The Performative Icon

The Performative Icon
Author(s): Bissera V. Pentcheva

Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 631-655
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067280
Accessed: 29-02-2016 14:34 UTC
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The Performative Icon

Bissera V. Pentcheva
Icon (ikon, eiKcov) in Greek is understood as image, repre

sentation, and portrait. In Byzantium the word also acquired
a very specific meaning as a portable portrait of Christ, the
Virgin, and saints with scenes from their lives on wood panels
or precious surfaces such as ivory, metal, enamel, mosaic, and
steatite (Figs. 1-4).* The icon was perceived as matter im
bued with charis (âpi?), or divine grace.2 As matter, this
object was meant to be physically experienced. Touch, smell,
taste, and sound all contributed to the experience of "seeing"
the portable portrait. Over the years, this sensory and sensual
experience (aesthesis) of the image has been lost from view in
the scholarship.3
The icon is in fact a surface that resonates with sound,
wind, light, touch, and smell. This object thus offers us a

glimpse into what vision meant in Byzantium: a synesthetic
experience in which the whole body is engaged. The term
synesthesia as employed in modern art theory and psychology
refers to concomitant sensation: the experience of one sense
through the stimulation of another, such as color experi
enced as sound. Instead, I will use the word synesthesis (syn-,
together, plus aesthesis, sensual apprehension) to focus atten
tion on consonant sensation: the simultaneity of senses. This
synesthetic experience is very characteristic of Byzantium. Yet
it is rarely discussed in medieval studies. Whenever a link

between the senses and the spiritual is made, it is often drawn
primarily on the basis of the writings of Abbot Suger.4
According to Byzantine image theory as it emerged in the

ninth century, the icon is the imprint (in Greek, typos) of
Christ's visible characteristics (appearance) on matter. The
quintessential Byzantine image ideally should not be thought
of as a painting created by brushstrokes but as an imprint?
a typos impressed on a material surface. The relief icon

most closely conformed to this theoretical model; it defined
Byzantium as the culture of the imprint, mold, or seal

(Figs. 1-3).
The relief icon also best responds to the prevailing theory
of vision known as extramission.5 According to this model, the
eye of the beholder is active, constantly moving and sending
light rays that touch the surfaces of objects. The eye seeks the
tactility of textures and reliefs. Sight is understood and expe
rienced as touch.6 Not surprisingly, Byzantine icons address

this tactile desire with their rich decoration, varied materials,
and reliefs. They employ a baroque pastiche of metal re

pouss?, filigree, cloisonn? and champlev? enamels, pearls,
and gemstones. Some of these panels also contain poetic
inscriptions embedded in the metal surface (Fig. 21).
The later and better-known production of wood panel
paintings covered with metal revetments (Fig. 4) differ sig
nificantly from the Middle Byzantine relief icon. In the latter,
enameled cover, which floods the eye with its radiance and
shimmer. When illuminated by the trembling flicker of can
dles and oil lamps rather than the steady and harsh spotlights
of museum displays, the painted holy face on the revetted

icon sinks and disappears in the shadow. These panels oper
ate at the brink of the extramission and intromission models of
visuality. They deny the tangibility and even visibility of the

sacred image, while they appeal to the sense of touch through
the textured surface of their repouss? and enameled-filigree
metal revetments.7
Because they are luxury objects, relief icons are now con
sidered exceptions among an otherwise largely panel-painted
icon production. However, the way relief icons in metal,
enamel, steatite, and ivory integrate the iconophile theory of
images and the way they sensorially engage the faithful

through their tactile representations suggest that these ob
jects, rather than being exceptions, lead us instead to a

fundamental expectation and experience of icons as textured
surfaces in Byzantium. The relief icon, which dominated
artistic production in the ninth and tenth centuries, most
closely fulfilled the qualities of Byzantine tactile and sensorial
visuality.
In its original setting, the icon performed through its
materiality. The radiance of light reflected from the gilded
surfaces, the flicker of candles and oil lamps placed before
the image, the sweetly fragrant incense, the sounds of prayer
and music?these inundated all senses. In saturating the

material and sensorial to excess, the experience of the icon
led to a transcendence of this very materiality and gave access
to the intangible, invisible, and noetic.8 This phenomenolog

ical aspect of the icon has been largely overlooked in modern
scholarship. By treating it as art, confining it to a glass-cage
museum display, subjecting it to uniform and steady electric
lighting, the icon has been deprived of life?its surface,
dead.9
In Byzantine culture, mimesis is the word closest to the

definition of "performance." It stands for an admixture of
presence and absence.10 The icon exemplifies just such an
admixture. While itself an absence (appearance), the Byzan
tine icon enacts divine presence (essence) in its making and
in its interaction with the faithful.11 A person's approach,
movement, and breath disrupt the lights of the candles and
oil lamps, making them flicker and oscillate on the surface of
the icon, This glimmer of reflected rays is enhanced by the
rising incense in the air, the sense of touch and taste, and the
sound of prayer to animate the panel.12 The icon thus goes

through a process of becoming, changing, and performing
before the faithful,
These shifting sensations triggered through sight, touch,
the holy figure projects in relief, whereas in the former, the
sound, smell, and taste stir the faithful. They are then led to
sacred form recedes in darkness. It is painted on the flat
project their whirling psychological state and sensual experi

ence (pathema, Tr?diq/xa) back onto the object to make the
surface of the wood and surrounded by a raised silver-gilt or
532 ART BULLETIN VOLUME LXXXVIII NUMBER 4
1 Icon of the Archangel Michael, late 10th century, enamel on

gold, 17% X 14V6 X 3/4 in. (44 X 36 X 2 cm). Treasury of the
basilica of S. Marco, Venice (artwork in the public domain;
photograph by Cameraphoto, provided by Art Resource, NY)
2 Icon of the Archangel Michael, late llth-12th century,

enamel on gold, 85/s X 7V4 in. (22 X 18.5 cm). Treasury of the
basilica of S. Marco, Venice (artwork in the public domain;
photograph by Cameraphoto, provided by Art Resource, NY)
icon appear alive. Animated by the projected human
clastic period. The definition of the icon as absence has
7r?0T)/xa, it turns into a living painting: an empsychos graphe
paradoxically heightened the materiality of this object. A

tension lurks on the icon's surface between absence and
(e/xi/fuô? ypa</>ff). A new meaning of "living painting"

emerges from my analysis.13
presence, a tension that will be resolved in the icon's perfor
The Byzantine icon has a legacy of tactile visuality, sensu

ally experienced. Because the Eastern Orthodox liturgy main
tained its late antique tradition of saturating the senses, the
objects embedded in its rite gave rise to a sensorially rich
mance (mimesis) : the way it plays with appearances before the

faithful. In contrast to our Western notion of mimesis as the
performance. While all five senses are engaged, a subtle

hierarchy is established. Sight, touch, and sound emerge as
the senses through which the materiality of the icon as the
imprint of the divine appearance is empirically formed. At
the same time, smell and taste give access to divine essence
through an almost Eucharistie participatory knowledge of
God.
Byzantine Mimesis: Essence and Appearance

The Byzantine icon is a surface that has received the imprint
imitation of form, Byzantine mimesis is the imitation of pres
ence. The icon is just an imprint of form, but it simulates

divine essence through the interaction of its imprinted sur
face with the changing ambience.
Byzantine image theory emerged during the Iconoclastic
period, 730 to 843. At the very center of this controversy lay
the tension between matter and spirit. Can the icon represent
Christ's divinely human nature? The eighth-century defense

of icons presents an essentialist model. Its major proponents
were John of Damaskos (ca. 675-749) and Patriarch Germa
nos (ca. 634-732).15 Using Christology, they drew a connec
tion between the icon and the incarnate Christ. The Incar
of divine form. This nonessentialist definition of the icon
nation manifests the divine acquiring a human form, lending
developed in the ninth-century writings of Patriarch Nike
validity to the visible and representation. By extension, the

icon shows the process through which the Logos acquires a
visible human shape.
The original seventh-century mosaics at Nikaia offer an
example of this incarnational dialectic (Figs. 5, 6).16 The
phoros and Theodore of Stoudios. Charles Barber has al

ready reconstructed their theory in his excellent study Figure
and Likeness:- On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Icono
clasm.14 What remains to be explored is how this nonessen

tialist model affected the icon production of the post-Icono
pr?figurai divine, represented by the throne, book, dove, and
THE PERFORMATIVE ICON 533
3 Harbaville triptych, late 10th century, ivory, 9V? X WA in.

(24.2 X 28.5 cm). Mus?e du Louvre, Paris (artwork in the
public domain; photograph by Erich Lessing, provided by Art
Resource, NY)
?ir>#?^*Z&1*xz?.
5 Mosaic of the Hetoimasia, late 7th or early 8th century.

Church of the Koimesis of the Theotokos, Iznik, Turkey
(Nikaia) (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided
by the Theodore Schmit Archive, ? The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg)
inscription, is transformed into the Child held in the arms of
the Virgin in the apse. We witness a metamorphosis by fol

lowing the central ray of light, most likely made of silver
tesserae.17 They catch and reflect light as they lead us to the
carnal light: the golden-clad Child in Mary's arms. By equat

ing the icon with the body of Christ, making it participatory
in the divine essence, this essentialist model exposed itself to
charges of idolatry.18 The figurai representation at Nikaia

shows traces of such an iconoclastic intervention, for the
image of the Virgin and Child in the apse was replaced by the
aniconic shape of the cross sometime in the mid-eighth cen

tury. With the reestablishment of image veneration in 843,
the figurai representation was restored.
To counteract the charges of idolatry in the incarnational

model, the iconophiles of the later part of the eighth and
early ninth centuries developed a nonessentialist interpreta
tion of the icon.19 Patriarch Nikephoros (ca. 750-828) de
fined the icon as the imprint (typos) of the visible character
i ftl J;
istics of Christ on matter, or appearance imprinted on
4 Double-sided processional icon of the Virgin Hodegetria,

3rd quarter of the 13th century, tempera on wood, silver-metal
revetment, 38V? X 26% in. (97 X 67 cm). Icon Gallery, Ohrid,
Macedonia (artwork in the public domain; photograph ?

Scala, provided by Art Resource, NY)
matter: "Painting represents the corporeal form of the one

depicted, impressing its appearance (schema) and its shape
(morphe) and its likeness (empheria).'"20
Schema, morphe, empheria (oxrj/xa, jmop</>Tj, e^?peta) all
converge on the sense of appearance/likeness and empha
7 Seal attached to the memorandum of a judge of

Thessaloniki written in 927, lead, 7% X 6% in. (19.8 X 17.4
cm). Iviron Monastery, Mount Athos, Greece (object in the
public domain; from Treasures of Mount Athos, 508, cat. no.
13.1)
6 Apse mosaic of the Virgin and Child, late 7th- early 8th and
mid-9th century. Church of the Koimesis of the Theotokos,
Iznik, Turkey (Nikaia) (artwork in the public domain;
photograph provided by the Theodore Schmit Archive, ? The
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)
size the nonessentialist relation between copy and prototype.
The two are connected by form, not essence. The icon as

imprint of appearance no longer participates in Christ's sa
cred energy and therefore does not reveal his hypostasis
(divinely human essence). In bearing only the visible charac
teristics and lacking the miraculous essence, the icon be
comes the imprint of absence on matter. This object is thus
set to simulate presence (essence) through appearance.
A similar definition of the icon as an imprint of likeness on
matter emerges in the writings of Theodore of Stoudios
(759-826):
The crafted icon modeled after its prototype brings the

likeness of the prototype into matter and participates in its
form by means of the thought of the artist and the impress
of his hands. This is true of the painter, the stone carver,
and the one who makes images from gold and bronze;
each takes matter, looks at the prototype, receives the
imprint of that which he contemplates, and presses it like
a seal into his matter.21
appearance of the prototype has been impressed onto the

memory of the artist. In the next step, this impressed form is
imprinted (literally impressed like a die) for a second time on
the material surface (bronze or gold, marble or encaustic).

The making of the icon becomes a process of double imprint
(typos).
This nonessentialist theory of the icon does not account for
miraculous images. As in any other culture, the theoretical
model exercised some but not total control over artistic

production and ritual practices. It gave a conceptual line
through which to defend the validity of icons.
At the same time, a belief in miraculous icons did exist in
Byzantium, and this belief went against the theoretical defi

nition of the icon as absence. Because these thaumaturgie
images were perceived as repositories of divine presence, they
functioned in a way similar to relics. These icons offered

access to sacred energy. Habitually enclosed in containers
and covered by silk veils, the miraculous images were kept
away from sensual grasp, in contrast to the regular icon,
which was always fully visually and tangibly available. The
miracle-working images were fully revealed only at swift cli
mactic points of the ritual.22
Typos and Sphragis
The nonessentialist model of the icon as a double imprint, I
In this passage, the icon is likeness that participates only in

the form, not the essence, of the prototype. The act of
believe, originates from the very image production practices
looking at the model is understood as a primary imprint. The
and from the stronghold of the extramission theory in Byzan
available to men of letters in ninth-century Constantinople
8 Seal blank, lead, diameter IVs in. (2.9 cm). Dumbarton

Oaks, Washington, D.C. (object in the public domain;
photograph provided by Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine
Collection, Washington, D.C.)
10 Seal of Peter, bishop of Thebes, with the Virgin Episkepsis,

11th century, diameter 1 in. (2.5 cm). Dumbarton Oaks,
Washington, D.C. (object in the public domain; photograph

provided by Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection,
Washington, D.C.)
11 Coin with the impressed images of Christ and Emperor
Constantine VII (r. 945-59), gold, diameter % in. (1.8 cm).

Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. (object in the public
domain; photograph provided by Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine
Collection, Washington, D.C.)
9 Pliers with intaglio relief of a saint, iron, 6% X 6V6 in.

(17.4 X 15.5 cm). Arthur Sackler Museum, Cambridge, Mass.,
bequest of Thomas Whittemore, 1951.31.6 (object in the
public domain; photograph provided by the Arthur Sackler
Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge)
The typos/sphragis concept is not new. It has been explored

most prominently by Herbert Kessler in connection with the
acheiropoietos of Christ (miraculous image not made by human
hands, a-, without, heir, hand, poietos, made): the imprint
(typos) of the Holy Face on a material surface.25 This thauma
turgie object is allegedly the product of a single imprint of
the divine form and essence. It is created like a coin or seal.
Christ's body functions like an intaglio impressed on the

material surface (Figs. 10, 11). As an extension of the divine
form, which bears the divine touch, the acheiropoietos partici
tine visuality. Many documents, once their writing was con

cluded, were secured with a seal.23 For instance, in a memo
pates in the essence.
randum by a judge of Thessaloniki written in 927, the seal is

still in its original position, affixed with a cord at the edge of
regular icon. In contrast to the acheiropoietoi, the icon is

created through a double imprint and participates only in the
the parchment. It completes the writing and ensures the
appearance of the prototype. Again, the making of a seal or
inviolate state of the letter (Fig. 7) .24 The characteristic Byz
a coin exemplifies this process. The die and its imprint
antine sealing practice was to use lead blanks with a channel

going through their diameter (Fig. 8). The silk cords were
the relation between Christ and the icon but also a process
first threaded through the parchment and then strung

through the seal's channel. After being heated, the lead
Yet the typos/sphragis concept has never been applied to the
(eKTweojULa, twos, a<j>payU) furnish not just a metaphor for

that entirely maps the concept of the icon as absence, lacking
creating the metal relief, the pliers embedded the silk cord
in the lead and closed the parchment. Writing and sealing
thus became linked in Byzantium. The graphe (encompassing
writing and painting) was understood as a seal (sphragis,
essence. The sacred body leaves a physical imprint. By dis

placing matter, it produces a negative space, a shell in which
a body once resided but no longer remains. This shell is
equivalent to the negative intaglio on the heads of the pliers
(Fig. 9). It is this form of absence that is then imprinted on
the warm metal surface, reifying in relief the shape of ab
sence (Figs. 10, 11). Here, absence turns into a projection,
penetrating the physical space. The relief paradoxically is
ar<f>payi<;), for the seal completed it. By analogy, the icon as a

manifestation of graphe also became a sphragis.
The icon then becomes a reified, sensual, sensory manifesta
blanks were placed between the valves of iron pliers (Fig. 9).
The pliers were struck shut with a hammer, impressing a
relief on the softened surface of the lead (Figs. 10,11). While
transformed into the materialization of the form of absence.
tion of absence. It self-consciously draws attention to absence,
making it tangible, apprehensible through the senses.26 As

present absence, the imprint neutralizes the icon and makes
it immune to charges of idolatry. It provides access to appear
ance, which is materially realized and sensually experienced.

The understanding of the icon through the seal-making
model also places an emphasis on tangible versus intangible
absence, rather than on the visible versus the invisible. In its
imprinted relief, the icon materializes the absent sacred fig
ure. It gives it shape. Therefore, medieval objects in general
and Byzantine icons in particular attempt to express the
paradox of the tangible versus the intangible rather than the
visible versus the invisible (in which my analysis differs from
that of the existing scholarship on medieval image theory) .27
The tangible appeals to and mobilizes all five senses, while

the visible addresses itself just to the eye. It is our modern
culture's obsession with making things visible, fueled by op
tical visuality, that makes us project a similar framework onto
medieval art.28 By contrast, the Byzantine icon presents an

eloquent example of tactile visuality sensually experienced.
According to the preferred theory of vision in Byzantium,
extramission, the eye casting its rays seeks a tangible form
that can be "touched with the eyes, hands, and lips."29
Moreover, the same desire for materiality is present in the
passage quoted from Theodore of Stoudios: "[the artist]

takes matter, looks at the prototype, receives the imprint of
that which he contemplates, and presses it like a seal into his
matter."30 In the making of an icon, the active eye of the artist
casts optical rays over the saint. They touch the sacred form
and return, impressing the gathered shape into the memory
of the craftsman. This first image (the imprinted vestige of
touch) is thus internal. Like a negative intaglio, it is subse
quently impressed by the hands of the artist into a material
surface.
The Byzantine sacred portrait can be seen to function in

Neoplatonic terms. It presents a material manifestation of
what is immaterial and ineffable (divine essence). The image
is a priori internal. Its external manifestation is the icon. The
eye "touching" its surface reaffirms the reality of the internal
prototype. Touch authenticates this internal imprint. The

validity or truth of the image is its matter; its surface, having
received the imprint (typos) of absence, offers it in turn to the
touch of the "eyes and lips" of the faithful.
Paradoxically, the icon as reified absence is imbued with

the most profound materiality. Its lack of essence is compen
sated by the materially manifested likeness: palpable, tangi

ble, and sensual. It is this materiality of the icon that is
overlooked in the recent studies of Byzantine image theory.31
The Relief Icon
the chancel barrier in Hagia Sophia, Paul the Silentiary men

tioned metal-repouss? disks with the figures of Christ, the
angels, prophets, Apostles, and the Virgin.32 Similarly, after
Iconoclasm, icons in metal repouss? adorned the epistyle of
the imperial foundation called Nea Ekklesia (the New

Church) of Emperor Basil I (r. 867-86) .33 Enamel medallion
icons of Christ appeared in the Chapel of the Savior in the
palace.34 These instances demonstrate a continuing tradition
of luxury relief icons in both Hagia Sophia and the churches
and chapels of the Great Palace.
The most important icon in this period was the Chalkites
Christ set atop the Brazen Gates of the imperial palace. Its
story summarizes the entire Iconoclastic period (730-843). It
was allegedly taken down on the orders of Emperor Leo III in
730, and this act of public aggression against images signaled
the outbreak of Iconoclasm in the capital.35 Since this story is
not mentioned by any contemporary eighth-century source

and appears in the written record only after 800, it casts some
doubt on the existence of a Chalke Christ in about 730.
Marie-France Auz?py has correctly argued that the legend

was developed in order to justify Empress Eirene's placement
of such an icon for the first time during the iconophile
interim period, 787-814.36 Through the invention of a leg
endary past for the Chalkites, it acquired legitimacy. Then
again in 814 Emperor Leo V removed this image from the
gates in an attempt to emulate the legendary actions of his
iconoclast predecessor, Leo III. Finally, a new Chalkites was
set up in 843. The Chalke Christ marked the final triumph of
orthodoxy and celebrated the renewed alignment of imperial
power with image veneration. As the gate to the Great Palace,
the Chalke visually and tangibly defined and propagated

imperial policy. It was probably this same image that reap
peared on imperial coinage in 843.37
What did this icon look like? Could it have been a metal
relief icon?a typos} Its name, Chalkites^ refers to copper and
bronze,38 but is this a reference to the Brazen Gates over

which it hung or to the fact that the image itself was made of
metal? Scholars, notably, Cyril Mango in 1959, have argued

that the Chalkites was a painted panel because the iconoclasts
sent it to the fire.39 However, panel painting is not suited for
the exterior of a building; ultraviolet light, humidity, and

temperature shifts would all wreak havoc with egg tempera
on wood.
By contrast, if we identify the Chalkites as a metal relief

icon, all of these issues are resolved. A bronze or copper icon
(a typos) would have easily been burned in accordance with

the incident of 730 or 814. In fact, fire would have been the
only and perhaps best way to destroy it. Moreover, its burning
For the period from the ninth to the eleventh centuries,

relief icons in metal, enamel, ivory, and steatite survive in
greater numbers than panel paintings. So far, this imbalance
has been attributed to wood's vulnerability to deterioration.
Perhaps a different interpretation, which takes into account
would have had a strong symbolic value by alluding to the

biblical Golden Calf (Exod. 32:20). Burning, indeed, would
have justified the icon's destruction in the eyes of iconoclasts
tradition, theory, and the function of icons in the ninth and
as an orthodox act of pulling down the idols.

Further confirmation of this hypothesis can be found in
the written record. In one of the two earliest Byzantine
tenth centuries, is in order. In this interpretation, the seal

and-coin-based model at the core of Byzantine image theory
Stephen the Younger (written about 809), the icon appears as a
furnishes an insight into the art produced after Iconoclasm.

Already in his discussion of the sixth-century decoration of
copper relief image. The passage mentions the icon and its
location at the gates:40
sources describing the Chalke incident of 730, the Life of Saint
In these days [the patriarch Anastasios,] having become

the leader of heresies, immediately attempted to take
down and throw into the fire the authoritative icon of
Christ our Lord, hanging above the imperial gates, at the
place, where due to its relief character, it [the icon] is called
the Chalke (the Copper One).41

The syntax of the dependent clause is rather difficult to
interpret. It is introduced by a relative pronoun (kv oicnrep),
which refers to the gates, yet the rest of the sentence has a
holy face was rendered as a relief, while the epigram as letters
incised on matter. Both draw attention to the textured and
imprinted surface. Finally, Michael Glykas in the twelfth cen

tury reinforces the idea of the Chalkites as a metal relief icon
by calling it an imprint (ekt?tt?uiio) .47
What is the importance of identifying the Chalkites with a
metal relief icon? This was the most prominent icon in Con
stantinople during and after Iconoclasm. It symbolized pro
image policy. Therefore, its form would have been under
stood as the ideal icon. If my interpretation of the written
subject in the feminine singular, and the only other word in
sources is correct, the Chalkites served as the model for the
the feminine singular in the main clause is "icon" (eiKC?v).

While the Greek for gate (pyle, 7r6kr?) is in the feminine
Byzantine metal relief icon. As a typos, the Chalke Christ also
gender, a switch from the plural to singular and the subsequent
tialist definition, the ideal icon is a representation in relief:

an imprint (typos) left by an intaglio (Figs. 10, 11).
It is quite possible that the Chalkites was medallion-shaped.
In Byzantine iconophile writings the legitimacy of the icon is
description of this object as holy suggest that the subject of

the relative clause is not the Brazen Gates but the Chalkites
icon. The relative pronoun can then be translated as refer

ring to the locale, where the icon is set.42
The word used to describe the metal object in the quoted
passage is charakter (xotpoLKTr\p). It means an imprint, relief,
and engraved surface. In fact, its first definition is connected
to the stamping of an intaglio on a metal surface in order to
produce a coin. The same word also appears in th? descrip

tion of the Chalkites in Theophanes' Chronographia (early
ninth century), The passage narrates the events of 602 CE,
when Emperor Maurice (r. 582-602) dreamed of his judg
ment by Christ, which resulted in his deposition. Theophanes
embellished the story by ahistorically inserting the Chalkites
icon?the very object that was most likely first placed ?t the
gates almost two centuries later, in the period 787-814. The

icon became the medium through which Christ appeared
and judged the emperor: "One night as [Emperor Maurice]
was sleeping, he saw a vision; he was standing before the icon
of the Savior at the Chalke gates and ? crowd was standing

around him. A voice from the relief icon of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ came and spoke."43
Later sources also indicate a copper relief icon for the
Chalkites. In the Patria (a compilation of various sources on
the topography of Constantinople, edited about 995), we
read the following: "In the so-called Chalke Gates a copper
stele of our Lord Jesus Christ was erected by Constan tine the
Great. The emperor Leo [III], father of Kavallinos, took it

down. Now decorated with mosaics, this icon is restored by
the [empress] Eirene the Athenian."44
The icon is called a copper relief slab (stele chalke, ottj?tj
XakKrf). These words have hitherto been interpreted as a
bronze statue and discredited as corrupt information because
fulfilled Byzantine image theory. According to its nonessen
frequently argued on the basis of the imperial coin. A reci

procity is established between the emperor and his represen
tation on the gold solidus (Fig. 11), Both are linked by one
identity yet separated by natures.48 The same reciprocity
reigns between the icon and Christ. Both represent the same
identity but differ in nature: a material substance versus a

divinely human hypostasis. The roundel icon evokes in its
shape the very arguments used to defend its legitimacy. The
medallion panel thus becomes an ideal devotional object

protected by form and theory from charges of idolatry.49
Similarly, the majority of icons depicted in the mid-ninth
century Khludov Psalter (State Historical Museum, Moscow,

cod. gr. 129) have a round shape that evokes coins and seals
(Fig. 12).50 These images do not resemble what we consider
to be the canonical look for an icon: a rectangular wood

panel painting. In employing the shape of coins and seals, the
representations in the Khludov Psalter activate the nonessen
tialist definition of the icon as imprint of absence on matter.
Hence, the circular form validates th? veneration of images.

