Skip to Main Content

Members' Research Report Archive

Unforgivable Sin: Suicide in Medieval Art

Benjamin Zweig, Research Associate, 2014–2015

zweig-2014-2015

Suicide of Pyramus and Thisbe, detail from an ivory casket. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Scala / Art Resource, NY

This year my research focused on the representation of suicide in late antique and medieval visual and intellectual culture. Expanding on my dissertation (Boston University, 2014), I am examining the iconography of suicide in sculpture and illuminated manuscripts in relation to theological discourses and ritual, the reception of antiquity, courtly love, and medieval theories of emotions. I also continued my work in the digital humanities and research on the art of the medieval Baltic. I published two articles on digital art history, one as single author and one as coauthor, and a book review, and I presented papers in Cortona, Italy, and Reykjavík, Iceland.

Imagining the Unforgivable Sin: Suicide in Medieval Art and Thought
Benjamin Zweig
, Research Associate, 2017–2018

Imagining the Unforgivable Sin: Suicide in Medieval Art and Thought
Benjamin Zweig, Research Associate, 2016–2017

Depicting the Unforgivable Sin: Suicide in Medieval Art
Benjamin Zweig, Research Associate, 2015–2016