Jas' Elsner: Architecture and the Icon: Establishing the Holy in East Christian Art

In this paper I explore the ways icons in the early Christian and Byzantine periods used techniques of framing, spatialization and material differentiation to construct a sense of the sacred.

John R. Elsner is Visiting Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Chicago (2004-2013). Since October 2009 he is Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

1985 B.A. at King's College, Cambridge; 1987 M.A. in Art History at Courtauld Institute of Art, London; 1990 Ph.D. in Classical Art at King's College, Cambridge; 1990-91 Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge; 1991-98 Lecturer in Classical and Early Christian Art at Courtauld Institute and 1993-96 Co-ordinator of the MA Programme in Art Museum Studies at Courtauld Institute; 1998-99 Reader in the History of Art at Courtauld Institute, University of London.

Since 2009 Foreign Honorary Member at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Mass.

Publications include: Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity, Cambridge, New York and Melbourne (CUP), 1995; Pilgrimage Past and Present: Sacred Travel and Sacred Space in the World Religions (jointly written with Simon Coleman), London (British Museum Press) and Cambridge Mass. (Harvard University Press), 1995; Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire A.D. 100-450, Oxford: Oxford History of Art (OUP), 1998; Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text, Princeton (Princeton U.P), 2007.