Biography
Dr Cecily Hennessy is the Academic Director of Christie’s Education, London. Previously, Cecily was the Director of Studies and prior to that the Programme Director for Art and Collecting: Antiquity to Renaissance degree programme. She received her PhD from the Courtauld Institute in 2001, and she subsequently worked at the Courtauld as Head of Short Courses and Adult Learning before joining Christie's Education in 2006.
Cecily has published Images of Children in Byzantium in 2008 followed by a guide to the paintings in Cappadocia in 2013 and several articles on children, adolescence and the family in Byzantium, on middle and late Byzantine manuscripts, and on the topography and paintings of Constantinople, Ravenna and Jerusalem. She is currently finishing a short guide to medieval Rome.
Research Interests
Representation of children in Byzantine art
Middle and late Byzantine manuscript illumination
Byzantine wall painting
Art and architecture of Constantinople
Early Christian Architecture
Publications & Exhibitions
Books
Early Christian and Medieval Rome: A Guide to the Art and Architecture, 2017
Painting in Cappadocia: A Guide to the Sites and Byzantine Church Decoration, 2013, second edition 2014
Images of Children in Byzantium, Ashgate, 2008
Articles
‘Saint James the Just: Sacral Topography in Jerusalem and Constantinople’, in Tomb and Temple: Reimagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem, Eric Fernie and Robin Griffith-Jones (eds.), forthcoming 2018
‘Architecture/Spolia’, in The Cambridge Handbook to Byzantine Archaeology, M. Decker (ed.), forthcoming 2017
‘Representations and Roles of Adolescence with a Focus on Apocryphal Imagery’, in Coming of Age. Adolescence and Society in Byzantium, Millenium Studies, Despoina Ariantzi (ed.), Berlin, forthcoming 2017
‘The Vatican Epithalamion’, in A Companion to Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts, ed. V. Tsamakda, Leiden, 2017
‘The Theodore Psalter and the Rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2017, study 4
‘Patronage and Precedents: Galla Placidia’s chapel in Ravenna and the Holy Apostles, Constantinople’, Byzantinoslavica, 2016, 201, 26-43
‘‘The byzantine child: picturing complex family dynamics’, in Approaches to the Byzantine Family, edited Leslie Brubaker and Shaun Tougher, Ashgate, 2013
‘The Stepmum and the Servant: The stepson and the Sacred Vessel in the Illustrated Homilies of John Kokkinobaphos’, Proceedings of SPBS Symposium, March 2009, eds. Liz James and Antony Eastmond, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2013.
‘The Chapel of Saint Jacob at the Church of the Theotokos Chalkoprateia in Istanbul’, in Proceedings of 7th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (three volumes), eds J. Curtis, R. Matthews, A. Fletcher, C. Gatz, M. Seymour, St J. Simpson & J.N. Tubb, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012.
‘Young people in Byzantium, Blackwell Companion to Byzantium, ed. L. James, Blackwell, 2010
‘The Lincoln College Typikon: The Influences of Church and Family’, Under the Influence: The Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. A. Bovey, Brepols, 2008
‘The Topography of Constantinople’, Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, ed. E. Jeffreys, with R. Cormack and J. Haldon, Oxford University Press, 2008
‘A Child Bride and her Representation in the Vatican Epithalamion, cod. gr. 1851’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 30 (2006), 115-150
‘Children on Display’, Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, London 21-26 August, 2006, ed. F.K. Haarer and E. Jeffreys with J. Gilliland, Ashgate, 2006, vol. III, 128
‘Children as Iconic Images in S. Demetrios, Thessaloniki’, Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium, eds. A. Eastmond and L. James, Ashgate, 2003
‘A Child Bride and Her Representation in Vatican, cod. gr. 1851’, Byzantine Studies Conference: Abstracts of Papers, Notre Dame 2001
General Books
The Early Christian and Byzantine entries, 30,000 years of art, Phaidon, 2007
The Early Christian and Byzantine entries, 10,000 years of art, Phaidon, 2009
The Byzantine entries, The Art Museum, Phaidon, 2011
Book Reviews
Chypre entre Byzance et l’Occident IVe-XVIe siècle. Edited by Jannic Durand and Dorota Giovannoni, assisted by Dimitra Mastoraki. Musée du Louvre / Somogy éditions d'Art, Paris, 2012, in Burlington Magazine, 2013
July 2013: 'Constantinople and Jerusalem, temple and church' , Leeds International Medieval Congress
July 2013: 'An Empress’s Investment: The Affinities and Intentions of Galla Placidia', Royal Studies Network, 'Kings & Queens 2: Making Connections', Winchester
March 2013: ‘Constantinople and Jerusalem: Church, Chapel and Temple’: Temple and Tomb: Reimagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem, Courtauld Institute of Art
A. Papaconstantinou and A.-M. Talbot, eds. Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium, Washington, D.C. 2009, in Speculum 86 (2011), 255-56.
Natalie Boymel Kampen, Family Fictions in Roman Art, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2009, in Burlington Magazine
‘Recent Publications in Late Antique and Byzantine Art History’, includes: R. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity, Ashgate 2004; M. F. Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation: Prologomena to an Understanding of Spolia in Early Christian Rome, Rome 2003; T. Magnuson, The Urban Transformation of Medieval Rome, 312-1420, Stockholm, 2004. Eastmond, Art and Identity in Thirteenth-Century Byzantium, Ashgate 2005; V. Tsamakda, The Illustrated Chronicle of Ioannnes Skylitzes in Madrid, Leiden 2002, in Art History (2008) 31:399-406
B. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, University Park, Penn. 2006, in The Catholic Historical Review (2007), 93.3:616-7
J. Freely and A. S. Çakmak, Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul, Cambridge, 2004, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2005) 56: 537
Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), ed. H. C. Evans, Yale 2004, Anglo-Hellenic Review (2004) 30:22-3.
J. B. Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered, JACT (2003).
On-line Publications
Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, entries on Childhood in Byzantium; Icons, Iconography; Mosaics
