The aesthetics of Orthodox faith.

Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 23-July 4, 2004

Helen C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), exh. cat. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 658 pp., 721 color ills., 146 b/w. $75.00; $50.00 (paper)

The last centuries of the Byzantine Empire have often been characterized as a period of decline. Internal political and religious fissures, a waning share in the Mediterranean economy, the loss of regional hegemony following the Fourth Crusade of 1204, and the confrontation with burgeoning states in surrounding territories can all be cited as reasons for the ultimate collapse of the empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. It is this complex period in world history that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, recently addressed in its exhibition Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), the third in a series of shows devoted to the formation, development, and dissolution of this remarkable empire. (1) Rather than exploring the impact of the empire's political and economic fortunes on artistic and cultural developments, the Metropolitan Museum show, as its title suggests, focused instead on the religious matrix of Eastern Orthodoxy, which bound together the largely disparate cultures of the Balkans and Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, as well as communities in the Near East. As a result, the visitor encountered a somewhat monolithic view of the Orthodox world that minimized differences in society and culture in order to construct a sense of common religious practice. In reality, many of the cultures included in the show prayed in different languages, did not share the same liturgical traditions, answered to different ecclesiastical authorities, and, in some cases, differed substantially on matters of doctrine. The exhibition featured icons as the most prominent manifestation of Orthodox Christianity, and the show's stress on the aesthetics of faith brought viewers face to face with the holiest of figures. Set against porridge-colored and greenish blue walls, these devotional objects were presented as works of art, largely decontextualized and subjected, many for the first time, to purely art historical appreciation and scrutiny. The two previous shows read Byzantine art through its cultural contexts; the framework of this one was different. With its emphasis on the aesthetics of painting over details of religious culture and historical context, this exhibition was designed to appeal to a mass, lay audience for which such concerns may have been deemed irrelevant, uninteresting, or perhaps even offensive.

The decision to take an aesthetic approach to the material signals the difficulties attached to the contextual study of Late Byzantine art and may reveal an attempt, moreover, to avoid certain political pitfalls. More than the art of the Early Christian and Middle Byzantine periods, works and monuments of the last centuries are closely associated with modern national, cultural, and religious identities. Even today, contemporary icon and church painters most often appropriate the style of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for the creation of byzantinizing, that is, Orthodox, devotional images. Most notably, in recent years, the apse of St. Demetrios in Thessalonike, a critical monument of the early Byzantine period, was painted in the Late Byzantine style, a jarring renovation widely criticized by Greek art historians and archaeologists, but one promoted by the city's church leaders. The nationalistic associations of Late Byzantine art has other repercussions, which are manifested in the authorship of the catalog. Unlike the periods highlighted in the first two Metropolitan exhibitions, which are intensely studied by American and Western European scholars, the Late Byzantine period remains, to a large extent, the research area of scholars living and trained in former imperial and neighboring territories. The publication of significant monuments in a wide variety of languages--including Greek, Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Turkish, and Russian--poses a particular challenge to "Western" scholars working in this area. The inability of most scholars to read publications in so many languages (in addition to the more standard languages required for the study of art history) often impedes synthetic or cross-cultural approaches to the material; in addition, it makes the material virtually inaccessible to nonspecialists. Thus, part of the awe engendered by the encounter with so many "unknown" objects in Byzantium: Faith and Power, in reality, derived from their publication in English and their display, for the first time, in an American context.

The chronological framework for the show ranged from 1261 to 1557. The first date marks the recovery of Constantinople from its Latin rulers and the installation of the Palaiologoi, the dynasty that would rule the empire in its last centuries. The second date is more problematic. For Byzantinists, the selection of 1557 as a terminal date for this exhibition seems arbitrary. Byzantine rule over the capital ended in May 1453; the remaining parts of the empire were conquered shortly thereafter. In 1557, according to the exhibition catalog, the term Byzantium was first used by Hieronymus Wolf (1516-1580), librarian and secretary to the Fugger family in Augsburg, to define a field of study. (2) Wolf, however, did not invent the name. The fourteenth-century Chronica per extensum descripta of Andrea Dandolo already contains the term "Bysancium" in connection with a prophecy regarding the fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204. (3) And, whereas Wolf initiated Byzantine studies in Germany, particularly through the editing of texts, other sixteenth-century humanists were doing the same in Holland and Italy. (4) Nonetheless, the Metropolitan's creation of a notional Byzantium that survived as a scholarly construction for 104 years beyond the fall of the empire allowed the organizers to encompass a large number of works that Byzantinists have generally ceded to their colleagues in the field of early modern art.

The diplomatic achievement of amassing more than three hundred and fifty works from twenty-seven countries should not be undervalued. In addition to museums, cathedrals, monasteries, and individuals lent objects from their collections. Seeing the works in their permanent settings would have required numerous plane tickets, the rental of a car, and perhaps even a donkey or camel. The Metropolitan made it easy--and inexpensive--for viewers to take in so many objects in one location. The agglomeration of such a vast number of works, however, had its problematic aspects. Balancing the many first-rate objects were several quite pedestrian ones. The contrast between these common works and those that by any standard are indisputable masterpieces of painting introduced the critical issue of whether icons should be more properly considered works of art or primarily devotional objects. Recent discussions in the field of icon theory have been dominated by this very question. (5) Nevertheless, the inclusion of works of seemingly lesser aesthetic value was illuminating because it demonstrated that paintings of even minor artistic merit could play a vital role in the religious lives of Orthodox Christians. This paradox was at the center of the focus on the aesthetics of faith that the exhibition presented but left largely untheorized.

Icons dominated the exhibition. The number of painted panels, the most common form of eikon (image) in the show, was overwhelming. It was hard to know how to approach the figures of the saints within the setting of a museum. Within a church, the icons would have evoked a different response. There, flickering candles or lamps enliven the holy faces, and the wooden panels on which they are rendered emit the pungent smell of incense. Within the darkened church the figures, set on a gold background, appear to wrench free from the strict confines of their wooden backing. In the museum, the bright overhead lights leveled the figures, thus appearing to confirm long-held (and incorrect) notions that Byzantine figural painting is flat and static. Yet even in this museum exhibition the power of the icon was so palpable and the saints so vital that in the last gallery, filled with Netherlandish works, the transition from icon to painting was sufficiently unsettling that one was left to wonder whether Byzantine icons are empowered by aesthetics alone or whether, indeed, they possess a mystical presence independent of any human response.

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With its concentration on icons, the exhibition was, of course, about recognition. The identification of holy figures played a large role in that process. The viewer noted the number of icons of the Virgin in various poses and labeled with exotic names--Hodegetria, Kykkotissa, Paramythia, Pelagonitissa--names that recalled local cult icons and important shrines for the Byzantine supplicant. The legacy of these popular icons was traced in non-Orthodox works executed in Italy and northern Europe through paintings said to be modeled on these Byzantine prototypes. In these cases, however, questions about transmission and meaning could have been explored in greater detail, for example, whether images of the Virgin functioned in the same or similar ways when placed in culturally and religiously divergent settings.

