Double Trouble: Artistic “Doubling” of Deities and the Statue-deity Relationship in Ancient Greece
November 14, 2022
3:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location
BSB 140
Calendar
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The fifth and fourth centuries BCE saw a new trend on the rise in depictions of gods on vase paintings: the tendency to depict the same deity twice within the same scene, once as sculptural image and once as animated deity. What might have been the reason behind this “divine doubling”? Scholars have largely interpreted this trend as a theological reflection on the separate and unconnected nature of image and deity. In short, image ≠ deity. How then do we explain the ubiquity of images of gods, as well as their central role in Greek religion? This talk considers the question through recent theoretical and methodological developments in the fields of material, cognitive, and comparative religions. Situating the Ancient Greek evidence within a larger polytheistic and imagistic discourse can help us reconcile the double images of deities (as well as seemingly contradictory evidence on the statue-deity relationship), and understand more clearly the process by which statue =
deity.
Something to do with images of Greek gods…
Date posted
Oct 20, 2022
Date updated
Oct 21, 2022