problem portraits, the ambivalence of visual represention in byzantium

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 40:2, Spring 2010 DOI 10.1215/10829636-2009-021 2010 by Duke University Press

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Problem Portraits: The Ambivalence of Visual Representation in Byzantium

Paroma ChatterjeeUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillChapel Hill, North Carolina

Perception of an object costs Precise the Objects loss

Emily Dickinson, Poem 1071

Early in the narrative of the eleventh-century Life of St. Nikon, the reader, or listener, is made privy to a touching episode of family melodrama.1 Nikons relatives, intent upon retrieving him from the monastic life, are in hot pur-suit of the saint, while Nikon flees across a river with the Virgins aid. At this stage, Nikons father lets out a heart-rending lament: My son, . . . if it is not your wish to touch me, . . . at least show me your face which I long to see. . . . therein I will have immeasurable consolation. Softened, Nikon turns his visage just as much as was necessary, whereupon his father, taken aback by his withered countenance, ponders that perhaps it were better I did not see what I see. But when Nikon finally turns his back and moves out of sight, resuming his physical and spiritual journey, the father recovers somewhat. Heartbroken at his sons hasty (and this time final) departure, he speaks as though Nikon were still present, murmuring, Farewell, son, farewell, my sweetest (Nikon 15.9 16.26).

This encounter encapsulates poignantly the themes I propose to investigate: urgent desire (conscious and otherwise) for a glimpse of the saint; recognition of the holy one attendant upon shock or wonder; and the equivo-cations in the presence or absence of the saint in relation to the beholder before, during, and after the dawning of recognition. All these themes are vitally related to the workings of vision, a subject that has attracted much attention in the medieval field. Specifically with regard to Byzantium, a series of influential studies have examined the status of vision in relation to

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the other senses, its different, sometimes competing models, and the nature of the links posited between a visible, material representation and its holy prototype.2 In the above episode, the sequence of the brief fulfillment and final bereavement of vision is enacted between a father and his saintly off-spring. In this article, I explore the ramifications of that encounter in the context of the Byzantine artist and his saintly model, or sitter, where vision is invested with an added urgency because of the nature of the task at hand: making a portrait of the saint. If vision and representation were complex and much contested issues in Byzantium, then the relationship between the artist and the saint functions as both commentary and critique of those issues.3 In this context, the contemporary anxieties of visualization are encoded most effectively in the process of portraiture, when the artist attempts to make the saints icon. Hagiographic texts are some of the richest sources detailing the circumstances and consequences of such interactions.4 But scholarship has accepted them as straightforward arguments about the general importance of visual representation indeed, its triumph without considering their embedded nuances, nor the contemporary, often conflicting, perceptions of the workings of vision and representation that they touch upon.

I propose, through a rereading of certain episodes in the eleventh-century texts of the Life of Nikon and the Life of Irene of Chrysobalanton, to highlight the contradictions they manifest with regard to holy presence and the artists role in fleshing out a sacred countenance. Some hagiogra-phies are as much extended discourses about visual representation as they are sacred biographies, taking up the themes that informed the Iconoclas-tic controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries.5 These eleventh-century examples offer creative responses to the same issues. In so doing, they reveal the intrinsic difficulties embedded in the principles of visualization that persisted well after the end of Iconoclasm, when specific tenets for repre-sentation had been established.6 These texts, instead, offer a space in which concrete, hands-on representational practices are narrativized, problema-tized, and shown to break down in intriguing ways when a holy person is involved. Just as the artist coaxes into existence the depiction of the saint, often stumbling and failing in the process, so these texts are also exercises in delayed gratification, building up in stages and with the subtlest of strokes toward their (seemingly) satisfactory dnouements. Consequently, the texts suggest that the very fashioning of a portrait of the saint, no matter how arduous or interrupted the process, attains a central importance in defin-ing the identity of the holy one in relation to his or her image.7 Indeed, it is because of the conditions specific to visual representation that the tenu-

Chatterjee / Problem Portraits 225

ous links between the portrait and the holy prototype are clarified or con-founded, as the case may be.

In the process, these texts also place particular pressures on the one who paints the holy portrait: the artist. He remains nameless in each account, but escapes the archetypical notion of the anonymous medieval craftsman. It is he who is privileged with direct access to the saint in contrast to the other (often named) characters, whose encounters with the divine he mediates. Moreover, the artist assumes a significance beyond the obvious as he enables an instructive glimpse into the distinct stages charac-terizing visual representation and its complexities. The activities and osten-sible success and/or failure of the artist offer a pithy but provocative rumina-tion on the role of this pivotal character, and the agency simultaneously powerful and derivative that post-Iconoclastic theories of representation bestowed on him.8

However, verbal representation is not to be dismissed, not least since it forms the vehicle for communicating the effects of the visual, for elaborating upon, and offering variations of its processes. The holy portrait, even as it is fixed by the artist as an accurate and seemingly transparent representation for generations afterwards, in its making betrays unease, and the story of that making is only accessible through verbal delineation. A seri-ous analysis of these accounts, however, must consider not only the events they describe but also their emphatically literary qualities. This is evident in their allusion to rhetorical structures and their reflection on the effects of verbal narration. The Life of Irene of Chrysobalanton, in particular, is regarded as a hagiographic novel of sorts, with a high degree of literary self- consciousness.9 The incorporation of aspects of Byzantine rhetoric urges a reconsideration of the relations linking (or severing) verbal and visual prod-ucts and processes.10

These texts thus reflect and participate in the broader climate of the eleventh century when vision and representation were topics of vibrant engagement for theologians and intellectuals such as Michael Psellos, Symeon the New Theologian, Leo of Chalcedon, and others.11 Their writ-ings remind us that the issues debated so fiercely during Iconoclasm were by no means resolved when that conflict ended, but were susceptible to contin-uous discourse, related as they are to that integral component of Christian Orthodoxy as established after the ninth century: the icon. The portrayal of those subjects in distinct ways in the texts I will discuss, suggests the degree to which the nuances of vision and representation could be opened up to a broad public through the medium of hagiography, an enormously popular


genre in terms of both production and consumption. If hagiography could present and disseminate political and social propaganda, then it could surely also be a medium for discussing the subjects that were so vital to Orthodoxy. The fact that it was used for the justification of icons in the ninth century reflects its potential as a discursive site for exploring issues related to visual representation. A careful reading of the episodes in question, therefore, is not only enjoyable, but also essential for our understanding of how the funda-mental premises of certain critical issues were interrogated and reformulated at a particular historical moment. The narrative of the portrait in a hagio-graphic text like the Life of Nikon or the Life of Irene renders the portrait as an object flirting on the boundary between presence and absence, accuracy and failure. Moreover, the narrative does not invoke a linear trajectory of vision, but the vagaries that vision is subject to, even in the case of those whose professions are premised on it.

