Download PDF | (Princeton Legacy Library 523) Kurt Weitzmann - Greek Mythology in Byzantine Art-Princeton University Press (2014).
299 Pages
PREFACE
| chess since his occupation with the ivory caskets of the Middle Byzantine period the author has continued to be fascinated by the problem of the survival of classical art in Byzantium. Soon after the publication in 1930 of these so-called rosette caskets in the first volume of the corpus of Byzantine ivories, he realized that this material was too limited and too sporadic to reveal the full scope of classical representations which were known to the Byzantines of the posticonoclastic period. Nor did the ivories seem to provide the clue to explain the appearance of classical themes in the art of the tenth century, the time when most of the caskets were manufactured. It became obvious that the key material for the solution of this problem was illustrated manuscripts, and this branch of art has been the center of our studies ever since.
Two manuscripts in particular, the homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus in Jerusalem with their interesting illustrated commentary of Pseudo-Nonnus at the end, and the Cynegetica of Pseudo-Oppian in Venice with their numerous mythological miniatures interspersed among the hunting scenes, became the focus of our interest. It was hoped that they might lead to a clearer understanding of the relation between the classical representations in Byzantine art and their models of the Greco-Roman past. It soon became obvious that the illustrations of these two manuscripts are closely related to various scenes on the ivory caskets. Out of this realization grew the plan of the present study in which an attempt is made to prove the existence of illustrated mythographical texts already in classical antiquity and to show that they formed the common source for the Byzantine miniaturists and ivory carvers alike.
However, when the study was written eight or nine years ago, the author withheld its publication because he felt that the assumption of illustrated literary texts in classical antiquity was a challenging hypothesis which should first be discussed on a broader basis and documented not only by the two manuscript recensions involved in this study, but by other illustrated texts as well and also by whatever reflections exist of classical miniature painting in other media of ancient art. Thus, it was decided to write first another study dealing with the reconstruction of classical book illumination in general and with the principles on which it rests.
This study has in the meantime been published under the title [/Justratzons in Roll and Codex, A Study of the Oregin and Method of Text Illustrateon as Number 2 of the present series. Here material of various kinds has been brought together as evidence that the illustration of literary texts started as early as the beginning of the Hellenistic period and immediately on a very vast scale. Against this background the assumption of the existence of illustrated mythographical handbooks in the Roman period will, we hope, no longer appear as a startling novelty. In our opinion, they represent only one more category among other classical texts which were adorned with pictures and were in wide circulation in the ancient world.
Apart from these primary considerations other factors delayed the publication of the present study. Not until the end of the war could new photographs of the Gregory manuscript in Jerusalem be made. In 1946 Professor Carl H. Kraeling of Chicago University during a visit of the Near East was kind enough to make the necessary photographs in the Patriarchal Library at Jerusalem. For this friendly service we wish to express to him our most cordial thanks. For the photos of the Pseudo-Nonnus commentary in the Vatican, made before the war, we are greatly indebted to His Eminence, Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, at that time still the prefect of the library, and for the photos of the Pseudo-Oppian we express our thanks to the late Luigi Ferrari, the always helpful director of the Marciana in Venice.
Recently, new photographs were made of the Gregory miniatures in Paris for which our thanks are due to Jean Porcher, the new Conservateur du Département des Manuscrits of the Bibliotheque Nationale. The photographs of the Gregory manuscript in the Panteleimon monastery were made during our visits to Mount Athos in 1935 and 1936. With particular pleasure we recall the great cordiality and hospitality which we always experienced in the monasteries of the Holy Mountain. In the present case our thanks are due primarily to Pater Vasilij, the secretary, and to Pater Sophronios, the hbrarian of the Russian monastery.
The photographs of the ivories are from the collection begun by the late Adolph Goldschmidt and left in his will to the present writer. They are now deposited in the Art Department of Princeton University. We regret very much that, owing to the delay in the publication of this study, Adolph Goldschmidt, who had taken great interest in its preparatory state, was not able to see it in its final form. With the exception of figure 212, all ivory plaques are reproduced in original size. This was more or less the principle throughout Goldschmidt’s corpus with the one exception of the rosette caskets, most of which surpass in size the format of the folio volumes. Thus, we hope to have corrected this shortcoming to some extent and given a more adequate impression of the artistic quality of these, in parts, very charming ivory reliefs.
