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Five Late Byzantine Panels and Greco's Views of SinaiAuthor(s): D. Talbot RiceSource: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 89, No. 529 (Apr., 1947), pp. 92-94

Published by: Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/869452Accessed: 25-04-2016 17:04 UTC

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The Landscape Background in Rubens's St. George and the Dragon

the great palaces which formerly bordered the Thames

between Westminster and the City of London, and

occupied a strip of ground extending from the western

extremity of the Strand down to the River between

Suffolk (later Northumberland) House and Durham

House. Its only surviving relic, besides certain street

names in the locality (Villiers Street, Buckingham Street,

etc.), is the famous Water Gate designed by Inigo Jones.

Gerbier's dwelling is known to have been situated on

the E. side of the Strand gateway to York House.12

From its position on the N. bank, just where the

Thames makes a sharp bend to the E. below Whitehall,

the York House estate could well have been the place

mentioned above from which, it is thought, Rubens

saw the various buildings that he introduced into the

background of his St. George ; and indeed, lodging at

Gerbier's house, these landmarks must have been to his

eye amongst the most familiar inf London.13 In this

connexion it may be noted that in the background of the

central and earlier portion of the Gerbier Family Group,

which was painted in England at about the same time as

the St. George, there appears between the columns a

building, also at the water's edge, which, though less

well defined, is not unlike the suggested Lambeth

Palace in the latter picture.

Though there is in the Print Room at Berlin a drawing

for some of the figures and horses in the St. George, no

studies for the architecture or landscape in the back-

ground are known to exist, so it is impossible to tell

whether the artist worked these London elements into

his composition from preliminary sketches, or whether he

painted them direct on to the canvas. In either case the

level on which they appear in the picture gives the

impression that Rubens saw them from an upstairs

window ; and it is tempting to think that this window

may have belonged to the room at Gerbier's, or in

another part of York House, where the artist lived or

worked, and where he may have been inspired to give a

London setting to his glorification of our national Saint.

12 A drawing of York House by Hollar, in the Pepysian Library,

is reproduced in the L.C.C. Survey, vol. XVIII, pl.2(b) ; its site is

given on a modern plan, Idem, p.ii.

13 Cf. B.F.A. Club Exhib. Cat., Early Drawings and Pictures of

London [1920], p.52, No. 91, and pl. XXXVIII, which is a late

seventeenth century painting of Westminster from below York Watergate

(Coll. Mr. E. C. Grenfell).

FIVE LATE BYZANTINE PANELS AND GRECO S

VIEWS OF SINAI BY D TALBOT RICE

HE five small panels illustrated in

PLATED are framed together in the follow-

ing order ; The Annunciation; Mount Sinai ;

The Resurrection; Christ, St. Catherine and St.

Mercurios; and, lastly, The Transfiguration.

All the scenes except for the Mount Sinai are

identified by inscriptions, as are the Archangel

Gabriel, St. Catherine and St. Mercurios and the

bust of our Lord above these saints, which bears the

title The Just Judge. '

The iconography of the three principal scenes,

The Annunciation, Resurrection and Transfiguration, calls

for no special comment. The panel bearing Christ,

St. Catherine and St. AlIercurios is however unusual, and

the view of Sinai is especially interesting. They were

no doubt included owing to the fact that the church

for which the icons were intended was dedicated to

St. Catherine, who was renowned as patron of the

famous Sinai monastery. The icons were probably

intended for the upper row of an iconostasis, and

other scenes, such as some of the other major feasts

of the Church, that is, essential scenes from Christ's

life, or perhaps even scenes from St. Catherine's life2,

may well have been included in the series.

The panels are not dated, but they are to be

assigned with little doubt to round about the year

I6oo. An icon of the Annunciation in the Benaki

Museum at Athens, which is closely akin, is signed

Ioannou Kypriou, and bears the date 1581.3 Another

panel in the same collection, which shows the

Anastasis, is again closely similar, though its Style

suggests a rather later date than that to be assigned

to Mr. Blunt's panels ; it is dated by Xyngopoulos

to the middle of the seventeenth century.4 Quite a

number of icons in other collections in Greece,

notably an Annunciation in the Herakopou collection

at Athens,5 are again similar in style. The place of

their execution was very probably Salonica, where a

school existed from early to quite late times which

showed something of that high quality of workman-

ship that distinguished the work of Constantinople.

