Dear friends and colleagues,

The Centre for Early Medieval Studies at the Department of Art History (Masaryk University) would like to kindly invite you to the lecture From Trace to Print: Histories of an Islamic Image Relic by Prof. Finbarr Barry Flood (New York University). The lecture will take place on May 30 at 7 p.m. in Hans Belting Library (Veveří 28, Brno, Czech Republic).

We are looking forward to meeting you all!

From Trace to Print: Histories of an Islamic Image Relic

Among the most celebrated relics of the Prophet Muhammad was his sandal. Tracings made from the most famous sandal, kept in Damascus, were believed to circulate the blessings (baraka) of the Prophet. These indexes of the relic as outline were often copied in their turn, generating an enchained series that enabled the sandal and its blessings to travel well beyond the site of the relic’s enshrinement. This tradition continued into modernity, when new print technologies were applied to the reproduction of the sandal image. Such images raise significant questions about mediation and the ontology of the devotional image in modernity.