Book Summary The Language of Space in Byzantine iconography (original) (raw)
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The iconophile attitude that writing and painting are two different but equally efficient mediums for transmission and interpretation of evangelic message is developed in the second phase of iconoclastic controversy and signified with the Greek term γραφία, which could be simultaneously used to denote the act of writing and the act of painting (drawing). Although Byzantine painters never really reached a social dignity and respect reserved for the personage involved in writing practices, it seems, on the other hand, that they had an (unofficial, and presumably unconscious) intention to bring their art into close interaction with the art of writing much before such a necessity was recognized in theory. This research is made through a methodological attempt to focus the theoretical apparatus to the very top of the painters brush, and the very moment of its lending to the painting surface, finding in this discrete area an unexplored gnoseological frame through which the basic (Byzantine) need for synthesis of word and picture could find its way to be expressed in the artistic realms. Precisely, the method for painting of the human eye on portrait – as an almost unnoticeable but extremely persistent distinction of Byzantine art – can be recognized as a specific aesthetic formula which helped realization of such a synthesis. Throughout very dynamic stylistic changes in Byzantine understanding of human face – which diversely forced portraits to loose or to get back their voluminosity, to be molded according to archaic or antique formal models, to hide or to show strong facial expression ... – the lashes on the eye were always executed with one, single, clear and precise, calligraphic, brushstroke. As a semi-transparent area which could protect eye from dust and sun, but also – what is more significant – from the view of the other, eyelashes had a specific potential to became (in life and in art) a mark/expression for the privileged position of a neutral/objective spectator (voyeur), which granted a "freedom" of safe social interaction. On the other hand, eyes on the icon were never allowed to withdraw themselves to the neutral and shielded (gray/blurred), zone of this kind. Even if the concrete stylistic mode provoked a solid level of naturalism for the depiction of hairy zones on portrait, the eyelashes are never depicted with more than one dark and clear brushstroke, resembling a clear, conventional black graphic signs, exercised in alphabetic writing systems. This will bring us, indirectly, back to the γραφία concept, and it's very deep roots in Byzantine (visual) culture. On the basis of presented parallelisms it is possible to presuppose the existence of a specific gnoseological level in Byzantine portrait art where pure conventionalism (as a very semiotic essence of cognitive device such as phonetic writing is) and existential bodily experience of the encounter with the face of the other, actually, could never been pushed to the radical (iconoclastic) oppositions. While the way to such a conclusions inevitably provoked an inclination of our analytic apparatus towards the poetic realms, the profit of such a methodological adjustment is recognized in a novel theoretic possibility to read the holy faces on Byzantine icons as a result of fascinating aesthetic synthesis, which was never a simple historic reminder/illustration, but an authentic and irreplaceable theological means of expression.
2008
Western culture is marked by iconoclasm. This controversial statement made by Gilbert Durand-one of the most renowned French symbologist and philosophers can be understood better if we differentiate it from the phenomenon which took place in the 7 th century in Eastern culture. One can say that Eastern doctrine iconoclasm was rooted in Jewish and Muslim legalism, which strived to maintain the purity of symbol and the depth of its mysterious sense at any cost. Western iconoclasm on the other hand is a result of overuse of image which lead to disappearance of its value and 'evaporating' of its symbolical sense. Looking at European art Durand found orthodox icon, which 7 th Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 784 A.D. described as anamnesis, as the most 'symbolically intensive' phenomenon within the course of history. Thus orthodox icon isn't God's image, but is a visible proof of His existence. However, in Western tradition since orthodox icon and Romanesque art one can observe that significance of symbol gradually deteriorated accompanied by increase of pragmatism and empiricism overtaking philosophical thought, and strive for realism or stressing decorative and mimetic role of image. The most clearly it can be observed in sacral art, which original purpose was to reveal transcendental presence. As icons undoubtedly fulfilled this role, sacral images in Western culture gradually were brought to the role of genre painting. They lost their epiphanic power, power of leading into the world inaccessible to humans and transforming them into the image which they revealed. Significance of image was disappearing, and what goes with it-its role in culture.
Florilegium
The impression given by art history surveys and civilisation courses can often be that Byzantine art is 'flat, flat figures on gold, gold ground.' Take, for instance, the ninth-century mosaic over the imperial door in the narthex of that quintessential Byzantine monument, Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul: Christ is seated on a lyre-backed throne, blessing with his right hand and holding a book open with his left. To either side are roundels containing bust portraits of two members of his celestial court, the Virgin Mary (or the Theotokos, or the Bearer of God, to use proper Orthodox designation) and an angel (Gabriel? Michael?); while the angel gazes sternly out at the viewer, the Virgin turns to the figure of Christ with hands outstretched in a gesture of supplication. Set off in their roundels, these two figures belong to a different field of activity from the fourth participant in this image, the figure of an emperor (identifiable through dress and headgear) kneeling abjectly to...
In this essay we are talking about the style of Christian visual art that is commonly called iconographic. This is a living tradition. It has been strongly preserved in the Eastern tradition of the Church of which there are a number of different, authentic styles, still produced today and all of which correspond essentially to what might be broadly referred to as the ‘Byzantine’ prototype, named after the Eastern Roman Empire that became closely identified with its first development and use. It should be stated that the Byzantine church was not the only one to use icons. Examples of authentic national variations that we see today are, for example, from the various Slav, Greek, Russian and Coptic. I write from the point of view of a practising Catholic and an icon painter, passing on what has been handed on to me, for the most part orally, as part of a living tradition dating back to the early centuries of the Church.
Spatialities of Byzantine Culture from the Human Body to the Universe, 2022
In the Middle and Late Byzantine periods, it became fashionable—even expected—for wealthy patrons to have their works of art and architecture adorned with epigrams. These poetic embellishments served as dedicatory prayers, as expressions of identity, and as comments on the monuments that they adorned. As inscriptions, they are also visual, designed to be perceived and read in situ, and thereby facilitating a reader’s engagement with the inscribed space. Byzantine readers followed texts carved into marble cornices, traced words hammered onto icon frames, and charted verses across multiple sides of objects. One way in which inscribed verses were made more accessible for the reader was the development of placement conventions. These conventions allowed the reader to find the starting point of an epigram on a monument or object and to anticipate how the end of one verse and the beginning of the next would be mapped onto a multi-faceted construction. This chapter takes a closer look at these conventions: what they are, and how they facilitated a reader’s experience with Byzantine space.
BYZANTINE PAINTING TREATISES, I QUADERNI DEL MEDIAE AETATIS SODALICIUM
This article aims to examine the material of a codex entitled Hermeneia of the Painters. The manuscript in question constitutes a copy of an esteemed constitutio textus of late byzantine period regarding the descriptions of Saint's physiognomy along with quotations from their dicta and an entry of verses and epigrams related to biblical events. As I am intended to prove, byzantine painting manuals were not just a collection of technical and iconographical advises, like the post-byzantine ones, but mainly a corpus of theoretical knowledge necessary for artists' nurture.