An illustrated talk by Peter Brooke: What is the purpose of painting? A controversy from the eighth century.

 

 

 

Llaneglwys Village Hall

(near Brecon. Details at http://llaneglwys-village-hall.weebly.com ) Sunday 23rd August at 7.30 pm

 

Towards the end of the eighth century, a church council held in Nicaea, in what is now southern Turkey, ruled that painted images (‘icons’) could be used as objects of veneration. Shortly afterwards a major attack was launched against this Eastern Council under the auspices of Charlemagne, soon to be crowned first Emperor of a renewed ‘Roman’ Empire in the west. This was a major event in the process by which the Western (‘Roman Catholic’) and Eastern (‘Orthodox’) churches separated. But important as the political and theological aspect was, Peter Brooke argues that it also reflected a radical difference between the ‘classical’ art of Greece and Rome and the very different art that had developed in the West and is known as ‘Celtic’ or ‘insular’ art.