Monday, November 03, 2008
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Astley Castle undergoing emergency repairs
Work to stop castle crumbling
30 October 2008
Coventry Evening Telegraph
Emergency repair work is being carried out to stop an important medieval castle on the outskirts of Coventry from crumbling to dust. Astley Castle, once the home of three queens of England, ranks near the top of English Heritage's buildings-at-risk register. Experts had warned that if renovation work wasn't carried out soon, the building would be "beyond repair and lost forever".
The castle, built almost 800 years ago between Bedworth and Nuneaton, was damaged by fire in 1978 and is now in ruins and largely unroofed. Now, 30 years on, workmen have finally moved on to the site to save the structure from further deterioration while funding is sought to complete an innovative conservation scheme developed by the Landmark Trust, the nation's building preservation charity.
The trust has already been pledged £1.47 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund to create holiday accommodation at the ruins. Emergency funding of £300,000 has now been approved which has enabled workmen to move in to stabilise the ruins.
Peter Pearce, director of the Landmark Trust, said: "This is a significant and thrilling moment in our long campaign to save Astley Castle. We must now quickly raise the remaining funds needed to give this extraordinary and desperate place a new and self-sustaining life and future."
Donations can be made online at www.landmarktrust.org.uk
See an earlier report on this castle here.
30 October 2008
Coventry Evening Telegraph
Emergency repair work is being carried out to stop an important medieval castle on the outskirts of Coventry from crumbling to dust. Astley Castle, once the home of three queens of England, ranks near the top of English Heritage's buildings-at-risk register. Experts had warned that if renovation work wasn't carried out soon, the building would be "beyond repair and lost forever".
The castle, built almost 800 years ago between Bedworth and Nuneaton, was damaged by fire in 1978 and is now in ruins and largely unroofed. Now, 30 years on, workmen have finally moved on to the site to save the structure from further deterioration while funding is sought to complete an innovative conservation scheme developed by the Landmark Trust, the nation's building preservation charity.
The trust has already been pledged £1.47 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund to create holiday accommodation at the ruins. Emergency funding of £300,000 has now been approved which has enabled workmen to move in to stabilise the ruins.
Peter Pearce, director of the Landmark Trust, said: "This is a significant and thrilling moment in our long campaign to save Astley Castle. We must now quickly raise the remaining funds needed to give this extraordinary and desperate place a new and self-sustaining life and future."
Donations can be made online at www.landmarktrust.org.uk
See an earlier report on this castle here.
Company of Liars, by Karen Maitland
Dark Times, Circa 1348
Reviews by MARILYN STASIO
2 November 2008
The New York Times
Every historical novel has its ''Aren't you glad?'' moments. In COMPANY OF LIARS (Delacorte, $24), a jewel of a medieval mystery by Karen Maitland, those would be the times when you realize how lucky you are not to be living in England in 1348, when three separate plagues broke out among a population already beaten down by the deprivations of the Hundred Years War.
The novel's aged narrator, a hideously scarred peddler of bogus religious relics called Camelot, finds himself leading a small band of outcasts to safe haven in the north of the country after word arrives that a pestilence has struck nearby. Each of the travelers on this grueling journey -- including an albino child, two Italian minstrels, an ill-tempered magician and a one-armed storyteller -- has a guilty secret, and one of them may be a murderer. Either that or the wolf howling at night whenever one of them is about to die is no metaphor.
Like Chaucer's pilgrims, the wanderers pass the long nights telling tales. And it's only natural that supernatural elements should permeate their stories, since that was how the people of this profoundly superstitious world tried to make sense of the inexplicable events of their lives. But woe to those whose fantasies become too real. "Storytellers are always suspect," Camelot observes. "They are exotic strangers.... They don't belong." Sure enough, when a child is murdered, the enraged mob turns on Cygnus, the mesmerizing fabulist who believes himself to be half swan -- and has the wing feathers to prove it.
Maitland's own narrative strength is her skill at setting scenes that connect the harsh realities of medieval life with the no less cruel pagan customs and Christian rituals meant to explain and contain those realities. At every stop, the travelers become participants in some sad or horrific event, from the macabre "cripples' wedding" meant to fend off disease to the live burial of a suspected witch. Throughout it all, they remain pariahs, abandoned outside the walls of the not-so-civilized society of their day. No wonder they told stories to keep themselves warm.
Reviews by MARILYN STASIO
2 November 2008
The New York Times
Every historical novel has its ''Aren't you glad?'' moments. In COMPANY OF LIARS (Delacorte, $24), a jewel of a medieval mystery by Karen Maitland, those would be the times when you realize how lucky you are not to be living in England in 1348, when three separate plagues broke out among a population already beaten down by the deprivations of the Hundred Years War.
The novel's aged narrator, a hideously scarred peddler of bogus religious relics called Camelot, finds himself leading a small band of outcasts to safe haven in the north of the country after word arrives that a pestilence has struck nearby. Each of the travelers on this grueling journey -- including an albino child, two Italian minstrels, an ill-tempered magician and a one-armed storyteller -- has a guilty secret, and one of them may be a murderer. Either that or the wolf howling at night whenever one of them is about to die is no metaphor.
Like Chaucer's pilgrims, the wanderers pass the long nights telling tales. And it's only natural that supernatural elements should permeate their stories, since that was how the people of this profoundly superstitious world tried to make sense of the inexplicable events of their lives. But woe to those whose fantasies become too real. "Storytellers are always suspect," Camelot observes. "They are exotic strangers.... They don't belong." Sure enough, when a child is murdered, the enraged mob turns on Cygnus, the mesmerizing fabulist who believes himself to be half swan -- and has the wing feathers to prove it.
Maitland's own narrative strength is her skill at setting scenes that connect the harsh realities of medieval life with the no less cruel pagan customs and Christian rituals meant to explain and contain those realities. At every stop, the travelers become participants in some sad or horrific event, from the macabre "cripples' wedding" meant to fend off disease to the live burial of a suspected witch. Throughout it all, they remain pariahs, abandoned outside the walls of the not-so-civilized society of their day. No wonder they told stories to keep themselves warm.
Tewkesbury Medieval Festival needs new organizers
‘We need your help to save medieval festival’
30 October 2008
Tewkesbury Admag
Organizers of the annual Tewkesbury Medieval Festival say they need the public’s help to ensure the future of the event. This year’s 25th anniversary celebrations were a huge success and brought thousands of people to the town from all over the world.
However, the event is organised and run by a very small group of volunteers and they say that they need help to keep it going. This is because, while the festival has grown enormously over the years, the organising team has not. Members also all do several jobs at the same time.
They are fully stretched and feel the event is suffering as a result. They are all in or rapidly approaching their 60s and are concerned that without younger people joining in and learning the ropes, the festival, which is an important part of Tewkesbury’s summer, will not continue for many more years.
Spokeswoman Amanda Thomas said: “People come from all over the world to either take part in or visit the festival. We get e-mails every year from people as far away as America, New Zealand and Australia asking us when it is, so that they can plan their trip to England around visiting it. With support like that it can’t be allowed to die but we cannot go on without more help for much longer.”
Help is needed in all kinds of areas, from fundraising and administration to leaflet distribution, car parking and collecting funds. Representatives from the group will be in the Town Hall on Saturday, November 8, from 1-4pm to talk to anyone interested in finding out how they can get involved.
Alternatively, phone 01684 294939 or 291328, or visit http://www.tewkesburymedievalfestival.org/.
30 October 2008
Tewkesbury Admag
Organizers of the annual Tewkesbury Medieval Festival say they need the public’s help to ensure the future of the event. This year’s 25th anniversary celebrations were a huge success and brought thousands of people to the town from all over the world.
However, the event is organised and run by a very small group of volunteers and they say that they need help to keep it going. This is because, while the festival has grown enormously over the years, the organising team has not. Members also all do several jobs at the same time.
They are fully stretched and feel the event is suffering as a result. They are all in or rapidly approaching their 60s and are concerned that without younger people joining in and learning the ropes, the festival, which is an important part of Tewkesbury’s summer, will not continue for many more years.
Spokeswoman Amanda Thomas said: “People come from all over the world to either take part in or visit the festival. We get e-mails every year from people as far away as America, New Zealand and Australia asking us when it is, so that they can plan their trip to England around visiting it. With support like that it can’t be allowed to die but we cannot go on without more help for much longer.”
Help is needed in all kinds of areas, from fundraising and administration to leaflet distribution, car parking and collecting funds. Representatives from the group will be in the Town Hall on Saturday, November 8, from 1-4pm to talk to anyone interested in finding out how they can get involved.
Alternatively, phone 01684 294939 or 291328, or visit http://www.tewkesburymedievalfestival.org/.
Treasured Possession: Jews and Christians in a Medieval City
SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM AT YU MUSEUM AND METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART WILL SHED FURTHER LIGHT ON JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN MEDIEVAL PERIOD
30 October 2008
States News Service
A two-day symposium, 'Treasured Possession: Jews and Christians in a Medieval City,' co-sponsored by the Yeshiva University Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will look at various aspects of medieval culture Nov 5-6. The special symposium is in conjunction with 'Erfurt: Jewish Treasure from Medieval Ashkenaz' on view until Jan. 29 at the YU Museum, the only North American venue for this exhibition of medieval gold and silver jewelry, tableware, and rare coins, culled from a personal treasure hoard.
The first part of the symposium, on Nov. 5 at the YU Museum, will feature a lecture, 'Sefer Hasidim: A Brief Talk on a Strange Book from Nowhere,' by Haym Soloveitchik, an expert on Jewish medieval history, a distinguished Talmudist and the Merkin Family Professor of Jewish History and Literature at Yeshiva University. There will also be a performance of medieval music by Duo Marchand, consisting of Marcia Young, director of performance studies at Stern College for Women, on voice and medieval harp and Andy Rutherford on medieval lute.
This will be followed by a viewing of the Erfurt exhibit, which offers a glimpse into Jewish life and culture in medieval Europe. A half-day conference on November 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will explore cultural interactions during medieval times with presentations on metalwork, architecture, and sculpture.
Speakers will include Barbara Drake Boehm, curator in the Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters Museum and Gardens, the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Vivian B. Mann, director of the master's program in Jewish art at the Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary and curator emerita at the Jewish Museum; Carol Herselle Krinsky, professor of art history at New York University; and Nina Rowe, assistant professor of art history at Fordham University. The sessions will be moderated by Jacob Wisse, associate professor of art at Stern College.
30 October 2008
States News Service
A two-day symposium, 'Treasured Possession: Jews and Christians in a Medieval City,' co-sponsored by the Yeshiva University Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will look at various aspects of medieval culture Nov 5-6. The special symposium is in conjunction with 'Erfurt: Jewish Treasure from Medieval Ashkenaz' on view until Jan. 29 at the YU Museum, the only North American venue for this exhibition of medieval gold and silver jewelry, tableware, and rare coins, culled from a personal treasure hoard.
The first part of the symposium, on Nov. 5 at the YU Museum, will feature a lecture, 'Sefer Hasidim: A Brief Talk on a Strange Book from Nowhere,' by Haym Soloveitchik, an expert on Jewish medieval history, a distinguished Talmudist and the Merkin Family Professor of Jewish History and Literature at Yeshiva University. There will also be a performance of medieval music by Duo Marchand, consisting of Marcia Young, director of performance studies at Stern College for Women, on voice and medieval harp and Andy Rutherford on medieval lute.
This will be followed by a viewing of the Erfurt exhibit, which offers a glimpse into Jewish life and culture in medieval Europe. A half-day conference on November 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will explore cultural interactions during medieval times with presentations on metalwork, architecture, and sculpture.
Speakers will include Barbara Drake Boehm, curator in the Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters Museum and Gardens, the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Vivian B. Mann, director of the master's program in Jewish art at the Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary and curator emerita at the Jewish Museum; Carol Herselle Krinsky, professor of art history at New York University; and Nina Rowe, assistant professor of art history at Fordham University. The sessions will be moderated by Jacob Wisse, associate professor of art at Stern College.
Medieval Preston
Work reveals Preston's medieval past
Andrew Greaves
30 October 2008
Preston & Leyland Citizen
Archaeologists are hoping a study being carried out beneath the site of the £700million regeneration of Preston city centre will help to build a better picture of life there hundreds of years ago. Experts already know that Preston, originally known as ‘Priest Town’, was the site of an early settlement in the medieval period, thought to have existed around the Tithebarn area and what is now Preston Minster.
Now, archaeologists investigating the area have found pieces of pottery from the Middle Ages, the remains of an old mill and brickwork from the old fish market which they believe dates back to the eighteenth century.
Doug Moir, the county council’s planning officer (archaeology), said: “We are already aware that there was a settlement in Preston because we already have evidence to suggest this. There is some evidence of terrace housing but it is what is under these that we are interested in. This work is just the start and we will be making sure that the experts go back to these, open them up to a greater extent and record what is there.”
Mr Moir said that work carried out under what is now the Fishergate Centre in the 1980s revealed a number of shards of pottery, from medieval times, and a vaulted cellar were found. He added: “That was just a watching brief but since 1990 archaeology has a material consideration of the planning process which means that the developers are legally obliged to carry out this investigation. What it will do is allow us to map a greater area of the city and put together a better picture of life here hundreds of years ago. We have mapping from the seventeenth century so we can work backwards but all we can do there is make an educated guess as to time periods and settlers. It will also allow us to see what needs to be recorded, not just underground but also the buildings in that area."
There are 75 sites of archaeological importance within the boundaries of the Tithebarn development, of which more than 30 will be directly impacted by the building work.
Andrew Greaves
30 October 2008
Preston & Leyland Citizen
Archaeologists are hoping a study being carried out beneath the site of the £700million regeneration of Preston city centre will help to build a better picture of life there hundreds of years ago. Experts already know that Preston, originally known as ‘Priest Town’, was the site of an early settlement in the medieval period, thought to have existed around the Tithebarn area and what is now Preston Minster.
Now, archaeologists investigating the area have found pieces of pottery from the Middle Ages, the remains of an old mill and brickwork from the old fish market which they believe dates back to the eighteenth century.
Doug Moir, the county council’s planning officer (archaeology), said: “We are already aware that there was a settlement in Preston because we already have evidence to suggest this. There is some evidence of terrace housing but it is what is under these that we are interested in. This work is just the start and we will be making sure that the experts go back to these, open them up to a greater extent and record what is there.”
Mr Moir said that work carried out under what is now the Fishergate Centre in the 1980s revealed a number of shards of pottery, from medieval times, and a vaulted cellar were found. He added: “That was just a watching brief but since 1990 archaeology has a material consideration of the planning process which means that the developers are legally obliged to carry out this investigation. What it will do is allow us to map a greater area of the city and put together a better picture of life here hundreds of years ago. We have mapping from the seventeenth century so we can work backwards but all we can do there is make an educated guess as to time periods and settlers. It will also allow us to see what needs to be recorded, not just underground but also the buildings in that area."
There are 75 sites of archaeological importance within the boundaries of the Tithebarn development, of which more than 30 will be directly impacted by the building work.
Jonathan Sumption on Byzantium
ARTS: In heaven or on earth?: To appreciate medieval Byzantium, we have to place ourselves in a world that loved drama and splendour, in which classical, Christian and Asiatic traditions met. Jonathan Sumption revels in its riches
Jonathan Sumption
1 November 2008
The Guardian
Gibbon has cast a long shadow over Byzantium. The great 18th-century historian, the first to study the eastern empire seriously, wrote it off as a dispiriting tale of moral and cultural decay. "They held in their lifeless hands," he wrote, "the riches of their fathers without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony . . . their languid souls seemed incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of 10 centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea was added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation."
Constantly repeated, Gibbon's prejudices have become received truths. The very word "Byzantine" has passed into the language as a synonym for all that is obscure, tortuous or conspiratorial. He was not alone. "A worthless repertory of declamations and miracles," wrote Voltaire; ". . . a disgrace to the human mind." Modern generations have found similar reasons for their instinctive suspicion of the Byzantine world. It may be true, as Cyril Mango observes in his introduction to the catalogue of the Royal Academy's new exhibition, Byzantium 330-1453 , that "what used to be called superstition is now called spirituality". But we are still wary of theocratic states, enclosed value systems and patterns of daily life controlled by intense and manipulative religious emotion. So the study of Byzantium remains an arcane pleasure reserved for archaeologists, aesthetes and enthusiasts.
This is a pity, for medieval Byzantium made an incomparable contribution to European civilisation. For centuries it defended Europe against successive waves of Asiatic invaders. For more than a millennium, it was the sole political embodiment of Hellenic culture. Its scholars, compilers and scribes were responsible for preserving much of the literary and scientific legacy of ancient Greece. Without them, we would know almost nothing of Plato, Euclid, Sophocles or Thucydides, apart from isolated fragments written on papyrus. Yet Byzantium was a great deal more than a conduit from the ancient world to the European Renaissance. It was a cosmopolitan society, standing at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa. At the height of its prosperity, Constantinople was the richest and most populous city of the medieval world. Its aristocracy and civil service laid out their riches in books, ivories, jewellery and metalwork. The Greek church, with its dramatic liturgy, its rich symbolism and its powerful mystical tradition inspired buildings, paintings and sculpture of great beauty and originality. Byzantium created a unique fusion of classical, Christian and Asiatic traditions, which deserves more than the sneers of the age of Enlightenment.
This is the first British exhibition to be devoted to the whole course of Byzantine civilisation since the famous show organised for the Edinburgh festival and the V&A by David and Tamara Talbot Rice, now half a century ago. That drew mainly on the leading English museums. The Royal Academy and the Benaki Museum in Athens, which have together organised this event, have been able to range more widely. Many of the treasures of the British Museum, the British Library and the V&A are here. But there are also beautiful pieces from France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia and Ukraine, from the major American collections of New York, Cleveland and Dumbarton Oaks and, perhaps most remarkably, an entire room of icons from the monastery of St Catherine at Sinai, which are difficult to get to in their usual home and rarely exhibited elsewhere.
Byzantine civilisation was essentially the civilisation of Constantinople. Founded in AD330 as a new capital for Rome's Mediterranean empire, it was intended as an escape from the corruption, insecurity and paganism of Rome. Throughout its history, Constantinople was an intensely political city. Its artistic output was dominated by what one might loosely call "official" art. It was designed to impress, to convey the power of the emperors and the authority of the Orthodox church, two institutions that were intimately linked for most of the empire's history. The gold coins shown in this exhibition, with Christ on one side and the emperor on the other, say it all. Equally evocative, the magnificently carved ivory archangel of the sixth century from the British Museum was once part of a diptych, the other half of which would have shown the emperor receiving from the archangel the orb and sceptre of his office. This piece, a striking marriage of imperial propaganda, Christian imagery and pure classical style, probably belonged to the sixth-century emperor Justinian. It is one of many exceptionally beautiful ivories in this exhibition.
The quintessential Byzantine artefacts, however, are icons. These images, invested by their votaries with powerful miraculous properties, were central to the life of the Byzantine empire. They also exemplified an attitude to figurative art that has no parallel in the western tradition. To the Greeks of Byzantium, the material world was a mere shadow of an invisible and immaterial world beyond. An icon was not just a representation of the physical world. It was a living thing, a re-enactment, or mimesis, of the subject, like the reflections of human figures cast on the walls of Plato's caves. It was a direct means of communication between the worshipper and God. Icons are richly represented in this exhibition. One of the earliest pieces, a sixth-century icon of the Virgin and Child from Kiev, may originally have been presented by the emperor Justinian to the monastery at Sinai. The ivory relief of Christ Pantocrator ("All-powerful") from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge stares out at the beholder to demand his veneration. The latest examples, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, bring a measure of humanity to the once distant and severe figure of Christ, at just the time that Italian artists were learning to do likewise. Byzantine painting is often criticised as immobile, formulaic or insular. These extraordinary panels tell a different story.
Mosaics, which are among the most spectacular surviving artefacts of the Byzantine world, served a very similar spiritual function. They also enabled their creators to indulge their love of rich materials and their fascination with light, reflected in intense, contrasting colours. An account left by a Russian ambassador visiting Haghia Sophia in the 10th century conveys something of the impact of these great decorative schemes, dimly and indirectly lit in their grand architectural settings. This man was convinced that the angels came down from the mosaics to participate in the service: "Are we in heaven or on earth?" For obvious reasons, mosaic is hard to show in an exhibition such as this. But there are superb portable panels from the late middle ages in micromosaic, made with tesserae so small that one needs to come very close to see that they are not paintings.
T he same sense of direct contact with God through images and objects inspired the creation of smaller and more personal pieces, such as the rich reliquary crosses in gold and silver, studded with gems and enclosing fragments of hair or bone, which were carried next to the chest to ward off evil. At the opposite extreme, the same technical skills could be applied to subjects secular, scatological, even scandalous. The Veroli casket, made in Constantinople in the 10th century and bought from the canons of Veroli cathedral by a passing English tourist in 1861, was presumably made for a well-heeled courtier. Its humorous, erotic images, loosely based on classical myths, reveal the same love of gorgeous materials and profuse, intricate decoration, even if the subject could hardly be further from the intensely spiritual seriousness of the icons and mosaics.
