Download PDF | (Routledge Research in Art History) Christiane Esche-Ramshorn - East-West Artistic Transfer through Rome, Armenia and the Silk Road_ Sharing St. Peter’s-Routledge (2021).
239 Pages
This book examines the arts and artistic exchanges at the “Christian Oriental” fringes of Europe, especially Armenia.
It starts with the architecture, history and inhabitants of the lesser known pilgrim compounds at the Vatican in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, of Hungary, Germany, but namely those of the most ancient of Churches, the Churches of the Christian Orient Ethiopia and Armenia. Without taking a Eurocentric view, this book explores the role of missionaries, merchants, artists (e.g. Momik, Giotto, Minas, Paolo Veneziano and Diirer) and artefacts (such as fabrics, inscriptions and symbols) travelling into both directions along the western stretch of the Silk Road between Ayas (Cilicia), ancient Armenia and north-western Iran. This area was truly global before globalisation and was a site of intense cultural exchanges and East-West cultural transmissions. This book opens a new research window into the culturally mixed landscapes in the Christian Orient, the Middle East and north-eastern Africa by taking into consideration their many indigenous and foreign artistic components and embeds Armenian arts into today’s wider art historical discourse.
This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, architectural history, missions, trade, Middle Eastern arts and the arts of the Southern Caucasus.
Acknowledgements
The encouragement and support of Deborah Howard have been crucial for this project, which resulted in a Cambridge University Newton grant and a project grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Iam extremely grateful for the institutional support this work has received.
Research visits to Armenia and Ethiopia to facilitate this study were thus possible. They offered eye-opening views into these countries’ peoples, landscapes and history. In the search for the lost medieval world in the Christian Orient, where Europeans, mostly Italians, used to travel, these field trips proved indispensable for gaining a sense of place and space in the vast open highlands, plains and deserts of the Caucasus and Ethiopia.
Soon after the project began, it became obvious that its direction needed to be reset, in order to place a much stronger focus on Armenia, due to the extent of Armenian material still unknown to art historians specialising in the Vatican and Italian arts. It was also important for attempting to address the general historical negligence of Armenian and Christian Oriental material shown by Western art historians and academics.
Indeed, doubtful colleagues kept asking if my project was interesting and whether I spoke all the languages (Armenian, Geez and Persian). I hope that this study will assuage many of those doubts, and I further hope that it will encourage future research, even for researchers who are not fluent in all the respecting languages. I thank Levon Zekiyan for inviting me to attend his Armenian language course in Venice in the summer of 2009. My Erevan friends, especially Khachik Grigoryan and his family, helped me in learning Armenian. I remember many happy moments. Armenia’s incredibly rich artistic heritage (this book focuses on painting and sculpture rather than architecture) is well worth including in Western art historical studies.
This study could not have been finished without the help of Vrej Nersessian, curator of the Oriental Manuscript Collection in the British Library, who did not mind my regular showing up in the Oriental and African reading room and asking many questions until I felt prepared to face my rather new subject. Our discussions over many coffees made me understand how complex the subject of the Christian Orient really is and how easily one steps into the wrong direction. His generous help will never be forgotten. Of course, any mistakes appearing in the text are mine alone.
Theo van Lint generously helped me, especially during the early stages, with invitations to attend a workshop at Oxford and give talks about my project, thereby opening up new ways of thinking about the material at hand.
The British Library and, most of all, the wonderful University Library at Cambridge and their helpful staff were essential for my research. The same is true for the Bibliotheca Vaticana, the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome and the Matenadaran in Erevan. Clare Hall, Cambridge, provided a helpful and welcoming environment for me while I was doing my research.
My travel to Addis Ababa was made much easier with the generous help of Richard Pankhurst, who asked me to bring him chocolates from home. Vrej Nersessian had prepared me for my first-ever trip to Armenia and helped by opening doors and assisting me to make friends. I thank all of my Armenian colleagues and friends for their generous help. An invitation from the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II to Ejmiadsin was a memorable experience. He received me, flanked by two clerics/clergymen, while sitting under a canopy grown with flowers in a courtyard on a sunny late morning. Equally, the hospitality of Bishop Abraham Mkrtchyan of Vayots Dzor will not be forgotten.
This research has taught me a lot, opened up new ways of thinking and new perspectives. During the course of the writing of this book, I had the opportunity of giving various international conference and departmental lectures and organising conference sessions in order to attract attention to this fascinating unknown field of East-West artistic contacts with Armenia. It could only be something of a brief glimpse into this mer a boire.
I thank my family and friends, in particular my daughter, who always brought love and laughter to my life during all of the stages of research. I thank all of you, who have patiently listened, shared, discussed and helped bring on its way this new set of ideas, among them especially my Cambridge friends.
Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, starting with spring 2020, the purchase of images and copyrights from various institutions was impossible for me. Unfortunately, this is why the book does not contain any maps. Therefore, I would suggest that the reader uses Hewsen’s relevant maps (see Bibliography) to be found online.
Introduction!
Geography of the dogma and the Christian Orient
Throughout this book, we will be examining the artistic exchanges between Armenia and Italy. We will look at the Roman Pilgrim Compounds of Armenia, Ethiopia, Hungary and Germany at the Vatican, with a special focus on Armenia and the western stretch of the Silk Road.
During the time frame of this book, from approximately 1250 to 1600, pilgrims from Armenia, Ethiopia, Hungary and Germany inhabited lodgings on the south side of Old St. Peter’s, in a complex of buildings that still offers fascinating insights for art historians. Surprisingly, however, the four foreign pilgrim compounds for pilgrims from Armenia, Ethiopia, Hungary and Germany formerly situated in this area (the Vatican Palaces lie to the north of the basilica) have neither received full attention, except the German, nor have they been interpreted as a group of buildings in terms of their function during our time frame. To this day, Franz Ehrle’s study of 1910 remains the only one that discusses the churches of these four different nations situated to the south side of the basilica, including those of the Armenians, in the area known as the Borgo, the quarter between the Vatican Hill and the Tiber.” He describes this complex as: “so closely connected with the heart of Christianity, and so worthy of full illumination.”°
The compound given to the Ethiopians around 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV was the last one to be established. Two of the compounds, the German church and cemetery, the Camposanto Teutonico and the Ethiopian church of S. Stefano Maggiore still exist today, although reduced in size. Two of the four compounds belonged to Oriental Christian Churches — those of Armenia and Ethiopia — whereas the two others were assigned to the popes’ ancient European allies, Hungary and Imperial Germany.
These four pilgrim compounds are the point of departure. This book opens with the history and reconstruction of their architecture, with the help of both textual and visual evidence. The sources are rich in the case of the Germans, but much sparser and relatively little investigated in the Armenian case. Indeed, the Armenian presence in medieval and Renaissance Rome has never been researched enough in depth. And “Western” art history has neglected if not ignored Armenian painting and sculpture and their mutual relationship to “Western” arts. In addition, during the fifteenth century, a time of dramatic cultural decline has been even less researched compared to other epochs in Armenia’s history. At that time, in Armenia, the art of miniature painting still flourished in some of the monasteries, for example, in Khizan, Lake Van area,‘ and artistic production was intense in the Armenian diaspora, for example, the Crimea.
It became necessary, therefore, to firmly shift the focus of investigation towards Armenia and to start exploring this widely unknown area known as the Armenian Highlands and its relationship to western Europe, which played such an important political role during the time frame of this book.*
What exactly was this role and why had academia entirely forgotten about it, despite recent successful exhibitions which have shed new light onto the material, such as Treasures in Heaven (New York, 1997) and Treasures from the Ark? (London, 2001).
Today, China’s development of a modern “Silk Road” is gaining speed. Italy has opened the ports of its ancient trading cities Genoa and Trieste. But Peter Frankopan in his “The Silk Roads. A New History of the World”® wrote his history without including the Armenians despite Armenia’s crucial role in the medieval and early modern Silk Road trade. This reflects the general academic negligence in history and art history departments and made this book’s focus onto Armenia so necessary. Through its geography, modern Armenia is again involved into China’s expansive trading plans.
I have chosen together with Vrej Nersessian (in our view) a user-friendly vocalised transliteration system, in contrast with Armenologists’ use of the Library of Congress and the Hiibschmann-Meillet systems.
Returning to the Roman pilgrim compounds, the Armenian and the Hungarian compounds were both later destroyed in order to make space for the new layout of the Borgo close to the basilica; the Armenian compound was sacrificed in the seventeenth century to provide improved access to the Porta Cavalleggieri and the newly built Palazzo di Sant’ Uffizio (or dell’Inquisizione); and in 1660, the Hungarian S. Stefano Minore or degli Ungari was demolished to make way for the building of the sacristy of New St. Peter’s. The decoration of these buildings will be discussed and interpreted with regard to the other foreign pilgrim houses that were situated in this cosmopolitan pilgrimage destination.’ We shall see how the presence of the Dominican order in the Oriental Christians’ compounds played a crucial role, especially with regard to the supervising and teaching of the Latin Roman dogma, which differed in important points from the dogma of the Oriental Churches. The Union of the Churches, as proclaimed in the Council of Florence (Decreto Armeno), was never put into practice for reasons that will be discussed later in the book. The Roman Church’s intolerance towards the Oriental Churches, which were declared “heretical” when not in union with Rome, was the biggest hindrance of all. This created a deep segregation within the group of Christian Churches.
