Volatile Images: The Empty Throne and its Place in the Byzantine Last Judgment Iconography

Eschatological concepts entered the realm of the visual arts of Byzantium and the medieval West surprisingly late. It is not until the middle Byzantine period that we encounter images that depict the end of time, such as the Last Judgment. While the Last Judgment iconography was a relatively late invention, other iconographical motifs, such as images referring to the Book of Revelation had been in use since Late Antiquity. However, those did not acquire eschatological meaning before the high Middle Ages. Here, I concentrate on one particular motif, the empty throne, to illustrate the shift from present to eschatological meaning in the course of the Middle Ages. While it signified an imperial or divine presence during the first millennium, it was increasingly used to refer to the end of time starting in the tenth century. In this study, I do not treat the terms eschatological and apocalyptic as synonyms. In popular use, apocalypse/apocalyptic are frequently understood as references to the end of time and the horrors associated with it and are thus used interchangeably with eschatology/eschatological. However, ancient and medieval apocalyptic literature is characterised by the revelation of otherwise invisible truths; in some cases, those texts might reveal information about the future end of time, but did not necessarily always do so. Therefore, I use apocalypse/apocalyptic only to denote texts or concepts relating to the field of apocalypticism without any temporal restrictions to past, present, or future meanings. Eschatology/eschatological is exclusively used to denote the Last Things and expectations of the future end of time.