Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St Antony at the Red Sea

Architectural Review, The, April, 2002

Caption: The Coptic monasteries of Egypt are quite extraordinary. Lost in the deserts, they are some of the oldest religious foundation in the world, and St Antony's under a barren yellow cliff in the east of the country is the most venerable of them -- perhaps the most ancient religious community in the world.

Its thirteenth-century paintings have recently been revealed again after years of obscurity under layers of soot and bad overpainting. They are joyfully recorded in Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St Antony at the Red Sea, edited by Elizabeth S. Bolman with photography by Patrick Godeau, Yale, London, [pounds sterling]45.