Virtual Talk with Justin Willson: Printed Icons in the Early Slavic World

Free. Register by Monday, April 29th.

The Zoom link will be sent to you when you register and on the day of the program.

What might iconography gain by migrating to the page, and what might it lose? Explore this question with Museum Curator Justin Willson during his first virtual talk for The Icon Museum and Study Center.

Beginning in the seventeenth century prints with images of beloved cult icons and famous pilgrimage sites spread in the South and East Slavic worlds. Worried about the uptick in cheaply produced iconography, church leaders banned printed icons. Later, their rulings would be edited in pattern books that codified traditional craft knowledge. Printed icons raised new questions about paper as a support for sacred iconography. Was the printed icon simply a utilitarian device for promoting shrines and publicizing iconography, or was it an autonomous object worthy of the same veneration given to panels? This talk explores printed iconography within the wider context of the early modern transformation of the art of icon painting.