Nikon and the failed artist

An episode in the Life of Nikon effectively raises the question of holy presence and the ability of a portrait to substitute for this presence. As the episode relates, Malakenos, a beneficiary of Nikons favors, commissions a portrait of the saint from a skillful artist. Malakenoss desire for a portrait is fueled primarily by the fact that Nikon had prophesied that Malakenos would see him, but the saint died before this could come about. Malakenos, disturbed at this disruption of the saints prophecy, tries to fulfill it by his own efforts. Thus, the commission acquires a value beyond the expected. Not simply an aid to the remembrance of the holy person and therefore an explicit marker of his absence in the way that portraits usually functioned, this portrait is posited as an agent that will fulfill the saints promise.12

What follows is a saga of frustration crowned by a miracle. Malak-enos describes the saints appearance in great detail to the artist, mentioning Nikons stature, hair, and dress, but the artist, on attempting to paint the portrait, finds that he is unable even to begin the task, let alone finish it. As the text explains, the artists inability is due to the fact that he has never before seen the saint. Then a monk fortuitously enters the artists house, claiming to have a perfect likeness to Nikon. This monk is Nikon himself, but the artist does not recognize him as the saint. The artist rushes to paint this sitter, so conveniently provided, but only to find that the appearance of the saint is already imprinted upon the panel. Meanwhile, the mysterious monk has vanished. The artist then finishes the painting and brings it to a


delighted Malakenos, who declares it to be a perfect and indistinguishable likeness of Nikon (Nikon 44). Recounted in this manner, the episode might seem typical of other episodes of saints appearing to artists, venerators, and even emperors in dreams and visions, often uninvited, in order to assist them to good fortune or avert them from catastrophe, and to facilitate the making of an icon. But if read carefully, examining each stage in the making of the portrait in the context of contemporary Byzantine visuality, this episode in the Life of Nikon reveals itself as a peculiarly convoluted instance of failure at every level.

The episode begins with a perfectly comprehensible commission of the saints portrait. When Malakenos describes Nikon to the artist, men-tioning the saints physical characteristics, he follows a standard procedure, for as Henry Maguire has shown, in the post-Iconoclastic period the picto-rial definition of the holy one was based on his or her hagiographical text.13 The texts furnished pointers to artists creating the saints likenesses, which they then embellished and finally codified. It is in accordance with such a code that different categories of saints came to be identified, their codes fixed by the late tenth or eleventh century. For instance, military saints such as George were described in written versions of their lives as being more corporeal than ascetic saints such as John the Baptist, who were described as being emaciated. Accordingly, the icons of George and John the Baptist depict them as robust and lean respectively, the modeling and use of color in their portraits calibrated so that the differences articulated in their scripted biographies are immediately evident. Even within the same hagiographic category, individual saints were delineated so as to distinguish each from his or her counterparts.14 Nikon, specifically, had an advantage over most of his fellow saints in that he had a recognizable attribute, a staff with a cross on its top given to him by the Virgin (Nikon 15.45 46), which, as Maguire claims, was much rarer in the depiction of Byzantine saints than in those from the Latin West.15

However, in spite of the diegesis or narration furnished by Malak-enos, the artist of Nikons portrait is unable to translate the verbal cues into pictorial terms. According to the Life of Nikon, he is unable to portray a man he has never seen on the basis of a verbal account alone (Nikon 44.18 20). Yet the artists stumbling block is surely surprising, for the internal details of the narrative imply that it is reasonable for Malakenos to presume that the artist would be able to paint a likeness when given the code. And the artist trusts his own ability to do so, for he accepts the commission. In fact, the text mentions that the artist thinks he can quite cleverly produce


results with his art (44.15 18). The point of the ensuing events is to offer an extended and miraculous version of a process that would otherwise have been familiar to the artist. His inability, I suggest, is the first point of curi-osity in the narrative, signaling the flaws in a fundamental post-Iconoclastic tenet of representation.

Word and image were posited as distinct representational modes in Byzantium after that upheaval, but equal in value, as argued by the leading ninth-century Iconophile, Patriarch Nicephoros, against the unique privi-lege that Iconoclasts such as John the Grammarian bestowed on words.16 Word and image, despite their obvious differences as representational sys-tems, were believed to share a basic similarity in that both were reposito-ries of memory and mimesis in relation to the prototypes they sought to embody.17 The artist in the Life of Nikon, however, reveals that despite their parallel status, difficulties persist in moving from one system to the other precisely because the sheer arbitrariness of words means that they cannot, in all circumstances, be seamlessly translated into images.

This is an interesting reversal of a rhetorical mode of viewing that was widely prevalent among and cultivated by the Byzantines: ekphrasis. In an ekphrastic mode of viewing, the power and potential seductiveness of images is transferred to verbal exposition, the words striving to keep up, compete with, and overcome the image, whether real or imagined.18 Accord-ing to the Progymnasmata, the ancient rhetorical handbooks used in Byzan-tium, the defining features of ekphrasis are clarity (sapheneia) and vividness (enargeia).19 Accounts of ekphrastic responses to images of saints and their lives reveal that this was an exceptionally effective channel of response, pre-mised on the intensification of the affective qualities of the image by the word, and thereby maneuvering the viewer (or listener) into a suitably emo-tional state, ready to imbibe the moral lessons offered by hagiography.20

In the case of Nikons portrait, however, the opposite is posited as an impossibility: the image refuses to take its cues and form itself from the ver-bal delineation. Moreover, the text specifies that Malakenos did not offer an ekphrasis, but a diegesis, to the artist. Diegesis is defined as a narration in the rhetorical handbooks, which could potentially include an ekphrastic pas-sage.21 In this case, the diegesis encompassed a detailed account of Nikons form (morphe), his outline, or monastic habit (schema), his hair, and clothes. Even as the words are offered as tools to facilitate the task of embodying the holy one, the image that should take shape from them remains elusive. Its power resides, paradoxically, in its nonexistence. Would the artist have been better equipped by a vivid narrative fulfilling the requirements of a success-


ful ekphrasis rather than a diegesis? Furthermore, are the words themselves adequate to describing the saint, as the patron (and initially, the artist) take them to be? By subtly posing these questions, the text interrogates the con-ceptual categories laid down for the representation of a holy person, and the nature of response to it, be it in the form of a narrative or a description.22 The artist in this case is not just one who represents; he is also an audience to Malakenoss rhetorical choice for representing the saint. The final prod-uct crafted by the artist is the required response to that descriptive perfor-mance.23 If the response falters or fails completely, it indicates some funda-mental difficulty in the nature of holy representation and the responses to it, verbal and visual, that are considered valid.

Moreover, representation here is construed as an act informed by and conducive to communication. Just as Malakenos communicates a set of verbal coordinates to the artist, so the artist is expected to fashion a visual matrix that communicates Nikons holy identity back to Malakenos and other viewers. But if the vital links in the chain remain unconnected, if an artist cannot make the leap from words to image, then how does one bridge the gap? This is not an idle dilemma but one with a disturbing urgency, for it provokes a similar and immeasurably more significant question: If it is difficult to switch from one representational system to another when each is posited as the others equal in value, how much more difficult is it to forge the link between a representation (in word or image) and an entity posited at a different ontological plane altogether: the prototype?

