Images at the Crossroads: Media and Meaning in Greek Art

An eagle and a snake, a myth painted on a vase, an image made for a grave: ancient Greek pictures reached people through many kinds of objects, and their setting mattered. Edited by Judith M. Barringer and François Lissarrague, Images at the Crossroads brings scholars of Greek art together to ask how images made meaning across different media.

Some essays consider how myths took shape in pictures; others turn to the work of craftsmen, the ways viewers interpreted images, or the objects used to honour the dead. Clay and stone are studied alongside one another, not as interchangeable surfaces but as materials with different uses and audiences. The meaning of an image depended on more than the scene it depicted.