n. oikonomides, the mosaic panel of constantine ix and zoe in saint sophia

8/13/2019 N. Oikonomides, The Mosaic Panel of Constantine IX and Zoe in Saint Sophia

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T H E MOS ICS O H G I S O P H IBY CHARLES RUFUS MOREY

Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton UniversityThe mosaics of Hagia Sophia are comparable, only examples of truly Byzantine mosaics inin their importance for Byzantine art, to the this period, since those which were commis-Elgin marbles in the British Museum, which sioned by Paschal I and Gregory IV forrepresent the high-water mark of Greek sculp- churches in Rome in the early years of theture. For Constantinople and Hagia Sophia ninth century are but provincial works, imi-were not only the re-ligious centers of east-ern Christianity, butthe fountainhead of itsartistic expression. Andyet, until these mosaicswere brought to lightagain, the major artof Constantinople wasmore a concept con-structed from mediae-val descriptions than areality; only one church,Kahrie Djami, still re-tained its mosaic deco-ration, and this datedfrom the very end ofthe Christian art of the capital, in the four-teenth century. The enamels, textiles, manu-script miniatures, and ivories, on which webased our notion of Byzantine art at its met-ropolitan source, were all a matter of attribu-tion and were distributed through the mu-seums and collections of Europe and America.But the mosaics of Hagia Sophia go fartoward filling the vacuum. The lunettes of theportals, figuring the Christ enthroned with animperial donor at his feet and the Virgin andChild receiving the gift of the city from Con-stantine and Hagia Sophia from Justinian,show us in creations of the first water what theateliers of Constantinople could do in theninth or tenth century. They are in fact our

tative of early Chris-tian style, and theninth - century datinggiven by some to themosaic apses in Cyprusis open to question.The Deesis of the tri-forium, with its Christreceiving the supplica-tion of his Mother andJohn the Baptist, is themost important itemin the corpus of Byzan-tine art that this writercan think of, and fullyembodies the climaxof Constantinopolitan

style which was reached in the eleventh cen-tury. The imperial portraits of the south gal-lery, of the later eleventh century and the earlytwelfth, are witness as well of the beginningof decline-the substitution of actual and spe-cific portraiture and expression for the broadand deep significance that imparts its majestyto the Deesis.The Deesis is the most Byzantine of Byzan-tine themes. This group, wherein the Virginand the Precursor make their plea (Deesis) forerring humanity, is the nucleus of ByzantineLast Judgments, such as that which covers thewest wall of Torcello Cathedral. It was un-known to early Christian art, and no exampleof it occurs before the ninth century. It isTHE BULLETIN is published monthly from October to June and quarterly from July to September by The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, New York 28, N.Y. Re-entered as second class matter November I7, 1942, at the Post Office atNew York, N. Y., under the Act of August 24, I9I2. Copyright 1944 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Subscription $2.00 a year.Single copies twenty cents. Sent free to Museum members. Editor: Beulah Dimmick Chase. Assistant Editors: Agnes Peters andJean Leonard. Assistant: Mary Ellen Goode.

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CONTENTSMarch, 1944

THE MOSAICS OF HAGIA SOPHIABY CHARLES RUFUS MOREY 201

TURKISH ART OF THEMUHAMMADAN PERIODBY MAURICE S. DIMAND 211

THE HERBAL OFPSEUDO-APULEIUS

BY WILLIANIM. IVINS, R. 218MR. KAO AND MISS CHANG

BY ALAN PRIEST 222


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Head of Christ. Mosaic in the apse of thecathedral of Monreale, Palermoespecially Byzantine in its emphasis on thedogmatic rather than emotional value of theseassessors of the Judge; whereas the Judgmentsof Romanesque and Gothic pair the Virginwith the Beloved Disciple as her partner inintercession, the Byzantine gives her the Bap-tist as the last of the prophets and the end ofthe Old Dispensation.The trend of Byzantine art-from the time itbegan its integration after the Iconoclastic Con-troversy of the eighth and ninth centuries hadshattered the early Christian tradition-wasalways toward such direct and pure expressionof its transcendental content as this Deesis rep-resents. The irreality thus achieved is mostapparent in the persistent Byzantine abhor-rence of the third dimension: in its preferencefor the single plane, its decoration of metal byincision and flat enamel rather than relief, itselimination of space in mosaics and iniaturesby a gold background. Painting as a two-dimensional art was the Byzantine artist'snatural medium, and there is even literary evi-dence that painting was considered by theGreek Church as more holy than sculpture.Despite the victory of the image-worshipers atthe end of the great Controversy, there still

