From Olympus to the Streets of Constantinople: The Byzantine Retirement of the Ancient Gods, lecture by Anthony Kaldellis (Ohio State University), National Gallery of Art, March 3, 2016, 3:30 pm

A lecture, coordinated with and supported by Dumbarton Oaks, to accompany the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World on view through March 20, 2016.

In this lecture, Anthony Kaldellis explains the role of Hellenistic art during the Byzantine era. For centuries, Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, was the largest and most impressive open-air museum of classical art in the world. To adorn their capital, emperors selected and imported the best surviving pieces of classical sculpture from the Aegean region. Kaldellis explores the cosmic and imperial messages that their contemporary architectural arrangements conveyed, before they were irretrievably lost in fires and wars.