Virgin Territories

In this wide-ranging conversation, David Serlin (University of California, San Diego) and Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine) discuss questions of sexual consent and sexual violence in the visual culture of early Christian art as inspired by Betancourt’s recent book, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages (2020). Drawing on rare manuscripts and other objects of worship from institutional archives, Betancourt analyzes and contextualizes numerous Byzantine visual texts featuring often confounding representations of sexual acts or gendered behavior that later Christian interpreters would treat as conventional or settled. For Betancourt, early Christian authors and artists were far more open to troubling and experimenting with depictions of sexual and gendered narratives than many medievalists (and, importantly, non-medievalists) have been trained to see.

Polityka rosyjskiej Cerkwi prawosławnej wobec cudownych obrazów katolickiej proweniencji na wschodnich terenach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej w XIX w. na kilku przykładach

Due to the liquidation of the Union in 1839 and the transfer of Catholic churches to the Orthodox Church after the rebellions of 1830–1831 and 1863–1864 in the territories of the former Polish -Lithuanian Commonwealth which were incorporated into the Russian Empire, a great deal of sacred art pieces of western -Christian art became property of the Orthodox Church. As per directions of the Church authorities, the images of Jesus Christ, Our Lady and the Saints of the Undivided Church could remain in Orthodox churches, while those of Catholic and Greek -Catholic Saints were to be given back to Catholics. The images that were left in Orthodox churches were to be changed to meet the Orthodox rules. That usually meant addition of an inscription or repainting of the image partially or fully. The situation was different in relation to miraculous images. After being transferred to the Orthodox churches they remained unchanged, even in the cases when their iconography was unacceptable for the Orthodox Church or when they represented Catholic Saints, such as Ignatius Loyola or Anthony of Padua. This was related to the effect miraculous images had on local communities. The cult of miraculous images was above -confessional; believers of different Christian confessions went on pilgrimages to them. Leaving these images as is they were aimed at converting Catholics to Orthodoxy to strengthen the position of the Russian Empire on the land of the former Polish - -Lithuanian Commonwealth. To justify the functioning of western -Christian images in the Orthodox Church, both new legends were developed stating the images had Orthodox origins and were taken by Catholics, and attempts of theological rationale were made. These activities were successful: the images that survived through the disasters of the 20th century are still in the cult of the Orthodox Church along with the legends of their Orthodox origin developed in the 19th century.

The Medieval Armenian Symbol of Eternity in the Art of the Twelfth-Century Italian Sculptor Nicholaus: A Veiled Performance

The medieval Armenian symbol of eternity – a whirl sign – is engraved in the forehead of five bull sculptures dated to the first half of the twelfth century, attributable to the workshop of the Italian sculptor Nicholaus. The whirl is an ancient sacred symbol associated with eternal life, not specific to any religion or culture, that has persisted for millennia. The following carvings display a closely resembling geometric whirl engravure: in the apse frieze of Koenigslutter Kaiserdom (Lower Saxony), in the pulpit of Sacra di Carpi (Modena), in the “Creation of animals” panel of S. Zeno Basilica (Verona), in the Verona Cathedral porch, and in the Ferrara Cathedral narthex. This symbol, generally ignored by Western Christian art after the Carolingian period, was revisited by the Nicholaus workshop. We argue that the small, hitherto overlooked whirl engraving made by these artists in the bull head of Koenigslutter, Carpi, Ferrara and Verona was a veiled ornamental performance displaying the symbol of eternity to signify the concept of life in the hereafter. Here the immediate inspiration source was likely Armenian, because in the early twelfth century the geometric whirl symbol of eternity was foreign to Italian religious decorations while it was deeply rooted in Armenian Christian art. Nicholaus and his atelier were familiar with the leaved cross and the whirl – traditional Armenian motifs symbolizing life in the hereafter – and were inspired by them in some of their works. In the decorative reliefs of S. Zeno Basilica façade, Verona Cathedral porch and Koenigslutter Kaiserdom frieze, various examples of the geometric whirl metamorphosis into naturalistic foliate whirl are extant, witnessing the Nicholaus atelier’s versatile sculptural performance in conceptualizing everlasting life.

Imagery in Jewish and Christian Ritual Settings

During the Roman period, Jewish and Christian communities throughout the Mediterranean had a complex relationship with the visual culture of the larger Greco-Roman world. Both groups, in their attempts to be set apart as distinct ethnic or religious entities while at the same time remaining integrated within their surrounding social landscape, expressed themselves in different times and places along a spectrum of selective adoption, adaptation, and rejection of the artistic forms used by their neighbors. For instance, owing to a shared hostility toward pagan idolatry, both communities in the early part of this period largely avoided figural iconography (they instead drew in limited ways upon the non-figural artistic repertoire of local Hellenistic and Roman society), but by later centuries distinctly Jewish and Christian art began to emerge and incorporate a fuller range of Greco-Roman motifs for use in a variety of communal settings.

The Iconography of Early Christian Roman Art

Focusing on works of art produced in the third and early fourth centuries, this chapter considers works in four media—sculpture, painting, mosaic, and textile—in order to illuminate how artists working for Christian patrons adapted and ultimately transformed earlier Roman visual traditions. While some traditional Roman media such as sculpture went out of fashion in the period, iconographies were transferred from three- to two-dimensional forms such as mosaics, which became popular in church interiors. Christian image programs in spaces of worship as well as burial used visual strategies such as typology, the comparison of events from the Old and New Testaments, to present statements of belief, including the hope for salvation after death. Many of the images of “Christian art” were also popular with pagans and Jews but took on particular meanings in the context of spaces used by Christians.

«Успение Богородицы» в средневековом искусстве Армении и Руси

The article is devoted to parallel identical phenomena in Armenian and Russian art, phenomena that are not due to mutual influence, but reflect similar processes in the development of Eastern Christian art in territories that are quite distant from each other. In the context of the study of the origins and development, the general features of the iconography of the Dormition of the Theotokos in Armenian and Russian art are considered, namely the iconographic version of this scene with the episode of the Punishment of Sophoniah (Avfonia). Its appearance was associated with the tendency to expand and enrich iconographic schemes with narrative and didactic elements, with a freer use of non-canonical apocryphal texts as sources of iconography.

Islamic States and the Middle East

Byzantine art, born in the Middle East, is still alive in the area. The oldest Christians in the world—Armenians, Copts, Georgians, Syrian, and Eastern Orthodox—still have vital communities in the Middle East that express themselves through later forms of “Byzantine” artistic language. Byzantine art developed through four historical periods in this area: (1) early formation and growth in the Middle East; (2) art under the Muslim conquest; (3) the continuing Christian art under Islamic domination; and (4) the Crusader period. Despite these cataclysmic changes, an artistic language led by Constantinople developed in this area and survives in the modern world, somewhat erratically, but distinctive nonetheless.

The Sky, Sun, Moon and Stars in The Renaissance Churches Wood Carving from Southwestern Bulgaria (Semantic aspects)

The study presents images of the sky, sun, moon and stars in Christian art from Southwestern Bulgaria. Emphasis is placed on the semantics of the images and the cultural and historical layers in them. The author has studied the connection between the images of the celestial bodies and the beliefs about them from the Bulgarian folk mythology.