Abstract

The lecture will explore the notion and phenomenon of spatial icons in the context of hierotopy, the study of the making of sacred places and spaces. It will focus on such eloquent examples of Byzantine and medieval Russian spatial imagery as the Tuesday Rite with the Hodegetria icon of the Mother of God in Constantinople, the ‘Procession on the donkey’ on Moscow’s Red Square, and the innovative case of Patriarch Nikon’s Skiti (hermitage) in the New Jerusalem Monastery near Moscow.

Alexei Lidov is an internationally recognized scholar of Byzantine iconography, Eastern Christian visual culture and the theory of art. He is the founder and director of the Research Centre for Eastern Christian Culture in Moscow, the head of the Department of Ancient Culture at the Institute for World Culture at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, and a full-member of the Russian Academy of Arts. He is the author of more than 100 research publications in numerous languages, including 27 monographs, catalogues and collections of articles. (See: www.hierotopy.edu)