Alexei Lidov

Alexei Lidov is a world known specialist in Byzantine iconography, Eastern Christian sacred images and theory of art. Lidov is the founder and director of the Research Centre for Eastern Christian Culture in Moscow (since 1991) and the Director of Research of the Institute for World Culture at the Moscow State University, and an academician of the Russian Academy of Arts (elected in 2007).

Lidov is the author and editor of 23 monographs, catalogues, and collections of articles, among them: Jerusalem in Russian Culture (Moscow 1994; New York Athens 2005), The Eastern Christian Church. Liturgy and Art (Saint Petersburg 1994), The Miracle Working Icon in Byzantium and Old Rus’ (Moscow 1996), Byzantine Icons of Sinai (Moscow/ Athens 1999), The Iconostasis. Origins Evolution Symbolism (Moscow 2000), Eastern Christian Relics (Moscow 2003), Hierotopy. The Creation of Sacred Spaces in Byzantium and Medieval Russia (Moscow 2006), New Jerusalems. Hierotopy and Iconography of Sacred Spaces (Moscow 2009), Spatial Icons. Performativity in Byzantium and Medieval Russia (Moscow 2011), Hierotopy of Light and Fire in the Culture of the Byzantine World (Moscow 2013).

Lidov’s studies in Byzantine iconography, miracle-working icons and relics allowed him to develop a new research field of Hierotopy, in other words, the making of sacred spaces and the historical research that defines this special form of human creativity. Hierotopy spans the traditional fields of art history, archaeology, anthropology, and religious studies, but coincides with none of them. The concept of Hierotopy has been developed in Lidov’s monograph Hierotopy. Spatial Icons and Image-Paradigms in Byzantine Culture (Moscow 2009).