Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean, Ca. 1000-1500 [1 ed.] 9789004250345, 9789004249776

Citation preview

Mechanisms of Exchange

Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean, ca. 1000-1500 Heather E. Grossman and Alicia Walker

Leiden • Boston 2013

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013934999

ISBN: 978 90 04 24977 6 © Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Printed in The Netherlands

CONTENTS Articles Heather E. Grossman and Alicia Walker, Introduction  .......... Melanie Michailidis, Samanid Silver and Trade along the Fur Route  ................................................................................. Renata Holod and Yuriy Rassamakin, Imported and Native Remedies for a Wounded “Prince”: Grave Goods from the Chungul Kurgan in the Black Sea Steppe of the Thirteenth Century  .................................................................. Scott Redford, Portable Palaces: On the Circulation of Objects and Ideas about Architecture in Medieval Anatolia and Mesopotamia  ........................................................................... Justine Andrews, Conveyance and Convergence: Visual Culture in Medieval Cyprus  .................................................................. Maria Georgopoulou, Vernacular Architecture in Venetian Crete: Urban and Rural Practices  ............................................. Heather E. Grossman, On Memory, Transmission and the Practice of Building in the Crusader Mediterranean  ................. Ludovico V. Geymonat, Drawing, Memory and Imagination in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch  .............................................. Eva R. Hoffman, Translating Image and Text in the Medieval Mediterranean World between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries  .................................................................................

1

286

Index  . .........................................................................................

i

17

41 84 115 149 183 220

The page numbers in the above Table of Contents and in the Index refer to the bracketed page numbers in this volume.

In Memory of Melanie Michailidis

Introduction Heather E. Grossmana, * and Alicia Walkerb

Art History Department, University of Illinois at Chicago, MC201, 935 W. Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA b  History of Art Department, Bryn Mawr College, 101 North Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899, USA *Corresponding author, e-mail: [email protected] a 

By means of eight case studies of cross-cultural artistic and architectural interaction in the Middle Ages, this Special Issue of Medieval Encounters offers a range of new material and innovative methodologies for understanding the precise mechanisms that facilitated cross-cultural transmission and the ways in which works of art and architecture produced by these exchanges were understood in the medieval world. The essays collected here highlight approaches and theoretical models that, though particularized to the material under consideration in each instance, have potential for translation to comparable situations in other contexts of medieval Europe, the Mediterranean and western Asia, as well as beyond this period and these regions. The aim of this Special Issue was not, therefore, to present a set of studies united in their focus on a single place, moment or medium, nor does this volume privilege a particular method for interpreting medieval intercultural artistic relations. Rather the essays were envisioned as a compendium of distinct but overlapping exemplars of how scholars today are negotiating the challenges inherent in analyzing medieval cross-cultural artistic transmission. It might be asked why there is a need for such a publication, given the growing body of scholarship on medieval cultural interaction1 as well as 1   Although by no means a comprehensive bibliography, important studies of medieval cross-cultural artistic interactions include the following: Christine Verzár Bornstein and Priscilla Parsons Soucek, The Meeting of Two Worlds: The Crusades and the Mediterranean Context (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1981); Vladimir P. Goss and Christine Verzár Bornstein, eds., The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and

[2]  300

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

increased critical engagement with broader discussions of hybridity, syncretism, appropriation and a framing of the Middle Ages in post-colonial and “global” terms.2 We seek to engage with and expand upon this robust West during the Period of the Crusades (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986); Avinoam Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996); Lucy-Anne Hunt, Byzantium, Eastern Christendom and Islam: Art at the Crossroads of the Medieval Mediterranean (London: Pindar Press, 1998); Robert Ousterhout and D. Fairchild Ruggles, guest eds., Encounters with Islam: The Medieval Mediterranean Experience, Special Issue of Gesta, 43, no. 2 (2004); Alka Patel, guest ed., Communities and Commodities: Western India and the Indian Ocean, 11th-15th Centuries, Special Issue of Ars Orientalis, 34 (2004); Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi, eds., Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Colum Hourihane, ed., Interactions: Artistic Interchange between the Eastern and Western Worlds in the Medieval Period (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2007); Eva Hoffman, ed., Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World, Blackwell Anthologies in Art History 6 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Press, 2007); Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Anthony Cutler, Image Making in Byzantium, Sasanian Persia and the Early Muslim World: Images and Cultures (Farnham: Ashgate/Variorum, 2009); Matthew Canepa, guest ed., Theorizing Cross-Cultural Interaction among the Ancient and Early Medieval Mediterranean, Near East and Asia, Special Issue of Ars Orientalis, 38 (2010); Lieselotte Saurma-Jeltsch and Anja Eisenbeiss, eds., The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformation. Art and Culture between Europe and Asia (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010); and Catarina Schmidt Arcangeli and Gerhard Wolf, eds., Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World. Trade, Gift Exchange and Artistic Transfer (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2010). 2   A number of these terms are defined and explored in the recently published anthology of essays on critical terms for the study of medieval art; see Nina Rowe, guest ed., Special Issue: Medieval Art History Today—Critical Terms, Studies in Iconography, 33 (2012). Also see Robert S. Nelson, “Appropriation,” in Critical Terms for Art History, eds. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 116-128; D.A. Kapchan and P.T. Strong, “Theorizing the Hybrid,” The Journal of American Folklore, 112, no. 115 (1999), 239-253; Claire Sponsler, “In Transit: Theorizing Cultural Appropriation in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 32, no. 1 (Winter 2002), 17-39; Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn, “Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America,” Colonial Latin American Review, 12, no. 1 (2003), 5-35; Heather E. Grossman, “Syncretism Made Concrete: The Case for a Hybrid Moreote Architecture in Post-Fourth Crusade Greece,” in Archaeology in Architecture: Studies in Honor of Cecil L. Striker, eds. J.J. Emerick and D.M. Deliyannis (Mainz: von Zabern, 2005), 65-73; Alicia Walker, The Emperor and the World: Exotic Elements and the Imaging of Middle Byzantine Imperial Power, Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012), esp. xvi-xxii. Three linked initiatives—the Global Middle Ages Project (GMAP), Mappamundi and the Scholarly Community for the Globalization of the Middle Ages (SCGMA), with Susan



mechanisms of exchange

301  [3]

scholarship by focusing on the specific means through which such interactions took place, a topic that has received less attention to date. Examination of the modes of transmission across regions, landscapes, religions and cultures offers insight into many other aspects of cross-cultural artistic and architectural phenomena, including patronage, design and production, taste and fashion, cultural and artistic memory and the creation of knowledge. A further goal of this Special Issue is to consider the possible effects of scale on such transmission: how do the mechanics of interaction differ for portable objects (such as textiles, manuscripts, metalwork, icons, glassware and ivory carvings) versus the monumental (such as buildings and architectural ornamentation)? The relationship between the portable and the monumental is also a primary concern. Several authors take up this question in their case studies, theorizing the roles small-scale works played in transmitting architectural form, decoration and ideas. Finally, consideration of the intentions of and reception by people—as patrons, designers, builders, makers and viewers—in intercultural settings completes our examination of how artistic and architectural exchanges occurred and the impact they exerted in shaping the ever-changing material and visual cultures of the medieval world. The papers included in this volume explore objects and monuments that date between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, covering a period that witnessed an unprecedented degree of cross-cultural exchange throughout the Mediterranean and its littoral as well as abutting regions, especially western and northern Europe and West Asia. This heightened interaction was the result of intensified contacts brought about by trade, pilgrimage,

Noakes and Geraldine Heng directing—seek to “transform how we see and understand the world across macrohistorical time.” See “The Global Middle Ages,” University of Texas at Austin, available online at http://www.laits.utexas.edu/gma/portal/ (accessed 31 May 2012). Eva Frojmovich and Catherine Karkov convened an online research network called “Postcolonising the Medieval Image,” based at the University of Leeds, in order to reposition medieval art histories within new theoretical frameworks. See “Post-Colonising the Medieval Image,” University of Leeds, available online at http://www.post-col-med.leeds .ac.uk/ (accessed 24 April 2012). Also see the current project Art, Space and Mobility in the Early Ages of Globalization: The Mediterranean, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent (MeCAIS) 400-1650, directed by Gerhard Wolf, Hannah Baader and Avinoam Shalem at the Kunsthistoriches Institut Florence–Max Planck Institut and sponsored by The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, available online at www.khi.fi.it/en/forschung/projekte/projekte/ projekt35/index.html (accessed 3 November 2012).

[4]  302

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

war and diplomacy.3 Already in the ninth century, several factors were reshaping the nature of this broad territory, setting the stage for encounters between diverse groups and their cultural production. Charlemagne’s union of western European states in the late eighth and ninth century and his court’s concern for the preservation and encoding of various realms of cultural and scientific knowledge produced an environment that fostered dynamic regional and inter-regional connections. The consolidation of the Abbasid Empire prompted a sharp rise in artistic and architectural interconnectedness throughout the vast territories of this political body, while the establishment of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty generated intercultural exchange within the Iberian Peninsula as well as with various states of northern Europe and the Maghreb. Over the course of the tenth century, the fragmentation of the Abbasid world further stimulated interaction as newly independent groups competed with one another for prominence. Diplomatic exchanges between western European, Byzantine and Islamic courts brought new peoples and goods to distant lands and helped engender shared tastes throughout these regions. With the advent of western European Crusader expeditions to the eastern Mediterranean in the final years of the eleventh century, a new wave of cross-cultural currents put into motion an ever-greater variety of intercultural transmissions. Following 1204, the division of Byzantine territories into multiple courts in exile throughout the former provinces of the empire and a Crusader kingdom centered at Constantinople introduced new rivalry among a plethora of smaller, culturally diverse polities. The ripples of Crusader impact in the Near East were felt long after the loss of actual Latin control of eastern Mediterranean territories in the late thirteenth century. Further east, the continuing dissolution of the Abbasid Empire into autonomous, competing Islamic polities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries spurred dynamic cross-cultural movements of people, things and ideas, as did economic traffic throughout Eurasia along the various trade routes between the eastern Mediterranean and northeastern Europe, Central Asia and the Indian Ocean. Newly autonomous and increasingly powerful Islamic groups, such as the Ayyubids, the Seljuqs and the Mamluks,   In addition to the historical studies cited in the essays that follow, see Janet Abu Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989); Jóhann Páll Áranson and Björn Wittrock, eds., Eurasian Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 3



mechanisms of exchange

303  [5]

not only eroded Abbasid hegemony but also destabilized and eventually usurped Byzantine and Crusader political authority and territorial holdings through the Near East. The establishment of the Mongol Empire in the mid-thirteenth century marked the final demise of the Abbasids and established new networks of exchange, localized farther east but with extensions leading to the Mediterranean. The attenuated devolution of the Byzantine Empire over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries resulted in intensified intercultural contacts through the exchange of religious and political emissaries, the migrations of populations and the establishment of new centers of late medieval Greek culture in the wake of territorial losses to the Ottomans, who were gaining surer footing in the Mediterranean and Near East. The phenomena of tenth- to fifteenth-century cross-cultural artistic and architectural transmission transgress, and thereby challenge, the political, geographic and religious boundaries that are traditionally employed to define, categorize and interpret the art and architecture of this period.4 In so doing, these interactions disrupt notions of static cultural identity or unitary meaning found in many conventional histories of medieval art. The term “Mediterranean” makes possible an alternative framework that offers a more open and fluid field within which to situate the disparate objects, monuments and cultures that were networked with one another in real ways, even if these connections were contingent and constantly changing. Given the prolific scholarly production and debate surrounding the term “Mediterranean” and its varying meanings and connotations, a few words are necessary to explain how it is understood here.5 While the geographic and cultural purview of this Special Issue is defined as “Mediterranean,” the region is understood to have extended deeply into the surrounding geographic and cultural areas of Europe and West Asia. 4   Regarding the conventional geographic and national taxonomies of medieval art history, see Robert S. Nelson, “The Map of Art History,” The Art Bulletin, 79, no. 1 (1997), 28-40; Eva R. Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the 10th to the 12th Century,” Art History, 24, no. 1 (1999), 17-50, at 18-21. 5   From among the numerous recent reflections on current trends in “Mediterranean” studies, see especially W.V. Harris, ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, “The Mediterranean and ‘the New Thalassology’,” American Historical Review, 111, no. 3 (2006), 722-740; and David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[6]  304

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

Indeed no medieval region can be understood as entirely autonomous given the diplomatic, military, commercial and other interactions that routinely occurred throughout the Middle Ages. The histories and networks examined in the case studies gathered here—both within and beyond the Mediterranean—are interdependent and mutually informing. Furthermore we do not judge the Mediterranean as an exceptional region in terms of the concentration or complexity of the cross-cultural artistic exchange that occurred within it; other medieval geographic and cultural areas were also extensively connected to each other and to the broader Mediterranean basin. While advocating for the utility of “Mediterranean” as a designation of geographic relationships and cultural connections, we do not propose it as a uniform totality. In particular we wish to avoid any flattening effect that the term might impose to the degree that it risks eliding the myriad differences among the cultures and artistic traditions located within the region. Rather we see the Mediterranean as encompassing a diversity of microenvironments that are distinct in their chronological, spatial, historical and cultural aspects. Nor can the interpretation of these individual and varied contexts be generated from the top down. Our understanding of medieval Mediterranean art and architecture must be built up from these micro-histories, but with an awareness that a total synthesis is neither possible nor perhaps even desirable: a “Mediterranean art and architectural history” can never be fully defined nor completely encompassed because it was and is a story of innumerable connected entities whose relationships were constantly in flux. Still the understanding of any one of these microcontexts is illuminated by comparison with others. In this sense we employ “Mediterranean” not as a concept that represents an effort toward generalization but as a framework for locating a set of case studies in relation to one another both literally, in essentially geographic terms, and conceptually, as examples of artistic and architectural cultures that are characterized by connectivity and the negotiation of multiple, mutable artistic forms and identities. All this must be done while remaining conscious of the fact that our interpretations of the fragmentary remains of the medieval past will necessarily evolve as new evidence is found, innovative methods of analysis are devised and novel ideas take root. Awareness about the language of analysis must extend, of course, beyond the term “Mediterranean.” A perennial issue in the study of medieval cross-cultural artistic interaction is the question of classification and the degree to which modern vocabulary is at odds with or may obscure the



mechanisms of exchange

305  [7]

ways that medieval viewers interpreted and classified the cultures, objects and monuments that surrounded them.6 Such issues are of fundamental concern because of the deep impact modern, especially nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, taxonomies have had on medieval art history and how they continue to influence our analysis and interpretation of works of art and architecture. Modern nomenclature thus can occlude or distort more than it reveals or clarifies about the ways in which medieval audiences experienced and understood architectural and artistic forms. For this reason when such categories are employed for their heuristic value, they must be used with an acknowledgement of their potential incongruity with medieval systems of classification or notions of identity and meaning. The present Special Issue results from a one-day symposium held on February 25, 2011 at the Center for Renaissance Studies of the Newberry Library in Chicago.7 Six of the essays included here were first delivered at that event, and the revised versions presented here reflect the lively roundtable discussion with which the symposium culminated.8 The essay topics, which span geographically from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia and from Scandinavia to Crete, survey a broad range of objects and monuments, including manuscripts, metalwork, textiles, churches and palaces. These diverse case studies intersect conceptually and methodologically in productive and intriguing ways. Trade has long been recognized as an essential means of artistic transmission in the medieval world, with much attention directed toward the so-called Silk Road that linked the eastern Mediterranean and China over   On this point, see for example Robert Ousterhout, “Ethnic Identity and Cultural Appropriation in Early Ottoman Architecture,” Muqarnas, 12 (1995), 48-62; Sharon Gerstel, “Art and Identity in the Medieval Morea,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, eds. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy P. Mottahedeh (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001), 263-285; and Annemarie Weyl Carr, “Correlative Spaces: Art, Identity, Appropriation in Lusignan Cyprus,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, 14-15 (1998-1989), 59-80. 7   “Symposium on Mechanisms of Exchange,” The Newberry Library, available online at http://www.newberry.org/02252011-symposium-mechanisms-exchange (accessed on 24 October 2012). 8   The remaining two essays were delivered first at other conferences. The article by Melanie Michailidis was presented at the College Art Association Annual Meeting in Los Angeles in February 2012, as part of the session sponsored by the Historians of Islamic Art Association, “The Interconnected Tenth Century.” Heather E. Grossman’s essay was delivered on a panel entitled “Architectural Transmissions” at the Center for Ancient Studies Annual Symposium, “Masons at Work,” at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2012. 6

[8]  306

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

many centuries. Melanie Michailidis’ paper, “Samanid Silver and Trade along the Fur Route,” shifts our focus to a different network of commercial pathways that linked Central Asia with northern European territories (including modern-day Russia and Scandinavia) and that intersected with the cultural and economic circuit of the Mediterranean at key points including the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. Her paper reminds us how expansive and overlapping the interconnectedness of the medieval world was, and how the careful synthesis of material remains recovered from radically dispersed find spots can give shape and substance to the economic connections that moved goods—including works of art—across vast territories. While the Fur Route is a much-studied phenomenon of medieval Russian and Scandinavian economic history, its art historical impact, particularly within Islamic lands, has been less fully explored. Michailidis surveys the archaeological remains that document the coins, textiles and metalwork that moved along this circuit in order to explore the possibility that the import of Samanid works of art may have spurred a distinct stylistic shift in tenth-century art produced in regions of modernday Denmark. She also asks why the Fur Route has yet to impact the study of Samanid art and architecture and outlines possibilities for how future work in this subfield will benefit from a more integrated consideration of these far-flung economic and artistic interactions. Such a perspective also promises to bring to light the Samanids’ highly connected position in medieval economic and artistic exchange, a realization which questions the tendency in medieval Islamic art history to relegate the Samanids to a marginal status, thereby illuminating how sustained attention to intercultural connections can lead to reevaluation of local histories and identities. Renata Holod and Yuriy Rassamakin’s essay, “Imported and Native Remedies for a Wounded ‘Prince’: Grave Goods from the Chungul Kurgan in the Northern Black Sea Steppe of the Thirteenth Century,” examines the archaeological evidence for the transcultural identity of the Turkic Qıpčaqs, a pastoralist nomadic group active in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Eurasian Steppe, and their role in the transmission of pharmaceutical knowledge and courtly practices, specifically medicinal substances and the objects used to contain them. Holod and Rassamakin re-examine the burial site and grave goods excavated in 1981 from the Chungul Kurgan, a tumulus of multiple phases in southern Ukraine’s Molochna-Chynhul River Valley that served as the site of burial for a Qıpčaq “prince” of the highest rank. The richness of the Chungul Kurgan’s contents is without parallel in the archaeological record. A number of



mechanisms of exchange

307  [9]

ceramic and metal vessels from diverse origins in western Europe and the Mediterranean recovered from the site point to the diffusion of not only artistic products but of valuable medicinal substances as well. The trace remains of medical substances indicate that not only physical objects circulated amongst Mediterranean lands, but that medical knowledge moved as well and was deployed simultaneously with local practices. In addition, Holod and Rassamakin explain the far reaching diplomatic, service and familial ties forged by the Qıpčaqs, and how these social networks played a role in the exchange of goods and knowledge over vast distances of the Eurasian Steppe and neighboring territories. The Qıpčaqs exploited the trade routes of southern Ukraine to access foreign materials, which they combined in reuse with Eurasian products both for therapeutic and commemorative purposes. This tomb embodies, therefore, a snapshot of intersecting cultural networks as well as the processes of appropriation that transformed materials and objects from far away into integral components of local identities and practices. Continuing the consideration of the role that portable objects and trade had in linking distant cultural groups, Scott Redford’s essay, “Portable Palaces: On the Circulation of Objects and Ideas about Architecture in Medieval Anatolia and Mesopotamia,” considers how works of art (especially ceramics) and ephemeral architecture (like tents and palanquins) helped disseminate medieval monumental forms across the Eastern Mediterranean and especially between the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Rather than the direct, denotative transmission of architecture through diagrams or descriptions, ceramics (whether in the shape of buildings or decorated with vignettes that include details of the built environment) could connote architecture synecdochically, through representations of discrete features of palatial structures, or metonymically, through depiction of people engaged in particular ceremonial and leisure activities of court life. Similarly tents and litters not only conveyed the key features of monumental structures, such as domes or decorative motifs, but also associated these architectural forms with the social prestige of the buildings’ owners. Redford posits that these works of portable art helped to define and spread a taste for monumental environments and the social practices that transpired within them. In this way, ceramic vessels and ephemeral, small-scale architecture—whether transmitted via trade, diplomatic contacts, population migrations or some other means of cultural interaction—established an intercultural receptivity to large-scale architectural forms and the reproduction of these architectural models in new locales.

[10]  308

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

Justine Andrews’ consideration of medieval intercultural transmission focuses on how architectural forms were reconfigured and reinterpreted when deployed in new contexts. She confronts a long-standing tendency in the literature on the major medieval churches of Cyprus to categorize these monuments and their parts into overly reductive and mutually exclusive stylistic taxonomies of “Gothic” and “Byzantine,” as well as to associate these forms with the presumed cultural identities of the monuments’ patrons and audiences. Her essay, “Conveyance and Convergence: Visual Culture in Medieval Cyprus,” proposes instead that Cypriot architectural forms were continually in flux, neither static nor singular but multifaceted and constantly changing. She decouples them from conventional stylistic assignations that assume discrete and particular geographic or cultural associations for individual architectural elements and sees the precise means of transmission of architectural style to Cyprus as diverse and difficult, if not impossible, to isolate definitively. She argues that an effort to ascertain the range of potential conduits is useful nonetheless because the way that forms came to the island informs the reading of the possible meanings that they conveyed at a given point in time and space. Likewise the people who served as the agents of these transmissions could have passively and actively shaped the intended meaning of a style in its initial use and reception. Historical context and transformation inflected the messages that architectural styles conveyed both at the moments when they were first incorporated into monuments and over the lives of these buildings, as subsequent audiences and renovators introduced new readings of and interventions in the form of a given church. Maria Georgopoulou similarly recognizes the ideological content and cultural markers embedded in the stylistic features of official architectural foundations in the urban centers of another important point of cultural intersection in the Mediterranean region, the island of Crete. However, she questions whether the same phenomenon of polemical intentions and meanings should be read in its rural churches, which she regards as less ideologically signifying structures. In her essay, “Vernacular Architecture in Venetian Crete: Urban and Rural Practices,” she explores how the people of the multicultural, multi-confessional communities of rural Crete experienced pervasive intermingling in their social lives. Georgopoulou proposes that over time this cultural mélange resulted in a language of architecture that was neutral in its political message. Instead a patron or community’s use of an architectural style or form could have reflected trends in fashion that drew upon the island’s cosmopolitan urban centers



mechanisms of exchange

309  [11]

and their local stylistic idioms, rather than from overseas architectural traditions or cultural-political identities. She posits that migrating masons’ workshops may have played an important role in constituting and diffusing these common aesthetic tastes, in part by employing building techniques and possibly ready-made decorations that produced consistent architectural forms across the region and did not make use of stylistic features with the awareness or intent of ideological distinctions. In her essay, “On Memory, Transmission and the Practice of Building in the Crusader Mediterranean,” Heather E. Grossman expands on the consideration of masons’ active roles in the cross-cultural transmission of architectural forms that transpired in the Levant and particularly Greece during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. She explores the diverse ways in which memory operates within the design and creation of architecture and in the transmission of architectural knowledge. Grossman posits that memory, as a means of the dissemination of architectural ideas and forms, is expressed both in the pragmatic aspects of architectural design and construction as well as through the cultural associations that buildings asserted through structure and ornamentation. She argues that scholars often emphasize the latter type of memory, with patrons being privileged as the primary agents for establishing architectural meaning, often with perceived ideological intent. She focuses instead on the discernable evidence of builders’ work found in the archaeological record, interpreting the physical remains of medieval monuments as testimony to masons’, designers’ and patrons’ processes and intentions. Showing how buildings in various cross-cultural contexts of the medieval Mediterranean exhibit the intermingling of different architectural styles and construction techniques, she argues that the employment of various modes of architectural memory in changing and fluid conditions helped shape new, highly localized identities and taste. Grossman proposes that ultimately we should see buildings as sites of collaboration, where patrons, designers, masons and viewers produced and perceived both practical and cultural memory and meaning in dynamic and dialogic ways. Ludovico V. Geymonat also considers the role of memory in artistic and architectural transmission in his essay, “Drawing, Memory and Imagination in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch.” He revisits a well-known, thirteenth-century “modelbook” to demonstrate its role in cross-cultural transmission as a record of a medieval artist’s visual cognition and imagination. Noting the unusual distributions of figures from the same iconographic scenes across several pages of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch and

[12]  310

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

the artist’s interest in problems of representation over iconographic detail or accuracy, Geymonat suggests that the illustrations are best understood as indexes of artistic process aimed at understanding and assimilating new forms and effects. He posits that the drawings represent not faithful recordings of full iconographic programs, but rather visualized mental notes that the Western European artist made in order to translate into his own hand unfamiliar works of Byzantine art and by which to commit to memory the noteworthy features of monuments and objects that he observed during his travels. In this process of transmission, the artist transformed his sources, merging large- and small-scale models on the pages of his sketchbook and synthesizing what were no doubt a diverse range of formal types into the uniform style of his own hand. Giving prominence to the artist as the agent of transmission, Geymonat shifts our focus from the iconographic meaning of medieval works of art to the process of their creation and the force of the artist’s imagination in shaping them. He also reconsiders the very notion of the medieval modelbook and suggests that rather than functioning in a fashion similar to other examples, the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch should instead be understood as unique to its maker’s intent and needs. While Geymonat explores the translation of artistic effects from monumental to portable arts and from a Byzantine to northwestern European artistic tradition, Eva R. Hoffman considers translation as a textual and visual process through her reappraisal of a body of material that has been central to studies of medieval scientific and artistic transmission: copies and glosses made in numerous locales on the medical and herbal manuscript De Materia Medica, by the first-century CE Greek physician and scholar Dioscorides. Her essay, “Translating Image and Text in the Medieval Mediterranean World between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries,” challenges perceptions of translation as a linear procedure that promises unaltered renditions of original meanings. Hoffman instead presents translation in both the verbal and visual domains as a complex undertaking, characterized by the negotiation of unfamiliar forms and the production of new understandings that approximate but never exactly embody the original. She sees translation as an ongoing, creative process that locates, secures and even expands understanding. She uses the copies of De Materia Medica as a case study for tracing how the medieval Islamic scholar-artist simultaneously transformed and transmitted visual and textual renderings of scientific learning that entered their cultural sphere from other Mediterranean contexts as well as earlier time periods.



mechanisms of exchange

311  [13]

The essays gathered here, although treating diverse media, chronologies and geographies, highlight recurring themes in today’s scholarship on cross-cultural artistic interaction, as well as demonstrate methodologies applicable throughout medieval art history and different areas of the field or other disciplines. The role of memory in transmission—whether of artistic, architectural or scientific knowledge—is a particular concern in the contributions from Geymonat, Grossman and Hoffman. In distinct ways, each of these essays provides possibilities for considering the creative processes and practical solutions that are inherent in any artistic endeavor, but which rarely are explicitly documented. Such processes might be appreciated as particularly relevant to instances of cross-cultural artistic and architectural transmission, when the processing of unfamiliar forms and meanings required concerted efforts at mediation and interpretation.9 Through their ambitions, memories (sometimes reinforced with drawings and verbal descriptions) and gestures (such as tracings on the ground or other impermanent marking), people conveyed forms and changed aesthetics, and these processes were especially powerful when individuals traveled between distant geographical and cultural domains. Perhaps because of the anonymity of most medieval patrons, designers and craftsmen, modern scholars sometimes envision the interaction of medieval artistic styles via unpeopled transactions.10 Such methodologies have been productive, and some of the essays in this issue expand upon this approach to the extent that they explore how objects moved across the medieval world and in the process produced new horizons of artistic and architectural taste and meaning (see Hoffman, Michailidis, Redford and   This point has been fruitfully examined with regard to cross-cultural reception of works of medieval art. For example, see Barbara Zeitler,“Cross-Cultural Interpretations of Imagery in the Middle Ages,” Art Bulletin, 76, no. 4 (1994), 680-694; and Alicia Walker, “Cross-Cultural Reception in the Absence of Texts: The Islamic Appropriation of a Middle Byzantine Rosette Casket,” Gesta, 47, no. 2 (2008), 99-122. 10   See the diverse studies that focus on the “social lives of things,” “thing theory” and the “biographies of objects,” which has burgeoned the last several decades, for example, Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” in Things, thematic issue of Critical Inquiry, 28, no. 1 (2001), 1-22; Saurma-Jeltsch and Eisenbeiss, “Introduction,” The Power of Things, 10-22; and an April 2013 conference: “Ding, Ding, Ting: Objects as Cultural Mediators. German, Dutch and Nordic Language Areas,” Université Paris—Sorbonne (Paris IV), available online at http://colloque.objetsmediateurs.overblog.com/article-call-for-papers-101444435.html, with a useful bibliography (accessed 26 October 2012).  9

[14]  312

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

Holod and Rassamakin). Still objects and monuments are not animate, of course, and there were always human agents behind them, even though these individuals and their actions are often difficult to trace given the dearth of textual and other evidence directly documenting their identities, activities and intentions.11 By demonstrating the records of craftsmen’s, artists’ and masons’ transmission in the marks left in stone and on parchment, Georgopoulou, Geymonat and Grossman show how people might be reinscribed in these histories of production and dissemination. Redford, Andrews, Georgopoulou, Grossman and Holod and Rassamakin also remind us that monuments and objects express not just ideology but fashion as well, thereby attending to the ways that patrons and makers shaped artistic and architectural forms and offering new approaches for thinking about the importance of taste in the consideration of medieval objects and monuments. The question of scale prompts another set of questions in transmission studies that has not yet received full attention.12 Geymonat, Michailidis and Redford drive home how the movement of both people and things aid transmission between the monumental and the portable. These essays remind us that while modern scholarship often draws a bright line dividing architecture from smaller works of art, this was not likely to have been the case for medieval patrons and designers. Geymonat and Michailidis explore how small-scale objects such as manuscripts or metal vessels may have served to transmit figural compositions and decorative motifs among distant locations and across diverse media. Redford further examines the classifications of scale by drawing attention to how “portable” architecture—whether ultimately of large scale (as in the case of tents) or small scale (as in the case of ceramic objects in the shape of or depicting

  A point recently emphasized and further explored by Avinoam Shalem, “The Otherness in the Focus of Interest: or, If Only the Other Could Speak,” in Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World, eds. Arcangeli and Wolf, 29-44, at 29-30. 12   The issue was raised by Eva Hoffman in her well-known essay on portability and continues to receive growing attention in the field of art history; see Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability,” 33-41, which cites additional studies of note. More recently the topic of scale was the focal point of the conference “Size Matters: Questions of Scale in Art History,” held November 8-10, 2012. See “Size Matters: Questions of Scale in Art History,” Kunsthistoriches Institut Florence–Max Planck Institut, available online at http://www .khi.fi.it/en/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung388/index.html (accessed 27 October 2012). 11



mechanisms of exchange

313  [15]

architectural forms)—allowed monumental forms to move across geographic and social space. In thinking across classifications that are produced and perpetuated by art and architectural scholarship, these papers help break down boundaries of scale or media in order to assess the complex ways in which artistic and architectural transmission actually took place between diverse types of art. Another challenge to the traditional nomenclature of art and architectural history is found in the contributions of Andrews, Georgopoulou and Grossman, each of whom actively scrutinizes the language used to characterize medieval artistic and architectural styles. They highlight the insufficiency of seemingly stable artistic, cultural and religious taxonomies such as “East and West” or “Latin and Orthodox,” pointing instead to the mutable character of these categories across medieval time and space. Furthermore they draw attention to how canonical terms—such as “Gothic,” “Byzantine” and “Islamic”—that purport to represent monolithic identities were in fact composed of multiple socio-cultural entities, which in turn were in constant flux over long spans of time and geography. Similarly Hoffman shows how in the “spaces of translation” created by medieval Dioscorides manuscripts, the religious, political or linguistic origins of a given author were noted, but the scientific knowledge that scholar-translators produced and transmitted was understood as a shared tradition that encompassed Greek, Arabic and Latin languages and cultures. By parsing the terminology of analysis applied to situations of cross-cultural interaction, these essays offer more accurate understandings of how the visual and the material circulated within an ever-changing medieval world and how the meaning conveyed by objects and monuments transformed over time. Not only do the authors expand definitions of canonical terms, they also move the disciplinary scope of this Special Issue beyond art and architectural history to encompass archaeological methodologies and evidence recovered from excavations. Michailidis, Redford, Grossman and Holod and Rassamakin draw attention to how archaeological data complements art historical information in shaping our understanding of medieval cultural, political and economic connections. These studies attest to the benefit gained by working in interdisciplinary modes and indicate that the full history of any one medieval region can sometimes only be traced by extending significantly beyond the ostensible “borders” of not only geographic domains but scholarly ones as well. The publication of these essays—and the symposium from which they grew—would not have been possible without the generous support of

[16]  314

heather e. grossman and alicia walker

several institutions and numerous individuals that similarly crossed institutional and disciplinary frontiers. We thank the Newberry Library, especially Carla Zecher, Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies, Karen Christianson and Tia Parks, for endorsing the topic of our symposium and for the generous financial and organizational assistance that made the event possible. Special recognition is also due to the Newberry Consortium Committees of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis, the Dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Lectures and Events Committee of the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago for their support. Numerous colleagues across many areas of medieval studies and in related fields actively contributed to the final roundtable discussion at the Newberry symposium, enriching the conversation and our understanding of the topic immeasurably. We are indebted to Cynthia Robinson, both for the initial invitation to edit this Special Issue of Medieval Encounters and for her guidance throughout the production process, and to Marc Jamuszewski for his patience and flexibility in shepherding this Special Issue to print. We are also grateful to the anonymous reader who provided valuable comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript, contributing significantly to its improvement. Lastly we thank the authors of the essays, who worked tirelessly and with unfailing good humor to bring this project to fruition.

Samanid Silver and Trade along the Fur Route

a 

Melanie Michailidisa,b,*

Department of Art History and Archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1189, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA b  Saint Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA *E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract While much scholarly attention has been devoted to cultural exchange in recent years, most of the focus has been on the Mediterranean Sea and the land and sea routes connecting China to the Islamic world and beyond to Europe. In the tenth century, another major trading route also flourished between Central Asia and northeastern Europe. Furs and slaves were sent from Scandinavia, Russia and Eastern Europe in exchange for silver which was mined in the realm of the Samanids in Central Asia. Not only were Samanid coins used as currency by the Vikings, but Samanid luxury metalwork objects have also been found in Europe. Using the evidence of such finds, this paper posits the Fur Route as a major avenue of cultural interchange in the Middle Ages and the Samanids as important actors on the medieval global stage. An examination of their far-flung trading connections along the Fur Route not only reveals transmission between these regions, but also reiterates the importance of the Samanids in the history of Islamic art and in that of the broader medieval world. Keywords Samanids, Vikings, Central Asia, silver

The volume of trade along the Fur Route, the major trade pathway between Central Asia and northeastern Europe that flourished in the tenth century, was significant. Of course, the Fur Route did not exist in isolation, but was one circuit in a dense and far-reaching network of global interchange. This lesser-known route is intriguing in its evidence of artistic interchange not only in and of itself, but also because it adds in important ways to the discourse on medieval cultural transmission. Since the evidence comes from a combination of visual analysis, archaeology, numismatics and literature, there may be methodological applications that could be relevant

[18]  316

melanie michailidis

to other areas as well. The primary motivation for contact over such a vast distance was economic, and the main objects that were traded were light and portable luxury items, namely silver and textiles. The motifs that were transmitted via these valuable goods are also found in other artistic media in Samanid Central Asia, such as monumental architecture. This relationship between the monumental and the portable raises interesting points about the transmission of motifs between media as well as between cultures. Although this article deals with the artistic interchange between Viking objects of the tenth century and objects imported into Viking regions from Central Asia along the Fur Route, it should be made clear from the outset that it was written by a specialist in the art of the Samanids of Central Asia, and not in the art of the Vikings, and my interests ultimately rest with a reconsideration of Samanid visual and material culture. Crossing area boundaries in this way is an exercise almost as fraught with danger as travelling along the Volga in the tenth century, since no one can possibly speak with equal authority on two regions as geographically distant as Central Asia and Scandinavia.1 Disciplinary boundaries within art history configure the world as distinct geographical zones, and so one must necessarily exit one’s academic comfort zone in order to discuss cross-cultural transmission at all. There can be a definite methodological benefit in doing so, since a specialist from another part of the discipline may be able to offer observations that would not occur to those who are enmeshed within

  While there are historians who have used Islamic textual sources in the study of Eastern Europe, such efforts delve into the history of one area, rather than treating the history of two disparate regions with equal depth. For example, see the work of Omeljan Pritsak, the first Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, who was the most prominent of such historians. In his lifelong study of Kievan Rus, he combined his interests in Turkic linguistics and Ukrainian history to utilize a much wider array of sources than any of his predecessors. See Pritsak, Studies in Medieval Eurasian History (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981); and The Origin of Rus’ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). Historian James E. Montgomery also extensively used Arabic sources in his work on the Vikings; see James E. Montgomery, “Vikings and Rus in Arabic Sources,” in Living Islamic History: Studies in Honour of Professor Carole Hillenbrand, ed. Yasir Suleiman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 151-165; and Montgomery, “Arabic Sources on the Vikings,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink (London & New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), 550-561. 1



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 317  [19]

a particular historical and historiographical discourse. The study of cross-cultural transmission can also bring about new observations on the historiography of the sub-discipline of origin, which in this case is the history of Islamic art. Transmission between the Samanids and Vikings makes an interesting case study because of the various types of evidence—economic, archaeological, historical, artistic—that can be brought to bear on the question; there is no need to rely solely on visual analysis to suggest a connection. Focusing on a Samanid perspective, this article will outline this evidence and suggest the types of conclusions that may be drawn. The intention here is not to make any definitive claims about an area outside my own geographical focus, but to share some preliminary thoughts on a topic which has not been fully explored in relation to the Samanids and seems to be very promising for future research. One aim is to initiate a dialogue with those who do have a deep knowledge about the art of the Vikings, and to stake a claim for the Fur Route alongside the other trading networks of the medieval world which have garnered a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years, namely the Silk Route, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In doing so, I will highlight the historiographical trajectory that has largely sidelined both the Fur Route and the Samanids in the history of Islamic art. My larger aim is to argue that the Samanids should not be regarded as peripheral or provincial, as has often been the case to date, but instead as major players in the medieval intercultural artistic and commercial spheres. The Samanids in Islamic Art History In order to appreciate the value of Fur Route evidence for a reevaluation of the Samanids, it is instructive to survey their current and long-standing peripheral place in the field of Islamic art history, a position which, I argue, is not reflective of the important role they played in medieval history and art history. The Samanids ruled over an area encompassing the modern states of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and parts of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Iran, from 874 until 1005. They were notable for being the first Islamic dynasty to promote Persian as a language of government and literature. This was a very significant step, as it not only revived and energized the Persian language, now written in Arabic script and incorporating many Arabic loan words, but it also facilitated the

[20]  318

melanie michailidis

transformation of Islam from an Arabic religion to a world religion.2 Up to this time, Islam was associated with Arab ethnicity, so that converts had to be at least superficially assimilated into an Arab tribe. The adoption of Persian as an official language by an Islamic dynasty was accompanied by pride in a Persian identity, and this creatively constructed identity was no longer seen as incompatible with being a proper Muslim. The Samanids themselves were not Persian, a word that refers to Fars Province in Iran. They originated from the area around Termez, on the Oxus River, and the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, an area then inhabited by the Bactrians, a group who spoke another Iranian language. Much of the area under Samanid rule was inhabited by yet another Iranian ethnolinguistic group, the Sogdians, as well as the descendants of Arabs and Persians who had mostly come into the region as conquering soldiers. Faced with competition from the Sogdian aristocracy, the Samanids justified their rule by claiming descent from the Sasanians, the great Late Antique Persian dynasty, who ruled Iran from 224 to 651. The Samanids used their literary and artistic patronage to bolster these claims.3 The Samanid capital, Bukhara, was a cultural and intellectual center on a par with the other major cities of the Islamic world in the tenth century such as Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba. The famous doctor and philosopher Ibn Sina (d. 1037), for example, found patronage at the Samanid court. Samanid artistic production included ceramics made for domestic consumption that have been hailed as among the very best produced in the Islamic world in any era.4 Made in Samanid cities such as Samarqand and Nishapur, these ceramics were generally covered with a white slip and decorated with bold Arabic inscriptions in black around the rim (black vessels with white inscriptions are also common, as are red accents). The inscriptions are secular, moralizing aphorisms that would have appealed to a sophisticated, bilingual, urban clientele. They have been 2   Richard Frye, “Comparative Observations on Conversion to Islam in Iran and Central Asia,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic & Islam, 4 (1984), 81-88. 3   For an overview on the history of the Samanids, see Richard Frye, “The Samanids,” Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4: From the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, ed. Richard Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 136-161. 4   For an overview of Samanid art, see Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture 650-1250 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 110-113, 116-128; Melanie Michailidis, “Landmarks of the Persian Renaissance: Monumental Funerary Architecture in Iran and Central Asia in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries” (PhD diss., MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2007), 205-23.



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 319  [21]

found throughout Iran and Central Asia, but not more widely. Additional slip-painted wares, including some with figural decoration in a particular local style, were found in Nishapur. Samanid ceramics, then, were made to appeal to local and regional tastes, and not for export. Samanid silver and textiles, on the other hand, were used locally and exported. Textiles show a strong continuity from the pre-Islamic period, with pearl-bordered roundels enclosing birds or animals, often confronting one another. Birds and animals frequently sport fluttering scarves round their necks and birds often hold necklaces in their beaks. All of these features can be seen in pre-Islamic Sasanian and Sogdian silks, and, for this reason, attributing and dating Samanid textiles is often difficult. Just as the earlier silks have been found from western Europe to Japan, Samanid silks likewise enjoyed a wide distribution. Silver vessels, such as the magnificent salver in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (Fig. 1), have also been found in western Europe and in former Samanid territory. These vessels are stylistically distinct from their Sasanian precursors, although they do exhibit similar techniques of hammering, engraving, chasing and gilding, as well as the same artistic vocabulary seen in the silks. Their shapes and the way the roundels interlace are two details that are characteristic of the tenth century and hence indicate a Samanid provenance. Samanid architecture is best known for the dynastic mausoleum in Bukhara, a building that harks back to the Sasanian and Central Asian past in many ways (Fig. 2).5 This dynastic structure re-interprets the open, four-arched form of the Zoroastrian fire temples of Sasanian Iran, reflecting Samanid claims to Sasanian descent as one component of their political program. Its battered walls are a Central Asian tradition, and its arcaded gallery references the Zoroastrian ossuaries of Central Asia. The decorative pearl borders on the interior and the exterior exemplify the longevity and ubiquity of this particular motif, found in multiple media even in the early Sasanian period. The movement of decorative motifs such as the pearl border between media, including monumental architecture and portable objects, is characteristic of Islamic art in general and Samanid art in particular. Through the textiles and silver that were exported, such motifs received a wide distribution. The Samanid mausoleum and the epigraphic ware ceramics appear in virtually every survey of Islamic art and architecture and can be considered to be part of the medieval Islamic artistic canon. Despite this, the location   Michailidis, “Landmarks of the Persian Renaissance,” 224-289.

5

[22]  320

melanie michailidis

Figure 1.  Senmurv Plate, Samanid, tenth century, silver, partly gilded. Museum für Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. Photo: Georg Niedermeiser. Art Resource, New York, NY, USA. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/ 15700674.



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 321  [23]

Figure 2.  Samanid Mausoleum, c. 907, Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Photo: Melanie Michailidis. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674. of the Samanids at the northeastern end of the area covered by survey textbooks of Islamic art has caused them to be relegated to a peripheral status. In Robert Hillenbrand’s volume in the Penguin World of Art series, Central Asia (along with Spain) is characterized as one of the autonomous “extremities of empire” in the chapter on the Abbasids.6 Samanid art and architecture are not even treated in the same chapter: Samanid silks and ceramics are discussed in the Abbasid chapter,7 whereas the Samanid mausoleum appears in the chapter on the Saljuqs,8 rendering it a somewhat anomalous precursor to Saljuq domed, square mausolea. Likewise in Barbara Brend’s survey, the Samanids appear in the Saljuq chapter as a   Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture (London & New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 39. 7   Ibid., 49-58. 8   Ibid., 104. 6

[24]  322

melanie michailidis

brief Persian interlude in the area “where the Arab impact had been least felt,” to be quickly followed by the advent of Turkish domination.9 While the facts are true enough, they are presented in a way that implies a brief flash of glory on the periphery, before the main eastern Islamic capital moved to the more central location of Isfahan. Brend says, “The rule of the Seljuk Turks does not embrace the whole period, but is its most important feature.”10 Even in the longer and consequently more thorough volume by Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina in the Pelican History of Art series, Transoxiana, the province where the Samanid cities of Samarqand and Bukhara are located, is referred to as a “frontier area.”11 In the volume by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom in the Phaidon “Art & Ideas” series, Transoxiana in the ninth and tenth centuries is described as one of the Abbasid Empire fringes that unraveled.12 The province’s location on the edge of the regions under consideration in these texts, and at the edge of the geographic area covered by Islamic art history as a discipline, inevitably relegates it to the conceptual periphery as well. The peripheral status of the Samanids in standard survey books is not solely due to the geographical boundaries of the discipline, however. Very few North American or Western European historians of Islamic art work on the Samanids, undoubtedly due to the geopolitics of the twentieth century. Since the Samanid capital, Bukhara, and much of their former territory falls in the former Soviet Union, this material was the province of Soviet archaeologists. Hence it was logistically very difficult for Westerners to access before the fall of the Soviet Union, and most of the literature remains inaccessible to the majority of Western scholars because it is in Russian. Outside of the former Soviet Union, study of Islamic Central Asia falls under the remit of those who work on Iran. Yet its geographical location to the northeast of Iran makes it peripheral for these specialists, a situation augmented by the fact that many scholars do not find the time to master Russian in addition to other, more necessary Islamic languages. As a result, Central Asia is commonly viewed as a northeastern extension of Iran, rather than a separate region in its own right. The uniqueness and complexity of this region are subsumed into general statements about Iran, so that the Samanids are described in every survey text as Persian, even   Barbara Brend, Islamic Art (London: British Museum Press, 1991), 70.   Ibid. 11   Ettinghausen, Grabar and Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture, 105. 12   Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, Islamic Arts (London: Phaidon Press, 1997), 131.  9 10



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 323  [25]

though they were not. This is true of Islamic Central Asia in any period: for example, in the post-Samanid period, the Saljuqs, who ruled an area encompassing much of modern Iraq, Iran and Turkmenistan, are included in the surveys, whereas the Qarakhanids (r. 999-1211), their rivals in Transoxiana, are entirely overlooked. As a whole, the region of Central Asia is prone to being treated with sweeping generalizations and frequent inaccuracies. In the Russian literature, however, this is not the case.13 Samanid art is classified as Central Asian rather than Islamic, since regional rather than religious categories determined the disciplinary boundaries in Soviet cultural taxonomies. Central Asia is therefore not seen as peripheral, but cross-cultural connections both within and without the Islamic world are nonetheless downplayed. Soviet archaeology and art history divided geographically along the boundary lines of the Soviet republics, so that the notion of a distinct Uzbek, Tajik and Turkmen art was promoted in the service of forging an identity for each of these entities created in the 1920s during the Stalinist era. The result is that the structure of art history as a discipline, both in the former Soviet Union and in other areas, has mitigated against any exploration of the long-range trade connections of the Samanids. Yet even cursory examination of these connections shows that the Samanids were not peripheral at all, but instead at the center of several different trading systems. The widespread distribution of their textiles and silver, serving as an inspiration to artists in other regions, shows that they deserve to be studied as a topic of focus and in all their complexity rather than relegated to what is erroneously viewed as a remote and inconsequential area on the fringes. They were involved in economic exchange with other regions of the Islamic world, with the Turkic nomads to their north, with China via the Silk Route and with the Vikings via the Fur Route. Viking and Samanid Art along the Fur Route Like the term “Silk Route,” the term “Fur Route” is slightly misleading in that neither silk nor fur were the only materials to travel these paths. In fact a wide variety of goods were traded along both networks: in the case 13   See, for example, Galina Pugachenkova and L.I. Rempel’, Istoriia iskusstva Uzbekis­ tana (The History of Uzbek Art) (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965).

[26]  324

melanie michailidis

of the Fur Route, silver was exported from Samanid territories in Central Asia in return for furs, slaves, wood, amber, honey and other commodities from the North.14 Silver took the form of both coins and objects, such as the aforementioned salver in the Pergamon Museum (see Fig. 1). Samanid silver coins, and possibly other silver objects as well, were used as currency by the Vikings, who did not have access to silver mines in any of their territories.15 During the tenth century, the Vikings occupied a wide swath of northern and eastern Europe, including Scandinavia, parts of the British Isles, the Baltic coast and settlements extending far down the Volga River. Objects found in Viking contexts throughout this area exhibit interlaced designs that bear some similarity to decorative motifs associated with Islamic art, including the frequently cited arabesque. Although interesting, this similarity is not the subject of this article, which addresses stylistic innovations seen in Viking art of the tenth century that may evince a more direct response to the influx of new artistic models from Samanid Central Asia. The possibility of artistic transmission between the Samanids and Vikings is not, to my knowledge, something which has been suggested before. The new stylistic developments in Viking art take their name from objects found in Denmark.16 The first is the so-called Jelling Cup, found in the grave of a queen and dated to approximately 900 (Fig. 3). Made of silver, this vessel is engraved with an elongated serpentine beast whose body weaves around the circumference of the cup. The body is studded 14   For a recent discussion of Viking trade routes, including the Fur Route, and a summary of earlier literature on the subject, see Søren Michael Sindbœk, “Local and LongDistance Exchange,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink (London & New York: Routledge, 2008), 150-158. See also Susan E. Kruse, “Trade and Exchange across Frontiers,” in Silver Economy in the Viking Age, ed. James Graham-Campbell and Gareth Williams (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007), 163-176; Janet Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 5-14, 35-43. 15   See Birgitta Hårdh, Silver in the Viking Age: A Regional-Economic Study (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1996). 16   For a recent summary of the historiography of Viking art and its classification of successive styles, see David M. Wilson, “The Development of Viking Art,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink (London & New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), 323-338. Also see Aidan Meehan, The Dragon and the Griffin: The Viking Impact (London: Thames & Hudson, 1995); James Graham-Campbell and Dafydd Kidd, The Vikings (New York, NY: William Morrow, 1980), 153-178; The Vikings Exhibition. Exposition Viking, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON: Queen’s Printer, 1968); David Wilson and Ole Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966).



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 325  [27]

Figure 3.  Jelling Cup, Viking, c. 900, silver. National Museum of Denmark. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674. with round shapes, which resemble a feature found extensively in Islamic art; by convention, these motifs are called “pearls” in Islamic art historical literature. In literature on Viking art, the technique of ornamentation seen on the Jelling Cup has given rise to the term “Jelling style,” used for objects exhibiting elongated, pearl-studded animals. This style continued during most of the tenth century but was gradually superseded in the second half of the tenth century by the “Mammen style,” a name taken from another iconic object found in Denmark, the so-called Mammen Axe (Fig. 4). Made of iron with silver inlay, this axe boasts a profusion of the pearl studs seen on the Jelling Cup. The animal depicted on the axe has been described as a bi-pedal bird, and according to scholars of Viking art, this is a new

[28]  326

melanie michailidis

Figure 4.  Mammen Axe, Viking, mid-tenth century, iron with silver inlay. National Museum of Denmark. Photo by Roberto Fortuna and Kira Ursem. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674. motif either introduced from another part of Europe or developing from indigenous Scandinavian motifs (in which case it could hardly be classified as new). It is interesting to note that the possibility of an origin outside of Europe is not suggested in the literature. The term “Mammen style” is used to describe objects with dense, pearl-studded interlace, including the famous Casket of the Kunigunde, or Bamberg Casket, from the treasury of Bamberg Cathedral in Germany, now in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich (Fig. 5). This oak casket is overlaid with walrus ivory punctuated by gilded bronze bands. Each of the compartments on the sides is filled with a pearl-studded beast encased in interlace; one of these has a peacock-like tail similar to that seen on the Mammen Axe. The compartments on the lid contain a human face, a dragon-like animal, a pair of confronted dragons and a pair of confronted birds holding the ends of a vegetal interlace in their beaks. Viking art is conventionally described as a succession (somewhat overlapping, but a succession nevertheless) of distinct styles, and it is the style of the animals as well as the appearance and profusion of the pearl motif which is said to differentiate the Jelling and Mammen styles from earlier Viking art of the ninth century.



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 327  [29]

Figure 5.  Casket of the Kunigunde (Bamberg Casket), Viking, tenth century, oak, walrus ivory and gilded bronze, Inv.-Nr. MA 286, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum.

These particular motifs, new to Viking art of the tenth century, are also found in the art of the Samanids, although the possibility of a Samanid source for this innovation in Viking art has not been previously suggested. One motif which was prominent in many different media of Samanid art, including textiles, silver and architectural decoration, was the pearlstudded border. Another motif seen in different media from late antiquity onwards was the senmurv, a mythological beast that was part feline and part bird. A Sasanian example of a senmurv inside a roundel with pearl borders is seen in a stucco remnant from Chal Tarkhan, a site excavated near modern Tehran.17 The senmurv retained its popularity during the Samanid period as part of the creative adaptation of aspects of Iranian antiquity amidst Samanid claims to Sasanian descent. Hence the senmurv encased within a roundel at the center of the Pergamon Museum’s silver salver (see Fig. 1), which alternates with flowers in the smaller roundels

17   Prudence O. Harper, The Royal Hunter: Art of the Sasanian Empire (New York, NY: Asia Society, 1978), 118, no. 50.

[30]  328

melanie michailidis

surrounding it, bespeaks the Samanid appropriation and re-interpretation of the Sasanian artistic inheritance. It is also the primary motif of a silk that is part of a fur-lined garment found in a tomb in the Caucasus and now at the Hermitage (Fig. 6). Though variously dated, this is a post-

Figure 6.  Silk, Samanid, from Moschevaya Balka, late ninth century. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Molodkovets. © The State Hermitage Meseum.



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 329  [31]

Sasanian and possibly early Samanid silk.18 Other Samanid silks exhibit another motif that was used in textiles without interruption from late antiquity onwards: pairs of confronted birds, animals or people, either encased within pearl-studded roundels or interspersed between roundels containing vegetal interlace. Tenth-century Scandinavian works of art may reflect additional connections with Samanid models beyond the pearl motif noted above. While the animal on the Mammen Axe is more bird-like than composite, it does exhibit similarities with the senmurv, with its prominent tail plumage and the way its body is curved to fit the shape of a roundel or an axe head. The thick lips and open mouth, seen also on the Jelling Cup, are similar to features of Samanid senmurvs, and the curved snout of the Jelling animal resembles that of the senmurv on the silver salver. One of the Bamberg Casket animals also has a senmurv-like appearance, and the confronted birds holding vegetation in their beaks on the lid strongly echo those seen in Central Asian textiles. Granted, both pearl borders and confronted birds were ultimately derived from Sasanian textiles, which enjoyed a wide distribution in Late Antiquity and beyond and have been found from France to Japan. Hence this was a widely disseminated motif that conceivably could have entered Viking art by a number of routes. Similarly the scroll of split palmettes on the metal bands of the Bamberg Casket is a ubiquitous feature in the art of the medieval Islamic world. But taken together the confronted birds, the senmurv-like animals, the pearl studs and the split palmettes strongly suggest a connection with Samanid art. Textual and Numismatic Evidence of Cultural Interchange In many other cases of possible medieval cultural transmission, suggestive visual comparisons cannot be supplemented with other types of evidence, but the likelihood of a connection between Samanid and Viking art can be further supported through numismatics and textual sources. The fact that

18   See Ettinghausen, Grabar and Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture, 125-126; Krishna Riboud, “A Newly Excavated Caftan from the Northern Caucasus,” Textile Museum Journal, 4, no. 2 (1975), 21-42; A. Ierusalimskaia, “Novaya Nakhodka tak Nazyvaemogo Sasanidskogo Shelka c Senmurvami” (A New Find of the So-Called Sasanian Silk with Senmurvs), Soobshcheniya Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha (Bulletin of the State Hermitage), 34 (1972), 11-15.

[32]  330

melanie michailidis

such evidence exists for this potential cross-cultural artistic interchange makes this a particularly interesting case study. The references to the Vikings in the histories, geographical treatises and accounts of travelers from the Islamic world are numerous enough that they comprise one of the main types of primary source available for the study of the Vikings. The earliest account was that of Ibn Khordadbeh in the ninth century, and tenth-century authors who describe the Vikings include Ibn al-Faqih, al-Yaʾqubi, Ibn Rusta, Ibn Fadlan, al-Balkhi, al-Istakhri, Ibn Hawqal, al-Masʿudi and the anonymous author of the Hodud al-ʿAlam.19 In these texts, the Vikings are referred to as “Rus”20 and are described as inhabiting an area extending from the British Isles to the Volga, dominating the northern sea and conducting raids as far south as Spain. In other words, the area of the Rus in the Arabic sources coincides with the region inhabited by people generally referred to as Vikings. Nuances of ethnic identification are less relevant for the argument presented here than the fact that these are the people who traded with the Samanids, used their coins as currency and produced the objects examined in this article. The Rus are distinguished in the tenth-century sources from the Slavs, called “Saqaliba,” and the Bulghars, who also had settlements along parts of the Volga and suffered from the raiding of the Rus. These sources describe the Rus as a fierce and warlike people who mostly practiced a pagan religion. Their funerary customs, including ship burials, cremation and burial with grave goods, were of great interest to Muslim authors, as they differed significantly from Muslim practices. Ibn Fadlan, who was part of an embassy sent by the caliph from Baghdad, described the funeral of a chieftain at length, including the sacrifice of a female slave

19   For a summary of ninth- to eleventh-century Islamic sources on the Vikings, see Montgomery, “Vikings and Rus in Arabic Sources,” 151-165. Also see Egil Mikkelsen, “The Vikings and Islam,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink (London & New York: Routledge, 2008), 543-549; and Montgomery, “Arabic Sources on the Vikings,” 550-561. For sources in translation, see for example: Ibn Rusteh, Ibn Rusteh: les autours précieux, trans. Gaston Wiet (Cairo: Geographical Society of Egypt, 1955), 163-165; Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia, trans. Richard Frye (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2005), 63-71; Hudud al-ʿAlam, trans. V. Minorsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 159. 20   The extensive scholarly debates over the exact definition of this term are not the relevant factor here. On this issue, see Montgomery, “Vikings and Rus in Arabic Sources,” 151-165.



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 331  [33]

to accompany him in the afterlife,21 a practice echoed in the accounts of the historian al-Masʿudi, who travelled north of the Caspian, and the geographers al-Balkhi, al-Istakhri and Ibn Hawqal. The archaeologically attested practice of burial with grave goods is referred to by the eleventh-century historian Ibn Miskawayh, who describes a tenth-century battle between Muslims and the Rus, after which the Muslims raided Rus graves in order to retrieve the swords buried with their enemies’ fallen warriors. In addition to describing cultural differences such as funerary customs, religion and clothing, the Muslim geographers elucidated which geographic areas were controlled by which groups, categorized the topography and described the main settlements and the products each area produced. The picture which emerges is one of a thriving trade with the Rus, who brought furs such as sable, marten, beaver and fox, as well as slaves, amber, honey and other commodities, down the Volga, which empties into the Caspian Sea. The lower reaches of the Volga were controlled by the Khazars, a Turkic people whose leaders had converted to Judaism. But the Khazars were not always intermediaries: both Rus and Muslim traders had outposts in areas controlled by the Khazars, where they came into direct contact with each other, and some of the Viking traders even converted to Islam. Others converted to Christianity, although Ibn Khordadbeh in the ninth century cast aspersions on the genuineness of such conversion, suggesting that it was a front in order to foster better trade relations. One commercial route, prominent during the time of Ibn Khordadbeh, branched away from the Volga and went south to Baghdad; in the tenth century, this was superseded by trade going all the way down the Volga into the Caspian. On the south side of the Caspian is the Elborz mountain range, which is difficult to traverse even today. The eastern side was dominated by the Ghuzz, a nomadic Turkic tribe famed and feared for their raids on cities to the south of the areas they inhabited. Nevertheless, there was a network of fortified buildings which served both as military outposts and as caravanserais connecting Samanid territory with the Caspian. The Samanids also directly controlled a corridor of access to the Caspian near Dehistan. In the southeast corner of the Caspian was the realm of the Ziyarids, another Persianate dynasty; some of the Viking furs did go through the Ziyarid capital, Gurgan, and from there to Rayy, one of the   Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia, 67-70.

21

[34]  332

melanie michailidis

capitals of the Buyid dynasty, which controlled western Iran and Iraq during this period. The wealth of the Buyids and Ziyarids, however, paled in comparison to that of the Samanids, who minted large numbers of the silver coins desired by the Vikings. The goods purchased from the Vikings, particularly the furs and the slaves, were equally prized by the Samanids. The natural resources of their realm comprised one major source of Samanid wealth; another was derived from a head tax on the slave trade. The use of slave soldiers was a practice which had spread from Central Asia to the entire Islamic world, and slaves who passed through Samanid territory, both Turks from the steppes to the north and Slavs brought down the Volga, were exported to rulers’ courts as far away as Cairo. Their female counterparts were destined to be concubines, entertainers and servants at these same courts. The scale of this trade is well-attested by numismatic evidence. From the late eighth and ninth centuries, dirhams minted in Baghdad have been discovered in large quantities in former Viking territories.22 By the tenth century, the Baghdadi coins were vastly overshadowed by those of the Samanids, who pledged nominal allegiance to the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad but enjoyed a de facto independence. One of the major indicators of their political autonomy is the fact that they minted their own currency, and hoards of Samanid silver coins have been found all over Scandinavia and eastern Europe. The numbers are staggering: while a mere 700 Samanid coins have been unearthed in Norway, 5000 have been found in Denmark, 85 000 in Sweden and a quarter of a million in Russia along the banks of the Volga. Considering that only a tiny fraction of the coins once   There is an extensive literature on the numismatic evidence and other related objects used as currency. See, for example, Svein H. Gullbekk, “Coinage and Monetary Economies,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink (London & New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), 159-169; Märit Gaimster, “Viking Economies: Evidence from the Silver Hoards,” in Silver Economy in the Viking Age, eds. James Graham-Campbell and Gareth Williams (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007), 123-133; Birgitta Hårdh, “Oriental-Scandinavian Contacts on the Volga, as Manifested by Silver Rings and Weight Systems,” in Silver Economy in the Viking Age, eds. James Graham-Campbell and Gareth Williams (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007), 135-147; Thomas Noonan, The Islamic World, Russia and the Vikings, 750-900: The Numismatic Evidence (Aldershot: Variorum Reprints, 1998); Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 65-66; Tadeusz Lewicki, “Le commerce des Samanides avec l’Europe orientale et centrale à la lumière des trésors de monnaies coufiques,” in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Dickran K. Kouymjian (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1974), 219-233. 22



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 333  [35]

in circulation are extant and above ground today, the scale of the trade between the Samanids and Vikings was clearly very substantial. It is also evident from the contexts in which they were found that Samanid coins were used as a form of currency by the Vikings. Some coins, however, were altered in this new context, with either a cross or a pagan hammer carved over the Samanid inscriptions, which included the Muslim profession of faith and Qur’anic verses. Other coins were transformed into jewelry, in the form of pendants on the necklaces of women, seen in burials in northern Europe. Viking silver neck rings and armbands, used for currency in some areas as well as for personal adornment, were probably often composed of melted Samanid silver coins. Hence there was an aesthetic reaction to Samanid coinage, the meanings it conveyed and the symbols it employed, as well as an appreciation of its material and monetary value. Coins were not only used as they were, but also altered to fit their new contexts and the new meanings they acquired. The surfaces of Samanid coins are filled with epigraphy; they do not bear the confronted birds, senmurvs, split palmettes and pearl borders found in metalwork, textiles and other luxury objects. Those motifs reached the Viking world via luxury metalwork and silk. Yet coins and metalwork are related in their production and circulation, and I would argue, in their aesthetic reception and adaptation to local needs and tastes as well. The Samanid cities where the main mints were located, namely Balkh and Samarqand, were also renowned for their silversmiths, who produced thinly hammered vessels with engraved designs inlaid with niello and sometimes gilded for accent. The very lightness of these vessels made them easy to transport, and hence probably as important as textiles for the transmission of artistic motifs across cultures and over great distances. Unfortunately silver vessels are inherently valuable and convertible; prone to being melted down for their raw material, they rarely survive unless buried. The Pergamon Museum salver (see Fig. 1) is one of the most magnificent surviving pieces of Samanid silver, and it is significant that it was found in Germany, rather than in Uzbekistan or Afghanistan. Little silverwork has been recovered in former Samanid territory. In Russia, however, a number of Samanid silver objects have been discovered in cities such as Perm, situated along the Kama River (a tributary of the Volga). These objects are now in the Hermitage, which has a collection of Samanid silver displaying motifs such as peacocks enclosed within roundels, pearl borders and split palmette scrolls (Figs 7 and 8). They are important not only as surviving examples of Samanid silverwork, but also as tangible

[36]  334

melanie michailidis

Figure 7.  Ewer, Samanid, tenth century, silver, partially gilded. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Molodkovets. © The State Hermitage Museum.



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 335  [37]

Figure 8.  Vase, Samanid, tenth century, silver, partially gilded. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Molodkovets. © The State Hermitage Museum.

[38]  336

melanie michailidis

proof of the export of such goods to areas under or near Viking control. Closer to Central Asia, similar motifs are also seen in a contemporary silver hoard found in northern Iran, an area bordering Samanid territory and part of the same cultural milieu. Textiles also do not survive well, particularly fragile and perishable silks. Again, textual sources speak highly of Samanid textiles woven in centers such as Zandana, near the capital, Bukhara. It is difficult to overstate the importance of textiles in the medieval world in terms of their economic significance and their role in the transmission of artistic motifs. The delicate silks and lavish brocades produced in the Samanid realm had no equal in tenth-century northern Europe, and hence were valuable and soughtafter commodities. Furthermore, their light weight and the ease with which they could be packed and carried made them relatively easy to transport. Samanid and related textiles that survive today usually travelled beyond Samanid territories in the medieval era and were often carefully guarded by their subsequent owners, as shown by their frequent use in high-ranking burials. One famous example is the Shroud of St. Josse, made in tenth-century Afghanistan for a high-ranking Ghaznavid amir and later used to wrap the body of a French saint.23 Smaller scraps of technically sophisticated fabric with a diamond pattern have been found extensively in excavations at Swedish sites such as Birka. There is a general consensus that this type of fabric was not produced locally, but also a great deal of debate regarding exactly where it was made.24 The archaeologist Agnes Geijer has argued that these diamond-patterned worsted woolens came from Syria, but this has been refuted by other scholars on technical grounds.25 As there are diamond-patterned textiles with a Z-spun warp 23   The Ghaznavids initially gained power as Samanid governors of Afghanistan, and continued to model their court culture on that of their former overlords. Therefore this textile is indirectly related to Samanid production. For further information on the Shroud of St. Josse, see Ettinghausen, Grabar and Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture, 126-127 and fig. 203. 24   For a summary of the literature on the origin of the Birka finds, see Eva Andersson, The Common Thread: Textile Production during the Late Iron Age – Viking Age (Lund: Institute of Archaeology, 1999), 13. For an analysis of comparable material found in the Oseberg ship burial in Norway see, Arne Emil Christensen, Anne Stine Ingstad and Bjørn Myhre, Oseberg-Dronningens Grav (Oslo: Schibsted, 1992), 200-203. 25   Agnes Geijer, “Textile Finds from Birka,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson, eds. N.B. Harte and K.G. Pointing (London: Heinemann, 1983), 80-99. For a refutation of Geijer’s argument focusing on the



samanid silver & trade along the fur route 337  [39]

that have been conclusively attributed to Central Asia,26 a Central Asian origin for the Birka textiles should definitely be considered.27 There is also the early Samanid silk from a burial in the Caucasus (see Fig. 6): although it was found a bit off of the Fur Route, this garment, with its combination of a beautifully woven green and gold silk with a luxurious fur lining, exemplifies the trade along the Volga, and it prominently bears a repeating pattern of senmurvs enclosed within pearl roundels. The vast geographical spread of Samanid luxury goods in northern and eastern Europe indicates that the Samanids were wealthy, artistically sophisticated and widely connected in the medieval trading system. The idea put forth here that the portable art they exported may have inspired artists in regions ruled by the Vikings posits the Samanids as vibrant actors on the global stage, situated at the juncture of several major trade routes. This is an image that contrasts strongly with that seen in survey textbooks of Islamic art, where the Samanid realm is depicted as a remote break-away province on the northeastern fringes of the Abbasid Empire. Here the study of cross-cultural transmission serves as a useful counter-balance to the inevitable distortions created by the geographical divisions within the discipline of art history. Conclusion Although the number of extant examples of Samanid works of art from along the Fur Route is small, they do show that the Samanids exported luxury objects, echoing the tenth-century geographers’ descriptions of goods produced and traded. These objects were not directly copied by the Vikings, but they do seem to have served as a source of inspiration for Viking artists, who selectively chose and re-interpreted some motifs to fit their own cultural milieu and adorn objects that they valued, such as the Jelling Cup and the Mammen Axe. The new styles that evolved in Viking art of the tenth century therefore show that trade along the Fur Route, in technical evidence see, Lise Bender Jørgensen, North European Textiles until AD 1000 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1992), 138-140. 26   See James Watt and Anne Wardwell, When Silk Was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese Textiles (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), 27-28, 50-51. 27   Chinese silks have also been found at Birka, indicating that textiles did traverse both the Silk Route and Fur Route. See Annika Larsson, “Viking Age Textiles,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink (London: Routledge, 2008), 181.

[40]  338

melanie michailidis

addition to its economic significance, may have had an artistic impact as well. The Fur Route, like the more famous land and sea routes, appears to have been a major avenue of cultural interchange in the medieval world; it is certainly worth a closer look and merits further research. Fur Route trade serves as an example of cultural transmission that can be documented in interlocking ways, using stylistic analysis, archaeology, numismatics and literary sources. Through long-distance trade, motifs that carried a particular connotation on both monumental and portable objects in a Samanid context were adapted and re-interpreted to fit the Viking context. The specific connotations of the Jelling and Mammen styles in their own society are best left to specialists in the art of the Vikings. My hope is to have offered a new interpretation of how these motifs may have suddenly entered tenth-century Viking art by examining the question from the point of view of a different sub-specialty of art history. Fur Route trade also demonstrates the inter-connectedness of the medieval world. Branches went to Constantinople, tying the Fur Route into the Mediterranean trading system. In the Samanid cities, the Fur Route met the Silk Route, as well as the routes bringing Turkic slaves from northern Central Asia into the Islamic world. Viewing the Samanids’ realm as the nexus of three major trade routes puts them in an entirely different perspective from the way they are often viewed in Islamic art history. Rather than peripheral, their main cities were thriving hubs in a multi-centered world. Rather than looking only towards Baghdad, they reached out in every direction, and their influence was widely felt in many different spheres. The study of cross-cultural transmission serves as a necessary corrective to the seemingly impermeable geographical boundaries that conventionally structure art history as a discipline, and puts the Samanids in a limelight that they richly deserve.

Imported and Native Remedies for a Wounded “Prince”: Grave Goods from the Chungul Kurgan in the Black Sea Steppe of the Thirteenth Century

a

Renata Holoda, * and Yuriy Rassamakinb

  Department of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, 301 Jaffe Building, 3405 Woodland Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6208, USA b   Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Heroiv Stalingrada Avenue 12, 04210 Kyiv-210, Ukraine *Corresponding author, e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract A burial of a Turkic (Qıpčaq/Cuman/Polovtsian) prince excavated in the grasslands of southern Ukraine is witness to an exchange in objects and products throughout the Black Sea/Mediterranean littoral, the Middle East, and central and northwest Europe in the Middle Ages. The grave goods, arms and costumes, which are of unprecedented richness for a medieval Turkic burial, are datable to the first three decades of the thirteenth century. They were likely accumulated through trading and raiding or through diplomatic and marriage gifts of this Qıpčaq leader, and his tribal confederation, with the neighboring Rus’, Georgian, Armenian, Hungarian, Byzantine, Crusader and Islamic polities. Among the grave goods excavated in the tumulus/ kurgan are a variety of containers such as two complete and reused amphorae, glazed ceramic albarello and bottle and a gilded silver covered cup. The albarello and bottle could be associated with the Mediterranean pharmacological practice of shipping valuable substances in specialized containers. Other vessels, such as the covered ceremonial cup from northwest Europe, were reused likely in a complex ritual utilizing plants native to these grasslands. This paper will consider the circumstances under which these substances would have been deposited and discuss the origins and uses of the containers. Keywords Qıpčaq, Cuman, Polovsti, Turkic beliefs and burial ritual, tumulus, grave goods, Turkic steppe ethno-medicine, medieval and Islamic pharmacology and trade, albarello, amphorae, covered cup, feasting

In imagining the medieval world of the Mediterranean and discussing the interactions of its many polities and cultures, it is perhaps far fetched to

[42]  340

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

include the area belonging to the western Eurasian steppe within its scope and primary interests. Yet, whether in trade or war, this area of grasslands inhabited by nomadic confederations continued to remain in the orbit of Byzantium, the Crusader States, the Seljuks of Anatolia, and their neighboring states. A constant transit center for the fur trade, the region was a source for products that were much desired elsewhere in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. A continual source of manpower, it provided mercenaries and slaves to the main Mediterranean centers: Egypt, Syria, Byzantium, Venice, Genoa and beyond. It is thus fortuitous that physical traces of these interactions have been found in the archaeological record. A careful study of these finds reveals, at the same time, the connectedness and separateness of the great steppe “sea” and the waters of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The thirteenth-century historian Aubry of Trois-Fontaines, a Cistercian resident in Crusader Constantinople, wrote of the burial of a Qıpčaq chieftain in a tumulus outside the walls of the city, accompanied into the afterlife by eight warriors and twenty-six horses.1 Probably much exaggerated in his account, this description of burial, nonetheless, mirrors aspects of the Chungul Kurgan described below where there were five horses and one human sacrifice. Jean de Joinville (c. 1224-c. 1317) reported a similar burial rite with only one horse and an attendant. A great mound then was raised to cover the burial.2 Notably, he also tells of the attendant being given money by the participants in the rites to be returned to them in the afterlife. While both commentators focus on what was foreign and bizarre to them, they do record the Qıpčaq belief in the afterlife. What they could not record are the details of the grave goods and how these could function as records of exchange, belief and customs. The Excavation of a Kurgan The salvage excavation in 1981 of a tumulus, the Chungul Kurgan, has allowed for a reconstruction of the burial ritual for a Qıpčaq (Cuman/ 1   Albericus Trium Fontium, Chronicon, in MGH SS, XXIII, 950; I. Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars: Oriental Military in the Pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185-1365 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 66. 2   Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. Noël L. Corbett (Sherbrooke, Québec: Naaman, 1977), 186-87; D. Sinor, “John of Plano Carpini’s Return from the Mongols,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 89 (1957), 203-204.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

341  [43]

Polovets) notable or “prince”3 in the steppe of the Molochna River system of southern Ukraine (Fig. 1).4 This tumulus or kurgan was raised on the high right bank of a wide and marshy valley of a river complex that flows into the Azov Sea. With permanent water and protection from the severe climate of the steppe plateau, the Molochna-Chynhul5 River valley system formed an ideal environment for winter quarters for several sequential pastoralist polities throughout antiquity and the medieval periods, among them Scythians, Sarmatians, Pecheneqs and Qıpčaqs. This burial, initially named Chynhul (Russian orthography: Chingul) Kurgan by the excavators, was built up to almost five meters using an earlier Eneolithic-Bronze Age tumulus as a platform. It stood in line with other burial mounds, which had been raised by other, earlier pastoralist polities. Despite the changing ethnic, political and linguistic identities of these societies, it was the specific nature of the original landscape, which drew transhumant societies to this area of the western Eurasian steppe. Its economic capacity was highly desirable, providing secure, sheltered locations for winter pastures and continuous water for the summer. The visually prominent geographic features, in particular its high right bank lined with rows of tumulus “hills,” could be understood cumulatively as a miniature imitation of the 3   We are using the title “prince” to indicate high rank only, and in full recognition that this would not have been the correct title in the Turkic world. As there is no information about the actual rank of the deceased: bey, khan or other title, we have adopted the more general and neutral, “prince.” 4   For the first notice of the excavation results, see V. Otroshchenko, “Raskopki kurganov v Zaporozhskoi oblasti” (Excavations Kurgans in the Zaporozh’e Oblast’), Arkheologicheskie otkrytiia 1981 goda (Kiev: Institute of Archaeology, 1983), 300-302; a fuller report appeared in V. Otroshchenko and Y. Rassamakin, “Polovets’kyi kompleks Chynhul’skoho kurhanu” (The Polovtsian Complex of the Chynhul Kurgan), Arkheolohiia, 53 (1986), 14-36. To develop a more complete, detailed study of the burial and its grave goods a project team was organized supported by a J. Paul Getty Collaborative Grant, 2006-2009, consisting of Oleksandr Halenko (Institute of History, Kyiv), Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA), Vitalij Otroshchenko (Institute of Archaeology, Kyiv), Yurij Rassamakin (Institute of Archaeology, Kyiv) and Warren T. Woodfin (Queen’s College, CUNY, New York, NY). 5   Molochna (Ukrainian), Molochnaya (Russian) is a translation of the older Turkic toponym: süten meaning milky; see O. Pritsak, “The Polovcians and Rus’,” Archivium Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 2 (1982), 334. Chynhul (Ukrainian) Chingul (Russian) is a version of the Turkic chungul/çöngul, meaning “boggy;” see J.W. Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon (Constantinople: Printed for the American Mission by A.H. Boyajian, 1890), 740, s.v. chungül. Henceforth, we will be using the Turkic version, Chungul Kurgan, as the name for the tumulus site in all publications of this project.

Figure 1.  Location map of Chungul Kurgan in southern Ukraine. After Woodfin, Holod and Rassamakin.

[44]  342 renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

remedies for a wounded “prince”

343 [45]

Figure 2. Detail from map of the Chynhul-Molochna River Valley of the mid-nineteenth century with all kurgans marked as dots. After Podrobnaya Militarnaya Karta po Granyts Rossii s Turtsiyeyu, part 1 (St. Petersburg, 1800). sacred geography of the Altai Mountains (Fig. 2).6 This is also the landscape that provided ready access to the ports and landings of the Sea of Azov and, within several days’ ride overland, connections to the trading entrepôts of the Crimean peninsula. Through these ports the western end of the Eurasian steppe communicated and traded with the Mediterranean world at large, whether in antiquity as was the case with the Scythians and On sacred geography of Turkic peoples and the Altai Mountains, see for example P.B. Golden, “Religion among the Qıpčaqs of Medieval Eurasia,” Central Asiatic Journal, 42 (1998), 180-237. 6

[46]  344

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Sarmatians or, in particular for this study, during medieval times in the case of the Goths, Pechenegs and Qıpčaqs. To the south through Crimean ports like Sudak/Soldaia lay the southern shores of the Black Sea: Byzantium (and after 1204, the Empires of Nicaea and Trebizond and the Despotate of Epirus), Bulgaria, the Latin Empire of Constantinople and its fiefs, the Crusader States, the realms of the Seljuks of Anatolia and Ayyubid Syria; to the north and west: the Rus’ principalities such as Kyiv, Pereyaslav and Halyč-Volyn’ and the kingdoms of Hungary, Poland and realms of the Teutonic knights; to the east and south: territories of the Alans, the kingdom of Georgia, the Seljuk Atabegates and the Khwarazmshahs. It is this particular location in the steppe within which a full evaluation of this burial, and its spectacular inventory, must take place. The grave goods allow for identifying the tomb as that of a Qıpčaq/ Cuman/Polovets leader or “prince” and for dating the burial to the first part of the thirteenth century.7 The Qıpčaqs, a confederation of nomadic, mainly Turkic tribes, were relative new comers to the Black Sea Steppe. They arrived from Central Eurasia to these territories in the middle of the eleventh century, displacing the earlier nomadic confederations of the Pechenegs and the Torks (Oghuz). At the same time as they inhabited the Pontic Steppe, from the Danube to the Volga, the Qıpčaqs interacted with the neighboring settled societies in several ways. They became a force to be reckoned with: raiding and trading, as well as intermarrying with the surrounding polities. They provided auxiliaries or mercenaries for hire, and a military retinue—a comitatus: for example, the prince of Chernigov had a Polovtsi (Qıpčaq) bodyguard.8 There are some ten known examples 7   On the discussion of the spectacular textiles found in the burial, now see W.T. Woodfin, Y. Rassamakin and R. Holod, “Foreign Vesture and Nomadic Identity on the Black Sea Littoral in the Early Thirteenth Century. Costume from the Chungul Kurgan,” Ars Orientalis, 38 (2010), 153-184. The complete discussion of all the grave finds is in preparation by the team in a monograph, titled The Last Kurgan. 8   On the concept of comitatus, see C. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road, a History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). On the Qıpčaqs and Rus’ principalities, see O. Pritsak, “The Polovcians and Rus’,” 321-380; and P.P. Tolochko, “Polovtsy i Rus’,” in Kochevye narody stepei i Kievskaia Rus’ (Nomadic Peoples of the Steppes and Kyivan Rus’) (Kyiv: Abris, 1999), 108-158; on the Qıpčaqs and Georgia, see P. Golden, “Cumanica I: The Qıpčaqs of Georgia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 4 (1984), 45-87; M.D. Lordkipanidze, Georgia in the XI-XII Centuries, trans. D. Skvirsky (Tbilisi: Ganatleba, 1987); on the Qıpčaqs and Bulgaria, see Vásáry, Cumans and Tatars; on Qıpčaq relations with Byzantium, see A. Savvides, “Hoi Komanoi (koumanoi) kai to Byzantio 11-13 ai. m. Chr.” (The Cumans and Byzantium 11th-13th c. AD), Byzantina, 13 (1985), 137-155.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

345  [47]

recorded of high-ranking marriages with Rus’ princely families. In Georgia, Qıpčaqs formed an elite bodyguard unit at the royal court and were also settled there. Byzantium utilized Qıpčaq/Cuman mercenaries, as did Bulgaria.9 One of their elite clans, the Ölberli would later become the leaders of Mamluk Egypt.10 Despite their late arrival on the medieval scene of the Mediterranean world and that of western Eurasia, the Qıpčaqs were destined to play key, dynamic roles as mounted warriors—allies and enemies, relatives and slaves, traders and raiders—in the surrounding states from the middle of the eleventh century to the time of Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century (Fig. 3). Thus, in terms of culture, habitus and experience, this confederation can be considered a part of the Mediterranean story in addition to being integral to that of Eurasia. The vessels deposited in this burial came from different geographic origins. They are witness to the Qıpčaqs’ position at the intersection of diverse medieval cultures and traditions, and at the crossroads of interregional trade networks. Before moving to a discussion of their contents, a few comments are in order about the nature of the evidence presented. Since we are dealing with nomads, we can expect no direct textual records from them, and we have to rely on written notices of their settled and literate neighbors.11 Further evidence and explanation of material culture, daily   Missionary (Dominican and Franciscan) activities out of Crimea connected the Qıpčaqs to the Mediterranean world and to Central Europe. Among these see the accounts of John of Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck and Peter of Hungary in Sinica Franciscana, itinera et relationes Fratrum minorum saeculi XIII et XIV, ed. A. van den Wyngaert, Sinica franciscana 1 (Queracchi-Firenze: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1929); The Texts and Versions of John de Plano Carpini and William de Rubruquis, ed. C.R. Beazley (Nedeln: Klaus Reprint, 1967 (1903)); and M. Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, Consisting of the Travel Records to the Eastern Parts of the World of William of Rubruck (1253-1255); The Journey of John of Pian de Carpini (1245-1247); The Journal of Friar Odoric (1318-1330) & the Oriental Travels of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (1160-1173) (New York, NY: Boni & Liveright, 1928); Willem van Ruysbroeck, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Mongke, 1253-1255, trans. P. Jackson, introduction, notes and appendices by P. Jackson with D. Morgan (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990). 10   On the Mamluks in Egypt and their identity as Qıpčaqs, see D. Korobeinikov, “A Broken Mirror: The Kipçak World of the Thirteenth Century,” in The Other Europe in the Middle Ages: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars and Cumans, eds. F. Curta and R. Kovalev (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 329-412. 11   For a reconstruction of the history of this group, see Pritsak, “The Polovcians and Rus’ ”; P. Golden, “Cumanica I”; P. Golden, “Nomads and Their Sedentary Neighbors in PreČinggisid Eurasia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 7 (1987-1991), 41-81; and P. Golden, “The Qıpčaqs of Medieval Eurasia: An Example of Stateless Adaptation in the Steppes,” in  9

Figure 3.  Map of the early thirteenth-century polities of the Mediterranean world, Europe and the Middle East. After C. McEvedy, The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 77. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[48]  346 renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin



remedies for a wounded “prince”

347  [49]

life and ritual has been derived from and supported by largely nineteenthcentury and later ethnographic collecting from much further east in Eurasia, and must therefore be treated with caution.12 Although a recent mapping of many Qıpčaq burials in the southern steppes of Ukraine and southern Russia provides a useful background, recorded burials have not yielded comparable archaeological evidence showing the range of grave goods found in the Chungul Kurgan (Fig. 4).13 The published record of Qıpčaq burials, sacred sites and winter camps is extensive, but establishing Rulers from the Steppe: State Formation on the Eurasian Periphery, eds. G. Seaman and D. Marks (Los Angeles, CA: Ethnographics Press, 1991), 132-158. 12   For example, V.V. Radlov (Radloff ), Aus Sibirien, Vol. 2 (Leipzig: Weigel, 1893; Osterhout: Anthropological Publications, 1968); E. Tryjarski, Bestattungsitten türkischer Völker auf dem Hintergrund ihrer Glaubensvorstellungen (Berlin: Reinhold Schletzer, 2001), 199-205, and E. Tryjarski, Zwyczaje pogrzebowe ludów tureckich na tle ich wierzeń (Funerary Traditions and Their Background among Turkic Peoples) (Warsaw: PWN, 1991), 25-50. 13   A.V. Evglevskii, ed., The European Steppes in the Middle Ages, Volume 3: The Polovets and Golden Horde Times (Donetsk: Donetsk National University, 2003). For more typical inventories of grave goods, see in the same volume E. Ye. Kravchenko, “Pogrebenie znatnogo voina XIII v. na reke Kalke” (A Noble Warrior’s Interment of the XIIIth c. on the River Kalka), 123-131; and Yu.Ya. Rassamakin, “Pogrebenie znatnogo kochevnika na reke Molochnoi: opyt reconstruktsii veshchevogo kompleksa” (A Noble Nomad’s Burial on the River Molochnaya: An Attempt at Reconstructing a Set of Grave Goods), 207-230. Evglevskii’s analytic maps lay out Polovets burials and their attributes. We thank our colleague for making these available to us, as in Fig. 4. At this juncture, mention should be made of the very rich chance find of a burial made by a peasant near the town of Tagancha/ Tahancha (Tahańcza) near Kaniw, 150 km south of Kyiv. Two years later in 1896, the collector I.A. Khoinowskii published an account of his assembling the finds in his Kratkiia archaeologicheskiia svedeniia o predkakh Slaviian i Rusi i opys drevnostey sobranykh mnoyu, s obyesneniyamy I XX tablyciamy risunkov (A Short Archaeological Presentation about the Ancestors of the Slavs and of Rus’, and a Description of the Antiquities Collected by Myself with Explanations and Twenty Plates of Drawings), Vol. 1 (Kyiv: Tipograpfiia Imperatorskovo Universytetu Sv. Vladymira, 1896). The grave goods consisted of an inventory of more than thirty items, among which the mail coat, saber, bottom half of a covered cup, a straightened torque, and a belt are closely comparable to the finds excavated in the Chungul Kurgan. However, since this burial was found much closer to Kyiv, in the foreststeppe zone, and within the boundaries of the Rus’ principalities, it is impossible to determine whether it belonged to a Qıpčaq, or to a member of another Turkic group more closely tied and subaltern to the Rus’ principalities, such as the Torks, and more specifically, the Black Cowls. The Tagancha find is now located in the State Archaeological Museum, Warsaw, and has been studied most recently by W. Gawrysiak-Leszczyńska and K. Musianowicz, “Kurhan z Tahańczi,” Archeologia Polski, 47 (2002), 287-344. We hope to include an extensive discussion of this chance find within the context of our final monograph.

Figure 4.  Map of Qıpčaq burial sites; Chungul Kurgan marked with a star. After A. Evglevskii. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[50]  348 renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin



remedies for a wounded “prince”

349  [51]

that Chungul Kurgan was a uniquely rich burial with complete certainty is next to impossible. Much was looted in the “gold fever” of the nineteenth century, when the settling and ploughing of the steppe was undertaken.14 Whatever comparanda were excavated since the beginning of the twentieth century are only partially published. These data now come mainly from the archives of the Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv, from local publications, provincial museums and archival centers such as Dnipropetrovs’k, Zaporizhzh’ia, Donetsk and the salvage campaign of the late 1970s and 1980s, which developed in connection with the construction of the North Crimean Canal and irrigation systems.15 Within that particular geographical, historical and archaeological context, more than thirty medieval burials attributable to the Qıpčaqs were found with the typical inventory of one horse, armor, a pot and a bronze kettle. The Chungul Kurgan is, thus, the richest burial of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries unearthed to date.16 Even if such a burial may not have been unique, it does represent one of a highest-ranking notable or “prince” at the end of Qıpčaq pre-state consolidation in the pre-Mongol steppe.17 If we date the burial to the first decades of the thirteenth century, then it immediately preceded the Mongol invasions—first, the disastrous trouncing

14   On the history of the settling of this steppe, see J.R. Staples, Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe: Settling the Molochna Basin, 1784-1861 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2003); L.G. Friesen, Rural Revolutions in Southern Ukraine: Peasants, Nobles, and Colonists, 1774-1905 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 15   For example, the archival register of medieval burial sites found within the neighborhood of the Chungul Kurgan by the salvage expedition headed by Vitaliy Otroshchenko (Zaporizhs’ka ekpeditsiia) of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine lists some thirty-six burials, none with an extensive inventory. 16   For earlier studies of Polovtsian sites, see S.A. Pletneva, “Pechenegi, torki i polovtsy v iuzhno-russkikh stepiakh” (Pechenegs, Torki and Polovtsi in the Southern Russian Steppes), Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR, 62 (1985), 151-226; Pletneva, “Polovetskaia zemlia” (The Polovets Land), in Drevnerusskoe kniazhestvo X-XIII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 260-330; Pletneva, “Polovetskie kamennye izvaianiia” (Polovets Stone Sculptures), Arkheologiia SSSR. Svod arkheologicheskikh istochnikov, E4-2 (Moscow: Nauka, 1974); Pletneva, Polovtsy (Moscow: Nauka, 1990). 17   In this matter, we tend to follow the position of Peter Golden, in “The Qıpčaqs of Medieval Eurasia,” who has called the Qıpčaqs a confederation of tribes in the process of state formation, rather than assigning them a complete state organization known for the earlier and more easterly Turkic states. For an argument claiming a fuller “state” organization, see Pritsak “The Polovcians and Rus’.” For an exploration of Qıpčaq identity through Arab sources, see Korobeinikov, “A Broken Mirror: The Kipçak World of the Thirteenth Century.”

[52]  350

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

by the Mongol vanguard of the combined Rus’ and Qıpčaq armies on the Kalka River in 1223, then the defeat of the entire Qıpčaq confederation on the middle Volga in 1236-1238. These events were followed by the inclusion of these regions into the Mongol administrative map. As a result, the entire habitus of this steppe underwent a radical change. The Qıpčaq confederation was destroyed. The surviving elite of the leading clans fled to the Hungarian kingdom and its well-known grasslands. Considerable relocations of winter and summer camps and renaming of the hordes ensued. Several groups seem to have been sold into slavery outright, some eventually creating the Bahri Mamluk (Qıpčaq) sultanate in Egypt. The Juchid Mongol successor state of the “Golden Horde” was built upon remaining Qıpčaq substrate groups.18 In the process came state organization, new material goods and tastes from the East, and the introduction of different rituals of passage, including burial rituals, through Islamization. Other clans opted for sedentarization and Christianization, assimilating into the populations of Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, or of the Rus’ principalities. The Chungul Kurgan and Its Ritual of Burial This is not the place to discuss all the excavation details that now allow for a full description of the burial phases, and thus a reconstruction of the funeral rites and rituals. A brief summary will be useful, nonetheless, to develop the context within which the medicinal containers were found. The medieval tumulus/kurgan was constructed in several phases. In Phase One, the platform of a pre-existing Eneolithic-Bronze Age tumulus was surrounded by a moat. Phase Two consisted of erecting ramparts that formed the internal structure of the new burial mound. In Phase Three, the burial pit was dug and the coffin and attendant materials deposited (Fig. 5). Then came Phase Four: the sacrifice of five fully caparisoned horses, and a ritual feast whose amphorae were broken, ritually “killed,” with their body shards deposited next to the horses and their handles thrown into the eastern segment of the dry moat. All this was sealed with clay slurry. Some time later, Phase Five, a small platform covered the location of the burial and a portion of the interior area. Phase Six entailed the   For a summary on the Juchids (Golden Horde), now see I. Vásáry, “The Jochid Realm: the Western Steppe and Eastern Europe,” in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: the Chinggisid Age, eds. Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank and Peter B. Golden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 67-86. 18



remedies for a wounded “prince”

351  [53]

Figure 5.  Chungul Kurgan, drawing of the burial with its grave goods. Drawing: Y. Rassamakin and T. Hoshko.

[54]  352

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Figure 6.  Chungul Kurgan, reconstruction axonometric view showing Phases 1 through 6 of the tumulus construction and burial process. Reconstruction: Y. Rassamakin and A. Popel’nytsikii, based on field records and drawings of Y. Rassamakin. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674. building up of an upper platform, which was furnished with an east-facing apsidal structure, fire pit and paved area. The structures of this phase seem to have been purposely damaged or ruined after use (Fig. 6). Finally, Phase Seven consisted of closing the burial mound. The tumulus’ construction and details of the burial underline the complex social meaning of the effort. Our reconstruction of this phasing has been based on the interpretation of the detailed archaeological record, enhanced through ethnographic and historic parallels. The exact intervals between phases are difficult to determine but a cycle of commemorative or memorial events could certainly be proposed, based on ethnographic data.19 Along with the very rich grave goods, the building process of the tumulus and the proposed reconstruction of the burial rituals associated with it can cast a light on the material and spiritual identity of the Qıpčaq nomadic confederation of the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. For the purposes of this study, however, we shall focus only on the burial pit itself and its contents.   Radlov, Aus Sibirien, vol. 2; Tryjarski, Zwyczaje pogrzebowe.

19



remedies for a wounded “prince”

353  [55]

Figure 7.  Chungul Kurgan, view of burial. Photograph: V.I. Klochko. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/ 15700674. The Finds, Their Dating and the Deceased The more than forty individual items found in the burial pit are ample record of a very high status individual. Placed within a constructed wooden coffin with iron clamps and locks were a full set of gilded armor (a saber, a helmet with eventail, a mail shirt, open and covered quivers, two knives, a bowcase, a shield and a dagger with belt), a gilded and enameled silver lobed cup with thumb ring, a gilded-silver covered cup, three belts on the body, at least three sets of robes in addition to those on the body and various rings, buttons and hooks, all parts of a leather strap system (Fig. 7). This inventory, as well as the horse trappings in Phase Four, allows us to

[56]  354

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

situate the date of burial within the last decades of the twelfth and first decades of the thirteenth century, perhaps even at the time of the Mongol invasions into the Black Sea Steppe (1222-1240). The man buried within the tumulus was a tall (about 176 cm) person of fifty-five to sixty years of age; he was laid in the coffin with his head toward to west and his feet tied with a golden chain. He had an old fracture on the right leg and arthritis in his joints. These latter physical conditions certainly would have given him pain, but not nearly so much as the wound to his head. There is a six-centimeter long fissure in the back of his skull, likely caused by the blow of a blade (Fig. 8).20 Nevertheless, according to the paleopathologist who examined this evidence, the trauma was not the immediate cause of death; attempts seem to have been made to close the wound with a suture or staple, and bone regrowth had already begun around what is perhaps a trepanation drilled in the front of the skull (Fig. 9). Nonetheless, this severely wounded condition would have required medications and measures to relieve pain during the remainder of his life. Further, such a wound may very well have caused loss of consciousness or an altered mental state, which to the Qıpčaqs would likely have indicated possession by evil forces.21 Turning to the containers of the grave, we might be able to surmise what would have been considered efficacious treatment in life and even after death; for, as the missionary, papal emissary and traveler, John of Plano Carpini stated, “They know nothing of everlasting life and eternal damnation. But they believe that after death, they will live in another world and increase their flocks, and eat and drink and do other things which are done by men living in this world.”22 20   A re-examination of evidence from the skeleton will be included in the final publication of this burial. For the present, see the preliminary examination of the remains by M. Schultz, “Archäologische Skelettfunde als Spiegel der Lebensbedingungen früher Viehzüchter und Nomaden in der Ukraine,” in Gold der Steppe: Archäologie der Ukraine, ed. R. Rolle et al. (Schleswig: Archäologisches Landesmuseum, 1991), 41-42. We are awaiting a new review of the physical remains by Oleksandra Kozak of the Institute of Archaeology, Kyiv, Ukraine. 21   On possession and the role of the baqsi, the healer or spiritual specialist among Turkic peoples, see V.N. Basilov, Shamanstvo u narodov Srednej Azii i Kazakhstana (Shamanism among Peoples of Central Asia and Kazakhstan) (Moscow: Nauka, 1992); Tryjarski, Zwyczaje pogrzebowe. 22   John de Plano Carpini, “History of the Mongols,” translated by a nun of the Stanbrook Abbey in The Mongol Mission, ed. Christopher Dawson (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 12.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

355  [57]

Figure 8.  Chungul Kurgan, detail of the back of the skull of the deceased. Photograph after M. Schultz.

Figure 9.  Chungul Kurgan, detail of burial, showing trepanation (?) on front of the head. Photograph after M. Schultz.

[58]  356

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Figure 10.  Chungul Kurgan, containers deposited in the burial pit outside the coffin: amphorae, bottle and drug jar. Photograph: V.I. Klochko. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674. The Containers and Their Contents Two amphorae were placed outside the coffin, along with sides of horsemeat and together with two other containers to be discussed below (Fig. 10). The pear-shaped amphorae are almost identical, with two handles rising from the shoulder and curving above a low neck to join it almost at the lip. The base is rounded and would not have been able to stand without



remedies for a wounded “prince”

357  [59]

a support.23 A pale buff slip was washed into the interior and streaked on the outside, and a series of parallel horizontal grooves were combed into the area between neck and shoulder. Both containers bear a series of incised markings on the handles, which may have been counting or proprietary indications.24 Amphora Two also has two markings located on the shoulders between the handles, one on either side, likely a Greek lambda (Fig. 11). A third mark occurs lower on the handle, the Greek

Figure 11.  Chungul Kurgan, containers in the burial pit: amphorae, bottle and drug jar. Drawing: S. Woloshyn. 23   Prior to their deposition in the grave, the amphorae were rested in circular depressions that had been dug into the ledge of the grave pit. These would have held the vessels at an interim phase of the burial rituals and preparation. 24   The state of research on such marks in the medieval period makes it difficult to say more at this time.

[60]  358

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

letter beta (Fig. 12). From all formal aspects, these amphorae can be identified as Günsenin Type 4. Amphorae of this type have been found both on land and, significantly, at underwater sites within the Propontis and along the Black Sea coast. Find-spots include Nesebar, in Bulgaria; in the Belgrade fortress and in Braničevo along the Danube in Serbia; in the Crimea, specifically at Chersonesos, Balaklava, Kerch and Sudak; and in the Çamaltı Burnu I shipwreck, located off the western coast of the Isle of Marmara.25 The Crimean and Azov finds witness a continuing pattern of wine importation to the Pontic steppe, known already in antiquity. Ganos is a possible source of the amphorae; the source of the wine is not known. Trebizond or Sinope would have functioned as the export ports in any case. A close examination of the neck shows marks of reuse, an indication that, like many other medieval amphorae, these wine amphorae were

  Amphorae were found on several other Qıpčaq sites, for example see A.V. Evglevskii and T. M. Potemkina, “O Nekotorykh Vydakh Goncharnoi Keramiky u Vostochnoevropeiskykh Nomadov Razvytovo Srednevekovya” (Some Wheel-Made Ceramics with the Nomads of Eastern Europe in the High Middle Ages), in Stepi Evropy v ėpokhu srednevekov’iȃ (The European Steppes in the Middle Ages), ed. A.V. Evglevskii, vol. 1 (Donetsk: Donetsk National University, 2000), 209-225; and M.V. Panchenko and N.N. Kovalukh, “The Attribution and Dating of Nomad’s Materials from Northern Crimea,” Mathematics. Physics. Geochronometry, 13 (1995), 263-267. Nergis Günsenin has recorded examples in local museums of Sinope and Samsun. For a definition of the type, see N. Günsenin, “Recherches sur les Amphores Byzantines dans les Musées Turcs,” in Recherches sur la céramique byzantine. Actes du colloque EFA-Université de Strasboug, Athènes 8-10 Avril 1987, eds. V. Déroche and J.-M. Spieser, Bulletin de correspondance hellenique, supplement 18 (Athens: École Française d’Athènes, 1989), 267-76; Günsenin, “Les amphores byzantines (Xe-XIIIe siècles): typologie, production, circulation d’après les collections turques” (Ph.D. diss., University of Paris I, Paris, 1990); Günsenin, “Ganos, centre de production d’amphores à l’époque Byzantine,” Anatolia Antiqua, 2 (1993), 193-201. We thank Nergis Günsenin for discussing this matter with us. On the Sea of Marmara underwater amphora finds, see her “Underwater Archaeology,” Sea of Marmara Underwater Discoveries, available online at http://www.nautarch.org (accessed March 2012). On the Sudak underwater finds, see S.M. Zelenko, “Issledovanie gruza torgovogo korablia 13 veka pogybshovo vblizi Sudaka (razkopky 2004 g.)” (Research on the Cargo of a Trading Ship of the 13th-Century Lost at Sea near the Sudak (Excavations of 2004)), in Arkheolohichni doslidzhennya v Ukrayini 2004-2005 g. (Archaeological Research in Ukraine 20042005), ed. N.O. Hawryliuk, Vypusk 8 (Kyiv-Zaporizhzh’ia: Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences, 2006), 12-14. We thank Emerson Avery for the list of sites where this type of amphorae was found, and hope to include his fuller report in the final monograph. 25



remedies for a wounded “prince”

359  [61]

Figure 12.  Chungul Kurgan, detail of lower handle of Amphora 2, now located in the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: D.V. Klochko. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[62]  360

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

used again and again. Or, absent the sediment normally found in wine amphorae,26 a reuse of these vessels for another liquid can be proposed; the amphora perhaps held a liquid drink more typical for nomadic societies. There are many traditional milk drinks used in methods of prophylaxis. For example, kumis (qımız), fermented mare’s milk, is considered beneficial in strengthening immunity and purifying the human body of toxic substances. The inclusion of such liquids would testify to different ideas of the life hereafter, one in which food and drink—and healing drink at that—were considered a necessity.27 The other two containers deposited next to the amphorae were not imported for their own material value, but nevertheless are definite indications of imported goods. The first is a splashware bottle, made of a thin, light buff ware (Fig. 13). The globular body was thrown together with the foot, while the neck and lip are almost seamlessly attached. Traces of other vessels having been in contact with its surface while in the kiln indicate that it was a “second,” but that its compromised manufacture did not prevent it from being sold and utilized as a container. Its narrow neck, and its carefully formed, thin lip appear suitable for the dispensation of distillates, such as specialized flower or vegetal oils. Although its place of manufacture cannot yet be definitively ascertained, in shape it somewhat resembles bottles excavated at Chersonesos, such as the one found there recently. Further research must be pursued to localize its source.28 26   An examination of the interior of Amphora Two was possible at the Museum of Historical Antiquities, Kyiv in June 2012. Its base was broken in the interim time between its excavation and its entering into the collection of the museum, and we could thus view its interior. Any residue of tartaric acid and its salts, indicators of the presence of wine, appears absent. We have been finally able to obtain a sample from its interior, and await the results of its analysis. 27   Of course, kumis in its more fermented state, as well as the more alcoholic qaraqımız, would have been used for feasting, including the funeral feasts. On traditional Kazakh (Turkic) medicine and its contemporary practices, see P. Garrone, Chamanisme et islam en Asie Centrale. La baksylyk hier et aujourd’hui (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, Jean Maisonneuve successeur, 2000); also P.D. Buell, “Steppe Foodways and History,” Asian Medicine, 2 (2006), 171-203. 28   On Chersonesos pottery see, for example, A. Rabinowitz, L. Sedikova and R. Henneberg, “Daily Life in a Provincial Late Byzantine City: Recent Multidisciplinary Research in the South Region of Tauric Chersonesos (Cherson),” in Byzanz—Das Römerreich im Mittelalter, vol. 2, no. 1, Schauplätze, eds. F. Daim and J. Drauschke, Monographien des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums 84 (Mainz: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, 2010), 425-478. In the new catalogue of materials from Chersonesos, the closest



remedies for a wounded “prince”

361  [63]

Figure 13.  Chungul Kurgan, splashware bottle, now located in the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: D.V. Klochko. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[64]  362

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

The second glazed container is a drug or apothecary jar that can be assigned to middle Euphrates, or perhaps a generally Syrian, workshop by its form, body and decoration (Fig. 14). Discovered lying on its side, the jar had apparently fallen as a result of the internal collapse within the tumulus, but must have been deposited in a standing position. It is an eight-sided example of bi- or tri-chrome underglaze painted ceramics, the so-called “Raqqa” ware; these feature red, manganese-aubergine and cobalt blue glazes, decorated in black with ornament in reserve, on a stonepaste or artificial faience body. The jar is glazed inside and out. The pseudo-Kufic writing in reserve on the neck may be indicative of style, time and workshop. It also appears to have been in reuse when deposited into the burial as it had a chip on the lip.29 Given the fact that it will not be possible to analyze samples from the interior of the jar, we must rely on a wider context of comparative texts and studies in order to propose its contents.30

parallel is a handled jug and not a bottle per se; see cat. no. 422 in T. Yasheva et al., eds., The Legacy of Byzantine Cherson (Sebastopol and Austin, TX: Institute of Archaeology and Packard Humanities Institute, 2011), 352, 633. We thank Adam Rabinowitz for making this study available to us. Medieval period materials in the eastern Mediterranean have been studied also by J. Vroom, After Antiquity: Ceramics and Society in the Aegean from the 7th to the 20th Century A.C.: A Case Study from Boeotia, Central Greece. Archaeological Studies Leiden University 10 (Leiden: Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2003); J. Vroom, Byzantine to Modern Pottery in the Aegean—7th to 20th century (Utrecht: Parnassus Press, 2005); and D. Papanikola-Bakirtzis, Byzantine Glazed Ceramics. The Art of Sgraffito (Athens: Archaeological Receipts Fund, 1999). At first glance, none of the materials presented by either author in these publications are comparable to the Chungul bottle in shape or in decoration technique. 29   The jar was found complete but with an already chipped lip according to Y. Rassamakin’s excavation notes on deposit at the Institute of Archaeology, Kyiv. It suffered extensive breakage at some point between the time of excavation and the present. According to V. Otroshchenko, the damage happened during preparations for the first exhibit of the spectacular finds of the Chungul burial in Zaporizhzh’ia immediately after the excavation. As it appears presently in the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv, it is complete but in a repaired state, reassembled from numerous shards. 30   Unfortunately, immediately after the excavation, this object among others was unprofessionally handled without the supervision of the excavating archaeologist, Y. Rassamakin. He noted a white residue of some kind in the jar at the excavation. After the breakage of the jar, it appears to have been thoroughly cleaned on the inside before reassembly. Our close visual examination of the jar at the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine on 9 July 2012 was made possible through the kindness of its director, Ludmila V. Strokova, and with the help of the curator, Wolodymyr Khardayev and Natalia Rudyka, Research Associate.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

363  [65]

Figure 14.  Chungul Kurgan, stonepaste drug jar, now located in the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: D.V. Klochko. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[66]  364

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

The apothecary jar is in the form of a so-called albarello, a tall polygonal shape with a narrowed waist for handier dispensing of contents. It was but one of several ceramic forms utilized as drug containers. For example, larger and smaller jars are illustrated in a depiction of a pharmacy in the thirteenth-century copy of Ibn Butlan’s Da‘wat al-Aṭibbā’.31 Glazed on the interior as well as exterior, their non-porous surfaces preserved their contents, such as dried herbs, liquids, syrups and semi-solids, from contamination. Only a few other albarello forms have been noted in recent excavations of Syrian sites.32 On the other hand, examples similar in form (though not identical) and in different decorative techniques are encountered in museum collections. For example, the polygonal drug jars in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 15)33 and in the Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar (Fig. 16)34 also have decoration drawn in reserve, but in a luster   E. Baer, “The Illustrations for an Early Manuscript of Ibn Butlan’s Da ‘wat al-Aṭibbā’ in the L.A. Mayer Memorial Museum in Jerusalem,” Muqarnas, 19 (2002), 1-11. A larger form of a drug jar with a more bulbous body appears to have been also commonly utilized contemporaneously and later to the “Raqqa” production. Such a jar was found for example in the excavation of the Ayyubid period layers at Qasr al-Ḥ ayr al-Sharqī; see O. Grabar, R. Holod, J. Knudstad and W. Trousdale, City in the Desert: Qasr al-Hayr East (Cambridge, MA: Distributed for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University by Harvard University Press, 1978), 182-183 and 196-197. A later fourteenth-century example is the drug jar from the Hospital of Nūr al-Dīn in Damascus now in the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar (PO 40). On drug jars and their history, G. Griffenhagen and M. Bogard, History of Drug Containers and Their Labels, American Institute of the History of Pharmacy 17 (Madison, WI: American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1999), 1-9. We thank Jaclynne Kerner for discussing the matter of drug jars and their contents with us, and for indicating several additional sources. 32   Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Raqqa Revisited: Ceramics of Ayyubid Syria (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), 132 and passim. Tri-chrome and bi-chrome wares were also excavated in the Ayyubid twelfth- to thirteenth-century layers at Qasr al-Ḥ ayr al-Sharqī; see Grabar et al., City in the Desert, 182-183, 196-197 and 216-217. See in particular the fragmentary rim of an albarello with turquoise glaze and black underglaze decoration, 199. We would like to thank Julia Gonella, Rosalind Wade Haddon, Stefan Heidemann, Stephen McPhillips, Marcus Milwright, Martina Müller-Wiener, Scott Redford and Cristina Tonghini for discussing the matter of Ayyubid stonepaste/artificial faience production with us. Studies of the more recently excavated sites would indicate production in several locations including Balis, Raqqa and Damascus in the second half of the twelfth to the first part of the thirteenth century; see for example, S. McPhillips, “Continuity and Innovation in Syrian Artisanal Traditions of the Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries: Ceramic Evidence from the Syrian-French Citadel of Damascus Excavations,” Bulletin d’Études Orientales (forthcoming). 33   See Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY (48.113.12). 34   See Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar (PO.68. 1999.HU). 31



remedies for a wounded “prince”

365  [67]

Figure 15.  Drug Jar, Metropolitan Museum, New York (48.113.12). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/ 15700674.

[68]  366

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Figure 16.  Drug Jar, Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar (MIA PO. 68. 1999. HU). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

367  [69]

technique with additional turquoise-blue stripes. Jenkins-Madina has presented the albarello jar at Metropolitan Museum among the profiles with verifiable Raqqa provenance and places this type of stonepaste-ware or artificial faience production in the first three decades of the thirteenth century.35 Very similar albarello shapes are found today in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum.36 Lastly, a smooth circular jar from the Ashmolean Museum, which has black decoration under a turquoise glaze,37 and a faceted jar from the Freer-Sackler Galleries, which appears to have been a second and has no decoration,38 are also part of this production. The Chungul example is important because it is among the earliest complete and scientifically excavated albarello-shaped examples of drug jars known, datable to the first part of the thirteenth century as indicated by the other materials with which it was found. As such, it is witness to the extensive pharmacological trade in expensive drugs originating in or channeled through Syria in this period. According to Efraim Lev’s study, the Levant (Bilad al-Sham) appears to have functioned as the “big Pharma” of its day, both as a location that processed and manufactured pharmaceutical substances, and one that repackaged and trans-shipped them. While he does not mention the Crimean or Azov ports in his list of receiving entrepôts, it stands to reason that these should be included as destinations for this trade as well. The very existence of the albarello among the grave goods is a physical indication of such exchange. We have thus redrawn his diagram to add this area (Fig. 17) and have excerpted his tables in order to draw attention to trade to Europe in general and to Italy in particular, which in turn traded with Black Sea ports (Tables 1 and 2; showing items traded to Europe and within the time frame of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries).39   Jenkins-Madina, Raqqa Revisited, 174.   For the Victoria and Albert Museum see C 21-1956 and for the Royal Ontario Museum 959.187.41. 37   See Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1956.178). 38   See Freer-Sackler Museum, Washington, DC (1910.36). 39   E. Lev, “Trade of Medical Substances in the Medieval and Ottoman Levant,” in Y. Lev, Towns and Material Culture in the Medieval Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 159184; E. Lev, “Reconstructed Materia Medica of the Medieval and Ottoman al-Sham,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 80 (May 2002), 167-179; and E. Lev and Z. Amar, Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean According to the Cairo Genizah (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Also see N. Coureas, “The Reception of Arabic Medicine on Latin Cyprus: 1200-1570,” in Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras. V, 35 36

[70]  368

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Figure 17.  Diagram of trade in medicinal substances. After Lev with alterations and additions. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.

Proceedings of the 11th, 12th and 13th international colloquium organized at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in May 2002, 2003 and 2004, eds. U. Vermeulen and K. d’Hulste, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 183 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 219-228; A. Dietrich, “Islamic Sciences and the Medieval West: Pharmacology,” in Islam and the Medieval West Aspects of Intercultural Relations, ed. K.I. Semaan (Albany, NY: Albany State University of New York, 1980), 50-63. One should also be aware of the practice of substitute medicines that could have been shipped in the drug jar, as discussed in M. Levey, Substitute Drugs in Early Arabic Medicine, with special reference to the texts of Māsarjawaih, Al-Rāzī, and Pythagoras (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1971).



remedies for a wounded “prince”

369  [71]

Table 1.  Medicinal substances imported from Syria (after Lev, with alterations) Scientific name Plants Asparagus officianalis

Arabic and English names hilyawm, Asparagus

Exported from

Bilad al-Sham, Acre

Imported to

Centuries

Middle East, Europe

13th to 16th

Asphodelus ramosus

Ishras, Tall Asphodel Harran

“Eastern Countries”

13th

Casia fistula

khiyar Shambar, Indian Laburnum

Egypt, Syria

Europe

13th to 15th

Citrullus colocynthis

hanzal, Bitter Apple

Bilad al-Sham

Europe

13th to 14th

Citrullus vulgaris

battikh, Watermelon

Bilad al-Sham

Egypt, Europe

13th to 15th

Commiphora balsam, Balsam opobalsmum

Jerusalem

Tyre, Europe

8th

Convolvulus scammonia

Bilad al-Sham

Italy

15th

Crataegus sp. Zaarwur, Azerolier

Acre

Europe

13th

Crocus sativus

Zafaran, saffron

Damascus

Egypt and “the region”

12th

Cuminum cyminum

kammun, Cumin

Bilad al-Sham

Europe, Venice

13th

Dorema ‘ushshaq, ammoniacum Ammoniacum

Acre, Bilad-alSham’s mts.

Europe

13th to 16th

Ficus carica

tin, Fig

Bilad al-Sham, Acre

Egypt, Europe

10th to16th

Glycyrrhiza glabra

sus, Liquorice

Acre

Europe, Venice

13th

Ipomea turpethum

turbad, Indian Turbith

Acre

Italy

15th

Lavandula officinais

astukhudhus, Lavender

Bilad al-Sham, Acre

Europe, Italy

12th to 14th

Pimpinella anusum

aisun, Aniseed

Bilad al-Sham

Europe, Venice

13th

Saqamuniya, Scammonuyy

[72]  370

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Table 1 (cont.) Scientific name

Arabic and English names

Exported from Bilad al-Sham, Acre

Imported to

Centuries

Europe, Crete

8th to 14th

Pistacia lentiscus

mastaki, Mastic

Punica grantum

raman, Pomogranate Bilad al-Sham

“many countries”

10th to 13th

milh, Salt

Dead Sea

Europe, Italy

13th

Physseter catodon

anabar, Ambergris

Med. Littoral

Europe

10th to 13th

Tubipora musica

marjan, Coral

Red Sea

Europe, Egypt, Genoa, Provence

12th to 13th

Minerals Salt Animal products

We have excerpted items traded to Europe and within the time frame of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries.

Table 2.  Medicinal substances transiting through Syria (after Lev, with alterations) Scientific name

Arabic and English names

Exported from

Transit at

Imported to

Centuries

Plants Aloe vera

sabir, Aloe

Asia

Acre, Tripoli, Jerusalem

Egypt, Europe

11th to 15th

Alpinia Galanga

khulanjan, Galingale

Asia

Syria, Egypt Italy, Europe

13th to 15th

Astragalus Sarcocolla

anzarut, Sarcocolla

Asia

Jerusalem

11th to 13th

Boswelia carteri

luban, Frankincense

Arabia, Jeddah

Acre, Egypt, Europe, 13th to 18th Suez Marseille, Moscow

Caesalpina sappan

bakkam, Brazil wood

India, Mecca

Egypt, Europe Ramla, Acre

Egypt, Europe

11th to 15th



remedies for a wounded “prince”

371  [73]

Table 2 (cont.) Scientific name

Arabic and English names

Exported from

Transit at

Imported to

Centuries

Cinnamomum kafur, camphera Camphor

Asia

Acre, Egypt, Europe Alexandria

11th to 13th

Cinnamomum dar sini, zeylanicum Cinnamon

Asia

Iran, Iraq, Acre, Tyre, Ramla

Europe

11th to 15th

Commiphora myrrha

Arabia

Tripoli, Ace Venice

13th

Asia, India

Acre, Ramla, Haamat

Europe

15th

Dorema ushshaq, Asia Ammoninacum Ammoniacum

Acre

Europe

13th

Elletaria cadamomium

hal, cardamom

Asia

Acre

Europe

13th

Eugenia caryophullata

karanful, Cloves

Asia

Egypt, Acre, Europe Jerusalem, Ramla

11th to 15th

Myristica fragrans

jauz bawwa, Nutmeg

India, Mecca

Egypt, Acre, Europe Ramla, Damascus

13th to 16th

Nardostachys jatamansi

sundul, Spikenard

Asia, Arabia

Acre

Europe

11th to 13th

Piper sp.

filfil, Pepper

Asia

Acre, Tyre, Ramla, Jerusalem

Europe

11th to 15th

Terminalia citrina

halilaj, Myrobalan

India, Malabar

Egypt, Acre Europe

11th to 18th

Zingiber officinale

zanjabil, Ginger

Asia, Mecca

Syria, Acre, Ramla

Venice, Europe

13th to 15th

shabb, alum

Egypt, Asia

Acre, Jerusalem

Venice, Europe

13th to 15th

murr, Myrrh

Curcuma longa kurkum, Turmeric

Minerals Alum

[74]  372

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Table 2 (cont.) Scientific name

Arabic and English names

Exported from

Arsenic sulphide

zarnikh, Orpiment

?

Vitriol

zaj, Vitriol

misk, Musk grain

Transit at Acre, Safad

Imported to

Centuries

Venice, Europe

10th to 16th

Acre Egypt, Amman, Bilad al-Sham

Venice, Europe

10th to 13th

Asia, Tibet

Asia

11th to 13th

Animal products Moschus moschiferus

Jerusalem, Acre

We have excerpted items traded to Europe and within the time frame of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries.

Notably, the name preserved in the Qıpčaq language Codex Cumanicus for some pharmacological substances, such as maajunlar (“powdered medicines, electuaries”; from the Arabic ma‘jūn), points to the source for objects like the albarello and its contents.40 Some jars had their contents indicated at the kiln, such as on the later Doha jar, which has the word naufar (“water lily”) written on it;41 this practice is also known from pharmaceutical jars

40   C.G. Kuun, Codex Cumanicus bibliothecae ad templum divi Marci Venetiarum. Primum ex integro edidit . . .notis et compluribus glossariis instruxit comes Géza Kuun (Budapest: editio scient. Academiae hung., 1880), 346, and as listed among the articles of trade and handicraft in P. Golden, “Introduction to Codex Cumanicus,” in Central Asian Monuments, ed. H. Paksoy (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1992), 80-86 and 91-99. The Codex Cumanicus represents two different European traditions of dealing with the western-most Turkic world of the steppe: the Italian (Genoese and Venetian) trading activities and their glossary of goods, numbers and phrases; and the Central European (German and Hungarian) Christian missionary activity, with its translations of the story of Jesus Christ, prayers and hymns. While there are no extant copies of these compilations datable before the middle of the thirteenth century on the basis of the date of the paper on which they were copied, their existence reflects ongoing, longer-term presence of both groups in the area of the Black Sea steppe. 41   A larger form of a drug jar with a bulbous body appears to have been also commonly utilized contemporaneous with and later to the albarello “Raqqa” production. Such a jar was also found in the excavation of the Ayyubid period layers at Qasr al-Ḥ ayr al-Sharqī; see Grabar et al., City in the Desert, 182 and 197. A later example is the drug jar from the Hospital of Nur al-Din in Damascus now in the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar (PO 40).



remedies for a wounded “prince”

373  [75]

produced in southern Europe during the fourteenth and later centuries.42 For the most part, however, the earlier jars from Syria did not have such specific identification of contents. They appear to have been reusable, and their contents would have been indicated on a clay stopper or on a paper or parchment cover tied around their everted rims.43 In the case of the Chungul jar, a clay cover was not found, nor did a paper or parchment cover survive the conditions of burial in the kurgan. Whatever the contents, the inclusion of such imported and rare pharmacological material in its container among the grave goods is certainly witness to the communal wishes of a cure for this gravely wounded “prince,” if not in this life then in the next. The Covered Cup and Its Contents The covered cup that lies at the proper right shoulder of the deceased belongs to a group of metalwork vessels from the Rhine-Meuse River area datable to the mid-twelfth or early thirteenth century (Fig. 18). Covered cups were used as feasting utensils throughout the medieval world, and also for Eucharistic chalices or host receptacles. Among the notable examples of covered cups are the Agaune Ciborium and the covered cup, the so-called coupe de Charlemagne of the St. Maurice Treasure.44 Several, also from western Europe, have been unearthed from the areas of the Rus’ principalities; one of which has a graffito in Slavonic “nasha chasha” (our cup).45 Although the form of the cup from the Chungul burial is very   On majolica drug jars, see R.E.A. Drey, Apothecary Jars: Pharmaceutical Pottery and Porcelain in Europe and the East, 1150-1850 (London: Faber & Faber, 1978); C. Prats i Darder, Apotecaria de Santa Maria de Vallbona (Vallbona de los Monges: Fundació d’Història i Art Roger de Belfort, 1990); and B. Rackham, The Victoria and Albert Museum. Catalogue of Italian Majolica (London: H.M.S.O., 1977). 43   On a group of twelfth- through thirteenth-century albarelli excavated in Corinth but coming from Syria, Egypt and the region, see C.K. Williams II and O.H. Zervos,“Frankish Corinth: 1993,” Hesperia, 63 ( Jan.-Mar., 1994), 17-22. We thank Charles Williams for making this study available to us. 44   J.J. Berthier, La Coupe dite de Charlemagne, du trésor de Saint Maurice (Fribourg: Impr. de l’Oeuvre Saint-Paul, 1896). See for other examples of secular feasting and sacral covered cups: Aron A. Andersson, Mediaeval Drinking Bowls of Silver Found in Sweden (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1983); and V.P. Darkevich, Proizvedeniia zapadnogo khudozhestvennogo remesla v vostochnoi Evrope (Works of Western Crafts in Eastern Europe) (Moscow: Nauka, 1966). 45   On covered cups found recently in Ukraine, see O. Minzhulin, “Svits’kii Posud Davn’oii Rusi” (Secular Ware of Ancient Rus’), Visnyk Iuvelira Ukrainy, 2 (2006), 35-43. 42

[76]  374

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Figure 18.  Chungul Kurgan, Covered Cup, now located in the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: D.V. Klochko. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline. com/content/15700674.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

375  [77]

distinctive—with a rampant lion pawing the post in the center of its bowl (Fig. 19)—it is nonetheless clear that it was an imported object rather than a vessel commissioned in the nomadic context. Bones found at the level of Phase Six of the burial indicate the presence of a sacrificed dog, the Qıpčaqs’ totemic animal par excellence. The lion, although an important animal for, e.g., the Seljuks of Rum, is not known to have been symbolically significant for the Qıpčaqs. What is more pertinent for this study is the material found in the cup: powdery sediment was found deposited in its interior. The original position of the cup in the coffin would have been somewhat canted when it was placed (covered and with a liquid in it) on the sleeve of the deceased’s burial robe at his upper arm and on top of the belt with the dagger (Fig. 20). This position and location safeguarded it from being completely crushed by the subsequent internal collapse within the tumulus. Judging by its slanted position in the well of the cup, the liquid or viscous material had already set before it fell and the body of the cup was snapped from its base (Fig. 21). The pourable contents of the cup had apparently been topped with bruised, dried or otherwise processed vegetal matter. Palynological and botanical analyses of these plant remains reveal numerous steppe (and forest-steppe) flora, especially grasses and flowers.46 We have redacted the original list of more than seventy individual plants to highlight only those with the highest counts (Table 3). These identify plants that possess definitive medicinal characteristics utilized in many traditional remedies, such as belladonna, valerian, mint and aconite.47 The final monograph on the Chungul Kurgan will develop a detailed study of the cup itself, as well as of these comparanda. 46   For the initial analysis of the flora, see L.H. Bezus’ko, V.V. Otroshchenko, R. Ya. Kostyliov, A.P. Olins’ka and Y.Ya. Rassamakin, “Paleobotanichniy Analiz Orhanichnykh Zalyshkiv iz Kuril’nytsi Chynhuls’koho Kurhanu (Zaporizhs’ka Oblast’)” (Paleobotanical Analysis of the Organic Remains from the Incense Burner of the Chynhul Kurhan), Ukrains’kyi Botanichniy Zhurnal, 46 (1989), 30-32; summarized in L.G. Bezus’ko, V.V. Otroščenko, Ju. Ja. Rassamakin, et al., “Raucherwerk der Polovzer,” in Gold der Steppe: Archäologie der Ukraine, eds. R. Rolle, M. Müller-Wille and K. Schietzel (Schleswig: Archäologisches Landesmuseum, 1991), 276-278. For a botanical dictionary of Ukraine, see Vyznachnyk Roslyn Ukrainy (Description of the Plants of Ukraine), eds. D.K. Zerov et al. (Kyiv: Urozhaı ̆, 1965); and for utilitarian plants, Z. Podbielkowski, Słownik roślin użytkowych (Dictionnary of Useful Plants) (Warsaw: Rolnicze i Leśne, 1980). 47   See for example S. Tate, “Peppermint Oil: A Treatment for Post-Operative Nausea,” Journal of Advanced Nursing, 26 (1997), 543-549; on Turkic ethno-medicine and

[78]  376

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Figure 19.  Chungul Kurgan, Interior of Covered Cup, now located in the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: D.V. Klochko. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

377  [79]

Figure 20.  Chungul Kurgan, location of the covered cup in the coffin at the right shoulder of the deceased. Photograph: Y. Rassamakin. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. Ethno-medicine or ethno-pharmacology of the steppe must thus become a detailed pursuit. The preliminary identifications give us a hint of the specifics of use. Notably, these plants appear to have been added to the concoction in a dried or even slightly charred state. It is for this reason that the receptacle has wrongly been called an “incense-burner” (kuryl’nytsia) ethno-pharmacology, see Z. Grzywacz, “Traditional Kazakh Medicine in Change,” Turkic Studies, 2 (2010), 1-72; J.-P. Roux, Faune et Flore Sacrées dans les Sociétés Altaïques (Paris: A. Maisonneuve, 1966).

[80]  378

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

Figure 21.  Chungul Kurgan, Covered Cup, section with location of sediment as found. Section drawing: S. Woloshyn; reconstruction drawing: Y. Rassamakin. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline. com/content/15700674. even though the original shape of the covered cup was not meant for this function.48 The sediment of the liquid still needs further analysis, but it is unlikely that the covered cup would have been utilized as a smudge pot or an incense burner. Yet, the blossoms could have been slightly charred elsewhere in a ritual process to create an aromatic smoke deemed beneficial, and then deposited into the cup already filled with a liquid. Despite their high numbers and variety, the presence of flowers cannot be used to determine the season of the burial as they could have been utilized in their dried form. In this context, we can recall the oft-repeated tale of the use of steppe flora to evoke memory and loyalty. As reported in the Rus’ chronicles, an emissary from the steppe used artemisia (evšan) to recall for Otrok, son of

  Bezus’ko et al., “Paleobotanichniy Analiz.”

48



remedies for a wounded “prince”

379  [81]

Table 3. Palynological analysis with highest counts only (after Bezus’ko et al., with alterations) Scientific family name

English family name

Counts

Herbaceous Rosaceae Lamiaceae Liliaceae Apiaceae Asteracea Fabaceae Ranunculaceae Boraginaceae Solanaceae Brassicaceae Thalictrum sp. Valerianaceae Artemisia sp. Urtica sp. Iridaceae Linaceae

Rose family Mint family Lily family (onion, asparagus, saffron) Umbelliferae (parsley, caraway) Daisy family Pea family Buttercup family (aconite) Borage Solanaceae (belladonna) Cabbage family Meadow Rue Valerian family Mugwort Nettle Sword Lily Flax

352 219 140   53   51   49   31   30   23   22   19   18   14   13   11   10

Trees Tilia sp.

Linden

  26

Sharukan (who had settled into court life in Georgia), the glories of his native steppe and to cause his return to home pastures after 1125.49 The deposition of the covered cup in the coffin itself, separate from the other containers that were placed outside the coffin, may also be significant. To be sure, further research into the ceremonial uses of the feasting cup will be pursued in our final study. Of particular interest is the fact that both it and the thumb-ringed, lobed cup (the private drinking cup of the “prince”) had been placed in the coffin, the first on the right of the body, the second on its left. The two cups together represent the social status

49   See Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisei, Vol. 2 (St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad, Moscow, 1841-1977), 716; and Golden, “Cumanica I,” 69.

[82]  380

renata holoda and yuriy rassamakin

of the deceased and his equipment for feasting in this life and the next.50 While the “prince” drank from his private cup, the feasting cup would have been sent around the gathered company, filled with the beverage of choice. Perhaps the concoction in the covered cup should be interpreted mainly as a feasting beverage.51 Yet, seen in the context of the grave condition of the leader, the other “medical” contents of the bottle, albarello and amphorae, and the ethno-pharmaceutical aspects of the plant choice present in the cup sediment, this parade container could also have been understood and utilized as a vessel for palliative care. The albarello and the bottle would have contained expensive imported substances for medical uses, and indicate the participation of this steppe confederation in the international Mediterranean trade in these substances and its members’ belief in their efficacy. On the other hand, the amphorae and the covered cup, while initially imported to the steppe themselves as containers or gifts, seem to have been adapted to local usage in the aid of this wounded leader. What remains to be sketched are the possible routes by which these containers and their contents arrived in the Qıpčaq steppe in the early decades of the thirteenth century. The bottle and the amphorae were delivered by sea and land to the Qıpčaq steppe. The drug jar could have traveled easily by sea from Syria through the Armenian Cilicia or the Crusader ports via Latin-occupied Constantinople to Trebizond or Sinope, and from there on to Sudak, the Qıpčaq port.52 Or, if one kept to land routes, the goods may have traveled through the Ayyubid realms of Syria and then along the newly equipped and regularized routes with their purpose-built caravansaries installed by the Seljuks of Anatolia to Sinope and across to 50   On the aspect of feasting in nomadic versus settled societies, see the forthcoming study of O. Halenko, “Wine and Feast on the Political Culture of the Early Ottomans.” 51   Here the research of P. Mc Govern on “extreme beverages,” or grog, is very suggestive; summarized in his “Conspicuous Consumption: Ancient Feasting and Drinking,” Copia, 6 (2003), 15-21, available online at http://www.penn.museum/sites/biomolecular archaeology/ (accessed 19 July 2012). 52   On the mention of Sudak as the Qıpčaq port, see Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil fi’l- Tavārīkh, ed. C. Tornberg, Vol. 12 (reprint Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1385-1387/1965-1967), 386: “They (the Mongols) came to the city of Sūdāq. This is a Qıbčaq town, from which they get their goods, because it is on the Black Sea, and ships come to it with textiles. These are sold, and for them slaves boys and slave girls are purchased as well as burtāsī, beaver, squirrel and other furs, and other things from their land.” Sudak was also the port through which incense was imported, according to William of Rubruck; see Willem van Ruysbroeck, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, 15. We thank Oleksandr Halenko for these reminders.



remedies for a wounded “prince”

381  [83]

the Crimean ports.53 While today we may perceive this (and any other) albarello as a kind of luxurious container, its utilitarian facture and form was meant for continued use, storage and easy dispensing. What was important to its medieval users were its contents. The same could probably be said of the splashware bottle in the burial. Finally, the covered cup was produced in the Rhineland, but was reused or adapted to a procedure derived out of steppe ethno-medical or ethnopharmaceutical practice. By its nature, however it was not merely a container such as the other vessels. Also, its location within the coffin gave it particular, if not yet fully understood, meaning. In form and manufacture, it belonged to that category of the “glorious” gift, whether given as a marriage or another type of diplomatic gift exchange with the Rus’, Byzantine or Georgian neighbors of the Qıpčaqs, or as payment for valuable goods, such as furs or slaves at entrepôts like Sudak.54 In its regular function, it was a feasting cup, used in a communal experience for members of the “prince’s” clan group or confederation. In its last function, it can be taken as witness to the attempts of the followers of the wounded “prince” to ease his pain and passing. Together, all the containers in the burial locate the deceased between nomadic traditions, social practices and materials on one hand, and on the other, within the interregional, cross-cultural exchange of luxury materials and fabricated objects.

  On Seljuk caravanserais, see A.T. Yavuz, “The Concepts that Shape Anatolian Seljuq Caravanserais,” Muqarnas, 14 (1997), 80-95; on the Seljuks of Rum and their economic policies and trade, see V.A. Gordlevskii, Gosudartvo Selzhukov Maloi Azii (The Seljuk State in Asia Minor), in Izbrannie Sochinenie (Collected Works), Vol. 1 (Moscow: Izd-vo Vostochnoı ̆ Literatury, 1960), esp. ch. 10. This route was established to compete with the Trapezuntine one; the Seljuks of Rum took Sinope in 1214. The Empire of Nicaea controlled the port of Amastris in the early thirteenth century. We thank Warren Woodfin for his comments on the politics of trade. See also J. Herrin and G. Saint-Guillain, Identities and Allegiances in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); R. Shukurov, “Trebizond and the Seljuks (1204-1299),” Mesogeios Revue trimestrielle d’études méditerranéennes, 25-26 (2005), 92-99; and A. Peacock, “The Saljūq Campaign against the Crimea and the Expansionist Policy of the Early Reign of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, Series 3, 16 (2006), 133-149. 54   On fur trade see: J. Martin Treasure of the Land of Darkness: the Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 53

Portable Palaces: On the Circulation of Objects and Ideas about Architecture in Medieval Anatolia and Mesopotamia Scott Redford

Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Koç University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, Sariyer, 34450 Istanbul, Turkey *E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract This essay examines two categories of portable objects: ceramics and ephemeral architecture (such as tents, palanquins, litters) for clues to the transmission of ideas about palatial architecture and the creation of a shared taste for a certain kind of palatial form and decoration between Christian and Muslim states whose artistic production is usually considered separately. The time period investigated is the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and the geographical area investigated spans Constantinople, Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia. Without denying the importance of traveling craftsmen as vectors for artistic exchange, this essay argues that portable objects and portable or ephemeral architecture helped create the taste and demand for a supranational palatial architecture. Keywords palaces, palatial imagery, ceramics, ephemeral architecture, medieval Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, Byzantium

It is perhaps obvious to compare a building to a tree. It can be uprooted but it is hard to think of it surviving transplantation whole. Certainly a building can be partially or wholly dismembered, its parts grafted onto other buildings in other places, but this act can give only a partial idea of an ensemble. Given architecture’s defining characteristics of rootedness and completeness, how do ideas about architecture spread? In this essay, I would first like to address how not spoliation, nor itinerant artisans (architects, builders, tile-makers, painters, and specialists in molded plaster decoration), but objects propagated ideas about and a taste for palaces and palatial decoration in Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia and Byzantium in



portable palaces

383  [85]

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. After examining ceramics as a means of transmission in the first part of this paper, in the second part I will address other ways in which mobility can be connected with architecture by examining several categories of ephemeral architecture. The objects considered in this essay did not depict buildings so much as evoke them. In doing so, portable objects promoted the creation of a taste for a particular kind of palatial building, the domed polyhedral pavilion, and a particular kind of palatial décor, the depiction of young male court attendants. The creation of taste was aided by two factors: first, the spread of representations evoking palaces and palatial décor to the easily replicable and widely diffused medium of glazed ceramics; and second, the mobility of monarchs and courts and the duplication of elite palatial settings for them. Pierre Bourdieu argues for taste as a marker of class differentiation, and that popular taste is more of an ethos than an aesthetic. While my employment of the word “taste” is not congruent with that of Bourdieu, I do employ his ideas of taste as an important economic force and social marker.1 Let us start with a fragmentary object, about a quarter of a monochrome glazed earthenware vessel that was found in rural central Anatolia and is currently in the Etnoğrafya Müzesi (Ethnographic Museum) in Ankara, Turkey (Figs 1 and 2). At 34 centimeters in diameter, it is large, typical in size and shape for central Anatolian glazed ceramic bowl production in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. What is atypical of this vessel is its extensive champlevé decoration, both exterior and interior, under a nowdecayed transparent greenish glaze. As opposed to its more economical cousin, sgraffito, champlevé decoration is more expensive, because more time has to go into the carving away of the light colored slip to reveal the darker earthenware body of the vessel than sgraffito, which arrives at a design more quickly and simply through incision in the slip.2 1   Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. R. Nice, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 32 for ethos versus aesthetic and 56 for taste as a marker of class differentiation. 2   This sherd is in the collections of the Etnoğrafya Müzesi, Ankara, where it has inventory number 17345. I studied it there in 2010 with a museum research permit granted me by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. I would like to thank the Director Mehmet Yücel Kumandaş, Yıldız hanım and Aynur hanım of the Etnoğrafya Müzesi and Ben Claasz Coockson, who drew and photographed the sherd. For their assistance and advice, I would like also to thank symposium organizers Heather Grossman and Alicia Walker, as well as Serpil Bağcı and Massumeh Farhad.

[86]  384

scott redford

Figure 1.  Earthenware bowl fragment with monochrome green glaze and champlevé decoration on interior and exterior. Etnoğrafya Müzesi, Ankara, Turkey. Accession number 17345. Interior view, profile and exterior view drawn by B. Claasz Coockson.



portable palaces

385  [87]

Figure 2.  Earthenware bowl fragment with monochrome green glaze and champlevé decoration on interior and exterior. Etnoğrafya Müzesi, Ankara, Turkey. Accession number 17345. Photograph of interior by B. Claasz Coockson. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674. The bowl’s exterior has a band of decoration that consists of repeated tripartite vegetal elements inscribed in a rounded frame like an ivy leaf and separated from one another by vertical lines. The vegetal elements most resemble a fleur de lys, although they vary in shape from frame to frame. At first glance, this band of vegetal ornament seems to have nothing to do with the decoration of the interior, until one realizes that there are similar tripartite vegetal/floral elements both on the extradoses of the arches, represented there as well as one in the inscription, where this element may be seen as taking the place of the Arabic letter ‘ayn. The reader will notice the reflowering of the fleur de lys over and over again in this essay. The interior decoration of this vessel was first published by Gönül Öney, who recognized that it represented the interior elevation of a palace. The elevation has three registers. At the top, a window with hexagonal grille pierces a blank wall. Underneath runs a band of cursive writing or

[88]  386

scott redford

pseudo-writing. Below this band is the largest of the registers, a series of round arches that contain either zig-zag patterns or busts of beardless young men wearing polka-dotted kaftans and soft, rounded hats. In between two of the arches is a colonette decorated with a vegetal scroll. This arcade is surmounted by a series of tri-lobed arches containing tri-lobed floral elements mentioned above. The space between two of these tri-lobed arches is filled with more floral and vegetal scrollwork.3 Öney related this depiction to the elevation of a courtyard façade of the Kara Saray, a palace in the citadel of Mosul in present-day northern Iraq, built by its ruler Badr al-Dīn Lu’lu’ in 1233 and first published by Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld (Figs 3 and 4) and, accordingly dated the bowl

Figure 3.  Photograph of courtyard stucco decoration of the Kara Saray palace, Mosul made in April/May 1909. Courtesy of The Gertrude Bell Photographic Archive, Newcastle University. Image number M006.   Gönül Öney, “Human Figures on Anatolian Seljuk Sgraffiato and Champlevé Ceramics,” in Essays in Islamic Art and Architecture in Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn, ed. Abbas Daneshvari (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1981), 121-122. 3



portable palaces

387  [89]

Figure 4.  Elevation detail, courtyard stucco decoration, Kara Saray, Mosul. From Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld, Archaeologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1920), plate 97.

[90]  388

scott redford

fragment to the thirteenth century and, due to its find spot, Seljuk Anatolia. The resemblance is apt, because there, too, registers of painted molded plaster with bands of writing surmounted tri-lobed arches with small busts in them, and below them blind arcades filled with vegetal ornament terminating in fleur de lys-like elements. Order and size may have been a bit different, but the essential elements were there.4 Since its publication, the fragmentary bowl in the Ankara Etnoğrafya Müzesi has prompted neither scholarly discussion relating to the meaning of its decoration, nor questioning the reasons that a ceramic artist would be moved to reproduce the impression of what was likely a courtyard elevation of a palace. In this essay, I would like to try to contextualize its decoration, as I earlier related its diameter and shape to what we know of central Anatolian glazed ceramic production at the time. This bowl fragment becomes more understandable when linked stylistically, iconographically and in terms of technique to contemporaneous ceramic production. Whether, as is the case with this fragment, the palace setting is evoked, or, as is the case in other, more frequently encountered examples, the young Turkic slave soldier retainers of the palace are represented without architectural setting, the aim was to evoke the court and its luxuries for a non-elite market that purchased and utilized these vessels. I argue that the link between the figures and the setting is the contemporaneous and widespread practice of representing, either as plaster or painted figures, these Turkic slave courtiers on the walls of palaces from Samarkand to Cairo.5 In style and subject matter, this bowl fragment can be related to other earthenware bowls produced in Anatolia. A group of these bear similar champlevé decoration, but represent less elaborate subjects than the palace façade. Often, the inside of the bowl depicts a standing beardless youth dressed in a caftan and hat, often with a bird on his arm, sometimes with a flower in his hand, sometimes both. Other bowls depict stylistically similar birds and vegetal decoration. A group of these champlevé decorated glazed bowls was discovered at one location in north central Anatolia, but there 4   Öney, “Human Figures,” 122; Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld, Archaeologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet, 4 vols. (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1911-1920), 1:239-249. 5   Daniel Schlumberger and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, Lashkari Bazar: une résidence royale ghaznévide et ghoride (Paris: de Boccard, 1978); Yury Karev, “Qarakhanid Wall Paintings in the Citadel of Samarqand: First Report and Preliminary Observations,” Muqarnas, 22 (2005), 45-84; Nasser Rabbat, Mamluk History through Architecture (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 128 n. 14, with references to contemporaneous descriptions of the citadel palace at Cairo.



portable palaces

389  [91]

Figure 5.  Glazed earthenware bowl. Interior has champlevé figural decoration carved through slip under a transparent light green glaze. Ereğli Museum, Turkey. According to museum records, it was found at Devle/ Ayrancı and entered the museum collection in 1968. Photograph by B. Claasz Coockson. Reproduced with permission of the Ereğli Museum Directorate. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674. are also other examples of varying quality found at various spots present in museums elsewhere in Turkey. One such bowl also comes from central Anatolia and from a place outside the town of Ereğli in Konya province in south central Anatolia (Fig. 5).6 6   Hakkı Acun, “Yozgat Müzesi’ndeki Selçuklu Kaseleri” (Seljuk Bowls in the Yozgat Museum), 9. Milletlerarası Türk Sanatları Kongresi (9th International Conference of

[92]  390

scott redford

During excavations at the site of Kinet, in southern Turkey, archaeologists recovered a single glazed earthenware bowl with champlevé decoration on the interior and slip-painted decoration on the exterior (Fig. 6). Archaeological context allowed it to be dated not to the thirteenth, but to the early fourteenth century, the last occupation phase at the site. The exterior of the bowl is slip-painted with a ragged version of the word al-sultan alternating with a rosette running beneath the rim. The interior of the bowl contains an incised full-figure depiction of a standing, beardless youth. In his right hand he carries a large, leafy bough ending in a bulbous trilobed flower. On his left arm perches a bird of prey. Protrusions like golf clubs seem to grow out of his shoulders. He is dressed in chain mail, covered by a long, kaftan-like garment closed by buttons. On his head, he wears a soft, polka-dotted hat.7 It has long been realized that in this period, with its proliferation of small states and their courts, and the increase of trade (especially in glazed ceramics) among them, objects of art in many media were decorated with excerpts, mélanges and misinterpretations of princely cycles of pleasure and disport, or other arts of the court. In ceramics, the beardless youth featured on these bowls can be compared to the widespread depiction of the cupbearer, or saqi, on mid- to late thirteenth-century glazed earthenware bowls. The Kinet bowl mixes themes of love and hunting, just as other images mix hunting and war, heraldry and astrology, and so on. This image can also be related to the poetry of the time, in which the young male beloved is often addressed as a Turk. The homoerotic aspect of this genre may perhaps be seen as represented in another ceramic bowl in the collections of the Etnoğrafya Müzesi in Ankara, also attributed to thirteenth-century Anatolia, in which the beardless, kaftanned, fur-hatted beloved seems oblivious to attentions (and beverage) proffered him by an older, smaller, bearded man (Fig. 7).8 To return to the architectural image on the bowl in Ankara, the image of the beardless youth in court costume carrying an attribute can be related Turkish Arts), 3 vols. (Ankara: Kultur Bakanlıgı, 1995), 1:1-12; Cihan Soyhan, Çinili Köşk’ten bir Grup Selçuklu Keramiği” (Seljuk Pottery in the Tiled Pavilion), Sanat Dünyamız, 11 (1985), 9-17. 7   Scott Redford, “Kinet Höyük’te Bulunan bir Kase” (A Bowl Found at Kinet Höyük), in Uluslararası Turk Sanatı ve Arkeolojisi Sempozyumu (International Symposium on Turkish Art and Archaeology), Yeni Ipek Yolu-Konya Kitabi 10 (Konya: Konya Ticaret Odası, 2007), 537-542. 8   Yıldız Meriçboyu, “Figürlü bir Selçuklu Kasesi” (A Figured Seljuk Bowl), Sanat Tarihi Yıllığı, 9-10 (1981), 197-214.



portable palaces

391  [93]

Figure 6.  Monochrome glazed bowl with underglaze slip painted, sgraffito and champlevé decoration excavated at Kinet. KNH-1212. Currently on display in the Hatay provincial museum, Antakya, Hatay, Turkey. Rim diameter 21.7 cm. Base diameter 10 cm. Exterior: underglaze slip painted cursively painted writing and rosettes. Green glaze. Interior: cream slip incised under a greenish-clear glaze. Drawing by B. Claasz Coockson.

[94]  392

scott redford

Figure 7.  Monochrome green glaze earthenware bowl with interior sgraffito and champlevé decoration. Etnoğrafya Müzesi, Ankara. Inventory no. 455. Rim diameter 31 cm. Yıldız Meriçboyu, “Figürlü bir Selçuklu Kasesi,” Sanat Tarihi Yıllığı, 9-10 (1981), fig. 3. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



portable palaces

393  [95]

to the schematized busts peering, as it were, down from the walls of the palace on the courtyard and court below. Despite the fragmentary nature of the Kara Saray in the Mosul citadel, it can be linked to a long-standing tradition of depiction of the court on the walls of the actual building where these officials and retainers would have been disposed in real-life ceremonies and feasts. Painted examples of courtiers “assembled” on the walls surrounding the throne of the monarch have been documented from palaces in Afrasiyab/Samarkand, Lashkari Bazar in Afghanistan and the Cairo citadel. Carved and painted plaster statues and reliefs of courtiers (including many beardless male warrior statues) from eleventh- to twelfth-century Iran are found in museums, though none have been found in archeological or architectural context, so it is impossible to state whether they functioned in spaces as did the painted examples cited above.9 The function of the plaster figures on the Kara Saray courtyard façade, which must be related in some way to the earlier, larger plaster Iranian statues, can be connected more firmly to the ranks of courtiers with their attributes when one examines the stone courtyard façade of the Gu’ Kummet, a building discovered near Sinjar, west of Mosul, dating to more or less the same time period as the Kara Saray there (Fig. 8) and likely built by the last Zangid ruler of Sinjar before it was captured by Badr al-Dīn Lu’lu. The Gu’ Kummet façade represents beardless young men wearing kaftans and soft, perhaps fur, hats and carrying the attributes of various court offices. They are situated in trilobed niches. These niches alternate court figures with bilaterally symmetrical stylized vegetal decoration that culminates in a fleur de lys. A similar tripartite vegetal ornament adorns the tops of the caps of the courtiers there. These figures are disposed around an actual architectural space, a muqarnas niche, where at least at some time they must have “accompanied” an actual seated sovereign (Fig. 9).10 The Beaux Brummel of the early fourteenth century may be seen as detached from their architectural settings at court and set to wander in the world of commerce, in a way connected to the more elaborate, but   Gerald Reitlinger, “Medieval Antiquities West of Mosul,” Iraq, 5 (1938), 151-153.   Estelle Whelan, “Representations of the Khassakiyah and the Origins of Mamluk Emblems,” in Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. Priscilla Soucek (College Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 222, which identifies the attributes: “Eight individual beardless figures in military dress are carved in relief at regular intervals on the arched panels that frame the niche. Clockwise from bottom left they carry an arrow or short spear, a polo stick, an object that is unidentifiable because of damage to the stone, a bow and arrow, a bow suspended from some kind of strap, a beaker and napkin, a baton, and a sword.”  9 10

[96]  394

scott redford

Figure 8.  Stone courtyard façade of audience hall, Gu’ Kummet, Sinjar, currently in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. General View. From Estelle Whelan, “Representations of the Khassakiyah and the Origins of Mamluk Emblems,” in Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. Priscilla Soucek (College Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), fig. 2a. Drawing by Thomas Amorosi. still simplified (and misunderstood) representation of their architectural setting on the Ankara bowl fragment. There, a palace is evoked as much as represented, with the fleur de lys on the exterior essentializing the setting. The purchaser of this bowl would understand its evocation of palatial privilege from the combination of busts and writing, but also from the prominent use of zigzags, one of the most widespread decorations used on Seljuk, and likely other, palaces and pavilions of the period.11 11   See Reitlinger, “Medieval Antiquities,” 148 for painted zig-zag ornament from Tall A’far in northern Mesopotamia.



portable palaces

395  [97]

Figure 9.  Courtyard façade of audience hall, Gu’ Kummet, Sinjar. Iraq Museum, Baghdad. Photographic detail of niches with figures of courtiers. From Estelle Whelan, “Representations of the Khassakiyah and the Origins of Mamluk Emblems,” in Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. Priscilla Soucek (College Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), fig. 5. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http:// booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. Another muqarnas-topped audience hall, in this case known only from an historical source, has engaged scholarly imaginations for decades. This audience hall, however, was not in northern Mesopotamia, but in Constantinople. Alicia Walker is the latest to address the issues raised by a passage containing an architectural description by the Byzantine historian Nicholas Mesarites, writing in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Rather than a courtyard-centered palace as the Gu’ Kummet seems to have been, it appears to describe a muqarnas domed, painted and tiled pavilion that was located in the heart of the Great Palace in Constantinople. I quote from Walker’s translation: The Mouchroutas is an enormous hall, next to the Chrysotriklinos, located on the westerly side. The steps to this hall are made from baked brick, gypsum and marble.

[98]  396

scott redford

The staircase bears serrated decoration on either side and turns in a circle. It is painted with dark blue, shining with deep red, dyed with green, blooming with purple from mixed, cross-shaped tiles joined together. The chamber was the work not of a Roman, Sicilian, Celt, Sybarite, Cypriot or a Cilician hand, but rather of a Persian hand, because it bears figures of Persians and their various costumes. Everywhere on the ceiling are scenes of various types applied to the heaven-like ceiling made of hemispheres. The recesses and projections of the angles are densely packed. The beauty of the carving is extraordinary, the spectacle of the concave spaces is delightful; overlaid with gold, it produces the effect of a rainbow more colorful than the one in the clouds. There is insatiable pleasure—not hidden, but on the surface: not just for those who for the first time direct their gaze upon it, but also for those who visit it frequently (it evokes) amazement and surprise.12

I have recently attempted to propose one category of portable object that, among many other factors, has influenced the creation of a taste for building such a domed pavilion at the Byzantine court in the late twelfth century.13 This is a molded and monochrome glazed ceramic tabouret, or small table, in the form of a polygonal pavilion, a type known from medieval Iran and Syria, but also recovered archeologically from Turkey (Fig. 10). Like the decoration on the fragmentary bowl in the Etnoğrafya Müzesi in Ankara (see Figs 1 and 2), these tabourets serve to evoke an architectural form rather than reproduce it, and to spread ideas of elite palatial culture to larger audiences and markets. The domes that should top them are flattened to form level surfaces, and round knobs that raise them off the ground deny any sense of egress or ingress. Nevertheless, the facades contain windows, balconies, balustrades, writing and other features found on pavilions and palaces, making them recognizable as architectural forms. The fact that there are many in the museums of the world, combined with their lack of color and detail, lead us to posit that they were not luxury objects. However, their size (most are about 35 centimeters in height), breakability and variety of decoration all suggest multiple production centers. A tabouret unearthed by Turkish archeologists at Samsat in southeast Turkey was probably produced there, because of the simplified nature of its decoration, appropriate to provincial production, and the fact that Samsat had a thriving ceramic industry at this time (Fig. 11). However, the promi  Alicia Walker, “The Architectural Ekphraseis of Nikolaos Mesarites,” Muqarnas, 27 (2010), 94 with bibliography of earlier studies that address this building and text. I would like to thank Alicia Walker for permission to quote from her translation of Mesarites. 13   Scott Redford, “Constantinople, Konya, Conical Kiosks, Cultural Confluence,” Proceedings of the Second International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium (Istanbul: Vehbi Koç Foundation, forthcoming). 12



portable palaces

397  [99]

Figure 10.  Molded and glazed ceramic tabouret, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA. Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1911.1. Attributed to Raqqa, Syria, eleventh to twelfth century, height: 35.9 cm. Reproduced with permission. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[100]  398

scott redford

Figure 11.  Molded and glazed ceramic tabouret found at Samsat Excavations. Lale Bulut, “Samsat Kazısı Buluntuları,” in Anadolu’da Türk Devri Çini ve Seramik Sanatı, eds. Gönül Öney and Zehra Çobanlı (Istanbul: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2007), photograph 18. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. nent use of crosses at the top of each side, something that remains to be explained, furnishes us with an example of the variety of interpretation and use a form can undergo as it passes from place to place, providing a measure of correspondence to the Byzantine introduction and use of an Islamic architectural form in the heart of the venerable Great Palace.



portable palaces

399  [101]

Figure 12.  Base and bottom of an open vessel of red clay. White slip inside and out. Interior: champlevé decoration with fine sgraffito details. Depiction of a male bust flanked by two pointed-topped trees. Pale green glaze with streaks of green and brown glaze. Early thirteenth century. Surviving height 3 cm. Diameter of base 9 cm. Maximum diameter 14 cm. Benaki Museum, Theodoros Macridy Donation. Inventory No. 13604. Image © 2010 Benaki Museum, Athens. Reproduced with permission. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. In this paper, we have seen the prominence of representations of court attendants and officials in Islamic palaces in the form of sculpted and painted busts and statues attached to the spaces where rituals and other activities connected with the ruler and court would have taken place. Although there was a lively tradition of painted depictions of ruling monarchs and their feats on the walls of their palaces, to my knowledge,

[102]  400

scott redford

Byzantine palatial traditions at the time did not use representations of court officials to “populate” the spaces where they participated in activities. A champlevé bowl base in the Benaki Museum provides the only iconographic parallels between the champlevé bowls from Anatolia and Constantinople at the time, as well as the idea of ceramics conveying artistic motifs that are then misunderstood and resituated (Fig. 12). Although it is unprovenienced, this bowl base was part of the Macridy collection, and therefore likely originated in Istanbul/Constantinople, where Theodore Macridy worked for many years for the Imperial Museums. Unlike the Anatolian examples, the youthful, beardless male figure represented in the middle of the bowl is shown as a bust, and his clothes are different than those of the youths in the Anatolian examples. However, the connection with the Kinet bowl is made stronger by the placement of the figure’s head framed between two cypress trees, which appear as if growing out of his elbows. The right arm of the figure is separated from the body, perhaps copied from a model in which the figure would carry something, as was the case with the flower offered by the figure in the Kinet bowl.14 The Benaki bowl provides slender evidence for the mis- or reinterpretation of the youthful court retainer figure in a Byzantine or LatinoByzantine context. Would it be straining credibility to propose a connection between observed and/or reported instances of the practice of reproducing court figures in palatial spaces from the Islamic world and the deployment of three small sculpted imperial female busts above the entrance to the twelfth-century Gyrolimne gate to the Blachernai palace at Constantinople (Figs 13 and 14)? There is a tradition of the depiction of busts on the extradoses of arches in Byzantine religious art, but not palatial art. Of course who exactly is represented at the Blachernai is unclear: the figures seem to be female, but the comparanda for their jewelry all come from earlier centuries, so they may have been reused here. While most definitely not courtiers bearing attributes, their beardlessness could relate them to the court attendant figures discussed above. Whatever the case, one must think of this gate into the newly constructed twelfth-century additions to the palace as a place of ritual that must have accompanied the passage of the emperor through the gate, so these busts, otherwise so anomalous in the Byzantine imperial iconographic tradition, might be 14   Demetra Papanikola-Bakirtzi, F.N. Mavrikioy and Ch. Bakirtzis, Byzantine Glazed Pottery in the Benaki Museum (Athens: Benaki Museum, 1999), 111, no. 228; Theodoros Macridy Donation, Invoice no. 13604.



portable palaces

401  [103]

Figure 13.  General view of Gyrolimne Gate, Walls of Istanbul. From Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger, Die Landmauer von Konstantinopel-İstanbul (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), fig. 158. Used with permission. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

Figure 14.  Photograph of imperial bust found at the Gyrolimne gate, Walls of Istanbul. Alexander van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople. The Walls of the City and Adjoining Historical Sites (London: John Murray, 1899), xii. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[104]  402

scott redford

seen as a repurposing of a practice observed in neighboring Islamic lands. The specific form of the busts might be anomalous, but in this context, it might not be inappropriate to quote from Mesarites’ description of the audience hall in the Great Palace, which “. . . bears figures of Persians and their various costumes . . .” In addition to the figures described in the muqarnas vaults, could this passage refer to the kind of ranks of courtiers we have seen in Islamic audience halls? If this were the case, it would bring the busts of the Gyrolimne gate at the Blachernai palace a step closer to the Mouchroutas.15 Another possible conveyer of ideas about palatial architecture is manuscripts, and the medieval Islamic practice of frontispiece depictions of rulers. Badr al-Dīn Lu’lu, ruler of Mosul and Sinjar and builder of the Kara Saray citadel palace in his capital also commissioned copies of the multivolume poetic compendium entitled Kitāb al-Aghānī, or Book of Songs. These frontispieces, which likely date from after the completion of the volumes in 1219, depict him in a variety of activities, including seated flanked by serried ranks of beardless young men with kaftans and fur hats, presumably at court (Fig. 15). This depiction is particularly interesting in light of the fact that Badr al-Dīn, himself a former slave courtier of the ruler of Mosul, originally an Armenian from Anatolia, was the first slave soldier in the medieval Islamic world to rule in his own right.16 While it is unlikely that a multi-volume compendium of Arabic poetry might have been of interest to a Byzantine monarch, there were other kinds of books produced at that time with potential cross-cultural interests. In this respect, and in reference to the issue at hand, which is the transmittal of ideas about palatial architecture through portable objects, illustrated manuscripts of pharmaceutical texts could have evoked interest   Alexander van Millingen, Byzantine Constantinople. The Walls of the City and Adjoining Historical Sites (London: John Murray, 1899), xi, 127, “The gate was at the service of the Palace of Blachernae, a fact which, doubtless, explains the decoration of the arch of the entrance with three Imperial busts.” Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger, Die Landmauer von Konstantinopel-İstanbul (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 145-146, which lists comparanda from representations of imperial women dating mainly from the sixth century. I would like to thank Dr. Buket Coşkuner for inquiring at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, where there is no record of such a bust in the collections. The remains of two are still to be found above the (now blocked) Gyrolimne gate. I would also like to thank Dr. Hansgerd Hellenkemper for his suggestion that these busts could be spolia. 16   D.S. Rice, “The Aghani Miniatures and Religious Painting in Islam,” The Burlington Magazine, 95 (1953), 128-135. 15



portable palaces

403  [105]

Figure 15.  Frontispiece of Volume 17 of the Kitab al-Aghani, Millet Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, Feyzullah Efendi 1566. Reproduced with permission. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[106]  404

scott redford

in Byzantium. The frontispiece that incorporates the most architecture is from a manuscript of the Kitāb al-Diryāq, or Book of Antidotes, attributed to Mesopotamia in the first half of the thirteenth century, the same time period as the Kitāb al-Aghānī frontispieces (Fig. 16). This well-known frontispiece depicts three different scenes—the top portrays a hunting scene, and the bottom a procession. It is the largest, middle scene that concerns us first. It is an intriguing mixture of an ideal picture of court with a genre scene. The monarch is depicted seated on a raised iwan holding a wine glass in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, gazing at kebabs that are cooking on the grill in front of him. Behind him are two beardless youths carrying lances or standards that end in tripartite fleur de lys-like elements. To his right and left are ranks of beardless youths, all bearing attributes of court office—reminiscent of the frontispieces of Badr al-Dīn Lu’lu’. Given the scholarly attribution of this frontispiece to the general region of Mosul, and the era of the reign of Badr al-Dīn Lu’lu, it is interesting to observe that four of the courtiers flanking the Kebab King are depicted in windows on an upper story, and shown from the waist up—similar to the plaster figures on the walls of the Kara Saray palace in Mosul (see Figs 3 and 4), and displaying only a bit more torso than the figures on the scene on the fragmentary vessel in the Ankara Etnoğrafya Müzesi (see Figs 1 and 2). As can be seen in these two examples, the courts of northern Mesopotamia were active in book production. With Byzantium entangled in the politics of the region due largely to the Frankish states of the Outremer, there would have been multiple ways for copies of pharmaceutical texts like the Kitāb al-Diryāq, or astrological or philosophical texts to make their way from this region to Constantinople—some perhaps, with the kind of depictions of palatial spaces found in the Vienna copy of this manuscript.17 Whether through decoration on champlevé bowls, tabourets in the shape of pavilions, or frontispieces depicting court scenes, there were multiple ways in which portable objects evoked palatial spaces and practices at this time. In this article, I have situated the objects under discussion in 17   For an example of the involvement of Mosul with larger intellectual and cultural currents at the time, see Dag Nikolaus Hasse, “Mosul and Frederick II Hohenstaufen: Notes on Atiraddin al-Abhari and Siragaddin al-Urmawi,” Occident et Proche-Orient: contacts scientifiques au temps des Croisades, eds. Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon and Baudouin van den Abeele (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 145-163.



portable palaces

405  [107]

Figure 16.  Frontispiece of the Kitab al-Diryaq Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. A.F. 10, fol. 1. Reproduced with permission. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[108]  406

scott redford

a general trend: the spread of royal imagery to a variety of objects not necessarily produced with a courtly audience in mind, and have linked them also to the proliferation of small courts, increased trade links and multiple centers of production of the era. But in addition to this, we know from Byzantine and Seljuk examples that the artistic and architectural vocabulary of the monarch and his high court officials were almost identical at this time. This means that multiple places existed in each of these dynastic capitals, as well as in every city of every realm, where palaces and pavilions would have been built for the monarch and his court. Porta-Palaces II: Ephemeral Architecture The lowest scene of the Kitāb al-Diryāq frontispiece depicts four women and one child traveling by camel accompanied by guards on horseback. They are seated in a square contraption atop the camel, with no indication of canopy or other covering. Presumably this scene, like the hunting scene at the top of the frontispiece, relates to the specific court being depicted, and like them is an official one with genre elements. This scene recalls another more spectacular one, which took place late in the previous century in 1184, at Mosul, as recounted by the Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr, who was part of the pilgrimage party of Saljūqa Khātūn, the daughter of Anatolian Seljuk sultan Qilij Arslān II and then wife of the Artuqid ruler of Diyarbakır. The litter of this illustrious woman was covered; in fact it was called by its covering: qubba, or dome. The Broadhurst translation, given in modified form below, assumes that she traveled by litter stretched between two horses (as the subsequent quotation makes clear), and not atop a camel or other animal: The Mas’udi princess (Saljūqa Khātūn) entered at the head of her troop of handmaidens, while before her was a body of the men who had conducted her. Her litter (qubba) was wholly adorned with pieces of gold shaped like new moons, with dinars the size of the palm of the hand, and with chains and images (tamāthīl ) of pleasing designs, so that hardly any part of the litter (qubba) could be seen. The two beasts that bore her advanced with jaded steps, and the clatter of their trinkets filled the ears. The golden ornaments on the necks of her beasts and the mounts of her maidens formed together a sum of gold beyond estimation.18

18   R.J.C. Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubair (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952), 246; Ibn Jubayr, Rihla (Beirut: Dar Sader, 1964), 212-213.



portable palaces

407  [109]

Both the nature of the litter and the visual splendor of the party are recounted in more detail in another passage: The Mas’udi princess (Saljūqa Khātūn), with many youths and much circumstance, came suddenly upon us the evening of our departure from Baghdad. She was withdrawn inside a litter (hawdaj) placed on two poles that lay between two beasts, one ahead of the other, and decked with gilded caparisons ( jalal al-mudhahhaba). The animals carried her along like a zephyr, speedily and gently. There was an opening (bāb) both in the front and in the rear of the litter, inside which could be seen the princess, veiled and wearing a golden headband. Before her went a mounted troop of her youths and soldiers. On her right were the nags and excellent hackneys, while behind her was a party of her handmaidens riding both nags and hackneys, on goldworked saddles. They also wore golden head-bands whose ends fluttered in the breeze. Like a cloud they moved behind their mistress, with banners and timbals and trumpets which they sounded at the mount and dismount.19

Ibn Jubayr also recounts a scene that took place earlier in the same pilgrimage, the visit of the same Saljūqa Khātūn to the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad at Madina. Here, there is no mention of golden adornment, nor or the multi-colored silks worn by the women when making their succes fou upon entering Mosul. Despite the sobriety appropriate to the setting, Saljūqa Khātūn’s arrival once again occasioned a crowd. Of more interest to the topic at hand is Ibn Jubayr’s mention of the domed litters (qubāb, plural of qubba) of not only Saljūqa Khātūn herself, but also her daughters and attendants.20 These passages evoke strong images of multiple domed litters, accompanied by guards as in the image from the Kitāb al-Diryāq frontispiece, bobbing and surging through excited crowds. While none of these portable, domed litters has survived, it is safe to say that they provide the beginning of a means to moderate the rootedness and place-specific nature of architecture presented at the beginning of this essay. It is a commonplace in many architectural traditions that domes are associated with important people: here, as in the decoration on the outside of the fragmentary bowl in the Ankara Etnoğrafya Müzesi, the top stands for the whole—there 19   Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubair, 239-240; Rihla 206-207. A hawdaj here means a litter, but can also mean (an elephant) howda or camel howda. It seems the origin of this term can be connected with the Arabic hawd, one of whose meanings is camel hump. Thus the English language association of the term howda with elephants may have come from its use in India. 20   Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubair 207; Ibn Jubayr, Rihla, 177.

[110]  408

scott redford

it is the fleur de lys, here it is the dome of the litter that literally gives it its name. Above, I introduced a category of portable objects—smallish ceramic tables evoking the tradition of polyhedral pavilions—as a way of providing one idea of a means of transmission for ideas about a particular architectural form from Islam to Byzantium, as well as in commercial milieux around the Islamic world. Litters, palanquins and howdas must have been found in all medieval societies, and therefore it is not necessary to think along similar lines for their ceramic representation. Furthermore the figure of the elephant, his mahout and howda are familiar to us from later contexts. Still it is apposite to introduce the fact that such figurines existed at the time, as well as one example of the object category (Fig. 17). This figurine, like most of its kind, is attributed to thirteenth-century Iran, but the general sharing of ceramic trends between Iran, Mesopotamia, and Syria at this time, as well as the presence of known examples of Syrian theriomorphic fountainheads, make it likely that it was part of the visual repertoire of these other areas. The pavilion-like howda on top of the elephant has a figure inside it (obscured in this photograph) and is topped by a centrallyplace finial, perhaps evocative of a dome. The relation of howda to pavilion was made explicit in Fatimid Cairo, where there was a famous pavilion called the Hawdaj on Rawda Island in the Nile.21 The Seljuk sultans and their contemporaries also used an umbrella (chatr) as one of their regalia—it is perhaps this that is evoked by the cloth held by angels over the head of Badr al-Dīn Lu’lu’ in the Kitāb al-Aghānī frontispieces. This umbrella is called a qubba in Arabic language sources. In recounting the invasion of Anatolia by the Mamluk sultan Baybars in 1277, Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓ āhir mentions that the inhabitants of the city of Kayseri called the Seljuk sultan ṣāḥ ib al-qubba wa’l ṭayr (lord of the dome (umbrella) and the bird), because the Seljuk sultans had a bird atop their sultanic umbrella. Seljuk chronicler Ibn Bībī tells us that the sultan’s tent was “three headed,” a reference once again to those tri-partite elements

21   The hawdaj pavilion on Rawda Island is mentioned in Neil Mackenzie, “The Fortifications of al-Qahira (Cairo) under the Ayyubids,” The Jihad and Its Times: Dedicated to Andrew Stefan Ehrenkreutz, eds. Hadia Dajani-Shakeel and Ronald Messier (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies, 1991), 86-87, quoting al-Maqrizi’s al-Mawā’iẓ.



portable palaces

409  [111]

Figure 17.  Underglaze painted glazed ceramic figurine of “elephant with howdah and figure.” Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. F1967.26 Attributed to “Saljuq period, early thirteenth century.” Height 22.9 cm. Reproduced with permission. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[112]  410

scott redford

that seemed to top everything at the time—including the crowns of kings and sultans alike.22 A fourteenth-century drawing from Mongol Iran depicts such a tripartite finial—and introduces another kind of portable architecture, the tent pavilion. The structure represented is actually a tent mosque. There is a well-known if vague account of an Anatolian Seljuk tent pavilion that was gifted to the French King Louis IX while he was in Cyprus in 1248. This must have formed one part of the sultan’s sarā-parda, literally curtain palace, which he set up at his suburban palaces, when traveling or on campaign.23 I would like to close this consideration of ephemeral architecture with a textual reference that recalls the travels of Saljūqa Khātūn as recounted by Ibn Jubayr. The Seljuk chronicler Ibn Bībī recounts enthusiastic crowds that gathered outside the central Anatolian cities of Kayseri and Konya to greet ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubādh when he became Seljuk sultan in 1219. Upon receiving news of the impending arrival of the new sultan and his party from the governor of Kayseri, “the military commanders of the city and the state and (other) important people went to the Çubuk district with movable and fixed pavilions (koskhā-ye revān o sākin), and wheeled vehicles (gardūnhā—literally wheels) full of bands, singers, and encomiasts (meddāh).”24 When subsequently the sultan and his entourage arrived at the capital of Konya, crowds dressed in their best raiment greeted them, along with, and here Ibn Bībī is specific, 300 movable and 500 fixed kiosks decorated with all manner of weapons and implements. In Ibn Jubayr’s travel narrative, litters are referred to as domes. Here, it is possible that the term “movable pavilions” refers to litters, or, as we saw in the elephant figurine, a howda in the form of a pavilion fixed to the top of a horse, camel, ox, water buffalo or the like, or to a wheeled conveyance. Since there is mention of weapons affixed to these, it is also possible that some of the movable pavilions might be of the “Elephant and Castle” type—basically 22   As preserved in the fourteenth- to early fifteenth-century writer al-Qalqashandī’s Ṣubḥ al-Ā’shā, 14 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 1338 (1919)), 14:155, reprinted with original pagination in Faruk Sümer, Yabanlu Pazar. Selçuklu Devrinde Milletlerarası Büyük bir Fuar (Yabanlu Pazar: A Seljuk Period Big International Fair) (Istanbul: Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları Vakfı, 1985). 23   Stefano Carboni and Linda Komaroff, The Legacy of Genghis Khan (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002), 116, fig. 134. 24   Ibn Bibi, El-Evamirü’l-‘Ala’iyye fi’l-Umuri’l-‘Ala’iyye (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1956), 212 and 214.



portable palaces

411  [113]

an armored pavilion atop an animal—known from armed combat at this time. As for the fixed pavilions, one can imagine tent pavilions pitched by the urban notables and the military mentioned in connection with similar celebrations at Kayseri.25 In my opinion, these descriptions provide us with a category of ephemeral architecture—litters, howdas, tent pavilions and perhaps even wheeled pavilions—that uproot the fixedness of place noted at the beginning of this essay and any tendency to associate certain forms with certain construction materials. In this way, although many Byzantines came and went to Seljuk territories, it is not necessary to posit a trip to Konya to visit a sultanic pavilion or palace as a means of stimulating demand on the part of a late twelfth-century Byzantine emperor for a Seljuk-style pavilion. Elaborate, portable pavilion-type movable structures, so common as to be seen by the hundreds in the capital of Konya, in the form of booty, gifts or trade commodities, could easily have made their way to Constantinople. Visits like that of Sultan Qilij Arslān II to Constantinople in 1162 could very well have occasioned, if not gifts, then the strong visual impact of pavilion-like domed sultanic litters or howdas and elaborately structured tent pavilions, which were themselves used as reception halls. The editors of this volume asked contributors to entertain the idea of a model that might encompass the production of both monumental and portable art. I take for granted that there were no architectural plans at the time, with the exception of schematic diagrams scratched on stones at building sites, and that master builders/artisans/craftsmen carried with them the secrets of their trade, and based their buildings on simple multiplications derived from the footprint of the building. Portable objects either recalling architectural forms in shape or decorated with architectural forms were neither unheard of nor uncommon, but in my opinion they formed part of a continuum with categories of decoration (like representations of beardless youths) that normally would not be considered 25   Until about this time, Arabic language authors referred to the trellis tent (modern Turkish yurt) common to Central Asia as a qubba, or dome, due to its shape. A rounded tent or other dwelling placed on a cart was also a feature of Central Asian nomadism. It is possible that this is what is referred to in the passage from Ibn Bibi quoted above. See Peter Alford Andrews, Felt Tents and Pavilions. The Nomadic Tradition and Its Interaction with Princely Tentage, 2 vols. (London: Melisende, 1999), 1:180-193, for the use of the term qubba for trellis tent in pre-Mongol Arabic literature, and 1:201-203 and 1:256-263, for carts bearing round dwellings. It is entirely possible that this Central Asian tradition continued in medieval Anatolia.

[114]  412

scott redford

related to architecture unless one knew, for instance, of their ubiquity in the decoration of palatial reception halls. I also take for granted the use of objects to create taste, and a desire on the part of the patron to commission a particular building based on that taste. But at the same time, with the lack of resources for monumental building and constant mobility, courts from those of the Normans and Frederick II Hohenstaufen through the Laskarids, Anatolian Seljuks and other dynasties in northern Mesopotamia constructed multiple urban and suburban palaces in or around all of the major cities of their realms. If the case of the Anatolian Seljuks holds true, these palatial settings were not grand, but they bore standardized imagery and were populated not only by sovereign, court and a menagerie of wild animals and birds, but also by luxurious portable objects, including textiles and gold and silver vessels. Some of these vessels also bore representations of monarch and court replicating the figural scenes found on the audience hall walls mentioned in this paper. While there must have been orders of magnitude, with capital cities like Mosul and Konya possessing larger palatial spaces with more complex iconographic programs, the very visibility, mobility and portability of the courts themselves must have contributed to the spread of selected court imagery to other settings and other media. As a result, my paper unifies architecture and portable objects in a single model conjoining the creation of taste and demand.

Conveyance and Convergence: Visual Culture in Medieval Cyprus Justine Andrews*

Department of Art & Art History, University of New Mexico, MSC04 2560, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-00011, USA *E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract While the trajectory of transmission of art in the Mediterranean has often been understood as West to East, here I will consider the transmission of artistic sources to Cyprus from both the West and East. These trajectories open a dialogue regarding the question of how the many sources that underpin Cypriot medieval art converged on the island. Focusing on commissions of the Lusignan dynasty, as well as other powerful communities such as the Orthodox Greeks and the Genoese, this paper shows that the social and political identity of these groups was constantly in flux; the artistic styles they used to express themselves changed according to their shifts in status. Thus, their use of artistic and architectural styles was strategic and both reflected and shaped the family’s changing political and economic position in the Mediterranean. Keywords Medieval Cyprus, visual culture, transmission of art, Lusignan dynasty

With its close proximity to the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, the Latin kingdoms of the Holy Land, and Islamic dynasties in Egypt, medieval Cyprus saw successive waves of refugees and conquerors from these polities and also functioned as a major trade entrêpot between the areas. Uniquely shaped by the island’s location at an intercultural crossroads of the Mediterranean, Cyprus offers the art historian of the Middle Ages extraordinary examples of stylistically and iconographical hybrid architecture, sculpture and painting. While Cypriot visual culture has been dissected in attempts to locate models for and the origins of its arts and architecture, little has been written about the modes of transmission that brought diverse visual styles and techniques to Cyprus in the late twelfth

[116]  414

justine andrews

to fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, the terminology that modern scholars employ to characterize the features of many Cypriot monuments is often freighted with implicit cultural, ethnic and geographic associations as well as associated meanings that do not always capture, and sometimes even occlude, the meanings and associations that these forms projected for medieval makers and viewers. The exploration of these meanings and associations within their historical context and with attention to the complexity of modern terminology widens our understanding of the convergence of artistic sources within the monuments of Cyprus. In the Middle Ages, Cyprus attracted artists, merchants and patrons of varying regional origins and classes. The primary ruling family of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was the Lusignan. Originally from the area of Poitou, France, the Lusignan were minor nobles who rose to prominence during the Crusades. This branch of the Lusignan was a dominant player in Levantine Crusader politics before their purchase of Cyprus. They came to the island from the East rather than directly from France. Guy de Lusignan purchased Cyprus in 1192 from Richard the Lionheart, thus beginning the dynasty’s governance, which lasted until 1489.1 It was during this family’s rule, and especially during the fourteenth century, that new architectural styles and techniques were introduced, and that established art forms, such as monumental painting and manuscript production, were transformed by new iconographies from a variety of sources. The Lusignan were strategic in their use of artistic and architectural styles, and the family shifted styles and forms to suit their political and economic position in the Mediterranean. Several key monuments of medieval Cyprus—the Latin-rite Cathedral of Santa Sophia in Nicosia, the Latin-rite Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Famagusta and the Orthodox-rite Cathedral of St. George in Famagusta— clearly reflect the relationships between artistic or architectural styles and changing ethnic, religious and political identities. Further, portable painted objects, together with the artists and patrons who produced them, shed light on how artistic and architectural forms were transmitted to the island and the meanings they conveyed within this unique environment. The precise relationship between the production of architecture and portable arts is not always clear; yet, the exploration of both in this paper helps to   In 1191 Richard had seized the island from the Byzantine tyrant Isaac Comnenus. For a history of Cyprus in this period see, Peter W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades 1191-1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. 2-9. 1



conveyance and convergence

415  [117]

consider the varied roles that works of different scale played in the transmission of art to and in Cyprus. It is the flexibility and complexity of art in Cyprus that allowed patrons such as the Lusignan to strategically choose styles and forms to accommodate their own fluctuating identities. By viewing these monuments and objects as changeable and in flux themselves we can break free of static notions of ethnicity and identity attached to art, and understand the art and architecture of medieval Cyprus as both distinct and changeable. Terminology and Historiography Before further discussion of specific monuments, the use of the terms frequently found in the literature on medieval Cyprus requires some unpacking. Scholars of medieval objects and monuments in Cyprus often use terms like “Gothic” or “Byzantine” in broad strokes to categorize artistic styles and techniques associated with one or another geographic, cultural or religious identity. Like the “Latin/Orthodox” or even broader “Western/ Eastern” dichotomy, the terms “Gothic” and “Byzantine” are meant to evoke specific visual motifs associated with particular communities on the island. In this schema, a building described as “Gothic” would typically exhibit architectural features such as ribbed vaults, flying buttresses and tracery windows that held stained glass. A monument described as “Byzantine” might employ a cross-in-square plan with a centralized dome and a bema space separated from the naos by an iconostasis. Yet the stylistic categorization of images and monuments according to terms that evoke religion, language, geography and politics often tells us more about modern notions of boundaries and identity than about the role of art in medieval societies such as that of Cyprus, which accommodated communities of different religions (Latin Christian, Orthodox Christian), different languages (Latin, French, Italian, Greek) and different political allegiances (the Kingdom of Cyprus, Venice, Genoa, Aragon). In such environments identity could be ignored, foregrounded or otherwise manipulated based on the need for and negotiation of interaction between groups.2 Therefore, we cannot approach the art of Cyprus with an assumption that identities—whether of people or monuments—were 2   Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, eds., Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700-1700 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 20.

[118]  416

justine andrews

fixed. Rulers as well as artists, patrons, tradesmen and others often worked in a flexible and creative way to accommodate local understandings of boundary and difference within the arts.3 This accommodation may have been a conscious or unconscious choice, depending partly on the artist’s familiarity with a variety of cultural motifs and on the directions of the patron. Outside of artistic practice, of course, interactions and acknowledgement of boundary and difference could also be radically different, with less accommodation and other types of “impositions.” For example, in the 1320s King Hugh IV (c. 1295-1359) and the bishop John di Conti (act. 1312-1332) created a portal program at Santa Sophia in Nicosia that accommodated locally produced panels related to the holy icon painting styles used in the Orthodox Church, thereby signaling an ecumenical attitude, at least from an artistic perspective. Yet approximately thirty years later, the papal legate Peter of Thomas convened all the Greek Orthodox bishops of the island in the cathedral to reprimand them and possibly to try to convert them to the Latin Church, an effort which suggests a less sanguine outlook toward religious diversity.4 It appears that when interactions between identities occurred on Cyprus in the sphere of religious dogma and praxis, less flexibility is apparent. When interactions on Cyprus occur in an artistic sphere, however, there was room for accommodation. Although the categories of “Byzantine” and “Gothic” are complicated, we should not summarily discard them. This is in part because they are deeply ingrained in the art historical taxonomies that underpin any analysis of works of art and architecture from this period, but also because they can be useful in designating the broad geographic regions from which a particular motif may originate. This paper, however, will show that these categories must be qualified, particularly because the geographic and temporal territories connoted by the terms are vast and changed during the long periods of history that they encompass. “Byzantine,” for example, may denote not only imagery drawn from the capital of Constantinople, but also that from another region of the empire or via an intermediary,   Power and Standen, Frontiers in Question, 13.   The Greek chronicler Makhairas and the French chronicler Philippe de Mézières both describe this event. Leontios Makhairas, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus Entitled ‘Chronicle’, ed. R.M. Dawkins, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 91; and Philippe de Mézières, Life of Saint Peter Thomas, ed. Joachim Smet (Rome: Institutum Carmelitarnum, 1954), 94. 3 4



conveyance and convergence

417  [119]

such as one of the Syro-Palestinian Crusader kingdoms. Nor will “Gothic” designate styles and techniques coming exclusively from France or even Western Europe. Thus, the terms “Gothic,” “Byzantine” and “Cypriot” are shifting concepts that changed during the long, tumultuous history of medieval Cyprus; the responses in art and architecture to this history are equally diverse. Because of the mutable nature of these terms, for the purposes of this study, I will use instead more specific temporal or geographic terms to designate the sources of artistic motifs and styles. Occasionally the sources themselves will be diverse, and I will indicate that when necessary. I employ the term “Byzantine” primarily to describe elements associated with that empire and its capital Constantinople. The term “Gothic” will be used primarily in historiographical discussion or when paraphrasing or quoting previous scholarship. The term “Cypriot” will be employed to describe the particular convergence of artistic styles and iconography on this island, especially in the late Middle Ages. Much of the scholarship on Cypriot art of the later Middle Ages, since the seminal work of Camille Enlart in the late nineteenth century, has focused on its artistic origins in France.5 A simplistic explanation of artistic transmission in Cyprus is that new artistic forms, particularly those in the current thirteenth-century “French” or “Gothic” style, were brought to the island by its new rulers and upper class patrons as a means to lay claim to their French ancestry.6 The arrival on Cyprus of Louis IX on his way to Egypt in 1248 is understood as a prime moment of transmission. Many scholars propose that the King of France and his entourage had a dramatic effect on the arts of Lusignan Cyprus. An elaborately sculpted portal, the so-called “door of St. Louis” at Santa Sophia, the main cathedral of Nicosia, evinces this line of the historiography of Cypriot arts in the Crusader period (Fig. 1). Enlart assigned the name to this ensemble in the nineteenth century because he attributed the

5   Camille Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, trans. and ed. Peter Hunt (London: Trigraph and A.G. Leventis Foundation, 1987), esp. 46-67. 6   Indeed the simplistic answer repeats the French history of the family, which is often the specific cultural identity given to the Lusignan. Politically, the Lusignan family’s alliances in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries fluctuated between the King of France and the Kings of England. While originating in the region of Poitou within the Duchy of Aquitaine, the Lusignan had strong ties to the Holy Land. Guy’s father Hugh VIII (Le Brun) died in the Holy Land in 1164. See Sidney Painter, “The Houses of Lusignan and Chatellerault 1150-1250,” Speculum, 30 (1955), 374-384, esp. 375-378.

[120]  418

justine andrews

Figure 1.  “St. Louis” Portal, east end, Santa Sophia, Nicosia, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.



conveyance and convergence

419  [121]

sculpture to an artist who had traveled to Cyprus with Louis IX.7 The portal is flanked on each side by two pilasters and two columns, the capitals of which form a sculptural frieze. Sensuously carved beasts, now headless, crouch among the undulating convex and concave foliage that adorns the capitals. Enlart reckoned these to be the work of thirteenth-century French craftsmen, perhaps Eudes of Montreuil, an artist who traveled to Cyprus with Louis IX in 1248. He cites the skillfully carved marble, especially in the capitals and imposts, as evidence of the involvement of French artists.8 Current scholarship has rejected, however, this easy correlation of architectural forms and cultural identities, for neither this doorway, nor any other part of Santa Sophia, can be shown to have been commissioned by Louis IX. Nicola Coldstream explains that there is no parallel at the Nicosia Latin cathedral of architectural elements current at the court of Louis IX; particularly lacking is any sign of the Rayonnant, the sinuous architectural “court style” seen in Louis’s building program at the Sainte Chappelle and other Parisian projects. Coldstream concludes that there was no building program at all by Louis IX while he stayed on Cyprus in 1248.9 And yet, the impulse to see this door as a key marker of artistic transformation on the island is understandable because the cathedral’s architects quickly abandoned the predominantly heavy, late Romanesque and Crusader forms used in earlier phases and by the early fourteenth century worked in a decidedly more elaborate, “Gothic,” or contemporary French mode. In reassessing the architecture of Lusignan Cyprus, it must first be said that while art can be used to emphasize either the religious indicator or political indicator of identity, it does not act alone as a disclosure of identity. For instance, Santa Sophia at Nicosia, as the place of coronation, was   The portal was originally positioned on the south side of the cathedral, but was relocated during the sixteenth century to the building’s east end, where it is seen today. The tympanum is decorated with an inscription in Arabic, which gives the date 1584. Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 105. This idea is reiterated and attribution given to Hugh da Fagiano (1251-1269), who accompanied the expedition of Louis IX. Philippe Plagnieux and Thierry Soulard, “La Cathédrale Sainte-Sophie,” in L’Art gothique en Chypre, Mémoires de l’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, n.s. vol. 34, eds. Jean-Bernard de Vaivre and Philippe Plagnieux (Paris: Boccard, 2006), 150. 8   Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 104-105. 9   Nicola Coldstream discusses this point in her introduction to Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 1-10. 7

[122]  420

justine andrews

integral to the establishment of Cypriot kingship, and thus the involvement of the kings in its production was central. It is a prime example of how the patrons and makers of Cypriot art and architecture merged styles—eliding modern architectural categories—in order to project messages about the multifaceted identity of the island’s elites. The west end of the cathedral displays Orthodox-style icon painting as well as iconography and sculpture evocative of French cathedral decoration, elements that suggest neither exclusively affiliations with France nor Constantinople, but rather a royal message of confluence between the two that King Hugh IV strategically sought at the site of his son’s coronation as king of Cyprus.10 A more useful approach to the arts of multicultural environments comes from the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology, which have addressed two issues important for medieval Cyprus: the consideration of identity in pre-modern societies as an idea that is mutable, and the flexibility of the connections between shifting identities and material culture. Ethnicity, as proposed by anthropologists and archaeologists, is an affiliation that is eminently changeable. The anthropologist Frederik Barth makes this point exceptionally clear in his critique of his own earlier work, “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.” He stresses the situational quality of ethnic groups, produced “under particular interactional, historical, economic, and political circumstances.”11 In Cyprus, a specific set of historical circumstances shaped artistic production: a historic lineage of many cultures conflicting under political regimes and co-existing under commercial necessity, with periods of heightened interaction. It is within this “flux of culture” that Barth says identities merge and blend, rather than reproduce distinctions that reaffirm and separate identities.12 The architecture, wall paintings and manuscripts from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Cyprus were made amidst this “flux,” and the identities represented within its images are not distinctly “Latin” or “Orthodox,” but instead are mixed, the result of the specific historical situations in Cyprus. Ethnic identity is not something inherent to a person or group,   Justine Andrews, “The Latin Cathedral of Nicosia: the Sculpture of the Western Portals and Its Reception,” Epetiris Kentrou Epistimoniko Erevon (Kuprou), 31 (2005), Παρἁρτημα (Annex), 49-58. 11   Frederik Barth, “Enduring and Emerging Issues in the Analysis of Ethnicity,” in The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries,” eds. Hans Vermulen and Cora Govers (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1994), 12. 12   Barth, “Enduring and Emerging Issues,” 13. 10



conveyance and convergence

421  [123]

and might be changed by adopting cultural or behavioral attributes. Artists and patrons were therefore accorded the freedom of choice.13 According to the circumstances of production, the artist or patron could select their manner of expression (that is to say, the style of their work) based not only on their cultural or ethnic origins, but also according to different social, political, religious and historical demands in their environment or their own or the patrons’ aesthetic preferences.14 Therefore, as new techniques and styles of architecture, sculptural ornament and painting were brought to the island of Cyprus, the patrons and artists in Nicosia and Famagusta had multiple models from which to draw. The Capital at Nicosia and the “Conveyance” of the Artistic East Nicosia, in the center of Cyprus, was the capital city for the Lusignan rulers and their court. Although the ancestors of the Lusignan came from the area of Poitiers in France, the Lusignan kings of Cyprus arrived more directly from the East, after having spent many years in the Crusader territories of the Holy Land. Guy de Lusignan and his brother Aimery are credited with establishing their kingdom on Cyprus in 1192, having long served the Latin kings of Jerusalem.15 The cathedral at Nicosia was begun in the thirteenth century and contrary to the often-assumed transmission of artistic forms from the West, it appears that the earliest forms present at Santa Sophia are, like the Lusignan, more immediately tied to the East (Fig. 2). In its plan as well as some decorative sculpture, the cathedral clearly draws upon precedents from Crusader models. Therefore, French architectural elements in this first Cypriot cathedral are actually transmitted to Cyprus by way of the Latin kingdoms in the Holy Land; while they certainly show an affiliation with France, it is essential to note that this connection is via the architecture of the Crusader states. 13   Katherine Verdery, “Ethnicity, Nationalism, and State-Making. ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’: Past and Future,” in The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries,” eds. Hans Vermulen and Cora Govers (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1994), 49-50. 14   Siân Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identies in the Past and Present (London: Routledge, 1997), 97. 15   Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 22; and Jean Richard, “Introduction historique” in L’Art gothique en Chypre, Mémoires de l’académie des inscriptions et belleslettres, n.s. vol. 34, eds. Jean-Bernard de Vaivre and Philippe Plagnieux (Paris: Boccard, 2006), 60-62.

[124]  422

justine andrews

Figure 2.  Santa Sophia Cathedral, Nicosia, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly the start of construction of Santa Sophia.16 Although there is speculation that the site was previously occupied by an earlier Templar church, the structure built as a cathedral certainly could not have started until the archbishopric was established in 1196. The building more likely began to take shape under Archbishop Eustorge de Montaigu by 1217.17 The plan of the cathedral in Nicosia has basic 16   On the complexities of the foundations of Santa Sophia and the origins of the cathedral’s name see, T.C. Papacostas, “In Search of a Lost Byzantine Monument: Santa Sophia of Nicosia,” Epetiris Kentrou Epistimoniko Erevon (Kuprou), 31 (2005), 11-37. 17   On the establishment of the archbishopric see: Nicholas Coureas and Christopher Schabel, eds., The Cartulary of the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom of Nicosia (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 1997), 74-82. On the early construction of the cathedral: Camille Enlart, L’Art gothique et la renaissance en Chypre, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1899), 1:78-81; Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 82-83; Plagnieux and Soulard, “La Cathédrale Sainte-Sophie,” 121-122. On the connection to an early Templar church on the site, see:



conveyance and convergence

423  [125]

similarities to other Crusader churches such as the Cathedral of Tortosa and the Church of St. John in Beirut. The plan of Santa Sophia and those Crusader churches includes a nave and two side aisles, made up of square bays and heavy piers, and a tripartite east end.18 Recent scholarship finds particular similarity between the foliate ornament on the lintel of the exterior north door of Santa Sophia (from the second decade of the thirteenth century) and the sculpture of the south door of the Holy Sepulcher church in Jerusalem (c. 1140-1150).19 Other sculptural comparanda for the floral ornament at Santa Sophia are found in the few remains from the parish church at ‘Atlit, south of Haifa, Israel, and the sculpture of the Great Hall at Crac de Chevaliers in Syria, both from the mid-thirteenth century.20 Later in the thirteenth century we begin to see in Santa Sophia more architectural elements that are associated with the West (and France) but continue to be mediated by Syro-Palestinian Crusader architecture. For example a polygonal apse is built on Santa Sophia’s east end, paralleling that at the small parish church at ‘Atlit, which was built in the late 1230s or early 1240s and also shows a similar use and profiles of ribs, and ribbed vaulting as the cathedral of Nicosia (Fig. 3).21 One must remember that throughout the thirteenth century the leaders of Cyprus looked continually to the Levant and had substantial interaction with the Crusader States. Upon acquiring the island in 1192, Guy de Lusignan recruited friends, knights and refugees from the Holy Land to settle on Cyprus.22 This migration of people continued, if sporadically, until a final influx of refugees arrived after Acre was lost in 1291. The Kingdom of Cyprus adopted the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the relationship between the kingdoms was solidified by the king of Cyprus’s claim to the crown of Jerusalem in 1269. Cyprus was therefore

T.S.R. Boase, “Ecclesiastical Art,” in A History of the Crusades, gen. ed. Kenneth M. Setton, Vol. 4: The Art and Architecture of the Crusader States, ed. Harry W. Hazard (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 16. 18   Jaroslav Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098-1187 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 71 and 302. 19   Plagnieux and Soulard, “La Cathédrale Sainte-Sophie,” 137. 20   Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 202-204. 21   Folda, Crusader Art, 196-197. 22   Nicholas Coureas, “The Place to Be: Migrations to Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus,” Kupriakai Spoudai, 67 (2002), 125.

[126]  424

justine andrews

Figure 3.  Interior, Santa Sophia, Nicosia, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.



conveyance and convergence

425  [127]

intimately linked to the Holy Land through family, church and architecture, at least through the end of the thirteenth century. The events of 1291 brought about a dramatic change in how the upper class of Cyprus chose to express their identity. With the loss of Acre the leaders of Cyprus sought to establish their kingdom as the most powerful center of Latin Christendom in the East. Directly confronting the Muslim threat in the East, Cyprus was at the same time so far from Europe that the kings of Cyprus began to feel compelled to compensate for this literal and figurative distance by describing their kingdom in starkly Western terms. This realignment was also necessary for religious and political reasons, especially in regard to the Lusignan position vis-à-vis the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia. Armenia could also claim to be the furthest Christian Kingdom in the East, and Cyprus was in direct competition with the major port of Ayas, particularly in the early fourteenth century.23 The leaders of Cyprus sought to dispel notions that they might not be able to compete with other powerful courts of the West and East on an international political stage. Therefore, from 1291 we see a distillation of artistic and particularly architectural forms drawn more directly from thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury Western European sources in France, Italy and Germany. The porch of Santa Sophia was built as the Cypriots changed their sightlines from the Syro-Palestinian mainland, with its hybrid, localized artistic forms, toward stronger ties to Western Europe and its clarified and international artistic forms. The west end of Santa Sophia was constructed under the supervision of Archbishop John di Conti (Fig. 4). Although never fully completed, the cathedral was consecrated by the archbishop in 1326.24 The deep rib-vaulted porch with three impressively decorated portals draws heavily, although not entirely, upon French models. Each portal consists of a series of archivolts, tympana and splayed jambs. The central portal presents a series of small figures in each archivolt (Fig. 5). Closest to the viewer are figures of queens and kings, next are prophets and the third order is filled with bishops. In an earlier publication, I relate some of these   Peter W. Edbury, “Cyprus and Genoa: The Origins of the War of 1373-74,” in

23

Πρακτικἁ του Δευτἑρου Διεθνοὐς Κυπριολογικοὑ Συνεδρἱου (Λευκωσία, 20-25 Απριλίου

1982) (Proceedings of the Second International Cyprological Congress (Nicosia, 20-25 April 1982)), Vol. 2, eds. Th. Papadopoullos and B. Englezakis (Nicosia: Society of Cypriot Studies, 1986), 109-126; Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 135. 24   Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 82-90; and Plagnieux and Soulard, “La Cathédrale Sainte-Sophie,” 122-128.

[128]  426

justine andrews

Figure 4.  West façade, Santa Sophia, Nicosia, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

Figure 5.  Central Portal, west façade, Santa Sophia, Nicosia, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.



conveyance and convergence

427  [129]

elements to Reims Cathedral and suggest that they carry associations with royal coronation.25 The symbolic nature of this correspondence is clear. Reims was the site where the French kings were anointed and by the thirteenth century was known as a symbol of the monarch’s power. As the site of the Cypriot kings’ coronation, Santa Sophia in Nicosia was remodeled in the fourteenth century to create a parallel visual environment of royal ceremony and power. Today the portals appear remarkably distinct from Orthodox churches and are likened to French examples with their pointed, gabled arches and archivolts filled with decorative or figural sculpture. Blind niches on the trumeau, the jambs and the tympanum were clearly intended as areas for figural imagery, as in French comparanda. However, the figures in these spaces are not present, giving a false impression of the original appearance of the portals. In the center portal, for example, there are two niches on either side jamb, yet these niches are relatively shallow and still have the remains of metal hooks just under a bas-relief sculpture of two hands holding a crown. This relief image, clearly associated with coronations, suggests that a figural image appeared in this space. However, the shallow physical space and hooks indicate that it came in the form of a painted panel. There are extant examples of icons painted in a style related to Constantinopolitan painting on Cyprus at exactly this time and in specifically this unusual shape, long and rectangular. We are left to conclude that in addition to the figural sculptures in the archivolts, painted icons also appeared on the façade of the cathedral.26 This suggests that while choosing Western European forms in architecture and sculpture, the creators of the cathedral simultaneously incorporated works of art associated with the Byzantine Orthodox practice of icon painting. Yet they did not use the icons in a manner consistent with Orthodox practice, but rather in a new, uniquely Cypriot way. In addition, the shapes of the damaged figures under the three blind trilobed spaces of the   Andrews, “The Latin Cathedral of Nicosia,” 39-40.   Andrews, “The Latin Cathedral of Nicosia,” 43-44; Annemarie Weyl Carr, “Byzantines and Italians on Cyprus: Images from Art,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 49 (1995), 340; Carr, “A Palaiologan Funerary Icon from Gothic Cyprus,” in Πρακτικά του Τρίτου Κυπρολογικού Συνεδρίου. (Λευκωσία, 16-20 Απριλίου 1996) (Acts of the 3rd International Congress of Cypriot Studies (Nicosia, 16-20 April 1996)), eds. G.C. Ioannides and S.A. Hadjistellis (Nicosia: Society of Cypriot Studies, 2001), 599-619; reprinted in Carr, Cyprus and the Devotional Arts of Byzantium in the Era of the Crusades (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), IX. 25 26

[130]  428

justine andrews

tympanum suggest the iconography of the Transfiguration. The central figure appears kneeling, with the two side figures possibly cowering in surprise. This evokes the Orthodox Greek iconography of the event and again implies that the imagery of this central portal combined many sources.27 Because of the damage to the portal and the speculative nature of any interpretation of its program, it is not possible to establish a definitive explanation for the unusual combination of these elements. It is nonetheless important to note the innovative and seemingly intentional relationship between Orthodox Greek iconography and form and sculpted imagery with precedents in Latin cathedrals in France. Santa Sophia was initially built as a Crusader church in sporadic episodes through the thirteenth century. Ecclesiastical and secular patrons looked to the architectural styles of the Latin kingdoms of Syro-Palestine and to increasingly distant memories of a Christian Jerusalem, which had been in Muslim hands since 1187. It is very probable that in fleeing the shrinking Kingdom of Jerusalem, masons and artists skilled in the styles and techniques of Crusader art and architecture found work in the flourishing kingdom of the Lusignan. Having come from the East themselves, the artists and patrons in Cyprus were not choosing from “pure” artistic traditions. The selection of a “purely” thirteenth-century French capital, or a “genuine” Byzantine image, was simply not possible. Crusader art was already a mix of hybrid forms. Rather than created on Cyprus, this hybridity was in many cases imported and further cultivated on the island. Famagusta: A Cosmopolitan Convergence A second urban center in Cyprus, the port city of Famagusta, arose within a set of specific historical circumstances in the fourteenth century. While the loss of territory to Muslim forces in 1291 did not entirely turn the ruling class, and thus the majority of patrons, away from models and traditions of the lost Crusader kingdoms of the Syro-Palestinian mainland, they did force a reconsideration of Cyprus’s role in international politics. Cyprus became the largest, eastern-most Latin kingdom in Christendom, and from this point in time the image of the kingdom needed to be not just international, but of the highest courtly caliber. Unique to Famagusta however was an additional set of resources and patrons that vied with the   Andrews, “The Latin Cathedral of Nicosia,” 36.

27



conveyance and convergence

429  [131]

monarchy for influence in the visual culture of the city. The merchants and distinct cultural groups in Famagusta were privileged with enormous wealth during most of the fourteenth century.28 While it remained the seat of royal power and benefitted from the wealth of Famagusta’s port, Nicosia never had the same diversity of patrons. These Famagustan merchant populations quickly became prominent patron groups who wanted to express their wealth and status by visual means, which often included their own churches. While the Latin bishop of Famagusta and the King of Cyprus had palaces in the city and exerted influence over the building of their new cathedral, the Orthodox Greeks, Syrian Christians, Genoese, Venetians and Armenians of the city also had the opportunity to create visual cultures that were as multifaceted as the people who made them, and they were able to choose from a variety of artistic sources to best express their identities. The visual culture of Famagusta did not rest on discrete styles associated with the cultural origins of patrons, but was characterized by the fusion of these different artistic choices. Like Santa Sophia in Nicosia, the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Famagusta was conceived as a coronation church and played an important role in the establishment of Cyprus as the new frontier for the crusading movement in the fourteenth century. Since 1268, the King of Cyprus had claimed a second title, as the King of Jerusalem.29 When Acre was lost in 1291, the King of Cyprus continued to claim the kingdom of Jerusalem, and it was imperative to find a new venue for this separate coronation. Henry II, who ruled from 1285 to 1324, and the bishop of Famagusta worked together to create an impressive site that evoked the international character of this kingship.30 Hugh IV was crowned King of 28   Peter Edbury, “Famagusta in 1300,” in Cyprus and the Crusades: Papers Given at the International Conference Cyprus and the Crusades (Nicosia, 1994), eds. Nicholas Coureas and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 1995), 337. For examples of this type of wealth, see Plagnieux and Soulard, “La Cathédrale Sainte-Sophie,” 272, on the story of the Lachas brothers; and Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 211, citing “Liber peregrinationis Fr. Joannis de Verona,” in Revue de l’Orient Latin, ed. Reinhold Röhricht (Geneva: Société de l’Orient latin,1895), 177-178. 29   Peter Edbury, “Franks,” in Cyprus Society and Culture 1191-1374, eds. Angel Nicolaou-Konnari and Chris Schabel (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 70-71. 30   On the relationship between bishop and king see: Chris Schabel, “The Latin Bishops of Cyprus, 1255-1313, with a Note on Bishop Neophytos of Solea,” Epetiris Kentrou Epistimoniko Erevon (Kuprou), 30 (2004), 75-111. On the previous coronations of the king of

[132]  430

justine andrews

Cyprus in Nicosia in 1324, and according to the author of the Amadi Chronicle, one month later he was the first to be given the separate title of the King of Jerusalem in a separate ceremony at the new cathedral in Famagusta.31 This new royal authority created a desire for a stronger embrace of contemporary French idioms at St. Nicholas in Famagusta (Fig. 6). The façade of the cathedral in many details evokes the powerful image of the French coronation cathedral at Reims. There are the same high, gabled portals, tympana that feature quatrefoil tracery with glazing and jambs that have deep niches for sculpture. Although only the smallest fragments of the sculptural program at St. Nicholas survive, it is clear that the façade was meant to be teeming with fantastic beasts, angels and even representations of monks or clergy positioned in the interstices, angles and joins (Fig. 7). While crumbling today, the chevet still presents a striking visual display of intricate finial projections and tall lancet windows that immediately evoke the conventional designations “Gothic” or “French” (Fig. 8). The picture is complicated, however, by the tracery within the windows of St. Nicholas, which convincingly has been compared to Cologne Cathedral and to a set of drawings, now in Cologne, of similar windows dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.32 This comparison to German sources underlines the diversity of the contemporary European models available to artists, masons and architects working in Cyprus during the fourteenth century. With further scrutiny, however, the façade of St. Nicholas reveals itself as less perforated than the Rayonnant style of French or German thirteenth-century architecture to which it has been readily compared. The windows in the second story over the side aisles are blind, and there is a distinct horizontality to the façade, emphasized by the balustrade of the second story balcony and the building’s overall squat proportions. The interior of the cathedral is even more discordant with a Rayonnant Jerusalem see: Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi, Premier Partie Chronique d’Amadi, ed. R.M.L. de Mas Latrie (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1891), 217. 31   Edbury, The Kingdom, 141. 32   Regarding the drawings of the windows in Cologne see: Arne Franke, Medieval and Renaissance Famagusta: Studies in Architecture, Art and History, eds. Michael Walsh, Nicholas Coureas, and Peter Edbury (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming). Coldstream mentions the connection between Cologne and the Latin cathedral in Famagusta in her introduction to Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 9.



conveyance and convergence

431  [133]

Figure 6.  West façade, St. Nicholas Cathedral, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[134]  432

justine andrews

Figure 7.  Central Portal, west façade, St. Nicholas, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.



conveyance and convergence

433  [135]

Figure 8.  View from north east, St. Nicholas, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674. reading (Fig. 9). There are no slender supports but large, thick, cylindrical ones. The nave arcade is capped by a horizontal course beneath the large windows. There is no triforium or gallery. The east end terminates in three apses without an ambulatory. These elements suggest a stronger foundation in Crusader architectural forms that had flourished in the Levant since the early twelfth century and that had been imported to Cyprus by the early thirteenth century, as evidenced by the early construction phases of Santa Sophia. Although distinct from Santa Sophia in Nicosia, St. Nicholas in Famagusta also offers a combination of earlier Crusader architectural planning with decorative details indicative of the more elaborate and contemporaneous Northern European style of decoration. St. Nicholas likely was read by its patrons and the elite Latin aristocracy as a prime example of cutting-edge, Western architecture expressive of Cyprus’s new position on the front line of the Crusader Mediterranean. The Kingdom of Cyprus had been thrust into prominence by the demise of the Kingdom of Jerusalem

[136]  434

justine andrews

Figure 9.  Interior, St. Nicholas, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.



conveyance and convergence

435  [137]

in 1291 and the loss of Armenian Christian city of Ayas to the Mamluks in 1337. But another reading of the Cathedral of Famagusta is possible and could explain the meaning of the architectural choices made by its patrons and makers. The cathedral’s multicultural audience of merchants, refugees and local Orthodox and Latin Cypriots may have found the cosmopolitan architectural elements to suggest the wealth and grandeur of the city and its leaders, outside of any ethnic, regional or religious identity the Northern European or Crusader architectural elements might hold. The sources of these various forms and styles are as international as the population of Famagusta and the image of the cathedral. Masons and artists from among the refugees of Acre and the Holy Land were likely responsible for the plan and interior. However, the specificity of the window tracery suggests that German masons may have come to Cyprus to work in the fourteenth century. Another possibility is that a model book from Cologne, similar to the still-extant drawings, was available in Famagusta. Alternatively, these forms could have been transmitted by travelers to the island, such as Ludof von Suchen of Westphalia, who stopped at Cyprus between 1336 and 1341 during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Von Suchen spent enough time on the island to observe the cities of Nicosia and Famagusta, both of which he described in his travel account.33 The thirteenth and fourteenth-century Northern European architectural features of Santa Sophia and Saint Nicholas were quickly taken up in later churches in Famagusta and are likely the result of quickly emerging local workshops. The diverse merchant society of Famagusta no doubt also contributed to the transmission of these artistic ideas and practices. By their travel to and commerce with cities such as Venice, Genoa and Damascus, merchants had the financial resources and experience to purchase works of art and model books, and also to transport artists from a variety of origins to Famagusta. As the boon days of Famagusta waned in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, new groups came to power. The Genoese went to war with the Lusignan in 1373; they captured Famagusta in 1374, ruling the city until 1464.34 While their mark on the visual culture of the city is difficult to define, they did insert certain iconographic elements into already established structures.   Excerpta Cypria, trans. Claude D. Cobham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 18-21. 34   Edbury, The Kingdom, 209-211. 33

[138]  436

justine andrews

Such is the case with a small chapel located on the southeast side of the cathedral, built during Lusignan control in the early fourteenth century. It comprises a single rectangular bay with a small semi-circular apse, both of which are covered by ribbed vaults. The chapel was originally accessible via the cathedral’s south arcade, but this entry was blocked during the conversion of the cathedral into a mosque in the sixteenth century (today it is accessible only through a small window). There are three small windows in the apse and another on the south side of the chapel. Although there once was a window on the west façade of the chapel, it is no longer preserved.35 The chapel continued to be used after the Genoese took control of Famagusta in the late fourteenth century, but it was transformed into a funerary chapel. The interior of the chapel retains fragments of its frescoed decoration, which recently was examined by Brunehilde Imhaus.36 Citing the first of two phases of frescoes as well as the sculptural decoration of its interior capitals, Imhaus dates the chapel’s construction to the early fourteenth century. She suggests that because of the inclusion of decorative elements bearing the royal heraldry that incorporated the cross of Jerusalem, the function of the chapel was connected to the coronation ceremony for the Lusignan kings of Jerusalem. A tomb (now destroyed) lies under the large window on the south wall. Its painted epitaph, dating to 1383, names a young Genoese man and tells us he was the son of an otherwise unknown Genoese, Ricardo Squazarficus.37 On the north wall of the small chapel, a fresco of a horseman, possibly the Genoese patron saint, St. George, is distinctly later than the other frescoes in the chapel, and the horseman appears to date from the time of the tomb, within the Genoese period. 35   Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 240-241; and Brunehilde Imhaus, “Une Memoria du Royaume de Jérusalem à Famagouste?: La chapelle sud ouest de la cathédrale Saint-Nicolas,” Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, 35 (2007), 439. 36   Imhaus, “Une Memoria du Royaume de Jérusalem à Famagouste?” 435-447. 37   + [HIC REQUIESCIT ] (SQU)AZARFICUS FILIUS QUONDAM D. RICARDI QUI AD H(ONOREM). . . . . C . . . . . AR. . . . . ANNO(DOMINI) M.CCCLXXXIII. DIE. . . . . . . . . . (CUJ)US (ANIMA) (REQUIESCAT IN) PACE. AMEN

Transcription from Imhaus, “Une Memoria du Royaume de Jérusalem à Famagouste?” n. 31. Also see Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 241.



conveyance and convergence

437  [139]

Based on these additions Imhaus proposes that the Genoese attempted to “eradicate the memory of the Lusignan.”38 Whatever the motivation, the inclusion of a tomb with fresco painting c. 1383 suggests that as the Genoese gained a more solid hold on Famagusta, so too they began to impress their image upon the city’s monuments. Thus the Genoese and perhaps other commercial communities were the transmitters of artistic elements to Cyprus in the later Middle Ages. The fourteenth century also saw the re-installation of Orthodox bishops to sees in the major urban centers of Nicosia and Famagusta. Although we know little of the foundation and patronage of the Orthodox Cathedral of St. George, it could only have been erected after the reinstallation of the Greek bishops sometime after 1340.39 It incorporates into its south wall an earlier Orthodox church that was possibly the earlier cathedral of the Orthodox community in Famagusta. As Annemarie Weyl Carr has stated, “St. George was surely built ab initio as the Orthodox cathedral.”40 The Orthodox cathedral of St. George draws from the powerful, nearby model of the Latin Cathedral of St. Nicholas (Fig. 10).41 While it is fascinating that the Orthodox patrons appropriated some architectural forms, such as flying buttresses, tracery windows and ribbed vaults, one could argue that by the mid-fourteenth century, the eclectic use of various architectural elements can be characterized as a distinct Cypriot style, indicating the flourishing of a local idiom rather than the adoption of a foreign model. There were abundant choices of architectural forms, as well as sculptural and painted decoration available in Famagusta by the mid-fourteenth century. The choices that were made at the Cathedral of St. George show that the Orthodox community wished to display their rising status within the   Imhaus, “Une Memoria du Royaume de Jérusalem à Famagouste?” 445.   Theirry Soulard, “L’architecture gothique grecque du royaume des Lusignan: les cathédrales de Famagouste et Nicosie,” in Identités croisées en un milieu méditerranéen: le cas de Chypre (Antiquité – Moyen Âge), eds. Sabine Fourrier and Gilles Grivaud (Rouen: Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2006), 357; Plagnieux and Soulard, “La Cathédrale SainteSophie,” 288; and Efthalia Constantinides, “Monumental Painting in Cyprus during the Venetian Period, 1489-1570,” in Medieval Cyprus, Studies in Art, Architecture, and History in Memory of Doula Mouriki, eds. Nancy Patterson Ševčenko and Christopher Moss (Prince­ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 265. 40   Annemarie Weyl Carr, “Art,” in Cyprus Society and Culture 1191-1374, eds. Angel Nicolaou-Konnari and Chris Schabel (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 315. 41   Soulard, “L’architecture gothique grecque,” 358-359; and Weyl Carr, “Art,” 314-315. 38 39

[140]  438

justine andrews

Figure 10.  View from east, St. George Orthodox Cathedral, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksand journals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. Lusignan kingdom by constructing their prominent church in the architectural vocabulary most laden with power in this society. Their choices thus communicated the explicit message that their community shared equal stature with the Latins. However, there is very little in the broad, blank façade, thick piers and heavy buttresses that suggests the thirteenthand fourteenth-century architecture of France or Germany here (Fig. 11). The church harkens to earlier Crusader structures, although on a larger scale, and possibly to Italian examples of thirteenth-century ecclesiastical art and architecture. This is likely due to an established local workshop of masons and the increasing power and resources brought to the city by the Genoese. These many styles were all comingling as a Cypriot style from the middle of the fourteenth century onward. The Cathedral of St. George is impressive for its size as well as its painted murals, found on the walls and vaults of the apses. Most scholars agree that



conveyance and convergence

439  [141]

Figure 11.  West Façade, St. George Orthodox Cathedral, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksand journals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. the paintings date later than the church itself and, therefore, to after 1340.42 The preserved fragments of fresco appear to represent several separate campaigns of artistic production. Some images show remarkable affinity to Italian painting, such as the Cimabuesque Crucifixion scene on the interior west wall (Fig. 12). Others show a strong correspondence with contemporary Palaiologan style, particularly in the broad bodies tapering to small hands and feet seen in the south apse image of the Betrayal (Fig. 13). Other details suggest more generic Western elements, such as the borders of quatrefoils that could be associated with Italian fresco painting as well as manuscript painting from the Latin East. Annemarie Weyl Carr attributes several of the frescoes to the Byzantine Palaiologan style and asserts that this correspondence shows the importation of cosmopolitan painting   Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, 257; and Weyl Carr, “Art,” 316-318.

42

[142]  440

justine andrews

Figure 12.  Crucifixion, fresco on west wall, St. George Orthodox Cathedral, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



conveyance and convergence

441  [143]

Figure 13.  The Betrayal, fresco on south apse wall, St. George Orthodox Cathedral, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Justine Andrews. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. that in the later fourteenth century displaced local forms of art and expressed the voice of the newly-assertive Orthodox community.43 The complex and eclectic choices made by patrons of architecture in fourteenth-century Famagusta produced one commonality in their church structures: wall space. The broad, flat façades of the monuments are reflected on the interiors by expansive, flat, unobstructed surfaces. Many of the churches are without aisles, ensuring the prominence of wall paintings within the church space. There is ample evidence that the soft local limestone was plastered over, and thus was perfectly disposed for decoration with fresco. Although now only emerging like ghostly shadows from the walls of the open churches or peeking out from behind the much-later whitewash of converted monuments, Famagusta’s elaborate

  Weyl Carr, “Art,” 318.

43

[144]  442

justine andrews

monuments from the fourteenth century clearly were adorned with large cycles of painting. Unlike traditional Byzantine fresco (exceptional early examples of which were available locally in the Troödos Mountains of Cyprus), the wall painting in the fourteenth-century churches of Famagusta, including the Orthodox cathedral, did not follow a coherent program of iconography or style. This lack of planned programs could be the effect of the large scale and longitudinal format of the churches; the typical Middle and Late Byzantine iconographic program was designed specifically for the spaces of domed, centrally planned churches. The prevalent painted form in fourteenth-century Cyprus, icon panels are dwarfed by the architectural space of the Cathedral of St. George, and it is hard to imagine a coherent narrative program filling the walls. Instead the artists and patrons of Famagusta followed the Cypriot tradition of eclecticism and drew from a variety of painted sources (Italian, Byzantine, French) to decorate the interiors of their new church. The transmission of the most current Byzantine styles could have come to Cyprus via its close connections to Mistra in the Greek Peloponnese. In the late fourteenth century the Despot of Mistra, Manuel Kantakouzenos (1348-1380) was married to a Lusignan from Cyprus, Isabella. This couple was an important patron of painted churches in Mistra including the Katholikon of the Peribleptos Monastery. They hosted the king of Cyprus, Peter I, in Mistra in 1371, and Isabella returned to Cyprus after her marriage.44 It is very possible that the Byzantine artists or their patrons brought the current Palaiologan styles to Cyprus by way of Greece. Portable Arts and the Movement of People in the Making of Medieval Cypriot Arts The relationship between monumental painting (in the form of frescoes) and manuscript painting is not always a straightforward one. Still there is ample evidence that there was some dialogue between painters of walls and painters of books, and occasionally these artists could even be one and the same.45 Artistic ideas were transmitted in the Middle Ages via portable   Weyl Carr, “Art,” 318-320.   Ernst Kitzinger, “The Role of Miniature Painting in Mural Decoration,” in The Place of Book Illumination in Byzantine Art, eds. Kurt Weitzmann, William C. Loerke, Ernst Kitzinger and Hugo Buchthal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 99-142. 44 45



conveyance and convergence

443  [145]

means, such as icons, manuscripts and other models in the form of drawings or copybooks. This is seen in the connection between drawings of Cologne Cathedral and the tracery at St. Nicholas in Famagusta. For the frescoes in Famagusta, it is most likely that new ideas for painting styles and iconography came through the movement of panel paintings and books. But as Cypriot artists adopted new models into their vocabulary, they also immediately transformed these forms into their own local style. The fifteenth century witnessed an increasing Ottoman threat to the Byzantine Empire, as well as to the Despotate of Mistra. This threat culminated in the loss of Constantinople in 1453 and the surrender of the Peloponnese in 1460. At that time the island of Cyprus was experiencing a revival in Byzantine art and scholarship under the auspices of the Queen Helena Palaiologina, who was married to the Lusignan king, John II, who reigned from 1432 to 1458. Helena was the niece of the emperor in Constantinople as well as the daughter of Theodore Palaiologos, who controlled the territories of the Peloponnese from 1396 to 1448 as the Despot of the Morea. She was brought up in Mistra, but in her life on Cyprus from 1442 she supported the Orthodox community and encouraged Byzantine monks and scholars who had fled from mainland territories during the midfifteenth century to resettle in Cyprus.46 Given the stylistic links between painted churches in Cyprus and fresco painting from the same period in Mistra, some of these immigrants to Cyprus were likely artists.47 By the late fifteenth century, in the wake of a plague, Cyprus was suffering from a dramatic drop in population. The Lusignan King James II appealed to Venice to send settlers to repopulate Cyprus.48 Only after 1479, when Cyprus was formally under colonial rule, did the Venetian 46   Constantinides, “Monumental Painting in Cyprus during the Venetian Period,” 265. 47   Annemarie Weyl Carr, Byzantine Illumination 1150-1250: The Study of a Provincial Tradition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 25 n. 9 and 25 n. 30. Melita Emmanuel notes similarities in the figures painted in the Latin chapel at Pyrga in Cyprus with figural images in the Pantanassa Church in Mistra, c. 1430. See Melita Emmanuel, “Monumental Painting in Cyprus during the Last Phase of the Lusignan Dynasty 13741489,” in Medieval Cyprus, Studies in Art, Architecture, and History in Memory of Doula Mouriki, eds. Nancy Patterson Ševčenko and Christopher Moss (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 243. 48   Benjamin Arbel, “Cypriot Population under Venetian Rule (1473-1571): A Demographic Study,” Meletai kai Hupomnimata, 1 (1984), 183-215; reprinted in Arbel, Cyprus, Franks and Venice, 13th-16th Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), V.

[146]  444

justine andrews

administration develop incentives for Venetians and subjects from their colonies in the Peloponnese and Corfu to resettle in Cyprus. There was a particular interest in repopulating Famagusta, with its prominent port, and special incentives of land and tax relief were allotted to those who moved to the city.49 This continued into the sixteenth century, as Venetian power increased, up until the final moments of Latin rule over Cyprus in 1571. There is also evidence of the continued production of Greek manuscripts in Cyprus during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.50 There were several manuscripts copied at monasteries near Nicosia and Kyrenia, a port town on the northern coast, and at least two confirmed scriptoria in Famagusta: one at the Latin castle under the aegis of the King Janus (13981432), and the other at the (now lost) monastery of Agia Paraskevi.51 In addition, monumental painting on Cyprus increasingly incorporated Italianate iconography and style. As noted above, the late fourteenthcentury Crucifixion image in St. George is strikingly Italianate, as is the later wall painting in the south chapel added to St. Nicholas. Two later examples of an Italianate strain in Cypriot painting are found in the paintings at the Church of the Panagia Podithou in the mountain village of Galata in the Solea valley of the Troödos Mountains, and the so-called Latin Chapel of monastery of St. John Lampadistes at the village of Kalopanagiotes, three kilometers north of Moutoullas.52 These paintings show a balance of the late Constantinopolitan tradition that was flourishing in Mistra until 1460, including the use of traditional clothing colors and poses of the figures. The murals also use Renaissance formulas, including more naturalistic expressions and perspectival backgrounds, which had evolved in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.53   Arbel, “Cypriot Population under Venetian Rule,” 185-186.   Costas N. Costantinides and Robert Browning, eds., Dated Greek Manuscripts from Cyprus to the Year 1570 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks; and Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 1993), 12. Few manuscripts are on parchment and at least 50 of the sixteenth-century manuscripts from Cyprus are on Western paper. 51   Constantinides and Browning, Dated Greek Manuscripts, 13 and 228, 193 and 283. 52   The most important and exhaustive text on the painted churches in Cyprus is Andreas Stylianou and Judith A. Stylianou, The Painted Churches of Cyprus: Treasures of Byzantine Art (Nicosia: A.G. Leventis Foundation, 1997). References to these examples are found on pages 98-105 and 312-320. 53   Constantinides, “Monumental Paintings in Cyprus during the Venetian Period,” 275-279. 49 50



conveyance and convergence

445  [147]

The transmission of artistic motifs, styles and techniques can be seen in the architecture, sculpture and painting in fresco or manuscripts made in Cyprus during the Lusignan period. One factor that links the modes of transmission in the monumental/architectural versus the portable arts is the movement of people. Refugees from many regions came to Cyprus, especially Famagusta, after the fall of Acre in 1291. Orthodox monks and scholars found their way to Cyprus during the Ottoman takeover of the Peloponnese in the fifteenth century. Painted styles and iconography could also have been transmitted by diplomatic or commercial carriers bearing gifts or purchases in the form of icons, manuscripts and model books. As artistic motifs converged in Cyprus, they offered a plethora of styles and forms from which artists and patrons of any origin could choose. Cypriot art of the later Middle Ages shows that the categorization of style and its relationship to identity is not always straightforward.54 Despite such complications, previous scholarship has employed style to inscribe boundaries between groups and to provide evidence for interaction. The appearance of one style in a distant region has been cited as evidence that connections existed between separate cultures. The monuments and painting from Nicosia and Famagusta, however, show the fruitlessness of drawing strict binaries of “Gothic/Byzantine” and “East/West,” or of seeing these as styles associated with single geographic or cultural origins. In the examples discussed here, not only has one group’s style been found in the other’s artistic monuments, but the two styles co-exist in single monuments, and the meaning of styles found in Nicosia and Famagusta were not fixed but continually changing throughout the island’s history.55 Conclusion The conveyance of artistic form and technique takes on a dizzying array of possibilities in medieval Cyprus. In the thirteenth century a clear path of   Esther Pasztory notes that styles do not behave the same way from culture to culture. Her example of stylistic juxtaposition in Aztec art shows a more politicized ascription of image to identity than that found in the icons and manuscript miniatures of the Byzantine world in the fourteenth century. Esther Pasztory, “Identity and Difference: The Uses and Meanings of Ethnic Styles,” in Cultural Differentiations and Cultural Identity in the Visual Arts, eds. Susan J. Barnes and Walter S. Melion, Studies in the History of Art 27 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989), 15-38. 55   Jones, Archaeology of Ethnicity, 114-118. 54

[148]  446

justine andrews

transmission came from the Holy Land. The long history of the Lusignan dynasty in that area, as well as of other refugees from Syro-Palestine, particularly after the Fall of Acre in 1291, provided opportunities for architectural plans and elevations to be reinterpreted in Nicosia and Famagusta. Visitors from the West must also have played a part, but they should be understood as conduits for models from beyond the single source of France. Given the intricacy of the sculptural ornament in the monuments of Nicosia and Famagusta, it seems likely that in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century master craftsmen from Northern Europe were practicing on the island. No doubt local labor was also employed, with specific knowledge of local materials and resources, resulting in further adaptation of architectural and sculptural forms. Following the already distinct workshop development of the Latin East, painters on Cyprus could equally have had mixed training.56 Even paintings that most clearly echo contemporaneous Palaiologan styles could have arrived from a source outside of Constantinople. In the fifteenth century monks and scholars sought refuge in Cyprus from the Byzantine territories of Mistra and Constantinople, then occupied by the Ottomans. Finally, commercial communities that came to power on Cyprus in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the Genoese and Venetians, introduced their own iconographies and styles into the monumental painting of the island. The convergence of these artistic forms and techniques suggests a need for these many and different artistic models. I believe that although Cyprus has always experienced the convergence of people, religions and the arts, the fourteenth century was particularly open to artistic transmissions, and perhaps the patrons on Cyprus sought out these many divergent models in order to best express through art and architecture their messages of royalty, political position and economic status.

56   See Hans Buchthal and Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Manuscript Illumination at SaintJean d’Acre, 1275-1291 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

Vernacular Architecture in Venetian Crete: Urban and Rural Practices Maria Georgopoulou*

The Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 54 Souidias Street, GR-106 76, Athens, Greece *E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract The architecture built in Venice’s colony on Crete between its establishment in 1211 and the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1669 displays an intermingling of Western (Latin) architectural traditions with pre-Venetian Byzantine (Orthodox) forms and styles. Previous scholarship has explored the urban architecture of Venetian Crete, but less attention has been granted to the many rural Orthodox churches of the later medieval period that dot the Cretan countryside. While the official monuments of Cretan cities have been interpreted as employing architectural forms with a strong ideological—especially political—intent, the use of forms in rural buildings was not as ideologically charged. These more modest structures employed “Western” and “Byzantine” architectural styles in an ideologically neutral manner that reflected trends in fashion or taste rather than distinctions of cultural or political identity. By the fourteenth century, “Latin” and “Orthodox” architectural traditions had merged into a local style that expressed the cosmopolitan character of medieval Crete. Keywords Crete-Venetian rule (1204-1669), Byzantine architecture, Venetian architecture, vernacular architecture, Gothic sculpture

The establishment of Latin states in various regions of the Near East and Greece after the Fourth Crusade of 1204 brought about the downfall of Byzantine political power and a new political system and socio-economic framework dominated by the Italian maritime Republics of Venice and Genoa. Different systems of patronage, needs for novel religious and public spaces in the towns and the countryside and unprecedented mercantile

[150]  448

maria georgopoulou

mechanisms opened new vistas in the former Byzantine territories.1 This essay explores the traces that Byzantine art left in the states that were formed in its stead and the ways in which the presence of newcomers affected local artistic culture.2 My focus is the architecture and decorative sculpture of rural churches on Venetian Crete in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The island of Crete was acquired by the Venetians as a result of complex political negotiations following the Fourth Crusade of 1204.3 The arrival of the Venetians in 1211 marked a new beginning in the social, political and economic life of Crete. Although the Latin feudal lords who were sent from Venice to Crete were only a minority, the Venetians managed to impose a tight political control over the largely Greek locals.4 Eventually the coexistence 1   Klaus-Peter Matschke, “The Late Byzantine Urban Economy, Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries,” and Matschke, “Commerce, Trade, Markets, and Money: Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries,” in Economic History of Byzantium, ed. Angeliki Laiou, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002), 2:463-495 and 2:771-806; also see Angeliki Laiou and Cécile Morrisson, The Byzantine Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. 166-230. 2   C. V. Bornstein and P. Parsons Soucek, The Meeting of Two Worlds: The Crusades and the Mediterranean Context (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1981); Manolis Chatzidakis, “Éssai sur l’école dite ‘Italogrecque’ précédé d’une note sur les rapports de l’art vénitien avec l’art crétois jusqu’à 1500,” in Venezia e il Levante fino al secolo XV. Convegno internazionale di storia della civiltà veneziana, 2 vols., Civiltà Veneziana Studi 27, ed. A. Pertusi (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1973-1974), 69-124; Chatzidakis, “La peinture des ‘madonneri’ ou ‘véneto-crétoise’ et sa destination,” in Venezia centro di mediazione tra Oriente e Occidente (secoli XV-XVI), Aspetti e problemi. Atti del II Convegno Internazionale di Storia della Civiltà veneziana, 2 vols., eds. Hans-Georg Beck, Manoussos Manoussacas and Agostino Pertusi (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1977), 2:675-690; Camille Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus, trans. and ed. David Hunt (London: Trigraph in association with the A.G. Leventis Foundation, 1987); Maria Georgopoulou, “Gothic Architecture and Sculpture in Latin Greece and Cyprus,” in Byzance et le monde extérieur: contacts, relations, échanges, Byzantina Sorbonensia 21, ed. Michel Balard, Élisabeth Malamut, JeanMichel Spieser and Paule Pagès (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005): 1-28; Ernst Kitzinger, The Art of Byzantium and the Medieval West: Selected Studies, ed. W. Eugene Kleinbauer (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976). 3   Antonio Carile, “Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae,” Studi veneziani, 7 (1965), 125-305. 4   For an overview of the settlement of the Latins on Crete see G. Silvano Borsari, Il dominio veneziano a Creta nel XIII secolo (Naples: F. Fiorentino, 1963). The first charter of colonization, the so-called Concessio insulae Cretensis, was composed in 1211 for the settling of the western and central part of Crete; see George Martin Thomas, Urkunden zur älteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig, mit besonderer Beziehung auf



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 449  [151]

of Venetians and Greeks on the soil of Crete for more than four centuries (1211-1669) left traces of a rapprochement between the two peoples that are visible in the linguistic, literary, cultural and religious spheres.5 Issues of terminology and taxonomies are especially vexed when studying territories shared by different communities since no clear-cut boundaries can be drawn when co-habitation is prolonged. I use the terms “Greek” and “Latin” to designate, on the one hand, the local Greek population that had lived on Crete since the Byzantine period, and on the other hand the newcomers (colonists and others) who came primarily from Italy and were Latin Catholic Christians. These terms are apt because they appear in governmental and notary documents from fourteenth-century Crete. Nevertheless, Sally McKee has shown that as legal definitions they do not always reflect the complexities of mixed families and the special relationships that were formed between the two communities of Venetian Crete in their daily interaction.6 With language and ethnicity hard to pin down, it was religion that became a significant factor in determining each community’s identity; the Greeks of Crete remained Orthodox Christians, but the island was officially a Roman Catholic territory placed under the jurisdiction of a Latin archbishop.7 Other ethnic groups present on the island, including Jews and Armenians, are not treated in this essay.8 Byzanz und die Levante, 3 vols., Fontes rerum Austriacarum 2 (Vienna: K. K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1856), 2:130-136. Also see A. Sefakas, Παραχώρησις από της Εvετικής Συγκλήτoυ τoυ διαμερίσματoς τωv Χαvίωv ως φεoύδoυ εις Εvετoύς ευγεvείς εv έτει 1252 (The Concession by the Venetian Senate of the Department of Chanea as a Feudum to Venetian Nobles in the Year 1252) (Athens: s.n., 1940). 5   Maria Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies. Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); David Holton, ed., Literature and Society in Renaissance Crete (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Sally McKee, Uncommon Dominion. Venetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Chryssa Maltezou, “Η Κρήτη στη διάρκεια της περιόδoυ της Βεvετoκρατίας (1211-1669)” (Crete during the Period of Venetian Rule (1211-1669)), in Κρήτη: Iστoρία καί πoλιτισμός (Crete: History and Civilization), ed. N. Panagiotakes (Herakleion: Syndesmos Topikon Enoseon Dimon kai Koinotiton Kretes, 1988), 2:105161; Freddy Thiriet, La Romanie vénitienne au Moyen Age. Le développement et l’exploitation du domaine colonial vénitien (XII-XV siècles) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1959; 2nd ed., 1975). 6   Sally McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 6, 86-99, and 168-171. 7   Giorgio Fedalto, “La chiesa latina a Creta (1204-1261),” Kretika Chronika, 24 (1972), 24 (1972), 145-176 (146). 8   On the Jewish community of Candia in the colonial landsape see Maria Georgopoulou, “Mapping Religious and Ethnic Identities in the Venetian Colonial Empire,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 26, no. 3 (1996), 467-496.

[52]  450

maria georgopoulou

Community identities were not fixed nor were the artistic products of this society distinctly tied to one or the other group. Interestingly, the terms “Greek” and “Latin” were also employed during the medieval period to distinguish the iconography of religious icons produced on Crete, but they do not offer any better understanding of the nuanced artistic encounters between the two communities. The very practice of building in a colonial, multicultural territory is a process that problematizes notions of neatly organized classifications, which divide actions and cultural production according to ethnicity or cultural background.9 So, art historical labels such as “Gothic” and “Byzantine,” which traditionally have been associated with ethnicity (French versus Greek/Byzantine) do not work well for monuments built in the colonial territory of Crete, especially when we move away from the public official monuments of the capital city of Venetian Candia (modern Herakleion).10 My essay focuses on the rural Orthodox churches of Venetian Crete that were adorned with several “Gothic” details. Such details recalled a tradition that originated from outside Crete, but we can be almost certain that not all of these monuments were created by Venetian builders and artists, who are all but absent from the historical records. The simplicity of the plans and modes of construction of these churches in the countryside of Crete suggests that they should be considered as examples of vernacular architecture. The position of these churches on the colonial landscape becomes more complex when we move away from the first moment of construction: after a couple of generations these “Gothic” details became part and parcel of the architectural vocabulary available on the island in the same manner as Heather Grossman has shown for the Frankish Peloponnese.11   Heather E. Grossman, “Syncreticism Made Concrete: The Case for a Hybrid Moreote Architecture in Post-Fourth Crusade Greece,” in Archaeology in Architecture: Papers in Honor of Cecil L. Striker, eds. Deborah Deliyannis and Judson Emerick (Mainz: Ph. von Zabern, 2005), 65-73, esp. 65-66. 10   For a more extensive discussion see Georgopoulou, “Gothic Architecture and Sculpture in Latin Greece and Cyprus.” 11   Heather E. Grossman, “Building Identity: Architecture as Evidence of Cultural Interaction between Latins and Byzantines in Medieval Greece” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2004), available online at http://repository.upenn.edu/ dissertations/AAI3152042/. See also Grossman, Architecture and Interaction in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean: Building Identity in the Medieval Morea (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, forthcoming).  9



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 451  [153]

The thousand or so small rural churches that dot the countryside of Crete thus underscore the inter-pollination that inevitably occurs at the local level among diverse communities that inhabit the same space. Rather than undertake the daunting task to consider these rural churches as a whole, I present here certain tightly-knit cases that hold the key to understanding broader paradigms. The careful exploration of cases on the micro level often suggests significant perspectives for further research. Although hard to prove from the available evidence, it is logical to assume that after certain Western architectural and sculptural elements were introduced into the cities of Crete by Venetian builders/architects, local stone masons (murarii) transferred them to structures of the countryside. By focusing on patronage and regional patterns, I argue that instead of the diametrically opposed position that Byzantine and Gothic art often hold in the minds of medievalists, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Crete the two styles do not seem to have been in strong ideological opposition. If we accept that by the fourteenth century “Gothic” details had become a decorative element devoid of any ideological weight, we can push the argument further to test to what extent the intrusion of such foreign elements (which must have been associated with the official structures of the Venetians on Crete) might be read as indicative of the attitudes of the rural population and perhaps also of those of the non-ruling elite. The imposition of Venetian control after 1204 was followed by a century of revolts led primarily by the local Greek lords, who fought in order to keep their landed estates and privileges.12 After a devastating earthquake in 1303, the fourteenth century was a period of calm when new economic and social opportunities improved living conditions on Crete.13 The peaceful co-existence between Greeks and Latins reached such a level that in 1363, upon the imposition of new taxes on Venetian Crete, the two

  Stephanos Xanthoudides, Η Εvετoκρατία εv Κρήτη καί oι κατά τωv Εvετώv αγώvες (Venetian Rule in Crete and the Fights of the Cretans against the Venetians) (Athens: Byzantinisch-Neugriechischen Jahrbuecher, 1939), and Nikos Svoronos, “Το νόημα και η τυπολογία των Κρητικών επαναστάσεων του 13ου αι.” (The Meaning and Typology of the Cretan Revolts of the 13th c.), Symmeikta, 8 (1989), 1-14. See also Chryssa Maltezou, “The Historical and Social Context,” in Literature and Society in Renaissance Crete, ed. David Holton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 17-47. 13   Angeliki Laiou, “Venetians and Byzantines: Investigation of Forms of Contact in the Fourteenth Century,” Thesaurismata, 22 (1992), 29-43; and Sally McKee, “Households in Fourteenth-Century Venetian Crete,” Speculum, 70 (1995), 27-67. 12

τωv Κρητώv

[154]  452

maria georgopoulou

communities joined forces against the Venetian administration.14 Although Orthodox Greeks living on Crete were no longer under Byzantine rule, they were not completely isolated from the empire. Painted churches in the fourteenth century show affinities with major developments in the Byzantine world.15 Artists traveled to Constantinople in the early fifteenth century, and clerics or monks from Byzantium visited Crete.16 The island’s colonial society and its commercial outlets in Western Europe proved a fertile ground for artistic experiments that blended the Byzantine and Latin/Venetian modes of expression. Among the most striking examples of this osmosis are the religious icons produced in large numbers on Crete after 1453. New subjects were introduced from Italy like the Pietà or the embrace of St. Peter and St. Paul,17 and even Western saints like St. Francis invaded as traditional a Byzantine iconography as that of the Virgin holding the Child. For instance, a fifteenth-century icon of the Madonna and Child at the Byzantine Museum of Athens (attributed on stylistic grounds to the Greek artist Nikolaos Tzafouris) portrays to the left of an Italian-looking Virgin and Child a small figure of St. Francis; he holds a cross and a Bible, and the stigmata clearly show on his hands.18 Numerous archival documents assert 14   Sally McKee, “The Revolt of St Tito in Fourteenth-Century Venetian Crete: A Reassessment,” Mediterranean Historical Review, 9 (1995), 173-204. 15   Manolis Chatzedakes, “Τοιχογραφίες στην Κρήτη” (Wall Paintings in Crete), Kretika Chronika, 6 (1952), 59-91; Konstantinos D. Kalokyris, The Byzantine Wall Paintings of Crete (New York, NY: Red Dust, 1973); Klaus Gallas, Klaus Wessel and Manolis Borboudakis, Byzantinisches Kreta (Munich: Hirmer, 1983); and Maria Vassilakis-Maurakakis, “The Church of the Virgin Gouverniotissa at Potamies, Crete” (PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, London, 1986), 67-69. 16   The highly educated monk Joseph Bryennios was in Crete from 1375-1395; the artist Nikolaos Filanthropenos was imprisoned in Crete in 1419 for having ties to the church in Constantinople; and according to his will, the icon painter Angelos Acotanto traveled from Crete to Constantinople in the first half of the fifteenth century; see Maria Vassilaki-Maurakaki, “Ο ζωγράφος Άγγελος Ακοτάντος: το έργο και η διαθήκη του (1436)” (The Artist Angelos Acotanto: His Oeuvre and his Will (1436)), Thesaurismata, 18 (1981), 290-299. See also Vassilaki-Maurakaki, ed., The Hand of Angelos: an Icon Painter in Venetian Crete, trans. Alex Doumas (Farnham: Lund Humphries in association with the Benaki Museum, Athens, 2010). 17   Maria Vassilaki, “A Cretan Icon in the Ashmolean: the Embrace of Peter and Paul,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 40 (1990), 405-422, has rightly identified this subject as a reference to the Union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. 18   Athens, Byzantine and Christian Museum, T. 233; see Myrtali AcheimastouPotamianou, From Byzantium to El Greco: Greek Frescoes and Icons (Athens: Ministry of



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 453  [155]

that the icon painters from Candia, Crete’s capital city, could paint in both the Greek and the Latin mode.19 Far from the authority of Orthodox bishops, professional icon painters in Candia created images that took liberties from the established canon of Byzantine religious iconography and form that had crystallized in Byzantium after Iconoclasm; Orthodox rules must have been relaxed and at times broken in order to accommodate the demands of a new clientele.20 Such cultural negotiations were not reached without discord, and by no means did all aspects of life on Crete reach a similar equilibrium. A colonial situation incorporates by definition moments of conflict as well as harmonious encounters between diverse communities that inhabit the same space. Monuments are typically interpreted as spaces where this power struggle is played out, both through their material forms and decoration as well as through the events and rituals that transpire within them. Venetian Crete offers a wealth of art historical material that may give us clues into this process: (a) four urban centers (Candia, Chania, Rethymnon and Sitia) still preserve Latin and Greek churches, administrative palaces, Culture, 1987), no. 46, 114 and 179-180. On Tzafouris/Zafuri see M. Bianco Fiorin, “Nicola Zafuri, cretese del Quattrocento, e sua inedita ‘Madonna’,” Arte veneta, 37 (1983), 164-169; and Mario Cattapan, “I pittori Pavia, Rizo, Zafuri da Candia e Papadopulo dalla Canea,” Thesaurismata, 14 (1977), 199-238. 19   Mario Cattapan, “Nuovi documenti riguardanti pittori cretesi del 1300 al 1500,” in Pepragmena tou B’ Diethnous Kretologikou Synedriou 3 (Athens: s.n., 1968), 29-46; Mario Cattapan, “Nuovi elenchi e documenti dei pittori in Creta dal 1300 al 1500,” Thesaurismata, 9 (1972), 202-35; Nano Chatzidakis, Venetiae quasi alterum Byzantium. From Candia to Venice. Greek Icons in Italy, 15th-16th Centuries (Athens: Foundation for Hellenic Culture, 1993); Maria Constantoudaki-Kitromilides, “Οι Κρητικoί ζωγράφoι και το κoιvό τoυς: Η αvτιμετώπιση της τέχvης τoυς στη βεvετoκρατία” (The Cretan Painters and Their Audience: The Reception of Their Art during the Venetian Rule), Kretika Chronika, 26 (1986), 246-261; Maria Constantoudaki, “Icone cretesi del XV secolo e la pittura italiana del tardo medioevo,” XXXVIII Corso di cultura sull’arte Ravennate e bizantina (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 1991), 125-129; and Maria Constantoudaki, “Conducere apothecam, in qua exercere artem nostram: Το εργαστήριο ενός Βυζαντινού και ενός Βενετού ζωγράφου στην Κρήτη” (The Workshop of a Byzantine and a Venetian Artist in Crete), Summeikta, 14 (2001), 291-299. 20   A similar suggestion has been made for the appearance of Western iconographic elements in the wall paintings of the Athenian church of Omorphe Ekklesia in Galatsi; see Agape Vasilaki-Karakatsani, Οι τοιχογραφίες της Όμορφης Εκκλησιάς στην Αθήνα (The Wall Paintings of Omorfe Ekklesia in Athens) (Athens: Christianiki Archaiologiki Etaireia, 1971), 114. I would like to thank Professor Slobodan Ćurčić who suggested this to me in Princeton.

