Bissera Pentcheva

Bissera Pentcheva is PHD from Harvard University in Byzantine Art. She is professor in medieval art at Stanford University 2003-present

The project

Title: Exploration of the interaction of music and images in the liturgy and art at Sainte Foy at Conques (eleventh century)

"Sainte Foy, Holy Faith, is the patron of the medieval monastery at Conques-en-Rouerge in Occitania, Southern France. Here she paradoxically sustains two manifestations: a figural and a non-figural one. She is both present in her golden statue of an enthroned, impervious ruler and as a light, fragrant breeze softly dislodging whisps of fog which gently drift through the air (Figs. 1, 2). It is this sharp contrast between the glittering materiality of the golden imago and the opalescent immateriality of the light fog that informs the encounter with the metaphysical at Conques. Art history has always gravitated to the material images. By contrast, the structuring of the medieval sacred space exacts equal attention to the ephemeral and temporal in which the Spirit becomes manifest in the smoke of incense, the breeze, the wisps of fog, and the chanted music that fills and animates the architectural interior and envelops the material images and faithful. This book explores the duality of the visible materiality and invisible sensoriality of the divine at Conques."

Hosting institution: École des Hautes Études et Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Selective Bibliography

• AudioVision in the Middle Ages : Sainte Foy at Conques (Stanford :Stanford University Press, 2023)
• “Fidelitas and Engan: Sainte Foy of Conques and the Art of Politics in the ‘Culture of Fidelity’,” Codex Aquilarensis 39 (2023): 175–222
• “Chiasm in Choros: The Dance of Inspirited Bodies” Postmedieval 14 (2023), DOI: 10.1057/s41280-023-00271-5
• “The Virgin and Sainte-Foy: Chant and the Original Design of the West Façade at Conques.” Religions 13 (12): 1299,
• Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017),
• Recipient of the 2018 American Academy of Religion’s Prize in Historical Studies