ABSTRACT
The centrality of the image in Byzantine life and culture is obvious, but the individual response to this visual experience is difficult to detect from the object itself. A close examination of the subject depicted is essential if we are to reach an understanding of the religious optical experience. This paper will focus on the image as such and will argue that by viewing what is depicted, whether iconic or narrative, the viewer becomes involved at an emotional level in responding to what he or she sees. The image provides the guides or symbols for a meditation on the importance of life, death, and possible salvation offered through Christ and the Virgin. This paper is driven by the visual, and in this way parallels the proposed reception of these images by the Byzantine viewer. I would like to explore how the physical manifestation of love exchanged between the Virgin and her Son becomes a material experience of the salvific plan. The main focus of my discussion is the type of image that symbolizes the Incarnation of Christ, as developed during the centuries after iconoclasm, and especially in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Like the earlier representations of the Virgin and Child of the pre-iconoclast period these images carry the message of the salvation that Christ brought to the world through the Virgin Mary. It is however highly revealing to observe the changes which have occurred in the presentation of that salvation. The visual means by which this is now displayed are utterly different and would have been unacceptable if used in the first millennium of the Christian church.1
