Convivium

Often, we mention Renovatio Imperii when we talk about the reception of ancient art during the Carolingian period. We like to imagine that Carolingian artists, for both political and religious reasons, sought out normative examples in ancient art. However, the example of ivory carvings from the period serves to demonstrate that Carolingian artists were astonishingly freewheeling in their adaptation of models from Late Antiquity; in fact, virtually without exception, they produced highly innovative compositions rather than exact copies. Thus, the results of my inquiry show that the criteria for the reception of ancient art should be reformulated to account for innovative recreation rather than exact imitation.

The main aim of the present paper is to give an overview on parallel phenomena appearing in Byzantine art and literature in the ninth and tenth centuries. The author argues that both classicising artistic creations and a vast number of literary products originate from and mirror the same intent of rediscovering and conquering their own past on the part of Constantinopolitan court circles. The most compelling force behind the systematizing, redefining, reviving, and restoring activity that characterizes the ninth and tenth centuries was Byzantine intellectuals’ vision of their own cultural identity that urged them to create and commission literary and artistic products expressing and bolstering their own self-image as well as their understanding of their own culture.

Made around the turn of the first millennium the Apollonius pictus manuscript of the Hungarian National Library preserves the oldest known illustration cycle of a Late Antique adventure story, the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri. Until very recently the only art historian who recognized the importance of the manuscript was Kurt Weitzmann, who believed that the style of the thirty-eight red line-drawings of the manuscript revealed classical ancestors, which, within the theoretical framework Weitzmann constructed, meant that the images were derived from a lost Late Antique original. Leaving aside the problems of a speculative archetype my paper is an attempt to unfold the textual and visual associations, both Late Antique and Ottonian, the manuscript evoked in the circle of its medieval readers. To this end I investigate the possible visual messages of the “papyrus-style” layout-structure of the manuscript, and that of the characteristic motifs of the single images.

The almost unknown “Apollonius fragment” of the National Széchényi Library is the earliest known illustrated copy of Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, a Late Antique romance on the adventures of king Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia. The fragment’s uniquely rich secular narrative image cycle appears to be, with its thirty-eight pen-work drawings, a faithful rendering of its Late Antique model. The fragment is one of the most extensive secular narrative image cycles of Late Antique origin and is of primary importance in the history of secular narrative book illustrations both in the context of Late Antique art and that of the Ottonian period. In this article, the author focuses on the architectural representations of the scenes of the Picture-Cycle of the Apollonius fragment in order to try to clarify the narrative strategies, the representation of movement, effects of perspective and classical sources.

A unique narrative pictorial cycle survives in the Apollonius pictus, an Ottonian copy of a Late Antique illustrated romance, the Historia Apollonii. The fragment of the cycle depicts a continuous narration from the perspective of the romance’s storyteller who was careful to maintain the linearity of time and space when retelling the adventurous story of King Apollonius and his family. The contaminated text of this fragmentary manuscript underwent at least two steps of transition which transformed the depictions to an extent which is difficult to asses. Instead of the individual depictions, however, I focus on their cyclic cohesion which likely fossilized the essence of a Late Antique illustrated model.

As an experimental method, I analyzed the pictorial cycle of the Apollonius pictus as a cycle of scenes by the dramatic scene division. I demonstrate that the pictorial cycle carefully follows division by action space and tends to depict dialogues separately. Time to time the illustrator conflates more scenes within one image space or fragments one scene in two depictions. These pictorial interpretations highlight the Christian understanding of the romance, the praise of virtuous acts, the punishment of evil deeds, the power of chastity, divine intervention, the act of mercy, and moral growth.

