From Image into Art: Art after Byzantine Iconoclasm

This paper argues that within a history of the medieval image, there remain some stories of art. The changing patterns in the discussion of the image during Byzantine iconoclasm provide the material for this argument. These indicate that later iconophile writers needed to construct a notion of the image that rejected the implications of presence apparent in the writings of earlier iconophiles and iconoclasts. In so doing, these later, ninth-century iconophiles produce theories of the image that suggest echoes of later theories of art in their stress upon the formal relation between the painting and the one painted.