Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 in Fine Arts Gallery, HART, VRC.

The CBS Sunday Morning video crew arrived early the morning of March 26 to set the stage for an interview in the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery with Robin Jensen, Luce Chancellor’s Professor of the History of Christian Art and Worship at Vanderbilt University.

Interviewed by CBS News correspondent Martha Teichner, Jensen was featured on CBS Sunday Morning on March 31 as part of the cover story that aired on Easter Sunday. Teichner interviewed Jensen about the depiction of the Virgin Mary in art. Jensen also described some of the images of Mary—seven paintings from the Samuel Kress Collection—that are on view in the gallery as part of the Vanderbilt University Art Collection. Follow this link to the segment of CBS Sunday Morning that featured Jensen.

Jensen teaches courses in both the History of Art department and the Divinity School, among them, a course entitled “Mary, the Magdalene, and Eve in Christian Art, Text, and Tradition.” Most of her research and publication focuses on the interpretation of early Christian art and architecture in light of its theological significance, ritual performance, and cultural context. Her courses include introductions to Jewish and Christian pictorial hermeneutics; visual representations of God, the Trinity, Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints; the religious art of Late Antiquity; and the art of the early Roman empire.

Her most recent books are Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (Brill, 2011), and Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity (Baker Academic, 2012). Other books include Understanding Early Christian Art (Routledge, 2000); Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Fortress, 2005) and The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith and the Christian Community (Eerdmans, 2004); She was also a contributing editor and essayist to Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art (Yale, 2008), and co-editor of Visual Theology (Liturgical Press, 2010).