Stoddard Lecture Spring 2019– Monastic Lessons in Cloth from Late Antique Egypt: Worn, Embodied, and Remembered

12:00 am | 3/20/2019 | Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley | Until 2:00 am | 3/20/2019
Thelma K. Thomas, Associate Professor of Fine Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Explorations of late antique painted portraits of the Egyptian desert fathers yield lessons about leading a righteous life. This presentation considers how visual messages and teaching texts about clothing directed attention to lessons embedded in the actual garments in which monastic fathers vested their spiritual children. In this way, the monastic habit could cue memories ranging from instruction about daily behavior to contemplation of the salvific virtues of monastic life that would form the monk’s future resurrection body.