Events Calendar – British School at Athens
One-day online workshop
Byzantium and Bloomsbury
This one-day online workshop will focus on the interest of members of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantium, especially Byzantine art. Both Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant demonstrated an interest in Byzantine art, in terms of their aesthetic concerns and their subject matter; in 1912 Vanessa Bell painted a work entitled ‘Byzantine Lady’ and Grant painted a similar work entitled ‘The Countess’, and their Famous Women dinner service, commissioned by Kenneth Clark in 1932, featured the Empress Theodora as one of the twelve queens depicted on the set of fifty plates. But the interest of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantine art was more fundamental than this. Byzantium had a vital place in Clive Bell’s Art (1914); Clive, art critic and husband of Vanessa, declared ‘since the Byzantine primitives set their mosaics at Ravenna no artist in Europe has created forms of greater significance unless it be Cézanne’. His enthusiasm was shared by Roger Fry, both artist and art critic (and collaborator with Vanessa and Duncan in the Omega Workshop, 1913-1919), who initially labelled Cézanne and Gauguin as ‘proto-Byzantines’ before adopting the term ‘post-Impressionists’. Boris Anrep, who worked in mosaic (e.g. at Westminster Cathedral), knew Fry (Anrep’s wife left him for Fry), Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf.
The workshop is open to members of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (reduced fee), but also to non-members (full fee). The reduced fees also apply to members of the British School at Athens.
For more information and to register, please visit: https://www.byzantium.ac.uk/byzantium-and-bloomsbury-a-one-day-online-workshop-1-april-2026-10am-5pm-organised-by-the-society-for-the-promotion-of-byzantine-studies/
When: 1 April @ 10:00 am - 5:00 pm BST
Where: Online only – –