On One’s Own: Solitude and Emotion in Byzantine Art

The phenomenon of monastic and ascetic solitude has been widely researched in Byzantine studies. However, albeit the vibrant scholarship on emotions, especially in the last decade, not much attention has been devoted to the negative or positive emotions and states of mind of one being alone or kept apart from others in the Byzantine context. Further, remarkably, the visual expressions of these emotions and feelings have not yet attracted any scholarly interest. When one thinks about solitude as visualized in Byzantine art, the images that come to mind are a meditating monk confined to his cell, evangelists enclosed in an intimate space writing their books, and hermits. Does art reflect only these types of figures? Apparently, Byzantine images do feature a range of iconographies for male and female figures that suggest feelings of solitude, aloneness, and loneliness. The presentation explores such images with the aid of a grammar of visual markers contextualized in Byzantine culture.