The modern tendency to separate the verbal and the visual, catalyzed by the invention of printing and enshrined in such classic works as Lessing’s Laocoon, would have been alien in a pre-modern culture such as Byzantium. Rather than operating as two distinct fields of signification and expression, the verbal and the visual were mutually imbricated. Physical artifacts and figural representations evoked and commonly incorporated texts, while writing partook of the materiality and sensorial immediacy of the visual object. Besides, images, objects, and texts variously participated in a broader system of communication and social interaction, in which speech, gestures, and ritual action played a no less important part. Ivan Drpić (Art History) will explore some aspects of the overlap and synergy of art and text in Byzantine culture. The lecture will focus upon inscriptions, in particular those with literary aspirations.