Funerary Vessel with an Underworld Scene (body) and a Battle between Greeks and Amazons (neck), (detail showing Sisyphus, condemned to an eternity of rolling a boulder uphill and watching it roll back down), South Italian, made in Apulia, 360–340 BC; found in Altamura, Italy, in 1847, terracotta. Red-figure volute krater attributed to the Circle of the Lycurgus Painter. National Archaeological Museum of Naples, 81666
Beyond Death: Visualizing the Afterlife in the Ancient and Early Modern World
GETTY VILLA
Auditorium
This is a past event
Throughout history, the prospect of death has inspired diverse beliefs about what is to come. Ideas about the next world and moral judgement have provoked creative visions from artists around the globe. Learn from experts about the ways the afterlife has been imagined in a variety of cultures and religions, from depictions of eternal suffering to blissful ideals of paradise.
Participants:
John Kieschnick is chair of the religious studies department and Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Buddhist Studies, Stanford University.
Claire Lyons is curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum and a classical archaeologist whose fieldwork and research center on pre-Roman Italy and Sicily.
Christopher Moreman is professor of philosophy and religious studies at California State University East Bay with research interests in death, dying, and ideas of the afterlife.
Maeve O’Donnell-Morales specializes in the art and history of medieval Iberia and is currently with the department of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Foy Scalf is a specialist in ancient Egyptian religious literature, and he serves as head of research archives and the Integrated Database Project at the Oriental Institute, Chicago.
David Saunders is associate curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum and a classical archaeologist specializing in the study of Greek and South Italian vase painting and iconography.
This program complements the exhibition
Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife on view through March 18. Parking fee $15.
