Henry Schilb

Position
Art History Specialist
Office Phone
Office
2C-4 Green Hall
Education

Ph.D., Indiana University Bloomington, 2009

Bio/Description

Profile

Ph.D., Indiana University Bloomington, 2009

Henry Schilb is an Art History Specialist in Byzantine Art at the Index of Medieval Art. Focusing on late-Byzantine embroidered liturgical veils, Schilb studied with W. Eugene Kleinbauer at Indiana University Bloomington, earning a Ph.D. in 2009 with his dissertation on embroidered aëres and epitaphioi of the Palaiologan and Post-Byzantine Periods. Before joining the Index of Medieval Art, Schilb taught at Indiana University Bloomington and the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He was also a student associate member of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 2004–2005. While the ambit of his research interests has widened to encompass post-Byzantine art, the reception of medieval art in the post-medieval world, and the aesthetic theories of the eighteenth-century portraitist Allan Ramsay, Schilb still specializes in late-Byzantine liturgical textiles, exhibiting a disturbingly persistent interest in the iconography of the Threnos.

Selected Publications

“Singing, Shouting, Crying, and Saying: Embroidered Veils and the Sounds of the Byzantine Rite,” in Resounding Images, edited by Susan Boynton and Diane Reilly (Brepols, 2015).

“The Epitaphioi of Stephen the Great,” in Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages, edited by Kate Dimitrova and Margaret Goehring (Brepols, 2015).

Selected Papers

“How Not to See the Iconography, Ornament, and Inscriptions on Moldavian Epitaphioi,” Fils de foi: autour des broderies religieuses de tradition byzantine, Colloque international, Paris, INHA, May 2019.

“Mutual Peripheries: Differentiating between the Byzantine Traditions of Wallachian and Moldavian Embroideries,” 44th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, October 2018.

“Lost in Translation: The Displacement of Meaning from Post-Byzantine Liturgical Textiles Acquired by R. F. Borough and Burton Y. Berry,” 29th International Conference on Medievalism, October 2014.

“The Complexity of the Threnos: The Elaboration of Iconography, and the Interpretation of Meaning and Function,” The Thirty-Ninth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, November 2013.

“Singing, Shouting, Crying, and Saying: Embroidered Veils and the Sounds of the Byzantine Rite,” Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound, a Conference of the University Seminar on Medieval Studies, Columbia University, May 2013.

“Serbian and Christian Identity in the Embroideries of the Nun Jefimija,” Identity and Authenticity, a Symposium of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Princeton University, March 2013.

“Stephen the Great as Patron and Propagandist: Post-Byzantine Liturgical Textiles as Sites for the Display of Byzantine Identity and Imperial Authority,” 98th Annual Conference of the College Art Association, February 2010.

“Aër or Epitaphios: Terminology and the Functions of Liturgical Veils,” 35th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, November 2009.

“An Unpublished, Sixteenth-Century Epitaphios in the Indiana University Art Museum,” 34th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, October 2008.

“Theater and Threnos: The Embroidered Epitaphios as an Actor in the Liturgical Drama,” 34th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association, October 2008.

“David Hume and Medievalism in Allan Ramsay’s Theory of Taste,” 18th International Conference on Medievalism, October 2003.