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The aesthetics of Orthodox faith.
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2005 by Sharon E.J. Gerstel
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)
