Download PDF | Lynn Jones (ed.) - Byzantine Images and their Afterlives_ Essays in Honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr-Routledge (2016).
308 Pages
BYZANTINE IMAGES AND THEIR AFTERLIVES
The twelve papers written for this volume reflect the wide scope of Annemarie Weyl Carr’s interests and the equally wide impact of her work. The concepts linking the essays include the examination of form and meaning, the relationship between original and copy, and reception and cultural identity in medieval art and architecture.
Carr’s work focuses on the object but considers the audience, looks at the copy for retention or rejection of the original form and meaning, and always seeks to understand the relationship between intent and perception. She examines the elusive nature of “center” and “periphery,” expanding and enriching the discourse of manuscript production, icons and their copies, and the dissemination of style and meaning. Her body of work is impressive in its chronological scope and geographical extent, as is her ability to tie together aspects of patronage, production and influence across the medieval Mediterranean.
The volume opens with an overview of Carr’s career at Southern Methodist University, by Bonnie Wheeler. Kathleen Maxwell, Justine Andrews and Pamela Patton contribute chapters in which they examine workshops, subgroups and influences in manuscript production and reception. Diliana Angelova, Lynn Jones and Ida Sinkevic offer explorations of intent and reception, focusing on imperial patronage, relics and reliquaries. Cypriot studies are represented by Michele Bacci and Maria Vassilaki, who examine aspects of form and style in architecture and icons. The final chapters, by Jaroslav Folda, Anthony Cutler, Rossitza Schroeder and Ann Driscoll, are linked by their focus on the nature of copies, and tease out the ways in which meaning is retained or altered, and the role that is played by intent and reception.
About the Editor
Lynn Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at Florida State University. Her work focuses on the nature of identity in the medieval eastern Mediterranean. She is the author of multiple articles, chapters in edited volumes, and the book Between Islam and Byzantium: Aght‘amar and the Visual Construction of Medieval Armenian Rulership (Ashgate, 2007). She is currently at work on a new monograph, Cappadocia and Monumental Painting in EleventhCentury Byzantium: The Rock-Cut Church of Meryem Ana.
About the Contributors
Justine M. Andrews is Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico. Her recent publications include “Gothic and Byzantine in the Monumental Arts of Famagusta: Diversity, Permeability and Power,” in Medieval and Renaissance Famagusta: Studies in Architecture, Art and History, edited by Nicholas Coureas, Peter Edbury and Michael J.K. Walsh; and “Conveyance and Convergence: Painting and Architecture in Medieval Cyprus,” in a special issue of Medieval Encounters titled Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean, edited by Heather Grossman and Alicia Walker.
Diliana Angelova is Assistant Professor of Early Christian and Byzantine art at the University of California, Berkeley. She has written on Late Antique art and published an award-winning article on the iconography of the early Byzantine empresses. A monograph, titled Sacred Founders: Women, Men, and Gods in the Roman and Early Byzantine Discourse of Founding is forthcoming from the University of California Press.
Michele Bacci, Professor of Medieval Art History at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, is the author of several publications on the cultural and art-historical contacts of East and West in the Middle Ages, and on the history of the religious practices associated with cult objects and holy sites. His books include I] pennello dell’Evangelista, Pro remedio animae, Lo spazio dell’‘anima and San Nicola il Grande Taumaturgo.
Anthony Cutler is the Evan Pugh Professor of Art History at Pennsylvania State University and is the author of numerous books and articles, such as The Hand of the Master: Craftsmanship, Ivory, and Society in Byzantium (Princeton University Press) and Byzantium, Italy and the North: Papers on Cultural Relations (Pindar Press). He has been the recipient of multiple fellowships, including four at Dumbarton. In 2011-12 he was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University. He is currently working on his book, The Empire of Things: Gifts and Gift Exchange Between Byzantium, the Islamic World, and Beyond.
Ann Driscoll is an independent scholar, living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her research centers on twelfth-century Italian painted crosses, and her publications include “The Croce Dipinta of Alberto Sotio in Spoleto,” Spoletium: Rivista di Arte Storia Cultura, 47/3 (2010).
Jaroslav Folda is the N. Ferebee Taylor Professor of the History of Art, emeritus, at the University of North Carolina. His recently published book is Crusader Art: 1099-1291 (Lund Humphries, 2008). He is currently completing a new book on chrysography and the imagery of the Virgin and Child, “Hodegetria”, enthroned, c. 1250-1311.