Last but not least, the writer wishes to express his thanks to his colleagues in the Department, especially to Professor A. M. Friend, Jr., for their continued interest and support in the pursuing of manuscript studies, to Datus Smith, director of Princeton University Press, to Miss Margot Cutter, who went over the manuscript with great care, and to the other members of his staff who have given the same great care and consideration to the printing of this volume as to the preceding ones in the same series.
KURT WEITZMANN
Princeton, New Jersey June 1949
PREFACE TO THE SECOND PRINTING
HIS book, which appeared more than thirty years ago, has as its main
subject the survival of representations of classical myths in Byzantine manuscripts and also ivories. The handbook which goes under the name of Apollodorus plays a key role, and I had tried to prove that the postulated miniatures of this text had migrated into other texts of which the commentary of Pseudo-Nonnus, attached to several homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus and the Cynegetica of Pseudo-Oppian are the most important. I see no need to change or modify these concepts. My sole task in this second preface 1s to demonstrate that the basic idea has taken root and that I myself and other authors have added not only new pictorial material, but found additional texts which we presume to have been illustrated in classical antiquity as visualized by migrated miniatures or ivories of the Byzantine period.
A basic study of illustrated Gregory manuscripts by George Galavaris (The [tlustrations of the Liturgical Homilies of Gregory Nazianzenus, Princeton 1969) has provided the evidence that not only the illustrations of the commentary of Pseudo-Nonnus were based on a classical source, i.e. the handbook of Apollodorus, but that other text passages with illustrations likewise had a classical root. The homily on New Sunday (idid., 149ff.) contains in three manuscripts a series of charming bucolic scenes, very classical in character, which could in part be interpreted by the romance of Daphnis and Chloe. The closest contact Galavaris found, however, is the ekphrasis on the spring by the sophist Libanius and on the basis of these Gregory miniatures he could postulate the existence of a lost illustrated Libanius.
Furthermore, the Pseudo-Nonnus text in the Jerusalem codex Taphou 14 and in the Vatican codex gr. 1947 contains a series of oracle pictures which in their compositional layout are Byzantine inventions (Myzh., figs. 70-81), but in their details show clearly the impact of classical models. Now the former manuscript includes among the homilies of Gregory one on the Birth of Christ which 1s attributed to a certain John of Euboea. It is prolifically illustrated and includes a series of miniatures of oracles which, according to the text, were consulted by the Magi on their way to Bethlehem (Weitzmann, “Representations of Hellenistic Oracles in Byzantine Manuscripts,” Mélanges Mansel, Ankara 1974, pp. 394ff. and pls. 126-127). These oracle pictures are painted by the same artist and conceived in the same spirit as those in the Pseudo-Nonnus text. Moreover there exists still another copy of the Birth homily in the codex Athos, Esphigmenu 14 where its text is integrated in a menologion, and here the oracle pictures are even more numerous and partly richer in classical elements (zd7d., pls. 123-126).
Also the Pseudo-Oppian illustrations are more complex than I had anticipated by separating the added mythological scenes from the scientific pictures of the hunt, assuming that the latter were all made up from the PseudoOppian text. However, Joannes Spatharakis (“Observations in a Few Illustrations in Pseudo-Oppian’s Cynegetica ms. in Venice,” Thesaurismata 17, 1980, pp. 22ff.) has argued with good reason that some of the hunting scenes are better explained by the Cynegetica of Kenophon and that this text might already have been illustrated and adapted by Pseudo-Oppian.
In our discussion of the ivories we proposed for the wealth of Dionysiac figure types and scenes an illustrated Dionysiaca of Nonnus of Panopolis, a fifth-century poet, as a probable source (Myth., p. 179). This idea has been strongly reinforced in an inspiring study by Erika Simon (“Nonnus und das Elfenbeinkastchen aus Veroli,” Jahrb. Arch. Inst. 79, 1964, pp. 279ff.). But in her attempt to interpret every single figure or groups of figures of this most sumptuous of all the ivory caskets out of the Dionysiaca, she went too far when she tried to include even scenes which surely are based on Old Testament illustrations, foremost the illustrated Joshua rotulus of the Vatican Library.