remained in the Byzantine mind an instinctivedistrust of sculpture as a mode too real for itssupernatural themes. Statuary in the round issimply nonexistent in developed Byzantinereligious art.The bearded Christ of the Deesis is evi-dently the Constantinopolitan type which wasimitated by the mosaic artists of the kings ofSicily in the twelfth century. The Pantocratorsin the apses of Cefalu, the Cappella Palatina,and Monreale repeat the contrasting directionsof the face and glance that enliven the majestyof the portrait in Hagia Sophia, and followclosely its features, accents, and composition.The concept of the Saviour has in this mosaicreached among existing renderings its prob-able ultimate of sublimity. The evolution hereculminated was a long one, commencing withthe early Christian groping after an ideal com-mensurate with both the humanity and divin-ity of the Son of God. No tradition existed ofthe actual likeness of the man Jesus. Tertul-lian's disconcerting phrase ne aspectu quidemhonestus, not even respectable in appear-ance, seems by its context to be meant tosupport his insistence on the humble human-ity of the Saviour rather than to record atraditional portrait. Augustine says that con-cerning the appearance of Our Lord in theflesh there is wide diversity of opinion andimagination. Early Christian art was forcedin this, as in the case of other types, to borrowfrom antiquity, and the earliest representa-tions of Christ follow the three divine typesof Hellenistic art: the beardless, short-hairedhead of Hermes, the beardless, long-hairedDionysus or Apollo, or the bearded, long-haired portrait that embodied the older andgreater gods, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon.There is something of a geographic divisionin the use of these types: the Hermes head waspopular in Alexandria, the Dionysus type inGreek lands, the bearded face in Syria andPalestine, whence it invaded Egypt to competein popularity with the youthful, curly-hairedtype we find on the Alexandrian ivories. Italyreceived and used all three but in more or lessof a succession. In the catacomb paintings ofthe third and fourth centuries Christ is usually

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The Virgin with the emperor John II Comnenos and the empress Irene.On the east wall of the south gallerynevertheless bring the south gallery group toa date not much later than that to which thepresent writer would assign the Deesis. Butthe Saviour is presented here in quite differentaspect from that in the Deesis. The type is thesame, almost line for line, but the mouth is setin a straight line, the gaze does not meet andarrest the spectator, the pose is alert, the effectmore positive, less imposing. One feels a differ-ence somewhat similar to that which distin-guishes a Madonna by Cimabue from Duccio'sVirgins. The Christ of Zoe and Constantinehas become more specific and mundane, aproper object of the offerings the rulers bring-Constantine his bag of gold, Zoe her scrollrecording donations to the Church.

The Christ portrait here is without doubt arendering we would not expect until later inthe eleventh century. The explanation lies inthe fact that all three heads in this Zoe groupare later restorations; Whittemore's careful de-scription notes the evidence for this in the dif-ference of level between the tesserae of theheads and those of the mosaic fields surround-ing them. The style of these figures is reallynot far from that of the other and later im-perial group recovered by Whittemore in thesouth gallery-John II Comnenos (1i18- 143),the Virgin and Child, and the empress Irene.The Virgin has the straight mouth of theChrist and the protuberant cheeks that are soconventionally modeled on all three faces of

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the Zoe group, but the accents here are morepronounced. The Child's knitted brow andpositive gestures give the infant a minatoryeffect quite unchildish, contrasting with thegentle serenity which the artist has elicitedfrom the conventions of the Virgin's features.Portraiture here is much more accurate thanin the heads of Constantine and Zoe, thoughmuch of the contrast may be due to the resto-ration above mentioned. The head of JohnComnenos conveys a personality not easilyforgotten, and his Hungarian empress, thoughmore conventionally rendered, seems demurelyon parade and conscious of the beauty forwhich she is praised in contemporary panegyr-ics. The seventeen-year-old Alexios Comnenos,who is pictured on the pilaster next to thegroup of Christ with John and Irene, has atroubled, transient face, to quote Whitte-more's description, whose tense expression isenhanced by a tight-drawn, drooping mouth.Such portraits prepare one for the strikinglikenesses of royal donors on the walls of Ser-bian churches from the middle of the twelfthcentury on, and are symptoms, along with theaggressive Child, of the trend toward realismwhich was soon to upset the serene equilibriumof classic Byzantine style. The later issue ofthis trend is better known than such rare ex-amples of its origin as these: it develops onthe one hand the mechanical liveliness thatone sees in some of the mosaics of St. Mark'sat Venice of the thirteenth century, and onthe other hand emerges in the surprisingdrama of the twelfth- and thirteenth-centuryfrescoes of Serbia. At St. Mark's the artists usethe conventions of the grand style while striv-ing to give them natural animation; the resultis a staccato movement, an ultra-elongation ofthe body, and an exaggeration of the mid-Byzantine contrast of high lights and shadow.In Serbia, at Nerez and Milesevo in the twelfthand thirteenth centuries, the content of Pas-sion scenes becomes real tragedy, with formsand movements truly expressive. The tenderMadonnas of Byzantine and mediaeval Italianpainting are the product of this realistic move-ment; one of the earliest examples we have ofIhe Virgin who pressesher cheek to that of the

