Lecture in Rome

Wednesday, 1th of July, I will give a lecture at the 2009 International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Rome, Pontificia Università Gregoriana. Here is an abstract of my talk.

Moving Pictures of Rome: Image Travel Across Art and Media
Program Unit: Whence and Whither?: Methodology and the Future of Biblical Studies
Ivo Blom, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Visions of Antiquity have largely been fed by artistic imagination. Hollywood thus frequently appropriated 19th century European painting for films such as Ridley Scott’s epic Gladiator (2000). This is, however, an appropriation that started already at the dawn of cinema, well before Hollywood came into existence. Ivo Blom will explain how in particular the 19th century paintings by Jean-Léon Gérôme were pivotal in establishing a vision of Roman Antiquity that led to dissemination across popular media, such as book illustrations, lantern slides and finally ending up in pictorial quotations and references in films.

~ by Ivo Blom on June 16, 2009.