Abstract
In the twelfth century, painters in the Frankish Levant began to make icons that depict St. George rescuing a captive youth bearing a winecup, redefining the military patron as the savior of Christian souls. Adopting a Mediterranean approach, I argue that these icons cannot be fully understood without reference to interfaith interactions. I situate images of George and the captive youth within the Mediterranean culture of slavery, palatial arts, and Islamicate practices of homosocial refinement. As I show, the icons expressed Christian fears of conversion in the context of slavery, relating them to transcultural literature that employed enslaved male youths—often cupbearers—to explore themes of cultural seduction, same-sex desires, and the captivation of the captor.
Speaker Biography
Heather Badamo is an associate professor in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research investigates the arts of interfaith contact and exchange in the medieval eastern Mediterranean. Her first book, George Between Empires: Image and Encounter in the Medieval East, is forthcoming from Penn State University Press. It explores how rival religious and political communities in the East employed George to negotiate their place in a world of many faiths during the Crusader era. Her next book, Medieval Coptic Art: Making Christian Subjects in the Islamic World investigates how Coptic elites employed the arts to disseminate their beliefs and ensure Church survival during the “Coptic-Arabic Renaissance.”