Kathleen Maxwell is Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History, Santa Clara University. She has published several articles and her book, titled Between Constantinople and Rome: Paris Gr. 54 and the Union of Churches, is forthcoming.
Pamela A. Patton is Associate Professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University and a specialist in the art and architecture of the medieval Iberian Peninsula. Her publications include Pictorial Narrative in the Romanesque Cloister: Cloister Imagery and Religious Life in Medieval Spain (Peter Lang, 2004) and Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (Penn State Press, 2012), along with other articles and essays on the intersections between visual culture and community identity in later medieval Iberia.
Rossitza B. Schroeder is an Assistant Professor of Arts and Religion at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. She is currently finishing a book about monastic practice and visual culture in late Byzantium.
Ida Sinkevi¢ is Associate Professor of Art History at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. Her publications include articles on Byzantine art and architecture, and the book The Church of St. Panteleimon at Nerezi: Architecture, Programme, Patronage.
Maria Vassilaki is Professor of Byzantine Art History at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly at Volos. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions, such as the “Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art” (Benaki Museum, Athens 2000) and “Byzantium 330-1453” (with Robin Cormack, Royal Academy of Art, London 2008). Her latest books are The Painter Angelos and Icon-Painting in Venetian Crete (Ashgate, 2009) and The Icons in the Tositsas Mansion, Metsovo: The Collection of Evangelos Averoff (in Greek, Athens 2012).
Bonnie Wheeler, Director of the Medieval Studies Program and Associate Professor of English at Southern Methodist University, has edited, co-edited and co-written 13 books, most recently The Letters of Heloise and Abelard: A Translation of their Collected Correspondence and Related Writings (2009). She still serves on the Executive Board of the Committee on Teaching the Middle Ages (TEAMS), which she founded. Founding editor of Arthuriana, she is also editor of peer-reviewed book series for Palgrave Macmillan, including The New Middle Ages and Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. At present Wheeler is finishing a book on the “work” of medieval humiliation.
Preface Images and Afterlife: Essays in Honor of Annemarie Carr
Lynn Jones
The concepts linking the chapters in this volume are familiar ones: the examination of form and meaning; the relationship between original and copy; and reception and cultural identity in medieval art and architecture. They are familiar because they ask questions that are central to the study and understanding of our discipline. Annemarie Weyl Carr’s work has expanded the ways in which we think about such fundamental questions and the ways in which we apply them to the objects we study. Her work focuses on the object but considers the audience; looks at the copy for retention or rejection of the original form and meaning; and always seeks to understand the relationship between intent and perception. She examines the elusive nature of “center” and “periphery,” expanding and enriching the discourse of manuscript production, icons and their copies, and the dissemination of style and meaning. Her body of work is impressive in its chronological scope and geographical extent, as is her ability to tie together aspects of patronage, production and influence across the medieval Mediterranean.
Annemarie’s work is perhaps best characterized by the pellucid nature of her writing, which conveys complex arguments with clarity and authority. She does not always tackle her subjects in the expected manner, or reach what the reader might presume will be the expected outcome. Who else would take as their subject the identity of an “Armenian” icon and suggest, convincingly, that is not Armenian but rather a product of Crusader workshops—in an essay written for a symposium accompanying an exhibition of Armenian art in which the icon in question was exhibited as “Armenian”?! Who else would begin an article on the Virgin’s girdle with a portrait of Emma, Anglo-Saxon queen, and then trace its various iterations in the medieval west before landing, resoundingly, in Byzantium, having demonstrated the effects of tradition, Christian confession and artistic influence on what was previously viewed as a collection of cultural-specific motifs?? In these and in her many other publications Annemarie shows us new ways of looking and new methods of teasing out unexpected answers.
Her encyclopedic knowledge and painstaking examination of the objects created in this period, and in these places, allows her to make new connections and establish new patterns. This is particularly true of her work on the arts of Cyprus, where she has been able to untangle the many strands of influence and identify the equally complex internal and external forces that drove the creation of particular types and forms of art. Her Cypriot work has been instrumental in focusing scholarly attention on the “Sweet Land,” bringing Cyprus more fully into the discourse of both eastern and western medieval art history. We eagerly await further publications.