The manuscript begins with a depiction of a youthful
Christ set within an arch (Fig. 12). Underneath the tympa
num, King David dressed in imperial attire sits on a throne
and strums the strings of his lyre. Divine and imperial are
joined through the seal of the icon. King David emerges as a
protector of images and vice versa: as a recipient of the icon's
protection. This idea captures the climate of ninth-century
Constantinople, where imperial policy had just firmly em
braced icon veneration. The Chalkites Christ established the
seal of affirmation in 843.
The medallion icon and its setting in the Khludov Psalter
Byzantium did not produce three-dimensional statues of

Christ or the saints.45 Yet the Byzantine choice of words is
within the tympanum of an imaginary arch recall the shape of

a gate. Given the manuscript's polemical depiction of current
quite clear. Just as the Greek word stele presents figures in low
political events and its avid defense of irhages, it is likely that
relief, so, too, the Byzantine Chalkites icon displays a bas

relief of Christ on a metal surface. The rest of the passage
states how this icon was decorated with mosaics by Empress
Eirene, which could be interpreted as a metal icon adorned
with glass tesserae or even enamel.
Similarly, the epigram written by Patriarch Methodios
sometime between 843 and 847 identifies the orthodox im
the preface miniature of the Khludov Psalter is not just a

visualization of an author portrait (King David as the poet of
the Psalms) but is possibly meant to configure in two-dimen
sional form a memory image of the Chalke gate and Chalke
Christ. Such a commemorative image would be quite appro
priate for the particular patron of the manuscript: most likely
Patriarch Methodios.51 His epigram adorned the Chalkites,
and, by extension, his Psalter begins with a miniature emu
lating his most prominent public act of image veneration. If
this reading of the preface miniature as a vision of the
ages as typoi: "I am representing [Christ] with imprints [ty

poi]."46 This poetic inscription most likely surrounded the
Chalkites icon, thereby linking image and text visually. The
12 Khludov Psalter, preface miniature,
medallion icon of Christ and King
David, mid-9th century. State Historical

Museum, Moscow, cod. gr. 129, fols,
lv, 2r (artwork in the public domain;
photograph ? by the State Historical
Museum, Moscow)
Chalkites at the Bronze Gates is correct, then all medallion
icon depictions in this manuscript acquire greater signifi

cance as copies sharing in the Chalkites's tradition, form, and
legitimacy. The ideal Byzantine icon emerges as a Chalke

icon: a medallion metal relief.
Finally, a dominance of relief icons over panel paintings in
the ninth and tenth centuries is also evident in the contem
porary function of images. In this period icons were not

carried in public processions (litaniai), so they were not the
focal point of public ceremonies. The small size and luxury
materials of these relief icons conformed to a more intimate
system of use.
The situation changed in the late tenth century when icons
appeared in imperial and liturgical processions and led to a

new demand for the larger size and accessibility of the image
in large public gatherings.52 Wood panel paintings allowed

for unlimited expansion of size. The sacred figure painted in
Painting as Imprint
In modern Western culture we are predisposed to conceive of
painting as the markings of the brush on a material surface.
Traced to its source, this perception derives from the Natural
History of Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE). In one of his anecdotes

the painter Zeuxis creates a virtuoso mimetic picture of
grapes, which deceives the birds. His competitor, Parrhasios,
in turn paints a curtain so skillfully that Zeuxis himself is
deceived as he attempts to draw the curtain in order to see
the supposed painting behind it.54 The same definition of
graphe as the marks of the brush on a surface creating a
mimetic image of the world also obtains in the Renaissance
theory of Leon Battista Albert! written in 1436.55 In recent
times, Ernst Gombrich has offered the best-known discussion
of painting as a naturalistic, mimetic pictorial copy of the

world.56 Although Norman Bryson and other scholars have
challenged his perceptualist theory, they have not questioned
tempera lacked relief and functioned primarily optically (Fig.

4). Only the revetment preserved the aesthetic of the luxury
the understanding of painting as a pictorial form of art:

brushstrokes on a material surface.57
metal relief icon. In the best examples, this metal cover
By contrast, in what emerges in the Byzantine theory and

practice, painting (graphe) is best understood as imprint (ty
consisted of an enameled silver-gilt surface decorated with

filigree designs, pearls, and gemstones.
The history of Constantinople's most famous icon, the
Hodegetria (the One Who Leads the Way), exemplifies this
development (Fig. 4). Until the late tenth century, the icon
ographie type without the toponymie name occurred mostly
on small luxury relief icons. Once the Hodegetria became the
focus of a cult and acquired its own weekly liturgical proces
sion, it established the first example of a monastery in Con
stantinople investing its identity in an icon rather than a relic
of the Mother of God.5S Consequently, Marian devotion in

the Byzantine capital was shaped through icons and icon
processions. These processional icons (later referred to as
signa) had the effect of shifting the perception of the ideal
image in Byzantium from a medallion relief (typos) to a
painted panel (signori).
pos and sphragis). The image is not the imitation of form but
rather the imprint of form. This Eastern perception of paint
ing?and, by extension, the icon?as imprint gives an insight

into Byzantine culture. As mentioned earlier, Byzantine mi
mesis is understood as the simulation of presence through the
interaction of the imprinted form (typos) with the changing
ambience.
Typos in Byzantium encompasses a range of definitions

spreading from individual mark, standard pattern, and state
decree to ritual.58 The dictionary entries are as follows: im
pression, imprint and mark, mold, representation, image,
exact replica, shape, form, type, pattern, model, example,
decree, and, finally, rite. One gradually proceeds from the
individual mark to the state, from the private to the public,
from the particular to the cultural. All meanings are inter
linked through the model of the imprint of an intaglio on

metal. Just as the icon is an imprint of visible characteristics
on matter, so, too, the rite becomes the imprint of a set of

gestures and speech acts in time and space. Both icon and
ritual present endless faithful reproduction rather than imi
tation of form.59 The imprint as a cultural practice ensures
uniformity and secures traditions. Byzantium emerges as the
culture of the typos:, the image understood as the impression,
mold, form, and decree, all authentic and limitlessly repro

ducible, linking image production to ritual practices and
cultural identity.
The coin or seal model (typos/sphragis) of the icon explains
why after Iconoclasm enamel became the medium par excel

lence. It, too, gives theory a palpable shape by displaying the
imprint of divine appearance in a material form. The enam

el's underlying metal foundation of cells functions like a
negative intaglio. The glass powder poured into this grid
becomes the imprint (typos). Once the powder is fired into
glass, it acquires mass, giving shape to divine absence. The
fossils: contact relics giving tangibility to the angel's present

absence.62 For this reason, the relief icon as a typos becomes
the only truthful form of representation for the Archangel.
By its definition, it is the imprint of absence. His enamel icon
in S. Marco is even closer to the truth, for it is an imprint of
fire on glass. Its materially saturated surfaces inundate the

senses and simulate the angel's presence.
The icon belongs to a group of luxury objects looted from
the palace in Constantinople when the city fell to the Cru
saders in 1204. Andr? Grabar and Michelangelo Muraro have
commented on the "unusual" medium and technique of this
icon. Their reaction betrays once again our modern precon
ception that icons should be primarily identified with paint
ings.63 As discussed earlier, the relief icon of the Archangel
might have been more characteristic of the Middle Byzantine
period than wood panels painted with tempera. The S. Marco

enamel is one of the few extant examples of this exquisite
production. It displays a mastery of metal techniques (enamel
materiality or substance to what is no longer there, to what is
filigree, repouss?) and lavish use of materials (Figs. 13-15).

The Archangel stands frontally, dressed in an imperial
purple tunic covered with a gem-studded sash called a loros
(Fig. 13). With one hand he holds a scepter and lifts the
beyond the tangible: a present absence. Both enamel and re
other in a gesture of intercession. His enormous wings press
congealed glass forms the materiality of the enamel image. As
with the relief icon, matter fills an empty shell and gives
lief icons display divine appearance through textured matter.
While enameled relief icons best embody the concept of

the icon as imprint, panel painting continued to be produced
in the period right after Iconoclasm, as attested by the pre

served collection of icons at St. Catherine's Monastery on
Mount Sinai.60 However, the graphe of tempera could not
compete with the perfect reciprocity of theory and produc
tion practices signaled by the metal icon, because the latter
displayed in its making the actual materialization of the typos.
Nor could tempera compare to encaustic, a form of relief
to the sides (Fig. 15). A subtle tension emerges between the

figure projecting in relief and the sunken central plaque. The
face extends outward the most, yet this projection is imme

diately checked by the palm turned to the viewer. It stops
movement and arrests the projection.
The body is outlined, but its materiality is rendered as a
multiplicity of surfaces. Imitation-pearl strings delimit all
shapes and frame the enamel plaques and gemstones (Figs.
13, 14). The gold repouss? surface is enlivened by thin,
undulating filigree with a pearly dot profile. This is one of the
warm wax is pushed, impressed, and incised by the palette
most exquisite Byzantine filigree examples in existence.

The excess of matter functions as dissemblance, set to
knife, "imprinting" a figure in relief.
oppose a desire to depict in a naturalistic style.64 Rather than
that imparts a vivid sensation of imprint. The surface of the
This understanding of graphe as imprint simultaneously

engages touch, sight, and sound. Touch, because grapheis the
actual physical impression made on a material surface: it

leaves a relief, a texture that has tactile presence. Sight and
sound, because both are modes of perception of graphe: as
both painting and writing, graphe unites image and letter. Just
as the image is an imprint of visible characteristics on matter,
so script is the impression/trace of letters incised, inscribed,
a mimetic figuration of the angel's appearance, the enamel

icon of the one who is fire and spirit offers a dissemblant
re-presentation of the angel's nature. It is made of glass
powder, placed in a metal mold, and fired to a high temper
ature. As an imprint, the enamel icon responds to the Byz
antine definition of an angel's representation: a symbolic
impression that allows for the contemplation of higher heav
enly reality beyond matter.65 The enamel icon itself is thus a
imprinted onto a surface (Fig. 21). Only through matter can

abstract ideas be realized and perceptually accessed. They
need to be embodied, incarnated. Graphe as imprint prede
termines the importance of the material surface in the Byz
antine perception of the icon.
dissemblant material imprint of the unfigurable created by

fire?a dissemblant semblance of the symbolic imprint.
The Icon's Materiality and the Sense of Touch

The textured surfaces of the Byzantine icon engage the five
senses, as demonstrated by the sensual appeal of the late
optical experience. Alois Riegl referred to the tactile qualities
tenth-century enamel relief of the Archangel Michael (Figs.

1, 13) .61 By nature, the angel is fire and spirit; no materiality
rests in him. Human beings can grasp him only through the
(relief and textured surfaces) that engages both the Byzan

tine theory of vision (extramission) and the practical vener
imprint he leaves on matter. For instance, Saint Michael's

shrines at Chonai and Monte S. Gargano are perceived as
The Archangel's nature of fire and spirit is nonmimetically

reproduced and hapticly enfigured on the diverse surfaces of
this icon. The ample textures are sensually and sensorially

available to the gaze, touch, and taste. Tactility combats the
as the true aspect of an object as opposed to the illusion

generated through the optical frame.66 It is this hap tic aspect
ation of the icon. The viewer's gaze seeks the tactility of the
icon's textures. The active eye sends off rays that touch the
surfaces of objects. At the same time, the glitter of light
imprints left by him on the landscape. A chasm (Chonai) and
emanating from the gold surface visualizes the rays that the
a shrine carved in the rock (S. Gargano), they form giant
"animated" image itself sends off to touch and in a sense
13 Icon of the Archangel Michael, late

10th century, central panel (artwork in
the public domain; photograph by
Cameraphoto, provided by Art
Resource, NY)
capture th? viewer. The space between icon and beholder

becomes activated through the exchange of gaze and touch.
The desire to touch is also expressed in the manner in

which a Byzantine icon is expected to be venerated: aspasmos
(kiss) and proskynesis (lighting of candles, making the sign of
teriality of color. It is glass packed in a metal mold. After

firing, it becomes a congealed, gemlike mass. Not surpris
ingly, enamel became the signature Byzantine medium in the
tenth century.
As we learn from an Arabic source, the eleventh-century
the cross, and prostration), both defining a body-centered
Book of Gifts and Rarities, enamel and purple silk were the two
ritual.67 The proskynesis sets off the optical dazzle of the icon
most highly valued Byzantine exports.70 A description of one

such gift, a set of enamel bracelets given by Emperor Michael
as the approach of the faithful disrupts the air with their

breathing and movement, making the wicks tremble. The
agitated lights dance off the metal revetments. This shimmer
ing, glittering effect gives rise to a sense that the image is

animated. The body of the worshiper is thus fully engaged in
the spectacle of the icon's performance/mimesis.
Color and Light and the Sense of Sight