The 10th and 11th centuries were a period of unparalleled prosperity. Constantinople was the world's chief entrepot for spices, silks, metals and slaves. Greek merchants and shipowners dominated the trade routes of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Its currency was the international medium of exchange across Europe and Asia. The city was recognised even in the Latin west as one of the great spiritual and artistic treasure-houses of Christendom. When, in 1177, Amaury, the Latin king of Jerusalem, paid a state visit to the city, one of his entourage recorded the occasion. The king and his party were astonished by the marble staircases, triumphal arches and columns adorned with statues and trophies, the hippodrome, the court ceremonies, the ethereal choirs in the emperor's antechambers, the profusion of gorgeous objects in the imperial palaces and chapels: ivory, precious fabrics, gold, silver and marble, "all the priceless treasures which had been gathered there by his imperial ancestors . . . reverendly preserved from the times of the good emperors Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian".
Dazzled by the wealth and brilliance of Constantinople, Amaury had no conception of the empire's inner weakness. A century before, in 1071, the imperial armies had been wiped out by the Seljuk Turks at the battle of Manzikert. At a stroke, Byzantium had lost all the provinces of Asia Minor from which it had once drawn the bulk of its grain, tax revenues and soldiers. It was a blow from which there would be no recovery. Another was to follow, shortly after Amaury's visit. In 1204, Constantinople was captured and sacked by the armies of the Fourth Crusade. A Latin dynasty was installed in the city, which held sway over little more than the territory within the walls. Most of the Balkan and Aegean possessions of the empire were occupied by the Serbs and the Bulgars, and assorted French, Italian and Catalan adventurers, until they too finally were swept aside by the Turks. A large part of the city's treasures, books, paintings and works of art was either destroyed or dispersed. Its craftsmen, starved of commissions, migrated elsewhere.
The sack of Constantinople was a tragedy for the city, but it accounts for the survival in western museums of a large number of Byzantine artefacts, including many of those exhibited at the RA. The finest items went to Venice, whose leaders had played a prominent part in the Fourth Crusade and knew better than others what was worth taking. The show contains several items from the treasury of St Mark's and the Marcian Library, all of which were pillaged from the ruins of the Byzantine capital in 1204. The extraordinary gold and silver cloisonne icon of the archangel Michael and the so-called Chalice of the Patriarchs were probably found in one of the imperial chapels. The bishop of Troyes in France, who obviously had more secular tastes, carried off a coffer carved with scenes of war and hunting, which is still among the possessions of his cathedral.
By the time the Greek emperors recovered possession of their capital in 1261, much of it had been wrecked. Visitors who described it in the next two centuries painted a bleak picture of dilapidated buildings, abandoned houses, pillaged monuments and a much reduced population, most of it living in abject poverty. It was a period of disastrous civil wars and rapid economic decline. Yet even now Byzantine artists were capable of fresh inspiration. There was a resurgence of literary scholarship, astronomy and medicine, which has been called the "last Byzantine Renaissance". The 14th and 15th centuries witnessed an astonishing renewal of older traditions of painting and mosaic-work. The famous mosaics of Chora, the intricate micromosaics, the icons of the last great generation of Byzantine painters, were all created in this period against a common background of impoverishment and failure.
On May 29 1453, after a hopeless defence of its thousand-year-old walls that had lasted seven weeks, Constantinople fell to the troops of the Turkish sultan Mehmet II. The last emperor died in the assault. His empire vanished from sight, leaving few traces of its existence. The scholars and artists fled to Mistra or Italy. The leisured and learned mandarinate that occupied the upper reaches of the imperial civil service, and had provided the clientele for generations of Greek scholars and artists, ceased to exist. The Orthodox church survived in increasingly difficult circumstances, but all the greater churches of Constantinople were turned into mosques. Their elaborate painted and mosaic decorations were destroyed or covered up with whitewash or plaster, to be rediscovered in some cases by the archaeologists of the 20th century. Apart from a few fragments, none of the secular buildings of the empire has survived. The heartlands of the empire are now Turkish. Since the terrible forced migrations of the 1920s, there has not even been a significant Greek minority in Constantinople or in the coastal settlements of Asia Minor where Greeks had lived since classical times.
But there is another, more fundamental sense in which Byzantium has left no trace. The mentality of its artists, and of those who enjoyed or venerated their work, is hard for the secular west to recapture. A painting by Titian or Rembrandt speaks for itself to anyone with a minimal knowledge of 16th-century Italy or 17th-century Holland and a basic grasp of Christianity. The artefacts in this exhibition, beautiful as many of them are, require a more sustained effort of historical imagination. At the time of their creation, they were part of a total aesthetic experience. We have to place ourselves in a world that loved drama and splendour, and regarded neither as gaudy or superficial; a world that looked up to the stiff orientalising court of a half-divine emperor, with its elaborate ceremonial and its finely graded hierarchies of officials and servants; a world of constant processions of dignitaries wearing gorgeous robes, jewellery and gaudy cosmetics, each according to his status; of churches dimmed by incense pouring from metal braziers; of imperial chapels populated by crowds of officials, priests, eunuchs and soldiers, the air filled with hymns and chants such as those which had struck King Amaury so powerfully. Many of the objects exhibited at the RA look slightly incongruous in their glass cases. The icons and liturgical objects were made to be carried, to be touched and kissed. The rich materials of which they were made were intended to be stroked. The subtle patterns in the fabrics could be seen only when they moved. Mosaics were designed for the dim glow of lamps and candles, not the harsh direct light favoured by modern museum practice.