The exhibition unfolded in a series of large galleries. In the absence of explanatory labels or signs, the theme of each gallery was not always obvious. A road map to the show was partially provided by the audio guide, but the rental of supplementary equipment should not have substituted for clear presentation. I describe the galleries briefly, since they differed substantially from the thematic divisions and arrangement of entries in the accompanying catalog. The first gallery was dedicated to the people who lived within Byzantium and its sphere of artistic influence. This emphasis was not immediately apparent, since the center of the gallery was filled with three large bilateral icons that were not associated with known donors (cat. nos. 90, 99, 103). On the periphery of the gallery, people were represented by name or by portrait on a variety of objects, including coins, seals, icons, jewelry, and manuscripts. The Byzantine worthies could be found on the left side of the gallery, those in neighboring lands to the right. The people who inhabited the vitrines were primarily emperors or aristocrats, themselves the patrons of the luxury arts on display. In viewing these objects, one got a sense of the individuals behind the "masterpieces." The signet rings, with their narrow openings, reminded us that people in the late medieval period were generally smaller of stature, and the rubbed surfaces of the coins communicated their handling in everyday transactions. The Venice Alexander Romance (cat. no. 32), a popular secular work written in Greek, contains notations in Turkish and Georgian, revealing the identities of generations of owners. One humble piece, a small glazed bowl inscribed with an abbreviated name, perhaps Demetrios (cat. no. 21), signaled that even more modest works in Byzantium were fashioned with a refined shape and style. This simple clay vessel was elevated in stature by being shown in the same case as a rare ivory pyxis (cat. no. 5). Other objects in this gallery provided evidence of female patronage in this period, a subject often discussed from the perspective of written sources and of ongoing interest to scholars in the field. Three icons, for example, portrayed Maria Angelina Doukaina Palaiologina, the daughter of Symeon Uros Palaiologos (cat. nos. 24A-C). The selection of saints on at least one of the icons, where Maria is depicted without her husband, suggests that she may have played a role in ordering specific devotional imagery.

Although the catalog opens with a map, there was, unfortunately, none within the exhibition. It is not easy to understand the decision to exclude maps. Without knowledge of the geography, one might have inferred that many of the sites represented by objects in the galleries were in close proximity and easily accessible. Here it is important to recall that most of the regions contained within the show are extremely mountainous and that topography played a critical role in the dynamics of artistic influence and reception. Certainly, political boundaries in this period were constantly changing, and it would have been difficult, given the chronological span of the show, to accurately delimit the borders of actual states. Yet in the absence of a map, the juxtaposition of objects from different cultures suggested that many independent states fell within the territorial boundaries of the Byzantine Empire. One wonders if an unfortunate episode with the labeling of a map in the 1997 show discouraged the kinds of political commitment that such maps inevitably betray. (6)

The second gallery, linked by wall color to the first, accentuated church furnishings and liturgical objects. The suspension of an enormous choros, or church chandelier, at the center of the room evoked the interior space of a monastic church (cat. no. 60). Such chandeliers are traditionally placed above eye level and set in circular motion on feast days so that their glimmering lights mimic the heavenly constellations. Lowered installation offered the opportunity to examine closely the intricate decoration and the mechanism by which individual lamps are attached to the larger fixture. The left side of the room was dominated by large-scale sculpture, such as a stone rosette that originally decorated the facade of the church of St. Stefan of the Milentija Monastery in Serbia (cat. no. 40). This work, marked by palmettes and knotted vines forming a cross, was paired with a sculpture of the Virgin and Child from the Banjska Monastery (cat. no. 41). Sculpted works are fairly common in Serbian architectural decoration of the late medieval period, and scholars have suggested that their presence in church tympana and facades reflected Serbia's geographic position between Byzantium and Romanesque Italy. Even until the end of imperial rule, however, Byzantine builders spurned the use of three-dimensional carvings on the exterior of their churches, those of the late period preferring glazed tiles and elaborate brickwork, which generally enlivened the east end of the church, emphasizing the place of liturgical sacrifice. Exiled to another gallery were the ceramic plaques that decorated the east facade of the church of St. Basil in Arta (cat. nos. 34A, B). The juxtaposition of the three-dimensional sculpture and the ceramic tiles would have highlighted a substantive difference in attitudes toward religious sculpture and exterior church decoration in Byzantium and its neighbors, demonstrating that cultural differences, in this case between Byzantium and Serbia, are more complicated than presented.

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The second gallery held other furnishings from church interiors. A set of doors that may have belonged to the church of St. Sophia in Novgorod (cat. no. 63) formed part of the iconostasis, the high screen that divided the church sanctuary from the nave in late medieval Russia. Again, a choice favoring comparison would have been useful. Fragments from Byzantine templon screens, lower and more visually permeable, were located in other galleries of the exhibition but might have been profitably placed in this room. A fragment of the epistyle from the stone templon of Sts. Theodore in Mystra (cat. no. 37), for example, was set in a later gallery. Inscribed with the names of the abbots Daniel and Pachomios (the latter name was partially obscured by the supporting clamp), the epistyle is carved with vegetal and pseudo-kufic ornament common to such architectural dividers. Although many structural fragments were brought together in the second gallery, a ground plan of a church, marked with specific components of furnishings and the names of functional spaces, would have assisted non-Byzantinists to better understand the place of such elements within the church proper.

The right side of the gallery contained a case of liturgical objects, including a very rare work, a wooden casket today in the Cleveland Museum of Art (cat. no. 73). Recently studied in detail by Kristine Hess, (7) the box is covered with scenes from the life of John the Baptist and most likely served as a reliquary (Fig. 1). Comparisons to ivory caskets of the Middle Byzantine period are inevitable and raise the question of the availability of precious materials in the centuries covered by the show. In the 1340s, Alexios Makrembolites refers to the use of wooden coffers (rather than ivory?) by the wealthy to store their coins. (8) The types of materials presented in the show, so different from those seen in the second exhibition of the series, The Glory of Byzantium, revealed something about the economic realities of the period. One is reminded that in the fourteenth century the emperor John VI Kantakouzenos was so impoverished that he was reduced to drinking from clay and tin goblets rather than those of gold and silver. (9) References to these issues would have greatly enhanced the educational value of the exhibition.

Examples of monumental painting, largely provincial and extremely fragmentary, confronted viewers in the small gallery that followed. Representing the excellent painting of Mystra, for example, were twelve small segments taken from excavated or dilapidated churches in that once-glorious city; of these, five were illustrated in the catalog (cat. nos. 48A-E). In contrast to the picture of damaged frescoes offered by the exhibition, ecclesiastical wall painting from this period survives in abundance: hundreds of churches with complete fresco cycles are preserved in Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and elsewhere. The small photographs from the interior of a number of churches shown as supplemental visual images on labels failed to convey the extent and quality of monumental painting in this period. Curiously, a number of exhibition labels referred to these absent cycles, which, in addition to their inherent significance, often provide fixed dates for the attribution of undated and unsigned works such as icons. The label for a miniature mosaic icon of the Twelve Feasts in the next gallery, for example, stated that the detailed depictions "may reflect the now-lost mosaic program of the great fourteenth-century Constantinopolitan Church in the Chora monastery." The value of the comparison to a lost work of art is dubious, and the introduction of a nonrepresented church on a museum label raises a question about the intended audience for such explanatory texts. Why were larger representative photographs of key cycles not added to give such comparisons validity? (10) These might have been placed in the entry vestibule or in the small reading room situated at the center of the exhibition.

In addition to monumental painting, the same gallery contained manuscripts from Byzantium, Armenia, Rus', and Serbia. Here, a number of important terms and ideas were introduced on the labels, although they were left unexplored or inadequately explained. For example, the term Hesychasm, which refers to one of the great monastic spiritual movements of the Late Byzantine period, was advanced in connection with a fragment of fourteenth-century church decoration from Pskov, Russia (cat. no. 46), and a manuscript containing the theological works of John VI Kantakouzenos (cat. no. 171). On the museum label for the Pskov paintings, the suggestion was made that Hesychasm may have influenced the selection of the dark, severe colors. While art historians and theologians have investigated potential connections between Hesychasm and artistic developments in the late medieval period, particularly in Byzantium and Russia, direct relations have been neither securely established nor universally accepted. Other manuscripts in the gallery raised the concept of cultural influence through the display of a bilingual Gospel Book (cat. no. 162, opened to a page with an image rather than one revealing the two-column bilingual text) and other works that variously pointed to the influence of Franciscan missionaries (cat. no. 173) or, more generally, the Gothic West.

The color palette changed as the visitor entered the fourth gallery, painted with a dark blue background. Its rich hue set the stage for the display of the luxury arts, principally a series of remarkable miniature mosaic icons and steatites. Here, one was confronted with the question of manufacture and the assumption that luxury works, although varying tremendously in quality and technical skill, were produced in Constantinople. Miniature mosaic icons, as suggested by preserved examples, were produced for a very limited time in Byzantium and were highly prized. A number of them ended up in Western collections, either as small devotional objects or as the centerpieces of larger works. The most visually striking example in Western use is undoubtedly the mosaic icon of the Man of Sorrows, which was taken to Italy in 1380 by Raimondello Orsini del Balzo, count of Lecce, and donated to the basilica of S. Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome (cat. no. 131). There, the icon was reassigned a sixth-century date and was encased in a relic cabinet. In addition to the mosaic icons, this gallery held a small number of works of steatite and precious stone that were used for private devotions or for personal adornment. Several of these small pieces (cat. nos. 143, 146, 148), with dates that have yet to be securely established, were purchases or gifts to the museum.

The turn into the next gallery was accompanied by yet another shift in color; the muted gray walls signaled a return to more common works. From this point on, the road map through the show seemed less clear, as large galleries were divided into small thematic units. The fifth gallery was subdivided into sections devoted to the Byzantine tomb, miscellaneous pieces of sculpture from church interiors, and liturgical textiles. With the installation of so many works, coherence of display occasionally gave way to exigencies of space. In this gallery, for instance, the aforementioned Arta tiles and a glazed bowl from Serres (cat. no. 22) seemed out of place; a marble plaque decorated with a griffin (cat. no. 35) would also have been better situated within the second gallery. Other parts of the display were more cohesive. In an attempt to indicate the reconstruction of an arcosolium tomb (the type of monumental grave favored by emperors and aristocrats in the late period), pieces of sculpture were arranged in an arched form set on capitals. Most significant are the well-known fragments from the tomb of the nun Maria Palaiologina (cat. no. 49), which have been associated with the important female monastery of Constantine Lips in Constantinople. The Lips fragments demonstrate the tendency of wealthy Byzantines to depict themselves in attitudes of supplication over their graves and to commission elaborate poems for these markers. These funeral texts, whether carved or recited over the tomb, constitute some of the most beautiful literature of the Late Byzantine period. Two capitals in this installation carved with images of military saints exemplified the return to figural decoration in certain architectural contexts. The four-sided capital (cat. no. 55), proposed here as part of a tomb niche, was more likely part of a freestanding ciborium or architectural support. (11) An interesting piece in this collection of objects was a relief with the Archangel Michael, which was discovered in the city of Iznik (Byzantine Nicaea) (cat. no. 52). Although the label suggested that the piece formed part of a templon screen, its subject and composition made its association with a tomb more likely. In both cases the labels contradicted information given in the catalog.

In the same gallery was seen a collection of liturgical textiles, probably the least-known works in the show. Many of these are still held by monasteries as treasured objects, and their presentation at the Metropolitan allowed the viewer the extraordinary opportunity to assess their beauty, method of manufacture, and importance. The two elaborate sakkoi (cat. nos. 177, 178) enclosed the patriarchal or, in special cases, episcopal celebrant in an array of embroidered icons. This costume element is well known from monumental painting, but the analysis of the actual vestments better illustrates the resplendence of the liturgical service and the symbolic role of the celebrant as the living embodiment of Christ. This gallery also contained a large number of epitaphioi, liturgical cloths paraded through the church during the Holy (Good) Friday service. Of singular importance is the Thessalonike epitaphios (cat. no. 187A), which was most likely executed in a textile workshop in that northern Greek city (Fig. 2). The inclusion of this Thessalonian work raises important issues about workshop practices that were unexplored in the exhibition. The detailed representation on the epitaphios of the Communion of the Apostles on either side of the recumbent Christ and the heavy figure style of the Apostles and angels suggest that a noted pair of church painters, Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, were involved in the design of this liturgical cloth (Fig. 3). The same team may also have been responsible for the design of a second textile not in the show; an embroidered silk panel of the Crucifixion, today in Bulgaria. (12) The large Bulgarian panel (48 by 26 3/4 inches, or 122 by 68 centimeters), dated about 1295, is associated through an inscription with the donors of the Peribleptos church in Ohrid, which was painted by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios. In the West, the involvement of painters, such as Jean Bondol, in the design of textiles is well documented. If, indeed, one can identify the hands of specific painters in the design of the Thessalonike epitaphios and the Crucifixion embroidery, these works provide important clues about artistic practices in the Late Byzantine period, an age in which the names of trained artists began to emerge from the anonymous workshop tradition of earlier centuries. Overall, the exhibition overemphasized Western names while neglecting to credit Byzantine artists of the same period.

The large subsequent gallery, the sixth, was devoted to icons. A wall text provided, belatedly, an overview of the function of holy images. Within this room icons were divided according to subject matter: processions, the Virgin, saints, the life of Christ, and the Mandylion. The sizes of the icons varied; the largest panels, over ten feet in height, belong to a Russian iconostasis (cat. no. 113). The icons that filled the seventh gallery derived exclusively from the collection of the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. (13) This gallery was reconstructed to create the impression of the church's basilica shape. As in the previous room, the icons were largely clustered in cases according to subject. This chamber, the most cohesive in the exhibition, allowed the visitor to assess the many styles of painting found in the icon collection of a single monastery. It is fortunate that the Sinai monastery permitted so many of its precious icons to travel to the exhibition, as they are among the finest works surviving from the period. Initially studied by George and Maria Soteriou and Kurt Weitzmann, the icons in the show, particularly those classified stylistically as "Crusader icons," have come under increasing scrutiny as scholars turn their attention to painting in the eastern Mediterranean. One of the questions outstanding is how icons of so many differing styles came to be housed in a single institution. Although scholars have posited the existence of a painting workshop at Sinai, a number of icons appear to have been painted elsewhere and donated to the monastery. One of the most interesting icons in the current show portrays the Deesis and five saints (cat. no. 219), incorrectly called Franciscans on the museum label (Fig. 4). The label also called the icon "Crusader" and attributed it to the late thirteenth century; the Soterious, who first published the work, dated it to the late thirteenth-early fourteenth century. (14) The faces and hands of the saints are beautifully modeled, expressive, and elegant. The layered paint on the faces is nearly translucent. The closest parallel to this distinctive painting style is seen on a Cypriot icon of 1356, the funerary icon of Maria, the virgin daughter of the church lector Manuel Xeros (Fig. 5). The style of this work is said to combine Byzantine and Gothic features, and although scholars have attributed the panel to the hand of a Palaiologan master, the individualism of the portrait of the young woman betrays an awareness of Italian art of the period. (15) Like these two panels, the Sinai material challenges scholars to unravel the complexities of interwoven styles of the late medieval period, but such an exercise depends on first identifying regional styles and understanding the historical and economic circumstances that resulted in their hybridization or exportation. In the case of the Sinai icon, the identification of the "holy new martyrs" Michael, George, Paul, Philip, and Mateos, figured in the lower register, should reveal either the provenance or audience for the panel.

In the first seven galleries works made in Constantinople were juxtaposed with those fabricated in such varied settings as Serbia, Armenia, and Ethiopia, creating an impression of cultural harmony, religious unity, and artistic similitude. In the midst of this laudable multiculturalist vision, however, Byzantium, the Greek-speaking empire of the show's title, was all but lost. One might expect that the exhibition would begin with a gallery dedicated to works that originated in Constantinople in order to foreground the core elements of Byzantine art in its last centuries. Indeed, numerous entries in the accompanying catalog referred to works as exemplary of Palaiologan style or as examples of the Palaiologan Renaissance. The use of such concepts might have been tested in a separate gallery. Another important problem raised in the first half of the show was the question of dating and provenance. With the field of Late Byzantine studies in art history largely in its infancy and with many works still unpublished, a number of the objects in the show could only be assigned broadly to a century or two. Future work should help refine these dates as more comparative material becomes available. Similarly, for many works the attribution to specific sites of manufacture remained premature. Many of the labels listed multiple cities for the provenance, often followed by question marks. In a number of cases, the provenance was given generically as Byzantium, frustratingly broad but unfortunately accurate. Scholars of the period are well aware that styles particular to specific regions flourished simultaneously and independently. The movement of artists as political fortunes changed further complicates the picture. Corollary to the issue of style--whether Byzantine or byzantinizing--is the question of influence, which was omnipresent throughout the galleries. The nature of such influence is critical to the understanding of the material, for after the seventh gallery the exhibition shifted to the interaction of the Orthodox peoples with their non-Orthodox neighbors.

The next (small) gallery raised the issue of Byzantium and Islam. This, the eighth gallery, contained an odd assortment of objects produced either for Islamic communities or for indigenous Christians in Islamic lands. A number of important works in this gallery contained views of Constantinople following its fall to the Ottoman Turks. Of particular interest was a woodblock depicting the siege of the Byzantine capital in 1453 (cat. no. 247A). Other views, such as the procession of Suleyman the Magnificent through the hippodrome by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (cat. no. 253), displayed the pageantry of the Ottoman court while recording documentary evidence for the survival of Byzantine monuments in the postconquest city. Two examples of sixteenth-century brocaded silks with Christian themes (cat. nos. 269, 270) reveal the tolerance of the Ottomans for the continued production of ecclesiastical textiles. Yet several objects in the gallery merited inclusion here only by the narrowest criteria. A late-twelfth-century Psalter housed in Constantinople's famous Hodegon Monastery in the fourteenth century (a recent gift to the museum) was selected by virtue of an inscription of 1554 (not visible in the display) recording the execution of the Christian Nicholas Pazartis in the hippodrome (cat. no. 255). Similarly, several excluded items would have been welcome additions, such as textiles with tiraz bands of the kind noted by Antonio Pisanello, which made their way into so many Italian paintings of the period, and metal objects decorated with Christian themes, which would have complemented the enameled glass bottle and glazed amphora (cat. no. 244). Altogether, the display of such diverse objects within a single gallery might have offered an opportunity to evaluate the artistic koine that has been noted in luxury arts of the eastern Mediterranean.

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The remaining galleries featured works produced in Crusader contexts and in Italy. Unfortunately, one of the most important works from the Crusader occupation of Constantinople, a fresco fragment illustrating Franciscan friars from the Kyriotissa Monastery (Kalenderhane Camii) in Istanbul (cat. no. 274), was not in the exhibition. Other works, the Arsenal Old Testament (cat. no. 272) and the Perugia Missal (cat. no. 276) among them, however, gave a sense of the artistic style that was popular in the Crusader Levant. These manuscripts have often been used as points of reference for a set of icons from Mount Sinai painted in what has been called the Crusader style. Restrictions imposed by the monastery on the display of the icons, however, prevented the examination of these works side by side. Although the ninth gallery showed paintings executed in Venice and in Crete, its colony, none by Paolo Veneziano, whose work has been profitably compared to Cretan frescoes of the fourteenth century, were on view. (16) The absence of panel paintings by such Italian masters as Duccio and Giotto constituted another missed opportunity, to reconsider remarks made by Giorgio Vasari about the maniera greca. In addition, southern Italian works, unfortunately, were underrepresented.

The final gallery held some of the most interesting, and some of the most problematic, material in the show. Divided by a thin wall, objects from fifteenth-century Italy were installed on one side, those from northern Europe on the other. We entered the world of fifteenth-century Italy in order to consider how the Byzantines were perceived on Italian soil, both as visitors and as residents. For Italians such as Pisanello, who masterfully captured the likeness of the emperor John VIII Palaiologos and members of his retinue while they attended the Council of Ferrara, the Byzantines appeared to be exotic creatures (Fig. 6). Pisanello's close attention to details of costume and military equipment, including the tiraz band on the emperor's robe, serves as a pictorial foil for Sylvester Syropoulos's detailed descriptions of the Italians of the same period. (17) Although the name Bessarion (1403-1472) appeared earlier in the exhibition, it is in this final gallery that we first saw a portrait of the famed Byzantine convert to Catholicism, subsequently a cardinal, and avid collector (cat. no. 324). Adjacent to his portrait was the cover for his staurotheke, the sliding lid of a reliquary of the True Cross, painted with an elaborate scene of the Crucifixion (cat. no. 325).

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The final component of the show consisted of paintings from northern Europe. The viewer was asked to contemplate the similarities between Byzantine icons, particularly those representing the Virgin, and paintings of the Madonna and Christ executed by such masters as Hans Memling, Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, Gerard David, and Dieric Bouts. These comparisons patently demonstrated the degree to which Western artists drew inspiration from Byzantine works. But the discussion needed greater nuance, which might have been provided if actual Byzantine icons (rather than black-and-white reproductions) had been displayed alongside the northern works. Within the gallery, no explanation was given of how the Byzantine style or which Byzantine style arrived in northern Europe. In considering the aesthetics of faith one was forced, in looking from icon to painting, to consider how panels of wood covered in pigment could engender such passionate responses. What would the Byzantines have thought about the Netherlandish Madonnas placed in domestic settings? Would a merchant from Bruges have thought the Virgin Hodegetria remote? What gave the last gallery its interest was its presentation of the tantalizing possibility of direct influence. Whether scholars will accept this idea as valid or not remains to be seen. Clearly, the issue of differences in aesthetics and devotional practices is much more complicated than the exhibition at times seemed to suggest. These divergences may be much more powerful and difficult to define than the formal similarities of representation. Yet, in the end, despite these differences, Byzantine and early modern paintings served the same purpose, both intended as aids to religious devotion, leading the supplicant to spiritual elevation through contemplation of the material beauty of sacred figures.

Without benefit of the catalog, certain themes emerged from the groupings of objects within the galleries. The visitor was squarely confronted with exempla of Christian faith and practice as manifested in devotional works of both East and West. In the West, affective piety, which arose in monastic circles and was vigorously championed by the Franciscans, gave rise to the graphic representation of Christ's humility and suffering. It has been argued that the prototype for these images was the Byzantine Man of Sorrows. But whereas in the West private emotional responses to such images were carefully cultivated, this was not the case in Byzantium, where they were linked with the corporate celebration of the Eucharist and of Christ's Passion during Holy Week. Along similar lines, the Virgins in the East are placed against golden backgrounds, as if emerging from some otherworldly realm. The Western Madonnas often inhabit domestic spaces, in which artifacts of everyday life are used to engage the viewer in common experience and affective bonding. Part of the difficulty in understanding differences in responses to these works stems from seeing them divorced from their original contexts. The majority of Byzantine icons come from churches--many of the larger ones were installed in icon screens--but the initial placement of the Western paintings is not fully explained in the exhibition. Even if it is hard for us to discern the difference between comparable images in the East and West, it is clear that people of the time recognized the divisions. In the fifteenth century, Sylvester Syropoulos records an objection, raised by the emperor's confessor, Gregory Melissenos, to using a Latin-rite church for Orthodox services during the Council of Ferrara (1438) as follows: "When I enter a Latin church, I do not revere any of the saints that are there because I do not recognize any of them. At the most, I may recognize Christ, but I do not revere Him either, since I do not know in what terms he is inscribed. So I make the sign of the cross and I revere this sign that I have made myself, and not anything that I see there." (18) For Melissenos, there can be no devotional experience without the identification of the depicted figure or its inscription. Throughout the show, inscriptions played a secondary role to images. Yet it was the inscription, in the posticonoclastic world, that performed as the guarantor of authenticity; without these labels, spelled out or abbreviated, the icon could not properly function.

The issue of framing, both narrowly and broadly defined, was a focus of the exhibition. Two bilateral icons, one from the Vlatadon Monastery in Thessalonike (cat. no. 82) and the other in the collection of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul (cat. no. 90), are composites formed of small panels set within later works. The join between the panels is disguised on the reverse by the application of a cloth layer below the painted scenes. On the obverse, however, the contrast between old and new is emphasized and the thematic juxtapositions purposeful. The miniature mosaic icon of the Akra Tapeinosis, or Man of Sorrows (cat. no. 131), as we have seen, was encased within a reliquary cabinet when it traveled from Byzantium to Italy. Framed by the relics of nearly one hundred and fifty saints, the Man of Sorrows, the archetypal image of Christ's Passion, visually recalls the suffering of the martyrs whose bones, housed within individual compartments, constitute tactile and visual reminders of suffering and sacrifice. But framing also meant creating obfuscation with revetments of gold or silver in order to reveal glimpses of hands and faces (cat. nos. 4, 150-55). The understanding of revelation through concealment was intuitive to the Byzantines, who caught mere moments of the liturgical service framed by high screens, which heightened the sanctity and drama of the liturgy. The issue of framing also extends to the broader questions asked by the show, which includes the inquiry into icons and aesthetics raised above.

The word influence, which appeared on labels throughout the galleries, was another significant theme of the show. Scholars have rightly questioned the use of the term to describe the process by which artistic forms are altered by external cultural forces. (19) For the material under consideration in this exhibition, reception was as important as influence. In the late medieval world, influence and reception can be attributed to a variety of factors, among them the coexistence of different peoples in a single land, trade, diplomatic exchanges, intermarriage, missionary activity, and artistic copying. Each of these instances, in which two or more cultures collided, engendered different degrees of influence, ranging, on the part of the receiving culture, from knowing assimilation to subconscious emulation. Further complicating the issue of influence is Byzantium's thousand-year history, in which long-integrated artistic styles were considered indigenous art forms. The differences between primary, secondary, or even tertiary influence needed to be more thoughtfully demonstrated. A case in point is the previously mentioned church chandelier suspended in the second gallery. The metal framework is decorated with openwork sphinxes, double-headed eagles, and quadrupeds, all of which, according to the label, "resemble thirteenth-century Islamic motifs." With the exception of the double-headed eagle, however, these motifs had long been incorporated into the Byzantine artistic repertoire, making the notion of direct influence misleading.

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Together with ideas of influence, the exhibition provided the opportunity to examine the intentional rejection of influence through cultural introspection and the appropriation of styles and subjects from the past--artistic choices that gave rise to the notion of a Palaiologan "renaissance." In all periods of Byzantium, artists and patrons looked back to their historical monuments, copying venerable works and styles associated with powerful dynasties and golden ages. These so-called renaissances appear in Byzantium after cycles of disruption, such as Iconoclasm or the Latin occupation, when society was drawn to the security and prestige enjoyed by previous generations. A leaf from a thirteenth-century Psalter representing King David standing between personifications of Wisdom and Prophecy (cat. no. 159; see similarly fig. 9.10, MS Vat. Palat. Gr. 381[B]) conspicuously copies the Paris Psalter (Bibliotheque Nationale de France, MS gr. 139), one of the most lavish manuscripts of the tenth century. Associated with early rulers of the Macedonian dynasty, the Paris Psalter proclaimed imperial virtues through the representation of the story of David. Thus, in addition to their aesthetic appreciation of earlier works, artists and patrons of the thirteenth century appropriated earlier art forms with an eye toward their social and political implications.

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

One of the greatest challenges of launching such an ambitious exhibition lay in presenting complex material to a wide range of audiences. The first step entailed collecting and installing hundreds of works; the second, displaying the works in a meaningful way. Discussions with visitors to the exhibition revealed that many could not grasp the underlying meaning of the show; indeed, a number commented that it simply contained too many works. Rather than appreciating developments in certain types of icons, many viewers saw the duplication of images as repetitious. In the absence of interpretative materials, some found the show too difficult and left the galleries in search of displays of more familiar (and comfortable?) works. From the standpoint of an academic whose research and teaching focus on the period under consideration, the disjunction between the way in which Late Byzantine art was presented in the show and the manner in which it is taught in the classroom was disheartening. A quick survey of graduate courses on Late Byzantine art offered in the United States over the last five years discloses that most are organized thematically, by medium, or by city; a large number address issues of cross-cultural interaction through trade, gift exchange, or as the result of war and subsequent cohabitation. I could not find a single seminar that explicitly addressed the aesthetics of Late Byzantine art. Ambitious exhibitions like this one extend an opportunity to educate the public. Unfortunately, many in the field viewed this as an opportunity lost.

The exhibition's lavish 658-page catalog, produced for a scholarly audience, contains seventeen thematic essays of varying length as well as entries for each of the exhibited works. The authors include senior scholars in the field, museum curators, and an archbishop, along with several younger scholars who worked as part of the exhibition team. More than one hundred authors, many of them associated with lending institutions, composed the catalog entries. As mentioned above, the divisions of the catalog do not correspond to the placement of objects in the exhibition, and some catalog entries differ with the museum's labels.

The first essay, authored by the principal curator, Helen C. Evans, serves as a general introduction. Here, Evans explains the chronological boundaries of the exhibition, identifies major artistic centers, and gives a brief summation of the history of the period as well as some information about Byzantium's interactions with neighboring cultures. In the next essay, Alice-Mary Talbot introduces translated texts from the period in order to illuminate the place of Constantinople and the impact of its fall on its citizens. These two essays are followed by entries describing the works bearing portraits of the Byzantines and their neighbors. Rulers from Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania are represented in the first gallery of the exhibition, yet the catalog does not adequately address the origin and rise of these sibling states, which were frequently at odds with Byzantium.

A lengthy essay entitled "Religious Settings of the Late Byzantine Sphere," written by the architectural historian Slobodan Curcic, introduces the second section of the catalog, devoted to the church, ecclesiastical furnishings, and liturgical objects. Curcic's essay primarily centers on monastic architecture, especially on those buildings constructed or decorated through imperial or aristocratic patronage. A short essay by Sarah Brooks, "Sculpture and the Late Byzantine Tomb," studies imperial and aristocratic burials, particularly the sculptural decoration of arcosolium tombs. A third essay in this section, written by Anna Ballian, examines liturgical implements through surviving examples and written records. Inexplicably, the catalog has no essay on monumental painting, which should have succeeded Curcic's contribution. As noted above, monumental painting was one of the greatest achievements of the Palaiologan period. Its absence from the show and the catalog are regrettable, to say the least. The catalog entries that end this section gather together objects scattered throughout the show. Of particular value is the pairing of photographs of building interiors with pieces of sculpture and church furnishings (cat. nos. 34, 37, 39, 41, 60). Thanks to the arrangement of the catalog, the church as a building and space for worship is much more clearly articulated here than in the exhibition.

The third section of the catalog is dedicated to the subject of icons in various media, from panel paintings to textiles. Drawing on her own experience in witnessing the modern-day use of devotional panels, Annemarie Weyl Carr sensitively analyzes three aspects of Late Byzantine icons in her essay: the growing importance of panel paintings in number and scale, the responsive clusters of images, and the self-referentiality of icons. (20) A short essay by Arne Effenberger considers the miniature mosaic icons exhibited together in the fourth gallery. As the author shows, mosaic icons were highly collectible objects outside Byzantium, particularly in the West, which may explain the survival of such a large number of these precious works. Jannic Durand's insightful essay, "Precious-Metal Icon Revetments," surveys surviving examples of metal revetments as well as those mentioned in church inventories. Durand expands on the work of Andre Grabar by adding examples unknown to the earlier scholar, and also by discussing the surviving revetments within the context of popular devotional practices. His essay ends with a brief treatment of the formal relation of metal revetments to the low-relief gesso decoration that covers the background of a number of painted panels (as well as monumental icons). He concludes that the gesso technique, found in locations ranging from the Holy Land and Mount Sinai to Italy, "poses with singular acuity the problem of reciprocal exchanges between Italian and Byzantine art in these regions from the thirteenth century onward" (p. 249). Although manuscript illumination in the Late Byzantine period has often been viewed as a poor relation to works produced before the Latin occupation, John Lowden, in his essay "Manuscript Illumination in Byzantium, 1261-1557," reassesses the importance of books in the late period. Among other things, the late period witnessed the rise of scribes who, like monumental artists, increasingly abandoned anonymity. Lowden raised other important points: the notion of a Palaiologan renaissance, which, given the retention of traditional styles and forms, he sees as a "Counter-Renaissance," and the emergence of new texts for illustration. He also addresses the economic dimensions of illuminated manuscripts; the materials used for book production; the repair of older manuscripts; and instances in which newly illuminated pages were added into older books. A brief introduction to liturgical textiles, written by Warren Woodfin, adduces earlier Byzantine as well as Late Byzantine texts to clarify the function and symbolic meaning of the embroidered silk cloths used for vestments and church ceremony. Writing about Saint Cyril and the Belozersk Monastery in Russia, Irina Solov'eva explores icons and textiles associated with that institution and its founding saint. The final essay in this section of the volume, written by Archbishop Damianos of the monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai, offers the reader a religious perspective on the function of icons, seeing them as the visual analogues to the spiritual journey undertaken by the monk, as exemplified in the Heavenly Ladder of Saint John Klimakos.

The catalog entries on icons are richly illustrated, including details of the larger panels. In the case of the miniature mosaic icons, these details allow the reader to scrutinize the production technique of this exacting art form. The inclusion of photographs and descriptions of the reverse sides of a number of icons provide valuable information on function and workshop. This is of particular importance for the Sinai icons, which are often decorated with a characteristic pattern of wavy red and black brushstrokes. The entries on these latter icons address the complexity of assigning various styles to artists from various locations. Many of these entries modify attributions first made by Kurt Weitzmann and reflect recent advances (of the last decade) in decoding the Cypriot, Armenian, Coptic, Syrian, and "Western" strains that comprise the painting style generically termed Crusader.

As in other sections of the catalog, the entries on icons vary in quality. Noteworthy are those written by Yuri Piatnitsky, Jannic Durand, and Georgi R. Parpulov. A number of entries are fairly brief and purely descriptive, perhaps in deference to the fact that many of these works have been displayed time and again in numerous exhibitions. The short entry on the Pafsolype icon, the first object displayed in the exhibition (cat. no. 90), was written without direct examination of the work, and readers should be aware that some of the information given, including the dating of the two panels, is incorrect (most likely, only the central panel can be attributed to the second half of the fourteenth century). A number of entries also contain assertions that are unfounded or highly speculative. For example, in an account of the Icon of the Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia from Sinai (cat. no. 225), the author compares the bathhouse depicted in the upper right-hand corner to the silver-and-gilt incense burner or lamp in the S. Marco Treasury. (21) She concludes that "the image on this icon suggests that the Venetian work, often called an incense burner, may be a miniature bathhouse for use in conjunction with the elaborate ceremonies of the bath" (p. 369). Equally dubious is the suggestion made, in connection with the Vatican Sakkos (cat. no. 177), that the elaborate robe belonged to Gregory Palamas, for which there is no evidence. In a discussion of the Icon of the Virgin Galaktotrophousa from Sinai (cat. no. 215), the author claims that this type of Virgin "is not seen often in Byzantine art." This, however, is not the case. In the late period, images of the nursing Virgin appear often in monumental painting.

The last section of the catalog concerns the interaction of Byzantium with other cultures, beginning with the Islamic world. The first essay, by Scott Redford, "Byzantium and the Islamic World, 1261-1557," investigates the exchange of luxury objects through diplomatic gifts, war booty, trade, and intermarriage, along with the effect of such exchanges on artistic production and the expansion of Western commercial activities in the Levant. Redford helpfully outlines the development of an artistic koine that was expressed in luxury objects as well as in humbler wares and the importance of a shared court culture in which certain symbols, regardless of territorial or cultural boundaries, conveyed similar meanings of status. An essay by Thelma K. Thomas studies the indigenous Christian communities in Egypt, Syria, Armenia, and Ethiopia. Thomas contrasts developments in Cairo and Jerusalem and considers monasteries outside urban settings, such as St. Antony, near the Red Sea coast, and Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, north of Damascus. For these two monuments, Thomas relies heavily on recent work by Elizabeth Bolman and Erica Cruikshank Dodd. She unfortunately pays little attention to the significant religious and artistic traditions in Armenia and Ethiopia. More generally, the entries in this section of the catalog are often poorly matched to the essays.

Although Redford's essay treats luxury goods, his essay is followed, for the most part, by representations of Constantinople/Istanbul in various media. The entries on a dagger and a bottle (cat. nos. 257, 258) that follow Thomas's essay would have fit more profitably after Redford's. The entry on the bottle, which repeats and simplifies information from an entry of Stefano Carboni in the exhibition catalog for Glass of the Sultans, (22) fails to cite a recent volume by Rachel Ward that presents the state of research for this precious medium. (23) The assertion that this very large bottle was used for chrism is speculative; more likely, based on its size, it was used as a container for holy water or wine.

Essays on Byzantium and the West, the strongest section of the volume, are introduced by a fine piece of scholarship authored by Anne Derbes and Amy Neff. Although the role of the mendicant orders in artistic developments in the eastern Mediterranean is alluded to in a number of labels within the exhibition, particularly in relation to works of Cilician Armenia, their exact role is never spelled out. In this essay, "Italy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Byzantine Sphere," the authors discuss the presence and mission of mendicant friars in the East, their devotional practices, religious images that they favored, and institutions that they founded. The authors assess the influence of Byzantine imagery on the formation of Franciscan iconography, such as the appropriation of the Man of Sorrows image for the purposes of affective worship (see, for example, cat. nos. 203, 204) or the use of the genre of the vita icon to promote the cult of mendicant saints. Another topic of interest is the creation of visual hybrids that appear to synthesize Western and Eastern themes in a single work. Examples are cited from both Sinai and Armenia. It is unclear, however, whether the introduction of such figures as the grieving Mary magdalen or the Madonna of Mercy indicates direct Franciscan influence or secondary influence through Cyprus, which had close ties to both Sinai and Cilician Armenia. There may be, indeed, a tendency in this exhibition to overinterpret works through the lens of Franciscan patronage and production. In a catalog entry on the fresco fragment with Franciscan friars from the Kyriotissa Monastery in Constantinople (cat. no. 274), the author, on the basis of a cross-media comparison to the "bulging-eye style" of the Arsenal Old Testament (cat. no. 272), attributes the frescoes to "French artists influenced by Byzantine models and techniques. The possibility of an Italian artist or artists, however, deserves further consideration." The following sentence begins, "In these frescoes painted by Westerners...." (p. 464). In asserting the exclusive role of Western artists in this monumental program, the author disregards a large body of scholarship that argues that the Kalenderhane frescoes were, in fact, painted by Byzantine artists who are also associated with the decoration of the thirteenth-century frescoes in the chapel of St. George at the Chilandar Monastery on Mount Athos. (24)

In "Venice and the Byzantine Sphere," Maria Georgopoulou focuses primarily on Crete, from the perspective of both the colonizers and the indigenous population. A large part of her essay is devoted to the subject of icon painters in post-Byzantine Crete, who worked both in forma alla latina and in forma alla greca. Organized into workshops, these named painters traveled through Greece and Italy and created works for both Orthodox and Catholic patrons. An interesting section of her essay treats the expatriate Greek community of Venice, its role in founding churches in the city, and the introduction of Greek philosophical and literary texts to the Republic.

In an excellent essay, "Byzantium and the Rebirth of Art and Learning in Italy and France," Robert Nelson traces the effect of Byzantine scholars, such as Manuel Chrysoloras (ca. 1350-1415), and Greek books, such as Ptolemy's Geography, on humanistic studies in Italy. Addressing the intellectual motivations to collect and preserve Byzantine manuscripts, along with the impact of Greek letters on the Italian Renaissance, Nelson concentrates on two great cardinals of the fifteenth century: Bessarion (1403-1472) and Francesco Gonzaga (1444-1483). The entries in this part of the catalog, written by Nelson, Carmen C. Bambach, Georgi Parpulov, Maria Georgopoulou, and Stephen Scher, are of uniformly high caliber and tightly coordinated with the theme of the introductory essay. In contemplating Pisanello's studies of Emperor John VIII Palaiologos and his retinue (cat. nos. 318A, B), Bambach shares the state-of-the-field analysis on the two pages from the artist's sketchbook preserved in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, and the Art Institute of Chicago (Fig. 6). This section of the catalog forms the blueprint for a much larger show that one hopes will be realized in the future.

In the volume's final essay, Maryan W. Ainsworth carefully dissects the transmission of Byzantine subjects and style to northern Europe. Knowledge of Byzantine art was both direct, as in the commissioning of Cretan icons for the Flanders market, and indirect, as in the circulation in the north of engravings and woodcuts based on Byzantine images. That Byzantine icons traveled to the north is documented in the inventories of private collections, such as that of Jean, duc de Berry. Conversely, northern artists traveled to Italy, where they may have viewed firsthand Byzantine icons or Italo-Byzantine works. Noteworthy is Ainsworth's discussion of the types of icons that circulated, primarily images of the Virgin (specifically types attributed to the hand of Saint Luke) and of Christ, such as the Man of Sorrows. The author also explores how Byzantine-style icons could be used for religious and political propaganda. Finally, Ainsworth studies the important issue of copying icons and how various styles and aspects of religious painting, derived from Byzantine or byzantinizing images, could coexist. The insightful catalog entries that follow, all written by Ainsworth, illustrate and expand on the points made in her essay.

The essays in this catalog, as well as a number of the entries, provide a helpful starting point for scholars interested in the study of this period. Like the catalogs for the exhibitions Age of Spirituality and The Glory of Byzantium, this one will serve as a standard reference tool for both scholars and students. And yet, like the exhibition itself, the catalog is not without certain shortcomings. First among them is the absence of a clear definition of Late Byzantine style that might have served as an index by which to compare works created outside the imperial borders. The reluctance to define Byzantine style gives rise to the impression, noted above, that Byzantium as such is largely missing from the show and the catalog, having been diluted into an amorphous Eastern Christian amalgam. The lack of a detailed historical treatment of the period is another lacuna. Smaller problems, such as inconsistencies in the rendering of names or of Greek inscriptions (for example, Lips/Livos; Stiris/Steiriotes; Ohrid/Achris), can be attributed to the involvement of so many authors, whose work, in many cases, had to be translated for this edition. There are minor mistakes in Greek, including differing standards of abbreviation for such titles as Mother of God, as well as typographical errors (see, for example, cat, nos. 52, 143, 148). The multiple references to the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium rather than to scholarly articles and monographs are surprising in a work of this caliber, as is the advertising of a number of unpublished doctoral dissertations, some of which were unfinished at the time of the catalog's publication (see, for example, cat. no. 49 n. 4). References to published works within the catalog entries are uneven, with significant studies often omitted. (25) Despite these problems, the overall editing of the volume is good. That so few mistakes appeared is a tribute to the staff that oversaw its production.

Byzantium: Faith and Power was conceived, from its beginnings, not as a typical museum show but as a blockbuster exhibition. The success of The Glory of Byzantium, with its record-breaking crowds, multiple printings of its catalog, and laudatory reviews, had taught the Metropolitan that the great empire of the East was not only chic but also profitable. And the timing for the current show proved auspicious. With the destruction of religious monuments in Kosovo dominating newspaper headlines, the American public was eager to examine cultural treasures that have long been at the center of national strife and religious violence. Moreover, the surprising success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which had dominated movie box offices in the weeks prior to the exhibition's opening, suggested that the public was ready and willing to absorb a show dedicated to the display of holy icons, many of them dealing with Christ's suffering and Crucifixion. But setting aside the presentation of artistic masterpieces from empires long past, the Metropolitan underestimated the complexity of the material and perhaps its audience. Viewers who were not infused from childhood with the writings of Leo Tolstoy and Constantine Cavafy or who were unfamiliar with the Christianity of the Balkans and the Middle East were surely at a disadvantage. In addition, those raised in religious traditions in which sacred art plays little or no role were not likely to possess a sufficient framework to imaginatively reconstruct the devotional experience of Orthodox Christians. The Metropolitan did not provide much assistance toward that end. Confronted with foreign alphabets and multiple images of the same unvarying figures, many viewers had little choice but to focus on the aesthetic qualities of the objects, commenting on brushstrokes or details of repousse, not comprehending the deeper meaning and significance of these objects.

