The aesthetics of Orthodox faith.

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).