Abstract:
This essay discusses the mounted image of St. George slaying an emperor within the broader context of how and why early Christian images were transformed and adapted to the early Byzantine religious style. The representational framework of Arthur Danto’s philosophical system is used to tie together the threads of this research. By drawing parallels between changes in contemporary art and culture – often referred to as the modern/postmodern shift – and the transition of the Hellenistic to the Byzantine era, structures common to artistic creation and reception are brought to the fore. The case study presents the history of the depiction of St. George slaying Diocletian, how it emerged in the Caucasus region, and the manner in which it reflects the stylistic changes that took place in the late antique eastern Roman world. The social, cultural and philosophical ramifications of the shift of high classical art to the early Byzantine style are laid out in terms of art, modes of inquiry, and action-orientation. A theory is presented on what role the image of St. George killing Diocletian may have played in transforming the late antique and early medieval worldview. The final section sketches a philosophical framework that supports the conclusions of this research.
Keywords:
Arthur Danto, early Christian art, Byzantine art, Georgian sculpture, action-orientation, worldview, transformation
How to cite:
Snyder, Stephen. “An Image of Power in Transition: St. George Slaying Diocletian and the War of Images.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 3, no. 4(10) (2019): 67-100. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2019.0043.
Author:
Stephen Snyder
Boğaziçi University
34342 Bebek/Istanbul, Turkey
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7523-4571
snyder.stephen.d@gmail.com
References:
Ando, Clifford. The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Beckwith, John. The Art of Constantinople. London: Phaidon Press, 1961.
Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
di Berardino, Angelo. “Christian Liturgical Time and Torture.” Augustinianum 51, no. 1 (2011):191-220. https://doi.org/10.5840/agstm20115119.
Dadiani, Tamar, Tamar Khundadze, and Ekaterine Kvachatadze. Medieval Georgian Sculpture. Tbilisi: George Chubinashvili National Research Center, 2017.
Danto, Arthur C. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Danto, Arthur C. “The Artworld.” The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964): 571-584. https://doi.org/10.2307/2022937.
Danto, Arthur C. The Body/Body Problem. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Danto, Arthur C. Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
Danto, Arthur C. “The End of Art.” In The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Danto, Arthur C. Narration and Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Danto, Arthur C. Nietzsche as Philosopher Expanded Edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Danto, Arthur C. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Eastmond, Anthony. “Between Icon and Idol: The Uncertainty of Imperial Images.” In Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium. Edited by Anthony Eastmond and Liz James. Hants, UK: Ashgate, 2003.
Elsner, Jaś. Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Elsner, Jaś. Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire A.D. 100-450. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Elsner, Jaś. Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Foucault, Michel. Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of Political Reason. “The Tanner Lectures on Human Values.” Delivered at Stanford University, October 10 and 16, 1979.
Gombrich, Ernst. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. New York: Phaidon Press, 2002.
Gombrich, Ernst. Meditations on a Hobby Horse. New York: Phaidon, 1985.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Translated by Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.
Harada, Takeko, ed. The Book of Ahtamar Reliefs. Istanbul: A Turizm Yayınları, 2003.
Herwitz, Daniel and Michael Kelly, eds. Action, Art, History: Engagements with Arthur C. Danto. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Jensen, Robin. Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005.
Jones, Lynn. “The Church of the Holy Cross and the Iconography of Kingship.” Gesta 33, no. 2 (1994): 104-117. https://doi.org/10.2307/767162.
Kitzinger, Ernst. Byzantine Art in the Making. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977.
Mango, Cyril. The Art of the Byzantine Empire: 312-1453. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986.
Margolis, Joseph. “Medieval Aesthetics.” In The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Edited by Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Mathews, Thomas. Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Pancaroğlu, Oya. “The Itinerant Dragon-Slayer: Forging Paths of Image and Identity in Medieval Anatolia.” Gesta 43, no. 2 (2004): 151-164. https://doi.org/10.2307/25067102.
Sheldon-Williams, I.P. “The Philosophy of Icons.” In The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy. Edited by A.H. Armstrong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Snyder, Graydon F. Ante-Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2003.
Snyder, Stephen. “Artistic Conversations: Artworks and Personhood.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy 19, no. 56 (2019): 229-248.
Snyder, Stephen. The End-of-Art Philosophy in Hegel, Nietzsche and Danto. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94072-4.
Snyder, Stephen. “Transvaluation and Aesthetic Displacement: Gezi Park and the Power of Art.” In Membrana, forthcoming.
Walter, Christopher. The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.
Woodfield, Richard. “Ernst Gombrich: Iconology and the ‘Linguistics of the Image’.” Journal of Art Historiography 5 (2011): 1-25.
Open Access Statement:
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Submitting a text to Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture means that the author agrees with the general conditions of this license. The author does and will maintain copyrights and publishing rights for his/her article without any restrictions.