“Reading the Image of Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavych in Seventeenth-Century Kyiv” Virtual Lecture

Date: September 8, 2022, at 12:00pm ET via Zoom

Free and open to the public. Register here: https://doaks-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0m1owNuYSECFYrHzB9fmug.

Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavych, converter of Rus’ to Christianity in 988, is a key figure in the history of Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox cultures. In the only book-length study dedicated to the image of Saint Volodymyr, Francis Butler argues that “the prince has been better remembered in Ukraine than in Russia”. This paper examines attitudes towards Saint Volodymyr in Ukraine from the mid-seventeenth century to the early eighteenth, showing how current ideologies, local power structures, and changing audiences could influence the reception as well as the evolution of his image. Using Pierre Delooz’s idea of sanctity as “a product of a collective representation” that reflects the needs and expectations of the worshippers, I will concentrate on how Saint Volodymyr was used as the means of shaping and negotiating the identities of different institutions, local groups, and individuals. I will argue that in the absence of a strong state organization, the Kyiv Orthodox Church used the figure of Volodymyr to protect its rights vis-à-vis Muscovy and, more importantly, to create a mystique of the good Christian ruler with enormous potential for the emergence of a “national” community who shared the religious ideals embodied by Volodymyr. In doing this, I will also shed some light on the modes of expression – what J. G. A. Pocock calls “conceptual vocabularies” – used by Kyiv Orthodox elites to describe their ideals of kingship, political order, and church-state relations.

Maria Grazia Bartolini is an Associate Professor of Medieval Slavic Culture at the University of Milan. Her research focuses on the intersection of preaching and visual arts in seventeenth-century Ukraine, and she has published various articles on the religious culture of early modern Ukraine. Bartolini is the author of Piznai samoho sebe (Kyiv, 2017), a monograph on Hryhorii Skovoroda and Christian Neoplatonism which was awarded the 2019 Ivan Franko International Prize.

This event is co-organized by Dumbarton Oaks in collaboration with North of Byzantium and Connected Central European Worlds, 1500-1700.

Sponsors and Endorsers: Dumbarton Oaks | Princeton University | Boise State University | Tufts University College Art Association (CAA) | Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) | Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) | Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent | Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art (HGSCEA) | British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) | International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) | Renaissance Society of America (RSA)

Yale Lectures in Late Antique and Byzantine Art and Architecture

Lecture series organized by Robert S. Nelson, Robert Lehman Professor in the History of Art, and Vasileios Marinis, Professor of Christian Art and Architecture at the ISM and YDS.

Presented in collaboration with Yale Department of Classics and Yale Department of the History of Art.

Zoom lectures begin at 12 noon Eastern Time; registration is required.

You can register at any time to join a lecture. Your registration is valid for the whole series; attend as many as you like.  You will automatically receive reminders for the lectures.

September 9

Windows onto Sanctity: Monks’s Cells and Hagioscopes in Byzantine Churches
Robert Ousterhout, University of Pennsylvania
Respondent: Vasileios Marinis, Yale University

October 14

From Crete to Singapore via Rome and St. Louis. An Orthodox Icon Becomes Catholic  
Robert S. Nelson, Yale University
Respondent: Annemarie Weyl Carr, Southern Methodist University

November 11

Fear and Artistic Authority in the Middle Byzantine Period
Ravinder Binning, The Ohio State University
Respondent: Foteini Spingou, University of Edinburgh

December 9

Discovering the Byzantine Object in Late Ottoman Istanbul: Diplomacy, Archaeology, and Collecting
Brigitte Pitarakis, CNRS, Paris
Respondent: Selin Unluonen, Oberlin College

January 13

The Golden Threads of Orthodoxy: Revisiting the Materiality and Function
of Early Palaiologan Epitaphioi
Anastasia Drandaki, University of Athens
Respondent: Warren Woodfin, Queens College, CUNY

February 10

The Donor and His House. Inscriptions in the Late Roman Domestic Context
Elisabeth Rathmayr and Veronika Scheibelreiter-Gail, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Respondent: Anna Sitz, University of Heidelberg

March 10

The Historical Frieze on the Arch of Constantine
Sarah Bassett, Indiana University Bloomington
Respondent: Noel Lenski, Yale University

April 14

Migrant Greeks: Comparing Feofan Grek and Domenico Greco
Charles Barber, Princeton University
Respondent: Maria Vassilaki, University of Thessaly