Pratt in Venice Professor Joseph Kopta (PiV '07) delivered a paper, “Middle Byzantine Manuscript Pigments” at Byzantine Materiality, a conference of the Sacred Arts Initiative at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York.

Kopta’s paper considered the construction and meaning of Byzantine manuscripts – particularly Gospel Lectionaries – from a material perspective. His research included that done at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, where he has consulted Byzantine manuscripts over the years during the Pratt in Venice program.

The conference explored matter, materials, and materiality in Byzantine art and culture. It aimed to examine material strategies of objects, makers, and users; the agency and affective properties of materials and objects; Byzantine depictions and descriptions of matter in images and texts; and the senses and embodied experiences in Byzantium.