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Maintaining social order with gruesome images of Hell

Updated Friday, 4 December 2020

Angeliki Lymberopoulou, a Lecturer in Art History at The Open University, explains the meaning of a fresco in the church of Kitiros in Crete.

Long before Dan Brown's "Inferno" fresco painters on the island of Crete attempted to create their vision of Hell. New research sheds light on how these images helped to maintain social order. The frescoes pictured damnation and torture, but employed a touch of modern advertising techniques. Angeliki Lymberopoulou, a Lecturer in Art History at The Open University, explains the meaning of a fresco in the church of Kitiros in Crete. The project "Damned in Hell in the Frescoes of Venetian-Dominated Crete (13th-17th centuries)" has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

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