The great merit of her study 1s the firm establishment of an illustrated Dionysiaca as the source of Byzantine artists of the tenth century, since this indicates that not only texts of the imperial period like Apollodorus and Pseudo-Oppian had been used in the period of the Macedonian Renaissance but that classical book illumination has an uninterrupted tradition until at least the fifth century, if not until the sixth or even seventh. The Milan Iliad from approximately the late fifth century is the best witness for this continuation, suggesting the availability of also late antique models in the Middle Byzantine period.
Ever since I wrote Greek Mythography in Byzantine Art I continued my studies of this subject and added new observations. After having postulated for the great number of Heracles figures and scenes an illustrated classical text (Myth., pp. 157ff.), it was good fortune that only a few years later an illustrated papyrus of the third century with a Heracles poem was discovered which includes scenes from the lion fight (Weitzmann in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri XXII, 1954, pp. 85-87).
Considering the great popularity which the mythological handbook of Apollodorus enjoyed in the Middle Byzantine period, it hardly comes as a surprise that its impact can be traced in texts other than Pseudo-Nonnus and Pseudo-Oppian. There is in the Theriaka of Nicander, best preserved in the tenth-century manuscript in Paris, Bibl. Nat. cod. suppl. gr. 247, a representation obviously derived from a Gigantomachy which shows the legs of the giants turned into serpents, a scene best explained by Apollodorus (Weitzmann, “Das Klassische Erbe in der Kunst Konstantinopels,” Alte und Neue Kunst Ill, 1954, pp. 14f. and figs. 15-16).
Photius in his Myriobiblon had made excerpts of still another mythological handbook in addition to that of Apollodorus, namely that of Conon which likewise belongs to the Roman imperial period. A miniature in the same above-mentioned Nicander manuscript in Paris can best be explained by the Conon text, namely the killing of Canopus, the pilot of Menelaus, by a serpent, and thus we assume a lost illustrated Conon which was still available in the time of Photius, the ninth-century patriarch (Weitzmann, Ancient Book ILlumination, Martin Class. Lectures, Cambridge, Mass. XVI, 1959, pp. 28ff. and pl. L, 106).
In this study an attempt was made to deal, though only in a sketchy manner, with ancient book illumination at large, including both scientific and literary texts. A general impression one gets from this study is the easy migration of miniatures from one text into another. There is, for example, the story of the jealous rival bulls which in the Pseudo-Oppian is illustrated in a picture so similar to one in Virgil’s Eclogues in the well known Vatican Virgil, cod. lat. 3225, that a common archetype must be assumed which, we believe, must have been Aelian’s De Natura Animalium.
From a classical text this miniature migrated even into a biblical text, namely, the Book of Job, as witnessed by a miniature in an eleventh-century manuscript at Sinai (Weitzmann, Ancient Book Illumination, p. 28 and figs. 34-36). Moreover, more recently I found out that postulated illustrations of Aelian’s treatise must have been known and were even quite popular in Byzantine book illumination, as could be demonstrated by a whole series of animal pictures in the ninthcentury Sacra Parallela manuscript in Paris, Bibl. Nat. cod. gr. 923. Here they accompany passages of Basil’s Hexaemeron, by which text, however, the pictures cannot be sufficiently explained, so that an older source must be assumed (Weitzmann, The Sacra Parallela, Princeton 1979, pp. 205-209, 211, 218, 261 and figs. 546-548, 551-555).
That the Pseudo-Nonnus and the Pseudo-Oppian manuscripts, both products of the Macedonian Renaissance, hark back to Apollodorus and other classical texts of the Roman imperial period should not obscure the fact that the illustration of mythological texts had continued throughout the Early Byzantine period, i.e. from the fourth to seventh century (Weitzmann, “The Survival of Mythological Representations in Early Christian and Byzantine Art and its Impact on Christian Iconography,” D. O. P. 14, 1960, pp. 45ff.). In those centuries, not only the //zad, as proved by the Milan fragments, but also other epic poems like the Little [iad of Lesches was still copied and its postulated miniatures were used as models, as attested by a silver plate in Leningrad from the sixth to seventh century with a representation of the Awarding of the Weapons of Achilles (¢did., p. 47 and fig. 2).
