Ancient Greek and Byzantine Art
Ancient Greek and Byzantine Art
The annual Dr. John and Helen Collis Lecture brings nationally and internationally recognized experts in the field of art history and archeology to discuss new scholarship, museum exhibitions, and archaeological discoveries. Topics alternate between Ancient Greek and Byzantine art every other year.
The annual Dr. John and Helen Collis Lecture is made possible through the Dr. John and Helen Collis Family Endowment. The endowment is the first of its kind at the museum, as it presents an annual lecture dedicated to a particular art historical emphasis. Additional support for this lecture comes from the Hellenic Preservation Society (HPS) of Northeastern Ohio. HPS is a non-profit organization whose focus is to preserve the Hellenic legacy that will promote the Greek experience through education, collection and preservation. Dr. John and Helen Collis are both members of the society.
[1]In this lecture, Charles Barber investigates how El Greco’s Greek identity has shaped both the conception and reception of his work. First trained in the tradition of Byzantine icon painting found on Crete, El Greco developed an understanding of his own art as a form of early modern Greek painting in the course of his life. This individual manner, which is so attractive to our own era, was set aside from the story of Spanish painting written in the 17th and 18th centuries as an eccentric and alien path that was not to be followed.
[2]In this talk, Dr. Segal presents the newly renovated gallery at the MFA, Boston, devoted to early Greek art, one of the greatest strengths of the museum’s world-renowned antiquities. Step back in time to the days of the emergence of the Greek city-state and discover the innovation and creativity of early Greek artists responding to local traditions and new ideas from abroad. Learn about the design strategy and digital media assets that transport visitors to ancient Greece and make the past present.
[3]VIRTUAL EVENT
Saint Catherine’s Monastery is located in Sinai, a place associated with well-known events narrated in the Old Testament, making the region the ultimate locus sanctus (holy place). Built in Egypt in the mid-sixth century by Emperor Justinian on the site of Moses’s Burning Bush at the foot of Mount Sinai, the fortified monastery remains intact to this day. In this lecture, Maria Vassilaki investigates how and when the Sinai landscape was transformed from a mere background setting into an independent composition.
[4]Beginning in the fifth century BC, Medusa became increasingly anthropomorphic and feminine, undergoing a visual transformation from grotesque to beautiful. Concurrently a similar shift occurred in representations of other mythical female hybrid creatures, such as sphinxes, sirens, and the sea monster Scylla.
[5]In this lecture, Professor Eastmond will use the portrait as a starting point to consider the nature of originality in Byzantine art. The Byzantine court has long been associated with the dead hand of rigid, stultifying administration, yet it commissioned and created some of the most beautiful and complex art of the medieval world. Can bureaucracy drive creativity?
[6]Athenian (Attic) vase painting is the largest body of pictorial imagery to have survived from ancient Greece. Depictions of mythology, religious cults, and daily life offer a window on Athenian society, but their selective and often ambiguous character leave many questions unanswered. One of the principal means by which scholars have studied Attic vases has been through close analysis of their style, allowing for the attribution of individual works to the hands of specific, usually anonymous painters.
[7]The lecture will focus on aspects of the Virgin that gave her the position she holds today and held for many centuries in Orthodox Christianity. Based on surviving visual and textual evidence, it will present some of the reasons and historical circumstances that led to her prominent and exalted position.
[8]The realms of Poseidon encompassed virtually every aspect of life in the ancient Mediterranean world, from mythology and religious cult to daily activities.
[9]Dr. Antonaras will give an outline of the history of the Byzantine Empire and the shapes, forms, and uses of glass objects present in Byzantine society will be illustrated.
[10]Dr. Claire L. Lyons, acting senior curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, presents masterpieces of ancient art from Sicily.