In Byzantium, color, as visible traits impressed on matter, is
the most material aspect of light, or, as Suida, the tenth

century encyclopedia, announces, "color in appearance is
what is visible and vision receives this."68 Looked at in this
light, color is an equivalent of form?the corporeal, material
aspect of the image.69 The enamel best exemplifies this ma
VII to the Fatimid caliph's mother in the 1070s, reads: "five

bracelets inlaid with glass in five colors: deep red, snow white,
jet black, sky blue, and deep azure. They were fashioned with
the best goldsmith's work. Their inlaid design was of the

finest craftsmanship."71 While this text gives us the perspec
tive of the Arab importers rather than the Byzantine export
ers, it still attests to the high quality and craftsmanship of the
Constantinopolitan production.
Similarly, in the Byzantine sources, such as the twelfth
century epic Digenis Akritis, enamels decorate the borders of
luxury clothing, saddles, and armor.72 Being on the fringe of
the garment, these sparkling objects were subject to the most
intense movement, where they gave a dynamic coruscating
THE PERFORMATIVE ICON 54I
14 Icon of the Archangel Michael, late 10th century, head (artwork in the public domain; photograph by Cameraphoto, provided
by Art Resource, NY)
effect. The colored glass mimics the look of gems and is

always set into a glittering metal plaque. As such, the medium
combines the two most important elements of the perception
Words for color in Byzantium describe the brilliance and

light-emitting qualities of a substance rather than its hue. A
characteristic passage in Digenis Akritis relates: "the glittering
of color in Byzantium: form and radiance.
violets were the color of the sea with its calm ruffled by a light
15 Icon of the Arch

angel Michael, late 10th
century, porphyreos wing
(artwork in the public
domain; photograph by
Cameraphoto, provided
by Art Resource, NY)
breeze."73 These words do not define the hue, instead con

juring a picture of the shimmer of ruffled water. The chang
ing vibrancy denotes the visible characteristics of this surface.
flowers emerge in their shimmering radiance, their colors

constantly fluttering and changing. Color becomes the re
flected light from surfaces: a polymorphous sight paired with
Radiance is most highly valued. In the same passage the

garden is described as gleaming and shining: "a meadow
the sweet sense of smell and sound.
bloomed brilliantly beneath the trees with its many colors

gleaming with flowers, sweet-scented narcissus, roses and
myrtles. The roses were a purple-tinted ornament on the
surfaced in Early Christian art and ceremony and remained

dominant in Byzantine aesthetics.75 Gold and purple contin
earth, the narcissus reflected in turn the color of milk."74 The
The glitter of surfaces betrays the "jeweled inflation" that
ued to be the two most significant elements in it. Both appear
prominently in the celestial and terrestrial courts, as both

embody radiance. Gold and purple are employed in imperial
silks, such as an eleventh-century fragment kept at Auxerre
(shroud of Saint Germanus, St-Eus?be, Auxerre) and the
contemporary depiction of such cloth in the miniature from

the Homilies of John Chrysostomos (Biblioth?que Nationale
de France, Paris, Coislin cod. gr. 79, fol. 2r) showing Emperor
Nikephoros III Botaneiates (originally Michael VII Doukas)
(Figs. 16, 17).76 The contrasting textures of the fabric in
crease the visibility of the eagle design in the Auxerre frag
ment. At the same time, the alternation of gold and purple
enhance the radiance of the silk. With each step and gesture,
the body dressed in the purple silk will animate the fabric,
revealing its vibrancy of hues and shimmer. The coruscating
effect of purple complements the glitter of gold.
This fascination with gold can easily be explained by its
radiance and glitter, but purple has a more culture-specific
meaning in Byzantium.77 Like gold, it has a changing, muta
ble character that imitates both fire and turbulent waters.
The highest-quality dye was derived from the murex, a ma

rine mollusk, and each batch could differ in hue and satura
tion.78 The Greek word for purple (porphyreos or pyravges,
TTop(j>vpeo<; or irvpetvyri?) captures this changing quality. Por
phyreos derives from the colors of the heaving, surging waters
of a stormy sea or gushing blood, while pyravges expresses the
luminous spectacle of fire. Therefore, unlike the limited

English term, the Byzantine word encompasses a spectrum of
hues ranging from rosy red, green, and purple to blue and
black.79 The fiery, iridescent, and polymorphous nature of
porphyreos exemplifies the Byzantine love for glitter and
change and makes it a fitting actor in Byzantine mimesis.
The affinity between purple and gold is made prominent

in the way they are paired on luxury objects. Besides silks and
imperial accoutrements, enamel icons and liturgical chalices

from the same period employ the fiery splendor of gold and
16 Imperial silk with eagle designs, 11th century, gold and

purple silk. Church of St-Eus?be, Auxerre (object in the public
domain; photograph by Giraudon, provided by Art Resource,
NY)
purple. A late antique sardonyx bowl known as the chalice of

the Patriarchs (in the treasury of S. Marco) is set in a tenth
century Byzantine gold enamel mount (Figs. 18, 19).80 De
appearance, it performs divine presence. For instance, when
likened to fossilized tongues of fire contained in a golden

armature. The icon is paradoxically an iridescent imprint of
fire on matter. The as?malos (bodiless) angel, who is fire and
spirit, is reified in enamel and gold. This icon constantly
empty, its translucent fiery body of sardonyx gives the impres

sion of live flesh: the body of Christ. When filled with wine,
transforms before the viewer as light into matter, matter into

light, the whole dematerialized by the scintillating glitter of
pending on the intensity and position of light, the body of the
chalice can glow like burning ambers (Fig. 18) or coagulate
into a deep blood color (Fig. 19). Through its changing
the deepened purple color is overwhelmed by the dazzle of

gold, suggesting the presence of divinity. Finally, as one lifts
the cup to drink the wine, the diminishing liquid gradually

reveals an enamel icon of Christ at the bottom of the bowl
(Fig. 20) .81 As it is consumed, the wine becomes visually

equated to the human body of Christ. The worshiper is
whirled through the many changes of the sardonyx under the
spectacle of light and gold, experiencing it as flesh, blood,

body, and divinity.
The late-tenth-century enamel icon of the Archangel ex
ploits the same shifting fiery vibrancy of the Byzantine por
phyreos (Figs. 13-15). The tunic and feathers of the wings play
with the mutability of Byzantine purple: the deep green of
the dalm?tica is picked up in the outer rim of the feathers,
which are followed in turn by feathers dappled in ruby red
and emerald green (Fig. 15). The spectrum of hues is ar

ranged to perform, to act like fire. The enamel could be
gold.
The word enameled in Greek, chimevtos (;\a>u.evT?<?), derives
from chimio (xvfJbeio)), "to alloy," yet it could also be phonet

ically linked to chimeo (êt/xeco), "to freeze."82 According to
the latter, the medium imitates the effect of the shimmering
and reflective surface of ice. This appearance is paradoxically

achieved through its opposite: fire. Enamel thus presents
matter purified through fire. The S. Marco icon uses a dis
semblant substance frozen through fire and dappled in cor
uscating purple and gold in order to perform the angel's
kinetic essence: a dynamic, energetic, ever-moving being
(fc?kro?, evepyov&o?, ?eiKiWjro?) .83
The polymorphy of this glittering metal and enamel is also
captured in the Greek word metallaxo (fieTaWaCo)), describ
ing metal's reaction to temperature changes.84 Metallon
(?jL Ta\X.ov) is another term used to designate gems and
mosaic cubes, again with the idea of change introduced by
surfaces (filigree, cloisonn?, and repouss?) (Figs. 13-15).

The icon changes before the gaze and touch, subtly trans
muting under the effect of ambient light. In fact, in one of
the catalog descriptions of this object, Grabar remarked that
the Archangel's image was photographed under enormous

difficulties because of the shimmering multiple reflections of
light that constantly changed the expression of the face.86

This kinetic effect of the Byzantine relief icon defies modern
photography and display and gives rise to the icon's mimesis.
A similar synesthetic vision (pikilia) emerges in the ekphra
seis of palatial churches, in whose architectural surroundings
this enamel icon resided.87 In the description provided by

Photios (ca. 810-after 893) of the Pharos church in the Great
Palace, the imaginary visitor is transfixed by the incessant
whirl of aesthetic sensations. The spectator is first enchanted
by the diversity of veins in the exterior marble revetment:

"Arresting and turning towards themselves the spectator's
gaze, they make him unwilling to move further in; but taking
his fill of the fair spectacle in the very atrium, and fixing his
eyes on the sight before him, the visitor stays as if rooted [to
the ground] with wonder."88
The approach of the interior only escalates the sensory
overload. The spectator is stirred by the diversity of shimmer
ing materials and textures:
It is as if one had entered heaven itself with no one barring
the way from any side, and was illuminated by the beauty
in all forms shining all around like so many stars, so is one
17 Homilies of John Chrysostomos, Emperor Nikephoros III
Botaneiates, 3rd quarter of the 11th century. Biblioth?que
Nationale de France, Paris, Coislin cod. gr. 79, fol. 2r (artwork
in the public domain; photograph provided by the Biblio
th?que Nationale de France, Paris)
utterly amazed. ... It seems that everything is in ecstatic

motion, and the church itself is circling around. For the
spectator, through his whirling about in all directions and
being constantly astir, which he is forced to experience by
the variegated spectacle on all sides, imagines that his

personal condition is transferred to the object.89
The rich aesthetic of scintillating gold, mosaic, silver, marble
the scintillating quality of light and the transformative nature
of metal. The icon of the Archangel exemplifies this poly

morphous substance that melts into fire and freezes into glass
before the gaze.

Pikilia (HoLKi\ia) as Synesthetic Vision
Although only a symbolic imprint, dissemblant in both form
and essence, the icon of the Archangel enacts presence. Its
light-emitting, glimmering, and shimmering surfaces imbue
this icon with life. Through its performance (mimesis) of

changing appearances, it conveys the angel's kinetic essence
of fire and spirit. The diversity of textures that appeals to
touch also gives rise to a dynamic polychromacity of matter,
surfaces, and shimmering light.85 This changing effect of
sight and touch is captured in the Greek word pikilia

(ttoikiXIol), meaning "diversity," an arresting sight of varied
and shifting sensual impressions, all gained through chang

ing colors, textures, and smells.
Pikilia is at the core of both the spectacle (mimesis) of the

enamel icon of the Archangel and the description of the
dazzling and fragrant meadow in Digenis Akritis. On the S.
Marco icon, this diversity is optically and hapticly configured
through the use of gold, enamel, glass (with hues ranging

from green to dark purple), gemstones, and a variety of metal
revetments, silks, and gemstones is orchestrated in order to

perform before the spectator a reeling vision of change. The
effect of this vision on the subject causes a reciprocal projec
tion of his or her experience back onto the object, making it
appear animate. The visitor is continuously astir, spinning
round in a whirl, sensations that arise from the polymor
phous and polychromatic vision (pikilia).
Pikilia seduces the moving eye. In trying to grasp the ob
ject, the eye, according to the extramission model of vision,
moves energetically across the surface, scanning, spinning in
an attempt to take in more of the spectacle.90 In a similar way,
the agitated spectator of the Archangel icon is dazzled by the
diversity of sensations triggered by this object. The whirling
spectacle of this mimesis makes the worshiper reproduce in

his/her own excited state the very essence of the subject
depicted in enamel: a living, energized, ceaselessly moving
angel. The spectacle of the icon equates the essence of the
being depicted to the psychological state of the subject expe
riencing the image.
These sensations are materially generated. The perfor
mance of shimmer and radiance is fulfilled on the surface of
the relief icon. The gems and gold enamel mutually reinforce
each other in creating a vision of splendor: photismos, a spec
tacle of light (Figs. 13, 14). It is in this splendor that a vision
18 Chalice of the Patriarchs, 10th

century, sardonyx glowing in amber
shades, gold enamel, 8% X 6% in.

