Some of the most engaging and creative insights into biblical narrative are found in paintings that adorn national and provincial galleries throughout Europe. They are a reminder that frequently our reading and understanding of biblical stories are influenced by our encounter with and response to the cultural, especially artistic, representations of a passage.

The aims of the research programme, The Bible and the Visual Arts, are to locate distinctive and representative appropriations of biblical paintings in galleries across Europe, draw parallels between ways in which biblical texts engage the reader and biblical paintings the viewer, and to create methodologies that ensure that visual interpretations of the bible play a central role in the 21st century in challenging (or supporting) traditional readings of biblical characters and plots.

The benefit of such a research area is that it is multidisciplinary and makes use of insights from a range of disciplines including art history, psychology, gender studies, and postcolonial studies.

Chair

Martin O'Kane, University of Wales Lampeter (m.o.kane@lamp.ac.uk)

2010 Programme

In 2010, because of our location in Estonia, we invite specifically papers on biblical art and artists from Northern Europe. While we wish, as always, to have an inclusive and representative range of topics in 2010, we particularly welcome papers that explore aspects of art relating to biblical interpretation in the Reformation and post-Reformation eras in Northern Europe.