Figure 1.  View of Candia from Bernard von Breydenbach, Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam, c. 1486. American School of Classical Studies, Gennadius Library. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[156]  454 maria georgopoulou



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 455  [157]

Figure 2.  Rural church in Cretan countryside, region of Chania. Photo: Maria Georgopoulou. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674. private dwellings and fortifications refurbished in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Fig. 1); (b) the ruins of several fortresses situated on promontories or by the sea still dominate the horizon; (c) a handful of major monasteries that have attracted the Orthodox population since the Byzantine period and that display continual remodelings over many centuries; and (d) hundreds of small Greek churches that still function or stand as ruins in the countryside (Fig. 2).21 It is this last type of

  The magisterial studies produced by Giuseppe Gerola for the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in the early twentieth century offer invaluable information on these monuments: Giuseppe Gerola, I monumenti veneti nell’isola di Creta, 4 vols. in 5 parts (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1905-1932). For the photographic archive of this mission also see Spiridione Alessandro Curuni and Lucilla Donati, Creta veneziana: l’Istituto veneto e la Missione cretese di Giuseppe Gerola: collezione fotografica 1900-1902 (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1988). 21

[158]  456

maria georgopoulou

monument that has attracted the least scholarly attention to date and forms the focus of the present study. The ways in which conflict is played out in monumental art created by mixed populations typically excite art historians’ imagination: we seem convinced that monuments are filled with ideological messages, yet we conceptualize notions of artistic diffusion and the inter-pollination of formal elements between distinct artistic traditions differently in the case of public, official architecture and private dwellings. The latter are considered to have a smaller impact on the formation of collective identities and ideologies than public monuments. In my previous work I have explored public official architecture as a way to showcase the colonial presence of the Venetian lords on the island of Crete.22 Here I am instead interested in the non-official forms of art and architecture, which are usually thought to be more conservative and more resistant to change because the symbolic messages that they carry are thought to be second to their functional purpose. Precisely for this reason one could argue that the intrusion of new elements in buildings that were not sponsored by the government or the Church is a sign of an even wider diffusion of building styles, techniques and decoration as their use may be non-intentional. Nonetheless, for all intents and purposes the small rural churches that form the focus of this study are public monuments within the context of the village or fief in which they are situated. What is the form that these monuments of a lesser political (or ecclesiastical) significance take? Do they follow older patterns of pre-Venetian, Greek monuments or do they show awareness of new forms as if they want to partake of the new building achievements of the colonial rulers? Little remains of the original governmental palaces that the Venetians erected on Crete, but many significant Latin churches have survived. The seats of Latin bishops as well as that of the archbishop were significant structures, in fact often reused Byzantine churches, but for the most part new, impressive Latin churches were built by the Mendicant orders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with later additions. These are typically three-aisled basilicas with ribbed vaulting over the choir and simple, elegant moldings on the portals and windows.23 Archival records and the standing medieval Latin and Greek churches give us valuable information   Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, 43-103.   For the most significant Latin churches on Crete see Beata Kitsiki-Panagopoulos, Cistercian and Mendicant Monasteries in Medieval Greece (Chicago, IL: University of Chi22 23



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 457  [159]

on religious practices and inter-community relations. On the arrival of the new Latin Archbishop, Orthodox bishops were expelled from the island and obstacles were imposed on the ordination of Orthodox priests, but there was no proselytism, and the numerous Greek monasteries kept their property and monks, as had been promised by the pope in the thirteenth century.24 Although the two rites remained distinct, archival evidence from the fourteenth century onwards affirms that Greek and Latin priests marched together in urban religious processions, and oftentimes Venetian noblemen married Greek women or vice versa.25 The absence of Greek bishops and the general lack of strong religious control on the part of the Orthodox Church may have something to do with the situation on the island and should, therefore, be taken into account when studying the architecture of Greek churches on the island. Surprisingly not only did Latin rule not hinder the erection of Greek Orthodox churches, it created the socio-economic conditions that allowed for their flourishing. A large number of new (or newly renovated) churches of the Orthodox rite were constructed in the hinterland of Crete as happened in other regions under Latin rule as well.26 These remote churches cago Press, 1979); Kitsiki-Panagopoulos, “Some Venetian Churches of Crete,” Arte veneta, 30 (1976), 20-29; and Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, 107-164. 24   Nikolaos B.Tomadakis, “Οι Ορθόδοξοι παππάδες επί Ενετοκρατίας και η χειροτονία αυτών” (The Orthodox Priests during the Venetian Rule and their Ordination), Kretika Chronika, 13 (1959), 39-72; and Tomadakis, “La politica religiosa di Venezia verso i cretesi ortodossi dal XIII al XV secolo,” in Venezia e il Levante fino al secolo XV. Convegno internazionale di storia della civiltà veneziana, 2 vols., Civiltà Veneziana Studi 27, ed. A. Pertusi (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1973-1974), 1, 2:783-800. 25   Although it is hard to pinpoint the earliest origin of these processions it is beyond doubt that by 1368 these included Greeks and Latins; see Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, 187-188, and 217-228. On the issue of mixed marriages and the multiethnic composition of households including the presence of indigenous wet nurses in Latin families of Candia see McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 100-115; McKee, “Households in Fourteenth-Century Venetian Crete,” Speculum, 70 (1995), 27-67; and Peter Topping, “Co-existence of Greeks and Latins in Frankish Morea and Venetian Crete,” in Studies on Latin Greece A.D. 1205-1715 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1977), XI: 21. 26   Myrtali Acheimastou-Potamianou, “Η μνημειακή ζωγραφική στα νησιά του Αιγαίου κατά το 13ο αιώνα. Η περίπτωση της Ρόδου και της Νάξου” (Monumental Painting on the Aegean Islands in the Thirteenth Century: Rhodes and Naxos), in Byzantine Art in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade and Its Consequences: International Congress, March 9-12, 2004, ed. Panagiotis Vocotopoulos (Athens: Academy of Athens, Research Center for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art, 2007), 13-30. On Naxos there were few new churches built. The majority of the renovations involved the addition of new wall paintings in older

[160]  458

maria georgopoulou

constitute the new landscape of “Byzantine” art after 1204 and played a dominant role in shaping the immediate cultural horizon of the inhabitants of these regions.27 By examining the architecture and sculptural decoration of several of these rural churches from the perspective of patronage as well as local and regional patterns, we can uncover the mechanics of interaction between different communities. The majority of the rural churches are architecturally conservative: they are small, mostly single-nave buildings with few openings and thick walls. Nevertheless, they display certain architectural innovations, which became more pronounced in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: pointed arches in doorways and windows, pointed barrel vaults, as in the church of St. Michael the Archangel in Axos Mylopotamou of the first quarter of the fourteenth century (Fig. 3), and decorative sculptural details on the exterior (especially at doors and windows) and in the interior (consoles at the springing of the vaults and occasionally ribbed vaults), as in the church of Panagia Kera at Kritsa dated from the middle of the thirteenth century to c. 1320 (Fig. 4).28 The simplicity of the architecture of the churches (which in their majority are single-aisled or modest, additive buildings), the irregularities in plan, the thick masonry walls with few openings and the minimal ornamental sculptural designs on their portals and windows point to a local workforce using the indigenous stone construction technique without complex architectural planning.29 Whether or not this mode of building was due to the financial means of the patrons, to the lack of access to master builders or Byzantine structures. Of the 180 painting strata identified on the island of Naxos, half are dated to the thirteenth century (14). In the hinterland of southern Greece, small churches and chapels were newly built; see Charalambos Bouras, Βυζαντινή & μεταβυζαντινή αρχιτεκτονική στην Ελλάδα (Byzantine & Post-Byzantine Architecture in Greece) (Athens: Melissa, 2001), 166. 27   The term “Byzantine” is used here as an art historical stylistic term that refers to Greek Orthodox churches. 28   Stella Papadaki-Ökland, “Η Κερά της Κριτσάς. Παρατηρήσεις στη χρονολόγηση των τοιχογραφιών της” (Kera in Kritsa. Observations on the Dating of Its Wall Paintings), Archaiologikon Deltion, 22 (1967), 87-111. 29   Klaus Gallas, Mittel- und spätbyzantinische Sakralarchitektur der Insel Kreta: Versuch einer Typologie der kretischen Kirchen des 10. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (München: Hofbauer, 1983); and Kostas Lassithiotakis, “Οι κυριαρχούντες τύποι χριστιανικών ναών από τον 12ο αιώνα και εντεύθεν στη Δυτική Κρήτη” (The Principal types of Christian Churches since the 12th century in Western Crete), Kretika Chronika, 15-16 (1961-1962), 2:173-201.



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 459  [161]

Figure 3.  St. Michael the Archangel in Axos Mylopotamou (from Olga Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη στην Ύστερη Μεσαιωνική Εποχή (Crete in the Late Medieval Period) (Herakleion: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, 2010), 135, fig. 145).

Figure 4.  Church of Panagia Kera at Kritsa, ribbed vault. Photo: Maria Georgopoulou.

[162]  460

maria georgopoulou

to the absence of a strong religious authority for the Orthodox of Crete, the mode of construction suggests that local patrons used their resources to create something akin to “vernacular” architecture. Nevertheless, some of the sculptural decoration of Cretan churches has a flamboyant “Gothic” flair, especially in the treatment of windows or the ornamental detailing of oculi, as in the case of the sculptural ornamentation of the monastery of St. Phanourios in Varsamonero (Fig. 5). The question is: do these Gothic details constitute an anomaly? There is little evidence to suggest that their function was more than decorative; they surely did not interfere with the liturgical function of the churches. Used in reference to language, the term “vernacular” signifies the mother tongue that is not learned, and vernaculars are often contrasted with an official, institutional, pan-regional language such as Latin. Similarly, vernacular architecture is concerned with the local and the functional. It is also a term used to differentiate between public or monumental buildings and structures of a non-official nature made by empirical builders without the intervention of professional architects using locally available resources and indigenous methods of construction.30 Even if small village churches may have ultimately functioned as significant public structures for the community, the term “vernacular” captures the creative process for this kind of architecture. Without wanting to take sides on the debate about the role of the “architect” (μηχανικός or μηχανοποιός) versus “mason” (οικοδόμος) in Byzantium, it is fair to say that the rural churches of Crete were made in the traditional local manner.31 Thus although these structures are typically thought not to carry any meaning other than to provide   Gabriela Arboleda, “What is Vernacular Architecture?” Ethnoarchitecture, May 29, 2006, available online at http://www.vernaculararchitecture.com/ (accessed 15 November 2011); and Paul Oliver, ed., Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). I would like to thank Alicia Walker for bringing to my attention a recent study that focuses on a similar theme: H. Pulhan and I. Numan, “The Traditional Urban House in Cyprus as Material Expression of Cultural Transformation,” Journal of Design History, 19 (2006), 105-119. 31   Robert Ousterhout believes that in Byzantium structures were erected out of practical experience. However, Charalambos Bouras suggests that despite a lack of extant architectural plans, designs recorded in various media indicate that architects did indeed use drawings in addition to mathematical calculations in their building processes. See Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 43-85; and Bouras, “Τρόποι εργασίας Βυζαντινών αρχιτεκτόνων και αρχιμαστόρων” (Methods of Work of Byzantine Architects and Chief-Masons), Μνήμη Μανόλη Χατζηδάκη. Ακαδημία Αθηνών, 4 Μαρτίου 2008 (Memory of Manolis Chatzidakis. Academy of Athens, 4 March 30



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 461  [163]

Figure 5.  St. Phanourios in Varsamonero (from Klaus Gallas, Klaus Wessel and Manolis Borboudakis, eds., Byzantinisches Kreta (Munich: Hirmer, 1983), fig. 95). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[164]  462

maria georgopoulou

a place of worship, in fact they were the public monuments of the countryside and constituted the very symbols of the Greek Orthodox population among the few Venetian villas/farms and remote fortifications. Hence, these vernacular churches take on a highly important public role. What is more, since “foreign” elements have intruded in the vernacular architecture it could be argued that they were readily available and highly desirable by the non-Venetian users of the Orthodox churches. It follows that in their eyes these details probably did not have any strong ideological connection to the Latin overlords of the island. It comes as no surprise that the rural churches of Crete do not form a homogeneous whole nor should we try to think of them as expressions of a single ideology even when they share common decorative and structural features. Taking an often repeated example, eleven rural churches contain donor inscriptions that commemorate the names of the ruling Byzantine emperors from the reign of Andronikos II (1282-1328) until the eve of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.32 This practice has been interpreted as the sign of a nascent “national” consciousness possibly articulating a self-identity vis-à-vis the arrival of a foreign overlord. This nostalgic evocation of the severed political and ecclesiastical ties with the patriarchate of Constantinople is counteracted by many expressions of a 2008) (Athens: Akademia Athenon Kentro Ereunas tes Vyzantines kai Metavyzantines Technes, 2010), 22. 32   Klaus Gallas, Klaus Wessel, and Manolis Borboudakis, eds., Byzantinisches Kreta (Munich: Hirmer, 1983), 41: Andronikos II (1282-1328), John V (1341-1391), Andronikos IV (1376-1379), Manuel II (1391-1425), and John VII (1425-1448). Angela Volan suggests that the legend of the Last Emperor was used in Crete as a theme that helped antiunionist efforts, by identifying the current emperor in Constantinople with the eschatological Last Emperor through inscriptions located within representations of the Last Judgment and the messianic image of Christ. See Volan, “Last Judgments and Last Emperors: Illustrating Apocalyptic History in Late- and Post-Byzantine Art” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2005), 111. Sophia Kalopissi-Verti, Dedicatory Inscriptions and Donor Portraits in Thirteenth-century Churches of Greece, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Denkschriften 226, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Tabula Imperii Byzantini 5 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1992), 25, has recorded eight more cases in the thirteenth century from mainland Greece, three of which come from areas that had been ruled by the Latins (Omorphe Ekklesia in Aegina, H. Ioannes in H. Basileios Pediados in Crete and H. Georgios Bardas in Rhodes). In Byzantine times the addition of an emperor’s name was a sign that the patron was close to the emperor.



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 463  [165]

social rapprochement of the Venetian and Greek communities starting in the fourteenth century. Among those we should mention a most blunt approval of the new colonial situation also painted on the walls of a Greek church: a donor inscription at the church of the Archangel Michael at Kavalariana (1327-1328) that refers to the time as the period “when Crete was ruled by the great Venetians our masters.”33 Between these two extremes the realities of co-habitation tell a variety of stories, especially after the end of violent confrontations of the first hundred years of Venetian rule.34 There were Venetian lords who wrote poetry in Greek like Marin Falier;35 Greek noblemen who gained acceptance in the Venetian colonial elite, such as the poet Stephanus Saclichi (born c. 1330);36 local aristocrats who acquired the rank of Venetian nobility like the Calergi family in 1381;37 Greek priests or monks who used their religious zeal to promote the cult of a local saint by constructing a monastery;38   Angeliki Lymberopoulouhas interpreted the following Greek inscription as a sign of a positive attitude toward or even an act of submission to the Venetian overlords of the island on the part of the donors, Theotokis Kotzis, Manuel Melisourgos, Nikitas Sideres and Dimitrios and their children: . . .τρέχο(ν)τα(ος) του παρόντος εόνος. έτους ςωλς αφε(ν) τέβο(ν)τ(ος) ε Κρήτη τ(ον) μεγάλον κε αφέτ(ον) ημ(όν) βενετήκ(ον). See Lymberopoulou, Church of the Archangel Michael at Kavalariana: Art and Society on FourteenthCentury Venetian-Dominated Crete (London: Pindar Press, 2006), 171. 34   Here it is worth mentioning the parallel phenomenon of Iberian “convivencia;” see Chris Lowney, A Vanished World: Medieval Spain’s Golden Age of Enlightenment (New York, NY: Free Press, 2005); Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, eds Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick and Jerrilynn D. Dodds (New York, NY: G. Braziller and the Jewish Museum, 1992); Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Maria Rosa Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Simon R. Doubleday and David Coleman, eds, In the Light of Medieval Spain: Islam, the West, and the Relevance of the Past (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 35   Arnold Van Gemert, “The Cretan Poet Marinos Falieros,” Thesaurismata, 14 (1977), 7-70. 36   A.F. van Gemert, “Ο Στέφανος Σαχλίκης και η εποχή του” (Stephanos Sachlikis and His Time), Thesaurismata, 17 (1980), 36-130. 37   McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 74-83; Ernst Gerland, “Histoire de la noblesse crétoise,” Revue de l’Orient Latin, 10 (1903-1904), 172-247; 11 (1905-1906), 7-144; and D. Mertzios, “Η συvθήκη Εvετώv-Καλλέργη καί oι συvoδεύovτες αυτήv κατάλoγoι” (The Treaty between the Venetians and Kallergis and the Lists that Accompany It), Kretika Chronika, 3 (1949), 262-292. 38   Vassilakis-Maurakakis, “The Church of the Virgin Gouverniotissa,” 77; and Maria Vassilaki, “Saint Phanourios: Cult and Iconography,” Deltion Christianikes Archaiologikes Hetaireias, 10 (1980-1981), 223-238. 33

[166]  464

maria georgopoulou

and simple folk (nuns, monks, priests) who combined their personal resources or those of their whole community to build a modest house of worship.39 To all, the Cretan countryside signified the source of their livelihood and at a certain level there must have been an understanding of a common good. The Orthodox churches of the countryside served the agrarian, Greek population, but often it was the Latin feudal lords who paid for their construction or refurbishment out of concern for the welfare of the peasants who worked their lands (Fig. 6).40 For instance, during the first decade of the fourteenth century the local (Latin) lords of the villages of Steriano and Agio Silla sponsored the reconstruction of churches that were actually built by the villagers.41 In 1348 Nicolaos Plachina, a Greek feudatory, left in his will money to the papas Ianni of the villages of Mulia (which must have belonged to him) for the refurbishment of the church of St. Nikolaos, probably in the same village.42 From her study of the wills of Venetian Crete, Sally McKee has shown that sixteen Latin feudatories and nine women married to Latin feudatories left small sums of money to the churches located in the villages to which they held rights.43 The Latin lords were further concerned about the presence of enough Greek priests to officiate in their villages: in 1386 the Latin feudatory Giorgio della Porta 39   Thirteenth-century donor inscriptions from Crete refer to monks (ieromonachoi; St. Anna of Amari and St. George at Kouneni Kissamou), a nun and a lector (anagnostes), who doubled as the artist who painted the church. In contrast, ten churches were funded by communal donations of the whole village (Archangel Michael in Doraki Monophatsiou, St. Nikolaos in Maza and St. Anna in Kritsa). On another occasion, several villages belonging to the same administrative region (tourma) paid for a church (Hagia Paraskeve in Kithiros Selinou in 1372-1373). Kalopissi-Verti, Dedicatory Inscriptions and Donor Portraits, 36 and n. 100. 40   Zacharias N. Tsirpanlis, Κατάστιχo Εκκλησιώv καί Μovαστηρίωv τoυ κoιvoύ” (12481548). Συμβoλή στή μελέτη τωv σχέσεωv Πoλιτείας καί Εκκλησίας στή βεvετoκρατoύμεvη Κρήτη (Catasticum of the Churches and the Monasteries of the Commune (1248-1548). Contribution to the Study of the Relations between Church and State in Venetian Crete) (Ioannina: Panepistemio Ioanninon, 1985), 81-82, has published information from the first decades of the fourteenth century for the city of Candia and its immediate hinterland, called Paracandia. In addition, many Latins left money in their wills for the enlargement or painting of churches in their fiefs as well as smaller sums to various Orthodox churches in the villages in which they held rights; see McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 109 n. 44. 41   Chryssa A. Maltezou, “Byzantine ‘Consuetudines’ in Venetian Crete,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 49 (1995), 269-280, esp. 277. 42   McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 109. 43   McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 109 n. 44.

Figure 6.  Map of Crete with churches discussed in the paper. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

vernacular architecture in venetian crete 465  [167]

[168]  466

maria georgopoulou

provided funds to cover the salary of a priest to serve the residents of the villages of Gurnes for three years, and numerous petitions of feudatories were made for the ordination of Greek priests outside Crete; there were six cases in 1391 alone.44 The detailed studies that Charalambos Gasparis has produced on the feudal cadastres of Venetian Crete has yielded information that can partly allow us to relate patronage in particular villages to the corresponding fiefs in order to define the specific history of a locale.45 From a socio-economic perspective the sheer number of churches— often a handful in a single village—suggests that in addition to the spiritual rewards they offered to their patrons, they must also have provided their priests with tangible benefits. The information contained in an early fourteenth-century collection of documents, known as the Catasticum, indicates that the returns from the properties of the Orthodox churches were significant.46 Indeed performing mass was a lucrative exercise for Greek priests who since 1418 were asked to serve the liturgical needs of the Latins because of the dearth of Catholic priests on the island.47 The situation in the last two centuries of Venetian rule deteriorated even further: Latin cathedrals were dismantled (Mylopotamo in the seventeenth century and Ario in 1551) and in at least one case in Ierapetra a church was provided with portable altar furnishings so as to accommodate both the Orthodox and the Catholic rite.48   McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 110-111 n. 52 and 107 n. 32.   C. Gasparis, Catastici feudorum Crete: catasticum Sexterii Dorsoduri, 1227-1418, 2 vols. (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2004); Gasparis, Catastici feudorum Crete: catasticum Chanee, 1314-1396 (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2008); and Gasparis, Η γη και οι αγρότες στη μεσαιωνική Κρήτη, 13ος-14ος αι. (Land and Peasants in Medieval Crete 13th-14th c.) (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 1997). 46   Tsirpanlis, Catasticum, 87. 47   Angeliki Panopoulou, “Οι Βενετοί και η ελληνική πραγματικότητα. Διοικητική, εκκλησιαστική, οικονομική οργάνωση” (The Venetians and the Greek Reality. Administrative, Ecclesiastical, Economic Organization), in Όψεις της Ιστορίας του βενετοκρατούμενου Ελληνισμού. Αρχειακά τεκμήρια (Views of the History of the Venetian-ruled Hellenism. Archival Records), ed. Chryssa Maltezou (Athens: Idryma Ellenikou Politismou, 1993), 281-406, esp. 294. 48   On Mylopotamo see Marco Petta, “La chiesa latina di Creta negli ultimi anni del dominio Veneto,” Bolletino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata, 22 (1968), 3-56, esp. 6. In 1627 the cathedral of Mylopotamo was in bad condition: it lacked a baptistery and Holy Communion was no longer celebrated. On Ario see Kostas E. Lambrinos, “Η Λατινική Επισκοπή Μυλοποτάμου. Όψεις της εκκλησιαστικής και οικονομικής οργάνωσης (16ος 44 45



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 467  [169]

It is only natural that there was also some intermingling of artistic and cultural forms much earlier. The thousand rural churches that dot the countryside of Crete show the results of an inevitable give-and-take between different communities that inhabit the same space. Archival documents about construction in the city of Candia indicate that masons and architects were locals, that is Greeks or Latins.49 Donor inscriptions in rural churches do stress the participation of the local community (as in the case of the aforementioned churches of Steriano and Agio Silla) or of eponymous Greek painters like Ioannes Pagomenos,50 but are regrettably silent when it comes to Latin masons or architects. With no written sources available we can only look for material evidence. What is the relationship of these rural churches to the large Latin establishments in the cities that offered models for these “Gothic” sculptural details? Recently the Center for Mediterranean Studies of the University of Crete in Rethymno, under the direction of Olga Gkratziou, has produced an inventory of Venetian sculptures on the island.51 This αιώνας)” (The Latin Bishopric of Mylopotamos. Aspects of the Ecclesiastical and Economic Organization (16th century)), in Ο Μυλοπόταμος από την αρχαιότητα ως σήμερα. Περιβάλλον, αρχαιολογία, ιστορία, λαογραφία, κοινωνιολογία (Mylopotamos from Antiquity to Today. Environment, Archaeology, History, Folk Studies, Sociology), 9 vols., eds. Eirene Gavrilaki, Giannes Z. Tziphopoulos, Maria Andreadaki-Vlazaki and Michalis G. Andrianakis (Rethymno: Historike kai Laographike Hetaireia Rethymnou, 2006), 6:3765, esp. 61. 49   Chryssa Maltezou, “Métiers et salaries en Crète vénitienne (XVe siècle),” Byzantinische Forschungen, 12 (1987), 327-328, and Maria Georgopoulou, “Private Residences in Venetian Candia (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries),” Thesaurismata, 30 (2000), 95-126. There are also instances where the masons were Latin as in the case of the two masons hired by Andrea Corner to construct a loggia at his residence in Candia in 1386; see McKee, Uncommon Dominion, 61. 50   Pagomenos and his workshop were responsible for the decoration of eight Cretan churches; see A. Sucrow, Die Wandmalereien des Ioannes Pagomenos in Kirchen der ersten Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts auf Kreta (Berlin: s.n., 1994). 51   “Digital Crete: Mediterranean Cultural Identities,” FORTH: Institute for Mediterranean Studies, available online at http://digitalcrete.ims.forth.gr/ (accessed 2 May 2012). The website contains information on the archaeology of Crete including G.I.S. maps from prehistory to the Ottoman period. Two new books, one on sculpture and the other on church architecture, engage several themes: patronage, questions of production of decorative architectural sculpture and the proposition that double-nave churches with multiple altars were created for a mixed congregation of the Greek and Latin rites; see Olga Gkratziou, Γλυπτική και λιθοξοϊκή στη Λατινική Ανατολή, 13ος-17ος αιώνας (Sculpture and Stonecutting in the Latin East, 13th-17th Century) (Rethymnon: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis

[170]  468

maria georgopoulou

reexamination of the material begs a closer look at specific examples and opens the way for investigating regional systems of the diffusion of formal elements through local patronage. The piecemeal preservation of sculpture unearthed outside its original context, in salvage excavations or reused in newer buildings, has led scholars to discuss the material as a whole by focusing on taxonomies that give few answers. Moreover there is much more extant architectural sculpture in situ that needs to be catalogued.52 A full inventory of sculptural details including their dimensions would surely enhance the way in which we can gather statistics and form groupings of churches based on the sculptural details they display. In fact, the way in which carefully cut stones and repetitive decorative moldings are used to embellish the rubble masonry has led Gkratziou to suggest that sculpted architectural details such as moldings that frame portals, tympana and archways or decorated corbels must have been available directly from the quarry or from organized stone-cutting workshops; the access to readymade elements reinforces the idea that local masons could put together most of the existing structures without the presence of an experienced master. Further calculations have to be performed to verify which monuments used similar pieces.53 Alternatively the similarity of construction also suggests that masons could have been organized in workshops that moved from place to place. Building on existing studies, I present here some groupings of rural churches about which we have concrete historical information in order to unpack the meaning and symbolism of Gothic details. Patterns of patronage can be explored by studying the churches sponsored by the Calergi family in their feudal holdings of Mylopotamo and the patronage of the Latin lord Marin Falier in his fiefs. A different perspective on patronage can be seen in the case of the monastery of St. Phanourios in Varsamonero, Kritis, 2007); and Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή: η μαρτυρία της εκκλησιαστικής αρχιτεκτονικής (Crete in the Late Medieval Period. The Evidence of the

Ecclesiastical Architecture) (Herakleion: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2010); review of the latter by Vassiliki Tsamakda in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 104, no. 1 (2011), 189-198. 52   An interesting parallel project that provided an inventory of vernacular architecture in the region of Eleia in the Peloponnesos is the Morea Project under the directorship of Frederick A. Cooper of the University of Minnesota. The Morea Project produced a detailed study of thousands of buildings and a comprehensive census of vernacular architecture over 750 years based on a intensive survey of the countryside from 1991 to 1997; see Frederick A. Cooper, ed., Houses of the Morea: Vernacular Architecture of the Northwest Peloponnesos (1205-1955) (Athens: Melissa, 2002). 53   Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή, 67-76 and 79-82.



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 469  [171]

which can be understood as an attempt to create a pole of attraction of pilgrims. Finally, regional patterns of imitation or friendly competition can be investigated within a group of churches in the vicinity of the monastery of Panagia Gouverniotissa in Potamies. The fifteen churches related to the Calergi family have been studied by Manolis Borboudakis.54 The identifying coats of arms and the elaborate sculptural decoration of their churches in Mylopotamo—the Panagia of Meronas, Panagia tou Thronou, Kera Asomaton and St. George Kamariotis—broadcast the good will of the patronus to his cohort and to the peasants who worked for him. The prominent Calergi family, who after a long rebellion against the Venetians was permitted to keep their lands and their Orthodox faith while participating in the political life of Crete, must have used models from Candia or perhaps from Venice itself to add to their prestige in their estates. A number of churches dot the large estates of the Calergi, which was the only family among the Greek elite (archontes) to be included in the ranks of the Venetian patricians (1381) without having converted to Catholicism. By broadcasting the association of the Calergi with the Venetian authorities, these Orthodox churches must have worked as victory monuments enhancing further the prominence of the feudal family within the Greek community. St. George Kamariotis in Mylopotamo shows the coats of arms of the Calergi family above the door to the interior of the church from the narthex (Fig. 7).55 The winged 54   Manolis Borboudakis, “Θυρώματα και παράθυρα σε εκκλησίες της Κρήτης (Τέλος 14ου- μέσα 15ου αιώνα” (Portals and Windows in 14th and 15th Century Cretan Churches), in Γλυπτική και λιθοξοϊκή στη Λατινική Ανατολή, 13ος-17ος αιώνας (Sculpture and Stonecutting in the Latin East, 13th-17th Century), ed. Olga Gkratziou (Rethymnon: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2007), 60-89, esp. 80-81; Borboudakis, “Η τέχνη κατά τη Βενετοκρατία” (Art During the Venetian Period), in Κρήτη. Ιστορία και πολιτισμός (Crete. History and Civilization), ed. N. M. Panagiotakis (Herakleion: Syndesmos Topikon Henoseon Demon & Koinoteton Kretes, 1988), 231-288, esp. 235-240; and Borboudakis, “Η Παναγία του Μέρωνα και μια συγκεκριμένη τάση της κρητικής ζωγραφικής” (The Church of the Panagia in Meronas and a Specific Tendency of Cretan Painting), in Πεπραγμένα του Ε΄ Διεθνούς Κρητολογικού Συνεδρίου. Άγιος Νικόλαος 1981 (Acts of the 5th International Cretological Congress. Hagios Nikolaos 1981), 3 vols. (Herakleion: Hetairia Kretikon Historikon Meleton, 1986), 2:396-412. On a discussion of the Calergi family as donors of art see Michalis Andrianakis, “Η αρχιτεκτονική γλυπτική στην Κρήτη” (Architectural Sculpture in Crete), in Γλυπτική και λιθοξοϊκή στη Λατινική Ανατολή, 13ος-17ος αιώνας (Sculpture and Stonecutting in the Latin East, 13th-17th Century), ed. Olga Gkratziou (Rethymnon: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2007), 14-33, esp. 20-21. 55   Gerola, Monumenti veneti, 4:373. In the church of St. George Kamariotis, located high up in the mountain of Ida, in addition to the coat of arms of the Calergi, Gerola noted

[172]  470

maria georgopoulou

Figure 7.  St. George Kamariotis, portal in narthex (from Olga Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη στην Ύστερη Μεσαιωνική Εποχή (Crete in the Late Medieval Period) (Herakleion: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kretes, 2010), fig. 88).



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 471  [173]

lion of St. Mark mirrors official Venetian monuments on Crete and the motherland; the painted coat of arms accentuates the unique accomplishment of the Calergi having gained Venetian nobility in 1381 as reward for helping Venice in her fight against Genoa during the War of Chioggia. The decorative sculpture, rich coloring and the positioning of the lion of Venice allow us to see the Cretan church within the orbit of contemporary Venetian art, although the original impetus for the practice of using sculptural details to frame doors and windows cannot be proven as a direct artistic borrowing from Venice.56 Significantly, the stones that form the jambs and tympanum of this portal were assembled in the same fashion as those of much humbler buildings, stressing the similar construction techniques used by masons and sculptors. Other churches associated with the same family in the village of Meronas also display the arms of the family sculpted on the exterior. The church of the Panagia is decorated with frescoes of a high quality, and both churches speak to the significance of feudal patronage. The trend of the use of coats of arms of feudal lords appears to have spread around 1400, as evidenced in portals and frescoes, though so far few of the numerous extant examples have been identified. Since they were surely a sign of ownership and pride, their identification with specific lords would further the research on the construction of these churches.57 The Venetian feudal lord and poet Marino Falier was a staunch Catholic and a fervent supporter of the union of the churches after 1439. He was eager to see the two rites united to provide for a peaceful coexistence between him and the Greeks working his land, but his interest in the religious well-being of the laborers in his estates went beyond his own religious convictions. In June 1434, he appealed to the government of Crete for permission for the ordination of Greek priests on the island who would serve the needs of the peasants in his estates, because since 1429 prospective priests from Crete were not allowed to go to Modon or Coron a bilingual inscription on the floor (34×55 cm) reading: ΟΜΑΡΤΥΡΟCΓΕΟΡ and SANCTEGEORGI. On the coat of arms of the Calergi family see Emmanuel S. Kallergis, “Οικόσημα και τοπωνύμια των Καλλεργών στην Κρήτη” (Coats of Arms and Place Names of the Kallergis in Crete), in Acts of the 7th International Cretological Congress (Rethymnon: Historike kai Laografike Hetaireia Rethymnes, 1995), vol. B1, 308-311. 56   Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη κατά την ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή, 55-90 and 324. 57   There are unidentified coats of arms in the south wall of the narthex in Varsamonero, in Panagia of Vlachiana, and in Agios Georgios at Ano Symi Viannou, all churches dated to the early to mid-fifteenth century; see Borboudakis, “Θυρώματα και παράθυρα,” 80, and Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή, 120.

[174]  472

maria georgopoulou

to be ordained. Falier complained that his village, Sarchos, became depopulated because its two priests had died; he was perhaps worried that the workers would leave for other villages. The boycott on ordination was lifted in 1436 after additional petitions for the ordination of Greek priests, six of which were initiated by Falier.58 While no other extant archival document speaks to his direct patronage of churches in his fiefs, this vehement proponent of the union of the churches also participated in the decoration of the Greek monastery of Panagia in the village of Kitharida. Here he may have been responsible for the imported bowl with the phrase “Ave Maria” that is immured on the façade of the church as a bacino (Figs 8 and 9). We can only speculate about the significance of this plate on the wall of an Orthodox monastery especially if it was given to the church by Falier, a Latin who wrote his poetry in Greek. The writing on the glazed bowl provides a clear link to the well-known Catholic hymn that celebrates the Virgin Mary and offers an interesting juxtaposition between the two languages, reinforcing the patronage of the poet Falier. A more fruitful way to understand the meaning of these churches from a formal point of view would be to see them in dialogue with one another and within a specific region. Indeed masons working on these structures would have migrated among sites on the island, thereby contributing to technical and stylistic connections among buildings. We can follow the evolution of this decorative concept in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The church of St. Phanourios Monastery in Valsamonero (1400/14261431) employed many so-called Gothic features (in other words, the latest “fashion”) in the decoration of the doorframes of the monastery to attract pilgrims to the newly found relics of St. Phanourios and bolster his cult.59 At the same time the interior of the chapel of St. Phanourios was adorned in 1432 with first-rate Byzantine paintings by Constantine Eirenikos and   Van Gemert, “The Cretan Poet Marinos Falieros,” Thesaurismata, 14 (1977), 41-42. Three petitions were about churches and monasteries in and around his village Sarchos, the nunnery of Petela (perhaps the monastery of St. Anthony in Petali), the monastery of St. Mary Skaliotissa (perhaps Panagia Spiliotissa near the village of Peza in the province of Pediada, a fief that he buys in 1441 from Michaeli Mauro), the church of St. Michael in Candia and a church in the village Ini. 59   According to an inscription the aisle that was dedicated to St. Phanourios was built in 1426 and was painted in 1431-1432; see Gerola, I monumenti veneti, 2:285. Maria Vassilaki records the development of the cult of St. Phanourios thanks to the efforts of the abbot of the monastery of Valsamonero, Ionas Palamas; see Vassilaki, “Saint Phanourios,” 223-238. Also see Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή, 143. 58



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 473  [175]

Figure 8.  Kitharida, monastery of the Virgin, façade. Photo: Maria Georgopoulou. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

Figure 9.  Detail of Figure 8 showing bacino. Photo: Maria Georgopoulou. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[176]  474

maria georgopoulou

icons in the hand of the famous icon painter Angelos. The unidentified coats of arms that are visible in the church suggest that the abbot Ionas Palamas, who invented the cult of Saint Phanourios at this monastery, must have been assisted by a feudal lord who most probably had property rights in the area. The use of the latest Gothic fashion observed in the elaborate sculptural decoration of the portals that has not survived anywhere else on Crete suggests a concerted effort on the part of the abbot to use a visually striking formal element in order to impress the visitors. The monastery was also well known for its library, which according to a catalog of 1644, contained religious and philosophical works. In other cases the relationship seems local and we can deduce the presence of a regional workshop or a local fashion that denoted a cosmopolitan taste but not any socio-political alignment. The Panagia Gouverniotissa in Potamies was most probably the catholicon of a monastery originally known as the Virgin Varnakiotissa, which due to its relative proximity to Candia may have been a significant center of learning. According to Maria Vassilaki the particular architectural plan of the church—a “free-cross” vaulted church with a dome—was associated with the revival of the cult of a local saint of the eleventh century, St. John Xenos.60 The style of its wall paintings suggests a date in the third quarter of the fourteenth century and the appearance of iconographic elements that betray a familiarity with Western art point to a connection with the capital city of Candia and its lively community of icon painters. It seems therefore that this monastic church must have commanded a significant position in the area of Potamies, which in 1368 was located in the fief of the Latin lord Laurentius Maripiero.61 The entrance into the church of Gouverniotissa displays a simple design of a pointed arch above the flat lintel (Fig. 10). A recessed tympanum may have been adorned with a painted decoration that is now lost. Similar sculptural decoration adorns the portals of a group of churches in the region of Pediada, near the villages of Avdou and Potamies, that are located merely three miles apart. In addition to the later façade of St. Constantine (1445) (Fig. 11), the portals of Sotiros Christou at Potamies (first half of fourteenth century) also resemble the entrance to the church of Gouverniotissa.62 So, it may be   Vassilaki-Maurakaki, “The Church of the Virgin Gouverniotissa at Potamies,” 381-384.   The village now belongs to the demos of Chersonisos; see “Παναγία η Γκουβερνιώτισσα στις Ποταμιές Δήμου Χερσονήσου” (Panagia Gouverniotissa at Potamies, Chersonisos), Odysseus, Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, available online at http://odysseus .culture.gr/h/2/gh251.jsp?obj_id=9222 (accessed 16 November 2011). 62   Interestingly, an inscription in the church of St. Constantine at Avdou records that the church was renovated during the reign of Byzantine Emperor, John VIII Palaiologos in 60

61



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 475  [177]

Figure 10.  Panagia Gouverniotissa at Potamies: façade. Photo: Maria Georgopoulou. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[178]  476

maria georgopoulou

Figure 11.  Hagios Konstantinos, Avdou: façade. Photo: Maria Georgo­ poulou. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 477  [179]

that the sculptural décor of the Gouverniotissa was based on that of an earlier church in the vicinity and possibly was executed by a workshop of stonecutters that was active in the area. The portal of Panagia at Avdou (dated to the sixteenth century) similarly copies the earlier one (Fig. 12). The windows of the Gouverniotissa and the church of the Annunciation at Avdou (fourteenth century) are also related. It appears then that in these cases it would be wrong to speak of a Venetian or Gothic influence in the sculpted décor as even if these features had originally come from the capital city of Candia, they were soon incorporated into the architectural repertoire of a local workshop. It may indicate the existence of a local tradition that becomes the trademark of this region. Or, the patrons may have wanted their churches to emulate well-known, older churches built by their neighbors, friends or foes. Elsewhere I have argued that in Latin-ruled Greece, the rich Latin churches with their Gothic appearance signal the superiority of the Latin Church vis-à-vis the Orthodox.63 These “Gothic” decorative details could not possibly have had a similar ideological symbolism in the rural churches of Crete. By denoting that they belonged to a sphere of higher VenetoCretan artistic production, these elements would have carried connotations of sophistication, affluence and fashion. Indeed, the framework of the vernacular allows us to shift our interpretation from one of political ideological meaning to the more neutral idea of fashion. Although definitive proof is lacking, there is little doubt that the impetus for new sculptural elements in rural churches was created by urban architectural projects that employed large numbers of stonecutters and sculptors.64 These projects may have produced a surplus of ready-made materials that made its way to the hinterland, or, new pieces could have also been produced for rich patrons. Along with the traditional, perhaps expressly old-fashioned ways of building and decorating a church with frescoes,65 1445; see Giuseppe Gerola, Monumenti veneti nell’isola di Creta, 4, 513, no. 14; and Thalia Gouma-Peterson, “Manuel and John Phokas and Artistic Personality in Late Byzantine Painting,” Gesta, 22 (1983), 159-170, esp. 161 and fig. 2. 63   Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies, 108. 64   Gkratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή, 155. 65   Still fundamental is the study of Giuseppe Gerola and Kostas Lassithiotakis, who identified 845 painted churches of the Venetian period. See Gerola and Lassithiotakis, Τoπoγραφικός κατάλoγoς τωv τoιχoγραφημέvωv εκκλησιώv της Κρήτης (Topographic Catalogue of the Wall-painted Churches of Crete) (Herakleion: s.n., 1961), 142-145. Also see Manfred Bissinger, Kreta: byzantinischen Wandmalerei, Münchener Arbeiten zur Kunstgeschichte und Archäologie 4 (Munich: Editio Maris, 1995); Gallas, Wessel, and

[180]  478

maria georgopoulou

Figure 12.  Panagia, Avdou: façade. Photo: Maria Georgopoulou. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/ 15700674.



vernacular architecture in venetian crete 479  [181]

came the need to add details that made the rural churches conversant with the more recent types of decorative sculpture that originated in the urban centers and on monuments sponsored by the Venetian overlords. These, too, had become part of the local vocabulary of forms and pointed to a lively exchange of ideas between the two communities that lived side by side. In the case where Latin lords put their signature on the Orthodox structures of the countryside, the message was also clear. They added details that, along with their coats of arms, communicated their status in terms of wealth and socio-political connections. Even if Gothic elements seemed foreign when first introduced into the cultural sphere of the Byzantine art of Crete, it is reasonable to speculate that after two or three generations they would have been incorporated into the vocabulary of the artists who could now employ them freely on different monuments. After all, to whom would a Cretan landowner turn if not to the best artisans in the cities? The fact that in all probability these rural churches were based on the example of the Latin churches and convents of the large cities of the island did not translate into a polemical act. In the end, the monuments of Crete also recall the public monuments and churches of Venice (for example, the ducal palace or San Giovanni e Paolo of the Dominicans), but were already a generation removed. The monuments of the cities functioned as a pole of artistic attraction for Latins and Greeks alike. After the end of the thirteenth century, the locals also began to use similar cultural idioms and maybe to employ foreign artists, if available, in their Orthodox churches. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the coexistence of Venetians and Greeks had given birth to a common culture, in which fashion, as a neutral element of taste, played the main role rather than political ideology; the circulation of printed architectural treatises was also a significant factor in the way decorative elements were applied to even the most remote buildings in the countryside including the major Orthodox monasteries built at the time.66 Borboudakis, Byzantinisches Kreta; K. D. Kalokyris, The Byzantine Wall Paintings of Crete (New York, NY: Red Dust, 1973); Ioannis Spatharakis, Dated Byzantine Wall Paintings of Crete (Leiden: Alexandros Press, 2001); and Spatharakis, Byzantine Wall Paintings of Crete, Rethymnon Province (London: Pindar Press, 1999-). 66   Kanto Fatourou-Hesychaki, “Η Κρητική Αvαγέvvηση καί τά Iταλικά πρότυπα της αρχιτεκτovικής της” (The Cretan Renaissance and its Italian Architectural Models), Ariadne, 1 (1982), 103-138; Iordanis Demakopoulos, “O Sebastiano Serlio στα μοναστήρια της Κρήτης (Serlian Manifestations in Cretan Monasteries),” Deltion Christianikes Archaiologikes Hetaireias, 7, Series 4 (1970-1972), 233-245, has shown the direct loans from Sebastiano Serlio in the monasteries of the Holy Trinity of Zangaroli near Canea and Arkadi near Rethymno as well as the influence of Serlio and Palladio in urban monuments; see also

[182]  480

maria georgopoulou

Long before the introduction of printed architectural treatises, the rural structures of Crete participated in an artistic dialogue with the Venetian monuments of the cities, a dialogue that had social and economic roots and implications. The sculptural details that adorned certain focal points on the structures (portals, windows, and the springing of the vaults) had to be transmitted through a human agent: the will of a patron and/or the skills of a mason. The simplicity of such sculptural décor gives the impression that certain of these architectural elements could have been readymade and easily available from a quarry or a shop. Similarly, the modest construction and size of most Orthodox churches in the Cretan countryside would characterize them best as the products of vernacular architecture. Hence, the academic terms “Byzantine” and “Gothic” or “Greek” and “Latin” do not advance our understanding of the processes of production nor of interaction between the two communities. On the other hand, in the case of the monastery of St. Phanourios the elaborate sculptural decoration that has no parallel on the island points to a different process of production, suggesting the presence of a skilled mason from an urban center or outside of Crete altogether. It is, thus, important to appreciate the regional aspect of artistic creation that includes access to similar quarries, itinerant or resident workshops as well as issues of imitation and fashion. All these factors should counteract the notion that the use of Gothic arches and simple “Gothic” carved reliefs in the churches of the Cretan countryside had any political or religious meaning. The large number and rich wall paintings of these remote churches assert that they constituted significant focal points for the Greek population of the countryside. Paid for by the congregation, priests, monks or local Latin and—in one case—Greek magnates, these simple buildings constructed using some ready-made materials commanded a public role perched on the summits of hills or located in the middle of an estate. Seeming to invoke a neutral sense of fashion or taste, rather than firm and directed ideology, the use of these Gothic details reinvigorates the architectural simplicity of the small monuments of post-1204 Byzantine art and places them within the larger framework of Mediterranean vernacular.

idem, “Ενα αναγεννησιακό θύρωμα του Ρεθύμνου σε σχέδιο του Sebastiano Serlio” (A Renaissance Portal in Rethymno in a Design of Sebastiano Serlio), Kretika Chronika, 23 (1971), 209-223, and idem, “Μεγάλη βρύση, μια βενετσιάνικη Κρήνη του Ρεθύμνου” (The Great Fountain. A Venetian Fountain in Rethymno), Kretika Chronika, 22 (1970), 322-343.

On Memory, Transmission and the Practice of Building in the Crusader Mediterranean Heather E. Grossman*

Art History Department, University of Illinois at Chicago, MC201, 935 W. Harrison Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA *E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract Memory played a key role in the cross-cultural transmission of medieval architectural knowledge amongst patrons, designers, ateliers and audiences from different religious, cultural and architectural traditions. Two aspects of architectural memory are here posited as playing a role in the dissemination of architectural forms and styles: a “cultural memory” that evoked specific, earlier sites of ideological or other significance to patrons; and a “pragmatic memory” of learned, practical skills that was transmitted amongst masons themselves. These interlocking yet distinct aspects of memory in architecture are not unique to cross-cultural transmission, but they had particular impact when deployed by patrons and masons across physical or conceptual borders. Whether introduced by practical means or for associative reasons, new forms further moved across regions with artisans, who proffered (and learned) new modes of working while traveling. Examination of the Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka in Stymphalia, Greece and other churches of the thirteenth-century, post-Crusade Peloponnese and greater Eastern Mediterranean demonstrate how both aspects of architectural memory can be read in the physical architectural record. This methodology also re-inscribes masons into a history of the cross-cultural creative process, showing that builders were vital in the processes of transmitting and interpreting forms. Keywords memory, mason, transmission, architectural knowledge, Morea, Frankish, Peloponnese, Cistercian, Zaraka

The transmission of different forms of architectural knowledge among patrons, designers, masons and viewers in the later-twelfth and thirteenth centuries was aided and advanced by different forms of memory in architecture. Memory is both a form and a means of transmission that not only produces the ability to recall the past but also provides building blocks for

[184]  482

heather e. grossman

innovation. Medieval authors often described their mnemonic processes in architectural terms, referencing “a set of memory ‘rooms’ ” envisioned as a foundation to be built upon, rather than as a sealed storage space.1 Such a conceptualization is irresistible for an architectural historian, but it is also an apt way of conceiving of the role of memory as a form of transmission and vice versa. Building on both medieval and modern concepts, this essay posits two aspects of architectural memory: a “pragmatic memory” in architecture (that which is learned in the fabrication of buildings and their parts) and a “cultural memory” of architecture (that which derives from experiencing architecture in use).2 In “pragmatic memory,” the designer or mason rarely aims to make a rote copy of a form, but rather uses his training to create something fresh. The “cultural memory” of both patron and mason processes past experience for a variety of political, social and aesthetic reasons and from these can create multiple meanings from visual forms. These categories are not exclusive, however, and instead form a continuum of experiences and prompts. These facets of architectural memory will be explored through examination of ecclesiastical architecture in Cyprus, Israel and Greece, with the Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka in Stymphalia and other churches of the thirteenth-century, post-Crusade Peloponnese serving as key examples of how memory inflected and intersected with transmission in cross-cultural situations. Transmission, Taxonomies and Terminology Architectural historians often discuss a practical architectural transmission that communicates designs through the use of plans and drawings, whether 1   Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 16-17. 2   In medical research on memory and its loss, researchers have found that “amnesia demonstrates that ‘memory as retention of skills is different from the recollection of events;’ ” see Max Deutscher, “Memory,” in The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Graig, Vol. 6 (London: Routledge, 1998), 297, as cited in Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead, “Introduction,” in Theories of Memory: A Reader, eds. Michael Rossington and Anne Whitehead (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 3. Pragmatic memory and cultural memory in architectural production and reception also correspond to Mary Warnock’s categories of “habit memory” (learned skills and behaviors) and “conscious memory” (the evocation of past events or ideas); see Warnock, Memory (London: Faber, 1987), 9-14.



crusader mediterranean

483  [185]

made on paper, on cloth, on stone, with ropes or in the dirt. Masons are known to have passed their knowledge to one another through experiential learning and by apprenticeship under the tutelage of a master.3 In this essay, I seek to re-inscribe masons, the construction methods they used and their ability to help transmit forms across time and space into the history of medieval buildings in general and cross-cultural architectural exchange in particular. While often difficult to trace in the textual historical record, medieval patrons still are better known than builders, who generally are absent from documentary sources. In part for this reason, considerable agency regarding a monument’s final appearance and form is afforded to the patrons of buildings.4 However, I propose to read the features of monuments—whether plans, construction features or ornamental forms—as records of the transmission that must have occurred amongst the various actors involved in the creation and use of buildings.5 In doing so and by looking at the roles in architectural production of masons and patrons holistically, we can see how interactions both within each of those separate groups as well as between them resulted in the transmission of architectural culture and knowledge. Such transmission occurred within the building tradition of distinct regions, but was heightened in exchange between cultures and geographic areas because in such situations other factors such as linguistic, religious and cultural difference also had to be overcome. In the stylistic assessment of medieval architecture, including Crusaderperiod architecture in the Eastern Mediterranean, plans and decorative forms are often discrete features upon which architectural typologies are founded, while the comprehensive fabrication from design to use (and most notably construction methods) takes a back seat in the description 3   Renata Holod calls this learning by “gesture”; see Renata Holod, “Text, Plan, Building: On the Transmission of Architectural Knowledge,” in Theories and Principles of Design in the Architecture of Islamic Societies, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1988), 1-2; David Turnbull suggests a “performative approach,” citing “talk, tradition and templates” as the means of exchange between masons (of various generations as well as within a site) and patrons; see David Turnbull, Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers: Makers of Knowledge and Space (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 2000), 55 and 63-68. Robert Ousterhout analyzes the training and practice of masons in the context of the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean; see Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), esp. 58-85. 4   Ousterhout, Master Builders, 39. 5   For a parallel in the portable arts and painting, see Herbert Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, Rethinking the Middle Ages 1 (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2004), 45-64.

[186]  484

heather e. grossman

and assessment of a building’s “identity.” The culture of a patron, even in locations and times when such identity was in flux, is often transposed onto the buildings they commissioned, while the builders’ part in constructing and expressing such an identity is often neglected. Yet in heterogenous cultures such as those of the later twelfth- and thirteenth-century Crusader states of Cyprus, Syro-Palestine or the Franko-Byzantine Peloponnese, monuments often mixed characteristics of what modern scholars consider taxonomically different architectural styles. For the Christian Eastern Mediterranean, such buildings are often described through a dichotomy of “Western” (or “Gothic”) and “Byzantine” architectures and are usually explained as a mixture of Western European decorative elements fused to Byzantine plan types. Often when cultural and geographic designators like “Byzantine” or “Western” are applied to architectural monuments, they carry with them implications regarding the sociocultural “identity” of a building and by extension that monument’s patrons and users (or, vice versa, a known or presumed patron’s cultural identity is extrapolated to the architecture).6 Equating architectural style with cultural identities can be misleading, however, because architectural forms, their fabrication and their cultural meanings as understood among differing groups was multivalent and could change, particularly in sites of cross-cultural interaction. In addition, the canonical terms of medieval architectural history create very broad groupings of “Eastern” and “Western” architectures that in and of themselves are comprised of many regional variations and styles; a bifurcated classification and its divisions into broad categories, such as “Gothic’ ” and “Romanesque” or “Middle” or “Late” Byzantine is rather too reductive to describe accurately the complex architectural traditions of much of medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire, let alone the wider Mediterranean.7

6   I have written elsewhere about these issues in the context of thirteenth-century Greece; see Grossman, “Syncretism Made Concrete: The Case for a Hybrid Moreote Architecture in Post-Fourth Crusade Greece,” in Archaeology in Architecture: Papers in Honor of Cecil L. Striker, eds. Judson J. Emerick and Deborah M. Deliyannis (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2005), 65-66. 7   The question of the categorization of medieval architecture is an enormous one, and many criticisms of canonical taxonomies can be made. On the use of the term “Gothic,” as one example, see Stephen Murray, “The Study of Gothic Architecture,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic Art in Northern Europe, ed. Conrad Rudolph (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 383-402; Matthew M. Reeve, “Gothic,” Studies in Iconog-



crusader mediterranean

485  [187]

Needless to say, medieval patrons, makers and viewers of architecture did not use the categories we modern scholars now employ to define architecture made from the tenth through the fifteenth centuries, nor would they have characterized their communities by using such terminology. Medieval identity (whether based on religion, ethnicity, kinship, linguistic group or some other indicator) was also changeable, shifting and complex, and comprised multiple factors. Cross-cultural encounters through trade, diplomacy, warfare and other means were frequent and brought with them resultant artistic and architectural exchanges interactions that resulted in some tantalizingly “messy” buildings. Although a critique of the canon of medieval architectural history and its conventional taxonomy are not the topic of this essay, the complexity of the cultures and architectures in the post-Crusade medieval Mediterranean is important to the inquiry. Stylistic terms are useful in that they provide scholars a short-hand for groups of features, yet they can elide nuances that tell differing histories. Close examination of particular case studies and their multifaceted contexts, including the contributions of designers and masons, move past broad classifications and allow for a better understanding of transmission. This transmission was in part rooted in the “cultural” memory of architectural meaning and “pragmatic” memory of architectural knowledge that guided both patrons and builders at the construction site. Aspects of Architectural Memory The medieval concept of mneme, of memory as a phenomenon that allows one to think through a problem or incident, rather than simply reproduce or mimic an experience or form, helps explicate the two forms of architectural memory discussed in this essay.8 Memory studies have been the subject of research for some time, and medieval memory is certainly a part of this academic phenomenon. Perhaps the most compelling appraisals of memory in the European Middle Ages have been made by Mary Carruthers, who has helped us understand the nature of memory through readings of monastic and lay texts. In her book The Craft of Thought, Carruthers writes raphy, Special Issue. Medieval Art History Today—Critical Terms, guest ed. Nina Rowe, 33 (2012), 233-246. 8   Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 3.

