The proceedings of the second Nicene Council on images have recently been published in Seeing the Invisible: Nicaea and the Statute of Images (Palermo: Aesthetica Edizioni, 1997). As a result of the great interest that this text has raised, and also in light of the importance of its topic and the ways in which the Nicene debate has (re)defined the statute of images, one of the interdisciplinary seminars that the International Study Center on Aesthetics (Centro Internazionale Studi di Estetica) organizes on a regular basis has focused specifically on it. The seminar, entitled "Nicaea and the Culture of Images" (Nicea e la civiltà dell'immagine), took place in Palermo on October 10-11, 1997.
The present volume features some of the most significant contributions that were presented at the seminar. Luigi Russo ("Preface") argues that Nicaea calls for a radical re-thinking of the figurative dimension and an innovative re-writing of its history, while Gianni Carchia ("The Theology of Images as Idoloclasm"), Donatella Di Cesare ("In the Shadow of Images: Aniconism in the Jewish Tradition"), Giuseppe Pucci ("The Statute of Images in Byzantium and the Classical Tradition"), Maria Andaloro ("The Parallel Line of Aniconism"), Lucia Pizzo Russo ("On Images: Between Mimesis and Iconoclasm"), Giuseppe Di Giacomo ("The Second Nicene Council and the Question of Images"), Roberto Salizzoni ("Meeting the Invisible"), Maria Grazia Messina ("Reflections on Iconoclasm and Modernity"), and Marie José Mondzain ("The War of Images, The Crisis of Judgement: On Byzantine Modernity") address a wide variety of different topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, and explore the universe of images in light of the new perspectives that have emerged from Nicaea.