The debates over the validity of icons in Byzantium in the eighth and ninth centuries unfurled precisely over the issue of the relationship sus-tained between an image and its prototype.24 John of Damascus formulated the theoretical defense that icons did indeed share in the essence of the per-sons they represented; therefore, dishonoring an image of Christ was tan-tamount to dishonoring Christ himself.25 Recognizing the near-idolatrous tenor of this theory, it was reformulated by Patriarch Nicephoros, who argued that the link between the image and the prototype was not essential-ist in nature, but formal. The image was tied to the prototype by memory, or resemblance, not by a share in the substance of the prototype itself.26 Nice-phoross formulation posited the Byzantine icon as a directed absence, as art historian Charles Barber elegantly puts it; the icon points or tends toward (pros ti) the prototype while being itself empty of any vestige of the latter.27 However, as Barbers studies have shown, the earlier, essentialist cast of the icon persisted with a tenacity well after Iconoclasm had ended, certainly for ordinary viewers of icons who often believed that they stood in for the holy


people they depicted, but also in the views of eleventh-century clergymen such as Leo of Chalcedon, who went so far as to hurl accusations against a Byzantine emperor on the basis of it.28 These instances of switching a for-malist conception of the icon for an essentialist one and vice versa indicate a broader, sustained problem regarding the issue of holy presence and its manifestation in visual terms.

The flip (or dark) side of this problem may be summed up in the following question: Since the representation, or image, is theoretically con-sidered to be a signifier removed from the signified (the holy prototype) in material and substance, is it then at best an arbitrary exercise, a complete fantasy with no concrete relation to the ineffable domain of the holy, or at worst, a fruitless enterprise for mere mortals such as the artist who tries to capture Nikons countenance in vain? The Life of Nikon raises this question forcefully once more later in the narrative, which I shall treat at length below. For now, we can say that even as the narrative voices these crippling doubts, puncturing the heart of representational theory in Byzantium and exposing the dangerous instability of the very definition of an icon, the text blithely proceeds to furnish a miraculous answer and response but without ever divesting itself of its ambiguities. Indeed, the recourse to the miracle that occurs may be regarded as intensifying rather than resolving them.

Meanwhile the artist in the Life of Nikon remains in a state of anxi-ety, as the text mentions, underscoring the contrast to his prior confidence. Mary Carrutherss investigations have suggested that worry, even ill health, were the preparatory stages deemed necessary to induce contact with the divine in the medieval period.29 Although Carruthers situates her visionar-ies in a monastic context in the Latin West, one may still presume that the Byzantine artists perplexity is partially responsible for what occurs next in the account of Nikons portrait. A monk appears to the artist and inquires why he looks anxious and worried. When the artist explains, the monk enjoins him to observe his countenance, for the saint to be painted was in all respects similar to himself (Nikon 44.34 35). By drawing attention to his own appearance, the monk also directs us, the reader or listener, to a crucial insight: the artist is unable to recognize that the monk, who now stands in front of his own eyes, corresponds to the verbal description of the saint. The lack of recognition is emphasized in the text, which clearly connects the description of the monk to that of the saint supplied by the patron, and this as the monk appears to the artist: tall in stature, eremitic in appearance, squalid head, black hair, black beard, and carrying Nikons defining feature,


his staff (44.21 29).30 The artist, at the monks urging, looks at the monk intently and believes that it is the same man as has been described by the patron, but even then, the artist cannot, or does not, equate the monk with the saint he is supposed to portray.

The theme of appearance and nonrecognition both echoes and reverses the circumstances of Nikons encounter with his father that occurs earlier in the text (described above). In that episode, Nikons presence is fer-vently desired and beseeched, whereupon Nikon obliges with a measure of stinginess, turning his countenance just as much as was required. The fathers recognition of this partial vision is immediate but tinged with shocked grief at how changed it is, because of the rigors of the monastic life. Yet, in spite of the drastic alteration and absence of the whole visage, his father does not fail to recognize the saint. In pointed contrast, in the episode of the artists encounter with Nikon, not only is there no indication of the artist praying to Nikon for an appearance, but when the saint does appear unbidden in the form of the monk, unaltered and whole, conforming exactly to the patrons description, the artists cognitive faculties fail.

The twin encounters raise the issue of the tenability of theories of vision in the medieval period and their application. Extramission, Robert S. Nelson has argued, was a broadly accepted model in Byzantium, whereby the beholders eye sends out rays to the object of vision, captures it, then returns to imprint it on the beholders retina.31 Bissera V. Pentcheva describes this process in terms specific to the making of images of saints in Byzantium:

[T]he active eye of the artist casts optical rays over the saint. They touch the sacred form and return, impressing the gathered shape into the memory of the craftsman. This first image (the imprinted vestige of touch) is thus internal. Like a negative intaglio, it is subsequently impressed by the hands of the artist into a material surface.32

When applied to Nikons artist, however, the process does not quite work, revealing the gaps that punctuate the optical trajectory, from the rays that emanate from the artists eye, to their return, to their final material shaping by yet another physical organ the hand. The artist certainly looks at the monk with some attention, during which time his form impresses the artist as being that of the same man as the saint (presumably impressed into his memory), but appreciation of the congruence of countenance does not equal comprehension of sanctity.


In short, vision, which is posited, after Iconoclasm, as the faculty par excellence for comprehending the divine, is here revealed as merely effi-cient, not ideal.33 Instead of being active and continuous, vision is sluggish, and when aroused to function it works in a piecemeal fashion, identifying the letter but not the spirit of what it sees. A parallel implication underlying the artists nonrecognition is that the efficacy of vision is contingent on the beholders relationship to the object of vision. A father recognizes his son, no matter the circumstances, whereas an artist whose very livelihood depends on the responsible working of vision, may grasp the outer form but not its holy significance.

The play on the lack and sudden dawning of recognition is pre-sented in an extended tableau in the text. Gilbert Dagron has argued that a saint nearly always appeared to mortal venerators as his icon, and was recognized because of his likeness to the image. Dagron observes that the icon tells the faithful under what form he will see the saint appear, and the saint what face he must assume and what clothes he must wear in order to be recognized.34 In Nikons case, there exists no prior image to which or against which the artist can relate and identify the form of the monk. However, the Byzantines were expected to be alert to the visual signs that distinguished sacred people and their portraits, even without the aid of inscriptions.35 In this instance, if anyone were best equipped to recognize Nikon, apart from the patron Malakenos, it is the artist, precisely because he holds the verbal code.

The artist does finally recognize the saint in a repeated play of gazes that pulls the narrative, crescendolike, to its conclusion. Repeatedly the artist looks at the monk, but only when he sees the outline of the image impressed on the board does the verbal description of the saint coalesce with his recognition of the holy being. It is only now that the form [morphe] of the monk is alluded to as the holy form [ten hagian morphen] and a miracle [thaumatos] (Nikon 44.39 41). When the artist turns his gaze back to the prototype, now possessed of knowledge, he finds empty space. It is as though vision, which failed to recognize the saint initially, will continue to fail even after recognition comes. No physical faculty not the hand, nor the eye can confront the holy presence except in retrospect.

