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Article: Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium.(Book Review)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Church History
- Article date:
- December 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 American Society of Church History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Glenn Peers. The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 32. Berkley: University of California Press 2001. xvi + 235 pp. $37.50 cloth.
Subtle Bodies, a revision of Peers's doctoral dissertation, explores the problem of images, their inscriptions, and explanatory texts and meanings for a special case in which there is no relic, no physical trace, no remains: the case of bodiless angels. Images used in Byzantium were based on ancient traditions of reproduction of an original, based on life, a "shadow" of a once concrete body. Peers adroitly explores the strategies used to get around this paradox of making an image of the uncreated, taking angels as a test case ...