[188]  486

heather e. grossman

[medieval] monastic art is, as monastic authors themselves talked about it, an art for mneme, “memory,” rather than one for mimesis . . . The questions raised about a work by mneme are different than those raised by mimesis. They stress cognitive uses and the instrumentality of art over questions of its “realism.” Mneme produces an art for “thinking about” and for “mediating upon” and for “gathering.” An art of tropes and figures is an art of patterns and pattern-making, and thus an art of mneme or memoria, of cogitation, thinking.9

She goes on to ask her readers “to conceive of memory not only as ‘rote,’ the ability to reproduce something . . . but as the matrix of a reminiscing cogitation, shuffling and collating ‘things’ stored in a random-access memory scheme, or set of schemes—a memory architecture and a library built up during one’s lifetime with the express intention that it be used inventively.”10 In the transmission of medieval architectural knowledge, “cultural memory,” outlined above, trades on the recognition of spaces and forms, grounding the maker/user—whether patron, designer, mason or viewer— in a particular environment, though one that can be transformed through the innovation of memory. Stanford Anderson has formulated a similar idea as “memory through architecture” or “architecture serving the causes of memory in society.”11 The medieval mind (those of monastics, in particular) felt that memory was a tool to help one move toward completion through a group or “civic” identity.12 In the medieval Mediterranean, this “cultural” transmission and memory can be posited to have helped newcomers to a territory connect back to their homelands, while simultaneously they created something new in their current landscape. For instance, the Cathedral of St. Nicholas at Famagusta, Cyprus (Fig. 1),13 begun in the late-thirteenth century as the coronation church of the Lusignan kings, strongly resembles Reims Cathedral, from the mid-thirteenth century, which fulfilled the same role for the kings of France (Fig. 2). Although not a directly mimetic copy, St. Nicholas features high pointed gables and deep, splayed portals that are architectural

  Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 3.   Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 4. 11   Stanford Anderson, “Memory in Architecture,” Daidalos, 58 (December, 1995), 23. 12   Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, 2. 13   Lucie Bonato and Maryse Emery, “L’Architecture rayonnante à Chypre: la cathédrale Saint-Nicholas de Famagouste,” Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes Chypriotes, 29 (1999), 97-116.  9 10



crusader mediterranean

487  [189]

Figure 1.  West façade, Saint Nicholas Cathedral, Famagusta, Cyprus. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksand journals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[190]  488

heather e. grossman

Figure 2.  West façade, Reims Cathedral, Reims, France. ©DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, NY. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.



crusader mediterranean

489  [191]

Figure 3.  Hagia Sophia, Andravida, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674. mnemonics of the earlier, French counterpart.14 By analogy, the Lusignan claim the same rights as their French relatives, using the architectural forms and style of Reims in their equivalent church in Famagusta. Individual sculpted forms could also succinctly introduce a political or social affiliation into an architectural space. For example, Hagia Sophia in Andravida, Greece doubled as an audience hall for Geoffrey de Villehardouin, the Prince of the Morea, in addition to its function as a regional cathedral (Fig. 3).15 An abraded corbel at the south side of the main apse is sculpted with a male head; the only such figure in the   On the idea of copies in medieval architecture, see Richard Krautheimer, “Introduction to the ‘Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture,’ ” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), 1-33; and later discussions, such as Paul Crossley, “Medieval Architecture and Meaning: The Limits of Iconography,” Burlington Magazine, 130, no. 1019 (February, 1988), 116-121. 15   Mary Lee Coulson, “The Dominican Church of Saint Sophia at Andravida,” in The Archaeology of Medieval Greece, eds. Peter Lock and G.D.R. Sanders, Oxbow Monographs 59 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1996), 50. 14

[192]  490

heather e. grossman

monument, he appears to wear a crown and could assert a princely presence within the church. We might imagine the prince seated near this sculpted image while holding meetings in the church and the sculpture could maintain something of his presence when he was absent (Fig. 4). Similar anthropomorphic corbels are found widely in France, such as in the southern range of the thirteenth-century cloister of the Abbey of SaintJean-des-Vignes in Soissons (Fig. 5), including in the regions from which the settlers of the Morea came. Such figural corbels can also be seen in other crusader contexts, as at Chastel Pelerin at ‘Atlit, north of Haifa, Israel, a Templar site. At ‘Atlit, human-headed corbels are found in the third-story chamber of the castle’s North Tower, a domestic space built in the later thirteenth century.16 While the figural corbels at these sites are not crowned, they similarly might have alluded to activity that occurred in the spaces where they were located or to associations desired by their patrons. The Cistercian monastery of Zaraka and its church, located in Stymphalia in the northeast Greek Peloponnese, demonstrate the transmission of “cultural memory” in a cosmopolitan context, as well as the concept of “pragmatic memory” (Figs 6 and 7).17 Zaraka was established in 1225 as a daughter-house of Morimond Abbey (in central France) at the request of Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Prince of the Morea. In building the monastery, Geoffrey was following his family’s tradition of patronage of the Cistercian Order.18 Morimond, located near Geoffrey’s home region within 16   For the corbels sculpted with human heads at Chastel Pelerin, ‘Atlit, see Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 129, Fig. 66a, b, d and 131. 17   On Zaraka, see Sheila Campbell, “The Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka,” Echos du monde classique/Classical Views, 41, no. 16 (1997): 177-196; Kathryn E. Salzer, “Gatehouses and Mother Houses: A Study of the Cistercian Abbey of Zaraka,” Medieval Studies, 61 (1991): 297-324; Beata Kitsiki Panagopoulos, Cistercian and Mendicant Monasteries in Medieval Greece (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 27-42; Antoine Bon, La Morée franque: recherches historiques, topographiques et archéologiques sur la principauté d’Achaïe (1205-1430), Vol.1, Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 213 (Paris: Éditions E. de Boccard, 1969), 553-559; Nikolaos K. Moutsopoulos, “Φραγκικές Εκκλησίες στην Ελλάδα. Églises franques en Grèce,” Technika Chronika, 37 (1960): 20-24; Anastasios K. Orlandos, “Η Φραγκική Εκκλησία της Στυμφαλίας” (The Frankish Church of Stymphalia), in Mélanges offerts à Octave et Melpo Merlier à l’occasion du 25e anniversaire de leur arrivée en Grèce, Vol. 3, Collection de l’Institut français d’Athènes 94 (Athens: Institute Français d’Athènes, 1957), 99-116ff; Anastasios K. Orlandos, “ Άνασκαφαι εν Στυμφάλω” (Excavations in Stymphalia), Praktika tes en Athenais Archaiologikes Hetaireias, n.v. (1929): 131-139. 18   Elizabeth A.R. Brown, “The Cistercians in the Latin Empire of Constantinople and Greece: 1204-1276,” Traditio, 14 (1958): 93; Salzer, “Gatehouses and Mother Houses,” 303.



crusader mediterranean

491  [193]

Figure 4.  Corbel sculpted with the head of a crowned male, Hagia Sophia, Andravida, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

Figure 5.  Corbel sculpted with the head of a young male and foliage, Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, Soissons, France. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[194]  492

heather e. grossman

Figure 6.  Interior of the church, Zaraka Monastery, from the east, Stymphalia, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. Champagne, was one of the four earliest mother-houses of the Order. The monks from Morimond who were sent to Greece thus continued the Villehardouin-Cistercian bond in a new land, and they also brought something of the Order’s long-standing heritage to a region where they did not previously have a foothold. The plan of the church that the Cistercians built at Stymphalia evokes both their Order’s architectural traditions as well as those of the parochial churches of Villehardouin’s home region of Champagne. The Zaraka church is a four-bay basilica with a flat eastern apse. The base of a stair tower remains in the northeast corner abutting the wall of the main apse and the aisle (Fig. 8). While no longer extant, there was an arcaded porch at the west, as attested to both by the two foliate capitals set at angles into the church’s façade, ready to receive the ribs of a cross-vault, and by the 1993 excavation of a doorway immediately southwest of the church facade (see Fig. 17).19 It bears mentioning that secular parish churches and monastic ones may well have shared design elements and the builders   Campbell, “The Cistercian Monastery of Zaraka,” 181 and 186.

19



crusader mediterranean

493  [195]

Figure 7.  Map of the Peloponnese, showing principal church sites of the Principality of the Morea. Map: Heather E. Grossman (After Peter Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, 1204-1500. London: Longman, 1995, 383, map 5). This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674. who planned and made them, as has been argued for the Cistercians.20 With its rectilinear forms, the plan of Zaraka’s church parallels that of the .

  Cynthia Marie Canejo makes a compelling case for a master builder who combined the knowledge of both monastic buildings and local secular churches into a singular building practice for both monastic and lay patrons; see Cynthia Marie Canejo, “The Yonne Valley Builder: An Identifiable Master Introducing a Unique Blend of Cistercian and NonCistercian Northern Burgundian Design to the Oise,” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture, 3, no. 3 (Summer 2012), 19-65. 20

Figure 8.  Plan, church, Zaraka Monastery. After Antoine Bon, La Morée franque; recherches historiques, topographiques et archéologiques sur la principauté d’Achaïe (1205-1430), 2. Album (Paris: Éditions E. de Boccard, 1969), pl. 119. Copyright: Cafael, French School of Athens.

[196]  494 heather e. grossman



crusader mediterranean

495  [197]

twelfth-century Morimond sanctuary, rather than more contemporary, thirteenth-century Cistercian churches, which usually featured rounded chevets (Fig. 9). I suspect this older plan type is in part an important reference to the monks’ place of origin at Morimond.21 The plan is also related to those of local parish churches of Champagne and northern Burgundy such as the thirteenth-century church of Notre Dame at Bourbonne-lesBains or St. Alpinus at Baye, which likely dates to the later-twelfth or earlythirteenth century as well (Figs 10 and 11).22 Notre Dame is noted as having been built in the tradition of the abbey church at Morimond, showing the extension and influence of Cistercian planning into the realm of the secular parish church (and also highlights the likely role of masons from the secular population who worked for both lay and monastic patrons in the construction of churches).23 Both of these churches feature flat apses, though St. Alpinus has a one-bay transept that laterally expands the eastern zone of the church. St. Alpinus also has a west porch similar to those found in rural, parish churches in the southern Ile-de-France and Champagne, and which might serve as a model for the reconstruction of Zaraka’s attested but no longer extant west enclosure.24 Both of these examples of Champenois and Burgundian church building also have a circular stair tower that closely aligns with the placement of the one at Zaraka. Nestled between the eastern termination of the north aisle and the north wall of the apse of Notre Dame at Bourbonne-lesBains, the stair leads to the upper chamber the clocher that rises above the last bay of the aisle. At St. Alpinus the circular stair adjoins the west wall of the north transept and the nave, giving access to the chamber above the nave crossing. The Cistercians prohibited bells in most cases, but the   Anselme Dimier, L’Art cistercien. France, Third edition, La Nuit des temps 16 (Paris: Zodiaque, 1982), 49. 22   For Bourbonne-les-Bains, see Robert Branner, Burgundian Gothic Architecture (London: Zwemmer, 1960), 120; a brief pamphlet available on site provides some information and archival photographs: see Jean Silvestre, Bourbonne-les-Bains. Église Notre Dame en son Assomption (s.l.: s.n., 1975). St. Alpinus at Baye is unpublished, though its architectural characteristics make a date in the later-twelfth century likely. 23   Silvestre, Bourbonne-les-Bains. Église Notre Dame, 1. 24   Anne Prache illustrates the example of an otherwise undocumented church at Boësse, in the southern Ile-de-France, which she dates to no earlier than the mid-twelfth century. Prache notes that porches such as at Boësse are common in rural churches not only in this area, but also in the Champagne region; see Prache, Ile-de-France romane, La Nuit des temps 60 (Paris: Zodiaque, 1983), 403-404 and plates 156 and color plate at page 415. 21

[198]  496

heather e. grossman

Figure 9.  Plan, church, Morimond Monastery. After Anselme Dimier, L’Art cistercien. France, Third edition, La Nuit des temps 16 (Paris: Zodiaque, 1982), 49.



crusader mediterranean

497  [199]

Figure 10.  Plan, Notre Dame, Bourbonnes-les-Bains, France. After Jean Silvestre, Bourbonne-les-Bains. Église Notre Dame en son Assomption. S.l.: s.n., 1975, n.p.

[200]  498

heather e. grossman

Figure 11.  Saint Alpinus, Baye, France, from the northwest. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674. Order’s statutes did permit them at sites where brothers would be working far afield. The circular stair-tower at Zaraka could be for a bell-tower or it simply may have given access to a space above the vault of the nave. The church of the Zaraka Monastery thus is comparable in several key morphological aspects not only to Cistercian Morimond, its mother-house, but also to ecclesiastic buildings serving the lay population throughout Burgundy and Champagne. Design elements of the Zaraka church make it probable that the Cistercian monks sent from Morimond came with plans and brothers (whether monks or laybrothers) who were at least visually familiar with both Champenois and Cistercian building traditions. Cistercian documents and the architectural evidence from other Cistercian sites clearly indicate that the Order’s monks and laybrothers were involved in the construction process at numerous monasteries. However, these sources also make clear that outside masons and workers were hired by the Order.25 The simplicity 25   Peter J. Fergusson writes that some Cistercian monks, and more often laybrothers, were involved directly in the planning and construction of the Order’s monastic buildings



crusader mediterranean

499  [201]

of the Zaraka plan surely was also a design factor, as it would have been easier to construct than the complicated rounded chevets of the thirteenth century, in terms of building costs and constructional knowledge. These plan elements suggest that cultural architectural memory was at work in Zaraka’s design process, but they also indicate that the second type of memory and transmission posited earlier, the pragmatic memory of building, was simultaneously activated for those designing and building the monastery. Examination of the wall fabric at Zaraka offers another important (and somewhat less commonly evaluated) body of evidence for considering architectural memory and transmission. Pragmatic memory—that from mason to apprentice or fellow-worker—transmitted either visually through portable or transient drawings or via demonstration, deals with specific details of design and structure. Anderson calls this “memory in architecture,” by which he means, “the operation of memory within the discipline of architecture itself.”26 While I believe that this second type of architectural memory and transmission is more related to the work of a mason or an atelier, this is not solely the province of the craftsman, any more than cultural architectural memory is solely the domain of the patron. But given the technical nature of the work, it is more likely that masons were the individuals most involved in this aspect of medieval construction. It is clear from the walls that masons trained in local construction techniques built Zaraka. The wall fabric approximates ashlar, rubble core construction (Fig. 12), which was used widely in the Champagne and other parts of France. However, this method of construction was also used in pre-Crusade Greece, as at the church of St. Nikoloas in Kambia and several and churches, at least in the twelfth century. Cistercian documents record that at times lay-brothers also traveled with monks to the sites of new monasteries, though both they and the monks were limited to working at only their own monasteries or in others of the Cistercian Order after 1157. In other cases, the Order’s records indicate that lay master masons, masons and carpenters were regularly hired by the Order; see Fergusson, “The Builders of Cistercian Monasteries in Twelfth Century England,” in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, ed. Meredith Parsons Lillich, Vol. 2 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 22-25. Further evidence of outside laborers has been collected by David H. Williams; see Williams, The Cistercians in the Early Middle Ages (Leominster: Gracewing, 1998), 196199. Sheila Campbell feels that the presence of two doors at the southwest end of the church at Stymphalia, one within the boundaries of the cloister and the other without, suggests the presence of lay-brothers, though whether these may have been builders is impossible to know; see Campbell, “The Cistercian Monastery,” 186. 26   Anderson, “Memory in Architecture,” 23.

[202]  500

heather e. grossman

Figure 12.  Church, Zaraka Monastery, wall fabric at the west façade. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksand journals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



crusader mediterranean

501  [203]

Figure 13.  North exterior wall of church, Zaraka Monastery, showing tile slips between spolia blocks. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. other churches. Zaraka’s walls are not quite true ashlar masonry, however. Its walls are made of large blocks with cramp cuttings (clearly spoliated from the nearby site of ancient Stymphalos) with smaller, irregular stones at the tops of the walls. Brick slips, sometimes laid in decorative patterns, and painted pieces are used as shims and fills (Fig. 13). Such techniques are all commonly found in the masonry of other local churches of the contemporary period. The use of newly cut stone (found largely at the windows and doors) in tandem with spolia and brick indicates that Greek (by which I mean local and quite possibly Orthodox) masons continued working with their own traditions in the Principality, albeit here for Latin patrons.27

  The masons’ cultural and religious identity can only be hypothesized, but their method of constructing walls indicates familiarity with building traditions of the Peloponnese from before the Frankish conquest. Thus they would seem to have been craftsmen local to the region and likely were at least culturally Greek. 27

[204]  502

heather e. grossman

Memory Conjoined in Transmission The ornamental sculpture remaining at the Zaraka Monastery shows how Carruthers’ “matrix of reminiscing cogitations,” cited above, could bind masons and patrons together, blending both pragmatic and cultural forms of memory. Architectural decoration became a site where both the patrons’ and the masons’ desires and skills intertwined, and forms could be designed to evoke or commemorate other locations and events but were also the product of the mason’s knowledge and experimentation. Amongst the plentiful, remaining sculpture from the site are several well-carved examples of crocket capitals—in which bud-like shoots frame the outer sides of the capital (Figs 14 and 15)—that bear striking resemblance to those from Cistercian houses, such as those from twelfth-century Vauclair Abbey (Fig. 16).28 One extant capital, which must have supported the springing of the ribbed vaults of the western porch, is of this crocket type. Though simpler in design than the large tripartite or octagonal nave capitals, the stems and curled buds of the crocket form are still visible even on the damaged surface of the block (Fig. 17). But this capital type would have been comprehensible, if not entirely familiar, to a local mason, especially given that these crockets are at essence akin to the curled acanthus stems and volutes of a Corinthian capital. Plentiful examples would have existed in Greece upon which they could have drawn (including at ancient Stymphalos, just meters away). In fact, the other capital remaining at the west façade has deeply drilled guide-holes and a far more Classical style, and may be spoliated from Stymphalos or copied from a nearby model. All of these sculptures exist along with the modified ChampenoisCistercian plan and the local masonry. Recognizing the composite nature of these monuments, we can posit exchange between the Cistercian patrons, and possibly designers, and the Greek masons. These different groups reached into their various architectural memories, and the resulting product of various processes of transmission brought forth a new building, innovative in its combinations and mixings and reflective of the many hands that went into its design and making. Some elements were surely the product of sketches, whether brought from Champagne or made on 28   For Vauclair, see René Courtois, “La première église cistercienne de l’abbaye de Vauclair,” Archéologie médiévale, 2 (1972), 103-125. Pontigny Abbey, another Cistercian house, also has similar capitals. Pontigny also preserves a porch similar to those of parish churches, such as at Baye and Bourbonne-les-Bains, though the church is overall of larger scale; see Dimier, L’Art cistercien, 264 and 299-304.



crusader mediterranean

503  [205]

Figure 14.  Nave capital, church, Zaraka Monastery. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

[206]  504

heather e. grossman

Figure 15.  Nave capital, church, Zaraka Monastery. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline .com/content/15700674.

Figure 16.  Capitals, chapter house, Vauclair Abbey, France. Photo: Heather E. Grossman.



crusader mediterranean

505  [207]

Figure 17.  West façade with extant porch capital, church, Zaraka Monastery. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksand journals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[208]  506

heather e. grossman

Figure 18.  Terrain image showing route from Stymphalia/Zaraka to Phlious. Imagery © 2012 TerraMetrics, Map Data © 2012 Google. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. site, while other elements would have been made by craftsmen with prior knowledge or who were learning on-site. The Champenois forms are unique and clearly recall northwestern European types, but they also traveled well across the Continent and within the local region, too. Zaraka, at the edge of Lake Stymphalos, is bounded by rugged terrain, but is accessible via mountain passes to the east and south. Travelers journeying between Corinth (a major market town and bishopric) and southerly commercial centers would have followed a path over the mountains, passing the Zaraka Monastery along the way (Fig. 18; also see Fig. 7).29 29   In the late antique and medieval periods the mountainous, inland routes of the Peloponnesos, such as the one on which Zaraka lies, became more frequently used and created “high connectivity” in the region. Though the Cistercians sought out isolated locales for their monasteries and quotidian activities, this connectivity did not dissuade the founders of the new Zaraka Monastery; see G.D.R. Sanders and I.K. Whitbread, “Central Places and Major Roads in the Peloponnese,” Annual of the British School at Athens, 85 (1990), 349-350, on the connectivity of Peloponnesian cities via inland routes. Caroline Astrid Bruzelius, in her study of Longpont Abbey, notes that several French Cistercian houses were founded in settled areas; see Bruzelius, “Cistercian High Gothic: The Abbey Church



crusader mediterranean

507  [209]

Along this route, we can see two other churches that adopted the crocket capital at their entryways, though original interpretations of the form were made. Descending from the mountains as he came from Stymphalia, the traveler would have seen the diminutive, domed, cross-in-square church of the Virgin Rachiotissa perched on a rocky outcrop just above the acropolis of ancient Phlious, near the modern town of Nemea (Fig. 19).30 If he approached the chapel to make an offering, our medieval visitor would have seen the stout lintel of the west portal supported on two small crocket capitals (Fig. 20). Or, had the traveler perhaps ventured on and wandered a bit further from the main road, he might have visited the Palaiomonastero at Phaneromenis, near the modern town of Xiliomodi (not far from medieval Corinth). The church here is similarly a small, domed, cross-insquare sanctuary (Fig. 21).31 Upon crossing the threshold, the visitor would face another pair of crocket capitals, here framing the doorway between the narthex and the nave (Fig. 22). Both churches must have served a local audience, likely both monastics and laypersons. There is a good possibility that these two monuments were designed and constructed by a mobile chantier that worked throughout the region, and that these masons were familiar with the earlier monastic church at Stymphalia. Like Zaraka, the wall fabric of both is made of a combination of spoliated, roughly shaped and well-cut materials. At the Rachiotissa, the masons arranged large blocks from the acropolis of ancient Phliountous (located directly below the church) at the lower portion of the walls and smaller stones above, in the same fashion as at Zaraka. Rough ashlar construction comprises the single, polygonal projecting apse. The builders of the Phaneromenis church used rough rubble for the main walls, though the apse is of Longpont and the Architecture of the Cistercians in the Early Thirteenth Century,” Analecta Cisterciensia, 35 (1979), 22. 30   The Rachiotissa now has been reconstructed as a simple, single-hall church with a gabled roof but its original form is archaeologically recoverable; see Charalambos Bouras, “Φλίους. Παναγία της Ραχιώτισσα” (Phlious. The Panagia Rachiotissa), Deltion tes Christianikes Archaiologikes Hetereias, ser. 4, 16 (1991-1992), 39-46. 31   Anastasios K. Orlandos, “Βυζαντινοί Ναοί της Ανατολικής Κορινθίας, Γ’ ” (Byzantine Churches of the Eastern Corinthia, 3), Archeion ton Vyzantinon mnemeion tes Hellados 1 (1935): 88-90; Charalambos Bouras, “The Impact of Frankish Architecture on Thirteenth-Century Byzantine Architecture,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahede (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001), 250; and Bon, La Morée franque, 586.

Figure 19.  Church of the Virgin Rachiotissa, Phlious, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[210]  508 heather e. grossman

crusader mediterranean

Figure 20.  Western portal, Rachiotissa, Phlious, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

509  [211]

Figure 21.  Church, Palaiomonastero, Phaneromenis, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[212]  510 heather e. grossman



crusader mediterranean

511  [213]

Figure 22.  Nave portal, church, Palaiomonastero, Phaneromenis, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksand journals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

Figure 23.  Capital, western portal, Rachiotissa, Phlious, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.

[214]  512 heather e. grossman

crusader mediterranean

Figure 24.  Capital, nave portal, church, Palaiomonastero, Phaneromenis, Greece. Photo: Heather E. Grossman. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.

513  [215]

[216]  514

heather e. grossman

similarly constructed with regular ashlars. The construction techniques and similar plans could point to the same workshop having created the two buildings. Further, the use of spolia at the lower walls and lighter materials above, in combination with ashlar-type construction at the apse, might also indicate that at least some of the workers had participated in the construction of the monastic church at Zaraka, just over the mountains. Masons also created new iterations of Zaraka’s sculptural forms for these tiny ecclesiastic buildings. The capitals that support the west doorframe of the Phlious church are quite roughly carved, with the tendrils of the foliage formed of thin segments and anemic buds (Fig. 23). At the outer face capital the carved proto-stems splay widely, and the volute-like buds of the capitals have some volume. However, the crockets sculpted at the inside of the portal itself are shrunken to one meager curl. At Phaneromenis, similar but better executed capitals support the lintel of the portal between the narthex and the sanctuary proper (these also have faired better than those at Phlious, with less white-wash occluding the form; Fig. 24). Although here too, the interior face has discernable differences from the outer surface and from any example found at Zaraka. The crocket is barely delineated from the surface of the door flange, and its form is “backwards”—the spiral ought to swirl in the opposite direction, toward the outer side of the block. These are clearly not the products of the more-skilled sculptors who worked at Zaraka, but the forms are undoubtedly related to those pieces. Interestingly, in both churches we see these “Gothic” capitals in the most visible and liminal spaces of the chapels. There can be little doubt that those who came to these churches were meant to see and appreciate these sculptures, but we must speculate more about who chose these particular forms for the two smaller buildings and who made the decision to give them such spatial prominence. Perhaps the crocket capital design was used at the request of a patron, impressed by the beauty of those at Zaraka and wanting to keep up with the latest styles of the Morea. The thirteenth-century Morea was socially integrated at least in the sphere of the local elites, as indicated by linguistic and other evidence. Fashion and taste in visual cultural also seem to have been shared, if the appearance of crocket capitals throughout the Morea is an indication. Were such decisions based on aesthetics alone, or did these formal selections still convey ideological sentiments in the form of cultural or religious allegiances within the territory after the initial conquest period? Cultural memory, as discussed above, might have become more localized in this case. A progression of at least a few generations of patrons, crafts-



crusader mediterranean

515  [217]

men and viewers can be demonstrated in the Principality. As time passed in the thirteenth-century Peloponnesos and the immediacy of the conquest slipped away, plans and sculptural forms that initially connected new immigrants to distant homelands, announcing one group to another, began to speak across religious/ethnic groups. In a newly forming society, small units of time are important. Fifty years on in the Morea, the crocket capital likely ceased to read exclusively as Cistercian, or decorative cloisonné masonry—that hallmark of Byzantine building—to signify “Greek.” Instead, these and other shared forms became part of the local visual and architectural vocabulary of the thirteenth-century Peloponnesos. These now signaled “Moreot,” by which I mean a style visually comprised of characteristics rooted in both older Peloponnesian and Champenois/Cistercian traditions but transformed into a unique entity in and distinctly of the milieu of the thirteenth-century Morea. Additionally, local craftsmen employed by Frankish patrons (and possibly designer-masons) or seeing new buildings with imported forms learned these techniques and clearly incorporated them into their new work for different patrons, whether of Latin or Orthodox faith, as we can see at the Phlious and Phaneromenis churches. Like the form of the sculpted crockets and like the groups themselves, cultural memories and cultural meanings mutated. Or, perhaps, was the crocket form simply “pragmatically” carried to these other sites in the mind and hand of a craftsman who had seen such sculpture at the Zaraka church? Perhaps our sculptors had been hired at Stymphalia, working to construct the walls there but keeping a keen eye on what their more specialized colleagues were fashioning for the details of the Cistercian church. These masons later might have moved on to smaller projects, such as the Rachiotissa and the Paliaomonastero, where they were now in charge and could try their hand at creating their own sculptural elements. These are not mutually exclusive hypotheses, and some combination of such cultural and pragmatic memory likely occurred when masons discussed projects with their patrons, exchanging ideas as they moved from site to site. Throughout the Morea, distinct ways of working—evidenced in the carving on moldings, forms of crockets on capitals or in wall construction—are found in groups that suggest the movement of masons both in separate clusters in the west and east of the Peloponnese, but also linking those regions (Fig. 25). This movement and transmission probably happened fairly rapidly, given the short distances between the buildings and the minimal amount of training needed to carve the forms as seen in the nearby churches.

[218]  516

heather e. grossman

Figure 25.  Map showing areas in the Morea with churches that share elements. Map: Heather E. Grossman. (After Peter Lock. The Franks in the Aegean, 1204-1500. London: Longman, 1995, 383, map 5.) This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. Conclusion These brief examples—indeed fragments—from the Morea, Cyprus and Palestine offer evidence of the types of transmission at work in the medieval Mediterranean, between patrons, between patron and architect and between workers at a given site and between sites. All of this circulation of architectural knowledge has at its basis the memory of past forms, techniques, places and meanings. This way of thinking about masons’ work,



crusader mediterranean

517  [219]

and the work of patrons and viewers, is also offered as a means of thinking about how architecture in mixed settings such as the Morea, Cyprus and the Palestinian Crusader states cross-cut typologies created by our modern scholarship. Built up over the life of an individual, and over the lives of communities, architectural practices were transformed through exchange and renewed through memory, in its various forms, and its continued engagement with both the craft of thinking and the craft of making. Acknowledgements This essay was presented in an earlier form at the Center for Ancient Studies (University of Pennsylvania) “Masons at Work” Symposium, March 30 to April 1, 2012. I would like to thank the organizers of that conference, Lothar Haselberger, Renata Holod and Robert Ousterhout, for the opportunity to present this material. I would further like to thank Ludovico Geymonat, my co-editor Alicia Walker and the anonymous reviewer of this Special Issue of Medieval Encounters for their invaluable comments and suggestions as the essay developed. This discussion is expanded in my book; see Grossman, Architecture and Interaction in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean: Building Identity in the Medieval Morea (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, forthcoming), especially chapter four.

Drawing, Memory and Imagination in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch Ludovico V. Geymonat*

Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, Italy *E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract The Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch (Cod. Guelf. 61.2 Aug. 8°, fols. 75-94, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany) is considered a crucial example of a medieval modelbook. The collection of drawings contained within its pages has long been identified as key evidence for the transmission of artistic motifs between Byzantium and western Europe in the thirteenth century. Offering an in-depth analysis of the drawings and the quire that contains them, the present article suggests that the drawings were made with the purpose of working through visual representations that the draftsman found intriguing and that he sketched in order to train his own hand, memory and imagination. This hypothesis challenges some of the assumptions behind the category of medieval modelbooks as a means of faithfully reproducing images so that they can be further copied in another context. If the main goal of the drawings in Wolfenbüttel was that of enriching the draftsman’s visual memory and exploring imaginative possibilities, their value as reproductions might have been marginal, but their role as means of cross-cultural encounter was decisive. Keywords modelbooks, drawing, transmission of images, visual memory, medieval art

Collections of drawings from the Middle Ages are rare and they are usually categorized as modelbooks, that is collections of images to be used as models in the production of other works of art. The portability of drawings and the practice of using modelbooks as iconographic and stylistic guides seem to provide an explanation for the consistency of medieval iconography, the spread of the same motifs over vast distances and the persistence of certain artistic traditions. It is an explanation that leads to particular expectations about medieval drawings, which in turn color our understanding of them and their functions. Were sets of drawings created only for the making of



drawing, memory and imagination

519  [221]

modelbooks in the Middle Ages? And are modelbooks the paradigm we should use in looking at the role of drawing as a means of cross-cultural artistic and architectural exchange? Both the concept of modelbooks and the theory of their use are challenged by the study of actual collections of drawings from the Middle Ages, especially those dating from before 1300. The Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch (Cod. Guelf. 61.2 Aug. 8°, fols. 75-94, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany) is a case in point.1 Its twelve pages drawn with figures from various New Testament scenes are hardly convincing as models for new works of art: they include key elements of canonical iconographies, but these motifs are jumbled and the resulting scenes are incomplete (Figs 1-14). The present article questions the established reading of the collection of drawings in Wolfenbüttel as a modelbook and proposes that it is more convincingly read as the outcome of a draftsman’s training his hand and imagination. As such, the drawings provide different but no less revealing evidence on possible mechanisms of cross-cultural artistic exchange.2 First published by Wilhelm Bode in 1873, the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch is a famous manuscript around which an extensive specialized bibliography has arisen over the last fifty years.3 It has been discussed   The drawings are dated on stylistic and circumstantial evidence before the Goslar Gospels (c. 1240; Goslar, Stadtarchiv, B 4387) and the Semeca Missal (between 1241 and 1245; Halberstadt, Cathedral Treasure, cod. 214). “Liber vallis s[anc]te ma[ri]e,” written in a fifteenth-century handwriting on fol. 134v of the manuscript, records the provenance of the codex from the library of the Cistercian Abbey of Mariental near Helmstedt, which was known by that name. It was in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel by around 1638/40. 2   Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch is by now the manuscript’s common designation and, despite a divergent interpretation of the drawings, it will be maintained in this article as the traditional name. It is assumed that the draftsman of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch was a man: no clues suggest a female artist’s work, and known artists of this time are usually men. Furthermore, the first recording of the manuscript in the library of the male Cistercian Abbey of Mariental suggests male ownership. One expects, though, that women artists in the Middle Ages made drawings and used them in their work; see (forthcoming) Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. T. Martin, 2 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2012). 3   Wilhelm Bode, “Skizzen eines italienischen Malers vom Ausgange des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts in einem Codex der Bibliothek zu Wolfenbüttel,” Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 8 (1873), 136-139; Hans R. Hahnloser and Fritz Rückers, Das Musterbuch von Wolfenbüttel: mit einem Fragment aus dem Nachlasse (Vienna: Gesellschaft für Vervielfältigende 1

[222]  520

ludovico v. geymonat

in reference to a number of topics: the development of Zackenstil (the German thirteenth-century style featuring angular lines, particularly in jagged drapery folds); the case for Venice, the possible site of the making of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, as a clearinghouse of cross-cultural exchanges in the visual arts between the Mediterranean and northern Europe in the thirteenth century; the development of Byzantine art after the fall of Constantinople in 1204; and the transition from Romanesque to Gothic painting in Central Europe. In short, the manuscript provides crucial evidence for a rich variety of important topics and it has been the focus of scholarly attention for quite some time. Kunst, 1929); Kurt Weitzmann, “Zur byzantinischen Quelle des Wolfenbüttler Musterbuches,” in Festschrift Hans R. Hahnloser, eds. E.J. Beer, P. Hofer and L. Majon (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1961), 223-250; Hans Belting, “Zwischen Gotik und Byzanz. Gedanken zur Geschichte der sächsischen Buchmalerei im 13. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 41 (1978), 217-257 (218, 242-257); Eberhard König, “Zur Bildfolge im ‘Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch’,” in Die Zeit der Staufer, V, Supplement, eds. R. Haussherr and C. Väterlein (Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1979), 335-352; Hugo Buchthal, The “Musterbuch” of Wolfenbüttel and its Position in the Art of the Thirteenth Century (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1979); Martin Gosebruch, “Die Zeichnungen des Wolfenbütteler ‘Musterbuches:’ ihre westlichen Beziehungen—ihre byzantinische Vorlage,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte, 20 (1981), 25-59; Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten, “Nicola Pisano, das Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch und Byzanz,” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, 39 (1988), 29-50; Iohannis Spatharakis, The Left-Handed Evangelist. A Contribution to Palaeologian Iconography (London: Pindar Press, 1988); Robert W. Scheller, Exemplum. Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900-ca. 1470) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 165-175; Annemarie Weyl Carr, “319. The ‘Model Book’ of Wolfenbüttel,” in The Glory of Byzantium, eds. H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), 482-484; Wolfgang Grape, “Sachsen, Venedig und Konstantinopel: zum Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch,” Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte, 37 (1998), 29-86; Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Kunsthistorische Beobachtungen zur Holzdecke von St. Michael. Ihr Verhältnis zur sächsischen Buchmalerei in der älteren Forschung und nach heutigem Wissenstand,” in Die Bilderdecke der Hildesheimer Michaeliskirche, eds. R.-J. Grote and V. Kellner (München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002), 36-58 (39-47); Marcell Restle, “Musterbücher,” in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. M. Restle, vol. 6 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2005), 770-806 (776-779); Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, “Das Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch in seinem sächsischen Umfeld,” in Manuscripts in Transition: Recycling Manuscripts, Texts, and Images, eds. B. Dekeyzer and J. van der Stock (Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2005), 99-108; Eberhard König, “Une nouvelle lecture du livre de modèles de Wolffenbüttel,” Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa, 37 (2006), 21-32; Maria Andaloro, “Gli Atlanti della memoria. La memoria delle immagini e le immagini della memoria,” in Medioevo: immagine e memoria, ed. A.C. Quintavalle (Milano: Electa, 2009), 564-577 (567-571).



drawing, memory and imagination

521  [223]

Drawing can be an effective means for the transmission of forms. An accomplished draftsman is able to copy a work of art—of whatever medium, scale and dimension—into an image on a page that is easily grouped with other drawings and moved around over short and long distances. Drawn images are both portable and fairly affordable to make, and one expects that they played some role in the mechanics of cross-cultural artistic and architectural exchange in the Middle Ages. Also essential in this regard is the ability of drawings to make portable images of monumental works and provide a connection between works of art of large and small scale. Drawing is a versatile medium that works well for copying as much as for exploring: it can be used to aid the mind retain the memory of a work of art as well as to help push the imagination into visualizing new shapes and forms. The two tasks are not separate, and drawings provide evidence for the nurturing of both memory and imagination, along with the interaction between them. A collection of drawings by an individual draftsman can be especially telling as it indicates both the range of approaches to visualization and the range of subjects and interests entertained by the same mind. The process that transforms a work of art into a drawn image and, by so doing, separates the original from its spatial, visual and iconographic contexts might be a productive one for a visual artist. Separation through reproduction by means of drawing facilitates interaction over long distances, not only through the portability of drawings, but also in the imaginative possibilities that they can inspire, at times even more so than the movement of completed three-dimensional works would do.4 The Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch reproduces iconography that was rarely seen in contemporary western Europe. Most scenes and figures—from a detailed representations of the Anastasis (see Figs 23-26) to Christ awakening the Apostles (see Figs 19 and 20), the Transfiguration (see Figs 7 and 29) and the Angel at Christ’s tomb (see Fig. 18)—are easily recognizable as belonging to an Orthodox theological and Byzantine iconographic tradition and were clearly inspired by Byzantine models. And yet, the treatment of drapery and the drawing technique show familiarity with the modeling techniques in thirteenth-century German works, particularly those from Saxony, the region where the manuscript was first recorded. It is on the basis of this kind of evidence that the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch   See Robert S. Nelson, “Appropriation,” in Critical Terms for Art History, eds. R.S. Nelson and R. Shiff (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 160-172. 4

[224]  522

ludovico v. geymonat

has been considered a key example of how visual knowledge of Byzantine art reached western Europe in the 1230s and inspired works of art produced there. Other drawings from the time present cases that are comparable, but none of them is as fully preserved and rich in their imagery as the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch.5 Further, drawings may provide evidence of cross-cultural artistic interactions both at their point of origin, the moment of their making, and—if they are ever used within a different context from that of their creation— at the time of their reception. Visual evidence suggests that this was the case with the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch. Scholarship has identified works of art from the Balkans, Venice and Saxony that offer comparative material to the drawings in Wolfenbüttel, and from these comparanda the Musterbuch has been shown to be the product of cross-cultural artistic interaction at the time of its making. The same evidence suggests that in the reception of its drawings it also became a means of artistic exchange between northwestern European portable and monumental arts and Byzantine and Veneto-Byzantine works. The goal of this essay is not to expand the attributions or retrace the links among these works of art. Rather, it is to argue for the unique function that drawing, of the kind preserved on the pages of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, served in the exchanges that occurred during the first half of the thirteenth century among works of different scale and media and from distant regions and artistic traditions of the Mediterranean and northern Europe. The article necessarily begins by surveying the complex state of preservation of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, which has been reordered and bound since the Middle Ages. Careful scrutiny of the illustrated pages reveals insights into the execution of the drawings and the mise-en-page. This approach is predicated on the belief that by retracing the manuscript’s process of production we might ascertain the purpose and principles that guided the draftsman who created it.

5   See, for example, the three sheets of vellum now preserved in Freiburg im Breisgau (Augustinermuseum, G 23/1a-c), which are fragments of a larger collection from the early thirteenth century; see Scheller, Exemplum, 136-143; Jaroslav Folda, “318. The Freiburg Leaf,” in The Glory of Byzantium, eds. H.C. Evans and W.D. Wixom (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), 482; Restle, “Musterbücher,” 780-786.

drawing, memory and imagination

Figure 1.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 75r and 94v (Cod. Guelf. 61.2 Aug. 8°, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany). Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

523  [225]

Figure 2.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 75v and 94r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

[226]  524 ludovico v. geymonat

drawing, memory and imagination

Figure 3.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 76r and 93v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

525  [227]

Figure 4.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 76v and 93r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

[228]  526 ludovico v. geymonat

drawing, memory and imagination

Figure 5.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 77r and 92v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

527  [229]

Figure 6.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 77v and 92r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

[230]  528 ludovico v. geymonat

drawing, memory and imagination

Figure 7.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 78r and 91v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

529  [231]

Figure 8.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 78v and 91r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

[232]  530 ludovico v. geymonat

drawing, memory and imagination

Figure 9.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 79r and 90v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

531  [233]

Figure 10.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 79v and 90r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

[234]  532 ludovico v. geymonat

drawing, memory and imagination

Figure 11.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fol. 80r and stub from cut-off page. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

533  [235]

Figure 12.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fol. 80v and stub from cut-off page. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

[236]  534 ludovico v. geymonat

drawing, memory and imagination

Figure 13.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 81r and 89v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

535  [237]

Figure 14.  Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 81v and 89r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

[238]  536 ludovico v. geymonat



drawing, memory and imagination

537  [239]

Codicological Analysis The manuscript containing the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch is composed of 137 leaves (folios), each of which measures about 16.6×12.0 cm (circa 6.5×4.7 inches). The present binding of the codex dates from 1957.6 It is a miscellaneous collection of materials, divided into four unrelated parts. The second part, which contains the drawings that are the subject of this study, is made of a single quire (a gathering of bifolios) that goes from leaf 75 to 94 and includes twelve pages with drawings mostly covered by writing.7 In the 1970s, the gathering of the drawings was unbound, and the loose bifolios were individually photographed from both sides (Figs 1-14). The photographs show that the drawings were made on the recto and verso of six leaves belonging to five different bifolios (Fig. 15), and that an additional single leaf with drawings on both sides was cut from another bifolio (as evinced by a stub that bears traces of drapery folds still attached to fol. 80—see Figs 11 and 12).8 Another unillustrated bifolio in the quire (fols. 75/94) is of the same size, type and quality as those with the drawings, while the remaining pages are of a different kind of parchment and size.9 The seven outer bifolios of the quire, which include six complete bifolios plus one remaining leaf, constitute a septernio (a quire containing seven bifolios of parchment folded to make fourteen leaves for a total of twentyeight pages).10 Evidently, the draftsman only partially filled this septernio  6   The Herzog August Bibliothek has preserved the previous binding: the oak-wood boards of the cover and traces of leather slips suggest that it is the original thirteenthcentury binding later altered and reused a few times. On Romanesque binding see: János A. Szirmai, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 140-172.  7   By making his or her own copy of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, the reader may find this section of the article easier to follow, further clarifying the challenges that the current condition of the manuscript presents. Figs 1-16 show the recto and verso of the seven bifolios that made up the original quire and the diagrams of the present order of pages in the manuscript and of the original sequence as reconstructed by König, “Une nouvelle lecture.” For a detailed codicological description see: Wolfgang Milde, “Zum ‘Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch’,” in Die Zeit der Staufer, V. Supplement: Vorträge und Forschungen, eds. R. Haussherr and C. Väterlein (Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1979), 331-333.  8   Thin slashes in the parchment along the inner margin of fol. 89 indicate that the leaf cut off originally followed this one (that is, the leaves in the quire were already in the present order but were not yet numbered).  9   They are numbered as fols. 82/84, 83, 85/88 and 86/87. 10   They are numbered as fols. 75/94, 76/93, 77/92, 78/91, 79/90, 80 and 81/89.

[240]  538

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 15.  Present order of pages, drawings and texts. After Die Zeit der Staufer, V, Supplement, eds. R. Haussherr and C. Väterlein (Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1979), 332, fig. 214. with his drawings (on fourteen out of the twenty-eight available pages) and left the remaining pages blank. At a later stage, the bifolios in the septernio were altered and rearranged: one leaf with drawings was cut off, and other bifolios were inserted into the middle of the quire. The pages were then inscribed with eight different texts of various lengths (see Fig. 15; Texts 1-8). In particular, the so-called Golden Epistle by William of Saint Thierry (d. 1148) was written over the drawings in a manner that shows little regard for their presence on the parchment.11 The current order of the pages with drawings was established at the time that the Golden Epistle was inscribed over them.12 The quire was then bound together in a codex that contains, in its other three parts, writings unrelated to the text by William of Saint Thierry or to the underlying drawings. Without a doubt, the current order of the pages is not the sequence intended by the draftsman for his drawings: one leaf (fol. 90; see Figs 9-10) was even turned upside down before being written over. Is it possible to establish whether a specific order of pages in the quire was followed in making the drawings? And, if that was the case, is there enough evidence to reconstruct it? 11   “Epistula ad fratres de Monte Dei” (1144-1145), in Guillelmi a Sancto Theodorico Opera omnia, III, Opera didactica et spiritualia, eds. P. Verdeyen and S. Ceglar, CCCM 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 213-289. 12   The text of the Epistle starts at fol. 78, continues over fols. 79r, 89v, 90, 91, 92 and 93 and abruptly ends midsentence on fol. 94r; see Fig. 15, Text 5.



drawing, memory and imagination

539  [241]

Remarkable progress in answering these questions was made by Eberhard König in his study of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch first published in German in 1979 and then in French in 2006.13 König believes that the quire was already bound, or at least folded in preparation for binding, at the time the drawings were made on its pages.14 This conclusion is not fully supported by the evidence; nonetheless, the order of the pages that he established for the original quire on the basis of this hypothesis remains by far the most convincing. In general, parchment leaves were folded into quires so that facing pages matched: hair side faced hair side, flesh side faced flesh side. Following this principle and the iconographic evidence within the drawings, and placing at the center of the quire the only bifolio with drawings on both leaves (fols. 78/91; see Figs 7-8), König has reconstructed an order of folios for the original gathering that makes sense of the sequence of drawings (Fig. 16). According to König, the draftsman left the outer bifolio blank, filled page after page of the folded quire with drawings, put the last touches on the innermost bifolio and then suspended his work leaving the remaining ten pages of the septernio blank. Soon thereafter, a scribe shuffled the leaves and reused both the blank pages and those covered with drawings. The handwriting has been dated on paleographical grounds to the first half of the thirteenth century, and its style, as well as that of the other texts in the codex, indicates that the parchment was recycled and rebound in Saxony.15 König believes that once the original order of the leaves is established, the quire can be recognized as a highly portable parchment support used by a traveling draftsman to copy on site images from one or two monumental programs. He concludes that “the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch is the result of a journey by a gifted and experienced artist in a region where he could study the contemporary production of Byzantine art,

  König, “Zur Bildfolge im ‘Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch’;” König, “Une nouvelle lecture.” 14   König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 26: “si l’on admet—comme une grande exception— que le cahier était déjà relié ou au moins bien plié au moment de l’exécution des dessins, . . . le cahier était déjà rigoureusement plié ou même relié par un fil au milieu quand on commença à dessiner!” 15   See Milde, “Zum ‘Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch’,” 331. 13

[242]  540

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 16.  Eberhard König’s reconstruction of the order of pages as intended by the draftsman. After Die Zeit der Staufer, V, Supplement, eds. R. Haussherr and C. Väterlein (Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1979), 350, fig. 227. probably not in Constantinople, but in Venice and in the small kingdoms of the Balkans.”16 Not all of the evidence supports König’s interpretation. On the recto and verso of fol. 90 (see Figs 9-10), the drawing extends significantly beyond the middle of the bifolio and comes very close to the middle of fol. 89v (see Fig. 13).17 On the bifolio with drawings on both leaves, fols. 78/91 (see Figs 7-8), the figures are placed horizontally on all four pages, not vertically as in all the other leaves in the quire: the draftsman must have drawn on both the inside and outside pages of this bifolio while it was opened flat in front of him. This assumption is supported by two features that are drawn right across the fold of the open bifolio: the isolated head on fol. 78r and the evangelists’ heads on fol. 78v. None of these drawings could have been made if the quire had been bound in advance of its use as a drawing support.18 But was the parchment that the draftsman was using already folded into leaves? The heads and drapery extending over the middle line of open bifolios suggest the opposite: there is no indication that the pen and ink used for the drawings were affected in the slightest by the presence of a   König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 30: “Le cahier de Wolfenbüttel est le fruit d’un voyage d’un artiste doué et expérimenté dans une région où il pouvait étudier d’art byzantin contemporain, probablement non pas à Constantinople, mais plutôt à Venise et dans les petits royaumes des Balkans.” 17   As already noticed by Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 15. 18   As already noticed by Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 15-16. 16



drawing, memory and imagination

541  [243]

crease in the parchment. If the bifolios had been tightly folded in advance, how could the draftsman avoid making the pen in his hand respond to the fold or having the ink run into the crease? And yet, on fol. 92r (see Fig. 6), the draftsman seems to have responded to a fold in the parchment by cutting short the foot, footstool and side of the throne of the seated figure on the page. Clearly it made no sense to continue the drawing on the other leaf of the bifolio.19 How can we explain this seemingly contradictory evidence? In four of five bifolios, the draftsman placed the figures vertically on the recto and verso of the same leaves and left the other half of the bifolio blank (see Figs 3-6, 9, 10, 13 and 14). This suggests that he expected these bifolios to be later folded in the middle and ordered into a quire. Even the figures on the bifolio with drawings on both leaves are placed in such a way that the bifolio can be creased in the middle and used for the innermost pages of a quire without detriment to the presentation of the drawings on its leaves (see Figs 7 and 8). Given the fact that the draftsman made his drawings on these parchment bifolios with the intention of folding them into a quire, as all the evidence undoubtedly indicates, if we look for an order in the sequence of drawings, the reordering of the quire proposed by König (see Fig. 16) is convincing.20 In an account which reconciles all the evidence taken into consideration thus far, we can conjecture that the draftsman had in his hands seven unbound and unfolded parchment sheets (which would have made his work easier than if he drew on already folded and bound bifolios); he filled the parchment with drawings in the expectation that they would be subsequently folded and bound into a quire, allowing for empty space where the bounded folios would later produce a gutter. We can speculate that he might have carried around these sheets of parchment (which likely measured about 18×25 cm, making them relatively small and portable) inside a soft leather jacket. It is possible that he gently bent the pages to protect them and make them even easier to carry, but he would not have creased

  As already noticed by Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 16.   König’s ingenious reordering offers a persuasive sequence of how the draughtsman proceeded in filling the pages with drawings. The only acceptable alternative would be the placement of fol. 93 later in the quire, but this does not provide any advantage in understanding how the drawings were made. 19 20

[244]  542

ludovico v. geymonat

them fully.21 The loose fold in the middle would be a reminder of the later pagination of the quire and would deter the draftsman from using the space at the center of the bifolios, but would not have affected the artist’s pen when it did move across this area of the parchment.22 This brings us to more intriguing questions: What might our draftsman have been doing with seven loose sheets of parchment inside a soft leather jacket? What kind of illustrations was he planning to put together? What was the quire supposed to look like in the end, and what function did it have, if any? No other manuscripts closely comparable to the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch are preserved. Our only source of information comes from the drawings themselves. The Drawings The drawings are in pen and wash.23 The artist drew with confidence and employed varying effects to create thick and dark contours as well as tapering lines and thin shading. A close consideration of the drawings reveals how the draftsman’s interest in the rendering of poses and emotions outweighs all concerns for iconography and narrative compositions. The angel at Christ’s tomb (Matthew 28:1-7) fills the entirety of fol. 93r (see Fig. 18). The same iconography is found in paintings from around this time such as the well-known white Angel from the Mileševa Monastery in Serbia (Fig. 17).24 The draftsman concentrated his efforts on the drapery that covers the seated body and falls in complex and accurately-drawn folds. The wings, the banner, the clumsy feet and the hands are summarily executed as if merely to record their presence. 21   Parchment is better carried around folded than rolled: the elasticity of the material is such that once the sheets are curled, it takes time to turn them back into flat surfaces. On the hypothesis for a leather jacket, see Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 16: “Perhaps the leaves, in all probability the property of an itinerant artist, were first only folded in the middle and carried about in a small leather satchel before they were bound up as a volume.” 22   Written sources attest to the existence of unbound quaterni that collected pages of drawings. See Scheller, Exemplum, 20 n. 61 and especially 40. 23   The ink used is dark brown, almost black, and in one instance, on fol. 91v, red. Washes are in brownish- and greenish-grey hues with splashes of grey-blue on fols. 78, 89, 90r and 91v. The layout of the drawings on the pages shows that all of the leaves in the quire were trimmed, probably at the time of binding. The following description follows the order of leaves in the septernio proposed by König, “Une nouvelle lecture” (see Fig. 16). 24   See Grape, “Sachsen, Venedig und Konstantinopel,” 44-46.



drawing, memory and imagination

543  [245]

On the verso of the leaf, the shaping of the page which arcs upwards toward the outer edge might have played a part in the conceptualization of the larger figure, who reclines as if on rising ground (fol. 93v; Fig. 19). Tucked on the upper left corner, the three-quarter profile head seems to have been drawn first and his elongated body added to fill the strangelyshaped bottom space of the page. On the right stands Christ in much smaller proportions. The drapery folds of the two figures overlap, something that the draftsman carefully avoided in all of the following pages. Fol. 92r (Fig. 20), showing a smaller reclining figure and an enthroned man, demonstrates that our draftsman used all available space on the page, rotating the sheet during his work. The young enthroned figure holds a standard or scepter and wears the garments of a ruler but remains unidentified. He was drawn on the page after the reclining figure, whose foot overlaps the throne. The figure along the vertical edge of the page turns his body and his head is rendered in profile, while the back of his feet slips out of the soft folds of his mantle. His pose suggests that he has just awoken, and the figure finds its model in one of the apostles that Christ rouses as he returns from the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26:36-46). Scenes that include such a figure are well known from coeval representations that show Christ approaching a group of apostles seated or lying down (Fig. 21). Other representations of the same scene (see Fig. 22) point to the identification of the two figures on fol. 93v (see Fig. 19), facing 92r in König’s reconstruction, as Christ returning from the Agony in the Garden and another apostle awakening.25 These two pages present the first instance of a distinctive and recurring feature: the draftsman does not represent a scene in its entirety but depicts only chosen figures extracted from the scene and drawn independently from one another. Most of the figures on the following three pages (now fols. 92v, 90v and 90r; Figs 23-26) derive from a representation of the Anastasis. The overall composition is well-known from monumental painting of a later date, which in turn draws from a long iconographic tradition in Byzantium (Fig. 27). The Byzantine representation depicts Christ as the central figure trampling Hades and pulling Adam and Eve from their coffins by their wrists; they are flanked on either side by King David, King Solomon, John the Baptist, Abel and other Old Testament worthies, who witness the   The larger figure has also been identified as Abraham sacrificing Isaac, see Hahnloser and Rückers, Das Musterbuch, 9; Weitzmann, “Zur byzantinischen Quelle,” 237-238; Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 23-24; König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 24. 25

[246]  544

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 17.  Resurrection of Christ, wall painting, c. 1230. Mileševa Monastery, Zlatibor, Serbia. Photo credit: Erich Lessing, Art Resource, New York, NY, USA. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brill online.com/content/15700674.



drawing, memory and imagination

545  [247]

Figure 18.  Angel at Christ’s Tomb, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fol. 93r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[248]  546

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 19.  Apostle (or Abraham?) and Christ, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fol. 93v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/ 15700674.



drawing, memory and imagination

547  [249]

Figure 20.  Apostle and Enthroned Man, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fol. 92r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[250]  548

ludovico v. geymonat

raising of Adam and are ready to follow in ascent towards Heaven.26 After placing on the page Christ, Eve and (under Christ’s foot) Hades (fol. 92v; see Fig. 23), the draftsman added a second, smaller figure of Christ to the right. It contrasts sharply with the imposing Christ who strides in from the left in a dynamic turn of the body emphasized by the flowing drapery and the mantle billowing from behind.27 On fol. 90v (see Fig. 24), the kings of Judea, including David and a young Solomon, are grouped together and turn towards the right. Adam, extending his arm to be pulled upwards by Christ, was added below them. On the verso of the same page (fol. 90r; see Fig. 25), we find the group of the Just led by a haloed John the Baptist. They turn towards the left mirroring the other group. In the far background, the draftsman drew the thin contours of three heads that he left unfinished, providing evidence for how he composed this intricate group. The bas-de-page was scraped clean, deleting any figures or writing on it. In making the drawings on both sides of this page, the draftsman focused most intently on the rendering of the two crowds. A dynamic movement enlivens their heads so that they appear to be animated and responding to each other. On fol. 89r (Fig. 28), the upper part of the page is taken by the seated evangelists John and Mathew and, on the bas-de-page, by six figures in two groups: Christ with John, James and Peter, and, next on the right, Christ again, turning back, and John. Kurt Weitzmann has identified these six figures as representing two episodes of Christ’s ascent to Mount Tabor (Matthew 17:1), as illustrated in Byzantine miniatures (compare Fig. 30).28 A tiny representation of a horse-like animal is tucked in the upper left corner, above the halo of John, matched by the small profile of a head wearing a pointed hat under the seat of Matthew.29 On the verso of fol. 89 (Fig. 29), we find the other two seated evangelists, Luke and Mark.   On the Anastasis, see Anna D. Kartsonis, Anastasis: The Making of an Image (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), esp. 7-18. 27   A thin contour of a halo (doubled on the left side) encircles Christ’s head. 28   See Weitzmann, “Zur byzantinischen Quelle,” 227-231; Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 24. 29   In contrast to the other illustrated pages, over which the scribe wrote, fol. 89r was not covered in writing. In fact, a later hand incorporated several elements within the existing images: it inscribed “Inclina cor meu(m) in testimo(n)ia tua” (Incline my heart unto thy testimonies) (Ps 118:36) on the roll held by John, filled the pages of the codex balanced on Mathew’s knee with pseudo-writing and added a trefoil design on the side of the desk between the Evangelists. These are all in a brownish ink different from that of the original drawings. 26



drawing, memory and imagination

549  [251]

The bas-de-page shows two apostles: one lies on the ground as if blinded by the Transfiguration of Christ (his head was cut in half by the trimming of the margin), and the other, possibly Peter, looks up, his back against rocks.30 The last remaining pages of drawings present an array of figures on the two sides of the same bifolio (fols. 78/91; see Figs 7-8). They are placed horizontally on the page, instead of vertically as in all the previous leaves. On fol. 78v (see Fig. 8), three author portraits of the evangelist type were drawn on the page first. Below their feet was placed the prone figure of the dead Christ with Nicodemus standing and Joseph of Arimathea inserted kneeling in the space between them ( John 19:38-42). On the upper page of the same bifolio (fol. 91r), we see on the left two more seated figures, perhaps the evangelists Matthew and Mark. The head of Matthew, the first from the left, is repeated as a disembodied form at the center of the page; one might guess that the draftsman wanted to refine his understanding of this particular character’s head. To the right, a standing woman addresses a seated man. They have been identified as either Pontius Pilate and his wife with her advising him not to condemn Christ (Matthew 27:19), or Pontius Pilate and one of the Maries who visited Christ’s tomb.31 On the other side of the same bifolio, the lower page (fol. 78r; see Fig. 7) shows Christ, a beardless Moses and Elijah all in a slightly slanted position on the page. They are taken from a representation of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Matthew 17:1-9), as is the case with the kneeling Peter added to the page on the right. Awkwardly, Peter’s back is turned toward the very figures who inspire his awe. Here again, the draftsman did not render the overall composition precisely but focused instead on selected visual passages and the rendering of poses and expressions. It is not the iconography of the Transfiguration but the problems of representation raised and solved by figures in it, alone and in a group, that provoked his interest. In the middle of the bifolio, the draftsman redrew the head of Elijah, making it bigger in size and with a somewhat different rotation. The upper page (fol. 91v) presents on the left a seated figure dictating to a young boy, 30   The apostle can be identified either with Peter or James at the Transfiguration of Christ, or else with Peter as he looks up to Christ returning from his prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane; see Weitzmann, “Zur byzantinischen Quelle,” 230; König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 22-23. 31   See Weitzmann, “Zur byzantinischen Quelle,” 241-242; König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 23.

[252]  550

ludovico v. geymonat

possibly the evangelist John and Prochoros, and, mirroring them on the right, an angel or the personification of Holy Wisdom inspiring another seated evangelist. In the middle of this balanced composition, positioned high on the page to avoid overlapping Elijah’s head at the center of the bifolio, stands a young figure of high status—a king, magus or archangel.32 These drawings are characterized by some striking features. While the last ten pages of the quire were left blank (and filled with writing only once the leaves had been rearranged into the present order), the twelve pages with drawings are densely packed with figures on both sides of each leaf. The draftsman husbanded the space as if he did not know in advance how many figures would capture his attention or how many pages he would use. The draftsman seems primarily concerned with the technical aspects of representation: the rendering of emotions, the proportions of the bodies and the movements implied by the intricate position and complex folds of the drapery. Figures often appear to have been drawn from the head down, and sometimes the relationship of head to body remains unresolved. On five pages out of twelve, figures of different proportions are placed next to each another (fols. 78r, 93v, 92r, 89; see Figs 7, 19, 20, 28 and 29). The draftsman tries to avoid overlap as much as possible: the fingers of the enthroned ruler on fol. 92r (see Fig. 20), for example, are bent so that they do not extend over the drapery of the reclined figure to his left.33 In two cases, Elijah and an evangelist (fols. 78r and 91r; see Figs 7 and 8), the artist redrew their heads independently from the body and achieved a clearer outcome the second time. Shorthand sketches of hands and feet suggest that the drawings were made rapidly. And yet, sustained attention to the rendering of drapery is consistent throughout, and wash is often employed to highlight folds and give volume to mantles and tunics.34 Little attention is afforded to the 32   Red and black inks are used to draw John and Prochoros, and a blue wash colors the hair and beard of the seated evangelist on the right. 33   The same happens with the drapery of the kneeling Peter on fol. 78r and with the standing figure added at the center of fol. 91v (see Fig. 7). 34   Wash is used on every page but with little consistency and uneven results. In certain cases, it strengthens contours and separates figures, while in other instances it creates highlights, gives volume to drapery and enhances the expressions on the faces. It marks the decorative bands (clavi) along the shoulder of the tunic of Christ and an apostle (fols. 93v, 92r; see Figs 19 and 20), but there is no other application of wash to record colors and hues.



drawing, memory and imagination

551  [253]

Figure 21.  Agony in the Garden, mosaic, 1215-1220, detail. Venice, San Marco, nave. Photo credit: Procuratoria di San Marco, Venice.