This is an astonishing climax (or rather, anticlimax) in a narrative that exposes the fallibility of sight in one whose very profession is predi-cated on it, and more importantly, one who creates the vital link between the sacred prototype and its mortal venerators. The artists failure occurs on two levels: first, when he fails to translate Malakenoss words into an image;


and second, when he fails to translate his verbal knowledge of the saint into knowledge of the saintly presence granted to him. In both cases, the artist is unable to switch from one register of representation to another. But per-haps the point driven home is that the fault lies not in the artists powers of image-making and recognition, but in the very nature of the relations he is expected to draw between word and image, and word and prototype. The relations themselves are artificial, even impossible to make because of the intrinsic inadequacy of words and the difficulty of reconciling two distinct representational systems trying to generate the same product. And perhaps that is why the artist is absolved of his faults and granted a saintly vision. However, at the end, he is left only with the representation. He embel-lishes the outlined image and presents a likeness of Nikon to an overjoyed Malakenos.

The conclusion offers a success story that masks the tensions informing the original legend from which it is inspired. The miraculous imprint of Nikon has obvious parallels to the famous Mandylion or the image of Christs face, as scholars have noted.36 In the legend of the Man-dylion, briefly, an artist is sent to capture Christs likeness but is unable to do so because of the radiance of the sacred countenance and its constantly shifting appearance. Christ helps the artist by pressing his face upon a cloth, leaving behind an outline. This influential and widely venerated image was known as an acheiropoietos or an image not-made-by-the-hand, stressing the inability of the human body to engage in the task of making or reproducing the sacred. Interestingly, Christ too does not use his hands to produce his self-portrait; his face itself generates the image.37

The portrait of Nikon is also an acheiropoietos, a miraculous imprint of the holy one, embellished afterwards by the artists hand. Yet, it cannot justly be said to approximate the legend of the Mandylion. In this legend, Christ is an active agent who presses his face on a receptive surface. In the Life of Nikon, on the other hand, there is no indication that Nikon does any such thing. Indeed, the visit of the monk-saint is structured deliberately on the motif of distance: the spiritual distance between the monk and the art-ist; the distance of the artists own faculty of sight from ideal perception; and the spatial distance between the monk and the artist, and the artists painting board. This instrument is close at hand to the artist but is not in the monks vicinity. The imprint miraculously impressed on the board is not direct like a footprint or Christs face on the cloth; nor can it be said to have been fashioned by the artist alone. Yet it reproduces the paradigmatic artist-sitter relationship, in which a spatial gap between artist and sitter is neces-


sary for realizing the portrait. The ideal conditions of such a relationship are outlined in those panels depicting Saint Luke in the act of painting the Vir-gin and Child from life, with the latter seated at a distance from the painter and his easel. This portrait formula, ostensibly by the hand of Luke, pro-liferated in Byzantium and the Latin West as icons of a particularly potent pedigree.38 Where the Mandylion acquired the status of a revered relic-icon with a specific physical point of origin emanating from Christ himself, what is the status of Nikons imprint, which results from the physical conditions informing a traditional portrait-sitting, but is devoid of its process: the input of the artist?

Perhaps the answer (insofar as this narrative ever supplies one) lies in the curious detail that the artist recognizes the monk only after he sees the imprint on the panel, and when he looks up he finds not the prototype but a yawning gap in space where the monk should have been. This moment is heightened by the drama of the visible suddenly becoming invisible; as such, it also questions the link between a material representation and the sacred presence, which, only a moment ago, enabled that representation to exist. What the artist and the reader/listener apprehend is the distance between the image and the prototype. The empty space where the monk formerly stood now underscores eloquently the severance of the relationship between the representation on the panel and the saint.

The nature of that representation, moreover, is not a direct like-ness of the saint. It is an image, to be sure, but in the form of an imprint, a mere outline, which the artist has to fill in order to complete. In the Byz-antine context, this implies the application of color to a sketch or an under drawing. Color was the element that literally breathed life into an icon. Liz James has argued that it was the addition of color that rendered imprecise the difference between the artists imitation and the object.39 In the final count, it is the artists labor in filling in colors that restores the outline, or imprint, to its proper state as an indistinguishable likeness of the prototype, a true image.40

If we accept this notion of color, then the image enabled by the presence of the monk is, paradoxically, incomplete. As an imprint that requires the artists subsequent activity, the image left behind on the panel is a marker of absence, or at least the vestige of a partial presence, which it is the artists task to flesh out in the full. In other words, the appearance of the prototype functions only to ensure that the ensuing representation is removed from it. And surely the finished icon wrought by the artist is also, according to the theory of the icon, a directed absence, an image that does


not contain any vestige of the saints presence, even more so when viewed against the circumstances that surround its making. Certainly the narrative implies that the artist acutely registers the absence of the monk, most of all when he undertakes the embellishment of the imprint in the aftermath of the monks disappearing act.

The narrative might well have concluded at this point in a satisfac-tory resolution of the icon as the object it was theoretically decreed to be in the first place: a sign of the prototypes absence. Instead, absence is con-founded by the patron Malakenoss happy but (for us) puzzling response. On receiving the icon and being informed in detail [kata meros] (Nikon 44.49) of the events of its making, he is overjoyed since he believes them to have fulfilled the saints prophecy. Malakenos, in other words, believes that the portrait of Nikon constitutes a sighting of the holy man; that is, the portrait contains Nikons presence itself. This reaction coincides uncannily with the reaction of Nikons father long after his son had escaped from him across the river. Nikons father is shocked at his sons altered countenance and wishes it to go away, but once the saint is no longer there, the father speaks as though he were present, addressing him several times directly with the melancholy words, Farewell, son, farewell, my sweetest.

The relentless equivocations over presence and absence informing the making of Nikons portrait in this episode of the Life of Nikon are ren-dered even more stark when compared to a similar episode described later in the narrative among the posthumous miracles of the saint. When Lace-daemon is threatened by an earthquake, Nikon stands at a certain spot pray-ing for the disaster to be averted. The form of Nikon is then miraculously inscribed and engraved on a stone slab. The text is pithy but underscores in no uncertain terms that this engraving is accomplished without human hand or art, a true acheiropoietos. It goes on to say that the slab narrates, more eloquently than any human voice or tongue, the events that brought about the astonishing image, thus disavowing its own verbal abilities. More-over, the text states that this image of Nikon is colorless. But it flashes from time to time, which is proof of the fact that the holy man once stood at that very spot (Nikon 66).