Great attention was paid to detail, and a manner

characteristic of this, the second city of the Empire

in later times, was developed, which shows an

elegance absent in work of the other local schools of

Greece. The location of schools of icon painting at

this late date is however by no means easy, and until

a great deal of further study has been undertaken, it

is not possible to do more than hint at the probable

location of the school to which Mr. Blunt's panels

belong

The combination of Saints in Mr. Blunt's panel,

showing Christ, St. Catherine and St. Mercurios is

unusual. St. Catherine is clothed in royal costume,

1 It has unfortunately proved impossible to include the inscrip-

tions in Greek.

2 Those indicated in the Painter's Guide are :-(i) The Saint

learning from her confessor. (ii) Christ averts His face from St.

Catherine because she is not baptised. (iii) The baptism of the

Saint by her confessor. (iv) The Saint receives a token of Her

betrothal from Christ. (v) The Saint speaks boldly to the Emperor.

(vi) The Saint disputes with fifty philosophers. (vii) The Saint is

fastened to the wheel. (viii) The beheading of the Saint. See

DENYS OF FOURNA ; The Painter's Guide, edited by Papadopoulos

K6ramaeus, St. Petersburg [Igog], p. x85. It has been in part

translated by M. STOKES: Christian Iconography, London [2892].

See Vol. II, p. 370.

3 A. XYNGOPOULos : Benaki Museum : Catalogue of Icons, Athens

[1936], No. 7, Pl. ga. The catalogue is in Greek.

* Loc. cit. No. 6o, pl. 37.

5 This icon has not been published. A photograph of it is in the

writer's possession.

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A-MOUNT SINAI. BY EL GRECO. PANEL, 41 BY 47.8 CM. (BARON

FRANZ VON HATVANY, BUDAPEST

B-DETAIL OF D. HEIGHT, 21 CM.

C-MOUNT SINAI. BY EL GRECO. PANEL,

37 BY 24 CM. (PINACOTECA, MODENA)

D-THE ANNUNCIATION ; MOUNT SINAI; THE RESURRECTION ; CHRIST, ST. CA THERINE AND ST. MERCURIOS;

THE TRANSFIGURATION. BYZANTINE PANELS, PROBABLY PAINTED AT SALONICA ABOUT 1600. OVERALL SIZE,

INCLUDING FRAME, 30 BY 88 CM. (MR. WILFRID BLUNT)

FIVE LATE BYZANTINE PANELS AND GRECO S VIEW OF SINAI



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Five Late Byzantine Panels and Greco's Views of Sinai

with the martyr's palm in her left hand and in her

right a spear, with which she transfixes a crowned

figure, symbol of pagan tyranny.6 St. Mercurios

also transfixes a pagan tyrant ; the figure probably

represents that of Julian the Apostate.7 The in-

scription associated with the figure of Christ usually

accompanies Him when He is shown in the Last

Judgment. The whole composition is thus probably

to be interpreted as symbolic of the Victory of

Christianity over pagan tyranny and of the fate

awaiting the unjust oppressors of the Faith.

The other panel, that showing Mount Sinai

[PLATE B], is of special interest owing to its close

similarities with two renderings of the same subject

by El Greco, one on the Modena altarpiece [PLATE

C], the other on a panel in the Hatvany Collection

in Budapest [PLATE A]. The former is usually

dated to 1567 or 15688 ; the latter to between 1571

and I576.9 The close relationship of the iconography

of all these renderings is clear from a glance at the

plates. Especially noteworthy is the almost exact

similarity of the angels and tomb at the summit of

the right-hand mountain, of the monastery itself,

and of the travellers arriving on camels in the right

foreground. It is clear that El Greco and the painter

of the icon followed the same model, and it is equally

clear that this model is to be sought in the Byzantine

world and not in the West; the character of the

mountains, the nature of the composition, and,

indeed, the whole comprehension of the subject are

all essentially Byzantine. The mountains are

paralleled in numerous Byzantine paintings from

the thirteenth century onwards, and the similarity of

outlook, though less easy to define in words, is none

the less clearly to be discerned when a number of

later Byzantine paintings on wall or panel are com-

pared. Greco's two paintings are, in fact, not only

close copies of some Byzantine iconographical

model; they are, in addition, painted with all the

feeling of a Byzantine artist.