The emperor Alexios Comnenos. On the eastwall of the south galleryChild is the Virgin of Vladimir, an iconbrought to Suzdal in Russia from Constan-tinople in the early twelfth century and an-cestress of a whole line of Russian icons thatimitate its delicate sentiment. But these por-traits in Hagia Sophia are the first examplesin Constantinople itself of a phase of laterByzantine which has been illustrated hithertoby examples so provincial that it is known gen-erally under the name of Macedonian style.The present writer saw the great Madonnain the apse of Hagia Sophia in 1936, when itwas just coming out of its plaster coating. Atthat time it seemed of late date and was sodescribed in the writer's Mediaeval Art, withthe suggestion that it might be a late copy orrestoration of a figure of the time of Basil I(867-886). One must await Mr. Whittemore'spublication of the mosaic before venturingfurther opinion, but the copy on exhibition** Reproduced n color on the coverof the Bulletin.

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Christ and the emperor Leo the Wise. Over the central doorway from the narthex into the navesupports the belief that this Madonna, afine combination of Hellenic humanism withByzantine dogma, belongs to the earlier andsubtler phase of Byzantine rather than to anylater period. The inscription on the face ofthe apsidal arch bears out a ninth-century dat-ing of the decoration of the apse. It is nearlyall gone, but enough remains to identify it asa couplet preserved in the Palatine Anthology:Icons which the imposters here destroyed, thepious sovereigns have restored again. Thissounds like a close echo of the end of theIconoclastic Controversy (842), and while itmight point to the regency of Theodora dur-ing the infancy of Michael III, the plural men-tion of the sovereigns would better fit the briefdual reign (866-867) of Michael and Basil, ter-minated by the murder of Basil's drunkardcolleague. Details confirm the later date: theearly Christian heavy infula, or fillet, which theVirgin wears beneath her veil; the plain rec-tangular (unsplayed) cross in the nimbus ofthe Child, which is a current type in the eighthand ninth centuries; the reminiscence of theeighth-century baluster fold of the draperyaround the ankle, resembling, along with the

rectangular cross in the nimbus, the same de-tails in the mosaic of Leo the Wise, Basil'simmediate successor, which adorns the lunetteof the main portal of the narthex.One is tempted, in view of the manifoldbuilding activity and restorations credited toBasil I, the founder of the Macedonian dy-nasty, to seek trace of his work among themosaics of Hagia Sophia. We know from thepages of his grandson Constantine Porphyro-genitus that he repaired the great west arch ofthe nave and set upon it a mosaic picture ofthe Virgin, with the busts of Peter and Paulbeside her, and restored most generously theother damages to buildings. His successor,Leothe Wise, seems to be the donor of the finemosaic lunette over the central door openingfrom the narthex into the church, since An-thony of Novgorod, writing his description ofthe holy places of Constantinople in 1200,speaks of a great picture beside the doorwhich represents the emperor and lord Leothe Wise, with a precious stone on his browthat lights up the church of Hagia Sophia bynight. The precious stone might be thecross of pearls surmounting the diadem of the

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Thle Virgin with Justinian and Constantine. Over the south vestibule doorway into the narthexprostrate emperor in the mosaic, but the iden-tification would not be too convincing were itnot for the medallions flanking the enthronedChrist to whom the emperor makes his obei-sance. These contain the busts of the Virginand the archangel Gabriel, the same person-ages attending the emperor in the coronationscene figured on an ivory in the Berlin Mu-seum; they seem therefore to be his especialspiritual sponsors, and their appearance herein the mosaic makes probable the presencealso of their imperial protege. Whittemorecites also the resemblance of the emperor'shead to the coin portraits of Leo VI.If the lunette over the narthex door is ofthe time of Leo VI, it suggests a continuationof mosaic work in Hagia Sophia begun by hispredecessor, Basil the Macedonian. The Lifeof Basil does not mention further mosaicadornment beyond that which accompaniedBasil's repair to the great western arch, butthe style of the ninth century seems certainlyvisible in another of the mosaics of the greatchurch. This is the lunette over the south door-way into the narthex, with its striking com-position of the Virgin and Child, enthroned,

