"The Life and Times of a Golden Gospel Lectionary" with Dr. Robert Nelson

Join us on Friday, March 27th for the next installment of our Spring Speaker Series!

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present Dr. Robert S. Nelson, Yale University.

Join us March 27th at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online ( https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82547895466), for his talk “The Life and Times of a Golden Gospel Lectionary”.

This talk will be moderated by Dr. Evan Freeman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Humanities.

Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be recorded.

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

ABSTRACT

A rare text of the Gospel lections written entirely in gold ink had several elite owners from the patriarchate and imperial palace in Constantinople, to the cathedral of the Empire of Trebizond, an emigre Greek bishop in Italy, Pope Julius II in Rome, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, before being given to the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence. Each valued the object for different purposes, which allows its biography to be described in detail. Thus, the manuscript is a case study of its prestige and importance in the Greek East and the Latin West.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Robert S. Nelson is an emeritus professor of the history of art Yale University and the University of Chicago, He studied and taught medieval art, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the history and methods of art history. He was the co-curator of Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2006-2007. His book, Hagia Sophia, 1850-1950, 2004, asks how the cathedral of Constantinople, once ignored or despised, came to be regarded as one of the great monuments of world architecture. Current projects involve the history of the Greek lectionary, the reuse of Byzantine art in Venice, the social lives of illuminated Greek manuscripts in Byzantium and their reception in Renaissance Italy and the collecting of Byzantine art in twentieth-century Europe and America.