Of course, Rome attracted not only pilgrims but also artists from all over Europe, who worked for the international clientele of the papal court. Works of art were both exported and imported, and foreign saints and patrons were depicted on altars and walls of the “national” pilgrim compounds. This book asks how the four pilgrim compounds at the Vatican each represented the respective foreign community’s identity. For example, “national” altars in the compounds and in the basilica of Old St. Peter’s attracted certain ethnic groups, numerous foreign languages from the entire Christian and non-Christian world were spoken, taught and studied at the Vatican, and interpreters were needed. One even finds a scriptorium in the Armenian compound. We shall discuss several examples of manuscripts that show how, consequently, a “hybrid” Armenian-Italian-Latin artistic style evolved in Italy. In addition, the Ethiopian church’s tramezzo (rood screen) showed a fresco with a Trinity and an Ethiopian Dominican, together with the inscription of his name in Geez. This was a multi-ethnic area due to the confluence of pilgrims, who came from all over the Christian world, including Asia and Africa.®
The compounds shaped the area south of the basilica into a single complex, occupied not only by pilgrims, but also by Dominicans, other orders and canons — the basilica’s canonica was located here. The presence of the famous Vatican Obelisk, which originally stood to the south of the ancient basilica and was included in the visitors’ itinerary, added to the importance of the area.
The pilgrims’ identity has many different components, of which three are of especial importance in this context: faith, language and alphabet. These will be recurrent themes of deep significance. Before discussing the reasons for the inclusion of Armenia and Ethiopia in the group of foreign pilgrims’ houses and their importance for the popes, not to mention the role of the arts in the compounds, we first need to focus on faith and distinguish Oriental Orthodox from Latin Christianity. Only in this way can we understand the Vatican’s missions, the diffusion of the arts and the dilemmas which Christians faced at the borders of Europe as well as in Rome. All of this had a direct impact on the visual arts, both in Rome and at the periphery of the Christian world.
Faith: the Oriental Churches and the Vatican
The chapters about the historical background will discuss extensively the history of the Armenian church in relation to the Roman Church.’ While the Byzantine Church and its links to the West during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have attracted scholarly study, Medievalists and Renaissance scholars have not given the same degree of attention to Armenia. It is symptomatic for our specialised field that this knowledge has so far not reached most scholars of the Middle Ages and European Renaissance. For example, although it is known that Ethiopians, Armenians, Copts and other Eastern Churches were present at the Council of Florence in 1439, the long-detailed story of their relationship with Rome is hardly known and has yet to be written. In the long-term view, the fifteenth century is not the most important period of their contacts with the Church of Rome, but it had its importance especially in regard to the present book.!° Aristeides Papadakis made an important step in this direction by focusing on the perspective of the Eastern Churches; he mentions that “Millions of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Balkans and Asia Minor were not represented (in the Florentine Council) because their territories were then under Turkish rule.”' The same is true for most of the Christians in the Near and Middle East. Piecing together the necessary evidence, we shall find that the Vatican, together with the Mendicant orders, did its best to convert the “heretical” Armenian and Ethiopian Churches by Latinising them. Since the time of the Crusades, first Franciscan and later Dominican missionaries had been sent out to the Near and Middle East to convert non-believers. Missionary work and preaching were the key roles of these orders.” In 1318, Pope John XXII took a new initiative towards Greater Armenia and divided up all of Asia between the Franciscans and the Dominicans as a new missionary territory. He assigned the Dominicans the metropolitan see of the important trading and royal city of Sultaniyah, west of Tabriz.
In the huge area between the Caucasus and the Ethiopian Highlands, ancient Christian cultures created distinct churches, cultures and arts.'* Since they were situated between the huge cultural blocks of Christian Europe, Byzantium" and the Muslim world (where religions mixed), the Oriental Churches of Armenia and Ethiopia were always exposed to the great danger of losing their cultural identity. Indeed, at particularly dramatic historical moments, even their existence was in danger. However, they survived. These areas and cultures (Armenia with its position on the western stretch of the Silk Road and access into the heart of the Middle East via Trabzon in the north and via Cilicia in the south, and Ethiopia with its access to the Indian Ocean trade and to the Red Sea) have always been immensely important for the transmission of religions, science and the arts between “East and West” and played an especially important role during the fifteenth century.’ As a consequence of this position, the culture and arts in Armenia show many influences from other non-Christian cultures. Within the time frame of this book, these two most ancient Christian nations were not “Christian borderlands” in the sense of centre (Europe) and periphery. They were themselves “centres,” since these Christian cultures were entirely distinct with their own language, alphabet, faith, literature and arts while at the same time deeply rooted within Asian and African cultures. They both belong to the Christian Orient, a term which has been widely accepted as referring to the ancient Churches of the Middle East, even where the lands in which they dwell were dominated by other civilisations over the course of the centuries.'®
The Christian borders in the ‘East’ and north-eastern Africa attracted papal attention not only in the attempt to unite the heretical Oriental Christians and bring them into the Roman Church. In addition to the idea of mission, the raison d’étre of the Order of the Preachers, the other motivation was the strategy of attacking the Mamluks of Egypt from all sides through the combined forces of Europe, the Middle East and Ethiopia.