Figure 22.  Agony in the Garden, miniature, 11th-century Greek Gospels. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, MS gr. 5, fol. 90r. Photo credit: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

[254]  552

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 23.  Christ, Eve, Hades; Christ, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 92v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



drawing, memory and imagination

553  [255]

Figure 24.  Kings of Judea; Adam, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 90v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[256]  554

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 25.  John the Baptist Leading the Group of Just, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fols. 90r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/ content/15700674.



drawing, memory and imagination

555  [257]

Figure 26.  Reconstruction of the Anastasis from fols. 92v, 90v and 90r of the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch. Design by Marion Jäckel, Schrecksbach, reproduced with permisssion.

Figure 27.  The Anastasis, Byzantine, wall painting, 1316-1321. Chora Monastery (Kariye Camii), parekklesion. Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey). Photo credit: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[258]  556

ludovico v. geymonat

landscape and architectural backdrops of the events. The tomb of Christ (fol. 93r; see Fig. 18), the throne of the young ruler on fol. 92r (see Fig. 20) and the seats, footstools, desks and lecterns of the evangelists (fols. 78v, 91, 89; see Figs 7, 8, 28 and 29) are only summarily sketched in a few suggestive lines. On the three pages with figures from the Anastasis (fols. 90, 92v; see Figs 23-25), there is no sign of the usual attributes of this scene, such as the broken gates of Hell with bolts and keys and the coffins from which Adam and Eve rise. In filling the pages, the draftsman did not add any captions to the figures, nor inscriptions around the drawings or inside the unfurling scrolls (fol. 78v; see Fig. 8). The fragmentation of scenes is highly peculiar: figures belonging to the same narrative event are grouped on different pages.35 We are able to identify most of these figures on the basis of their known iconography and standard disposition in Byzantine works. Others, the young enthroned ruler on fol. 92r for example (see Fig. 20), could represent a number of different characters and are harder to specify. There is no doubt that the draftsman was inspired by Byzantine sources and used them as models. And yet, he shows little concern for their iconography. Perhaps he was already familiar with the iconographic identity of the characters and scenes that he was copying, and in drawing on these pages, iconography was not what he sought to record. The chaotic ordering of the drawings in the quire, the casual disposition of the figures on the pages and the absence of captions all point to a lack of consideration for any possible audience and solid confidence in the power of his memory. The draftsman’s energy is focused on successfully capturing the physical traits and likenesses of the figures he is copying, their monumental scale and the folding of the drapery around their bodies. One expects that he must have chosen his models accordingly. Sources The draftsman did not need to have much with him in order to make these drawings: seven sheets of parchment, a good pen, a little brush, some 35   It is especially noticeable in three cases: Christ praying on the Mount of Olives and awakening the apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane (fols. 92, 93v and 89v; see Figs 19, 20, 23 and 29); the Harrowing of Hell (fols. 92v and 90; see Figs 23-25); and the Ascent to Mount Tabor and the Transfiguration of Christ (fol. 78r and 89; see Figs 7, 28 and 29).



drawing, memory and imagination

557  [259]

Figure 28.  Evangelists John and Matthew; Christ, John, James, Peter; Christ and John, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fol. 89r. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[260]  558

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 29.  Evangelists Luke and Mark; Apostles, Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, fol. 89v. Photo credit: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/ 15700674.



drawing, memory and imagination

559  [261]

ink and the time necessary for the wash to dry. Given the size of the parchment, especially if it was folded inside a soft leather jacket, these essential tools were easily portable. But exactly where the artist traveled and what he copied is far from clear. Scholars have proposed a wide range of sources for the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, from illuminations to monumental images. Persuasive arguments can be made for a number of different hypotheses. Certain figures and scenes, such as some of the seated evangelists and the Ascent to Mount Tabor (see Figs 7, 8 and 28), are more easily compared to miniatures (Fig. 30) than monumental painting, especially during the 1230s, the years to which the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch is usually dated. Furthermore, the horse-like animal and the small hatted profile on fol. 89r (see Fig. 28) are typical of motifs found in illuminated marginalia and historiated letters. The making of a parchment quire and the pagination of the sheets as bifolios with drawings on the recto and verso reinforce the argument that the gathering was prepared by someone familiar with illuminated manuscripts and the working of a scriptorium.36 Yet other evidence suggests that monumental images are the models for at least some of the drawings.37 The angel at Christ’s tomb, the figures from the Anastasis and those from the Transfiguration (see Figs 7, 18 and 23-25) all have a monumentality that is much easier to locate in wall 36   See Weitzmann, “Zur byzantinischen Quelle.” On his method, see Mary-Lyon Dolezal, “Manuscript Studies in the Twentieth Century: Kurt Weitzmann Reconsidered,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 22 (1998), 215-263. 37   A reference to this possibility is already found in S. Radojčić, “Sopoćani et l’art européen du XIIIe siècle,” in L’art byzantin du XIIIe siècle (Symposium de Sopoćani), ed. V.J. Djurić (Belgrade: Faculté de Philosophie, Département de l’histoire de l’art, 1967), 197206 (199-201). Strong arguments for monumental sources are made by Spatharakis, The Left-Handed Evangelist, 73-76; and König, “Une nouvelle lecture.” König maintains that the artist was on site and, with parchment, pen and wash, copied large figures and scenes from the walls of a church into the small pages of his quire. According to this scenario, the artist arrived in a Byzantine or a Veneto-Byzantine church and looked first at an Annunciation (which, König speculates, may have appeared in the now missing first folio of the quire), then to a representation of the empty Tomb of Christ, and then, in sequence, to Christ awakening the apostles as he returns from the Mount of Olives, the Anastasis, a series of seated evangelists with scrolls and codices, the Ascent to Mount Tabor, the Entombment of Christ and the Transfiguration. Among the evidence corroborating this interpretation would be the figures from the Transfiguration (fol. 78r; see Fig. 7): they are depicted not from a frontal view but slightly slanted, as if seen from below or distorted. A reasonable explanation would be that they were on a wall and the artist was looking at them from an angle, as can easily happen inside a church; see König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 30.

[262]  560

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 30.  Ascent to Mount Tabor and Transfiguration, miniature, thirteenthcentury Greek Gospels. Mount Athos, Iviron, ms. 5, fol. 269v. Photo credit: Centre Millet-EPHE, Paris. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksand journals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. paintings and mosaics than in illuminations. Moreover, if these drawings were made on site by a traveling draftsman, the random disposition on different pages of figures from the same scenes is easier to explain. For example, the role and meaning of the various figures and groups from a Byzantine Anastasis is lost by distributing them over three different pages (see Figs 23-27). However, if the draftsman had seen a monumental scene directly and copied it on site for his own use on the pages of his sketchbook, the overall composition of the Anastasis remained in his memory— it is not difficult to remember, and he might well have been familiar with it already.38 The drawings show that what concerned him was not recording   For this explanation, see König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 25-26; Weyl Carr, “319. The ‘Model Book’,” 484. 38



drawing, memory and imagination

561  [263]

the overall composition but the careful and effective portrayal of the leading characters: their complex, dynamic poses as achieved through their gestures, the drapery enveloping their bodies and the depiction of a group of people together as an expectant crowd. These finer techniques of representation were intriguing to the draftsman, and he attempted to understand them through his drawings. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of traveling, it is natural for an artist to sketch something he finds striking and fears he might otherwise forget. Through copying, an artist figures out what problems of representation a model entails that were not immediately apparent, what solutions the model implemented and to what effects. Working them out on the page serves to commit them to memory and to understand the model in ways that observation alone would not achieve. These particular circumstances of composition—drawing on site, copying images from the walls of a church visited in the course of a trip—may well explain the informality of the Wolfenbüttel drawings, which were not intended for presentation to an audience beyond the draftsman himself. Might their function, then, be as an aide-memoire for the artist to reproduce these works at a later time and in another location? Perhaps, but not necessarily. The portable size of the parchment and the use of only simple ink and wash are all explained by the Musterbuch’s being a traveling sketchbook. The intensive use of the space on the pages hints that the parchment was precious to the draftsman and something not easily replaceable, a situation unlikely to occur within a scriptorium, but plausible enough while traveling. In fact, the portability of the quire and tools needed to make the drawings might be the key aspects that explain much of the puzzling evidence concerning the range of models that seem to have been accessible to the draftsman. The evidence suggests that the quire was prepared in a scriptorium for someone familiar with miniature painting, but that it was then taken “on the road” to be used on site for drawing from monumental works. After fulfilling its purpose as a tool for understanding the works of art observed during these journeys, the sketchbook was returned to a scriptorium. There, the parchment was recycled, the folios shuffled and reused for writing and the resulting quire was bound together in a new codex. The apparent variety of sources collected in close proximity on the pages of this quire—from monumental compositions to sketches for marginal miniatures—is one of its most striking features, and it helps explain the exchanges among different artistic media at the time. The interchange between monumental arts and miniature painting in the twelfth and

[264]  562

ludovico v. geymonat

thirteenth centuries can be understood precisely by the use of drawings such as those found in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch and by the hypothesis that the same draftsmen moved and operated in different artistic contexts carrying around their drawing tools with them. The drawings in the quire are the results of varied efforts mounted at different times: some appear detailed and accomplished, others are cursory. Still within this range of variations, the drawings show a remarkable stylistic consistency overall, and most scholars believe, with good reason, that they are the product of a single hand. The sources the artist used most likely looked different; and yet, it is impossible to recuperate their specific styles, which are not preserved in the drawings. This is because, I would argue, the draftsman thoroughly translated his sources into his own style and visual language. This is also one of the reasons why the identity of the sources that were used to make these drawings is so difficult to pinpoint, not only as far as their media and scale are concerned—miniature or monumental painting, sculpture or mosaic—but also with regard to their geographic origins, with hypotheses ranging from Venice to Constantinople and from the Balkans to Saxony.39 A number of examples that have been cited as comparative material offer visual correspondences that are intriguing, but the similarities tend to be limited to individual drawings in the Musterbuch and often even to only certain aspects of those drawings. Given the large number of monuments that have been lost since the thirteenth century, and the often radical transformations sustained by those that are preserved, any assertion of the identity of original models based on visual correspondence alone is inherently questionable. Yet, even if such correspondences might not be conclusive in themselves, they are worth exploring if only because they offer some indication as to the process involved in the selection and use of sources and the copying from models. The drawings in Wolfenbüttel were certainly the result of such a process. Where did the draftsman come across his sources? Venice offers many suggestive comparisons. Several different drawings in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch find interesting correspondences with works in San Marco.40 The vast mosaic that covers the south wall of the west arm of the church   See Spatharakis, The Left-Handed Evangelist, 73-79; Grape, “Sachsen, Venedig und Konstantinopel.” 40   On these comparisons, see especially Belting, “Zwischen Gotik und Byzanz,” 242-257; Grape, “Sachsen, Venedig und Konstantinopel,” 29-46. 39



drawing, memory and imagination

563  [265]

represents the Agony in the Garden in one single panel of about twelve meters (forty feet) in length (see Fig. 21). Based on a combination of stylistic and documentary evidence, the mosaic can be dated to circa 1215-1220.41 In the Wolfenbüttel drawings, figures from the Agony in the Garden are distributed on four different pages (fols. 89v, 92 and 93v) and each of them shows varying degrees of correspondence with figures in the mosaic in Venice. For example, the representation of Christ standing as he addresses the apostles matches the figure in the San Marco panel in his three-quarter, forward-leaning pose, in each of the folds of Christ’s mantle from the clavis over the right shoulder to the drapery around the left arm and even in the position of the feet (compare Figs 19 and 21). Yet the right arm is slightly bent in the drawing and, more importantly, the fingers of Christ’s left hand hold a fold of his mantle; in the mosaic, this same gesture fails to convince as the fingers are not grasping anything. Two pages later (fol. 92v), a standing Christ with his hands raised in prayer is represented in the background, behind the Anastasis figures (Eve and Jesus). His face repeats that of the kneeling Christ in the San Marco mosaic (compare Figs 21 and 23), and the position of his fingers as well as their proportion and distance from his face correspond precisely. What does not match in the two representations is the drapery: Christ is shown in proskynesis (a kneeling position) in the mosaic, while in the drawing he is standing, if somewhat awkwardly, behind the figures from the Anastasis. Finally, the complex torsion of the reclining apostle on fol. 92r finds a typological correspondence in the figure of John at the feet of the standing Christ in the mosaic at San Marco (compare Figs 20 and 21). In the mosaic, however, his legs are missing, his arms do not stretch forward and the whole drapery is treated differently.42 What are we to make of these comparisons and of the correspondences between drawings and mosaic, so striking and yet limited to certain details and not others? As he was drawing in his portable sketchbook, was the draftsman standing in front of the mosaic completed only about fifteen years earlier, or was he looking at some other representation of the Agony in the Garden, one that was related to the panel at San Marco in some way 41   See Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice, 4 vols. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 2.1:6-21, 226. 42   For comparison with a reclining apostle in the Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, see Carl Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093): A New Critical Edition and Color Facsimile (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 23.

[266]  564

ludovico v. geymonat

that is not known to us? Or, to put it differently, are similarities and variations between the two works the result of a series of discrete contacts that stretched back over time and space, or are they instead the result of the initiative of a confident draftsman freely inspired by his own personal selection of the works that he encountered in his travels to make drawings in his own style? Any answer to these questions is further complicated by the evidence that links the drawings in Wolfenbüttel with another set of works from Venice. Some of the seated evangelists in the quire (fol. 89) have been compared to those carved in marble slabs on the north façade of San Marco (see Figs 28, 29 and 31-34).43 The five slabs portray the four evangelists and Christ and belong to a single set. The evangelist Matthew is seated on an elegantly carved throne, with a cushion and an open codex in his lap (Fig. 32). His right hand probably held a pen, now missing, with another book open on the lectern to his right. As with the other evangelists in the series, Matthew is barely contained within the frame: his right foot turns up in an awkward effort at foreshortening, and the whole of his body, enveloped in long and elegant folds, appears twisted. In the Wolfenbüttel drawing, the throne of Matthew is missing, and his feet rest upon a more convincing footstool, but the position of Matthew’s body, the open book in his lap, his hands and turned shoulder position are the same (compare Figs 28 and 32). The rendering of the drapery is far removed from that of the sculpture—the Wolfenbüttel drawing maintains the Zackenstil found all through the quire—but the similarities otherwise seem to extend beyond type. In the case of the other three evangelists, the comparisons are more generic. Some features are obviously the same: the evangelists turn in the   The reliefs are now preserved in the Museo di San Marco inside the Basilica. The comparison with the evangelists in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch was first proposed by Belting; see Belting “Zwischen Gotik und Byzanz,” 253-255; Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 37-38; Michael Jacoff, The Horses of San Marco and the Quadriga of the Lord (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 35-41; Grape, “Sachsen, Venedig und Konstantinopel,” 39-42; König, “Une nouvelle lecture,” 29. Both Jacoff and König suggest that the horse-like animal next to John could be an allusion to bronze quadriga sculpture the Venetians took from Constantinople and placed on the façade of San Marco. On the evangelists in San Marco, see Guido Tigler, “25-29. Cinque lastre a rilievo: Cristo ed Evangelisti,” in Le sculture esterne di San Marco (Milan: Electa, 1995), 40-45; Ruth Papadopoulos, Die Skulpturen des 13. Jahrhunderts an San Marco in Venedig (Würzburg: Ergon, 2002), 156-160. 43



drawing, memory and imagination

565  [267]

same direction in both the drawings and the reliefs, the position of Luke’s feet is the same and details, such as the grasping of the hands of Mark or the open roll and codex of John, recur in both works (compare Figs 28, 29 and 31-34). Yet other characteristic attributes (such as hair and facial expressions, shape and positions of the books upon which they write and the figure of Sophia instructing John in the sculpture replaced by the horse-like animal behind him in the drawing) clearly differentiate the two sets. Could the drawings be directly inspired by the sculptures from San Marco? If that was the case, as the evidence suggests but does not prove, the goal of the draftsman was certainly not to provide a faithful copy of the reliefs. Given their similarities with both mosaics and sculptures, it is hard to imagine that the drawings in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch could be made without some form of direct or indirect contact with San Marco. Either a large and fully formed repertory of images provided a common source for these different works, which independently replicated bits and pieces of this lost, complete set—a most unlikely hypothesis—or in drawing from a given model, the draftsman felt free to be selective, to offer new interpretations and transform his sources. If that was the case, one expects that it was precisely in drawings such as those in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch that these variations could most easily occur: with no specific audience and only basic materials at the draftsman’s disposal, experimentation came naturally and perhaps was even pursued in order to generate new ideas. The visual evidence is insufficient to reach any firm conclusion about what specific connections linked the drawings in Wolfenbüttel to the works in San Marco. What is lacking in particular is a sense of how common and frequent it was for the medieval draftsman to make drawings such as those in the quire or a sense of how he actually went about doing them. Did he make them all at once at the same site, or did he travel here and there and return to the same page of drawings over time to develop an idea that he had only sketched at first?44 What the comparisons between the Musterbuch drawings and the mosaic and reliefs in San Marco show beyond all doubt, however, is that in the early thirteenth century similar figures could be found rendered in different media and in completely   The use of wash almost as a finishing touch contrasts with the unfinished quality of many of the drawings and of the ten pages left blank in the quire. It is difficult, though, to determine whether wash was applied to the pages as the drawings were being made or only at a later stage. 44

[268]  566

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 31.  Evangelist John, marble carving, ca. 1230-1260. Venice, San Marco. Photo credit: Procuratoria di San Marco, Venice.



drawing, memory and imagination

567  [269]

Figure 32.  Evangelist Matthew, marble carving, ca. 1230-1260. Venice, San Marco. Photo credit: Procuratoria di San Marco, Venice.

[270]  568

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 33. Evangelist Luke, marble carving, ca. 1230-1260. Venice, San Marco. Photo credit: Procuratoria di San Marco, Venice.



drawing, memory and imagination

569  [271]

Figure 34.  Evangelist Mark, marble carving, ca. 1230-1260. Venice, San Marco. Photo credit: Procuratoria di San Marco, Venice.

[272]  570

ludovico v. geymonat

different scales. On the small pages of the very same quire, the draftsman was able to collect figures that were represented on a monumental scale over the walls of a building, such as in the mosaics and marble slabs from San Marco. And, once they were in his portable sketchbook, these same figures could travel across great distances. Comparanda in Lower Saxony The geographical origin of the draftsman is controversial, but we can hypothesize that he was active in lower Saxony for at least part of his career. The manuscript is first recorded there, in the Cistercian Abbey of Marienthal, and the script written on the drawings has been localized to Saxony and dated to the first half of the thirteenth century.45 The closeness of the drawings to a number of paintings and miniatures from this region further supports the thesis that the quire found its way to Saxony soon after it was illustrated. Comparanda for the drawings connect the artist to this area and are found in two well-known works in the cities of Goslar and Hildesheim, located about 50 km (30 miles) from each other in lower Saxony.46 The Goslar Gospels (Stadtarchiv, B 4387) was probably made in one of the city’s monasteries around 1240.47 It contains beautifully illuminated prefaces to each of the four Gospels. Full-page miniatures include a portrait of each evangelist sitting at his desk writing the text transcribed in the following pages (Figs 35-38). Compared with the evangelists in the Wolfenbüttel drawings, these portraits present remarkable affinities. John (fol. 105v) is represented with the very same rendering of the head, gesture of the hands and crossing of the feet (compare Figs 28 and 35). Unlike the reliefs from San Marco, here the drapery enveloping his body is similar to that found in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, from the decorative band over the shoulder to the folds around the waist and over the legs to the rich   See Milde, “Zum ‘Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch’,” 331; Wolfgang Milde, “Das ‘Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch’ aus Kloster Mariental,” in Das Zisterzienserkloster Mariental bei Helmstedt, 1138-1988, ed. C. Römer (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1989), 107-110. 46   See Renate Kroos, “Sächsische Buchmalerei 1200-1250,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 41 (1978), 283-316 (289-291); Wolter, “Das Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch in seinem sächsischen Umfeld.” 47   On the Goslar Gospels, see Das Goslarer Evangeliar. Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat der Handschrift B 4387 aus dem Besitz das Stadtarchivs Goslar, 2 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1990-1991); Barbara Klössel-Luckhardt, “Zum Programm des Goslarer Evangeliars,” in Goslar: Bergstadt, Kaiserstadt in Geschichte und Kunst, ed. F. Steigerwald (Göttingen: Goltze, 1993), 317-336. 45



drawing, memory and imagination

571  [273]

drapes of the mantle along the side of the throne. Scholars have remarked that the textile folds around the left arm and the top of the roll in his hand seem to fall more convincingly in the Goslar miniature than in the Wolfenbüttel drawing.48 The comparison suggests that the sketchbook drawing was done more hastily than the miniature, which is highly detailed, drawn with careful attention to every fold and beautifully colored. Yet the similarities are such that it is hard to imagine that these two figures of John could have been made completely independently one from the other. A comparison between the other evangelist portraits confirms a link between the drawings and the miniatures. Matthew in the Goslar Gospels (fol. 10v) corresponds to Luke in the Wolfenbüttel drawings (compare Figs 29 and 36). The head of the evangelist is different in the two works, and in the miniature he does not have a codex in his lap but instead uses both hands to write on the lectern with pen and knife. However, the positions of the figures’ legs and feet are a clear match. The same can be said for some of the drapery, especially the folds of the mantle around their knees and zigzagging along the side of the throne. A reverse position and a different head are not enough to disguise the similarities between Matthew in the drawing and Luke in the miniatures (compare Figs 28 and 37). Their gestures and the awkward foreshortening of the open codices on their laps are the same, as are the positions of their legs with one knee up to support the codex and the corresponding foot partially visible behind the other ankle. As with John, the stunning green, white and blue pigmentation of the garments of the evangelist in the miniature make the sketchbook drawing look poor in comparison, and yet some of the folds between the knees and along the throne fall in exactly the same way in both works. Interestingly, the fourth evangelist, Mark (fol. 44v), has only one foot and the beard in common; everything else—hair, the hand gesture, position of the body, drapery and even proportions—is completely different (compare Figs 29 and 38).49

  Kroos, “Sächsische Buchmalerei 1200-1250,” 289-291; Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 34-35. 49   On these comparisons, see Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 34-40; Spatharakis, The LeftHanded Evangelist, 32-37; Grape, “Sachsen, Venedig und Konstantinopel,” 46-64. Another correspondence between the miniatures in the Gospels and the drawings has been found in the figure of Nicodemus in the Lamentation (on fol. 78v) whose gesture is almost repeated, in reverse, by one of the bystanders at the Annunciation to Zacharias in the miniatures (fol. 70r). Comparable are also the two small horse-like animal and hatted profile on 48

[24]  572

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 35.  Evangelist John, miniature, Goslar Gospels, ca. 1240. Goslar, Stadtarchiv, B 4387, fol. 105v. Photo credit: Stadtarchiv, Goslar. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

Figure 36.  Evangelist Matthew, miniature, Goslar Gospels, ca. 1240. Goslar, Stadtarchiv, B 4387, fol. 10v. Photo credit: Stadtarchiv, Goslar. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/ 15700674.



drawing, memory and imagination

573  [275]

Figure 37.  Evangelist Luke, miniature, Goslar Gospels, ca. 1240. Goslar, Stadtarchiv, B 4387, fol. 69v. Photo credit: Stadtarchiv, Goslar. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

Figure 38.  Evangelist Mark, miniature, Goslar Gospels, ca. 1240. Goslar, Stadtarchiv, B 4387, fol. 44v. Photo credit: Stadtarchiv, Goslar. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[276]  574

ludovico v. geymonat

In the case of the Goslar Gospels, the size of the figures is almost the same as that in the Wolfenbüttel drawings: Luke in the Gospels, for example, is about 9.5 cm in height, with the corresponding Matthew in the drawings about 9 cm tall. The underdrawings of the illuminated evangelists likely look quite similar to the drawings in Wolfenbüttel. What dramatically differentiates the two works is, of course, their execution. The miniatures were carefully set on the page and elegantly framed, with the figures positioned in relation to furniture and architecture and all the drawings filled with gold leaf and colors. The illuminated pages were carefully planned in advance with an eye for maintaining a consistent style and color scheme throughout the entire manuscript. The obvious goal was to impress the audience: patron, recipient and viewers. This contrasts sharply with the drawings in Wolfenbüttel, which show unrelated figures assembled on the same page, with no detailing of the furnishings and architectural settings and careful rendering of only faces, bodies and drapery, with just wash used to bring out shadows, highlights and volume. The range of similarities and differences among the evangelists is remarkable, from the almost identical figure of John to only select similarities for Luke and Matthew and complete disparity with Mark. Whatever the direction of borrowing or the number of intermediaries between the two works, the process of reproduction was a creative one: some traits were faithfully copied while others were dismissed; some figures were duplicated in full, but others only in part; some characters were omitted altogether in favor of the creation of new ones or the integration of figures from a different source into the series. The numerous links amongst different works created by processes such as these are varied and idiosyncratic. The drawings in Wolfenbüttel and the paintings on the wooden ceiling covering the large nave of the famous early Romanesque Church of St. Michael at Hildesheim differ completely from one another in scale. And yet, a comparison between the two works is revealing. The ceiling illustrates the genealogy of Christ starting with Adam and Eve. The larger panels at the center are flanked by smaller, rectangular panels with portraits of prophets and evangelists. The carpentry and painting date from the second quarter of the thirteenth century.50 fol. 89r and some of the marginalia in the Goslar Gospels, like the centaur on the lower right corner of fol. 106r and the heads on the lower margin of fols. 80r, 115r and 124r. 50   See Die Bilderdecke der Hildesheimer Michaeliskirche, eds. R.-J. Grote and V. Kellner (München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002).



drawing, memory and imagination

575  [277]

Comparing the portraits of Saint Mark and those of the prophets Abdias and Zacharias to figures in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch reveals clear similarities. The position of the body of the evangelist Mark matches, to the detail, that of the evangelist Luke in the drawings (compare Figs 29 and 39). The book in his lap is more convincing in the drawing than in the painting, and the folds of the drapery are more pointed and articulated, but the two figures are obviously related. Similar observations can be made for the prophet Abdias, who appears to have been modeled on John the Baptist leading the group of the Just in the Anastasis drawing (compare Figs 25 and 40). The position of the body, with the bearded head turned in profile, the left hand covered by the mantle and the tunic showing underneath are all familiar from the small-scale work. Yet, the iconographic identity of the two figures—the prophet Abdias and John the Baptist— and their contexts are radically different.51 Abdias is not the only figure in the Hildesheim ceiling taken from this group drawing in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch. The prophet Zacharias can also be related to the third figure in the front of the group of the Just led by John the Baptist (compare Figs 25 and 41). On the ceiling, he holds a scroll and does not converse with the companion behind him as he does in the drawing. However, the position of his hands, his bearded face and the complex folds of his garments are similar.52   On this comparison, see Grape, “Sachsen, Venedig und Konstantinopel,” 51-81; Wolter, “Kunsthistorische Beobachtungen zur Holzdecke von St. Michael,” 42-43; Wolter, “Das Wolfenbütteler Musterbuch in seinem sächsischen Umfeld,” 101-102. 52   The very same two figures from fol. 90r appear in another monumental work found in Saxony: a large mural painting dating from the 1240s in the collegiate Church of St. Blasius at Braunschweig. It depicts Helena, the mother of Constantine, arriving at Jerusalem on her pilgrimage and interrogating a group of Jews (identifiable by their pointed hats) about the location of the True Cross. The two men in the front row are related to John the Baptist and the Old Testament worthy from the Wolfenbüttel drawing by their postures, their features and the form of the garments covering their bodies. Here again, it is not the composition and iconography of the group of the Just in the Anastasis nor the iconographic identity of John the Baptist that were significant to the artist, but rather the lively interactions and poses of their turning bodies in the crowd as well as the ways in which the drapery envelops them. Other comparisons between the drawings and the paintings in Braunschweig are listed in Scheller, Exemplum, 170. On the mural paintings in the Church of St. Blasius, see Stefan Brenske, Der Hl.-Kreuz-Zyklus in der ehemaligen Braunschweiger Stiftskirche St. Blasius (Dom) (Braunschweig: Stadtarchiv und Stadtbibliothek, 1988); Johann-Christian Klamt, “Die mittelalterlichen Monumentalmalereien in der Stiftskirche St. Blasius zu Braunschweig,” in Die Welfen und ihr Braunschweiger 51

[278]  576

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 39.  Evangelist Mark, painting on wood, ca. 1240-1250. Hildesheim, St. Michael, ceiling. Photo credit: Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Hannover. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674. Stylistic affinities among the drawings in Wolfenbüttel, the miniatures in Goslar and the ceiling figures in Hildesheim, as well as their closeness in time and location, may invite speculation about their belonging to the same artistic milieu if not to the same artist. Beyond conjecture, however, these comparanda provide intriguing evidence concerning the role of drawing in the transmission of artistic styles, motifs and approaches to Hof im hohen Mittelalter, ed. B. Schneidmüller (Wiesbaden: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1995), 297-335.



drawing, memory and imagination

577  [279]

Figure 40.  Prophet Abdias, painting on wood, ca. 1240-1250. Hildesheim, St. Michael, ceiling. Photo credit: Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Hannover. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674. representation. It is only the evidence from the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch that proves that the design of figures found in two different works in Saxony could be found together, at just about the same time, interwoven on the pages of just one single quire of parchment. Moreover, the drawings indicate that Byzantine or Veneto-Byzantine sources were related to the figures found in lavish miniatures and in a painted ceiling in Saxony. By way of drawings in the sketchbook of a well-traveled artist, it was thus possible that two figures originally found in a representation of the Anastasis, a scene developed within Byzantine iconographic traditions, could

[280]  578

ludovico v. geymonat

Figure 41.  Prophet Zacharias, painting on wood, ca. 1240-1250. Hildesheim, St. Michael, ceiling. Photo credit: Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Hannover. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals .brillonline.com/content/15700674. reappear radically transformed as Old Testament prophets in a ceiling at Hildesheim. The framing and contextualization within a specific work, whether an illuminated manuscript or a painted ceiling, result in the obscuring of its sources. The figures depicted in the Wolfenbüttel drawings, which lack any indication of the physical or iconographic contexts in which their models originally appeared, and which are thus free from the constraints of textual narrative, consistent proportion, color scheme, system of borders or architectural surrounding, show the process of an artist working through his inspiration from other works. The Wolfenbüttel



drawing, memory and imagination

579  [281]

Musterbuch illustrates how such drawings and the act of sketching could allow works of completely different scales and media, from illuminated miniatures to monumental painting and from sculpture to mosaic, to share some of the same sources and forms for figures unrelated in iconography but brought together by way of artistic transmission and creative imagination. Modelbooks, Memory and Imagination “Es gab Malerbücher” (“there were painterbooks/modelbooks”) are the words that conclude Wilhelm Vöge’s 1891 study on the Reichenau school of illumination. A foundational article by Julius von Schlosser from 1902 further developed that idea and inaugurated a rich literature on the topic of modelbooks. More recently, a systematic survey of the evidence concerning medieval modelbooks was published by Robert Scheller.53 A conspicuous gap between the end of the thirteenth and the end of the fourteenth century divides the surviving medieval collections of drawings into two periods. The sixteen from before 1300, as grouped in Scheller’s catalogue, include strikingly different types of manuscripts and drawings that present quite a diverse range of evidence. The Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, among the most prominent of the thirteenth-century examples, finds its closest companion in the even more famous portfolio by Villard de Honnecourt (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Fr. 19093).54 The thirty-three sheets of parchment in Villard’s portfolio contain about 250 drawings of a wide range of subjects. Villard added many captions in his Picardy dialect that explain the identities, origins and uses of figures and objects in the drawings, and that also tell us something about the author himself, his interests and his travels across northern France and to Hungary. The drawings record the range of sources with which Villard came into contact—from Carolingian miniatures to Gothic cathedrals. He seems to be a draftsman of wide interests and curiosity, well-versed in the lively technical and stylistic artistic developments of Gothic France at the time, but not especially responsive—whether 53   Wilhelm Vöge, Eine deutsche Malerschule um die Wende des ersten Jahrtausends (Trier: Lintz, 1891), 378; Julius von Schlosser, “Zur Kenntnis der künstlerischen Überlieferung im späten Mittelalter,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, 23 (1902), 279-338; Scheller, Exemplum. 54   See Barnes, The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt, 23.

[282]  580

ludovico v. geymonat

from lack of opportunity or lack of interest—to Byzantine artistic traditions. A comparison of Villard’s portfolio with the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch shows that the two collections have little, if anything, in common. By including manuscripts and drawings of such different ranges and intentions, the very category of modelbooks seems to lose much of its meaning. Indeed the strength of this category relies on a deductive approach taken by a number of scholars. The development and use of a consistent visual language, the resilience of iconographic traditions over time, the striking revivals of forms of representation and the diffusion of stylistic features throughout distant regions can only be explained by the physical transmission of images. Modelbooks and the drawings in them fulfill the primary function of providing a means for the transmission of images. Their existence is based on that assumption: what else could function in the same way to explain such a vast array of evidence?55 An analysis of the drawings in the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch that takes its lead from the principle that a modelbook’s primary function is to transmit iconography would offer rather frustrating results. The drawings in Wolfenbüttel do not fulfill that function very well at all: they lack any sort of captions, they pack the available space on the pages with unrelated subjects and they break up iconographic compositions into fragments that are difficult to piece together.56 Hugo Buchthal, who, like most scholars from his generation, was fully convinced of the existence and use of modelbooks in the Middle Ages, concluded his study dedicated to these drawings with the following disappointed words:   For a challenge to this thesis as regards Byzantine art, see Robin Cormack, “Painter’s Guides, Model-books, Pattern-books and Craftsmen: Or Memory and the Artist?” in L’artista a Bisanzio e nel mondo cristiano-orientale, ed. M. Bacci (Pisa: Normale, 2007), 11-29; on model books in Byzantium, see Irmgard Hutter, “The Magdalen College ‘Musterbuch’: A Painter’s Guide from Cyprus at Oxford,” Medieval Cyprus: Studies in Art, Architecture, and History in Memory of Doula Mouriki, eds. N.P. Ševčenko and C. Moss (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 117-146; and Nancy P. Ševčenko, “The Heavenly Ladder Images in Patmos Ms. 122: A 12th Century Painter’s Guide?” Νέα Ῥώμη, Rivista di ricerche bizantinistiche, 6 (Ἔξεμπλον. Studi in onore di Irmgard Hutter, I) (2009), 393-405. On the uses of drawings in antiquity, see Salvatore Settis, “Il Papiro di Artemidoro: un libro di bottega e la storia dell’arte antica,” in Le tre vite del papiro di Artemidoro, eds. C. Gallazzi and S. Settis (Milano: Electa 2006), 20-65; Salvatore Settis, “Il contributo del papiro alla storia dell’arte antica,” in Il Papiro di Artemidoro (P.Artemid.), eds. C. Gallazzi, B. Kramer and S. Settis (Milano: LED, 2008), 579-616 (612-613). 56   As already noted by Weyl Carr, “319. The ‘Model Book’,” 484. 55



drawing, memory and imagination

581  [283]

The Musterbuch is only a selective copy, an incomplete and utterly disorganized second-hand reflection of a collection of Byzantine and Byzantinizing formulas. One should be wary of taking the haphazard arrangement of the Wolfenbüttel leaves as typical for the genus of medieval Musterbücher. The leaves are late copies brought accidentally together, and in spite of their rarity value one should not over-estimate their wider significance or use them as the starting-point for bold and unprovable theories.57

The thesis that the drawings in Wolfenbüttel are only a second-hand copy of a much richer and better-organized modelbook does not, however, find support in the evidence. The disorderly character of the collection, the swift, uneven and sometimes unfinished traits of the drawings, the shorthand and repetitions, all suggest that the draftsman was not randomly copying from a better-planned model for some unclear purpose, but rather that he was experimenting on these pages and exercising his own hand and imagination, taking his cue from elements of monumental as well as smallscale works that captured his attention during his travels. It was an idea book as much as a copy book: a sketchbook in which to figure out designs and keep track of inventive solutions. We are then left asking what function could these drawings possibly have had. This basic and fundamental question might be misleading. It is worth exploring the possibility that these drawings were made with no external audience and subsequent function in mind. Rather the draftsman might have put together this quire and filled it with drawings simply to work through intriguing models that caught his interest and that he saw with his eyes but could only understand with his hand. Indeed, if we are to look for a reason for the quire’s making, one interesting hypothesis is that the main purpose of these drawings, if not in fact their only purpose, was that of exercising the hand, memory and imagination of the draftsman. The goal was not to reproduce all of the minutiae of an image so that it could be later copied in some other context, but rather to train the hand so that the image being studied became part of the artist’s visual memory and assimilated to his or her own creative imagination. Thus, the purpose of these drawings would be achieved in their very creation, with no further function in mind. Once the drawings were finished and the quire completed, they could be set aside: the goal of enriching the artist’s visual memory and exploring imaginative possibilities was accomplished. Their value as reproductions might have been irrelevant, or at least marginal.   Buchthal, The “Musterbuch”, 66.

57

[284]  582

ludovico v. geymonat

The draftsman never finished filling the Wolfenbüttel quire with drawings: for some unknown reason, ten of its pages were left empty. The script used for writing the Golden Epistle by William of Saint Thierry dates paleographically from the first half of the thirteenth century, and the drawings themselves are dated to the 1230s: the reuse of the folios for writing must have occurred soon after the draftsman stopped drawing on the quire. The drawings seem to have had little value to those who recycled the parchment. However, one wonders if they were not preserved precisely because some of the pages from that quire had been left blank by the draftsman, who otherwise would have discarded the entire set of his drawings once they were finished. The blank parchment that could still be filled with writing might be what saved them from oblivion. It may be, then, that the training of the artist’s memory and imagination by way of drawing rendered the need for a full repertory of images and iconographic guides less necessary than has been claimed by some scholars. The lack of surviving evidence for modelbooks similar to the one in Wolfenbüttel might be due not only to the ravages of time, but also to the fact that they were rarely preserved by their own makers. The transmission of images, an essential function indeed, could well be accomplished by the visual memory of the artists themselves, who would develop this fundamental skill of their trade by drawing in their sketchbooks from the works that captured their attention. Modelbooks in the sense that Buchthal intended, but so little hard evidence supports, were perhaps not as necessary as the scholarly literature has posited. It may be that hand, memory and imagination—in short, artists and not modelbooks—were the real agents of the transmission of artistic forms and ideas throughout the medieval world. Acknowledgements Fellowships at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University and at the Bibliotheca Hertziana Max Planck Institute for Art History provided ideal conditions for some of the groundwork for this essay. A two-month fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek gave me unfettered access to the Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch and the pleasure and excitement of studying this enigmatic manuscript at first hand. At the Herzog August Bibliothek, I would like to thank in particular Jill Bepler, Christian Hogrefe and Alexandra Schebesta. In the preservation



drawing, memory and imagination

583  [285]

and restoration department, Almuth Corbach’s generous and uncompromising answers helped me address key issues in the Musterbuch: I am deeply grateful for her assistance. For discussions concerning material in this article, I would like to thank Gianfranco Fiaccadori, Barry McCrea, Gianni Romano, Gabriele Sprigath and the participants at the Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies Symposium in February 2011, especially Aden Kumler and Anatole Upart. I am thankful for the comments from the two referees for Medieval Encounters. Heather Grossman and Alicia Walker have been extraordinary editors: with patience, determination and good spirits they have helped me conceive and write this article in many and crucial ways that improved all aspects of it from broad ideas to small details. Any shortcomings remain my sole responsibility.

Translating Image and Text in the Medieval Mediterranean World between the Tenth and Thirteenth Centuries Eva R. Hoffman*

Department of Art and Art History, Tufts University, 11 Talbot Avenue, Medford, MA 02155, USA *E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract This paper approaches the issue of the mechanisms and routes of transmission through the celebrated phenomenon of the translation of scientific works, to and from Greek, Arabic and Latin, that had its beginnings in Baghdad in the eighth century and expanded throughout European Mediterranean centers of scholarship by the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The focus is on the famous De Materia Medica of the first-century CE scholar Dioscorides and specifically on illustrated versions of this text. I analyze the process of textual and visual transmission by introducing the concept of an interactive space of translation as a theoretical framework for understanding how translation operated as a mediator of exchange. The contention here is that through the negotiation of these various intersections, translation served as a dynamic, collaborative and ongoing process that played a significant role in the formation and transmission of both art and scholarship throughout the medieval Mediterranean. Keywords De Materia Medica, transmission, exchange mediation, translation, book culture

The period between the tenth and thirteenth centuries witnessed a stunning and prolific expansion of book culture throughout the medieval Mediterranean world. Any evaluation of the growth in the production and circulation of books during this period must take into account the pursuit of scholarship throughout the Mediterranean and the extraordinary undertaking of translating to and from Greek, Arabic and Latin a full range of ancient and medieval scientific texts on subjects such as astronomy, medicine, engineering and philosophy. This endeavor has been described as one



translating image and text

585  [287]

of the greatest intellectual achievements in history.1 In addition to their translated texts, some of these scientific manuscripts contained illustrations which must also be considered as an integral part of the acquisition and representation of knowledge in this translation enterprise. In this paper, I explore ways in which the process of translation of image and text might contribute to our understanding of the mechanism of transmission of art and culture in the medieval Mediterranean world. The phenomenon of translation is well documented, from its beginnings as a scholarly endeavor in Baghdad as early as the eighth century to its expansion throughout European Mediterranean centers of scholarship by the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The illustrated book, therefore, both as a portable object and as a receptacle of textual and visual information, provides an ideal context in which to explore the issues of circulation and transmission, not only for itself but for other media beyond the book, where the details of exchange in the medieval Mediterranean are often less specific. One might expect that, in light of the obvious interest in preserving the accuracy of the translated work and promoting scientific knowledge, an evaluation of this body of scientific works would simply lead down a straight and narrow analytical path from the source manuscripts to their faithful copies. Indeed, at one time a primary approach to the study of this material involved the search for an authentic root manuscript source in order to map a clear chain of transmission of both illustrated and nonillustrated works. In the case of illustrated Arabic translations of Greek works, the dominant theory posited was that Late Antique Greek visual sources of the sixth century were transmitted to the Islamic world through Middle Byzantine intermediaries of the ninth to the thirteenth century.2 1   See Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007), for an excellent overview and bibliography. Also see the classic study, D. Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd-4th /8th-10th centuries) (London: Routledge, 1998), which cites the relevant earlier literature. For translations from Arabic into Latin see, Charles Burnett, “Arabic into Latin: The Reception of Arabic Philiosophy into Western Europe,” in Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, eds. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 370-404, with references to the extensive writings by this author. 2   Kurt Weitzmann, “The Greek Sources of Islamic Scientific Illustration,” in Archaeologica Orientalia in Memoriam Ernst Herzfeld, ed. George Miles (Locust Valley, NY: J.J. Augustin, 1952), 244-266.

[288]  586

eva r. hoffman

More recently, however, scholars have made significant breakthroughs, showing that the process of translation and transmission did not follow the direct singular route implied in the popular phrase “from Greek to Arabic to Latin.”3 Arabic translations did not function simply as intermediaries in a delivery system between the ancient Greek source texts and the later medieval Latin and vernacular European language versions. As is well known, many Greek texts were first translated into Arabic through earlier Syriac and Pahlavi translations.4 Also Syriac translations continued to be consulted even after Arabic translations were made directly from Greek texts. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, multi-directional translations occurred between and among Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and vernacular European languages.5 Furthermore the activity of translation involved a significant interpretative component.6 Extending well 3   For these more nuanced approaches, in addition to the works in n. 1, above, see the essays in Mohammed Abattouy and Paul Weinig, eds., Intercultural Transmission of Scientific Knowledge in the Middle Ages, thematic issue of Science in Context, 14, nos. 1-2 (2001); Karla Mallette, “Beyond Mimesis: Aristotle’s Poetics in the Medieval Mediterranean,” PMLA, 124 (2009): 583-591. For nuanced approaches in some of the most recent scholarship on the illustrated scientific manuscripts, see Anna Contadini, A World of Beasts: A Thirteenth-Century Illustrated Arabic Book on Animals (the Kitāb Na‘t al-Ḥ ayawān) in the Ibn Bakhtīshū‘ Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Persis Berlekamp, Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval Islam (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011); Anna Contadini, ed., Arab Painting, 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill 2010), especially section 2, with essays by Jaclynne J. Kerner, Michael J. Rogers, Remke Kruk, Moya Carey and Persis Berlekamp; Syrinx Von Hees and Edward Schwartz, “The Bird Illustrations in a Thirteenth Century Arab Natural History,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 29, no. 3 (2004), 231-247: Oya Pancaroğlu, “Socializing Medicine: Illustrations of the Kitāb al-diryāq,” Muqarnas, 18 (2001), 155-172. Also see the studies on the illustrated Dioscorides in n.10, below. 4   See, for example, Peter E. Pormann, The Oriental Tradition of Paul of Aegina’s Pragmateia (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 5   Alain Touwaide, “Arabic Materia Medica in Byzantium during the 11th Century A.D. and the Problems of Transfer of Knowledge in Medieval Science,” in Science and Technology in the Islamic World, Proceedings of the XXth International Congress of History of Science, Liège, 20-26 July 1997, vol. 20, De Diversis Artibus, Collection of Studies from the International Academy of the History of Science 64, ed. S.M. Razaullah Ansari (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 223-246; Burnett, “Arabic into Latin.” For Greek translations of Arabic texts in the eleventh century, see Maria Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002), 417-424; Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 162-168. 6   The discussion on translation here will be limited to the scientific manuscripts directly relevant to this paper. A fuller discussion of translation theory will appear in a forthcoming expanded study of this material. For the wealth of scholarship on contemporary “translation



translating image and text

587  [289]

beyond the mechanical operations, translation was a scholarly endeavor and entered into visual and textual dialogue with the translated ancient Greek works, routinely incorporating revisions to and refinements of the earlier Greek scholarship. Completely original medieval Arabic works, which relied upon and fully acknowledged Greek sources, carried this dialogue even further and significantly extended the scientific knowledge.7 All of this speaks to an enterprise of translation that was anything but linear. It encompassed an extraordinarily diverse synthesis of scholarship, with complicated lineages that were disseminated along multiple routes of transmission. Each manuscript copy underwent an individualized journey and must ultimately be considered on its own terms, a challenging task indeed, but one whose necessity cannot be overestimated. At the same time, the materials must be viewed in the context of the greater arena of transmission and circulation across cultures through which this intellectual phenomenon developed and was nurtured. In this paper, I will not trace the origins and specific translation of any single manuscript. Rather, I will focus on the process of translation itself.8 To that end, I propose the concept of an interactive space of translation as a theoretical framework for understanding how translation operated and unfolded. The contours of a space of translation are not defined by the usual geo-political and temporal boundaries but rather by the particular circumstances of the subjects studied, allowing us to bring together material that may routinely be separated. In our context here, an interactive space of translation served as a meeting point for multiple linguistic and visual exchanges and intersections of texts and images over distances of time and place. In order to explain this, I will turn to the following three instances and themes: (1) the space of translation between illustrated Greek and Arabic manuscripts of De Materia Medica by Dioscorides; (2) the theory,” see Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Routledge, 2004), for many classic articles, including those of Walter Benjamin and Jorge Luis Borges; and Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), introduction and extensive notes and bibliographies. 7   Franz Rosenthal, ed., The Classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge, 1975; repr. 1994), introduction; Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture; Pormann and SavageSmith, Medieval Islamic Medicine. 8   This paper is a small part of a book-length study on the circulation of art and culture in the medieval Mediterranean world. Regarding the broader issue of translation, see n. 6, above.

[290]  588

eva r. hoffman

space of translation on the page through the intersection of word and image; and (3) the space of translation between past and present, as expressed through the authority of translation. Through the consideration of these various contexts and intersections, it will be possible to clarify the role of translation as a vital and ongoing practice that played a significant role in the formation and transmission of art and scholarship throughout the medieval Mediterranean. A Space of Translation: Greek and Arabic Illustrated Manuscripts, De Materia Medica by Dioscorides A celebrated work that lends itself particularly well to scrutiny as a space of translation is Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, a five-volume encyclopedic work that comprised a compilation of medicinal substances and their therapeutic properties and uses. Written in the first century CE, Dioscorides’ text is considered to be a foundational work for modern pharmacology.9 It was produced in several recensions and provides a particularly rich body of material for interactive study as it was copied, translated, revised and illustrated many times over. Several Greek and Arabic versions survive, and a number of these have been the subjects of excellent studies.10 There is   For the Greek Dioscorides, see J.M. Riddle, Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985); J. Scarborough, “Early Byzantine Pharmacology,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 38 (1984), 213-232. For the Arabic Dioscorides, see C.E. Dubler, La “Materia medica” de Dioscorides: transmisión medieval y renacentista, vols. 2 and 3 (Barcelona: Tipografía Emporium, 1953-1957). References for illustrated manuscripts are found in n. 10, below. 10   For the illustrated Greek Dioscorides, see Touwaide, “Arabic Materia Medica”; idem, “Un recueil grec de pharmacologie du Xe siècle illustré au XlVe siècle: le Vaticanus graecus 284,” Scriptorium, 39 (1985): 13-56; idem, “Un manuscrit athonite du Traité de matière médicale de Dioscoride: l’Athous Magnae Laurae Ω 75,” Scriptorium, 45 (1991), 122-127; Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (London: British Library and Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2000); Leslie Brubaker, “The Vienna Dioskorides and Anicia Juliana,” in Byzantine Garden Culture, eds. Antony Littlewood, Henry Maguire and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2002), 189-214 ; Maria Mavroudi, “The Naples Dioscorides,” in Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th-9th Centuries). Catalogue of the Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Helen Evans with Brandie Ratliff (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 22-24. For the illustrated Arabic Dioscorides, see Florence Day, “Mesopotamian manuscripts of Dioscorides,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.s. 8 (1950), 274-280; Ernst J. Grube, “Materialien zum Dioskurides Arabicus,” in  9



translating image and text

589  [291]

evidence that both Greek and Arabic copies were, in fact, available and used by medieval scholars across the Byzantine and Islamic realms. Yet, the Greek and Arabic manuscripts have traditionally been compartmentalized into the spheres of Byzantine and Islamic art. Only recently have scholars begun to study Greek and Arabic scientific manuscripts in a more integrated manner, and there are still lingering disciplinary divisions among the Islamic, Byzantine and western European realms.11 Relationships between Greek and Arabic works are still discussed in terms of connections between individual manuscripts or with an eye toward defining lineage rather than interactivity. The consideration here of the interactive space of translation between Greek and Arabic versions of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica will bring these works together in a fully integrated manner and shed light on a dynamic process of translation at work, not only across languages but also between image and text.12 Before turning to the intrinsic evidence inscribed in the manuscripts themselves, it would be well to consider some extrinsic evidence. Many of the same eminent medieval scholars who translated and studied these scientific works were also deeply interested in the subject of translation itself. They wrote accounts about specific translations, translators and theoretical Aus der Welt der Islamischen Kunst: Festschrift für Ernst Kühnel, ed. Richard Ettinghausen (Berlin: Mann, 1959), 163-194; M.M. Sadek, The Arabic Materia Medica of Dioscorides (St-Jean-Chrysostome, QC: Éditions du Sphinx, 1983); E.R. Hoffman, “The Emergence of Illustration in Arabic Manuscripts: Classical Legacy and Islamic Transformation” (Phd Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1982); idem, “The Beginnings of the Illustrated Arabic Book: An Intersection between Art and Scholarship,” Muqarnas, 17 (2000), 37-52; Oleg Grabar, “About an Arabic Dioskorides Manuscript,” in Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800, vol. 2, Constructing the Study of Islamic Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 207-11, first published in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, eds. Christopher Moss and Katherine Kiefer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 361-363; Michael J. Rogers, “Text and Illustrations: Dioscorides and the Illustrated Herbal in the Arab Tradition,” in Arab Painting: Text and Image in Illustrated Arabic Manuscripts. Handbook of Oriental Studies, ed. Anna Contadini (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 41-47; George Saliba and Linda Komaroff, “Illustrated Books May be Hazardous to Your Health: A New Reading of the Arabic Reception and Rendition of the Materia Medica of Dioscorides,” Ars Orientalis, 35 (2008), 7-65. 11   This issue has been addressed by Touwaide, “Arabic Materia Medica in Byzantium”; Collins, Medieval Herbal; and Mavroudi, “Naples Dioscorides.” 12   On the importance of considering image and text in the context of scientific manuscripts, see Saliba and Komaroff, “Illustrated Books”; Anna Contadini, “Theoretical Issues. The Manuscript as a Whole,” in Arab Painting, 3-16; and Von Hees and Schwartz, “Bird Illustrations.”

[292]  590

eva r. hoffman

issues relating to the process of translation.13 These comments by medieval scholars offer valuable perspectives on the medieval understanding of how translation advanced the production of knowledge. One such account refers to a translation of a Dioscorides illustrated work and will serve as the point of departure here. The Transmission of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica: Ibn Juljul’s Commentary on the Translation of Dioscorides A justly oft-quoted passage by Ibn Juljul (d. c. 994) a physician from Cordoba, who wrote a commentary on Dioscorides’ work as well as his own herbal treatise, addresses multiple contexts and issues relating to translation and transmission and will serve as a guide. Ibn Juljul’s account provides remarkable evidence for the process of translation of scientific works and its sweeping reach into the political, intellectual and social spheres. In his Treatise on Medicaments Not Mentioned by Dioscorides, Ibn Juljul states The work of Dioscorides was translated from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad under the ʿAbbasids in the time of Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil. The translator was Istị fān b. Basil. Ḥ unain b. Isḥāq the translator checked his translation. He [Ḥ unain] corrected it and licensed the study of it. In all cases, where Isṭifān knew the current Arabic term corresponding to the Greek, he translated the Greek term into Arabic. Otherwise, he left it untranslated in the hope that after him, God would send someone who would know it and could translate it into Arabic. This work arrived in Spain in the translation of Isṭifān, partly with Arabic identifications, partly without them. It was used, as far as it was intelligible, both in the East and in Spain, until the time of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Nāṣir, then ruler of Spain. He conducted a correspondence with King Armaniyis, the Ruler of Constantinople, I believe, in the year 337/948-949, and the latter sent him very valuable presents, among them the book of Dioscorides written in ighrīqī, that is yunani, with wonderful Byzantine illustrations of the herbs. Together with it he also sent the work of the historian Orosius, a wonderful history of the Rum with historical information from old days, stories of the earliest kings and useful information. In his letter to al-Nāṣir, Armaniyus wrote that one could profit from Dioscorides’ book only if there was somebody who understood Greek well and knew the individual remedies. At that time there was no Spanish Christian who could read ighrīqī that is to say, old Greek. Thus the book of Dioscorides remained in Greek as it was, in the treasury

  For a sampling of these texts see Rosenthal, Classical Heritage in Islam, 15-23.