Jonathan Sumption
1 November 2008
The Guardian
Gibbon has cast a long shadow over Byzantium. The great 18th-century historian, the first to study the eastern empire seriously, wrote it off as a dispiriting tale of moral and cultural decay. "They held in their lifeless hands," he wrote, "the riches of their fathers without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony . . . their languid souls seemed incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of 10 centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea was added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation."
Constantly repeated, Gibbon's prejudices have become received truths. The very word "Byzantine" has passed into the language as a synonym for all that is obscure, tortuous or conspiratorial. He was not alone. "A worthless repertory of declamations and miracles," wrote Voltaire; ". . . a disgrace to the human mind." Modern generations have found similar reasons for their instinctive suspicion of the Byzantine world. It may be true, as Cyril Mango observes in his introduction to the catalogue of the Royal Academy's new exhibition, Byzantium 330-1453 , that "what used to be called superstition is now called spirituality". But we are still wary of theocratic states, enclosed value systems and patterns of daily life controlled by intense and manipulative religious emotion. So the study of Byzantium remains an arcane pleasure reserved for archaeologists, aesthetes and enthusiasts.
This is a pity, for medieval Byzantium made an incomparable contribution to European civilisation. For centuries it defended Europe against successive waves of Asiatic invaders. For more than a millennium, it was the sole political embodiment of Hellenic culture. Its scholars, compilers and scribes were responsible for preserving much of the literary and scientific legacy of ancient Greece. Without them, we would know almost nothing of Plato, Euclid, Sophocles or Thucydides, apart from isolated fragments written on papyrus. Yet Byzantium was a great deal more than a conduit from the ancient world to the European Renaissance. It was a cosmopolitan society, standing at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa. At the height of its prosperity, Constantinople was the richest and most populous city of the medieval world. Its aristocracy and civil service laid out their riches in books, ivories, jewellery and metalwork. The Greek church, with its dramatic liturgy, its rich symbolism and its powerful mystical tradition inspired buildings, paintings and sculpture of great beauty and originality. Byzantium created a unique fusion of classical, Christian and Asiatic traditions, which deserves more than the sneers of the age of Enlightenment.
This is the first British exhibition to be devoted to the whole course of Byzantine civilisation since the famous show organised for the Edinburgh festival and the V&A by David and Tamara Talbot Rice, now half a century ago. That drew mainly on the leading English museums. The Royal Academy and the Benaki Museum in Athens, which have together organised this event, have been able to range more widely. Many of the treasures of the British Museum, the British Library and the V&A are here. But there are also beautiful pieces from France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Russia and Ukraine, from the major American collections of New York, Cleveland and Dumbarton Oaks and, perhaps most remarkably, an entire room of icons from the monastery of St Catherine at Sinai, which are difficult to get to in their usual home and rarely exhibited elsewhere.
Byzantine civilisation was essentially the civilisation of Constantinople. Founded in AD330 as a new capital for Rome's Mediterranean empire, it was intended as an escape from the corruption, insecurity and paganism of Rome. Throughout its history, Constantinople was an intensely political city. Its artistic output was dominated by what one might loosely call "official" art. It was designed to impress, to convey the power of the emperors and the authority of the Orthodox church, two institutions that were intimately linked for most of the empire's history. The gold coins shown in this exhibition, with Christ on one side and the emperor on the other, say it all. Equally evocative, the magnificently carved ivory archangel of the sixth century from the British Museum was once part of a diptych, the other half of which would have shown the emperor receiving from the archangel the orb and sceptre of his office. This piece, a striking marriage of imperial propaganda, Christian imagery and pure classical style, probably belonged to the sixth-century emperor Justinian. It is one of many exceptionally beautiful ivories in this exhibition.
The quintessential Byzantine artefacts, however, are icons. These images, invested by their votaries with powerful miraculous properties, were central to the life of the Byzantine empire. They also exemplified an attitude to figurative art that has no parallel in the western tradition. To the Greeks of Byzantium, the material world was a mere shadow of an invisible and immaterial world beyond. An icon was not just a representation of the physical world. It was a living thing, a re-enactment, or mimesis, of the subject, like the reflections of human figures cast on the walls of Plato's caves. It was a direct means of communication between the worshipper and God. Icons are richly represented in this exhibition. One of the earliest pieces, a sixth-century icon of the Virgin and Child from Kiev, may originally have been presented by the emperor Justinian to the monastery at Sinai. The ivory relief of Christ Pantocrator ("All-powerful") from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge stares out at the beholder to demand his veneration. The latest examples, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, bring a measure of humanity to the once distant and severe figure of Christ, at just the time that Italian artists were learning to do likewise. Byzantine painting is often criticised as immobile, formulaic or insular. These extraordinary panels tell a different story.