In the Middle East, in places such as Armenia, missionaries could preach only to Christians and not to the Muslim “non-believers.” During the fourteenth century, the Dominican order had founded the Dominican Armenian order (Fratres Unitores) to increase its influence in Armenia right in the biblical “centre” close to the Holy Mountain Ararat, in Nakhijevan. Here, the Latin missionaries were able to convert about 50 Armenian monasteries to the Roman dogma. Moreover, Roman bishoprics were founded in the Middle East, and as a result, many clerics came to Rome to be ordained by the popes. Therefore, the number of Armenian clerics travelling to Rome increased significantly. The presence of Latin missionaries generally met with fierce resistance from the Armenian church, who in 1441 had moved from Cilicia back to its ancient seat in Ejmiadsin (where it remains to this day).
In Ethiopia, at that time, the relationship between the Vatican and the Ethiopian King had increased in intensity through embassies in both directions (which the Egyptian sultans tried to prevent), and the popes even sent religious books, vestments and paintings (such as a portrait of Sixtus IV), as well as artists and artisans to Ethiopia.‘” Although here, too, some Ethiopian clerics feared too strong an influence from the Roman Church, the Ethiopian King, who was head of the church, prevented this quite effectively. Nevertheless, through the presence and invitation of Italian and other foreign artists during the fifteenth century to work in Ethiopia (they had to stay in Ethiopia and were never allowed to return home), these Europeans were able not only to change Ethiopian art stylistically, but also in some cases to modify its iconography by introducing new scenes and interpretations. In addition, the especially dangerous circumstances under which Europeans travelled to Ethiopia were reason enough to keep Ethiopia at a relatively safe distance from papal influence. This, of course, was different when Ethiopians stayed in Rome.
By viewing the Armenian, Ethiopian and Hungarian pilgrim compounds in the Roman Borgo against this background, we shall see that in all three cases (excluding the Germans) Dominicans had control over the practice of the Roman rite there. The Dominicans kept watch over the dogma. Only the Roman rite was allowed in Rome, and this one-faith policy had important consequences for the arts. No other artistic subjects than those compatible with Latin dogma were allowed. Only when we take into consideration the different dogmas of Christianity are we able to discuss cultural transfer in the Christian Orient in Asia and Africa, a subject much neglected by Western art history. I shall address this problem later in this outline, when I talk about the different categories of comparative art history in the Middle East which I gather under the name of “geography of the dogma.”
Sharing sacred space in the pilgrim centres
The artistic impact of the intense links between the Armenians as Oriental Christians and Medieval and Renaissance Rome — the main theme of this book — has never been explored by Western art historians in detail. This book addresses these consequences from both sides. It asks how the relationship with the Oriental Christians affected the arts of Italy - and of Rome in particular — and investigates the arts of the Armenians living in the Italian diaspora. As a second stage, it asks what the European presence in Armenia meant for the arts in these regions.
Armenia does certainly not occupy a central position in Western art historical thinking, due to the distinction between academic fields on either side of the perceived cultural divide between East and West. As Christian culture, does it belong to the West or to the East, since its arts are deeply rooted in the Middle Eastern cultures? Sadly, this East-West distinction limits our view. We should treat the Christian Orient as an independent subject of study, a geographical area where faiths and cultures coexisted and intertwined, an area which was always in contact with the West. Only by integrating these ancient cultures like Armenia within Western academia can we adequately study the ancient links with the Christian Orient. Concerning Western art history, this will require an open view towards the inclusion of cultures that the Church of Rome has usually viewed as being heretical. Referring to Armenia’s Hellenic heritage and religious dimension and its integration and place in Europe, Theo van Lint writes, “The Armenians are very well equipped for an encounter with Europe: the elements are in place that would make a mutual enrichment possible, since there is enough common ground.”!®
The study of medieval and fifteenth-century arts will remain incomplete until we finally open up our field and include the Christian East. Rome was never an island. While Venice was connected through trading networks, Rome was linked to geographically distant places by the activities of its missionaries and, hand-in-hand, by papal politics and trade. The Christian world reached the Euphrates in the east and sub-Saharan Africa in the south, as demonstrated by the innumerable embassies which reached Rome from the Christian Orient and beyond.