(22 X 17 cm). Treasury of the basilica
of S. Marco, Venice (object in the
public domain; photograph provided
by the Procuratoria di San Marco,
Venice)
of paradise emerges. It is encoded in the gold repouss? and

raised filigree of the enamel revetments of icons.91 On the
Archangel icon they display vegetal and flower motifs. The
pearly dot profile of this delicate gold file coruscates, enliv
ening the background and halo of the angel with vibrant
glitter (Fig. 14).
The sparkling blossoms evoke the evergreen gardens of
paradise, for the icon is a material incarnation of the ineffa
ble paradise. This connection between Edenic gardens and
again written as an epigram for an icon: "I contemplate the

Golden Eden of the icon, which the plants fashioned by art
seem to surround the creator of Eden."93
In the icon, the verdant paradise is materially reconfigured
as gold, for both are connected through brilliance. Gold

(chrysos, ^ptxr?c) and green (chloros, ^?copo?, but especially
chloe, Âon, which means "the radiant first green of spring")
radiate light. They shimmer and sparkle. Since the Byzan

tines categorized color according to brilliance rather than
the icon's decoration is fully explained in the metric prayers
hue, fresh green (chloe) and gold were for them equivalents.
(epigrams) written on the surfaces of some Byzantine icons

(Fig. 21). They draw attention to the material gifts, silver,
gold, pearls, and gemstones, and ask in exchange for these
tangible riches to be granted a place of rest in the imagined
evergreen gardens of Eden: "give me enjoyment in the ver
dant radiant green of divine delights [deia? rpv<\rr\<; ?o?
Like the first green of spring that appears in its brightness

as gold, or the leaves of the ginkgo tree in autumn, half
golden yellow, half vibrant green, the surface of Byzantine
icons stirred the faithful to imagine in the radiance of gold
the verdant paradise of divine delights.94 Another enamel
icon of the Archangel (also in the treasury of S. Marco)
displays a more literal enameled image of Eden: a peristyle
garden with green, blue, and red blossoms set in a golden
armature (Figs. 2, 22). In its pikilia, the icon emerges as a
vision of paradise.
The image of gemstones shimmering on a glittering gold
evTpvtyav fie rp ^?o-n]."92 The shining gold on the material

surface of the icon appears as a dissemblant material vision of
the verdant paradise and the means through which to imag

ine this ineffable place of rest and delight. The same idea is
voiced in the fourteenth-century poem of Manuel Philes,
?. . vt* .wn** *.* ?'* î?t?^;^1^^^^?
?3?rfV
*r*:s*
*m*^M*
V o!* -3\\
19 Chalice of the Patriarchs, sardonyx
glowing in purple shades (object in

the public domain; photograph
provided by the Procuratoria di San
Marco, Venice)
surface appears in many of the tenth-century visions of par

adise such as the Life of Basil the Younger ( Vita Basilii Iunioris).
The floors are of immaterial gleaming gold tiles outlined by
Yet, while the synesthetic vision (pikilia) is materially gener
with an extraordinary perfume:
ated on the icon, the same spectacle is beyond the tangible in

the celestial realm. There, color exists without form, as radi
ant, self-generated light. The tents of the saints radiate with
immaterial light:
ineffable plants. The blossoms of these flowers fill the space
We came to a courtyard, which was wondrous and incom

parable. And its floor was flashing like lightning, adorned
with golden tiles, and there was no dirt at all on it, and the
And arising from there we journeyed to the abodes of the

saints; these were very, very many, not subject to enumer
air which was like lightning illuminated it, and in the joints
of those golden tiles there were flowering plants of every
ation, flashing the brightest gleam as if from the sun's rays,
sort, fragrant and abounding in fruits, beautifully culti

vated, and they were sending forth inexpressible and in
describable pleasure and joy and filling those who saw
them with divine happiness.96
and immaterially, and spiritually flashing inexplicably by

the hand of God with many colors as if of linen-white and
divine purple light.95
20 Chalice of the Patriarchs, medallion with Christ at the

bottom of the bowl (artwork in the public domain)
The table decked out for the feast, quarried of scintillating

emerald, is laid with ruby dishes framed in gold:
[The table was] 30 pech?is large, it was beautifully quarried
and constructed from emerald, emitting flashing rays, ...
and on this table there were also visible red gemstones

lying like dishes set with gold like lightning, which were
similar to all the precious stones and gold that come from
21 Enkolpion (pectoral pendant) of the Virgin with an epigram

inscribed on the frame. Basiliek van Onze Lieve Vrouwe,
Maastricht (artwork in the public domain; photograph
provided by Basiliek van Onze Lieve Vrouwe, Maastricht)
paradise.97
The angels appear in scarlet tunics with loroi radiating the
colors of paradise. On their heads they carry luminous gold
crowns:
[The servants/angels were] clad immaterially in cloaks

dyed scarlet and filled with all beauty, their feet snowy, girt
in belts like loroi with color from heaven's rainbow and
flashing like lightning, and on their heads they were wear
ing diadems of gold which were exceedingly glorious and

variegated with gems and precious pearls like sunbeams.98
The images that emerge in this vision are polymorphous,

changing their shape under flashing iridescence and radi
ance. About thirty words for light come up in this ekphrasis.
They derive from light (</>a>?: TT pL<t>o)T?(rixevo<;9 <J>o>to i?tj?,
(?HuTeiv??, </>?)to/3o?o?, (?xoTotvy??); fire (itvp: imp?iao-iia,

VTwp<?<;); ray (avy?j: (?xoTavy??, xpwavy?C?), irepiavy?C?),
?Lavy??a, ?ktx?, aKTtvoei?ff?, a?yX.% OL<rr?)p, r??MH^?yyo?) ;
sun (rf?to?: r??ux^?yyo?, ir??iaKO?); gold (xpwr??:
XpwoâTj?, xpwavyi??)) ; lightning (aorpair?}, aoTpairo
lxop<t>os, aaTpairro), e?aorpairT?)); and radiance (X.afi7rpvv?)9
In contrast to this immaterial celestial light, the tenth

century icon of Michael exploits a material splendor of light
that is reflected from the metal and glass surfaces?a photis
mos that bounces off bodies. Paradise is materially "en-fig
ured" in the Archangel's icon. An imperfect embodiment
that evokes the immaterial perfection of heaven (Figs. 1,13),
the icon falls short of the celestial exactly in its materiality.
Although the realm of paradise is ineffable, within the Vita
Basilii Iunioris, which seeks to make it tangible, an extraordi
nary effort is placed on sensual experience. All five senses are
engaged in the pikilia. This whirling vision is addressed to the
eyes, fingers, ears, mouth, and nose, but the effect is titillat
ingly invisible to sight, inaudible to hearing, intangible to
touch, and beyond taste and smell. A list of words and phrases
reveals how this immaterial pikilia affects the body: " [visions]
inexperienced; noetic; unspoken, inexpressible; unseen; im

possible to render in human words; beyond description; be
yond human reason and words; immaterial beings that can
not be held by human hands; beauty and pleasure
polymorphous and polychromatic vision (pikilia) reifies out
inexpressible by human voice and inaudible for hearing;

richly nuanced taste beyond expression and recount; fra
grance of violets and roses beyond human knowledge and
experience; perfume beyond recount; indescribable sweet
of light immaterially created.
fragrance; inexpressible sweetness."100 This synesthesis lacks
?a/uLirry?ovo?, Av^wraibc). Light conveys the ineffable es
sence of souls, buildings, and surfaces in paradise." The
The icon thus sets up a circle: a mirror reflecting the faithful
in their process of prayer and imagined response.

In Byzantine culture, the Psalms of David represent the
quintessential example of prayer. These poems, like the icon,
are corporeally experienced. Illustrated Psalter books furnish

a record of this perception. In the preface miniature of the
Khludov Psalter, sight and sound are linked (Fig. 12). Music
and writing coexist as King David strums the chords on his
lyre. The sound of his tune grows in the accompaniment of
the musicians flanking him. Two more figures appear above
the arch. One brings the audience into the space of the open
book and directs its gaze above and across the page to the
beginning of Psalm 1 on the facing folio. The other figure is
about to sound his trumpet to initiate the reading of the

Psalms. Music visually emanates from this miniature, associ
ating the act of praying with the sonorous sound of the lyre
and the imagined melodious human voice.

The image triggers the memory of a performance: a prayer
22 Detail of Fig. 2: the garden of paradise (artwork in the

public domain; photograph by Cameraphoto, provided by Art
Resource, NY)
pronounced. The sound of this performance, its music, is

then linked to the script. The letters on the page then be
come transformed from a silent string of characters to a
record of a corporeal experience of sound and sight that can
be activated the moment the lips begin to pronounce the
poem. The multisensory experience triggered by the perfor
mance of the Psalms resembles the sensual experience of
other genres of writing. For instance, in Byzantium, letters
were often sent with gifts, so that the sound of reading the
letter was linked to the smell and taste of the gifts.102 The
resulting experience was simultaneously aural, visual, tactile,
and olfactory.
The link between music and prayer, established through
the Davidic Psalms, also materializes in the epigrams of icons
(Fig. 21 ).103 Most of these poems are written in the frame of
material stimuli. Ineffable, immaterial, inaudible, testing and

teasing, this overload of sensations gains reality in the way it
is so profoundly bodily experienced, yet so beyond expres

sion and articulation.
icons, encircling and customizing the central image to re

spond to a particular request. Even when the panel does not
contain an epigram, it does not lose its music, for it continues
to avail itself of the sound of the faithful praying before it.
Poetic inscriptions are performative; they are prayers meant
The Sound of Prayer: The Circuit

While all five senses are engaged in the pikilia of paradise, this
sensorial agitation is created by ineffable stimuli. By contrast,
the icon replicates this experience through material, tangible
means. Its lush decoration and epigrams demonstrate a de

sire to imagine the ineffable. Both being a graphe, letter and
image form a prayer. While the image visualizes the perfor

mance of prayer, the epigram reinforces this action by sono
rously replicating it. The poetic inscription contributes a
visceral, material presence of sound, transforming the icon
into a sonorous body.101
The faithful's needs and wishes for help materialize in the
shape of the depicted sacred figure?in this case, the Arch
angel (Fig. 13). He is shown raising his hand in a gesture of
intercession. The Archangel not only receives the prayer of
to be pronounced, similar to high literature in Byzantium,

which was meant to be read aloud (Fig. 23).104 All epigrams
on icons are composed of twelve syllables, which means that
everyone will uniformly put the stresses at the same point,
and all prayers will create the same sonorous framework. This
repetitive, standardized form generates the prayer's perfor

mative magic, ensuring its efficacy.
Similarly, sound reverberates in the vaulted interiors of
Byzantine churches, bouncing off the curves of arches,

domes, and semidomes (Fig. 24). The same perception is
found in Photios's ekphrasis of the Pharos church: "It seems
that everything is in ecstatic motion, and the church itself is
circling around."105 Robert Nelson has recently defined the

icon's system of signification as circular and tautological.106
Byzantine architecture exploits the same circular paradigm
the faithful, but with his own stance and hand movement he
insofar as it captures meaning in the confines of the sphere:
replicates the position and action of the supplicant. Simulta

neously, the image ensures the continuation of the prayer
because the angel transfers the received request to a higher
the arch, the vault, and the dome. These spatial forms con
tinue to express Byzantium's essence as the culture of the
imprint, shaping matter by impressing its circular seal of
signification.
level and supports it through his own power of intercession.
W:??W~?
wm
''MMj
mi
i*y
?*?
23 Homilies of John Chrysostomos,
monk reading the homilies to the
emperor. Biblioth?que Nationale de
France, Paris, Coislin cod. gr. 79, fol. 1
g^fe&^
(2 bis)r (artwork iri the public domain;

photograph provided by the
:;??pp
Biblioth?que Nationale de France,
Paris)
Smell and Taste: The Transformation

The sonorous icon brings the two aspects of graphe, painting
and writing, together: graphe as the imprint of form on mat
ter. Figure and letter, one translates into scintillating light,
the other into a sound carried in space. And through the
voice bearing the melody in space, the sense of taste emerges.
As Theodore Hyrtakenos wrote in a letter to his friend in the
fourteenth century: "gazing at the letter, I feel I see you in
front of me and fill up with your sweet traits like honey, I hear
the echo of the musical tones of this wonder."107 This con
nection between the pleasure of reading/hearing the voice of

the writer, drinking, and music is a topos in letter writing.108
The oral performance of letters and prayers (epigrams) de
pends on a multisensory experience.109 In both cases, it tries
to reconstitute presence of an absent entity through sensual
stimuli. In the case of letters, this absent referent is the writer.
In the case of prayers, it is the invisible and intangible God.