Mosaics, which are among the most spectacular surviving artefacts of the Byzantine world, served a very similar spiritual function. They also enabled their creators to indulge their love of rich materials and their fascination with light, reflected in intense, contrasting colours. An account left by a Russian ambassador visiting Haghia Sophia in the 10th century conveys something of the impact of these great decorative schemes, dimly and indirectly lit in their grand architectural settings. This man was convinced that the angels came down from the mosaics to participate in the service: "Are we in heaven or on earth?" For obvious reasons, mosaic is hard to show in an exhibition such as this. But there are superb portable panels from the late middle ages in micromosaic, made with tesserae so small that one needs to come very close to see that they are not paintings.
T he same sense of direct contact with God through images and objects inspired the creation of smaller and more personal pieces, such as the rich reliquary crosses in gold and silver, studded with gems and enclosing fragments of hair or bone, which were carried next to the chest to ward off evil. At the opposite extreme, the same technical skills could be applied to subjects secular, scatological, even scandalous. The Veroli casket, made in Constantinople in the 10th century and bought from the canons of Veroli cathedral by a passing English tourist in 1861, was presumably made for a well-heeled courtier. Its humorous, erotic images, loosely based on classical myths, reveal the same love of gorgeous materials and profuse, intricate decoration, even if the subject could hardly be further from the intensely spiritual seriousness of the icons and mosaics.
The 10th and 11th centuries were a period of unparalleled prosperity. Constantinople was the world's chief entrepot for spices, silks, metals and slaves. Greek merchants and shipowners dominated the trade routes of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Its currency was the international medium of exchange across Europe and Asia. The city was recognised even in the Latin west as one of the great spiritual and artistic treasure-houses of Christendom. When, in 1177, Amaury, the Latin king of Jerusalem, paid a state visit to the city, one of his entourage recorded the occasion. The king and his party were astonished by the marble staircases, triumphal arches and columns adorned with statues and trophies, the hippodrome, the court ceremonies, the ethereal choirs in the emperor's antechambers, the profusion of gorgeous objects in the imperial palaces and chapels: ivory, precious fabrics, gold, silver and marble, "all the priceless treasures which had been gathered there by his imperial ancestors . . . reverendly preserved from the times of the good emperors Constantine, Theodosius and Justinian".
Dazzled by the wealth and brilliance of Constantinople, Amaury had no conception of the empire's inner weakness. A century before, in 1071, the imperial armies had been wiped out by the Seljuk Turks at the battle of Manzikert. At a stroke, Byzantium had lost all the provinces of Asia Minor from which it had once drawn the bulk of its grain, tax revenues and soldiers. It was a blow from which there would be no recovery. Another was to follow, shortly after Amaury's visit. In 1204, Constantinople was captured and sacked by the armies of the Fourth Crusade. A Latin dynasty was installed in the city, which held sway over little more than the territory within the walls. Most of the Balkan and Aegean possessions of the empire were occupied by the Serbs and the Bulgars, and assorted French, Italian and Catalan adventurers, until they too finally were swept aside by the Turks. A large part of the city's treasures, books, paintings and works of art was either destroyed or dispersed. Its craftsmen, starved of commissions, migrated elsewhere.
The sack of Constantinople was a tragedy for the city, but it accounts for the survival in western museums of a large number of Byzantine artefacts, including many of those exhibited at the RA. The finest items went to Venice, whose leaders had played a prominent part in the Fourth Crusade and knew better than others what was worth taking. The show contains several items from the treasury of St Mark's and the Marcian Library, all of which were pillaged from the ruins of the Byzantine capital in 1204. The extraordinary gold and silver cloisonne icon of the archangel Michael and the so-called Chalice of the Patriarchs were probably found in one of the imperial chapels. The bishop of Troyes in France, who obviously had more secular tastes, carried off a coffer carved with scenes of war and hunting, which is still among the possessions of his cathedral.
By the time the Greek emperors recovered possession of their capital in 1261, much of it had been wrecked. Visitors who described it in the next two centuries painted a bleak picture of dilapidated buildings, abandoned houses, pillaged monuments and a much reduced population, most of it living in abject poverty. It was a period of disastrous civil wars and rapid economic decline. Yet even now Byzantine artists were capable of fresh inspiration. There was a resurgence of literary scholarship, astronomy and medicine, which has been called the "last Byzantine Renaissance". The 14th and 15th centuries witnessed an astonishing renewal of older traditions of painting and mosaic-work. The famous mosaics of Chora, the intricate micromosaics, the icons of the last great generation of Byzantine painters, were all created in this period against a common background of impoverishment and failure.
On May 29 1453, after a hopeless defence of its thousand-year-old walls that had lasted seven weeks, Constantinople fell to the troops of the Turkish sultan Mehmet II. The last emperor died in the assault. His empire vanished from sight, leaving few traces of its existence. The scholars and artists fled to Mistra or Italy. The leisured and learned mandarinate that occupied the upper reaches of the imperial civil service, and had provided the clientele for generations of Greek scholars and artists, ceased to exist. The Orthodox church survived in increasingly difficult circumstances, but all the greater churches of Constantinople were turned into mosques. Their elaborate painted and mosaic decorations were destroyed or covered up with whitewash or plaster, to be rediscovered in some cases by the archaeologists of the 20th century. Apart from a few fragments, none of the secular buildings of the empire has survived. The heartlands of the empire are now Turkish. Since the terrible forced migrations of the 1920s, there has not even been a significant Greek minority in Constantinople or in the coastal settlements of Asia Minor where Greeks had lived since classical times.