The question addressed here is what role the Oriental Christians played in the microcosm of medieval and Renaissance Rome, especially since the Vatican preached the ideal of union between Rome and the schismatic Churches of the East. How was the Western centre of pilgrimage shared by various Christian groups, and what united and divided them? For example, what do we know about the reactions of Europeans to the Armenians?
As mentioned, Rome was a cosmopolitan pilgrim centre, but only one faith was practised there — like multi-ethnic Mecca and Medina.’ By contrast, in multi-ethnic Jerusalem, which was under Mamluk rule in the fifteenth century, three faiths — Islam, Judaism and Christianity (which included the Catholic, Greek and Armenian churches) — shared its pilgrim sites. Here, many pilgrims from Europe encountered Muslims and Oriental Christians for the first time in their lives. European visitors to the Holy Land often commented on the Armenians and Ethiopians, in many cases surprised, even puzzled and not positively. We shall find similarly revealing comments from other Europeans, for example, those travelling to Armenia. Religious tracts such as Nikolaus von Cues’ De Pace Fidei take a more tolerant stance towards the Oriental Churches than the Vatican. Although the popes of Rome received numerous Persian, Turkish and Egyptian embassies, Florence was the intellectual centre of philosophy and oriental studies. The dramatic case of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who, protected by Lorenzo de’ Medici, had striven to join all schools of thought in a single blend of philosophies, ancient and medieval, pagan and Christian, Muslim and Jewish, testifies to the dangers of intellectual work within an intolerant Christian society. He had these conclusions printed in Rome in 1486, and to introduce them he composed a work eventually of fame, the “Oration on the Dignity of Man.” Innocence VIII accused him of heresy. Consequently, he fled to France, was briefly jailed and later returned to the Dominican monastery of S. Marco in Florence, where he died at an early age.”°
Forty years earlier (1439 ff), the Florentine Council of Church Union had gathered theologians from the Christian world. Filarete’s 6-m-high bronze doors for the basilica of St. Peter’s, which I shall discuss in detail, expresses the attitude of the universal Roman Church using various Oriental languages.”
In medieval and Renaissance Rome, according to the papal one-faith policy, the decoration of the churches of the Armenians and Ethiopians had to be “Latin.” However, in these churches, inscriptions in the respective language were allowed, as illustrated by the Ethiopian example mentioned earlier, in which a Dominican Ethiopian was shown on the church wall beside a depiction of the Trinity. With good reason, the Trinity and Holy Spirit were major points of discussion over which the Western and Oriental Churches never found common ground. Another point was the belief in purgatory and hence the selling of indulgences, meaning a loss of income for the Roman Church wherever this doctrine was resisted. The unique pilgrim’s report of Armenian bishop Martiros Erznkatsi (travelled 1489-1496 to Rome and beyond) never mentions them, contrary to the usual reports of his Latin contemporaries.
This research into Rome’s links with Europe’s borders and the Christian Orient Armenia and Ethiopia, and Hungary and Germany — will invite the reader to take a different perspective on the art and architecture of the Borgo during the Renaissance.” The book seeks to show how the Roman faith, by excluding any alternative such as the Oriental Christian creeds, determined the artistic production of Italy. Comparing the culture of Rome with Armenia and its arts, the restrictive policy of the mono-faith society becomes all the clearer.
At the same time, the Armenians lived in the Italian diaspora in relatively large numbers (most probably more or less assimilated with the Church of Rome), for example, in communities in all of the major Italian cities such as Rome, Florence, Perugia and Venice. The arts are a sensitive indicator of the level of integration of these communities into mainstream Italian life, as a later chapter will demonstrate.
Towards the borders of Europe: towards a geography of the dogma
When we leave Byzantium and the Mediterranean Sea and travel towards the east, we step into areas, which, with regard to traditional scholarship, are under represented, such as Anatolia, the Caucasus, Armenia, the Middle East and north-eastern Africa. From early on, however, it was clear that Armenia and Ethiopia are both independent distinctive artistic centres located at the Christian borders.
Churchmen, merchants and ambassadors travelled to the faraway and inaccessible church and trading outposts at the Christian borders such as Caffa in the Crimea, Nakhijevan, Tabriz and Ethiopia. We need to bear in mind that during the period under investigation Mongols, Timurids and Turkmen reigned in Tabriz and Sultaniyah, a trading centre more important and bigger than any in Europe. This multi-faith Muslim city with Christian minorities kept vivid contacts with Europe’s courts. Evidence shows that Europeans brought with them artefacts from home. How did the Europeans first experience these new artistic territories?
