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The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art

The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art

by Paul Corby Finney

This revisionist study challenges the received opinion that in its earliest manifestations Christianity was a form of religiosity opposed both on principle and in fact to the use of pictures.The book documents the origins of Christian art based on some of the oldest surviving Christian archaeological evidence, and it seeks to show how the Christian products conformed to the already-existing pagan types and models. (more)

Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art

Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art

by Hans Belting

Before the Renaissance and Reformation, holy images were treated not as "art" but as objects of veneration which possessed the tangible presence of the Holy. In this magisterial book, Hans Belting traces the long history of the sacral image and its changing role in European culture. Likeness and Presence looks at the beliefs, superstitions, hopes, and fears that come into play as people handle and respond... (more)

The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm

The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm

by Alain Besanc?on

Philosophers and theologians have long engaged in intense debate and introspection over the representation of the deity, its possibilities and its proscriptions. The Forbidden Image traces the dual strains of “iconophilia” and iconoclasm, the privileging and prohibition of religious images, over a span of two and a half millennia in the West. Alain Besançon’s work begins with a comprehensive examination of the... (more)

Iconostasis

by Pavel Florenski

Born in 1882, Fr Pavel Florensky was a brilliant philosopher, theologian, scientist, and art historian who, in 1911, became an Orthodox priest. By the time of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Fr Pavel had become a leading voice in Russia's great movement in religious philosophy, a movement whose roots lay in the rich ground of nineteenth-century Russian monasticism and whose branches included the work of Bulgakov,... (more)

Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art

Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art

by Pavel Florensky

Beyond Vision is the first English-language collection of essays on art by Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), Russian philosopher, priest, linguist, scientist, mathematician – and art historian. In addition to seven essays by Florensky, the book includes a biographical introduction and an examination of Florensky’s contribution as an art historian by Nicoletta Misler. Beyond Vision reveals Florensky’s fundamental... (more)

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