Can this engraving in stone devoid of color be considered a true image of Nikon? Is it invested with his presence, since it would seem to be an impression of the saint himself, or does presence periodically flash through it, leaving it lifeless the rest of the time?41 Furthermore, does this peculiar image possess more eloquence than a text describing the events of its mak-ing?42 Here we would do well to recall, however, that even as the superiority


of the image is hinted at, the fact that its innate powers are explicated by the text complicates such a reading. If anything, the text gestures at the fact that all media, whether images or texts, are mixed media, in W. J. T. Mitchells formulation.43 As Cynthia Hahn has pointed out, saints lives are character-ized by intertextuality and interpictoriality, such that the representation of saints, in particular, constitutes a domain in which image and text are nested in each other in complex ways, each reinforcing the other even as it subverts, or appears to subvert, the others effects.44

When read in sequence, the episode of Nikons miraculous imprint-ing on the stone echoes as a fainter, seemingly less complex reverberation of the earlier episode of Nikons painting by the artist. However, even as this episode does away with the role of the artist and patron, replacing both with an ineffable, almighty will, it reiterates the themes informing the ear-lier episode. Like the latter, this one gestures toward a series of open-ended statements, or variations, on the processes of vision, and on the uneasy alli-ance between representational systems that sometimes threatens to be trans-formed into an insidious competition. Rather than offering a reassuring account of the triumph of visual representation, these episodes hint at the contradictions built into its very processes, which are dramatically exposed when the sitter happens to be a holy man.

Irene of Chrysobalanton and the successful artist

The Life of Irene, about the abbess of the convent of Chrysobalanton in Con-stantinople, opens with a declaration of the triumph of icons after Icon-oclasm and the efforts of the empress Theodora to have God pardon her husband, Theophilos the iconoclast, for his sins in having had holy icons destroyed during his reign.45 As one may expect from such a stirring pro-logue, the entire narrative is replete with accounts of the behavior of icons, the deployment of vision, and Irenes own manipulation of that faculty in her efforts at sainthood. For reasons of space, I shall confine my analysis to one such instance that parallels but also departs in interesting ways from the experience of the artist who attempted to paint Nikon.

Unlike the events in the Life of Nikon in which devotion motivates the commisioning of Nikons portrait, the events leading to the commission-ing of Irenes portrait are ominous and imbued not with faith but with fear and doubt (Irene 21). The saint is approached by the relatives of a man who is unjustly condemned to death by the emperor Basil II. Irene, who is reclusive by nature and seldom ventures forth from her convent, supplicates God on


behalf of the man. The text does not explicitly say so, but implies, from past accounts of Irenes behavior, that she does not approach the Emperor directly. Nevertheless, that night the Emperor sees Irene standing before him in his bedchamber, commanding him to release the unfortunate man on the threat of her bringing war and massacre upon the empire. Furious and frightened, the Emperor demands to know who she is and how she entered his private quarters. Irene answers by giving her name and identity, I am Irene, abbess of the convent of Chrysobalanton, not once but three times, drilling home the message by pricking him in the side at her final announcement.

The narrative opens with the statement that the above dialogue occurs while the Emperor is awake and not dreaming.46 However, once the emperor receives the prick in his side, the narrative declares that the pain awoke the Emperor, who watches in terror as the figure of the nun calmly makes its way out of his apartments. Already the narrative insists on the ambiguity of the status of this self-possessed figure, if not of its iden-tity: the figure refers to itself as Irene of Chrysobalanton, thereby naming the saint, but its ontological status remains unclear. Is the figure the saint herself, or a dream, or a vision of her?47 If it is a dream or vision, as one may plausibly conclude from the cues in the narrative, then why insert the detail of touch, and, moreover, a touch that wounds the Emperor so as to catalyze him from sleep to wary wakefulness? Last but not least, why is the emperors physical state (awake, sleeping, dreaming, awake again) allowed to remain so ambiguous? I suggest that the prick functions as a pivotal point, the role of which is precisely to enable the conflation of such contradictory states, thereby offering an illuminating take on the faculty of vision.

As discussed before, the most influential model of vision in Byzan-tium was that of extramission, which assumed the existence of an active eye casting forth optical rays extending to the object of vision, touching it, then returning to that eye bearing the essence of the object. Vision was both haptic and optic.48 By pricking the Emperor, the figure of Irene literalizes the haptic dimension of vision, making certain that the Emperor realizes the import of what he has seen and what has touched him. Furthermore, the prick allows for the possibility of a nascent instability in defining the physi-cal state of its object, the Emperor, thus turning the ambivalent status of the saint back toward the dreamer or visionary. In Byzantine oneiromancy, divine dreams believed to occur in the states between sleep and wakefulness were considered to rank highest in dream classification.49 In this instance, even as the Emperor is engaged in a course of injustice and perhaps because of it he is amenable to receiving a stern command to revert his


action issued when he is himself poised in a precariously liminal, even para-doxical state.

Thoroughly disconcerted, the Emperor demands to know which of his guards has allowed the woman to trespass his chambers, and upon meet-ing denial after denial of any such transgression on their part, and of their even having seen Irene, he realizes that he has experienced a divine vision made available only to his eyes (Irene 21.74.5 8). But the realization does not in any way lead to a dawning of faith on his part, for the next day the Emperor accuses the hapless prisoner (for whose sake Irene has appeared) of having conjured her through the forbidden means of sorcery. The prisoner passionately protests his innocence, but when asked whether he has heard of Irene of Chrysobalanton, he replies in the affirmative, telling the Emperor of her whereabouts and her general renown.

Wishing to know more about Irene, the Emperor dispatches a group of courtiers to her convent, including an artist in the retinue so that he might capture her countenance in a portrait and bring it back. When they see the holy woman, they are struck by such a bright flash of lightning emanating from her face that they fall backwards in agony. The stricken attitude of the courtiers is compared to that of the men who had come to arrest Christ, Irenes teacher and bridegroom (Irene 21.77.1 2), thereby underscoring the hints of treachery and bad faith that infuse the entire epi-sode, carrying over like an infectious disease, as it were, from the Emperor to his very henchmen.

Irene asks the courtiers not to be afraid, remarking with a certain disingenuousness that she is a human being like any other, and then com-mands them to assure the Emperor that whatever was told him in the dream would come true if he does not act as bidden. The courtiers, still frightened, beg Irene to share her wisdom with them before they undertake her com-mand, and Irene obliges. Her countenance now restored to normal so that the courtiers can look upon her, she converses with them while the artist makes her portrait.

So far so good. This artist is successful in his efforts in a way that his counterpart in the Nikon episode is not. He manages to make and finish a portrait of Irene, which he presents to the Emperor at the palace. But as soon as the Emperor sets his eyes on it, a blinding flash of lightning ema-nates from the portrait, forcing him to avert his gaze and cry aloud in terror. Only after the flash subsides is the Emperor able to look upon the portrait and recognize the woman therein as the one who had appeared to him the night before.


The account of the artist in this episode is nowhere near as detailed or tortured as that of his counterpart in the Life of Nikon, but both share a remarkable similarity in their inability to capture the saints likeness. What this episode in the Life of Irene reveals, in particular, is a subtle turn from the apparent success of the artist to his failure. He is able to paint Irenes portrait without mishap, but he does not capture the one quality that sig-nals her holiness in no uncertain terms and, therefore, was central to her identity her blinding radiance. (It is clear from the text that the flashing light of the portrait is not the handiwork of the artist.) Even as the portrait signals the saints holiness, it also indicates the limits of the artists powers of production and of vision in general. The artist and the courtiers are able only to look upon a partial or incomplete aspect of Irene, which does not flash forth her peculiar form of charisma. Like the artist in the legend of the Mandylion who is sent to capture Christs countenance and fails because of its overpowering radiance and shifting appearance, these courtiers, too, fail to look upon Irenes complete self. The artist, therefore, paints a partial portrait, one that is devoid of the very essence of Irene. It may be termed an adequate image in that it articulates her physical features satisfactorily, but it intimates its own lack of sacred essence, here figured as Irenes charisma. In the words of Susan Stewart, To describe more than is socially adequate or to describe in a way which interrupts the everyday hierarchical organization of detail is to increase . . . the unreal effect of the real.50 Although Stewart refers specifically to the realist novel in her remark, the sentiment is appro-priate to the product crafted by Irenes artist. He makes an adequate image that is divested of the unreal effect of the real presence of Irene. The image is, therefore, not one that increases but diminishes its subject.

The episode thus indicates that a true portrait icon must be invested with saintly presence. The portrait assumes the flashing quality of its proto-type, but all too briefly before it lapses back to normality. In this, it is unlike the image of Nikon carved in stone, which retains its privileged status because it flashes periodically.51 Irenes portrait, on the other hand, has no value (at least for the Emperor) beyond identifying the holy woman and (unexpectedly) communicating her holiness, after which he loses all inter-est in it and longs for direct access to the saint herself, to her presence as opposed to the directed absence that the image becomes. Furthermore, representation enabled by a normal condition of vision, in which the object is clear and perceivable to the beholder and artist, is posited as a form of nonrepresentation. Only when the object becomes blurred and intolerable to sight is it construed as being true. As in the legend of the Mandylion, the


presence of the holy one manifests itself in the circumstances of its nonvis-ibility to mere mortals. It is only when the flash subsides that the Emperor is able to look closely at the portrait, but, ironically, its (previously) blinding quality is what leads him to realize the divine nature of Irene. Vision and knowledge are thus enabled at two distinct temporal moments in a sub-version of their usual coexistence.52

The episode ends with the Emperor beseeching the presence of Irene herself, a request that sharply contrasts the patron Malakenoss joy in the Life of Nikon. Where Malakenos accepts the portrait of Nikon as a sign of the holy ones presence, the Emperor is sadly aware of the gap between the portrait and the holy woman, wishing to close it by having her grace him with an audience. Irene, however, refuses on the grounds that it would be neither fitting for the Emperor to come all the way to her convent for a mere sight of her, nor would it befit her to go to the palace. Neatly deflecting all pious responsibility to the Patriarch, the bishops of the Orthodox Church, and the holy fathers in the Constantinopolitan monasteries (a purely male domain), Irene excuses herself from the Emperors presence. In a final admo-nition, she declares that were the Emperor to persist in his desire to see her, he would annoy God greatly. The Emperor decides not to pursue Irene but receives comfort through her teachings and prayers transmitted through fre-quent messengers to her convent.

It is a strange conclusion, as dissatisfying to a reader as it is gratify-ing for the unfortunate man imprisoned by the Emperor and then released. Not only is the portrait set aside without further mention (we are not told of its subsequent fate), but the Emperor derives spiritual succor from Irenes teachings, her words, delivered through the medium of messengers. The epi-sode thus breaks down every possible dimension of Irenes presence the sight of her, her voice and sets about to transmit these in a thoroughly mediated fashion back to the palace such that the Emperor is always posi-tioned at a remove from the holy woman.

Epilogue

The seventh-century Life of Theodore of Sykeon relates how an artist is sum-moned to make a portrait of Theodore, but in surreptitious circumstances, through a tiny aperture in the wall, without the saint knowing.53 The artist succeeds in producing an accurate portrait despite the distorted, miniature view he is afforded. Indeed, the portrait is so accurate that when Theodore is shown the image, he accuses the artist of being a fine thief. In this account,


Theodore regards the painting of his portrait as a form of dispossession of some object or quality intimately associated with him that was surrendered without his will or knowledge when the artist positioned him as an unwit-ting sitter. Here, it is the saint who is left feeling bereft after the sitting, even though he smilingly consents to bless the theft.

In the eleventh-century accounts of Nikon and Irene, on the other hand, the situation is starkly reversed. In each case, the artist is the one to feel a sense of deprivation, which is experienced in the loss of his artistic powers of production, or in a dawning knowledge that the presence of the holy prototype has vanished irretrievably, or in the acknowledgement that his product, the portrait icon, lacks the essential quality that constitutes the sitters sanctity. The bereavement trickles into the texts themselves, wishing as they do to privilege the artists role and the image, but are instead forced to describe a trajectory of loss. In each case, the loss is dramatized and ironized by the fact that it is the artist who is granted immediate visual and physical access to the holy one in a fashion that is denied to the other characters and to the narrator, including, amazingly, the Byzantine Emperor himself.

And yet both artists fail at their enterprise despite their privileges. It is almost as though the ruling principle behind these brief but sugges-tive episodes decrees that the very immediacy of contact with the saint will result in failure, an idea captured succinctly in the epigraph to this article. These episodes imply that a successful icon is one that can never, perhaps should never, measure up to or be commensurate with the holy one. The project of visual representation after Iconoclasm, then, appears to be imbued and informed with a sense of loss, with the certain knowledge that its final product, even if enabled by the presence of the saint, ultimately stands at a remove from the presence of the holy one. This distance is only further increased by the embellishing hand of the artist, who acts as the distancing agent even as he is allowed immediate access to the prototype.

This process of deferral constitutes the heart of Byzantine theol-ogy, and these episodes of hagiographic portraiture are an instance of the grander, more ambitious project of the pursuit of the divine that occupied Byzantine thinkers and theologians over centuries. Gregory of Nyssa sums up this issue in the Seventh Homily on Ecclesiastes:

God is unspeakable and unknowable. Why so? Because created nature is unable to comprehend what is beyond its limits without transcending itself; and if it were to transcend itself, that would mean it had ceased to exist.54


The possibility of knowledge of the divine is foreclosed in Gregorys for-mulation, emphasizing instead the confinement of created beings and their knowledge to their own sphere. To leave that sphere is impossible, or implies death. We find variations on this theme in the eleventh century, particularly in the writings of Symeon the New Theologian, who argues for the very pos-sibility of the transcendence that Gregory denies.55 It is not my intention to ponder the details of this debate, but its very existence, and the involvement of eleventh-century contemporaries of the New Theologian such as Michael Psellos and Leo of Chalcedon, is proof enough of the vigor attending this debate.56 Icons, as objects integral to the Orthodox faith, were positioned at the core of theological contention. Did they, or did they not possess the ability to impart knowledge of the divine to a beholder? The texts I have considered take up this fundamental question in their slippery, gossamer-like recountings, and spin it into a vertiginous web of queries related to the role of visual representation and the divine, but they scrupulously deny clear answers.57

Byzantine visual representation, of course, need not be seen as an unqualified failure; the patron Malakenos is proof against such a pessimistic view. When we recall that most Byzantine viewers of icons of saints reacted to them as Malakenos did, as though they contained holy presence itself, we are offered a sobering (or joyful?) reassurance of the prevailing power of the portrait icon. But we would do well to remember that, like Malakenos, we too are recipients of the hagiographic text of the icon. Like him, other Byzantine readers as well as modern ones are offered a choice to accept the icon as presence or absence. Indeed, Byzantine hagiographic texts enjoin the task of choice, opening themselves as they do to further redactions and nar-rations by its receivers.58 Severed from the narrative of its production, the portrait icon may stand as a confident sign of the saint. Presented as the climax of a miraculous and painfully contradictory process of visualization, it may equally stand as a sign of powerlessness, an arbitrary representation of the holy one with no essential relation to the saint.

