“Picturing the City of Learning: Constantinople and the Muse of Poetic Inspiration”
Bissera V. Pentcheva

This paper focuses on the image and copies of the enthroned Virgin and Child in the apse of Hagia Sophia: the cathedral of Constantinople. Executed in 867, the mosaic marked the end of Iconoclasm, the re-establishment of icon-veneration, and Orthodoxy.  Being in one of the most prominent public spaces in the city, the image soon became identified with the Great Church and the capital Constantinople.  For this reason, the representation of the enthroned Virgin and Child has always been associated with the idea of power, especially the power of the Church. This paper, however, will turn to a heretofore neglected aspect of the iconographic type and explore on the basis of miniatures, icons, and medieval texts how it functioned as an image of poetic inspiration, and thus became an appropriate symbol of the cathedral school of Hagia Sophia by the twelfth century.  The paper will further trace the manifestation of the same association of the representations of the enthroned Virgin and Child with learning in the Latin West.