The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt

FAIN: FA-57612-14

Elizabeth Stinette Bolman
Temple University (Philadelphia, PA 19122-6003)

Conservation in Upper Egypt has revealed a unique and previously overlooked Late Antique church. This spectacular monument was built circa 500, at a site called the Red Monastery. Its dramatic triconch sanctuary includes tiers of niches framed by columns, supporting three huge semidomes. The interior is enlivened by a polychromed skin of painted figures and ornamental patterns, including the earliest surviving decorated apse in a church. I have been directing a conservation project there for the last decade, and have invited specialists in late antique monasticism, the Coptic language, the liturgy, archaeology and conservation to collaborate with me on an illustrated, multi-disciplinary volume on the church. The book will be a scholarly study but one that is also accessible to the general public. I have made significant progress on my editorial work, but not on my own contributions, which comprise about half of the volume. This fellowship application is for funding to complete them.

Associated Products

Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea (Book)
Title: Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea
Author: Bolman, Elizabeth Stinette
Year: 2002
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=9780300092240
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry
Publisher: New Haven: Yale University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780300092240

The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt (Book)
Title: The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt
Editor: Elizabeth Bolman
Abstract: The Red Monastery church is the most important extant early Christian monument in Egypt’s Nile Valley, and one of the most significant of its period in the Mediterranean region. A decade-long conservation project has revealed some of the best surviving and most remarkable early Byzantine paintings known to date. The church was painted four times during the 5th and 6th centuries, and significant portions of each iconographic program are preserved. Extensive painted ornament also covers the church’s elaborate architectural sculpture, echoing the aesthetics found at San Vitale in Ravenna and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Distinguished contributors from a wide range of disciplines, including art and architectural history, ancient religion, history, and conservation, discuss the church’s importance. Topics include late antique aesthetics, early monastic concepts of beauty and ascetic identity, and connections between the center and the periphery in the early Byzantine world. Beautifully illustrated with more than 300 images, this landmark publication introduces the remarkable history and magnificence of the church and its art to the public for the first time.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/red-monastery-church-beauty-and-asceticism-in-upper-egypt/oclc/926820761&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: WorldCat link
Access Model: book for purchase
Publisher: Yale University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 0300212305
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

---