A special kind of hell: on the embodied and emotional experience of Byzantine images of the Last Judgement
How does a conceptual and experiential approach to medieval Byzantine images of the Last Judgement dramatically alter and enhance our understanding of these images? That is the question tackled by Niamh Bhalla in Experiencing the Last Judgement. The monograph reinterprets depictions of the Last Judg...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Review |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
April 2023
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| In: |
Art history
Year: 2023, Volume: 46, Issue: 2, Pages: 405-408 |
| ISSN: | 1467-8365 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1467-8365.12720 |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12720
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| Author Notes: | Lara Frentrop |
| Summary: | How does a conceptual and experiential approach to medieval Byzantine images of the Last Judgement dramatically alter and enhance our understanding of these images? That is the question tackled by Niamh Bhalla in Experiencing the Last Judgement. The monograph reinterprets depictions of the Last Judgement associated with the Byzantine Empire through case studies ranging from the tenth to the early fourteenth centuries, in different mediums, and from a broad spectrum of geographical and socio-cultural contexts. They span the ‘centre’ and the ‘periphery’ or ‘non-Byzantine’, from the Chora parekklesion in Constantinople to Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello; monastic and lay contexts, with Yılanlı Kilise in the Peristrema valley in Cappadocia and the monasteries of St Catherine, Sinai and the Mavriotissa in northern Greece; and icons and manuscript illuminations in addition to monumental imagery.1 The case studies are examined through and organized according to experiential frameworks: time and space, agency, memory, rhetoric, gender, and the body. In doing so, Bhalla's objective is to highlight the complex, fluctuating, and multivalent meaning of images of the Last Judgement and to challenge a series of interlocking tenets promoted by previous scholarship: first, that there was a definitive iconography of Byzantine depictions of Last Judgements, formulated in a now lost original; second, that there is such a thing as a ‘Byzantine’ Last Judgement; third, that the ‘lost original’ and therefore the ‘ideal’ Byzantine Last Judgement was depicted on a flat surface - whether this be a single wall of a church or a manuscript page; and fourth, that looking for the textual sources of the disparate elements of the Last Judgement's imagery is the way forward in unlocking its meaning.2 |
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| Item Description: | Gesehen am 12.03.2025 |
| Physical Description: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1467-8365 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1467-8365.12720 |