THE WEDNESDAY LECTURE – 2 DECEMBER 2015

December’s ‘Wednesday Lecture’ at the A. G Leventis Gallery will be delivered by Maria Vassilaki, Professor of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology (IAKA) of the University of Thessaly.

 The lecture will look closely at what lies under the surface of the icons and will seek to explain the ‘technology’ used in their creation. In an attempt to analyse the production process, the speaker will focus on the pricked and imprinted cartoons produced by a mechanical reproduction process, which were used mostly for the painting of portable icons. These were introduced in Venetian Crete during an era of mass production and from there they spread to the rest of Greece. The lecture will draw on the Andreas Xyngopoulos portfolio of the Benaki Museum, which consists of 452 working drawings.

The contents of the portfolio were published by Vassilaki in March 2015, thanks to the generous sponsorship of the A. G. Leventis Foundation, in a co-edition of the A. G. Leventis Gallery and the Benaki Museum.

Professor Vassilaki studied at the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Athens and at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

The lecture will take place in the Constantine Leventis Auditorium of the A. G. Leventis Gallery on 2 December 2015, at 19.30.