When we move our eyes across maps, we are able to step into artistic landscapes as if entering huge imaginary doorways. Each door opens into another one and the artistic landscape thus slowly changes while we enter ever newer “artistic spaces.” Travelling through these geographical areas, we pass through one cultural “door” after another until we reach the multi-faith areas of the Near and Middle East. Here, we encounter a different artistic region compared to the mono-religious West: one which is often artistically “mixed,” where different ethnic groups and religions have coexisted for hundreds of years.
Like Armenia, similarly, Ethiopia was under threat by Muslims. Both these Christian “outposts” developed their strength in trade, a necessary pre-condition for exchange and cultural transfer: Armenia through its position on the western stretch of the Silk Road; and Ethiopia with its Red Sea port and Indian Ocean trade. Since ancient times, both cultures had assimilated diverse artistic influences from other countries, such as Mongol, Chinese, Western and Byzantine influences in Armenia, and Egyptian, Arabian and Indian influences in Ethiopia.
Since Josef Strzygowski first recognised the crucial role of Armenia’s early church architecture in understanding the development of Western and Eastern architecture, art historical scholarship has discussed the position of Armenian art within the framework of world arts from a comparative perspective.*? Concentrating on medieval architecture, however, these studies did not include the arts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.*4 In trying to define Armenian art’s true position within world art, art historians have developed extreme positions, ranging from the stance of Strzygowski, who thought the origins of Armenian architecture lay exclusively in Iran, denying any importance of Mediterranean cultures, to the opposite position, which gave Eastern Christianity all the credit.”
According to Richard Krautheimer, of all the border countries of the Empire, Armenia was the only one to confront Byzantine architecture on an equal footing during the Middle Ages. This important observation also applies to the following centuries. Armenia and likewise Ethiopia developed distinctive cultures and artistic styles. Krautheimer then addresses the question of the artistic dependency of Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance architects, such as Leonardo and Bramante, on Armenian-centralised church plans, including the possible influence on St. Peter’s in Rome.” These remarks bring us back to one of the main themes of this book, namely, the unexplored links between Italy and Armenia, especially in miniature and monumental painting and sculpture. By exploring the life of the Armenians in medieval Rome, it becomes clear just how much opportunity for communication and exchange existed between these cultures.
So how can we address the relationship between these two arts? What is the place of Armenian arts? As late as 2001, Robin Cormack remarked “and the question remains how Armenian art can be incorporated into a broader art-historical discourse.”?’ If that place isn’t at all clear, how can we address the relationship between the Armenian and “other” arts?
In the chapter about “Sacred Art in Theology and Worship” in Treasures of the Ark, Vrej Nersessian writes on the theology of Armenian art and on the theology of colour and ornamentation. “The core of Armenian aesthetic thinking is Nerses’ (Nerses Shnorhali 1102-73) proposal that the world of experience should be divided into two classes of objects — the necessary and the pleasurable or sensuous.”?* Nerses Shnorhali was one of the most influential thinkers of the medieval Armenian church and therefore, in order to address the place of Armenian art within the world arts, we have to focus on a “theology of aesthetics.”
Theology is a key subject of this book and to understand the relationship between the arts (and the people) in question and helps define categories for a comparative art history of the Christian Orient and its links with the West one needs to understand what I am going to call “geography of the dogma.” Who lived where together with whom and believed in which faith and under which circumstances?
Christian culture was defined by dogma, as we have already seen in the case of Rome. By focusing on dogma and the problematic contacts between the Armenian and Roman Churches, this book analyses the artistic contacts and the position of Armenian painting and sculpture within the context of “Latin” arts. Only with dogma as the first among other categories can we compare these arts with one another. Dogma was the one defining factor within the relationship between the Christian Orient and Europe.
It is imperative to compare medieval Western (e.g. Thomas of Aquinas’) with Armenian (such as Nerses Shnorhali’s) aesthetics and Persian aesthetics to locate the arts within their international framework. By applying this category, it is fascinating to look at the art of a painter such as Fra Angelico, a Dominican monk, who painted exclusively for the popes, the Dominicans and the Franciscans (the popes were often members of these orders). His paintings express perfectly the aesthetics of his time, and his art was the finest expression of the Dominican order’s theology. Many details in Fra Angelico’s paintings seem to derive from reports of missionaries returning to the order’s monasteries in Tuscany or Rome, such as precious gold, colours, carpets and Oriental garments.
This book will also address the question of what, in terms of artefacts and art works, travelled back and forth between Europe and Armenia. What reflections of these art works do we find in the respective cultures? What do we know about the outfitting of the united Dominican Armenian monasteries in Armenia? And how would the missionaries have reacted to the (“heretical”) arts of Armenia, where Christian dogmas “clashed”?
