Index of Medieval Art

Prof. Julia Matveyeva to Work with the Index on Ukrainian Cultural Heritage

A woman with her hair pulled back, wearing glasses and a purple scarf
Prof. Julia Matveyeva, Beketov National University of Urban Economy, Kharkiv

We are very pleased to announce that Prof. Julia Matveyeva will be joining the Index remotely in August to work on adding iconography from Ukraine’s medieval cultural heritage in the online database. Matveyeva will begin with St. Sophia in Kyiv, a UNESCO world heritage site and central medieval monument in the history of art. Legacy records of the mosaics of St. Sophia in Kyiv already exist in the print collection of the Index, as do those from Saint Michael’s Golden-Domed Cathedral and almost two dozen records of icons and other objects in Kyiv museums. However, scholars who are not able to travel to use the print Index on the Princeton campus have had no access to these images or their metadata, which moreover are in need of updating. By the end of the project in December, these works of art will be updated and incorporated into the online database, making them available for study by an international community of scholars, students, and lay learners.

A large typed card with a photostatic image of a building interior, and a stack of typed index cards
A photo card (dated 1942) and index cards (last updated 1967) in the Index of Medieval Art print files. Photo: John Blazejewski.

Matveyeva is an Associate Professor at the department of Fine Arts and Design of the O. M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv. Her research has been primarily focused on Byzantine iconography, especially textiles and embroidery, within the Empire and in the neighboring territories, including Kievan Rus’, Romania, Bulgaria, and Italy. Her book Decorative Fabrics in the Mosaics of Ravenna: Semantics and Cultural Context was published in 2020 and she is now working on a new project titled The Evolution of the image of the altar space: from liturgical fabrics to iconostasis in the 4th- 15th centuries. Subjects, semantics, iconography.This project was made possible by a Flash Grant from the Princeton University Humanities Council.

The interior of a domed church with paintings and mosaics on its walls
Interior, St. Sophia, Kyiv (Photo: Rasal Hague CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109689396)