La British School at Rome offre un ciclo di seminari di ricerca dedicati alle testimonianze culturali e storico-artistiche dell’eredità bizantina in Italia. Le conferenze sono rivolte a un pubblico con competenze anche non specialistiche. L’iniziativa è coordinata da Daniele Bianconi (Sapienza Università di Roma), Edoardo Crisci (Università degli studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale), Paola Degni (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), Marilena Maniaci (Università degli studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale), Raphaële Mouren (The British School at Rome).

Over the centuries, the Straits of Messina has functioned both as a break and a contact zone between mainland Italy and Sicily, as well as between Eastern and Western Mediterranean. At the time of the Norman maneuvering across the Straits, Messina soon appeared as being the ‘key’ for conquering the isle, which ultimately resulted in the creation of a Southern Kingdom for the Men of the North.

This conference is aimed at exploring the shaping of sacred architecture and church interior for Greek Monks in the Valdemone (Sicily’s north-eastern area) and around the Straits’ two strongpoints- Messina and Reggio -at the behest of patrons who were representative of the new elites, either the Norman Counts or their officials, deeply grounded in the Greek-Calabrian and -Sicilian tradition.

Greek monastic churches around the Straits are distinguished by the merging of elements consistent with the broader category of monastic architecture in the Norman South, or with the novelties of the buildings patronized by the new Kings of Sicily, as well as by archaic formulas which hint at the isle’s remote Christian past, recovered by the Normans through their Greek-speaking elites, within the frame of a dialogue/confrontation with non-Latin-Christian and non-Christian cultures on a Mediterranean scale.

Antonino Tranchina has studied Romance Philology and Art History in Palermo and Bologna. He has earned his PhD in Art History at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. He has been postdoc fellow at the University of Bologna and the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, as well as scientific guest at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has been teaching History of Manuscript Illumination at the University of Udine and he has conducted seminars at the University of Düsseldorf on the Arts of Greek-Christian regions of Southern Italy. His research focuses on religious art of the Middle Ages in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, especially on church architecture and decoration. He also deals with the transfer of sacred imagery between the Christian East and West, especially in the High Middle Ages, as well as with the reception of Medieval and Byzantine Art in modern Art History.

The event will be held in English. It will be accessible both in person and online, by registering at the link at the top of this page.

To see the entire programme, click here.