Likewise an illustrated Euripides must still have been known as witnessed by a silver plate of the sixth century in Dumbarton Oaks (s6id., pp. 53f. and fig. 14) which illustrates Hippolytus and Phaedra. Furthermore, a scene from Euripides’ /phigenia in Tauris may be seen on a Coptic textile attributed to the sixth to seventh century (Weitzmann, “Eine Darstellung der Euripideischen Iphigenie auf einem Koptischen Stoff,” Antike Kunst 7, 1964, pp. 42ff.). A more thorough investigation of Coptic textiles may well be a fertile ground for the tracing of lost illustrated, chiefly Dionysiac and bucolic texts such as the previously mentioned Dionysiaca of Nonnus. This seems only natural since Alexandria was the place where, after ail, book illumination was invented.
The above-cited “Survival” article has still another dimension with regard to the spread of mythological subject matter in Byzantine art, namely its impact on Old and New Testament illustration. A miniature from an eleventhcentury Octateuch in the Vatican with Samson strangling the lion is obviously derived from the parallel action of Heracles (sdi¢d., p. 57 and figs. 25-26) and the Sacrifice of Isaac on a fifth-century ivory pyxis in Trier can best be explained by a representation from The Telephus of Euripides, depicting Telephus about to sacrifice the boy Orestes (7did., pp. 58f. and figs. 27-28).
In this process of transformation of mythological scenes into Christian ones also the Pseudo-Nonnus commentary seems to have played a role. When we proposed that the representation of the Bewailing of Christ, so common in Byzantine art, was inspired by a scene of the Bewailing of the dead Actaeon by his mother Autonoé (Weitzmann, “The Origin of the Threnos,” De Artibus Opuscula XL, Essays in honor of E. Panofsky, 1961, pp. 476ff. and figs. 16-17), Pseudo-Nonnus seems, indeed, to have been the most likely source.
The search for lost illustrated mythological texts as evidenced by reflections in other media, has been taken up by other scholars as well. A study by Carina Calvi—to cite only an especially stimulating one—on a sixth-century silver plate from Castelvint, now in the Archaeological Museum in Venice, (“I] piatto d’argento di Castelvint,” Aguzleta Nostra L, 1979, pp. 354ff., esp. pp. 371, 379), which represents Athena being supprised by Teiresias, explains convincingly, I believe, that the source was an illustrated hymn of Callimachus. This kind of text, along with other mythological and bucolic texts of Alexandrian origin must, indeed, have been inviting to an illustrator.
Whatever the outcome of further studies along these lines will be, the nucleus of the transmission of mythological subject matter in the Middle Ages was obviously a handbook like that of Apollodorus and perhaps also that of Conon. Now it has recently been demonstrated by Josepha WeitzmannFiedler that also the Latin West showed in the Middle Ages, especially in the twelfth century, an intense interest in classical mythology as witnessed by widely spread engraved bronze bowls (Romanische Gravierte Bronzeschalen, Berlin 1981).
In this century subjects like Pyramus and Thisbe, Myrrha, Scylla and others, suddenly had become quite popular. These engraved scenes on the bowls, as she argued with good reason, are, like the Byzantine counterparts, rooted in illustrated texts of mythological handbooks (zdid., pp. 29f.). Yet the difference is that in the Latin West the pictorial tradition from classical times is more or less confined to figures based on pictures of constellations which were very popular in the West since the Carolingian period and often preserved the classical forms extremely well.
But outside of this realm most mythological subjects-on the bronze bowls are creations in the spirit of romanesque art. Even in a case where the model was not a mythological handbook but a straight classical text like the Ach#//ets of Statius that formed the basis for a cycle of Achilles scenes on a bow! in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, the style is thoroughly romanesque. In the light of these comparisons, the amount of the pictorial survival from the classical tradition in Byzantine art is all the more remarkable.
KURT WEITZMANN Princeton, New Jersey January 1984
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