Perhaps it is in extending the possibility of such a choice that the episodes I have discussed contain their own narrative power. In their per-plexing play with the prevailing rules of representation and reception and their insistence on the contingency of vision, these episodes do not enforce any hegemonic view of saintly presence and representation, but instead chal-lengingly critique them. They may or may not be read as maintaining the status quo of the triumph of icons and visual representation.59 Apart from this Janus-faced quality of their reception, their slyness lies in their almost


incidental mentions within the lengthy, often unwieldy, fabric of the larger hagiographic works in which they occur. Close reading, however, reveals the self-reflexive nature of these narratives and their questioning of the very principles on which their subjects saint, icon, vision are predicated.

a

Notes

I thank Robert S. Nelson, Ja Elsner, Kristine Hess, Galina Tirnani, Annemarie Weyl Carr, Charles Barber, Anthony Kaldellis, and Aditya Behl, and two anonymous JMEMS reviewers for their suggestions regarding the issues discussed in this essay. This article is dedicated to the memory of Aditya Behl, whose astute reading contrib-uted immeasurably to its development.

1 D. Sullivan, ed., The Life of Saint Nikon: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Brook-line, Mass.: Hellenic College Press, 1987). Further citations in the text are to this translation by chapter and line numbers

2 For an excellent history of vision in the medieval period, see David C. Lindberg, The-ories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); and Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Seeing through the Veil: Optical Theory and Medieval Allegory (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). On Byzantium, see Robert S. Nelson, To Say and to See: Ekphrasis and Vision in Byzantium, in Seeing as Oth-ers Saw: Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance, ed. Robert S. Nelson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143 68; and Charles Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding in Eleventh-Century Byzantium (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

3 On vision and representation, see particularly the studies by Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Contesting the Logic of Painting.

4 Alexander Kazhdan and Henry Maguire, Byzantine Hagiographical Texts as Sources on Art, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991): 1 22. See also the excellent study by Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies: Saints and Their Images in Byzantium (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).

5 Alice-Mary Talbot, ed., Byzantine Defenders of Images: Eight Saints Lives in English Translation (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998).

6 For a detailed study of the problems in understanding icons in the eleventh century, see Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting.

7 The subject of the medieval portrait has received recent attention in the essays col-lected in Contemporary Encounters with the Medieval Face, ed. Clark Maines, a special issue of Gesta 46.2 (2007), devoted to contemporary approaches to the medi-eval face.

8 The holy icon was posited as existing and deriving from traditions prior to the art-ist, the latter being construed as one who embellished upon and displayed the image.


Thus, the artist was placed in a paradoxical situation, being endowed with a certain agency which was, nevertheless, limited. For a discussion of this point, see John J. Yiannis, A Reexamination of the Art Statute in the Acts of Nicaea II, Byzantinis-che Zeitschrift 80 (1987): 348 59. For a discussion of the concepts of artifact and artificer, see Barber, Figure and Likeness, 111 15.

9 Jan Olof Rosenqvist, The Life of St. Irene Abbess of Chrysobalanton: A Critical Edition with Introduction, Translation, Notes, and Indices (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1986), xliii xlviii.

10 For a study of how Byzantine art incorporates and displays Byzantine rhetorical struc-tures, see Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-ton University Press, 1981).

11 For a detailed discussion, see Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting.12 For an extensive study of the portrait icon in Byzantium, see Barber, Figure and Like-

ness, 107 23. 13 Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies, 1 47.14 The so-called calendar icons located in the Monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai,

Egypt, are an outstanding example of the minute details that distinguish each saint from his or her counterparts, thus indicating a scrupulously precise visual code that had been established for the depiction of every single saint to grace the Orthodox calendar.

15 Maguire, The Icons of Their Bodies, 18.16 John the Grammarian, for instance, states, It is hopeless to characterize a man,

unless one has been led to this by words. It is not possible . . . to grasp them or render them by visual means. For a complete account and further discussion, see J. Gouil-lard, Fragments indits dun antirrhetique de Jean le Grammarien, Revue des tudes Byzantines 24 (1966): 173 74; and Kenneth Parry, Depicting the Word: Byzantine Iconophile Thought of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996). It is important to keep in mind the fact that the Iconoclast position(s) might have been distorted by the triumphant Iconophiles; however, the accounts still indicate the issues that were considered relevant to representation and the points of debate that the Iconophiles considered most salient (and most threatening) to their own stance, which inspired their painstaking refutations. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer of this article for the above insight.

17 Charles Barber, Mimesis and Memory in the Narthex Mosaics of the Nea Moni on Chios, Art History 24 (2001): 323 37.

18 The literature on ekphrasis is vast. For studies on classical ekphrasis, for example, see Shadi Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Descrip-tion in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989); Don P. Fowler, Narrate and Describe: The Problem of Ekphrasis, Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991): 25 35; J. A. W. Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbury (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Ja Elsner, Genres of Ekphrasis, Ramus 31 (2002): 1 18; Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagi-nation, and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Burlington, Vt.: Ash-gate, 2009). On Byzantine ekphrasis, see the influential article by Liz James and Ruth Webb, To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places: Ekphrasis and


Art in Byzantium, Art History 14 (1991): 1 17; and Nelson, To Say and to See. For a recent collection of essays on ekphrasis, classical and otherwise, see the special issue Ekphrasis in Classical Philology 102.1 (2007).

19 See the extensive discussion of ekphrasis in Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination, and Persuasion.

20 See Leslie Brubaker, Perception and Conception: Art, Theory, and Culture in Ninth-Century Byzantium, Word and Image 5 (1989): 19 32; and Ruth Webb, Accomplishing the Picture: Ekphrasis, Mimesis, and Martyrdom in Asterios of Amaseia, in Art and Text in Byzantine Culture, ed. Liz James (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 2007), 13 32.

21 Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination, and Persuasion, 70 71.22 Susan Stewart offers an insight into description as a category of experience by asking,

What does it mean to describe something? Stewart answers by remarking that the unsaid assumption underlying all descriptions is experience beyond lived expe-rience. . . . In description we articulate the time and space that are absent from the context at hand, the lived experience of the body. This account of description is remarkably applicable to the Byzantine notion. See Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 26.

23 For an account of the artist as audience or viewer, see Ja Elsner, Viewing and Cre-ativity: Ovids Pygmalion as Viewer, in Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 113 31.

24 See Peter R. L. Brown, A Dark Age Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy, English Historical Review 88 (1973): 1 34; and Jaroslav Pelikan, Imago Dei: The Byz-antine Apologia for Icons (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990). For a recent interpretation that draws on the documents of Iconoclasm, see Barber, Figure and Likeness.

