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Iconography and Liturgy at St Mark's

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Robert W. Gaston
Robert W. Gaston
Affiliation:
La Trobe University
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Extract

Some of the most explicit statements in early Christian and medieval sources about the functions of visual images in churches are notable for their silence regarding the liturgical significance of wall decoration. There is talk of imagery of the Old and New Testaments instructing the laity so that they should know ‘the high deeds of the servants of God and may be prompted to imitate them’, or at least to remember them. Images might be said to ‘decorate with beauty the house of the Lord’, but it is difficult to find it stated anywhere that the monumental cycles that still arrest our gazes in many of the churches were executed to ‘illustrate’, or to ‘represent’, or to ‘dramatize’ the liturgy that was celebrated in those sacred edifices

Type
Articles
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , October 1993 , pp. 181 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 These examples are drawn from Kessler, H., ‘Pictorial Narrative and Church Mission in Sixth-Century Gaul’, Studies in the History of Art, 16 (1985), 75–91;Google Scholar and Raw, B. C., Anglo-Saxon Crucifixion Iconography and the Art of the Monastic Revival (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 4ff.Google Scholar Cf. also Stefanescu, J. D., L'illustration des liturgies dans l'art de Byzance et de l'Orient (Brussels, 1936), which looks for specific liturgical scenes in the art.Google Scholar

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22 See esp. I, 85–8.

23 Kessler, H., ‘On the State of Medieval Art History’, The Art Bulletin, 70 (1988), p. 173;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kessler, pp. 172–4, gives an indispensable listing of studies that take liturgical approaches to church decoration.

24 Galavaris, G., The Icon in the Life of the Church La Trobe University (Leiden, 1981)Google Scholar, 5; also Kessler, ibid., p. 173.

25 Kessler, ibid., pp. 173–4.