For the Byzantines, empsychos graphe becomes the performa
tive image/writing that stirs the five senses and triggers syn
esthesis.
A similar synesthetic experience of hearing and taste
emerges in the vision of the Vita Basilii Iunioris. The souls of
the saints are gathered at an Edenic symposium. They pass

around a glowing chalice with a nectar of ambrosia. Drinking
this divine substance, the face of each participant transforms
into the gleam of budding roses:
The mixed wine in those immaterial and sun-bright cups

was gleaming intensely like burning hot coals, and when
someone received in his hands that wondrous and flashing
cup, filled with nectar of ambrosia and brought it near his
own mouth to drink, he was filled with the sweetness of the
Holy Spirit.. .. His face gleamed and he was more illumi

nated, like a rose emerging from the calyx.110
The synesthetic experience described in Vita Basilii Iunioris

could also be demonstrated by the Eucharist cup at S. Marco.
It can show how sight, touch, and sound could be linked to

smell and taste (Figs. 18, 19). An inscription is enameled on
the golden rim. The letters imprinted on the metal surface
announce: "Drink ye all of it, for this is my blood of the New
Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins"
psalter easily and quickly and had learnt the whole of it by

heart in a few days.113
According to Paul Speck, the excerpt about the icon that

caused the sensation of honey after the saint had prayed to it
was interpolated in this passage during Iconoclasm: the asso

ciation of the icon with psalms and prayer was established
during that period.114
The panel becomes the channel of direct divine response.
The role of the icon is equated to the effect of prayer. Sacred
presence translates into the sensation of honey in the mouth

of the faithful. Like the Davidic poems, the sonorous icon
triggers the sense of taste: the sweetness of honey. At the
same time, the reference to honey in the Psalms (Pss. 18:11,
118:103) indicates the moment when God's voice directly
reaches the supplicant and grants him or her forgiveness.
Similarly, in the climactic moment of the liturgy, the Com
munion, the supplicant is exhorted with Psalms 33:8: "taste
and see that God is good."115 Taste leads to participatory
knowledge of God.
Saint Theodore of Sykeon participates in the sweetness of
God. The verb used, "partake" (metalamvano, fJi TOikafx?av(o), is
usually associated with the Eucharist.116 It refers to this trans

formative moment when the worshiper loses his or her iden
tity, dissolving into the sacred presence and sharing in the

sacred essence. The performance of the icon is equated to
24 Domed interior of the monastery church of Hosios Loukas,
Greece, late 10th century (photograph by Erich Lessing,
provided by Art Resource, NY)
that of the bread and wine transformed into body and blood
during the liturgy. This metamorphosis of the icon, or better,
this metamorphosis of the worshiper takes place in the pro

cess of prayer. He or she then projects this experience (path
ema, 7r?0T)/xa) back onto the icon.
(Matt. 26:27-28).m As these words are pronounced and the

lips touch the surface of the chalice, the wine fills up the
mouth. Then words become body. Sounds become taste and
smell. The recipient of the wine, agitated in the synesthetic
vision (pikilia) of these corporeal sensations, becomes trans
formed in this climactic moment of the liturgy. The partici
pation in the Eucharist replicates the metamorphosis de
scribed in the vision of Vita Basilii Iunioris where the saints'
faces alight as they feel the sweetness of the Holy Spirit after
imbibing the nectar of ambrosia.

In a similar way, the hands touching the icon and the lips
kissing its surface link words with taste. The textures of the
icon trigger a synesthesis: sight, touch, hearing, smell, and
taste are engaged simultaneously. This experiential knowl
edge of God, this intuition of presence is achieved through
an almost Eucharistie experience of the icon.
An account of such a spectacle of senses is found in the Life
of Saint Theodore of Sykeon (d. 613) (Vita Theodori Syceotae).112
The saint, frustrated in his attempt to learn all the Psalms,
resorts to an icon of Christ. After praying for help, he expe
riences the taste of honey in his mouth, followed by his
miraculous new ability to learn all the Psalms by heart in a
matter of days:
For as the boy got up from the ground and turned to the
icon of our Savior in prayer, he felt a sweetness more
pleasant than honey poured into his mouth. He recog

nized the grace of God, partook of the sweetness and gave
thanks to Christ, and from that hour on he memorized the
Sight and touch, triggered by proskynesis (prostration, ven
eration, prayer) and aspasmos (kiss) give rise to sound in the

enunciation of prayer. Sound in turn precipitates the sensa
tion of taste and smell. The olfactory experience of the icon
is more difficult to gauge, yet it is linked to taste and the
Eucharistie ritual and stems from the integration of the icon
in the liturgical rite. Incense burning accompanies prayer. As
Susan Harvey has argued, the smoke of incense provides a

visual and olfactory bridge between the human and divine
spheres. Like taste, incense affords a participatory, experien
tial approach to God. Divine knowledge becomes sensorially

apprehended through the body.
This sensual aspect of the Byzantine rite is fully integrated
in the way the icon operates. Like taste, smell engages es

sence, not appearance, and this ensures divine knowledge.
Smell is affective yet intangible. While burning, incense be
comes transformed from material substance into smoke: an
ineffable yet sensorially present essence. As such, smell be
comes a perfect means through which to experience divine
presence: intangible yet palpably present through the olfac
tory sense.117
Perfumes, incense, and spices traditionally accompanied

imperial and liturgical ceremonies.118 It is in such aromatic
settings that luxury icons like the enameled panel of Arch
angel Michael performed. The sweet smells are part of the
synesthetic vision (pikilia), which is addressed to the partici
pant. The Book of Ceremonies reveals many instances where a
variety of smells and spices are distributed to the court, or are
carried by the crowd, or simply waft in the ceremonial
THE PERFORMATIVE ICON 55!
space.119 The most elaborate account appears in the section
way, the icon uncovers a divine vision by giving it a material
on imperial military campaigns. The extensive list of aromat
being?textures that can be grasped and sensorially experi
ics includes "ointments, various perfumes, mastic, frankin

cense, sachar, saffron, musk, amber, bitter aloes moist and
enced. Its rich surfaces function as the material veil affirming
dry, pure ground cinnamon of first and second quality, cin

namon wood, and other perfumes."120 This rich assortment
served a variety of functions: medicinal, political, even diplo
matic, because some of these rare scents and spices were
the presence of the intangible underneath. The icon as sur

face becomes the sensual "givenness" of absence. It rises as
the saturated phenomenon synesthetically performing the
invisible and intangible to the faithful.127
In its original context, the icon's instability, polymorphy of
offered as gifts. This fascination with aromatics betrays the
shimmering light, reverberating sound, and redolent fra
sensually rich environment in which both the imperial and
grance imbue it with life, making it an empsychos, an "inspir
liturgical ceremonies were set.

Unlike our contemporary olfactory neutrality in regard to
ited" image. The Byzantine icon is dependent on a living

body in space in order to perform. The object reconstitutes
power, authority in Byzantium was linked to aromatic
itself before the human gaze, touch, hearing, smell, and taste.
scents.121 The enamel icon at S. Marco with its imperial attire
This mimesis of surfaces changing by the shifts in ambient

light, air, smells, and sounds creates a synesthetic vision
of the Archangel and the court chapel in which it resided

likely shared the same aromatized air of scents, perfumes,
incense, and spices (Fig. 13). Power in the Middle Ages

manifests itself in a complex synesthetic vision (pikilia).122
These fragrances also enhanced the sensual effect of the

panel. Moreover, the elaborate golden filigree and enameled
lozenges with flowers conjure an image of the fragrant gar
dens of the palace and of paradise (Fig. 21). Similarly, the
Greek word usually employed to designate "colors" is flowers
(avOa). The polychromatic surface of the enameled icon is,

in Greek, "enflowered": virtually filled with the complex per
fume of fragrant blossoms. The visual and haptic aspects of

the icon subtly tease out through form and color the memory
of aroma wafting into space. This perfume, imagined or real,
brings to the faithful the scent of salvation.123
A Circle Completed
As the worshiper approaches the icon and begins praying, the
five senses alight. These corporeal pleasures trigger an intu

ition of sacred presence. While sight, touch, and sound stem
from matter and perform the appearance of the divine, smell
and taste engage the essence and make possible a participa

tory, sensorial experience of the holy. Both taste and smell
are embedded in the liturgy. The icon operates like other
liturgical objects, such as the Eucharist chalice of the Patri
archs at S. Marco. As wine pours from the cup, sight, touch,
and sound transform into smell and taste. Taste itself be

comes the seal or affirmation of participatory knowledge of
God.124
As a result of the performance/mimesis of the icon, this

materially triggered synesthetic pleasure experienced by the
faithful leads to something like Eucharistie transformation.
Sight, touch, and sound, the three aspects of the experience
of graphe, display a vision of paradise and present a prayer.
Taste and smell form the answer to this request and provide
a proleptic access to divine delight. The circle of human
request and divine response is completed, preserving the
Byzantine tautological, closed system of signification. The
icon's magic thus resides in the circular dynamic it elicits.125
This dynamic begins with the icon's surface, with its con
centration of rich materiality?an excess of materiality that
paradoxically reveals a vision of the immaterial. The concept
of the icon as surface resembles Martin Heidegger's defini
tion of truth. Starting with the Greek word alithia or alathia
(a-, without, lathia, covering, aAfjfleia, akaQeia), he argues
that truth is the unconcealedness of being.126 In a similar
(pikilia) that affects the faithful. This performance inundates
and saturates the human corporeal apprehension. The effect

of sight and touch is coupled with hearing and smell. The last
sense to be activated is taste. Through it emerges the climax:
the metamorphosis. It is in this crucial moment that the

individual, the corporeal, and the tangible dissolve into a
spiritual vision of partaking in the sacred. This sensual, phys
ical agitation (ir?Qîia) experienced by the faithful is simul

taneously transferred onto the object. The icon becomes an
empsychos graphe. From being a mere imprint of visual char
acteristics, a materially reified absence, the performative icon
thus stages the most sensually rich experience of divine pres
ence.
Bissera V. Pentcheva is assistant professor at Stanford University.

Her work focuses on medieval image theory and Byzantine icons. Her
hook Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium

(Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) explores the interaction
between imperial power and the cult of Mary [Department of Art and
Art History, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305, bissera@

stanford.edu].
Notes
This article presents an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Sensual Splendor:
The Icon in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press).
Unless otherwise indicated, translations from the Greek are mine.
1. For the definition of icon as a portable devotional object, see Ernst

Kitzinger, "The Cult of Icons in the Age before Iconoclasm," Dumbar
ton Oaks Papers 8 (1954): 83-150; and most recently Thomas Mathews,
"Isis and Mary in Early Icons," in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions
of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot, U.K.: Ash
gate, 2005), 3-9. Another, broader definition, which includes repre

sentations in all media, from frescoes and mosaics to coins, is also
current in Byzantine studies. Yet it is problematic, for many of the
images included in this definition, especially monumental painting

and mosaic, preclude the intimate engagement of proskynesis (reveren
tial bowing) and aspasmos (kiss) that is tied up with the identity of a
Byzantine icon. This broader use of the term arose from Otto De
mus's concept of "spatial icons"; Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration:
Aspects of Monumental Art in Byzantium (London: K. P. T. Trubner,
1948; reprint, New York: A. Caratzas, 1993).
2. Bissera V. Pentcheva, "Epigrams on Icons," in Art and Text in Byzantine
Culture, ed. Liz James (New York: Cambridge University Press, forth
coming) .
3. Earlier studies on sensual apprehension in medieval art focused on

the depiction of the five senses, such as Carl Nordenfalk, "The Five
Senses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art," fournal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 48 (1985): 1-22. By contrast, recent work has
drawn attention to the sensual effect of art and architecture: Liz
James, "Sense and Sensibility in Byzantium," Art History 27, no. 4
(2004): 523-37; and Rico Franses, '"When All That Is Gold Does Not
Glitter," in Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium; Studies Pre
sented to Robin Cormack, ed. Anthony Eastmond and Liz James (Alder
shot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2003), 13-24. See also the collection of essays /
cinque sensi, ed. Natalie Blanchardi, Micrologus, vol. 10 (Florence: Sis
mel, 2002).
4. Dominique D. Poirel, ed., L'abb? Suger, le manifeste gothique de Saint

Denis et la pens?e victorine (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001); Conrad Rudolph,
Artistic Change at St.-Denis: Abbot Suger's Program and the Early Twelfth
Century Controversy over Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990); and Jean-Claude Bonne, "Pens?e de l'art et pens?e th?o
logique dans les ?crits de Suger," in Artistes et philosophes: ?ducateurs?
ed. Christian Descamps (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1994), 13
50.
5. No systematic study of vision in Byzantium exists. This is a subject that

needs to be addressed in the future. Robert Nelson's pioneering essay
suggests that while both intromission and extramission were known in By
zantium, extramission appears to be the dominant prism through

which vision was perceived to operate. Nelson, "To Say and to See:
Ekphrasis and Vision in Byzantium," in Visuality before and beyond the
Renaissance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143-68;

and Gervase Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics (London: John Murray,
1963), 29-31. For ancient Greek thought on vision, see David Lind
berg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1976), 1-17.
6. Sight as touch resonates with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's ideas ex

pressed in "The Intertwining?the Chiasm," in Merleau-Ponty, The
Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press,
1968), 130-55.
7. The revetted icon is explored at length in Bissera V. Pentcheva, Sen

sual Splendor: The Icon in Byzantium, forthcoming. For preliminary find
ings, see Pentcheva, "Epigrams on Icons"; and Glenn Peers, Sacred
Shock: Framing Visual Experience in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsyl
vania State University Press, 2004), 101-31.
8. Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given: Towards a Phenomenology of Givenness,

trans. Jeffrey Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). I
thank Robert Harrison for introducing me to this work.
9. Only isolated voices have expressed concern about the draining of

the icon's meaning when subjected to the standard museum display.
See Sharon Gerstel, "The Aesthetics of Orthodox Faith," Art Bulletin
87 (2004): 331-41, esp. 332.