But there is another, more fundamental sense in which Byzantium has left no trace. The mentality of its artists, and of those who enjoyed or venerated their work, is hard for the secular west to recapture. A painting by Titian or Rembrandt speaks for itself to anyone with a minimal knowledge of 16th-century Italy or 17th-century Holland and a basic grasp of Christianity. The artefacts in this exhibition, beautiful as many of them are, require a more sustained effort of historical imagination. At the time of their creation, they were part of a total aesthetic experience. We have to place ourselves in a world that loved drama and splendour, and regarded neither as gaudy or superficial; a world that looked up to the stiff orientalising court of a half-divine emperor, with its elaborate ceremonial and its finely graded hierarchies of officials and servants; a world of constant processions of dignitaries wearing gorgeous robes, jewellery and gaudy cosmetics, each according to his status; of churches dimmed by incense pouring from metal braziers; of imperial chapels populated by crowds of officials, priests, eunuchs and soldiers, the air filled with hymns and chants such as those which had struck King Amaury so powerfully. Many of the objects exhibited at the RA look slightly incongruous in their glass cases. The icons and liturgical objects were made to be carried, to be touched and kissed. The rich materials of which they were made were intended to be stroked. The subtle patterns in the fabrics could be seen only when they moved. Mosaics were designed for the dim glow of lamps and candles, not the harsh direct light favoured by modern museum practice.
Bisanzio, Costantinopoli, Istanbul, edited by Jaca Book
BYZANTIUM TO ISTANBUL, A CITYÆS MILLENARY HISTORY.
31 October 2008
ANSA - English Corporate News Service
Bisanzio, Costantinopoli, Istanbul, a book curated by Tania Velmans and edited by Jaca Book was presented today in Rome at an event sponsored by the Office for Culture and Information of the Italian Embassy. The book, with more than 400 pages and many, many photographs and illustrations, is a salute to Turkish metropolis and its history which through the centuries has left a mark not only in the area but in the entire Mediterranean.
The volume contains contributions by Vittorio Franchetti Pardo (the historic-urban profile of the Imperial capital, from the origins to Giustinian), Eugenio Russo (architecture and sculpture in the first centuries), by the curator Tania Velmans (Byzantine painting, mosaics, frescos, icons and miniatures), Mauro Della Valle (architecture and sculpture up until 1453), Cigdem Kafescioglu (the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul between the XV and XVIII centuries), Giovanna Curatola (religious Ottoman architecture), Roberto Cassanelli (the autumn of Constantinople). A history of millenniums that made the city the heir of Rome on one side, and of the Greek and Hellenic world on the other, enriched with an amazing number of palaces, churches, places for entertainment . A history that is also the history of the places, each with a past to recount, like in the case of the largest Constantine basilica, the Santa Sofia. Always the most important religious centre in the city, it became the centre of Christian Greek Orthodoxy . But then, when the Ottomans came to power, it became a mosque, becoming the architectural model for many Islamic religious centres . However, giving the history, in a large volume with quality illustrations, of a city that has made history isn t easy due to the very many facets it has acquired over the course of the centuries which risks making even the most superficial research very difficult. On the other hand, the volume compiled by Tania Velmans is able to offer a sum of great value (from the point of view of historical analysis, architecture and even social history), but the book is not hard to metabolize. Before becoming Istanbul, the city lived in the opulent garments of Byzantium and as the cosmopolitan Constantinople. And from each of its three incarnations the city took all the elements and created a place that is magic, exotic and austere at the same time. (ANSAmed).
31 October 2008
ANSA - English Corporate News Service
Bisanzio, Costantinopoli, Istanbul, a book curated by Tania Velmans and edited by Jaca Book was presented today in Rome at an event sponsored by the Office for Culture and Information of the Italian Embassy. The book, with more than 400 pages and many, many photographs and illustrations, is a salute to Turkish metropolis and its history which through the centuries has left a mark not only in the area but in the entire Mediterranean.
The volume contains contributions by Vittorio Franchetti Pardo (the historic-urban profile of the Imperial capital, from the origins to Giustinian), Eugenio Russo (architecture and sculpture in the first centuries), by the curator Tania Velmans (Byzantine painting, mosaics, frescos, icons and miniatures), Mauro Della Valle (architecture and sculpture up until 1453), Cigdem Kafescioglu (the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul between the XV and XVIII centuries), Giovanna Curatola (religious Ottoman architecture), Roberto Cassanelli (the autumn of Constantinople). A history of millenniums that made the city the heir of Rome on one side, and of the Greek and Hellenic world on the other, enriched with an amazing number of palaces, churches, places for entertainment . A history that is also the history of the places, each with a past to recount, like in the case of the largest Constantine basilica, the Santa Sofia. Always the most important religious centre in the city, it became the centre of Christian Greek Orthodoxy . But then, when the Ottomans came to power, it became a mosque, becoming the architectural model for many Islamic religious centres . However, giving the history, in a large volume with quality illustrations, of a city that has made history isn t easy due to the very many facets it has acquired over the course of the centuries which risks making even the most superficial research very difficult. On the other hand, the volume compiled by Tania Velmans is able to offer a sum of great value (from the point of view of historical analysis, architecture and even social history), but the book is not hard to metabolize. Before becoming Istanbul, the city lived in the opulent garments of Byzantium and as the cosmopolitan Constantinople. And from each of its three incarnations the city took all the elements and created a place that is magic, exotic and austere at the same time. (ANSAmed).
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