Time: 2 pm EDT / 7 pm UK
Admission: $8 - Tickets HERE

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Saint Christopher, depicted with an animal head, with goat horns, or even with two faces – one of a dog, the other of a human; A three-armed Virgin Mary, capable of swimming with two arms while cradling the infant Christ with the third; Visions of the Holy Trinity, with six-hands and three-faces. In Orthodox iconography, the sacred images sometimes merge with the monstruous. Displayed in churches, these holy images can surprise modern viewers.

In this lecture, historian Sergei Zotov will lead us through a colorful journey of unexpected images in which folklore meets Orthodox mysticism. Created by intellectual icon-painters with a great knowledge of theology, these images sometimes represent visual riddles that one need to unfold in order to understand.

Zotov will also show how these traditions are alive in modern icons, which can be as puzzling as the images from the past: Why does Lenin shoot Christ? What is the purpose of an icon showing Jesus as a soccer player? We hope you’ll join us to find out!

Sergei Zotov is an historian and doctoral student at the University of Warwick (Great Britain). He is junior researcher at the Herzog August Bibliothek (Germany). Zotov is also the author of the three recently published Russian non-fictional bestsellers on iconography.