receiving from Justinian on her right a modelof Hagia Sophia and from Constantine on herleft a similar miniature of the city of Constan-tinople. Whittemore found the style of thislunette comparable to that of ivories and tis-sues of the end of the tenth century and saw apossible occasion for the choice of its subject inthe bringing of a venerated icon of the Virginto Constantinople by John Tzimisces in 971.Repairs which kept the church closed for theeight years preceding 994 might in his opinionhave afforded the opportunity for its installa-tion. But his dating is mainly based on thepalaeography of the inscriptions, whose letterforms he found to be paralleled mostly inexamples of the second half of the tenth cen-tury or the beginning of the eleventh. Byzan-tine script is not a very safe basis for chronol-ogy, being more prone to revivals and mix-tures of early and late than Latin, and Whitte-more's argument from the inscriptions is alsocompromised by the occurrence of some of theforms he cites in the ninth century and thefact that some of his test letters in the inscrip-tions are not precisely of the form that makescomparison valid: e.g. the lambda, mu, and

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tau. He recognizes the omega as not yet of therotund outline characteristic of the tenth cen-tury. On the other hand, his dating would besupported by a comparison he does not men-tion: the monograms M-P )Y' (YypP O0ou,Mother of God ) that flank the head of theVirgin are identical with those on ivory reliefsrepresenting Mary which date according toGoldschmidt and Weitzmann in the tenth cen-tury and are assigned by A. S. Keck and thepresent writer to the eleventh. The curvingmid-bars of the M, its ligature with the P, andthe extended crossbar of the theta with itsterminal pendants are all exactly reproducedon an ivory triptych of this category in theHistorical Museum at Moscow.Whittemore is quite right, too, in pointingout that these monograms are late arrivals inByzantine inscriptions and appear first on thecoins of Leo VI. The title Tz'PpOsou, usedas an inscription, is itself possibly post-Icono-clastic; there are no certain early Christianexamples. But the excellent detail plates ofWhittemore's publication make it possible tosuggest, even against the authority of his care-ful examination, that the monograms are alater insertion, betrayed by the irregularity ofthe rows of tesserae around and within theirenclosing circles, and by the lines of tesseraeadjoining the letters that interrupt the hori-zontal original rows of tesserae and look likeintrusions. As for the other inscriptions, onemay observe in Whittemore's description thatthe tessellae stand prominently from the plas-ter setting, which suggests, along with thefaulty fitting of Constantine's inscription to itsspace, that these also were later additions.They read in any case like retrospective eulo-gies: Constantine, the great emperor, num-bered among the saints ; Justinian, the em-peror famed in story.These doubts are prompted by the difficultyof accepting the style of the group as of theend of the tenth century. The figures are con-ceived in a space that had disappeared fromByzantine art by that time. They have also arobust volume which one still finds in the min-iatures of the Homilies of Gregory, illustratedfor Basil I (Paris, Bibl. Nat. gr. 510), but which

is absent from the figures in the numerousminiatures of the Vatican Menologium, exe-cuted a hundred years later for the secondBasil. The strong modeling of the features isa similar symptom of the ninth rather than thelate tenth century. So also is the heavy scaleof the ornament.Any attempt to date the mosaic by the archi-tectural features of the model of Hagia Sophiaheld by Justinian is apt to founder on the free-dom with which mediaeval artists deal withsuch details. Weigand thought the drum be-neath the dome was good evidence that thecomposition could not date before 1050, butan artist who used so large a scale in ornamentwould not have hesitated to enlarge the orig-inal windows at the base of the dome into the

semblance of a drum. On the other hand, thecity presented by Constantine is definitely ofearly type, retaining still the complete circuitof wall which the more careful of such modelsobserved in late antique art, whereas in thelate tenth century, to judge from the cities rep-resented in the miniatures of the Menologiumof Basil II, artists had already begun to rep-resent the city wall only in the front of themodel, indicating the rest by a mass of build-ings, or modifying the rear of the walled en-closure into the conventional arc that is thecharacteristic feature of such cities in min-iatures of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.The mosaic seems to the writer to be quiteconsistent with the character and times ofBasil I. The caution with which this astutebase-born usurper had to assert his imperialdignity might well have impelled him to con-sider Justinian instead of himself as a safervis-a-vis of Constantine. As for the latter, weknow that he was an especial object of rev-erence on the part of Basil, who named a sonafter the great emperor and dedicated a churchto him. Lastly, the theme of the composition,otherwise unique, is paralleled by anothercommissioned by Basil: on the ceiling of anapartment in his new palace, he ordered amosaic representing the emperor enthroned,surrounded by his generals, his comrades inarms, who were offering him the cities theyhad taken, as gifts.

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n. oikonomides, the mosaic panel of constantine ix and zoe in saint sophia

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