What does an idol look like? Visualizing idolatry in late antique Jewish and Christian art

This chapter proposes a comparative analysis of representations of pagan idols in late antique Jewish and Christian art. The goal is to understand the practical solutions implemented by artists to visualize the concept of idolatry without jeopardizing the legitimacy of the artistic products themselves. By selecting from an established Greco-Roman repertory, late antique artists relied on practices of decontextualization and on specific compositional devices to convert traditional depictions of statues into illegitimate cult objects, making them immediately recognizable to viewers. This unique iconotropic phenomenon is examined here by taking into consideration images in different media and by focusing especially on the ways that the artists’ professional habits contributed to the visualization of idolatry in Late Antiquity.