Icons - Learn the history of Icons and how they relate to Mila's art
Sun, Mar 22
|All Saints
Professor Bissera V. Pentcheva, Victoria and Roger Sant Professor in Art, Stanford University, will talk about the form and function of the Byzantine icon from its origins in Late Antiquity to its vibrant presence in Christian worship today with Icons in Transformation as an example.
Time and Location
Mar 22, 2026, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
All Saints, 555 Waverley St, Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA
About the event
Bissera's talk addresses the form and function of the Byzantine icon from its origins in Late Antiquity to its vibrant presence in Christian worship today.
The analysis draws on the writings of important spiritual and intellectual figures––Sts. John of Damascus, Theodore Stoudites, Patriarchs Germanos and Nikephoros––who supported the veneration of images during the Iconoclast crisis of the Eastern Mediterranean in the eighth and ninth centuries. Their theories continue to define the legitimacy and use of the icon today. It is in these treatises that we find the concept of the icon tied to the reproduction of a stable form that connects the external world of sensation to the internal world of imagination and memory. Sight in the Byzantine image theory is defined as the superior sense that enables a better understanding of the divine. In my talk, I will explain these processes of perception and remediation but also address the sonic aspect of icons manifested in prayer and chant.
At the end, I will engage with themes such as compassion and intercession, compunction, fear and desire that run through the exhibitions and connect the traditional icons on display with the art of Ludmila Pawlowska.
Here are samples of Bissera's work:
New Book-Exhibition Catalogue, 2023
AudioVision in the Middle Ages: Sainte-Foy at Conques
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=37864&bottom_ref=subject
Research Project on Sainte-Foy at Conques
https://enchantedimages.stanford.edu/
Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017), recipient of the 2018 Award in Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion
http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-07725-3.html/
https://hagiasophia.stanford.edu/
Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics and Ritual, ed. Bissera V. Pentcheva (Routledge, 2017)
Icons of Sound: Voice, Architecture and Imagination in Medieval Art, edited by Bissera V. Pentcheva (Routledge, 2020)
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/icons-sound-bissera-pentcheva/e/10.4324/9781003007463