Description
The Coptic Monastery of St. Paul by the Red Sea grew up across the cave where Paul, the primary Christian hermit, lived in solitude. The cave served as a shrine in overdue antiquity, changed into a church within the middle ages, and expanded again within the early up to date period.
This visually and intellectually exciting book chronicles the history of a series of devotional paintings within the Cave Church. It explores how the monastic community commissioned painting twice within the church within the 13th century, right through some of the greatest eras of Coptic art, and the way some of the monks painted it again within the 18th century, helping to inaugurate a Coptic renaissance after centuries of decline.
The foundation of this volume is a wall painting conservation project sponsored by the American Research Center in Egypt. The book also sets the art and architecture of the Cave Church in its historical context and examines the role of the Monastery of St. Paul as a part of the sacred geography of Christian Egypt through time.