Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria

Lecturer: Graeme Miles
Entry: Free

Synopsis

The Eikones (or Imagines) of Philostratus is a work of the first half of the third century AD, describing an art gallery, which may or may not have existed, on the Bay of Naples. Written in a virtuosic and allusive Atticising Greek, it presents itself not simply as a series of descriptions but as a guide to educated viewing.

The dominant concern in the older scholarship on this text has been the extraction of information about ancient art; the descriptions seemed to offer the tantalising possibility of learning about works no longer extant. The poet Goethe himself was at one point keen to have the images reproduced by contemporary artists. More recently, attention has shifted to the work as a unique source for the history of art interpretation, and it is with this that the present lecture is concerned. Drawing on several examples I will look at some of the ways in which Philostratus represents images through literature, and how he playfully approaches the problems raised by a realist art.

Biography

Graeme Miles completed his undergraduate study and PhD at the University of Western Australia.

Following his doctorate he was an Asialink writer in residence based at the University of Madras, then a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Ghent, Belgium (2007), before returning to teach at UWA in early 2008. He moved to the University of Tasmania in second semester 2008, where he is a lecturer in classics. His research interests include the Second Sophistic (especially the works of Flavius Philostratus, on which he has written a forthcoming monograph) and Neoplatonism.

Sponsors

We would like to thank Theo Markos for sponsoring this lecture.

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