The Art of Constantinople, An Introduction to Byzantine Art, 330-1453 by John BeckwithReview by: William C. LoerkeThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1962), pp. 337-338Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048037 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 00:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The ArtBulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.119 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:46:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS

JOHN BECKWITH, The Art of Constantinople, An In- troduction to Byzantine Art, 330-z453, Greenwich, Conn., Phaidon Publishers Inc., 1961. Pp. 184, 203 figs. $6.95.

The theme of this book, the art of Constantinople as an introduction to Byzantine art, was the theme of the Edinburgh Festival Exhibition of Byzantine Art held there during August of 1958, and on view in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum during October.' In the following year, stimulated by the ex- hibition but freed from its restrictions, its Director, Professor D. Talbot Rice, produced a Muse'e Imagi- naire on the same theme, enlarged to embrace the architecture, mosaic, and fresco of the city as well as the minor arts.2 And now, rounding the Golden Horn in the wake of that heavier and costlier craft comes this octavo by Mr. Beckwith, of the Victoria and Al- bert Museum, who worked with Professor Rice on the Catalogue of 1958. His book bravely carries yet once more the same message and much of the same cargo.

The book counts 184 pages but the space allotted to the text I estimate at about 62 pages, since text shares the page with illustration and about 30 pages are taken by Notes, Glossary, Chronological Table, and Indices. To characterize within this space I8o works shown in 203 illustrations might prove challenge enough to many, but Mr. Beckwith smoothly adds another 40 or so unillustrated works to his burden. The result is the cursory treatment frequently found in introductory surveys, couched here in terms both im- personal ("It is not without interest to note . . .") and tentative ("It would appear .. ," "It would seem . ,".... . suggests an atmosphere of style .. .") These blanket the text, drawing a gray shroud over the author's interest in his subject and effectively stifling the potential enthusiasm of the reader.

Several aspects of Mr. Beckwith's approach to art facilitated the writing of this swift survey. One is his exclusive preoccupation with style, described in the most general terms. This enables him to move rapidly from a stylistic aspect of one work to that of another, un- burdened by a consideration of the works as integral wholes. Another is his belief that to suggest a compari- son is to make one. A third is to arrange works as links in a chain of examples illustrating this "trend" or that "tendency"; a work may also appear only as a "candidate for this secondary sequence." It may "hark back" to earlier works or look forward to later ones. Often at its mere mention we are asked to avert our eyes to an adjacent one. It will not be seen steadily for its own sake. As a whole, this approach produces the effect, matched in many of the illustrations, of a parade of objects partially observed, barely introduced, faintly recognized, abruptly dropped. The parade takes place

at a great distance. We peer at it through the narrow aperture provided by the author. We must complain that the pace is too swift for a clear image to register.

The majestic late ninth century mosaic in the lunette over the imperial portal in Hagia Sophia flashes past with the observation that the "long-haired head of Christ harks back to the representation on the coins of Justinian II" and that the medallions of the Virgin and Gabriel "would seem to be based on a pre-iconoclast [sic] icon." We are told that this "broad, heavy style" may be seen in the tenth century mosaic of St. John Chrysostom in Hagia Sophia and that the "same prin- ciples of style may be observed" in an ivory of Leo VI where the figures "look back to the pre-iconoclast icon rather than forward to the essentially middle-Byzantine style of the ex-voto relief bearing the Epiphany [sic] of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. . . ." Thus we pass from the seven-foot mosaic figure of Christ to the seven-inch ivory of Constantine VII, which represents a Crowning of the Emperor by Christ.

The illustrations, many of good quality, vary greatly in size and in the reduction imposed on their originals. Dimensions are never given. This serious omission pre- vents the reader from properly visualizing many of the I8o works shown. Nor can he correct the misappre- hensions that will arise from Beckwith's comparison of the angels on the Child's Sarcophagus (582" long, 2 1 2" high) with the Nike from the gate of Ayvan Saray (58?" wide, 8'8" high), the former reduced in the ratio of 12 to I (figs. 23-26), the latter 25 to I (fig. 29). Miniature mosaics compare favorably in size with monumental ones; dimensions are needed to cor- rect these and other inevitable problems. The absence of dimensions contrasts with the catalogue of the Edin- burgh show, on which Beckwith collaborated and some 30 of whose objects appear in this book. The catalogue, though smaller in size than this book, illustrates five of these works in larger and better photographs. At least 70 of the illustrations provide views of objects which can be seen in The Art of Byzantium in larger reproductions, better photography, clearer printing, and in some cases in the same sequence. To many of these better plates, with which his illustrations could not be expected to compete in size or quality, Beckwith has thoughtfully provided references. This is particularly useful in connection with the Veroli Casket of the Vic- toria and Albert Museum, for of Beckwith's six illustra- tions (figs. 91-96) none shows the whole box; the closely cropped views of detached panels are provided with no indication of front, back, sides, or cover. More- over the six illustrations are carefully mounted on oppo- site pages in misleading order. This casual and unneces- sary disregard for the integrity of the individual work is not confined to this example.

Broader issues fare no better than individual works.

i. David Talbot Rice, Masterpieces of Byzantine Art, Edin- burgh, 1958.