The Historiae adversus paganos by Paulus Orosius was one of the most widely read and studied works of the Middle Ages; it was also one of the least illustrated. Vat. lat. 3340 is the earliest-known example of the Orosius pictus. It was copied in the Beneventan script and illustrated with 77 marginal drawings accompanied by explanatory annotations. The manuscript poses a series of as yet unanswered questions. Were the illustrations planned at the time of the codex's creation, or were they added later? When and where were they executed? Are these work copies or originals? The rather muddled mise en page and often weak relationship of image to text - which makes reading a challenging task -, seem to suggest a misalignment between the narrative and accompanying illustrations. If we accept that Vat. lat. 3340 was produced at Montecassino before 1075, the drawings must date (at least) to the first thirty years of the twelfth century. The drawings bear no resemblance to miniatures produced at Montecassino at the time the manuscript was produced. The only possible comparisons that can be drawn are with the carved ivory plaques produced in the same period on Campania's Tyrrhenian coast. In any event, wherever the creator of the illustrations worked, clearly he was not an amateur, as David Ross (1953) has noted. It is impossible to prove that the drawings were copied in totality from an earlier version of the Historiae; neither can it be shown that entire blocks of images “migrated” from other illustration traditions. There are hints, however, that suggest an adaptation of Late Antique models in Orosian drawings, particularly in the rendering of individual iconographic schemes and the narrative strategies employed.

The wealth and plurality of the scenes related to the fourth chapter of Genesis depicted at Pyrenean sites during the eleventh and twelfth centuries have not yet been assessed as a whole. Therefore, this paper deals with the iconographic transmission and its comprehension within this territory. I will briefly introduce the sites where some of the scenes concerning the history of Cain and Abel have been preserved, some of which are related to the biblical texts, for example the land rejecting the blood of Abel (Rodes and Ripoll Bibles) while others are non-biblical, such as the burial of Abel (portal of Ripoll, mural paintings of Sant Quirze de Pedret), in order to devote my attention to the analysis of a particular scene. This scene, which gives my paper its title, is the representation of Cain’s wroth as grief, as a result of his unwelcome sacrifice, observed in three Romanesque mural painting sites, its models and interpretation (Sant Climent de Taüll, Sant Andreu de Baltarga, Ginestarre).

The murals of the village church in Kosztolány (Kostoľany pod Tribečom, Slovakia) are among the earliest preserved fresco cycles of medieval Hungary. Because of its state of preservation and rudimentary character, the cycle cannot be dated on the basis of stylistic analysis. The church itself is dated between the ninth and the eleventh century. The analyzed murals belong to the first layer. The iconography of the Infancy cycle is surprisingly archaic, including Early Christian elements. This has been explained as intentional archaism following the same trend in Venice in the early thirteenth century or as an imitation of important local prototypes - miniatures, perhaps, or the decoration of the monastery of Zobor and the cathedral of Nyitra (Nitra), both in Slovakia and both now lost. This type of Infancy cycle was popular in the region of Rome from the late eleventh century to the thirteenth century in the context of the ecclesiastical reform movement, which was also influential in Hungary during the rule of King Coloman the Learned (1095-1116).

The present study deals with codicological, textual and art historical features of the Gospel Book (Tetraevangelium) from the Syrian Orthodox Church Meryem Ana, Diyarbakır (Turkey) that has not been sufficiently known either to scholars of Syriac Christianity or art historians. Due to the lack of the colophon we are bereft of any positive information concerning its provenance and therefore only through comparative study one can contextualize the evidence that it provides. Our preliminary study demonstrates that palaeographical and codicological features of the manuscript allow to ascribe it to the early Syriac manuscript production. Its text represents the standard Syriac Gospel text of the Peshitta version. The text is accompanied by a primitive lectionary system that covers only the principal liturgical commemorations; that was however enriched at a later stage when the manuscript was used in the Syriac Orthodox milieu. The manuscript contains a miniature of Christ as well as decorated Canon tables that are similar in style to those in Syriac Gospels from the sixth century and, in particular, with those of the Rabbula Gospels in Florence. Albeit most of the early Syriac Gospel books are not dated a recent new investigation of Rabbula codex cogently argued that its miniatures go back to 525-550 ce. Both authors agree that it is likely that the manuscript from the Church of Meryem Ana can be assigned to the same date of mid-sixth century.