Like seeds carried by the winds, foreign styles entered these regions from all sides, from the Eastern Silk Road, the Western Mediterranean and from central Europe. These seeds germinated or moved on, were integrated or rejected. To a certain degree, this seemingly unstable process can be explained by the specific circumstances of the time. Historical moments could either favour or prevent infiltration of the typical Latin “Western” stylistic characteristics such as linear perspective, proportion or three-dimensionality.
This book seeks to open new research into the culturally mixed landscapes of Armenia, by taking into consideration their many indigenous and foreign artistic components. Dogma is the one key element which most determined the arts at the borders of Europe. During the Middle Ages and fifteenth century, Oriental Christians along the Silk Road borrowed certain elements from Italian art, but also invented new scenes under this influence.
Important studies have already explored aspects of cultural transfer between “the West,” the Muslim and the Greek world.”? We now must address questions regarding the role of the Christian Orient as “hybrid” zones and ask how permeable they were. Were they especially creative zones because of the meeting of various artistic styles, iconography and symbols? In which directions did artistic transfer tend to work? The freedom, expressionistic originality and inventiveness that one notices in the Armenian arts defined these artistic centres. Depending on our perspective, the terms “borderlands” or “frontiers of Christianity” are somewhat misleading, since these were artistically independent entities which at different times and for different reasons during their history adapted or rejected foreign styles.
The study of Christian border arts requires knowledge of the faith and rites of the Oriental Churches and of their history regarding the Church of Rome. Art historians have so far neglected to interpret the arts of the Italian Mendicant orders as missionary “tools” (aesthetic “conquest”) directed to the conversion of the heretical “enemy” in the Christian Orient. Paintings on wood, fabric and also prints were especially important as teaching tools there.
Shared symbols
In addition, we shall have to discuss carefully how not only style, but also symbols were shared by Latin Christians, Oriental Christians, Muslims and in some cases Buddhists. We shall see that Armenians served as a transmitter between East and West, and the symbols of the cross, sun, moon, wheel, star and knot carved on thousands of Armenian khatchkars are the symbols which link the West with the wide spaces of Asia and Africa.*° We find these motifs decorating Italian manuscripts and church facades, and although they often look the same they express different meaning. Anatolian carpets play an important part in this cultural transfer from the Middle East to Europe.*! The Armenian merchants had a major role in the carpet trade with Europe, adding to their important function as ambassadors between “enemy cultures,” because they had learned to live and trade with the “enemy” in distant friendship over the centuries. This book discusses how at the same time their resulting language and diplomatic skills were eagerly employed by both European and Asian rulers.*
Careful investigation into the symbols and their different meanings in the culturally mixed zones is urgently needed and may lead to important insights regarding a precise understanding of artistic coexistence in the Christian Orient. More often in this book, however, we shall have to content ourselves with questions rather than answers.
Methodology
The point of departure of this book, the first chapter, is the late medieval ensemble of the four pilgrim compounds at the Vatican. Once the location and history of the buildings are discussed, the discussion moves to the four different cultures (Armenia, Ethiopia, Hungary and Germany), their presence in medieval and Renaissance Rome and the consequences for the arts. Because of the hitherto underestimated or even neglected importance of Lesser and Greater Armenia in western art history, this book has a strong focus on Armenian church, history, trade and arts.
The key themes of the second chapter are a brief discussion of selected works and the state of present research with regard to the “contact” between the arts from the “West” and the Armenian “East,” the character of Armenian arts and its identity.
Chapter 3 deals with the historical background and is written with the focus on Armenia’s role as intermediaries in long-distance trade. This book addresses the journeys made by fourteenth- and fifteenth-century churchmen, merchants and ambassadors travelling to the lands of the Christian borders: along the western stretch of the Silk Road, into Cilicia, the Armenian homeland (and on the Ethiopian Highlands). Although fifteenthcentury mapmakers were able to produce good maps of both countries and itineraries, most of these were still based on the Ptolemaic model. However, detailed late medieval travel itineraries to central Asia and north-eastern Africa exist.
On the other hand, the presence of Italians in Cilicia, their mercantile “colonisation” efforts and in a second step the term “geography of the dogma” helps understand the complicated net of inter-woven mercantile and missionary interests. The Latin missions into the western stretch of the Silk Road (Mongol-dominated during their early stages) were organised as an “attack” on Armenian dogma. Throughout the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, explorations and missions throughout the known world were the popes’ means to achieve an ever more “international” approach towards a union of the Christian Churches. Parallel to the Portuguese sea voyages along the African coasts and to the West Atlantic, the fifteenth-century popes made a new all-encompassing claim to these new-found territories for Christian spirituality. This is reflected in the Roman arts.
