Factum est silentium: Cosmic Silence as an Image in Medieval Manuscript Illumination

Date: 

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Barker Center 133. 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA.

RCC is pleased to announce this talk by Francisco Prado-Vilar, RCC Fellow and Scientific Director of the Santiago Cathedral Project.

As part of the series sponsored by the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies, Francisco Prado-Vilar will present a lecture on a group of medieval manuscripts dated from the 10th to the 12th centuries.

This talk brings to light a series of masterpieces of western painting that have remained until now hidden, and unexplained, in the pages of a group of Spanish illuminated manuscripts of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana, dated from the 9th to the 12th centuries. The sophisticated visual constructions designed by these medieval illuminators in their attempt to illustrate the Apocalyptic passage of “silence in heaven” anticipates the experiments around the theme of “silence" developed by modern artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage in the context of the 20th-century avant-garde.

Sponsor(s): Standing Committee on Medieval Studies, Mahindra Humanities Center Medieval Studies Seminar, Real Colegio Complutense

Contact: Francisco Prado-Vilar