
Location:  Gartner Auditorium
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Free; Ticket Required
a person with a beard and a hat

Nereid (Sea-Nymph) from a Hanging (detail), late 300s–400s CE. Byzantine Empire (Egypt).

About The Event

Join Alicia Walker as she explores attitudes toward women and adornment in the Byzantine world. Walker discusses how jewelry and clothing decorated with Christian signs offered women ways to ornament the body while still conforming to religious values that censured personal embellishment and promoted modest piety. At the same time, Byzantine society remained connected to pre-Christian cultural traditions, allowing for Greco-Roman goddesses and other female mythological characters to persist as models for the cultivation of physical beauty and allure. Walker shows how Byzantine women navigated these diverse possibilities, displaying moral virtue and social refinement—but also captivating charm—through their dress and adornment.

Sponsors

This lecture is sponsored by the Hellenic Preservation Society of Northeastern Ohio.

logotype for the Hellenic Preservation Society with pointillistic letters h p s

    All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Principal support is provided by Dieter and Susan M. Kaesgen and Gail C. and Elliott L. Schlang. Major annual support is provided by Brenda and Marshall Brown, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Medical Mutual of Ohio, the Edwin D. Northrup II Fund, Shurtape Technologies, and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. Generous annual support is provided by Gini and Randy Barbato, the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Char and Chuck Fowler, the Giant Eagle Foundation, Linda Harper, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., Susan LaPine, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Logsdon Family Fund for Education, Sarah Nash, Courtney and Michael Novak, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, the Pickering Foundation, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Suzanne Cushwa Rusnak and Jeff Rusnak, Ellen and Lowell Satre, in memory of Dee Schafer, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, the Sally and Larry Sears Fund for Education Endowment, Roy Smith, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Trilling Family Foundation, Jack and Jeanette Walton, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

      The Cleveland Museum of Art is funded in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

      Education programs are supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.