Ancient Mediterranean Art and Visual Culture

This study traces the development of Roman architecture and its sculpture from the earliest days to the middle of the 5th century BCE. Existing narratives cast Greeks as the progenitors of classical art and architecture or rely on historical sources dating centuries after the fact to establish the Roman context. Hopkins allows the material and visual record to play the primary role in telling the story of Rome’s roots, synthesizing important new evidence from recent excavations. From the late 7th century, Romans looked to increasingly distant lands for shifts in artistic production. By the end of the archaic period they were building temples that would outstrip the monumentality of even those on the Greek mainland. The book’s extensive illustrations feature new reconstructions, allowing readers a rare visual exploration of this fragmentary evidence.  This is an excerpt.

The essay applies the theoretical study of visual culture to an analysis of the role of
the visual in the communication of religious ideas by the New Testament author,
Paul. The discussion explores the contributions of anthropologists and iconologists to
the study and understanding of visual culture. After an exploration of the role of vision
in understanding generally, the essay then turns to the goals of creating visual experiences
in ancient rhetoric. The letters of Paul and his followers drew on the experiences
of Roman imperial iconography in multiple media to create their own visual worlds
and effect persuasion.

This paper is a tranlation from Polish into English, see: M.T.Olszewski, Uwagi na temat mozaiki z Domu Aiona w Nea Paphos (Cypr), Meander XLII, 9-10, 1987, pp. 421-438, on http://www.academia.edu/3256649
The author proposes a new interpretation of the iconographical and iconological programme of five panels mosaic from the House of Aion at Nea Pahos in Cyprus. He proposes reading the five mythological panels (1. Leda and Zeus; 2. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; 3. The Dionysian thiasos; 4. Apollo and Marsyas; 5. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia) as an allegory of the destiny of the human soul and body, starting with conception (Leda and a Swan)  and ending with the liberation of the soul and its apotheosis (the apotheosis of Cassiopeia).
The author rejects the interpretation of W.A. Daszewski, (Dionysos der Erlöser, Mainz am Rheim 1985) proposed in 1985 and his order of interpetation the five mythological pictures (1. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; 2. Leda and Zeus; 3. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia; 4. Apollo and Marsyas 5. The Dionysian thiasos). Daszewski would like to see in Dionysos - a newly born supreme god, the universal savior.
See too a more elaboret and completed version of the first paper published in Polish on academia.edu : M.T. Olszewski, L'allégorie, les mystères dionysiaques et la mosaïque de la Maison d'Aiôn de Néa Paphos (Chypre), BullAIEMA 13, 1990-1991, p. 444-463.

The miraculous icon of Our Lady of Gradovrh was kept until the end of the 17th century in the Franciscan monastery in Gradovrh, near Tuzla. After Bosnia became part of the ethno-religiously divergent Ottoman Empire in 1463, the Franciscans, thanks to the special position they enjoyed in relation to other representatives of the Latin Church under the Ottoman authorities, became one of the most important connective tissues of the Latin and Ottoman Mediterranean. Miraculous icons of Franciscan monasteries were still worshiped, copied, and new replicas were also worshiped like old paintings, because the authority of the original was transferred to them, as well as its thaumaturgic power. Thus, by copying old paintings, repeating their iconographic formulas and solutions, the translation of old cults and shrines originating from certain cultural environments was preserved, and thus also the translation of certain cultural models, which madethem an integral part of new environments and influenced culture, everyday habits and customs of their inhabitants. Although sacred images in the Catholic Church officially were never worshiped as icons in the Orthodox world, they gradually but inexorably penetrated the West and gained the greatest possible authority. Islam never officially recognized them, but in everyday life and popular piety, they were worshiped by members of all three faiths, and the differences in the manner of worship were lost due to the long history of mutual interaction.

The essay applies the theoretical study of visual culture to an analysis of the role of the visual in the communication of religious ideas by the New Testament author, Paul. The discussion explores the contributions of anthropologists and iconologists to the study and understanding of visual culture. After an exploration of the role of vision in understanding generally, the essay then turns to the goals of creating visual experiences in ancient rhetoric. The letters of Paul and his followers drew on the experiences of Roman imperial iconography in multiple media to create their own visual worlds and effect persuasion.

The essay applies the theoretical study of visual culture to an analysis of the role of the visual in the communication of religious ideas by the New Testament author, Paul. The discussion explores the contributions of anthropologists and iconologists to the study and understanding of visual culture. After an exploration of the role of vision in understanding generally, the essay then turns to the goals of creating visual experiences in ancient rhetoric. The letters of Paul and his followers drew on the experiences of Roman imperial iconography in multiple media to create their own visual worlds and effect persuasion.