In the final analysis, the show itself embodies the very question of whether or not icons should be classified as "works of art." For the Byzantines, whose own views on image theory were informed by Platonic philosophy and Christian theology, the answer to this question was articulated only after centuries of cultural introspection and doctrinal disputation. For them, as for modern Orthodox viewers, the contemplation of the image, no matter how it was painted or framed, was a means to approach the sacred and for the sacred to approach them. For the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fixed on the aesthetics of icons and wrapped in its own museological concerns, (26) the answer is also clear. In a blockbuster show where no alternative perspective is offered, icons are, indeed, purely works of art. And for many viewers, captivated by the beauty of the images, maybe that's sufficient. From a scholarly point of view, though, a period of such complexity demanded a different type of exhibition.

Notes

1. The other exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art were Age of Spirituality, November 19, 1977-February 12, 1978; and The Glory of Byzantium, A.D. 843-1261, March 11-July 6, 1997. The exhibitions were published as Kurt Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977); and Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom, eds., The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997).

2. Helen C. Evans, "Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)," in Byzantium: Faith and Power, 5. For her discussion of historiography, Evans relies on George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969), 2, originally published as Geschichte des Byzantinischen Staates (Munich: Beck, 1940), 2. The English version is a revised edition of Ostrogorsky's original text, which appeared as a volume in the Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft. For a more detailed study of Wolf, see Der Vater des deutschen Byzantinistik: Das Leben des Hieronymus Wolf von ihm selbst erzahlt, trans. Hans-Georg Beck (Munich: Institut fur Byzantinistik und neugriechische Philologie, 1984).

3. Andrea Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, ed. Ester Pastorello, Rerum italicarum Scriptores, n.s. (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1939), vol. 12, pt. 1, 279, line 21. I thank Anthony Cutler for providing me with this reference.

4. See also the work of Johannes Meursius (1579-1639), Nicholas Alemannus (1583-1626), and Leo Allatios (1586/87-1669), who were all responsible for editing Byzantine texts.

5. See, among others, Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); and Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds (London: Reaktion Books, 1997). The significance of this issue in the context of the Western visual tradition was addressed in David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

6. On this issue, see comments by Slobodan Curcic, Zaga Gravrilovic, and Dusan Korac in Serbian Studies 11, no. 2 (1997): 2, 9-10, 21.

7. The important study by Ms. Hess is unfortunately not cited in the catalog. See Kristine Hess, "The Saint's Presence and the Power of Representation: A Reliquary Box Depicting the Life of St. John Prodromos" (master's thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 2002).

8. Ihor Sevcenko, "Alexios Makrembolites and His 'Dialogue between the Rich and the Poor,'" Zbornik radova Vizantoloskog Instituta 6 (1960): 209, line 3, 221.

9. Immanuel Bekker, ed., Nicephori Gregorae Byzantina historia: Graece et Latine, vol. 2, Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae, 7 (Bonn: E. Weber, 1830), 788.

10. Fortunately, some visitors were able to view the exhibition Restoring Byzantium: The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration, which was held at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, April 14-June 12, 2004. See Holger Klein, ed., Restoring Byzantium: The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration (New York: Columbia University, 2004).

11. For a similar work, though little known, see Pierre-Louis Gatier, "Un chapiteau byzantin de la Fondation Pierides," Report of the Department of Antiquities Cyprus, 1990 (Nicosia: Department of Antiquities, 1990), 187-88.

12. This work was most recently featured in the exhibition Treasures of Christian Art in Bulgaria, Markets of Trajan, Rome, May 22-July 15, 2000. See Valentino Pace, ed., Treasures of Christian Art in Bulgaria (Sofia: Borina Publishing House, 2001), 208-9.

13. Following the Metropolitan exhibition, the Sinai material was exhibited at the Benaki Museum in Athens under the exhibition title Pilgrimage to Sinai: Treasures from the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine, July 20-September 26, 2004. The catalog for this exhibition reprinted the essay by Archbishop Damianos, together with new essays by the curator Anastasia Drandaki ("The Sinai Monastery from the 12th to the 15th Century") and Titos Papamastorakis ("The 'Crusader' Icons in the Exhibition"). The catalog entries from the Metropolitan were reprinted without emendation, although the order was changed to reflect the new installation. See Anastasia Drandaki, ed., Pilgrimage to Sinai: Treasures from the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine (Athens: Benaki Museum, 2004).

14. George Soteriou and Maria Soteriou, Eikones tes Mones Sina, vol. 2 (Athens: Institut Francais d'Athenes, 1958), 180-81.

15. Annemarie Weyl Carr, "A Palaiologan Funerary Icon from Gothic Cyprus," in Acts of the Third International Congress of Cypriot Studies, ed. George Ioannide and Stelios Chatzestylles (Nicosia: Hetaireia Kypriakon Spoudon, 2001), 600-619.

16. See, most recently, Francesca Flores d'Arcais and Giovanni Gentili, eds., Il trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Orienle e Occidente (Milan: Silvana, 2002).

17. Vitalien Laurent, ed., Les "memoires" du Grand Ecclesiarque de l'Eglise de Constantinople Sylvestre Syropoulos sur le concile de Florence (1438-1439), Concilium Florentinum documenta et scriptores, ser. B, vol. 9 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Oricntalium Studiorum, 1971).

18. Laurent, "Memoires" du Grand Ecclesiarque Syropoulos, 250-51, sec. 46, trans. Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312-1453: Sources and Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 254.

19. See, for example, Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 58-62.

20. The author (p. 145) unfortunately misrepresents an argument in an article that I have written based on her reading of a preliminary draft. The article, Sharon Gerstel, "An Alternative View of the Late Byzantine Sanctuary Screen," will appear in the volume Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, forthcoming).

21. See Evans and Wixom, Glory of Byzantium, 250-51, cat. no. 176.

22. Stefano Carboni and David Whitehouse, eds., Glass of the Sultans, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 2, 2001-January 13, 2002, 242-45.

23. Rachel Ward, ed., Gilded and Enamelled Glass from the Middle East (London: British Museum Press, 1998).

24. See, most recently, Branislav Todic, "Thirteenth-Century Frescoes in the Parecclesion in the Tower of St. George in Chilandar," Chilandarski Zbornik 9 (1997): 69, with collected bibliography.

25. For the Book of Job, copied by Manuel Tzykandyles at Mystra (cat. no. 33), see Justine M. Andrews, "Familiar Foreigners: Artistic Innovations in a Fourteenth-Century Illustrated Commentary on Job," Arle Medievale 14 (2000): 113-21; for the Poganovo icon (cat. no. 117), see Bissera V. Pentcheva, "Imagined Images: Visions of Salvation and Intercession on a Double-Sided Icon from Poganovo," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000): 139-53; for the staurotheke of Cardinal Bessarion (cat. no. 325), see Anthony Cutler, "From Loot to Scholarship: Changing Modes in the Italian Response to Byzantine Artifacts, ca. 1200-1750," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 237-68. Many other references could be added.

26. In his introduction to the catalog, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, states, "In 1997 the landmark presentation 'The Glory of Byzantium' focused on the art and culture of the Middle Byzantine era.... 'Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557)' now seeks to enhance public appreciation of the exceptional artistic accomplishments of an era too often considered primarily in terms of political decline" (p. x).

SHARON E. J. GERSTEL is associate professor of medieval art at the University of California, Los Angeles [Department of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles, 100 Dodd Hall, Los Angeles, Calif. 90095-1417, gerstel@humnet.ucla.edu].

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