In the Hatvany panel Greco's own individual

style shows perhaps rather greater development than

in the Modena picture. In the former the mountains

are rather heavier and the figures more substantial ;

in the latter all is still conceived in that symbolic,

abstract manner characteristic of the true Byzantine.

The Byzantine character of Greco's Sinai pictures

has already been pointed out by more than one

writer.1' But hitherto the only Byzantine parallels

available for comparison have been in the form of

engravings, done in the West, but Byzantine in

character. The earliest, dated I566, appeared in

Christopher FUirer's Itinerariumll ; but it is rather

more Western in style, and though based on the same

model, has deviated quite considerably from it.

The next was produced at Lvov in I688 ; it is very

closely similar. The last, an engraving preserved

in the Sinai library, is dated 1736 and is again

close to the Byzantine model.12 But Mr. Blunt's icon

iow provides us with a more satisfactory piece of

evidence, since it is unquestionably Byzantine, is of

much the same date as the Greco paintings, and

obviously follows an earlier iconographical proto-

type. It takes its place, beyond possibility of doubt,

in the evolutionary chain of this scene. One day,

perhaps, a wall painting, panel, or manuscript

illustration will be discovered, dating from the

fifteenth, fourteenth or even the thirteenth century

showing us an earlier link. Till that day we can only

reconstruct its appearance in our own minds with

the aid of the later copies that survive.

* The wheel, normally associated with St. Catherine in the West,

is not usually included in Byzantine iconography.

'According to a legend prevalent in the Byzantine world, St.

Mercurios was called upon to slay the Emperor Julian the Apostate,

and did so in battle, with a spear. See H. DELEHAYE ; Les Legendes

grecques des Saints militaires, Paris [9gog], p. 96 ; or JAMESON : Sacred

and Legendary Art, London [1900oo], Vol. II, p. 762.

8 See R. PALLUCCHINI : Un politico del Greco nella R. Galleria

Estense di Modena, in Bolletino del Ministero della Educazione

Nazionale [March 19371, PP- 389-392.

* It is dated to about 1571 by M. LEGENDRE and A. HARTMANN :

Domenicos Theotokopoulos, called el Greco, [1937], pl. 481. GOLD-

SCHEIDER : El Greco, [1938], pl. 14, assigns it less definitely to 1571

to 1576

10 F. RUTTER : El Greco, London [1930], p. 27. R. BYRON and D.

TALBOT RICE: The Birth of Western Painting, London [x930], pp. 195 f.

and pls. 90 to 93-

11 Also reproduced in E. S. BATES : Touring in I6oo, London [191 I],

plate facing p. 222. I am grateful to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt for calling

my attention to this plate.

1 BYRON and TALBOT RICE : op. cit., pls. 90, 91 and 92.

NOTES ON SOME PAINTINGS FROM THE

STRASBOURG MUSEUM BY P. WESCHER

Exhibition of the Art Treasures of

trasbourg was opened at the Bile Museum

n January i8th. The earliest paintings

hown were the two panels of the Education

of Mary [PLATE I, A] and the Doubts of

Joseph by the master who has been named after his

charming Garden of Paradise, in the Stfidel-Museum at

Frankfort. Since Ilse Futterer' published these two

pictures, which are parts of a lost altarpiece, and

ascribed them to this master, they have been cleaned

and transferred from the hospital of Saint Mark's to the

Museum of Strasbourg. Now they can be seen to

possess the same quality as the Madonna of Solothurn, the

Annunciation of the Reinhard Collection at Winterthur

and the other works of the artist. The catalogue dates

them about I4Io, but between 1420 and I430

would be more accurate. As the only works which,

through the centuries, have remained in their original

setting, they are of special historical interest.

Although most of the religious panels at Strasbourg

were destroyed by the iconoclasts in the Reformation

of 1525, a few have survived and gradually have been

grouped together. Two groups, ascribable to two

1 Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen [1928], p. 187.

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