13



translating image and text

591  [293]

of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir and was not translated into Arabic. The book remained in Spain but the translation of Isṭifān which had come from Baghdad remained in use. Then, when al-Nāṣir addressed a written reply to King Marinus, he begged him to send him someone who spoke Greek [ighrīqī] and Latin in order to teach slaves to translate for him. Thereupon King Armaniyus sent a monk named Niqula to al-Nāṣir. He arrived in Cordoba in the year 340/951-952. At that time there were physicians there who were interested in scientific research and desired a translation of the unknown drugs from the book of Dioscorides. Ḥ asdāy b. Shabrūt ̣ al-Isrāʾīlī was the one most interested in scientific research and in such a translation, since he hoped thereby to gain favor of King ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir. The monk Niqula was extraordinarily esteemed by him and very intimate with him. He explained the unknown names of drugs in the work of Dioscorides. He was the first in Cordoba to manufacture the fārūq-theriac with improved ingredients. Among the physicians of that time who were interested in improved identification of the names of the individual drugs in the work were Muhammad known as al-Shajjār, a certain al-Basbāsī, Abū ʿUthmān al-Hazzāz, who bore the nickname of al-Yābisah, Muḥammad b. Saʿid al-Tabīb, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Iṣhāq b. Haitham and Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Siqilli who spoke Greek and knew the individual remedies . . .14

It is impossible to overstate the importance of this celebrated account describing the translation into Arabic of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, and of the gift of a luxury illustrated Dioscorides manuscript, sent by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos, the Byzantine Emperor, to the Umayyad Caliph ʿAbd al-Rahman III in Cordoba in the year 948-949. The description confirms, first and foremost, the well-documented narrative of the translation and circulation of scientific texts and singles out the achievements of the two premier ninth-century ʿAbbasid translators, Ist ̣ifān b. Bāsīl and Ḥ unain b. Iṣhāq, who are mentioned often in the sources, usually together as here, with Ḥ unain as the master editor. Ibn Juljul’s account is a testament to the significance of translation in the transmission of knowledge and the value of science, book culture and art at the very highest level of medieval court sponsorship. The story of the gift makes clear the political dimension of translation, and how a gift could be used in the

  As preserved in Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa Uyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ (Sources of Information on the Classes of Physicians) as translated in Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, 194-196. For Ibn Juljul, see Ildefonso Garijo, “Ibn Juljul’s Treatise on Medicaments Not Mentioned by Dioscorides,” in The Formation of al-Andalus, Vol. 2, Language, Religion, Culture and the Sciences, eds. Maribel Fierro and Julio Samso (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 419-430. 14

[294]  592

eva r. hoffman

context of court rivalry and prestige. The gift recognizes the court of alAndalus within the network of artistic and cultural exchange among the Mediterranean courts. At the same time, the gift was clearly used as an opportunity for the Byzantine emperor to claim primacy.15 Significantly, the text addresses a major complication associated with translation, namely the challenge of communicating and translating technical terms across different languages. Indeed, modern scholars have long been intrigued by Ibn Juljul’s statement that when the translator, Ist ̣ifān, did not know the Arabic word for the Greek term, “he left it untranslated in the hope that after him, God would send someone who would know it and could translate it into Arabic.” This statement certainly speaks to a commitment to precision by the translators. Alain Touwaide further suggests that leaving words in Greek was not a function of ignorance but on the contrary an interest on the part of the translators in preserving accurate categories of classifications of herbals, best done by retaining the original Greek nomenclature.16 Above all, Ibn Juljul expresses the idea that translation is perpetual, part of a continuous process of scholarship. Related to this, Ibn Juljul emphasizes the cultural and social dimension of translation by elucidating the process of translation as a collaborative effort, requiring the expertise of a multilingual group from different cultural and faith communities: Muslims, Christians and Jews.17

15   For the place of intellectual activity in diplomatic rivalry see, Paul Magdalino, “The Road to Baghdad in the Thought-World of Ninth-Century Byzantium,” in Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? Papers from the Thirtieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1996, ed. Leslie Brubaker (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 1998), 195-214. 16   Alain Touwaide, “Translation And Transliteration of Plant Names in Ḥ unayn b. Iṣhāq’s and Istị fān b. Bāsīl’s Arabic Version of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica,” Al-Qantara, 30 (2009), 557-580; Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 31-32. 17   Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 52-53, point out that these scholars used the new manuscript to revise the old version and added local nomenclature of al-Andalus. The synthetic nature of knowledge and scholarship is expressed by the sources. See, for example, Ibn Khaldun in Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 37; and Franz Rosenthal, The Muqqadimah: An Introduction to History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), i and 61.



translating image and text

593  [295]

Linguistic and Visual Intersections across Greek and Arabic Illustrated Manuscripts of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica While the particular luxury gift copy of the Dioscorides work described by Ibn Juljul has not survived, and it is uncertain whether or not the translation was ever completed, there exists a critical body of illustrated works of the De Materia Medica that were translated from Greek into Arabic, Latin and French between the sixth and the fourteenth centuries. If there is a dominant feature shared by the body of Dioscorides manuscripts, it is the remarkable diversity and variety in both text and image. There is no single exemplar, and no two manuscripts are exactly alike. From the start, the De Materia Medica represented an expansion and synthesis of earlier pharmacological works referred to in the text. Multiple copies were made with a full range of recensions surviving in the Greek and Arabic versions.18 The later versions and translations, furthermore, did not adhere strictly to the confines of a singular Dioscorides text. Already in the sixth century, the earliest surviving illustrated Dioscorides manuscript, a magnificent early Byzantine luxury work (Vienna, ÖNB/ Wien, Cod. Med. gr. 1), made for the Princess Juliana Anicia in Constantinople in 512, was created as a composite work. The text is an alphabetical recension, that is, a version where the entries of drugs are rearranged in alphabetical order. It does not contain the full De Materia Medica text, only the herbal portion with pharmacological writings by the much admired Greek physician Krateus of the first century BCE, and the work of the second-century CE Roman physician Galen inserted as commentary on the text as well as five other appended natural history treatises.19 This pattern, though not adhering to this precise formula, is continued in later medieval copies. These translations and retranslations are still labeled and considered as the Dioscorides work, but they are often much more than copies of the Dioscorides text, bringing the text up to date and adding new, original material. In their careful comparison of texts of the manuscripts of the Arabic Dioscorides, George Saliba and Linda Komaroff have   See nn. 9 and 10 above.   Brubaker, “The Vienna Dioskorides and Anicia Juliana,” 191-196, with full discussion of the supplementary text. For facsimiles, see Codex Vindobonensis med. gr.1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, commentary by Hans Gerstinger, 2 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1965-1970); and Der Wiener Dioskurides: Codex medicus Graecus 1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, commentary by Otto Mazal, 2 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1998-1999). 18 19

[296]  594

eva r. hoffman

shown that there is no single Dioscorides text. There were “rectifications” (iṣlāḥ ) of texts and “redactions” (ṭaḥ rīr), which contain changes and additions so significant that these scholars suggest the redactions should not be considered “translations” altogether.20 Bearing this clarification in mind, this discussion will still follow the convention of referring to these texts as Dioscorides manuscripts. I would further add that the resistance to rote copying through these various revisions and additions affirms the goals of producing new scholarship beyond the copying of ancient works and the desire to satisfy the contemporary requirements of medieval scholars and patrons. An example is the earliest surviving Arabic Dioscorides manuscript, dated 1083, which according to the colophon is a copy of a revised version (islah) of Dioscorides by the translator-scholar and illustrator al-Nātilī in 990-991 for Prince Abū ʿAlī Simdjūrī at Samarkand or Bukhara (Leiden, University Library, cod. Or. 289) (see Figs 6 and 7). Just as in the case of its text, among the 620 illustrations there are many image inventions as well as the integration of entirely different image sources from the realm of India.21 Adjustments to the De Materia Medica text have been noted as a result of variations of flora in different geographical locations. Additions were made to accommodate particular native species, while plants were sometimes omitted when they were unfamiliar locally.22 Overall, through the circulation of Dioscorides and other works and the availability of the substances themselves, medieval scholars continuously expanded the lists of medicinal plants in a growing body of herbal literature. As we may expect, manuscripts that belong to the same or related recension groups often exhibit clear connections among their texts and images. For example, the illustrations for the plant Batos (blackberry) in the Vienna Dioscorides and in an undated manuscript in Naples (Biblioteca Nazionale, cod. Gr. 1) are comparable, with both manuscripts belonging to the same abbreviated alphabetical recension (compare Figs 1 and 2).23 The   Saliba and Komaroff, “Illustrated Books,” 12-17.   Sadek, Materia Medica; and Saliba and Komaroff, “Illustrated Books,” 17-18. 22   D.F. Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 20; Rogers, “Text and Illustrations,” 45; Touwaide, “Arabic Materia Medica,” 237-240; Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 53. 23   For the Naples Dioscorides, see Collins, Medieval Herbals, 51-59; and the facsimile Dioscurides Neapolitanus, Biblioteca nazionale di Napoli, Codex ex Vindobonensis Graecus 1, 3 vols., eds. Carlo Bertelli, Salvatore Lilla and Giulia Orofino (Roma: Salerno Editrice and 20 21



translating image and text

595  [297]

Middle Byzantine, imperial tenth-century copy of Dioscorides (New York, Morgan Library, ms. 652), which belongs to the related expanded alphabetical five-book recension, contains an illustration of Batos that is quite close to these as well (Fig. 3).24 Yet what is most telling is that even in these three closest of works, translations are not exact copies of either text or image. Instead, translation here takes into account the relationship between text and image for each particular work and the circumstances of patronage and use. Fitting its status as a royal showpiece, the images in the Vienna manuscript take center stage. As in the image of Batos, the Vienna images seem to have been designed on the page first, with the text fitting around them. The smaller, squatter image of Batos in the Naples manuscript conforms to a set format in the manuscript of two or three plants on a folio with the block of text below, making it easy to move back and forth between text and image. Perhaps this was done to accommodate the more scholarly function that has been suggested for the Naples work.25 On the pages of the imperial Morgan manuscript, the illustration of Batos stays close to the Vienna model and shares the luxurious form of the Vienna Batos plant, but it is smaller and placed in the center of the page between lines of text at the top and bottom, a format that facilitates both enjoyment of the image and the serious study of the text.26 Created four centuries after the Vienna Codex, the Morgan manuscript adopts from the Vienna recension 245 of its 448 images. Still it is more encyclopedic than the Vienna recension and it Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1988-1992). The localization of this work is uncertain. Based on paleographic grounds, the proposed dating to the late sixth or seventh centuries, is a matter of debate. Scholars do agree, however, that the Naples Dioscorides was probably copied from the same archetype as the Vienna, Juliana Anicia codex. 24   Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbaei De materia medica libri VII accedunt Nicandri et Eutecnii Opuscula medica, 2 vols. (Paris: s.n., 1935). See A. Van Buren, “De Materia Medica of Dioscurides,” in Illuminated Greek Manuscripts from American Collections. An Exhibition in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. G. Vikan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1973), no. 6, 66-69; Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom, eds., The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), no. 161, 237-238; and Collins, Medieval Herbals, 59-69, with additional bibliography. 25   A scholarly function was suggested in Collins, Medieval Herbal, 56. 26   Similarly, while the representation of the Rhodon (rose) plant is clearly similar in the Morgan and Vienna manuscripts (Morgan, m 652, fol. 142v. and Vienna, ms. gr. 1, fol. 282), each version adapted the plant to its own compositional format.

[298]  596

eva r. hoffman

Figure 1.  Illustration of Batos (rubus fruticosus; blackberry), Vienna. Courtesy ÖNB/Wien, Cod. Med. gr. 1, fol. 83. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



translating image and text

597  [299]

Figure 2.  Batos (Rubus fruticosus; blackberry), Naples, Biblioteca ­Nazionale, Cod. gr. 1, fol. 32, with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali-Italia.

[300]  598

eva r. hoffman

Figure 3.  Batos (Rubus frucosus; blackberry). New York, NY, Pierpont Morgan Library, ms. M 652, fol. 25v. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://books andjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



translating image and text

599  [301]

incorporates many more images from a variety of entirely different sources such as Kyamos aigyptios (Nymphaea lotus, or Egyptian Lotus) (Fig. 4).27 More unexpected are the apparent connections among manuscripts across the various recension groups. While the Leiden manuscript belongs to the five-book recension—and, as noted above, it has been shown that the Leiden text is a substantial revision of the Dioscorides text—the illustrations can still be favorably compared to illustrations in manuscripts in the abbreviated alphabetical recension. For example, the illustration of the mandrake in the Leiden manuscript finds its counterpart in the Greek Dioscorides manuscript in Naples, which belongs to the abbreviated alphabetical recension (compare Figs 5 and 6).28 Figural images are rare before the thirteenth-century Arabic manuscripts. Nevertheless, the one figural motif in the Leiden copy, depicting al-sādidj (Malabathron in the Greek text) applying a plant cure to an afflicted eye (Fig. 7), may be compared to a figure in an earlier Greek manuscript of the five-book recension, probably dating to the eighth or ninth century (Paris, Bibiotheque Nationale de France, BnF ms. gr. 2179).29 Further connections have been noted between the illustrations of the caraway plant and the orchid in this Greek manuscript (BnF ms. gr. Paris 2179, fols. 33v and 58v) (Figs 8 and 9) and those in several other Arabic manuscripts (BnF ms. or. arabe 4947, fol. 63; and BnF ms. or. arabe 2850, fol. 116) (Figs 10 and 11). All of this confirms exchanges across languages as well as across recensions. On paleographic grounds, this Greek manuscript (BnF ms. gr. Paris 2179) has been attributed to Egypt or Syria, a localization that may well have facilitated the contact between the Greek and Arabic works.30 The nature of translation, as a collaborative, active and ongoing process that crossed linguistic and visual boundaries may well be summarized in the evidence of a fourteenth-century example of an illustrated herbal manuscript (Copenhagen, The Royal Library, ms. Thott 190). Touwaide 27   Collins, Medieval Herbal, 66, who argues that the zoological illustrations in Book 2 of the Morgan codex may come from the Cynegetica of Pseudo Oppian and paraphrases of Nicander, which are in the Vienna Codex. 28   See Collins, Medieval Herbal, 118-124, for additional visual comparisons between illustrations in the Leiden manuscript and other illustrated Greek works of the alphabetical recension; and Saliba and Komaroff, “Illustrated Books,” Appendix, Table 7, for the comparison of the Leiden text and a non-illustrated Arabic text, translated by Ist ̣ifān. 29   Collins, Medieval Herbal, 118. 30   For a discussion of place of origin of the manuscript BnF ms. gr. 2179 see, Collins, Medieval Herbal, 84 and 92-93.

[302]  600

eva r. hoffman

Figure 4.  Batos (Rubus frucosus; blackberry). New York, NY, Pierpont Morgan Library, ms. M 652, fol. 25v. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://books andjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



translating image and text

601  [303]

Figure 5.  Mandragora officinarum, Mandrake, Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, gr. 1, fol. 90, with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali-Italia.

Figure 6.  al Yabruh (Mandragora officinarum, Mandrake). Leiden, courtesy Leiden University Library, Cod. Or. 289, fols. 156v-157.

[304]  602 eva r. hoffman



translating image and text

603  [305]

Figure 7.  Malabathron Plant to Cure Eye, Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, 1083. Leiden, courtesy Leiden University Library, or. 289, fol. 8r.

[306]  604

eva r. hoffman

Figure 8.  Karo, Paris, BnF ms. gr. 2179, fol. 33v.



translating image and text

605  [307]

Figure 9.  Orchis eteros, Orchis, Orchid, Paris, BnF ms. gr. 2179, fol. 58v.

[308]  606

eva r. hoffman

Figure 10.  al karawya (Caryn carvum, Caraway), BnF, ms. or. arabe 4947, fol. 63v.



translating image and text

607  [309]

Figure 11.  al husa (Orchis, Orchid), BnF, ms. or. arabe 2850, fol. 116.

[310]  608

eva r. hoffman

brilliantly reconstructed the complex stages of the production of the manuscript and the trajectory of its translation and transmission from its origins in Greek and Arabic sources in the eastern Mediterranean to the additions of its French and Latin texts and its final destination in Europe (see Figs 12, 14 and 15).31 With its movement into the European sphere, the space of translation for illustrated scientific manuscripts was exponentially expanded to include not only the range of Greek and Arabic images and texts but also Latin and European additions and revisions. Ms. Thott 190 seems to be a composite of two distinct sections. Touwaide convincingly posits that the earlier part was copied, either directly or through an intermediary copy, from a thirteenth-century archetype, probably made in Constantinople for Crusaders during their occupation of city between 1204 and 1261. It is likely that this section of the manuscript began as a botanical album with a focus on full-page illustrations, and the French and Latin texts were added later. Sources for text and image in this archetype, however, were completely unrelated. The exact textual models have not been identified, but seem to comprise a combination of Dioscorides’ and Galen’s works and demonstrate familiarity with Arabic medical texts as well. While the list of plants in this part mostly follows the alphabetical recension, it is important to note that departures from this alphabetical order occur due to the displacement of folios and some mistranslations and phonetic confusion in the translation of names of the plants from Greek into French and Latin as well as to and from other possible intermediary European languages. As for the visual models of the archetype of ms. Thott 190, Touwaide has suggested the illustrations of the Vienna Dioscorides and the Morgan Dioscorides, both of which were probably available in the library of the Monastery of St. John Prodromos in Constantinople at the time that the archetype was made (compare Figs 12 and 13; Figs 15 and 16). The second section of the manuscript does not follow the alphabetical recension and contains many images and texts that come from different sources altogether as well as material that is completely original. The herbal ms.Thott 190 is a document for the engagement with the fullest range of visual and textual sources. The compilation of these sources within ms. Thott 190, speaks to the fluidity of exchange in translating, making and transmitting scientific knowledge to suit those who used these   Alain Touwaide, “Latin Crusaders, Byzantine Herbals,” in Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550, eds. Jean A. Givens, Karen M. Reeds and Alain Touwaide (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 25-50. 31



translating image and text

609  [311]

Figure 12.  Adiantos vel politricum (maidenhair), late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, Copenhagen, courtesy The Royal Library, Ms. Thott 190 2, fol. 15v.

[312]  610

eva r. hoffman

Figure 13.  Adiantos vel politricum (maidenhair), Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, Vienna, courtesy ÖNB/Wien, Cod. Med. gr. 1, fol. 42v. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



translating image and text

611  [313]

Figure 14.  Cauda vulpina (horsetail), late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, Copenhagen, courtesy The Royal Library, Ms. Thott 190 2, fol. 20r.

[314]  612

eva r. hoffman

Figure 15.  Feves (beans), late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, Copenhagen, courtesy The Royal Library, Ms. Thott 190 2, fol. 40r.



translating image and text

613  [315]

Figure 16.  Batos (Rubus frucosus; blackberry). New York, NY, Pierpont Morgan Library, ms. M 652, fol. 25v. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://books andjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.

[316]  614

eva r. hoffman

manuscripts. Translation, above all, was a creative scholarly endeavor that contributed to keeping these works alive and to keeping knowledge up-todate for the contemporary audience. Visual images were an integral part of this process. The Page as a Space of Translation While the manuscript page functioned as a space of translation for the ongoing interplay of text and image between different copies of a work and different manuscripts, it may also be explored within the limits of the page itself, where it is sometimes possible to document how interactions between text and image played out. In many cases, the translation of image and text was complementary and was conceived as a collaborative enterprise.32 Literary and visual media were not simply interchangeable, and image and text were not literal translations of each other. Rather by communicating in their distinctive media, the literary and the visual worked together to produce the most complete translation of the work, making it fully functional as a compendium for the medicinal use of plants. The visual images of the plants were generally not precise enough to stand-alone, but when consulted along with the text, they could provide the informed reader with convenient and “crucial evidence for a definitive identification” of the plants.33 Similarly, when paired with the visual images, the text could be judiciously abbreviated or expanded according to the context and needs of the particular work. In illustrated manuscripts, plant images followed conventions and were typically copied from earlier manuscripts. Yet, as noted above, these representations and the explanatory texts could also be customized according to the varieties of local plant forms unknown in the earlier copies.34   For example as discussed in Von Hees and Schwartz, “The Bird Illustrations,” 231-247.   Rogers, “Text and Illustration,” 45. 34  Touwaide, “Arabic Materia Medica,” 242; Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape and Vision, 20-21. For discussion of local culture, see Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 32 and 53; Rogers, “Text and Illustration,” 45-46. Narrative images are not discussed in this paper but will be considered in relation to the broader pictorial trends in book painting in my expanded forthcoming study. For issues pertaining to the narrative images in the Arabic Dioscorides, see Saliba and Komaroff, “Illustrated Books,” 22; Pancaroğlu, “Socializing Medicine,” in which narrative imagery is a major theme. 32 33



translating image and text

615  [317]

Herein lies a distinction between the development in the translations of illustrated and non-illustrated versions of these works. The non-illustrated manuscripts contained unabridged literary descriptions of the full properties of the plants, which were faithful copies of earlier manuscript texts. As a result, these literary translations remained unchanged over time.35 By contrast, change occurred continuously in the illustrated versions, as the visual representations of plants from older versions were combined with fresh observations from nature and contemporary visual conceptions.36 Images added yet another dimension of translation in the mediation between the scientific past and present. Their interplay with the texts, furthermore, expressed the full transformative potential of translation, ironically justifying the warnings against including illustrations voiced by scholars in ancient times, who feared that visual images could potentially alter the “original” botanical descriptions of the plants.37 In addition to the complementary interplay between text and image, the surface of the page also serves as an archive, preserving layers of textual and visual interactions that contributed to the process of translation and the transmission of knowledge over time and space. The documentation and archiving on the page of a succession of scholarly notes and glosses provide insight into what these manuscripts meant within medieval culture.38 The evidence of archiving confirms that these manuscripts were, indeed, used, and even sheds light on how they were used and what the languages of their readers were. 35   For discussion of the differences between illustrated and non-illustrated versions, see Rogers, “Text and Illustration,” 42-46; and Saliba and Komaroff, “Illustrated Books,” 11, with the discussion of omissions of text in some illustrated versions. Also see Grabar, “About an Arabic Dioskorides,” 210; and Saliba and Komaroff, “Illustrated Books,” 20-22, for the interesting case of BnF or. arabe 2849, a volume that appears without illustrations but, according to a copyist’s note, was originally accompanied by a separate companion volume of illustrations. 36   Rogers, “Text and Illustration,” 45-46. 37   Plato’s distrust of visual images is discussed in Rogers, “Text and Illustrations,” 42. 38   Related to this topic, see the discussion of marginalia in Emilie Savage-Smith, “Between Reader and Text: Some Medieval Arabic Marginalia,” in “Scientia in margine”: Études sur les “marginalia” dans les manuscrits scientifiques du moyen âge à la Renaissance, eds. Danielle Jacquart and Charles Burnett (Geneva: Droz, 2005), 75-101; and discussion of captions in Bernard O’Kane, “The Uses of Captions in Medieval Literary Arabic Manuscripts,” in Arab Painting: Text and Image in Illustrated Arabic Manuscripts, ed. Anna Contadini (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 135-144.

[318]  616

eva r. hoffman

Almost every medieval illustrated Dioscorides manuscript, from the most luxurious to the most modest example, contains glosses and multilingual transcriptions of names of plants, added over time alongside the illustrations. The interaction of these glosses with the illustrations kept these pages and the translations active and open to a continuous process of revision and interpretation. The glosses pointed to images, which served as a fulcrum around which layers of multilingual labels and notes were added over time. This tradition and assemblage of notation invited the reader to contribute further to this multilingual exchange and to engage in the negotiation of translation and meaning. In the Greek Dioscorides copy (BnF ms. gr. 2179) for example, there are both Arabic and Latin transcriptions along with various corrections, including the scripting of Arabic names in Greek letters (see Fig. 9).39 The interaction on the page between Arabic and Greek may further help to explain and document the connections and the possible routes of transmission of illustrations and texts beyond this particular manuscript, extending to works that were written in different languages and belonging to different textual recensions, as discussed above. The evidence of a continuous dialogue involving image, text and the commentary of glosses goes a long way toward explaining the vitality of the Dioscorides. The work enjoyed continued production even after the scholarship contained in it had been superseded by more up-to-date science. As scholars have noted, furthermore, the number of copies produced of the illustrated Dioscorides seems to have exceeded illustrated versions of the more up-to-date medieval Islamic works by such herbalists as Ibn al-Bayṭār and al-Ghāfiqī.40 While it would probably not be consulted for the latest scientific information, the illustrated Dioscorides satisfied a niche market. Perhaps the continued demand and longevity of the Dioscorides may be directly related to its production in the illustrated format, which kept the work alive and current through the interactive, fully engaged process of translation. The time-honored status of the work was not forgotten.   For BnF ms. gr. 2179, see Collins, Medieval Herbals, 84-93, with bibliography.   As noted in Rogers, “Text and Illustrations,” 41 n. 1 (following a communication with E. Savage-Smith). It is worth noting that one of the rare illustrated Arabic manuscripts of the up-to-date work by al-Ghāfiqī was for a long time labeled as a copy of Dioscorides; see Adam Gacek, “Arabic calligraphy and the ‘Herbal’ of al-Ghāfiqī: A survey of Arabic manuscripts at McGill University,” Fontanus, 2 (1989), 37-53. The Ghāfiqī translation project is available online at http://publications.mcgill.ca/headway/magazine/ ancient-secrets-revealed/ 39 40



translating image and text

617  [319]

The Space of Translation between Past and Present The Dioscorides was a foundational work that commanded the respect of scholars and represented a long tradition of erudition and translation. With a nearly continuous history from the sixth century on, Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica was one of the most popular medical handbooks throughout medieval times. Matters of the authority and authenticity of the translations held considerable weight, and proof of their genuine lineage was recorded through text and image. The colophons of these manuscripts, for example, sometimes identify the specific translations that were copied and the names of the predecessor scholars and translators upon whose authority the present copyist relied. For example, when the translation was made by the celebrated translator Ḥ unain b. Iṣhāq, we are told whether it was specifically his Syriac or his Arabic translation.41 In addition to inscribing their own works, translator-scholars also left notes on the manuscripts from which they copied. This is the case where the name of the translator- artist for the Arabic manuscript dated 1229 (Istanbul, Topkapi Museum Library, Ahmet III, 2127) has been identified as a copyist who inscribed his name on an earlier manuscript (Paris, BnF ms. or. arabe 4947) as the model for his translation.42 In another case, in the year 1116, a little more than thirty years after the Leiden manuscript was written, a translator-scholar recorded the following after the colophon, in the Leiden manuscript The humble writer Muḥammad ibn ʿAli al-Rāmi has finished translating the book on medicinal matter from Arabic to Persian as the Arabic has fallen into disuse and Persian has become the most desirable language. I have completed my work from the copy of al-Nātilī and from a copy of the work of Istị fān and Ḥ unain and it was completed on Saturday, the eighteenth day of Ṣafar, in the year 510 AH and thanks be to God, the Lord of the two worlds and prayers to his Prophet Muḥammad and his pure, good family.43

Within the specificity of such a record of translation, the translator-scholar documents his connectedness to a wider sphere of production within the much broader project of making and transmitting knowledge. Al-Rāmi’s translation from Arabic to Persian signifies a momentous change, based on   Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 24-32.   Grube, “Materialien zum Dioskurides Arabicus,” 170; Sadek, Materia Medica, 10-11. 43   Sadek, Materia Medica, 29. 41 42

[320]  618

eva r. hoffman

Figure 17.  Dioscorides and Heuresis with the mandrake, Vienna, courtesy ÖNB/Wien, Cod. Med. gr. 1, fol. 4v. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://books andjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674.



translating image and text

619  [321]

Figure 18.  Dioscorides and student with a mandrake, 1229, Istanbul, Topkapı Museum Library, Ahmet III, 2127, fol. 2v. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. not conceived as a unidirectional transfer from a singular source to the recipient. Rather than directly copying a Late Antique model for the author portrait/presentation theme, the choice of a Middle Byzantine style for the depiction of Dioscorides may refer to a multidimensional coexistence between Greek and Arabic works. In addition to contact with scientific models, the choice of the Middle Byzantine/Christian model here may signal contact with visual culture completely outside the sphere of the scientific realm. The possible origins of this Arabic Dioscorides manuscript in the Jazira/northern Mesopotamia, an area associated with the celebrated Christian translators of the eighth and ninth centuries and with a vibrant local Christian population in the thirteenth century, may further help explain the choice of the motif and style of a Christian adaptation of the Late Antique author portrait theme. This speaks to the even greater

[322]  620

eva r. hoffman

Figure 19a complexities and fluidities of the translation process.45 Translation from Greek to Arabic retained the aura and authenticity of its ancient past while, at the same time, undergoing multiple medieval transformations and integrating scholarship and identities of the present.

  For a good summary of the role of Nestorian Christians in the translation of Greek texts into Arabic under the patronage of the ‘Abbasid elite, see Pormann and Savage-Smith, Early Islamic Medicine, 24-27; and George Saliba, “Competition and the Transmission of the Foreign Sciences: Ḥ unayn at the Abbasid Court,” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, 2 (2000), 85-101. On Jaziran Christians and art, see Bas Snelders, Identity and Christian-Muslim Interaction: Medieval Art of the Syrian Orthodox from the Mosul Area (Leiden: Brill, 2010); and R. Hillenbrand and S. Auld, eds., Ayyubid Jerusalem. The Holy City in Context, 1187-1250 (London: Altajir Trust, 2009), especially chapters by Anna Contadini and L.A. Hunt. 45



translating image and text

621  [323]

Figure 19b Figure 19.  (a, b) Dioscorides and Students, 1229, Istanbul, Topkapı Museum Library, Ahmet III, 2127, fol. 1v-2r. This figure is published in colour in the online edition of this journal, which can be accessed via http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/15700674. Conclusion The process of medieval translation and the mechanisms of cross-cultural transmission were complex and anything but linear. I propose an understanding of the complexities of translation and transmission in terms of the interactive exchange that governed them. A focus on exchange offers a greatly expanded arena for the process of translation and transmission that is not limited by geo-political boundaries. It is shaped instead by the contours of the space of translation, where the multiplicity and variety of connections converge and are mediated through translation. Such a reconfiguration of space allows for the study of Greek and Arabic manuscripts as an ongoing dialogue transpiring within the same sphere. It also accounts

[324]  622

eva r. hoffman

a model by al-Nātilī that had already incorporated many new and revised elements beyond the Dioscorides work. He takes great care, however, to place himself within the continuum of a chain of transmission, drawing on the authority of the past by naming the celebrated translators Ist ̣ifān b. Bāsīl and Ḥ unain b. Iṣhāq. Similarly, while speaking to the contemporary medieval present, the illustrations of these works also provided continuities to the past. This is expressed visually in the opening pages of Istanbul, Topkapi Museum Library, Ahmet III, 2127. The images in the book represent the adaptation and transformation of specific Late Antique portraits of Dioscorides. In one portrait scene, Dioscorides is shown with the mandrake. In the Late Antique Vienna codex, Dioscorides is accompanied by Heuresis, the Greek personification of discovery and inspiration, who holds up the mandrake with the dog attached to its root (Fig. 17). While still maintaining a connection with this theme, the translation in the Arabic manuscript shows the doctor Dioscorides conferring with a student over the medicinal mandrake, now without a dog, in a scene that is completely naturalized into the thirteenth-century Syro-Mesopotamian surroundings and visual style (Fig. 18). In the double frontispiece from the same Istanbul manuscript, the seated Dioscorides assumes the position of the patron, on whose approval and authority the copies will be disseminated, while two approaching figures present the volumes to the master for review (Fig. 19a and 19b). These standing figures may be the two local artist-scribes whose names are recorded in the manuscript, Bihnam ibn Mūsā ibn Yūsuf al-Mawṣilī al-Mutattabib and ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn ʿAli al-S. As I have discussed elsewhere, the portrait visually translates the message of transmission and continuity of Dioscorides’ work.44 The representation of the ancient doctor and the presentation scene are clearly modeled on a composition and figural type in images of Christ and evangelists in Byzantine or local Christian Syriac manuscripts. The juxtaposition of the Greek and Arab figures on facing pages visually represents the act of translation from Greek into Arabic, with the portrayal of Dioscorides clearly meant to evoke the Greek identity of the sage while the scribes are represented as Arabs, identified through physiognomy, dress and style as local contemporary men from Syria or the Jazira (northern Mesopotamia). Yet, as has been consistently argued in this paper, translation of text and image was 44   See Hoffman, “The Author Portrait in Thirteenth-Century Arabic Manuscripts,” 6-20. Saliba and Komaroff endorse these ideas in “Illustrated Books.”



translating image and text

623  [325]

for the numerous versions and the complexity of the compilations of individual manuscripts that are comprised of diverse sources, old and new, with complicated lineages. Above all, this model highlights translation as a dynamic process and as a scholarly endeavor that was fully engaged in and contributed to the scientific and visual discourses of the works translated. This process naturally entailed continuous revisions and additions. One of the great ironies is that the complexities of these medieval compilations and changes have at times prevented present-day scholars from identifying specific sources and locating particular routes of transmission. Change was intrinsic to the scholarly endeavor, but change did not negate the scientific heritage of the past. The space of translation accommodated the negotiations between the continuities of the ancient past and the innovations of the present. Therefore, while precise identifications are not always possible, it was the process and capacity of translation as a vital force that insured the continued life and success of the transmission of these illustrated scientific manuscripts. Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratitude to the editors, Heather Grossman and Alicia Walker, for their excellent suggestions and support.

Index Abbasid, 4–5, 23–24, 34, 39, 287 n. 1, 292–293, 322 n. 45 ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn ʿAli al-S., 324 Abd al-Rahman III, 292–293 Abū ʿAlī Simdjūrī, 296 Acre, 71–74, 125, 125 n. 5, 127, 131, 137, 147–148, 148 n. 56, 192 n. 16 Afghanistan, 19–20, 35, 38, 38 n. 23, 95 Alāʾ al-Dīn Kayqubādh, 112 al-Balkhi, 32–33 albarello, 41, 66, 66 n. 32, 69, 74, 74 n. 41, 82–83 al-Istakhri, 32–33 al-Masʿudi, 32–33 al-Yaʾqubi, 32 amphorae, 41, 52, 58–60, 60 n. 25, 62, 82 Anatolia, ii, 9, 42, 46, 60 n. 25, 82, 83 n. 53, 84–85, 88 n. 3, 90–92, 102, 104, 108, 110, 112, 113 n. 25, 114 Andronikos II, 164, 164 n. 32 appropriation, 2, 2 n. 2, 7 n. 6, 9, 13 n. 9, 30, 223 n. 4 Arabic, 15, 18 n. 1, 19–20, 20 n. 2, 32, 32 n. 19, 69 n. 39, 70 n. 39, 71–74, 87, 104, 109 n. 19, 110, 113 n. 25, 121 n. 7, 286–296, 287 n. 1, 288 n. 3, 288 n. 5, 289 n. 7, 290 nn. 9–10, 291 nn. 10–11, 294 n. 16, 296 n. 22, 301, 301 n. 28, 310, 316 n. 34, 317 n. 35, 317 n. 38, 318–319, 318 n. 40, 319 n. 42, 321–324, 322 n. 45, 324 n. 46 archaeology, 2 n. 2, 17, 25, 38 n. 24, 40, 43 n. 4, 51, 51 n. 15, 56 n. 20, 60 n. 25, 64 nn. 28–29, 82 n. 51, 92 n. 7, 104 n. 15, 122, 123 n. 14, 147 n. 55, 152 n. 9, 169 n. 48, 169 n. 51, 186 n. 6, 191 n. 15, 239 n. 6

architectural knowledge, 11, 183, 185 n. 3, 187–188, 218 architectural memory (see also memory), 11, 183–184, 187, 201 architecture, ii, 1, 2 n. 2, 5–11, 7 n. 6, 14, 18, 20 n. 4, 21, 23, 23 n. 6, 24 n. 11, 31 n. 18, 38 n. 23, 84–85, 88 n. 3, 90 n. 5, 104, 106, 108–109, 112–119, 121–123, 125, 125 n. 19, 127, 129–130, 132, 132 n. 32, 135, 139 n. 39, 139 n. 41, 140, 143, 145 n. 27, 147–150, 150 n. 2, 151 n. 5, 152, 152 nn. 9–11, 158–160, 160 n. 26, 162, 162 n. 30, 164, 169 n. 51, 170 nn. 51–52, 182–188, 185 n. 3, 186 nn. 6–7, 188 n. 11, 188 n. 13, 191 n. 14, 195 n. 20, 197 n. 22, 201, 201 nn. 25–26, 209 n. 29, 209 n. 31, 219, 221 n. 2, 276, 282 n. 55 Armenia, 41, 82, 104, 115, 127, 131, 137 Ayyubid, 4, 46, 66 nn. 31–32, 69 n. 39, 74 n. 41, 82, 110 n. 21, 322 n. 45 Badr al-Dīn Luʾlu, 88, 95, 104, 106, 110 Baghdad, 20, 32–34, 40, 96–97, 109, 286–287, 287 n. 1, 292–293, 294 n. 15 Balkans, 42 n. 1, 224, 242, 242 n. 16, 264 Bihnam ibn Mūsā ibn Yūsuf al-Mawsị lī al-Mutattabib, 324 book culture, 286, 293 books, 24, 104, 137, 144–145, 147, 267, 282 n. 55, 286, 291 n. 10, 291 n. 12, 296 nn. 20–21, 301 n. 28, 316 n. 34, 317 n. 35, 324 n. 46 British Isles, 26, 32 Bukhara, 20–21, 23–24, 38, 296 Bulgaria, 46–47, 46 n. 8, 52, 60

ii

index

Burgundy, 197, 200 burial ritual, 41–42, 52, 54, 59 n. 23 Byzantine, 2 n. 2, 4–5, 8–10, 12, 13 n. 9, 15, 41, 60 n. 25, 62 n. 28, 64 n. 28, 83, 97–98, 98 n. 13, 100, 102–104, 102 n. 14, 104 n. 15, 108, 113, 116 n. 1, 117–119, 124 n. 16, 129–130, 129 n. 26, 141, 144–145, 144 n. 45, 145 n. 47, 146 n. 52, 147–155, 150 n. 1, 152 n. 11, 153 n. 13, 154 n. 15, 154 n. 18, 155 n. 19, 157–158, 159 n. 26, 160, 160 nn. 26–27, 162 n. 31, 164, 164 n. 32, 166 n. 41, 174, 176 n. 62, 179 n. 62, 181–182, 181 n. 65, 185 n. 3, 186, 209 n. 31, 217, 222–224, 241, 245, 250, 257–258, 261 nn. 36–37, 262, 279, 282–283, 282 n. 55, 287, 288 n. 5, 290 nn. 9–10, 291–295, 291 n. 10, 294 n. 15, 297, 297 n. 24, 310 n. 31, 321, 324 Byzantium, ii, 2 n. 1, 7 n. 6, 42, 46–47, 46 n. 8, 84, 106, 110, 129 n. 26, 150 nn. 1–2, 154–155, 154 n. 18, 155 n. 19, 162, 162 n. 31, 185 n. 3, 209 n. 31, 220, 222 n. 3, 224 n. 5, 245, 282 n. 55, 288 n. 5, 290 n. 10, 291 n. 11, 294 n. 15, 297 n. 24 Cairo, 20, 34, 69 n. 39, 90, 90 n. 5, 95, 110, 110 n. 21 Calergi, 165, 170–171, 171 nn. 54–55, 173, 173 n. 55 Candia, 151 n. 8, 152, 155–156, 155 nn. 18–19, 159 n. 25, 166 n. 40, 169, 169 n. 49, 171, 174 n. 58, 176, 179 catholicism, 171 Central Asia, 3 n. 1, 4, 7–8, 17–18, 20 n. 2, 20 n. 4, 21, 23–26, 31, 34, 38–39, 39 n. 26, 40, 56 n. 21, 74 n. 30, 113 n. 25 ceramics, 9, 20–21, 23, 60 n. 25, 64, 64 n. 28, 66 n. 32, 84–85, 88 n. 3, 92, 102 Champagne, 194, 197, 197 n. 24, 200–201, 204

champlevé, 85–87, 88 n. 3, 90–94, 101–102, 106 Charlemagne, 4, 75, 75 n. 44 China, 7, 17, 25 Chungul Kurgan, ii, 8, 41–42, 43 n. 5, 44, 46 n. 7, 49–55, 49 n. 13, 51 n. 15, 57–59, 61, 63, 65, 76, 77 n. 45, 78–80 churches, 7, 10, 125, 129, 131, 137, 143–145, 146 nn. 51–52, 149–150, 152–155, 154 n. 17, 157–160, 158 n. 23, 159 n. 23, 159 n. 26, 160 nn. 26–27, 160 n. 29, 162, 164, 164 n. 32, 166–171, 166 nn. 39–40, 169 nn. 50–51, 171 n. 54, 173–174, 173 n. 57, 174 n. 58, 176, 179, 179 n. 65, 181–184, 194, 195 n. 20, 197, 197 n. 24, 201 n. 25, 203, 204 n. 28, 209, 209 n. 31, 216–218 Cilicia, 82, 98, 115 Cistercian, 42, 158 n. 23, 183–184, 192, 192 nn. 17–18, 194–195, 194 n. 19, 195 n. 20, 197, 200, 200 n. 25, 201 n. 25, 204, 204 n. 28, 208 n. 29, 209 n. 29, 217, 221 nn. 1–2, 272 coins, 8, 17, 26, 32, 34–35 Cologne, 132, 132 n. 32, 137, 145 community, 10, 139–140, 143, 145, 151–152, 151 n. 8, 159, 162, 166, 169, 171, 176 Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos, 293 Constantinople (see also Istanbul ), ii, 4, 8, 40, 42, 46, 82, 84, 97, 98 n. 13, 102–103, 104 n. 15, 106, 113, 118–119, 122, 145, 148, 154, 154 n. 16, 164, 164 n. 32, 192 n. 18, 222, 242, 242 n. 16, 257, 264, 266 n. 43, 292, 295, 310 copying, 223, 258, 263–264, 283, 296, 321 Cordoba, 20, 292–293 Corfu, 146 Crete, ii, 7, 10, 72, 149–155, 150 n. 4, 151 n. 5, 153 nn. 12–13, 154 nn. 14–16, 155 n. 19, 158–159, 158 n. 23, 159 n. 23, 159 n. 25,



index

160 n. 29, 161–162, 164–173, 164 n. 32, 165 n. 33, 166 nn. 39–41, 168 n. 45, 169 n. 49, 169 n. 51, 170 n. 51, 171 n. 54, 173 n. 55, 176, 179, 179 n. 65, 181–182, 181 n. 65 Crimea, 45–46, 47 n. 9, 51, 60, 60 n. 25, 69, 83, 83 n. 53 Crusader, ii, 4–5, 11, 41–42, 182, 116, 119, 121, 123, 125, 125 nn. 17–18, 125 nn. 20–21, 130, 135, 137, 140, 148 n. 56, 183, 185–186, 192, 192 n. 16, 219, 310, 310 n. 31 cultural memory (see also memory), 11, 183–184, 184 n. 2, 187–188, 192, 216 Cuman, 41–42, 42 n. 1, 46–47, 46 n. 8, 47 nn. 10–11, 74, 74 n. 40, 81 n. 49 Cyprus, ii, 7 n. 6, 10, 69 n. 39, 112, 115–137, 116 n. 1, 118 n. 4, 119 n. 5, 121 nn. 7–9, 123 n. 15, 124 n. 17, 125 n. 22, 127 nn. 23–24, 129 n. 26, 131 nn. 28–30, 132 n. 32, 138 n. 35, 138 n. 37, 139–148, 139 nn. 39–40, 141 n. 42, 145 nn. 46–48, 146 n. 50, 146 nn. 52–53, 150 n. 1, 152 n. 10, 162 n. 30, 184, 186, 188–189, 218–219, 282 n. 55 De Materia Medica, 12, 286, 289–293, 294 n. 16, 295–296, 297 n. 24, 305, 312, 319 Denmark, 8, 26–28, 34 Dioscorides, 12, 15, 286, 288 n. 3, 289–297, 290 nn. 9–10, 291 nn. 10–11, 293 n. 14, 294 n. 16, 295 n. 23, 296 n. 23, 301, 305, 310, 312, 316 n. 34, 318–321, 318 n. 40, 323–324 donors, 165 n. 33, 171 n. 54 drawing, ii, 11–13, 49 n. 13, 112, 132, 132 n. 32, 137, 145, 162 n. 31, 184, 201, 220–221, 221 nn. 1–2, 222 n. 3, 223–224, 239–244, 243 n. 20, 244 nn. 22–23, 250–252, 250 n. 29, 258, 261–267, 267 n. 44, 272–273, 273 n. 49, 276–284, 277 n. 52, 282 n. 55, 324

iii

earthenware, 85–87, 90–92, 94 Egypt, 42, 47, 47 n. 10, 52, 69 n. 39, 71–74, 75 n. 43, 115, 119, 301 ephemeral architecture, 9, 84–85, 108, 112–113 ethno-medicine, 41, 77 n. 47, 79 Eudes of Montreuil, 121 Europe, 1, 2 nn. 1–2, 3–5, 9, 17, 18 n. 1, 21, 26, 28, 34–35, 34 n. 22, 38–39, 38 n. 25, 41, 47 nn. 9–10, 48, 52 n. 18, 60 n. 25, 69, 71–75, 75 n. 42, 75 n. 44, 119, 127, 148, 154, 186, 186 n. 7, 220, 222–224, 287 n. 1, 310 Eustorge de Montaigu, 124 exchange, 1, 1 n. 1, 2 n. 1, 3–6, 7 n. 7, 8–9, 17, 25, 26 n. 14, 41–42, 69, 83–84, 181, 185, 185 n. 3, 187, 204, 219, 221–224, 263, 286–287, 289, 294, 301, 310, 318, 323 Famagusta, 116, 123, 130–148, 131 n. 28, 132 n. 32, 188–189, 191 fashion, 3, 10, 14, 149, 174, 176, 179, 181–182, 216 feasting, 41, 62 n. 27, 75, 75 n. 44, 81–83, 82 nn. 50–51 France, i, 31, 116, 119, 119 n. 6, 122–123, 125, 127, 130, 140, 148, 188, 190, 192–193, 197–201, 197 n. 21, 197 n. 24, 206, 281 fresco, 138–139, 141–145, 147, 154 n. 18, 173, 179 fur, 17, 25–26, 26 n. 14, 30, 33–34, 39, 42, 82 n. 52, 83, 83 n. 54, 92, 95, 104 Fur Route, ii, 8, 17–19, 25–26, 26 n. 14, 39–40, 39 n. 27 Genoa, 42, 72, 117, 127 n. 23, 137, 149, 173 Genoese, 74 n. 40, 115, 131, 137–140, 148 Geoffrey de Villehardouin, 191–192, 194 Georgia, 41, 46–47, 46 n. 8, 81, 83 Gifts, 41, 82, 113, 147 Giorgio della Porta, 166

iv

index

glass, 3, 106, 117 gold, 39, 39 n. 26, 51, 56, 98, 108–109, 114, 276 Gothic, 10, 15, 117–119, 119 n. 5, 121, 121 nn. 7–9, 123 n. 15, 124 n. 17, 127 n. 24, 129 n. 26, 131 n. 28, 132, 132 n. 32, 138 n. 35, 138 n. 37, 141 n. 42, 147, 149, 150 n. 2, 152–153, 152 n. 10, 162, 169–170, 174, 176, 179, 181–182, 186, 186 n. 7, 197 n. 22, 208 n. 29, 216, 222, 281 grave goods, ii, 8, 32–33, 41–42, 43 n. 4, 46, 49, 49 n. 13, 53–54, 69, 75 Greece, 2 n. 2, 11, 64 n. 28, 144, 149, 150 n. 2, 152 nn. 9–11, 158 n. 23, 159 n. 25, 160 n. 26, 164 n. 32, 179, 183–184, 186 n. 6, 191, 191 n. 15, 192 nn. 17–18, 193–194, 201, 204, 210–215 Guy de Lusignan, 116, 123, 125 Haifa, 125, 192 Hebrew, i, 288 Helena Palaiologina, 145 Henry II, 131 Hildesheim, 222 n. 3, 272, 276–280, 276 n. 50 Holy Land, 115, 119 n. 6, 123, 125, 125 n. 18, 125 n. 20, 127, 137, 148, 192 n. 16 Hugh IV, 118, 122, 131 Ḥ unain b. Isḥāq, 292 Hungary, 46, 52, 281 hybridity, 2, 2 n. 2, 130 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓ āhir, 110 Ibn al-Faqih, 32 Ibn Bībī, 110, 112, 112 n. 24, 113 n. 25 Ibn Fadlan, 32, 32 n. 19, 33 n. 21 Ibn Hawqal, 32–33 Ibn Jubayr, 108–109, 108 n. 18, 109 n. 20, 112 Ibn Juljul, 292–295, 293 n. 14 Ibn Khordadbeh, 32–33 Ibn Miskawayh, 33 Ibn Rusta, 32

Ibn Sina, 20 iconography, 2 n. 2, 34 n. 22, 119, 122, 130, 144–147, 152, 154–155, 165 n. 38, 191 n. 14, 220, 222 n. 3, 223, 244, 251, 258, 277 n. 52, 281–282 icons, 3, 129, 145, 147, 147 n. 54, 152, 154, 154 n. 18, 155 n. 19, 176 identity, 5, 7–8, 7 n. 6, 20, 25, 46 n. 7, 47 n. 10, 51 n. 17, 54, 115, 117, 119 n. 6, 121–122, 127, 137, 147, 147 n. 54, 149, 151, 152 n. 11, 164, 186–188, 203 n. 27, 219, 258, 264, 277, 277 n. 52, 322 n. 45, 324 imitation, 43, 171, 182 India, 2 n. 1, 3 n. 2, 4, 72–73, 109 n. 19, 296 interactivity, 291 Ioannes Pagomenos, 169, 169 n. 50 Ionas Palamas, 174 n. 59, 176 Iran, 19–21, 20 nn. 2–4, 24–25, 29, 34, 38, 73, 95, 98, 110, 112 Isfahan, 24 Islam, 2 n. 1, 20, 20 n. 2, 32 n. 19, 33, 62 n. 27, 70 n. 39, 104 n. 16, 110, 165 n. 34, 288 n. 3, 289 n. 7, 290 n. 10, 292 n. 13, 293 n. 14 Islamic, i, 2 n. 1, 4, 5 n. 4, 7 n. 8, 8–9, 12, 13 n. 9, 14 n. 11, 15, 17, 18 n. 1, 19–21, 20 n. 4, 23–27, 23 n. 6, 24 n. 9, 24 nn. 11–12, 31–32, 31 n. 18, 32 n. 19, 34, 34 n. 22, 38 n. 23, 39–41, 66, 66 n. 31, 66 n. 34, 68, 70 n. 39, 74 n. 41, 88 n. 3, 95 n. 10, 96–97, 100–102, 104, 110, 115, 185 n. 3, 287, 287 nn. 1–2, 288 n. 5, 289 n. 7, 291, 291 n. 10, 294 nn. 16–17, 296 n. 22, 316 n. 34, 318, 319 n. 41, 322 n. 45 Israel, 125, 184, 192 Istanbul (see also Constantinople), 102–103, 104 n. 15, 105, 257, 319, 321, 323–324 Istịfān b. Basil, 292–293, 294 n. 16, 324 Italy, 69, 71–72, 127, 146, 151, 154, 155 n. 19 ivory, 3, 28–29



index

James II, 145 Japan, 21, 31 Jerusalem, 66 n. 31, 71–74, 123, 125, 130–132, 132 n. 30, 135, 138, 138 nn. 35–37, 139 n. 38, 277 n. 52, 322 n. 45 jewelry, 35, 102 Jews, i, 151, 165 n. 34, 277 n. 52, 294 John di Conti, 118, 127 John II de Lusignan, 145 Juliana Anicia, 295, 297 n. 23 Kayseri, 110, 112–113 Kazakhstan, 19, 56 n. 21 King Janus, 146 Konya, 91, 92 n. 7, 98 n. 13, 112–114 landscape, 3, 43, 45, 152, 160, 188, 258, 296 n. 22, 316 n. 34 Latin, ii, 2 nn. 1–2, 4, 15, 46, 69 n. 39, 82, 102, 115–118, 121–123, 122 n. 10, 127, 129 nn. 25–26, 130–131, 130 n. 27, 131 n. 28, 131 n. 30, 132 n. 32, 135, 137, 139–141, 145 n. 47, 146, 148–155, 150 n. 2, 150 n. 4, 152 nn. 10–11, 158–159, 158 n. 23, 159 n. 25, 162, 164, 164 n. 32, 165 n. 37, 166, 166 n. 40, 168–170, 169 nn. 48–49, 169 n. 51, 171 n. 54, 174, 176, 179, 181–182, 192 n. 18, 203, 217, 286, 287 n. 1, 288, 288 n. 5, 291 n. 10, 293, 295, 310, 310 n. 31, 318 Laurentius Maripiero, 176 Louis IX, 112, 119, 121, 121 n. 7 Ludof von Suchen, 137 Lusignan, 7 n. 7, 115–117, 119, 119 n. 6, 121, 123, 125, 125 n. 22, 127, 130, 137–140, 139 n. 39, 144–145, 145 n. 47, 147–148, 188, 191 Mamluk, 4, 47, 47 n. 10, 52, 69 n. 39, 90 n. 5, 95 n. 10, 96–97, 110, 137 Manuel Kantakouzenos, 144 manuscripts, 3, 7, 14–15, 104, 122, 145–147, 146 n. 50–51, 222 n. 3, 244,

v

261, 281–282, 287, 288 n. 3, 288 n. 6, 289–291, 290 nn. 9–10, 291 n. 10, 291 n. 12, 295–296, 297 n. 24, 297 n. 26, 301, 310, 316–317, 317 n. 38, 318 n. 40, 319, 323–325, 324 n. 44 Marin Falier, 165, 170 masons, 7 n. 8, 11, 14, 130, 132, 137, 140, 153, 162 n. 31, 169–170, 169 n. 49, 173–174, 183, 185, 185 n. 3, 187, 197, 200–201, 201 n. 25, 203–204, 203 n. 27, 209, 216–219 mediation, 13, 286, 317 medicine, 41, 62 n. 27, 69 n. 39, 70 n. 39, 74, 79 n. 47, 86, 287 n. 1, 288 n. 3, 288 n. 5, 289 n. 7, 290 n. 9, 294 nn. 16–17, 296 n. 22, 310 n. 31, 316 n. 34, 319 n. 41, 322 n. 45 Mediterranean, i, ii, 1, 1 n. 1, 2 n. 1, 3, 3 n. 2, 4–12, 5 n. 5, 14 n. 11, 17, 19, 40–42, 45, 47–48, 47 n. 9, 64 n. 28, 69 n. 39, 82, 83 n. 53, 115–116, 135, 150 n. 2, 151 n. 5, 152 n. 11, 154 n. 14, 158 n. 22, 159 n. 23, 159 n. 25, 169, 169 n. 51, 179 n. 63, 182–183, 185–188, 185 n. 3, 218–219, 222, 224, 286–287, 288 n. 3, 289 n. 8, 290, 294, 310 memory (see also architectural memory, cultural memory; visual memory), ii, 3, 11–13, 80, 139, 183–184, 184 n. 2, 187–188, 188 n. 11, 192, 201, 201 n. 26, 204, 216–220, 223, 258, 262–263, 281, 282 n. 55, 283–284 merchants, i, 116, 131, 137 Mesopotamia, ii, 9, 84, 96 n. 11, 97, 106, 110, 114, 290 n. 10, 321, 324 metalwork, 3, 7–8, 17, 35, 75 Mistra, 144–146, 145 n. 47, 148 mobility, 3 n. 2, 85, 114 modelbooks, 220–221, 281–282, 284 monasteries, 146, 157, 158 n. 23, 159, 166 n. 40, 174 n. 58, 181, 181 n. 66, 192 n. 17, 200, 201 n. 25, 208 n. 29, 272

vi

index

Mongol Empire, 5 Mongols, 42 n. 2, 56 n. 22, 82 n. 52 Morea, 7 n. 6, 145, 152 n. 11, 159 n. 25, 170 n. 52, 183, 191–192, 195, 216–219 mosques, 112, 138 Mosul, 88–89, 95, 95 n. 9, 104, 106, 106 n. 17, 108–109, 114, 322 n. 45 muqarnas, 95, 97, 104 Muslim, i, 2 n. 1, 7 n. 6, 20, 32–33, 35, 84, 127, 130, 165 n. 34, 209 n. 31, 289 n. 6, 294, 322 n. 45 Nicholas Mesarites, 97 Nicolaos Plachina, 166 Nicosia, 116, 118–121, 122 n. 10, 123–126, 124 nn. 16–17, 128–129, 129 nn. 25–26, 130 n. 27, 131–132, 135, 137, 139, 146–148 numismatics, 17, 31, 34 n. 22, 40 ornament, 3, 11, 27, 64, 87, 90, 95, 96 n. 11, 108, 123, 125, 148, 160, 162, 185, 204 Orthodox, 15, 115–118, 122, 129–131, 137, 139–145, 147, 149, 151–152, 154–155, 154 n. 17, 157, 159, 159 n. 24, 160 n. 27, 162, 164, 166, 166 n. 40, 168, 171, 174, 179, 181–182, 203, 217, 223, 322 n. 45 Ottoman, 5, 7 n. 6, 42 n. 1, 69 n. 39, 82 n. 50, 145, 147–149, 164, 169 n. 51 painters, 84, 144, 148, 155, 155 n. 19, 169, 176 painting, 90 n. 5, 104 n. 16, 115–116, 118, 122–123, 129, 139, 139 n. 39, 141, 143–148, 144 n. 45, 145 nn. 46–47, 146 n. 53, 154 n. 15, 155 n. 20, 159 n. 26, 160 n. 26, 160 n. 28, 166 n. 40, 171 n. 54, 174, 176, 179 n. 62, 181 n. 65, 182, 185 n. 5, 222, 244–246, 257, 261–264, 272, 276–281, 277 n. 52, 288 n. 3, 291 n. 10, 291 n. 12, 316 n. 34, 317 n. 38

palaces, ii, 7, 9, 84–85, 90, 95–96, 98, 101, 104, 108, 112, 114, 131, 155, 158, 296 n. 22 Palestine, 218 patronage, 3, 20, 139, 149, 153, 160, 168, 169 n. 51, 170, 173–174, 192, 297, 322 n. 45 pavilions, 96, 98, 106, 108, 110, 112–113, 113 n. 25 Peloponnese, 144–147, 152, 183–184, 186, 192, 195, 203 n. 27, 208 n. 29, 217 Persia, 2 n. 1, 19–20, 20 n. 4, 21 n. 5, 24, 33, 98, 104, 319 Peter I of Cyprus, 144 Peter of Thomas, 118 pharmacology, 41, 70 n. 39, 79 n. 47, 290, 290 n. 9 plaster, 84, 90, 95, 106, 143 Poitiers, 123 Polovsti, 41 portability, 5 n. 4, 14 n. 12, 114, 220, 223, 263 post-colonial, 2 Qilij Arslān II, 108, 113 Qıpčaqs, 8–9, 43, 45 n. 6, 46–47, 46 n. 8, 47 nn. 9–11, 51, 51 n. 17, 56, 77, 83 rayonnant, 121, 132, 188 n. 13 reception, 3, 10, 13 n. 9, 35, 69 n. 39, 113–114, 122 n. 10, 155 n. 19, 184 n. 2, 224, 287 n. 1, 291 n. 10 Reims, 129, 132, 188, 190–191 Renaissance, 7, 16, 20 n. 4, 21 n. 5, 119 n. 5, 121 nn. 7–9, 123 n. 15, 124 n. 17, 127 n. 24, 131 n. 28, 132 n. 32, 138 n. 35, 138 n. 37, 141 n. 42, 146, 150 n. 2, 151 n. 5, 153 n. 12, 181 n. 66, 182 n. 66, 285, 317 n. 38 Rethymno, 155, 169, 181 nn. 65–66, 182 n. 66 Rhineland, 83 Richard the Lionheart, 116 Romanesque, 121, 186, 186 n. 7, 222, 239 n. 6, 276



index

Rus’, 18 n. 1, 41, 43 n. 5, 46–47, 46 n. 8, 47 n. 11, 49 n. 13, 51 n. 17, 52, 75, 75 n. 45, 80, 83 Russia, 8, 17, 24–25, 26 n. 14, 32 n. 19, 33 n. 21, 34–35, 34 n. 22, 49, 83 Saljūqa Khātūn, 108–109, 112 Samanid, ii, 8, 17–26, 20 nn. 3–4, 29–40, 34 n. 22, 38 n. 23 Samarkand (Samarqand), 20, 24, 35, 90, 90 n. 5, 95, 296 San Marco, ii, 253, 264–272, 265 n. 41, 266 n. 43 Sasanian, 2 n. 1, 20–21, 29–31, 29 n. 17, 31 n. 18 Saxony, 223–224, 241, 264, 272, 277 n. 52, 279 scale, 3, 9, 12, 14–15, 14 n. 12, 34–35, 117, 140, 144, 204 n. 28, 223–224, 258, 264, 272, 276–277, 281, 283 Scandinavia, 7–8, 17–18, 26, 28, 31, 34, 34 n. 22 science, ii, 70 n. 39, 288 n. 5, 293, 318, 322 n. 45 sculpture, 51 n. 16, 115, 121–123, 122 n. 10, 125, 129, 132, 147, 149–150, 150 n. 2, 152 n. 10, 169–170, 169 n. 51, 171 n. 54, 173, 181, 192, 204, 216–217, 264, 266–267, 266 n. 43, 281 Seljuk (Seljuq), 4, 24, 42, 46, 77, 82, 83 n. 53, 88 n. 3, 90, 91 n. 6, 92 n. 6, 92 n. 8, 96, 108, 110, 112–114, 112 n. 22 senmurv, 22, 29, 31, 31 n. 18, 35, 39 Serbia, 60, 244, 246 silk, 21, 23, 25, 30, 31, 31 n. 18, 35, 38–39, 39 nn. 26–27, 109 Silk Road, 7, 46 n. 8 Silk Route, 19, 25, 39 n. 27, 40 silver, ii, 8, 17–18, 21–22, 25–29, 26 nn. 14–15, 31, 34–38, 34 n. 22, 41, 55, 75 n. 44, 114 Sinope, 60, 60 n. 25, 82, 83 n. 53 Slavs, 32, 34, 49 n. 13 Soviet Union, 24–25

vii

Spain, 23, 32, 165 n. 34, 292–293, 296 n. 22 Stephanus Saclichi, 165 steppe, ii, 8–9, 34, 41–43, 45–46, 46 n. 8, 47 n. 11, 49, 49 n. 11, 49 n. 13, 51–52, 51 n. 14, 51 n. 16, 52 n. 18, 56, 56 n. 20, 60, 60 n. 25, 62 n. 27, 74 n. 40, 77, 77 n. 46, 79–83 style, 10–13, 15, 21, 26 n. 16, 27–28, 39–40, 64, 90, 113, 115–119, 121–123, 129–132, 135, 137, 139–141, 144–149, 147 n. 54, 153, 158, 176, 183, 186, 191, 204, 216–217, 222, 241, 264, 266, 276, 278, 321, 324 Sultan Baybars, 110 Syria, 38, 42, 46, 64, 66, 66 n. 32, 69, 69 n. 39, 71–73, 75, 75 n. 43, 82, 98–99, 110, 125, 131, 301, 324 Syro-Palestine, 130, 148, 186 Tajikistan, 19 taste, 3–4, 9, 11, 13–14, 21, 35, 52, 84–85, 85 n. 1, 98, 114, 149, 176, 181–182, 216 Tehran, 29 textiles, 3, 7–8, 18, 21, 25, 29, 31, 35, 38–39, 39 nn. 25–27, 46 n. 7, 82 n. 52, 114 Theodore Palaiologos, 145 trade, ii, 2 n. 1, 3–4, 7–9, 17–18, 25, 26 n. 14, 32–35, 39–42, 45, 47, 69–70, 69 n. 39, 72, 74 n. 40, 82, 83 nn. 53–54, 92, 108, 113, 115, 150 n. 1, 187 translation, 1, 2 n. 1, 12, 15, 32 n. 19, 43 n. 5, 74 n. 40, 97, 98 n. 12, 108, 286–297, 287 n. 1, 288 nn. 5–6, 289 n. 6, 289 n. 8, 294 n. 16, 301, 310, 316–319, 318 n. 40, 322–325, 322 n. 45 transmission, ii, 1, 3–5, 7–15, 7 n. 8, 17–19, 26, 31, 35, 38–40, 84–85, 110, 115, 117, 119, 123, 137, 144, 147–148, 183–185, 185 n. 3, 187–188, 192, 201, 204, 217–218, 220, 222 n. 3, 223, 278, 281–282, 284, 286–290,

viii

index

288 n. 3, 292–293, 310, 317–318, 322 n. 45, 323–324–325 Trebizond, 46, 60, 82, 83 n. 53 tumulus, 8, 41–43, 43 n. 5, 52, 54, 56, 64, 77 Turkey, 85–87, 91–93, 98, 257 Turkmenistan, 19, 25 Ukraine, 8–9, 41, 43–44, 49, 51 nn. 14–15, 56 n. 20, 60 n. 25, 61, 63, 64 nn. 29–30, 65, 75 n. 45, 76, 77 n. 46, 78 Umayyad, 4, 293 Uzbekistan, 19–20, 23, 25 n. 13, 35 Venice, 42, 71, 73–74, 117, 137, 145, 145 n. 48, 149–150, 151 n. 5, 155 n. 19, 158 n. 22, 159 n. 25, 171, 173, 179 n. 63, 181, 222, 224, 242, 253, 264–266, 265 n. 41, 268–271 vernacular architecture, ii, 10, 149, 152, 162, 162 n. 30, 164, 170 nn. 51–52, 182

Vikings, 17–19, 18 n. 1, 25–26, 26 n. 16, 32, 32 nn. 19–20, 34–35, 34 n. 22, 39–40 Villard de Honnecourt, 265 n. 42, 281, 281 n. 54 visual culture, ii, 2 n. 2, 3, 10, 115, 131, 137, 291 n. 10, 321 visual memory (see also memory), 220, 283–284 Wolfenbüttel Musterbuch, ii, 11–12, 220–239, 221 n. 2, 239 n. 7, 241, 244, 247–249, 254–257, 259–261, 264, 266 n. 43, 267, 272, 277, 279, 281–282, 284 workshops, 11, 137, 170, 182 Zaraka, 183–184, 192, 192 n. 17, 194–197, 194 n. 19, 200–209, 208 n. 29, 216–217 Zoroastrianism, 21