RE-VISITING CREATION
SIGNS OF THE NEW CREATION IN CHRIST IN IMAGES OF THE VISITATION
The Centre for Marian Studies is hosting an online lecture (via Zoom) on 1st February 2022 at 7pm in the UK (01:00 PM CT; 02:00 PM ET). This event has been organised in honour of the late Dr Cathy Oakes, who was an art historian and one of the founding members of the Centre for Marian Studies. Cathy was an expert in medieval Marian iconography and her untimely death in 2019 was a great loss to the Centre for Marian Studies on both a personal and academic level.
As a tribute to Cathy, we have asked Dr Chloë Reddaway from King’s College London and Duke University to speak about the Blessed Virgin Mary in a presentation entitled ‘Re-Visiting Creation: Signs of the New Creation in Christ in Images of the Visitation’. This paper will explore the locations, typology, iconography, and pneumatology found in images of the Visitation, illuminating connections between the Visitation, the New Creation in Christ, and the female role in creative redemption. Reading pregnancy as both a physical and metaphorical indicator of the threshold state of ‘already and not yet’ which characterises the Visitation and the post-resurrection life into which Christians are baptised, the paper will consider the implications of these depictions of Mary and Elizabeth’s meeting for an understanding of God’s transformative encounter with his people, past, present, and future.
Dr Reddaway is a Research Fellow in the Visual Commentary on Scripture in the Centre for Arts and the Sacred at King’s, and McDonald Agape Research Associate at Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. Her work focuses on visual theology and Christian art, with a particular interest in the potential of historic works of art for contemporary theology. She was previously the Ahmanson Fellow/Curator in Art and Religion at the National Gallery, London. Publications include: Strangeness and Recognition: Mystery and Familiarity in Renaissance Images of Christ (2019), and Transformations in Person and Paint: Visual Theology, Historical Images, and the Modern Viewer (2015). Public engagement includes: The Audacity of Christian Art (7 part film series), National Gallery, London - watch here.
If you would like to attend this free online event, please register by clicking the button below.