25 John of Damascus, On the Divine Images: Three Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images, trans. D. Anderson (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1980), 58 59.

26 Patriarch Nicephoros, Antirrheticus I adversus Constantinum Copronymum, in Patro-logiae cursus completus, Series Graeca, vol. 100, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1865), cols. 205 533, at col. 277. Charles Barber offers a discussion of these conflicting views in his article, From Image into Art: Art after Byzantine Iconoclasm, Gesta 34 (1995): 5 10.

27 Barber, Figure and Likeness, 121.28 Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting, 1 22.29 Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of

Images, 400 1200 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 174.30 Once again, Susan Stewarts formulation of description as absence is appropriate here.

See On Longing, 26.31 Nelson, To Say and to See, 151 55.32 Bissera V. Pentcheva, The Performative Icon, Art Bulletin 99 (2006): 636.33 Nelson, To Say and to See, 143 68.34 Gilbert Dagron, Holy Images and Likeness, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991): 23 33.


35 Maguire, Icons of Their Bodies, 42.36 For essays discussing the origins and transmission of the Mandylion image, see Ger-

hard Wolf and Herbert L. Kessler, eds., The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representa-tion: Papers from a Colloquium Held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, and the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1996 (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1998). For the links between the Man-dylion image and the image of Nikon, see Maguire, Icons of Their Bodies, 9.

37 For essays discussing various aspects of the Mandylion image, see Gerhard Wolf, Col-lette Dufour Bozzo, and Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, eds., Mandilion: Intorno al Sacro Volto, da Bisanzio a Genova (Milano: Skira, 2004).

38 Michele Bacci, Il Pennello dellEvangelista: Storia delle immagini sacre attribuite a San Luca (Pisa, GISEM: Edizioni ETS, 1998).

39 Liz James, Color and Meaning in Byzantium, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003): 223 33.

40 For further discussions on color, see Herbert L. Kessler, Medieval Art as Argument, in Iconography at the Crossroads, ed. B. Cassidy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 59 74.

41 In this context, one may think of what Hans Belting has called living painting (empsychos graphe), in which the living quality is evident because of the addition of narrative elements and the depiction of emotions. This enormously influential inter-pretation of Byzantine painting in the eleventh and twelfth centuries may be found in Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 261 96. For critiques of Beltings notion of liv-ing painting, see Charles Barber, Living Painting, or the Limits of Painting? Glanc-ing at Icons with Michael Psellos, in Reading Michael Psellos, ed. Charles Barber and David Jenkins (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 117 30.

42 A discussion on verbal discourse figured as an animate statue is found in Stratis Papaioannou, Animate Statues: Aesthetics and Movement, in Reading Michael Psellos, 95 116. If we take the narration of this particular episode to be animated (which is not self-evident, since the idea of an animated discourse was framed in specific terms not necessarily transferable to all verbal discourses), then it approx-imates the very quality that it ascribes to its object of narration: Nikons image sculpted in stone.

43 W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 5.

44 Cynthia Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 319.

45 Rosenqvist, ed., Life of St. Irene, 3 7. Further references are given in the text.46 Rosenqvist discusses the contradiction in Life of St. Irene, 91 n. 4, remarking that only

the very end of Irenes appearance is a waking vision, the Greek text indicating a dis-tinction between a real vision and an imaginary sight, both of which may appear in dreams.

47 See the seminal study on dreams by Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), which discusses these issues in some detail.


48 Nelson, To Say and to See, 143 68.49 See the Oneirocritica of Daniel, Achmet, Nicephoros, and Artemidoros for discus-

sions of dreams and their interpretation. See also Christine Angelidi, The Writing of Dreams: A Note on Psellos Funeral Oration for His Mother, in Reading Michael Psellos, 153 66.

50 Stewart, On Longing, 26 27.51 This is not unlike the miraculous animation evident in the images of the Virgin

Hodegetria and of the image of the Virgin at the church of Blachernai, both of which displayed their animation on certain specific days of the week at a particular hour in specific ways. The best accounts of these miracles, in my view, are Barber, Living Painting, or the Limits of Painting?; and Alexei Lidov, The Flying Hodegetria: The Miraculous Icon as Bearer of Sacred Space, in The Miraculous Image in the Late Mid-dle Ages and Renaissance, ed. E. Thun and G. Wolf (Roma: Bibliotheca Hertziana, 2004), 285 86. See also Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006).

52 Akbari, Seeing through the Veil, 3 20, points to the tenacious links drawn between vision and knowledge in the medieval period, when intellectual reasoning and divine revelation were both metaphorically described as visual experiences.

53 The episode is discussed in Robin Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and Its Icons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 39.

54 For the translation, see Stuart George Hall, ed., Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on Eccle-siastes; An English Version with Supporting Studies (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 124 25. For a discussion of the homily that is pertinent to my argument, see Colin Macleod, Collected Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 292 305.

55 Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting, 23 59.56 Ibid., 1 22.57 I use here the elegant descriptive terms of Annemarie Weyl Carr, from personal corre-

spondence with her. 58 The Life of Nikon, 269, for instance, remarks, And other things which are beyond

writing or narration . . . we have left to others tongues. A similar, if decidedly more taciturn move appears in Gregory of Nyssas Life of Macrina, which Gregory ends by flatly refusing to recount the many miraculous deeds of Macrina, saying that what exceeds the capacity of the hearer is received with insult and suspicion of falsehood, thus explicitly placing the onus of belief and the job of extending the narrative on the reader, or listener. See Grgoire de Nysse, Vie de Sainte Macrine, ed. Pierre Maraval, Sources chrtiennes, vol. 178 (Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1971), 39.

59 A discussion of a similar mode of two-facedness in the Byzantine novel may be found in Panagiotis Roilos, Amphoteroglossia: A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medi-eval Greek Novel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005). I hesitate to posit any direct connections between the eleventh-century hagiographies and the twelfth-century novels without further research; however, the preoccupation of both with episodes dealing with verbal and visual relations suggests that this was an impor-tant subject of discussion in the period.

Problem Portraits: The Ambivalence of Visual Representation

in Byzantium

Paroma Chatterjee

This study offers a close reading of the processes involved

in crafting a Byzantine holy portrait by focusing on

certain episodes in the Life of Nikon and the Life of Irene

of Chrysobalanton, hagiographies dated to the eleventh

century. The article argues that the anxieties of visual

representation in Byzantium are encoded in those episodes

in the narrative in which an artist prepares to make a

saints portrait. In the process, the episodes offer

provocative ruminations on the relations between a

representation and its prototype, words and images, sight

versus hearing, and the roles of the artist and the viewer.

They reveal that these issues were by no means resolved

with the official end of Iconoclasm in 843, but remained

vibrant arenas of philosophical and theological reflection

well into the eleventh century.

Copyright of Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies is the property of Duke University Press and itscontent may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder'sexpress written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

problem portraits, the ambivalence of visual represention in byzantium

Documents

saint recognition

sweetest nikon

saint functions

nikons father

status of vision

workings of vision

early modern studies

final bereavement of