Annemarie has what I can best term enthusiastic generosity, a trait that never diminishes or waivers. When prompted, she will discuss her work; but she is most keen to find out what you are up to. She does not criticize, but probes and pokes, gently, at problem areas. Once the patient has been diagnosed, she offers remedies: sources, resources, methodologies and comparanda. For her students she has been, and no doubt will continue to be, an unfailing support—writing what must now be thousands of letters, each crafted to a particular situation, often for very flustered young students at very late notice.* I leave the encomia of her teaching skills and the overview of her history at Southern Methodist University to her long-time colleague and friend, Bonnie Wheeler. I add only that Annemarie’s complete lack of negativity—often a more encouraging trait than relentless positivity —has buoyed many a floundering neophyte. She has proved both an inspiration and a very tough act for her students to follow as they mentor their own students. I feel confident that I am not the only one who has remembered with chagrin my shortcomings and Annemarie’s patient encouragement, and, in emulation and with varying degrees of success, quashed my exasperation and impatience with students.
Her service to the field, and to her chosen areas of study, has smoothed the way for those who follow her. She has been instrumental in increasing the profile of Byzantine studies in many institutions, publications and conferences. Her work as trustee for the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute has been seminal in opening meaningful dialog between the many disciplines now active in Cypriot studies. Annemarie has helmed major journals, including Gesta, and has been elected to lead influential academic organizations, including the International Center of Medieval Art. She has been elected—or has volunteered—to sit on innumerable boards and committees. Her ferocious dedication to the furtherance of Byzantine studies—in all its variants—is matched only by her truly formidable work ethic.
Three chapters in this volume focus on manuscripts. Kathleen Maxwell reexamines the “decorative style” group first published by Carr. She redefines the subgroups, linking some more closely with Constantinople in general and with the Kokkinobaphos Master in particular. Justine M. Andrews and Pamela A. Patton tease out the nuanced changes in form and meaning of Byzantine prototypes as they are repurposed in illuminated manuscripts produced in Cyprus and Castile.
Three chapters take on issues of intent and reception. Diliana Angelova’s study examines anew the works of Pulcheria, reassessing the messages of piety in works usually seen as monuments to dynastic power. Another powerful woman is the subject of Lynn Jones’s chapter, which traces the nature of Byzantine identity outside of the empire, using the relic(s) of the True Cross and Radegund of Poitiers as case studies. Ida Sinkevi¢ follows the iterations of the so-called “Rhodes Hand” of John the Baptist as it is appropriated and physically adapted to better convey specific cultural and religious ideologies.
Annemarie’s work on Cyprus and on Cypriot icons and their proliferation is reflected in the chapters by Michele Bacci and Maria Vassilaki. Michele Bacci examines the cross-cultural use of architectural styles by Lusignan patrons on Cyprus, focusing on the role these forms played in the social construction of Lusignan identity from medieval through to early modern times. Maria Vassilaki takes up the thorny question of Constantinopolitan or Cypriot influence in icon painting on Crete in the early fifteenth century, showing the intersections of influence and tradition in icon workshops.
The nature of copies, their changing form and meaning is examined in four chapters, by Anthony Cutler, Jaroslav Folda, Rossitza B. Schroeder and Ann Driscoll. Anthony Cutler identifies a forged “Byzantine” ivory panel and traces its subsequent lives as it is carved and re-carved to better suit the visual expectations of what it means to “be Byzantine” in modern art markets. Jaroslav Folda remarks on the origins and development of gintamani from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries, using three of its “afterlife” manifestations. Rossitza B. Schroeder examines the adoption and adaptation of the iconography of the “Heavenly Ladder” of John Klimakos from manuscript illuminations to a monastic fresco in the late Byzantine period. Ann Driscoll examines the influence of one painter, Alberto Sotio, on the iconography and style of subsequent, twelfth—-thirteenth-century painted crosses in Italy.
It is with gratitude that her colleagues and former students offer these essays to celebrate her work.* Taken together, the chapters collected in this volume reflect the wide scope and chronology of Annemarie’s interests. In their individual subjects and methodologies they also reflect the impact of Annemarie’s work.
Acknowledgements
I thank Janice Mann, former Chair of the Department of Art History, Southern Methodist University, for generously providing a subvention allowing for color plates. Many thanks to Gerald Carr for providing a perfect photograph of Annemarie. I am grateful to the contributing authors for their timely cooperation and for their patience with the many, many delays incurred on the way to publication. Thanks are also due to my research associates, Sarah Andyshak, Brad Hostetler and Sarah Simmons, each of whom helped to mask my utter failure to master anything involving technology.
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