2. The Art of Byzantium, text and notes by David Talbot

Rice, photographs by Max Hirmer, 44 color plates, 196 black and white plates, London, 1959.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.119 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:46:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

338 THE ART BULLETIN

The Foreword is unmarred by any definition of the theme, let alone by a discussion of it and of its attendant problems. Instead, the author plunges without preamble into a running start which propels the reader in two pages from the ancient Greeks via Roman Imperial re- liefs to Santa Maria Maggiore, whose artists "were speaking in the contemporary idiom." This preliminary exercise, whose momentum has carried the author a century past the founding of Constantinople, leads to three and one half pages on the importance of that city, thence to the following five sections: Fourth to Seventh Century, ca. 14 pp. of text with 68 illustrations; The Iconoclast [sic] Controversy, ca. 5 to 6 pp. of text with

7 illustrations; Ninth to Twelfth Century, 25 pp. of text with 97 illustrations; The Frankish Conquest, 3 to 4 PP. of text with 5 illustrations; The Paleologue [sic] Revival, 8 to 9 pp. of text with 28 illustrations.

The author did not choose to indicate his theme more closely than by title and subtitle. These might lead one to suppose the theme to be the art of the City as an introduction to Byzantine art in general. But the dust jacket restricts the aim of the book to the art of the capital whereby "it is hoped that the metropolitan style over more than a thousand years of creative activity may be more clearly defined." Provincial centers there- fore pass with brief mention, even when it is pointed out that artists from the City were involved in their productions. This purity of aim extends also to the eleventh century bronze doors exported from the City to southern Italy; they too are relegated to a similar paragraph and are not illustrated.

The chief accomplishment of the text is to tag in general terms the style of selected works, relate to these many more, provide dates and sequences, and indicate the literature. Granted the numerous problems in all periods of Byzantine art, we will not expect general agreement with all of Beckwith's attributions to Con- stantinople, with all his characterizations of style, with all his dates; nor is there space for him to discuss these problems. And yet his changes in interpretations and dating sound weak, accompanied as they are only by cautious and vague generalizations.

For example, figs. 36 and 37 present two limestone reliefs (not marble as stated) in the Archaeological Museum, Istanbul, which, with a third not mentioned, came from Russian excavations of 19o8 in the right aisle of the basilica St. John Studios, where they served, perhaps from I 204, as the cover of an ossuary. Mendel's detailed description and analysis (Catalogue des Sculp- tures, II, Constantinople, 1914, Nos. 668, 669, 67o) to which Beckwith refers, and Pantchenko's brilliant study appended thereto (Cat., pp. 46Iff.) make clear that these are all cut from the same local limestone, have virtually the same basic measurements, were orig- inally part of the same monument or complex, and ex- hibit three modes of relief carving, ranging from fairly high and rounded to flat silhouette. By means of ap- posite comparisons, concretely specified, Pantchenko identified their sources, stylistic and iconographic, and pointed out that the simultaneous presence of several modes of relief carving on the same monument was not

unknown in Christian art. He placed them at the end of the fifth or in the sixth century. Subsequent studies by Kollwitz and Deichmann support a late fifth century date. Beckwith does not mention the connections be- tween the two reliefs he selected. He proposes one (fig. 36) as a candidate for a "secondary sequence," a "re- tardataire category" of relief sculpture, probably "sixth century." He places the other (fig. 37) "on general principles of stylistic development" in the seventh cen- tury, because its "characteristics are difficult to recon- cile with fifth or sixth century ambiance." Space or no space in the book, this will not do.

WILLIAM C. LOERKE

Bryn Mawr College

ISA RAGUSA, tr. and ed., and ROSALIE B. GREEN, ed., Meditations on the Life of Christ, An Illustrated

Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Paris, Bib-

liotheque Nationale, Ms ital. I I15), Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961. Pp. xxxvi + 465; I93

text illus. $15.oo.

Among the summae of the thirteenth century there appeared the two most influential compendiums of canonical and apocryphal religious narrative, the Gold- en Legend and the Meditations on the Life of Christ. Their international popularity was immediate, first in numerous manuscript editions and eventually, with the fifteenth century, in a stream of printed versions. Each of these texts provides a vivid indication of the tendency in the later Middle Ages to relieve religious narrative of its dogmatic weight and to humanize it with the spirit of the familiar and personal. The degree of popularity of the Meditations can be measured by the fact that over two hundred manuscript copies still survive and countless printed editions have appeared. Although a new English edition-now out of print-was published as recently as 1934, the habit has been, when referring to an English translation of the Meditations, to go back to Nicholas Love's charmingly archaic and abridged paraphrase of 1410 (The Mirrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ). But now Isa Ragusa and Rosalie Green have closed the breach with their splendid new edition, which even without the test of time may be called definitive.

For this translation the editors have used in greater part the hitherto unpublished manuscript in the Bibli- othique Nationale in Paris (Ms. ital. 115). This is an invaluable version for two essential reasons: first, its Italian text is based on the long form of the Latin original rather than being an abbreviation which is more often the case with the vernacular translations, and, secondly, the Paris manuscript is the earliest as well as the most fully illustrated of nearly a score of manuscripts of the text containing picture cycles that have so far come to light. But even so rich a version as the Paris one presented the editors with a problem in its incompleteness, for the text abruptly ends in the midst of a sentence in the scene of the Appearance of

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.119 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:46:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions