Classics Friday Talk Featuring Professor Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford) "The Experience of the Golden Imago of Sainte-Foy at Conques through the Medieval Liturgical Chant"

Talk description:

The Benedictine monastery of Sainte Foy (Sancta Fides, “Holy Faith”) at Conques in Rouergue, France offers a rare example of survival of all artistic media created in situ in the eleventh century: music and poetry for the festal liturgy; a so-called “Book of miracles;” a vernacular canso that doubles as a dance; architecture and stone relief sculpture; and finally a golden statue-reliquary of the saint; the latter is the only object dating to the late ninth century and regarded as the earliest extant medieval statue in the round. While the monastery and its art have featured in many studies, the architectural and visual programs have only been discussed as sites of sight. By contrast, the poetry and music have never been considered in relation to the visual and architectural program. My new book turns to the Office (the festal Liturgy) and introduces the concept of audiovision (first developed in film studies, Chion, 1991) in order to explore the intermediality of sound and sight in medieval culture. More specifically, my analysis engages with how the simultaneous flow of poetry, music, and icons of sound layers over and inflects the encounter with the material images, affecting what one hears and sees. 

Short Bio:

Bissera V. Pentcheva is the Victoria and Roger Sant professor of Art at Stanford University. Her innovative work focuses on the interaction of art, architecture, and music in medieval art. She has published three books with Pennsylvania State University Press: Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, 2006 (received the Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America, 2010), The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium, 2010, and Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium, 2017 (received the 2018 American Academy of Religion Award in excellence in historical studies). She has edited two volumes: Aural Architecture in Byzantium: Music, Acoustics, and Ritual, Ashgate 2018 and Icons of Sound: Architecture, Music and Imagination in Medieval Art, Routledge, Routledge 2020. Pentcheva's work is informed by anthropology, music, and phenomenology, placing the attention on the changing appearance of objects and architectural spaces. She relies on film to capture this temporal animation stirred by candlelight. Another important strand of her work engages the sonic envelope of the visual--music and acoustics--and employs auralizations that digitally imprint the performance of chant with the acoustic signature of the specific interior for which it was composed. Her current book project explores the art and music of Ste. Foy at Conques.  

This talk will not be recorded and will not be available on Zoom.