Between Statues and Icons : : Iconic Persons from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages / / Vladimir Ivanovici.

This book argues that Romans credited certain living persons with the capacity to function as cult statues, that is, as images and vessels of the divine. After addressing the cultural context that produced the idea that humans can become images of the divine, the text shows how emperors, bishops, an...

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Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Contexts of Ancient and Medieval Anthropology Series ; Volume 5
VerfasserIn:
Place / Publishing House:Paderborn, Germany : : Brill Schöningh,, [2023]
©2023
Year of Publication:2023
Edition:First edition.
Language:English
Series:Contexts of ancient and medieval anthropology ; Volume 5.
Physical Description:1 online resource (275 pages) :; illustrations.
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Summary:This book argues that Romans credited certain living persons with the capacity to function as cult statues, that is, as images and vessels of the divine. After addressing the cultural context that produced the idea that humans can become images of the divine, the text shows how emperors, bishops, and others imitated the aesthetic, immobility, and material setting of statuary to establish themselves as iconic and how their role as mediators with the divine was eventually transferred to new categories of material objects, such as relics and icons. The figure of the iconic person thus is shown to have bridged the cult statues of Antiquity with the new mechanisms of interaction with the divine that Christians used for the following millennium. By integrating living persons in the art historical analysis of the spaces and advocating for the need to consider the animation of artefacts together with the reification of bodies, this study marks an important development in the study of the past.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN:3657790829
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Vladimir Ivanovici.