Chapter 5 discusses Lesser and Greater Armenia as “artistic crossroads” and theatre of artistic exchange between approximately 1200 and 1600. The focus is on languages and alphabets appearing in the arts of Armenia and the “West.” A discussion of fabrics, silks and patterns represented in both arts follows and proves how trade and taste move from one continent to the other along the Silk Road and appear in contemporary Armenian paintings of their time and only much later on in Tuscany. An important point which will be discussed in detail is Armenian production of fabric and possible export to Italian markets.
A selected chronological list of works of art and their artistic connections between Armenia and Italy and vice versa follows in chapter 6. The examples range from the thirteenth century through 1600.
Book illumination in Rome as well as major artists such as Momik and Giotto appear in this list, as do Armenian khachkar carved decoration and relief Madonnas of Nakhidjevan based on European models (but with Armenian inscriptions). The Noah iconography will be discussed in the frescoes in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, Florence and Filarete’s riddles on the bronze doors of St. Peter’s. Eschatological themes in various arts will be interpreted and depictions of Armenian legends and merchants in Venetian painting and more. Direr will appear as the producer of models for biblical scenes in the arts of the Christian Silk Road.
A brief excursus into Ethiopia’s arts and history follows in chapter 7.
A discussion of “international” style in the arts of the western Silk Road and Armenia into the term “Renaissance/s” and “periodisation” closes the book.
Regarding the underlying background of religious hegemony and tolerance, this book aims to open up a new field for art historical research through its interdisciplinary approach. By entering new geographical regions for medieval and Renaissance research, it will necessarily leave questions unanswered.
The way forward
This book is a study of the “arts travelling” and of European artistic models’ migration to the Silk Road (and Ethiopia), a process so far widely ignored by art history. We may wonder why this is so. Clearly, historical research is still missing regarding the late medieval and early modern Christian communities in the Middle East (including the Syrians) and its architecture and arts.
European travel reports from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, for example, give valuable information regarding the multi-faith world in which the Christian communities there lived, including its architecture, decoration and outfitting. Ethiopia today is one of the poorest countries in the world, and Armenia is only now gaining in strength after having recently passed through hard times. Ethiopia is not yet fully linked with Western academia; Armenia, however, is clearly represented. The West’s relative ignorance of these ancient cultures is rather disturbing and is probably the reason why Western art history has widely ignored its Christian borders, although recent exhibitions of Armenian arts and cultures (see the respective endnotes to this Introduction) in England and France gave the general public an excellent opportunity to familiarise itself with them.
In the light of the present political turmoil in the Near and Middle East, it is time to research what is left of the many different groups of Oriental Christians before their remains disappear.
The history of the numerous religious groups living together in close proximity in the Near and Middle East still needs to be written before it is too late, and the limited number of remaining artefacts is lost. Although they are the most ancient Christian churches and despite their continuous yet problematic contacts with the popes in Rome, traditionally, the Oriental Churches had to live in a sort of penumbra between these “distant frontiers” (if seen from a European perspective) and the major cultural blocks. This has not changed and today because of the tensions between the West and some Middle Eastern countries, the Oriental Christians have to face their continuous exodus from their ancient homelands. In contrast to the West, the three monotheistic religions had to find ways of coexistence during the period of this book. The Western tradition of one faith only, “Latin” Christianity, has prevented a free and unhindered view on the Christian Orient.
This book aims to give back to the Armenian Christians their place within the group of Christian cultures. The “geography of the dogma” can be a valuable tool in this endeavour. For example, the relationship, dependencies and mutual influences between the arts of Armenian and medieval Europe are still far from clearly understood. Another problem concerns the arts in the Armenian diasporas in Italian cities.
It is now time to acknowledge Armenians and their art as an important intermediary between “East and West.” In this process of cultural mediation, Ethiopia’s role, too, is crucial and hitherto undervalued. Symbols travelled along neighbouring cultures while at times changing meaning. Shared symbols connect cultures.
Bailey’s study about the creation of a global artistic language in late-Renaissance Rome, with its focus on the Jesuits, needs an extensive new chapter regarding the crucial role of the Roman missionaries in the fourteenth century in the cities along the Armenian, the western stretch of the Silk Road and of the dispersion of the “Latin” style from the fourteenth century onwards.* This book will show how at the borders of Europe and in the Christian Orient, as early as the very beginning of the Italian Renaissance, around 1300, this style, which was rather easily adaptable and modifiable, travelled along the trading and missionaries’ routes, to be transformed, rejected or assimilated.
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