The great richness and expressiveness of Christian Art is a marriage of two forms, two sensibilities, and two conflicting injunctions. Its genesis lies, on the one hand, among the splendours late Imperial Rome and on the other hand in the remote and humble monasteries of Coptic Egypt. While in Exodus, we are enjoined not to make a likeness of anything that is in the Heaven above, or in the Earth beneath, Pope Gregory the Great demanded that art be ‘a bible for the illiterate’. The lecture is intended to weave the loose threads together to reveal the glorious tapestry that is Christian Art. In the process, it is hoped to discern some of the influences that informed Irish medieval art.
John O’Riordan MA Art History UCD. For the last four years he has taught Art History for the BA in both UCD and DCU. He has also taught the subject in several Colleges of further education in Dublin.