10. For the Byzantine definition of mimesis as performance, see the article
by Eustratios Papaioannou on the self-fashioning of Michael Psellos in
Performing Byzantium, ed. Margaret Mullett (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate,
forthcoming).
11. Concepts that are again surprisingly close to the notion of the embod
iment of ideas and the interaction of viewer and viewed are in Mer
leau-Ponty, "The Intertwining," 130-55.
12. Pavel Florensky, "The Church Ritual as a Synthesis of the Arts"
(1918), in Beyond Vision: Essays on the Perception of Art / Pavel Florensky,
trans. Wendy Salmond, ed. Nicoletta Misler (London: Reaktion,
2002), 95-111.
66), vol. 100, col. 357D: "En tj ypa<j>i) t? crc?iiariK?v eXSo? r?V
ypa(j)ovevov 7Tap?o-Tr?cri, o-^rfjLia te Kai fxop^v avr?v
evrvTTovpievr} Kai tj]v kyn^?peiav.
21. Theodore of Stoudios, Antirrheticus II, sec. 11, in PG, vol. 99, col.
357D: ri?vTC?c ?? tj eiKOiv tj ?7]fXLovpyov[jL?v% fX Ta(f) poii?vr} arrb rov^
TTpC?TOTVTTOV, T7)V b?JLO?(?(TlV 6L? TT/V V?.TfV e'i'?TJê KUl /XeTeCT^Ke T??
XOLpaKTffpo? ?ke?vov ?l? Tff? T?T? T6XV?TOV ?iavoia? Kai x LP0<>
vaTT?ixay?xa' ovt(o? b ?wypaQo?- ovt?o? 6 kidoykvQo?, ovtw? ? t?v

Xp?xreov Kai t?v x???.k ov avbpi?vTa 8T)iuovpy6$v, eXa?ev v\j\v,
?ireT?ev el? to 7Tp?)T?TVTrov, otve\a?e ro?? reQeu)py)fxevov t?v tvttov
kva7r (T(f)payiaaTo t??tov kv Tff v^-XI
22. For instance, the famous icon of the "usual miracle" at the Blachernai
Church of the Virgin in Constantinople was always covered with a silk
veil. When on some Fridays the Holy Spirit allegedly descended on
the image, this veil lifted itself to reveal the animated (empsychos) im
age of the Virgin beneath. Bissera V. Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The
Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univer
sity Press, 2006), 154-60. See also idem, "The Performance of Relics,"
in Mullett, Performing Byzantium.
23. For the wide use of seals in Byzantine society, see Gary Vikan and
John Nesbitt, Security in Byzantium: Locking, Sealing and Weighing,
Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, 2 (Washington, D.C: Dum
barton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Trustees for Harvard Uni
versity, 1980).
24. A. Karakatsanes, ed., Treasures of Mount Athos (Thessaloniki: Organiza

tion for the Cultural Capital of Europe, 1997), 508, cat. no. 13.1.
25. Herbert Kessler, "Configuring the Invisible by Copying the Holy
Face," in The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, ed. Kessler and
Gerhard Wolf, Villa Spelman Colloquia, 6 (Bologna: Nuovo Alfa,
1998), 129-51, reprinted in Kessler, Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God's

Invisibility in Medieval Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2000), 64-87.
26. The way the icon self-consciously draws attention to matter, thus can
celing any claims for the presence of sacred energy (essence), resem
bles the way images were fashioned and displayed in the Latin West
before 1140. See Herbert Kessler, "Real Absence: Early Medieval Art
and the Metamorphosis of Vision," in Morfologie sociali e culturali in
Europa fra tarda antichit? e alto medioevo, 2 vols., Settimane di Studio
del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 45 (Spoleto: Centro

Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 1998), vol. 2, 1157-213, re
printed in Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 104-48.

27. Kessler, Spiritual Seeing. See also idem, Seeing Medieval Art (Toronto:
Broadview Press, 2004).
28. For a discussion of Western culture's privileging of sight, see Martin

Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century Thought
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1-148. I thank Lela

Graybill for introducing this study to me.
29. The expression "to touch with the eyes and lips*' is recorded in the
liturgical treatise of the Mandylion, mid-tenth century. See Ernst von
Dobschutz, Christusbilder: Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende, 3 vols.
(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1899), 112**.
13. For an understanding of empsychos graphe as images inhabited by the
Holy Spirit or as pictorial equivalents to figures of speech, see Bissera

V. Pentcheva, "The Icon of the 'Usual Miracle' at the Blachernai,"
Res: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 38 (2000): 34-55; and idem,
"Visual Textuality: The Logos as Pregnant Body and Building," Res 45
(2004): 225-38.
14. Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in

Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
15. Ibid., 70-81.

16. Oskar Wulff, Die Koimesiskirche in Nic?a und ihre Mosaiken (Strassburg:
Heitz und M?ndel, 1903); and Theodor Schmit, Die Koimesis-Kirche von
Nikaia: Das Bauwerk und die Mosaiken (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1927).
17. Wulff, Die Koimesiskirche in Nic?a, 246, 271; and Schmit, Die Koimesis
Kirche von Nikaia, 39, described the ray as gray (grau and hellgrau).
Most likely the tesserae were silver, still covered in soot and dirt, hav
ing lost their luster and shimmer. Only metal could have created the
glimmer and flicker in the early morning light that would have actual
ized the prophecy of the mosaic inscription into a visual reality: "I
have begotten thee in the womb before the morning star" (Ps. 109:3).
For a discussion of the Incarnation symbolism at Nikaia, see Cyril
Mango, "The Chalkoprateia Annunciation and the Pre-eternal Logos,"
Deltion tes Christianikes Archaiologikes Hetaireias 17, no. 4 (1993-94):
165-70.
18. Barber, Figure and Likeness, 72-81.
19. Ibid., 107-23.
20. Patriarch Nikephoros, Antirrheticus II, in Patrolog?a cursus completus: Se

ries graeca (hereafter, PG), ed.J.-P. Migne, 161 vols. (Paris: Migne, 1857
30. See n. 21 above.

31. Barber, Figure and Likeness, 107-37.
32. Paul the Silentiary, "Descriptio Sanctae Sophiae," in Prokop. Werke, ed.
Otto Veh, 5 vols. (Munich: Heimeran, 1977), vol. 5, 306-58, esp.
340-42, lines 691-720; trans. Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Em
pire 312-1453 (1986; reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1993), 87-88. See also S. Xydis, "The Chancel Barrier, Solea, and
Ambo of Hagia Sophia," Art Bulletin 29 (1947): 1-24.
33. Vita Basilii Imperatoris, bk. 5, sec. 83, in Theophanes continuatus, ed. Im
manuel Bekker, Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (hereafter

CSHB), 33 (Bonn: Impensis ed. Weberi, 1838), 326; trans. Mango, The
Art of the Byzantine Empire, 194. The sanctuary, synthronon, altar tables,
templon barrier, and epistyle were all covered in gilded-silver re

pouss? work and adorned with pearls and gems.
34. Vita Basilii Imperatoris, bk. 5, sec. 87, in Bekker, Theophanes continuatus,
330; trans. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 196.
35. Marie-France Auz?py, "La destruction de l'ic?ne du Christ de la

Chalc? de L?on III: Propagande ou r?alit?," Byzantion 60 (1990): 445
92; Robin Cormack, "Women and Icons, and Women in Icons," in
Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium (London: Routledge,
1997), 24-51; Leslie Brubaker, "The Chalke Gate, the Construction of
the Past, and the Trier Ivory," Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 23
(1999): 258-85; and Cyril Mango, The Brazen House: A Study of the Ves
tibule of the Imperial Palace of Constantinople (Copenhagen: B. L. Bog
trykkeri, 1959), 108-42.

36. Auz?py, "La destruction de l'ic?ne du Christ de la Chalc?," 445-92.
37. Philip Grierson, Catalogue of Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Col
lection and in the Whittemore Collection, 5 vols. (1966; reprint, Washing
ton, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks, 1992), vol. 3, pt. 1, 160-61, 454-55.
Mass.: MIT Press, 1990); and Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant Vimage:

Question pos?e aux fins d'une histoire de l'art (Paris: ?ditions de Minuit,
1990).
58. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexikon, s.v. "typos."
endon Press, 1968). See also Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spaw
59. In the eyes of outsiders Byzantium has been identified correctly as the
culture of the imprint. See the recent discussion of Alexander Nagel
and Christopher Wood, "Interventions: Toward a New Model of Re
naissance Anachronism," Art Bulletin 87 (2005): 403-15, esp. 407 and
note 28 (referring to the writings of Theodore of Stoudios).
forth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University
60. Konstantinos Manaphes, ed., Sinai: Treasures of the Monastery of Saint
38. The Greek word chalkeos (x?AKeos) does not distinguish between cop
per and bronze. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, eds., Greek
English Lexikon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); and Liddell, Scott,
and H. Stuart Jones, Greek-English Lexicon: A Supplement (Oxford: Clar
Press, 1996), s.v. "bronze."
Catherine (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1990), 140-46, nos. 6-7, 10-15;
39. Mango, The Brazen House, 108-42, esp. 116.

40. The second source, the Chronographia of Theophanes, simply states:
"They also killed a few of the emperor's men who had taken down
the Lord's icon which was [set] above the great Bronze Gates,"
Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. Immanuel Bekker, 2 vols., CSHB, 41
42, vol. 1, 623; trans, and ed. Cyril Mango and Robert Scott, The
Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD
284-813 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 559.
41. Vita Stephani Iunioris, bk. 10, in La vie d'Etienne le Jeune par Etienne le
Diacre, trans, and ed. Marie-France Auz?py, Birmingham Byzantine

and Ottoman Monographs, 3 (Aldershot, U.K: Variorum, 1997), 100:
'ev ToirroL? oiw eôixnariKO? ?pa??iievo? tff? aip?creaj?, ireip?tTai
TrapevOv rr}v ? o-7Totiktjv eiK?va XpiaTd??To??(deoi?r}iL&v ri)v
iopv?jL6vriv virepdev tQv ?acrikiK?iv ttvXQv, ev olcnrep ?i? t?v
XapaKTrfpa 7] ?yia Xo??.kt? keyerai, KareveyKai kql? rrvpi
irapaot?vPai.
42. Auz?py has offered a similar translation in La vie d'Etienne le Jeune,
193.
43. Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. Bekker, vol. 1, 439-40: ev ?x?q:

KOipL?)yL VOV CiVTCfi} 6??6V OTnOKJlCtV, i? TTp ^??K'?fV TwXj]V T?V
TTOtkOLTLOV V T^f LK?VL T?? (T?)Tr]pO<? eOiVTOV 7Tap OT?T?!, KCi? kdOV
Trapecrrc?TOL avrtj^' k ? (?xuvt) yeyove ck TotrâpaKTffpo? roi)
liey?\ov dedv Ka? auyfrfpos thaGjv 'lâduXpiar?i? keyovaa. The

sense of an icon in metal relief is lost in Mango's and Scott's
translation, The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 410.

44. Scriptores Originum Constantinopolitarum, 2 vols., ed, Theodor Preger
(Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1901), vol. 2, 219: ev rff keyofx?vxi Xa?Ktf
and Kurt Weitzmann, The Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai:

The Icons (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), nos. 50ff; with
a recent revision of the dating of some of these icons in Leslie
Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca. 680
850): The Sources; An Annotated Survey, Birmingham Byzantine and Ot
toman Monographs, 7 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2001).
61. See Antonio Pasini, II tesoro di San Marco in Venezia, 2 vols. (Venice:
F. Ongania, 1886), vol. 1, 73-74, cat. no. 4; Michelangelo Muraro and

Andr? Grabar, Treasures of Venice (Milan: Skira, 1963), 65-69; Klaus
Wessel, Byzantine Enamels from the Fifth to the Thirteenth Century (Green
wich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1968), 89-91, cat. no. 28;
Grabar, catalog entry in // tesoro di San Marco, ed. H. R. Hahnloser
(Florence: Sansoni, 1971), 25-26, cat. no. 17; and The Treasury of San
Marco (Milan: Olivetti, 1984), 141-47, cat. no. 12. The central plaque
is dated to the late tenth century. The transverse bands are Byzantine,
as are the enamels, but they no longer form their original sequence.
The outside frame is Venetian, thirteenth century. The reverse side is
possibly Byzantine; the cross is part of the original back of the icon.
The medallions are out of sequence. The daisy-pattern frame around
the plaque with the cross is modern.
62. Glenn Peers, Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium, Transfor
mation of the Classical Heritage, 32 (Berkeley: University of Califor

nia Press, 2001), 167-71, 177, 191.
63. Muraro and Grabar, Treasures of Venice, 65.

64. Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Ang?lico: Dissemblance and Figuration,
trans. J. M. Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3, 5,
45-60.
OTTJATJ XahK*?? ^\v TC??? KVplOV 7]jJiiuV TTjaO^XpiOT?tT TTCip? TOIT
65. Patriarch Nikephoros, Apologeticus pro sacris imaginibus, in PG, vol. 100,
col. 777C: r?? tBv imepovpav??ov ovv?fie?ov evTVTrcuTLK?iq cru/ui?oAotc
eiKoov T?iT Xpio-Totr ?vi(TTop7)dr) trapa E?pr)vr?<; Trf? 'Adiqvaias.
66. Alois Riegl, "Late Roman or Oriental," in Abis Riegl: German Essays on
Art History, ed. Gert Schiff, the German Library, 79 (New York: Con
tinuum, 1988), 173-90, esp. 181: "Whereas the optical qualities disap
pear in the dark, the tactile qualities remain. Extent and delimitation
are thus the more objective qualities, color and light the more subjec
tive ones, for the latter depend to a great degree on those chance
circumstances in which the perceiving subject finds itself."
puey?kov Kcjvo-ravT?vov KTiad?l& ? de Kecav o TTcnj)p to?T

Ka?akkivov ravrr)v Kcnr\yayev. 'H be vvv ?i? if/riî?wv bpejpi?viq
45. Mango, The Brazen House, 108-9. Albrecht Berger has also translated
the passage using "bronze statue." Yet, relying on the evidence of the
Life of Saint Stephen the Younger, he has suggested that the original
Chalke image was a bronze relief, which was replaced after 843 by a
mosaic. Berger, Untersuchungen zu den Patria Konstantinupoleos, Poikila
Byzantina, 8 (Bonn: Dr. Rudolf Habelt, 1988), 252-55.
6K(j)aivea6aL. See Peers, Subtle Bodies, 89-125, esp. 113.
46. Patriarch Methodios, epigram for the Chalkites icon, in Mango, The
67. Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks, and Shrouds
47. Michaelis Glycae Annales, ed. Immanuel Bekker (Bonn: Impensis ed.
68. Suidae lexicon, ed. A. Adler, Lexicographi Graeci, 1, 4 vols. (1928-38;

reprint, Leipzig: Teubner, 1971), vol. 4, 828-29: tovto 8? ?art to
Xpf?p<a' t? y?p ev tyf emp?vela xp?l?a t?vto ?ori t? bpaT?v, Kai
TOVTOv al ?if/eic avTika\x?avovTai. The passage is discussed in Liz
Brazen House, 126-27: odev irepiypatytov ere kol? yp?<?)0)v tOttol?.
Weberi, 1836), 623.
48. Basil of Caesarea, De Sancto Spirito 18.45, 45, in PG, vol. 32, col. 69D;
and John of Damaskos, De imaginibus, I, in PG, vol. 94, col. 1264A;
both are discussed in Barber, Figure and Likeness, 74-76, 122.
49. In fact, the medallion image came to be understood as the canonical

icon of Christ already in the late seventh century. See Kathleen Corri
gan, "The Witness of John the Baptist on an Early Byzantine Icon in
Kiev," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988): 1-11, esp. 10.
50. Marfa V. Scepkina, Miniatjury Khludovskoi Psaltyri (Moscow: Isskustvo,
1977); and Kathleen Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Byz
antine Psalters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). There
are roughly seventeen depictions of icons, fourteen of which display
the image in a medallion shape. Only three show a rectangular icon;

two of these depict Saint Peter, the other the Virgin and Child.
51. Corrigan, Visual Polemics, 131-34.
(London: Reaktion, 1997), 26-27.
James, Light and Color in Byzantine Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1996), 74-75.
69. Liz James, "Color and Meaning in Byzantium," Journal of Early Chris
tian Studies 11, no. 2 (2003): 223-33.
70. Book of Gifts and Rarities: Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf trans, and ed.
Ghada al Hijjawi al-Qaddumi, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs,

29 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), no. 62 (a belt
with gold enamel), no. 73 (rock crystal vessels caged in gold enamel,
gemstones, and pearls), no. 82 (enamel vessels), no. 86 (enameled
gold vessels), no. 97 (enamel bracelets).
71. Ibid., no. 97.

72. Digenis Akritis, trans, and ed. Elizabeth Jeffreys, Cambridge Medieval
52. For the evolution of processions with icons, see Pentcheva, Icons and
Power, 37-59.
53. Ibid., 109-43.

54. Pliny, Natural History bk. 35, lines 64-66.
55. On Painting/Leon Battista Alberti, 1436, trans. Cecil Grayson (London:
Penguin, 1991).
56. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study of the Psychology of Pictorial
Representation (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960).

57. Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1983), 163; Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Ob
server: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge,
Classics, 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1.164

(gilded spear with blue enamel), 4.220-22 (golden hems enameled
with pearls), 4.239-40 (saddle and bridle), 6.555 (saddle and reins).
73. Digenis Akritis 7.28-29: t?l Xa iracrTpaTTTOvTa xpoGv etyov 0ak?aar?<;
/ ev yakr\vr\ Wo ? tttt]<? aakevo?JLevr)<; avpa?.
74. Digenis Akritis 7.23-27: o AeijLLwv </>ca?p?<? edakke t?Sv 8?v?po)v
mroKaTu) / TroiK?kr)v eycov TT)v xpo?v, toT$ avQediv aCTTpaTTTCuV, / Ta
li?v v?)07] v?pKMj&a, p?oa Te Kai ?ivpaivai' / Ta p??a yff? eTvyxavov

Trop(j)vpo?a(j)o<; KO0710?, / y?kaKTO? e&TLk?ov xpo?v o? v?pKiaaou ev
fiepet.
75. Dominic Janes, God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 126. "Jeweled inflation" refers to the appropri
ation of imperial splendor in church ritual in the course of the fourth

century.
76. 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), cat. nos. 143 (Coislin 79), 149
(Auxerre silk), with bibliography. For Auxerre, see also Danielle Ga
borit-Chopin, ed., La France Romane au temps des premiers Cap?tiens
(987-1152) (Paris: Mus?e du Louvre/?ditions Hazan, 2005), no. 128.
77. For a similar use of the dazzling effect of gold to emphasize power
and divinity, see Janes, God and Gold, 3, 23, 26-27, 84-86, 89, 121,
139-52. See also Peers, Sacred Shock, 107-17, 126-31; and Franses,
"When All That Is Gold," 13-24.
78. On Byzantine purple, see Alexander Kazhdan, ed., Oxford Dictionary of
Byzantium, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), vol. 3,
1759-60, with bibliography. For the association of purple with gold
and the link it preserved between imperial power and divinity, see
Janes, God and Gold, 20-21, 28, 37, 84, 86, 89, 129-30, 150-51.
79. James, Light and Color, 50, 74, 99. For porphyreos and pyravges, see also
the entries in Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon.
80. The Treasury of San Marco, 159-65, cat. no. 16; and Wessel, Byzantine
Enamels, 72-73, no. 20.
81. In fact, by the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, usually only the
patriarch and the emperor would continue to receive Communion
directly from the chalice. Robert Taft, "Byzantine Communion
Spoons: A Review of the Evidence," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996):
209-38. Thus, the chalice's exquisite synesthetic experience was re
served for the select few. Political power in Byzantium translated into
the fullness of sensual delight.
82. On a twelfth-century icon from Sinai, an image of the Virgin is identi

fied as êi/iei/n], a word that conflates the roots of both "to alloy"
and "to freeze." For this icon, see George Sotiriou and Maria Sotiriou,
Eikones tes mones Sina, 2 vols., Collection de l'Institut Fran?ais
d'Ath?nes, 100 (Athens: Institut Fran?ais d'Ath?nes, 1956-58), vol. 1,
125-28, vol. 2, figs. 146-49; and Nicolette Trahoulia, "The Truth in
Painting: A Refutation of Heresy in a Sinai Icon," Jahrbuch der ?ster
reichischen Byzantinistik 52 (2002): 271-85.
83. Patriarch Nikephoros on the nature of cherubims, in PG, vol. 100,
col. 776D.
84. Eve Borsook, "Rhetoric and Reality: Mosaics as Expressions of Meta

physical Idea," Mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 44,
no. 1 (2002): 3-18, esp. 4-5; John Gage, Color and Culture: Practice and
Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1993),
39-64; and Franses, "When All That Is Gold," 13-24. So far, the dis
cussion has focused only on mosaics. Yet enamel presents the same
polymorphous glitter and privileges dazzle over hue.
85. Pikilia (ttoikiXiol) has a long tradition in Byzantium. Already in late

antiquity, ordinary body remains were transformed into spiritual ob
jects (relics) by being staged in sensually enhanced environments. See
Patricia Cox Miller, "'The Little Blue Flower Is Red': Relics and the
Poetizing of the Body," Journal of Early Christian Studies 8 (2000): 213
36.
86. Grabar, catalog entry in Hahnloser, II tesoro di San Marco, 25.

87. In Byzantium, ekphrasis presents a description of a building written
and received from the point of view of a subject moving through
space. Oskar Wulff, "Das Raumerlebnis des Naos im Spiegel der Ek
phrasis," Byzantinische Zeitschrift $? (1929-30): 531-39; and Ruth
Webb, "The Aesthetics of Sacred Space: Narrative, Metaphor, and Mo

tion in Ekphraseis of Church Buildings," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53
(1999): 59-74. On the creation of the visual equivalent of this genre
of literature in the twelfth century, see Pentcheva, "Visual Textuality,"
225-38.
88. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 185; Photios, Homily X, sec. 4,
90. On the concept of the moving eye in extramission, see Mathew, Byz
antine Aesthetics, 30. On the wandering gaze in ekphraseis, see Wulff,
"Das Raumerlebnis des Naos," 534-35.
91. Pentcheva, "Epigrams on Icons"; and Jannic Durand, "Precious-Metal

Icon Revetments," in Byzantium: Faith and Power, 1261-1557, ed.
Helen C. Evans (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), 243
51.
92. Spyridon Lambros, "O MapKiavos k&?l? 524," Neos Hellenomnemon 8

(1911): nos. 73, 109. For a discussion of the role of these metric
prayers, see Pentcheva, "Epigrams on Icons."
93. Manuelis Philae Carmina, ed. Emmanuel Miller (Amsterdam: Hakkert,
1967), vol. 1, 65-66: Xpv&ffv de pG? tt/i> JE?e/x Tff? eiK?vos, / ev tjt?
(f)vT?: TexvLKB? rfpfxoo-fx?va / boKoVcri KVKkoVv Tf/? JE??p< t?v
epy?TT\v. Discussed in Andr? Grabar, Les rev?tements en or et en argent
des icones byzantines du Moyen ?ge, Biblioth?que de l'Institut Hell?nique

d'?tudes Byzantines et Post-Byzantines de Venise, 7 (Venice: Institut
Hell?nique d'?tudes Byzantines et Post-Byzantines, 1975), 6; and Du
rand, "Precious-Metal Icon Revetments," 247.
94. For the association of gold and green with paradise in late antiquity,
see Janes, God and Gold, 100.
95. Trans. Denis Sullivan, Stamatina McGrath, and Alice-Mary Talbot,
from Aleksandr N. Vesselovskji, "Razyskanija v oblasti russkago du
hovnago stiha," Sbornik' Otdelenija russkago jazyka i slovesnosti Imperators
koj akademii nauk' 46 (1889-90), suppl., 3-89 (henceforth, Vita Basilii

Iunioris), 39: 'Air?pavTes oltv 6K T0ev km r?? T??v ayi&v crevas
eiTopevdrjixev. avrai be rjcrav irokkal cr<f>?8pa crty?bpa ?jlt]
\moK???xevai ?pidpA$, axnrep e? r)kiaKr?<; aKtTvos <f>ai8poT?Tiqv
a?ykr)v acrTpaTTTOwai, al be ?k [ivpio?a^cov o>? k ?ixraov Kai
TToptyvpa? deia? a?y?rj? onDAco? Kai votjtS?? acnp?movcrai. I

thank Alice-Mary Talbot for allowing me to use their draft transla
tion.
96. Trans. Sullivan et al, ibid., 42: Eio-r?k0oiiev eis Tiva irepiavkov ??vov
Kal iravTekSs k^rjkkayfjb?vov Kai r\v to b?irebov avro?r eâarp?irrov,
TrepiKeKO(T?jLr)iJL vov xpwaV; irka?l, Kal pimoq ev avtQS ov Trpoafjv to
ovvokov, Kal ar)p aaTpaTr??JLOp^)o<; Trepir\vya?,ev amo, ev be toV;
apixov?ais t?JSv xpvo~o<j)av?j5v eKeiv v irkaKBv vTff\pxov <j>vr?
k^r?vdLO-jxeva T?avTt??a tBv r\bvrrv?(x)v Kal ?ykaoKap v (?pai s
TTe(f)VTovpyriii va.
97. Trans. Sullivan et al., ibid., 43: eyyiora b? tQv ?v?biov avrBv loraTo
Tp?ire?a jmey?oTTf Trr?xe(?v Tpi?Kovra, Kal avTr\ r\v ?k kiOov
o~iLap?ybov oip??ox; kekaToyLT\?x?vr\ Kal KaTeaKevao-fx?vri, ??KTlVa?
kKTrefXTTOvaa (fxoTo?okovs, . . . crel ?X??'ol TTpoKeifievoi bi?xpvo'oi
?o-TpairoeubeV; kvxvi>TO?Cbi Kal <W??? ?k iravTwv TBv evTijxojv kiO v
Kal xpvo~6iv tQv ck toI? irapabeiaov k?epxojJL?vcjv Kal b?xoio^>epeV;.
98. Trans. Sullivan et al., ibid., 44-45: 01 b? vrn)percfvVTe<s avroV;

veavicTKOL (?pd?Oi iraw kivyxavov, eveubeV; toV; 7rpoo"?>7roi?, kevKol
&el x??v, ci ?paxeioves avrtSv Kal ci b?KTvkoi, w? ?v Tt? euroi

tovtov? ib?)v, ?K y?kaKTO? oit? (frvpa??vTos KaTao-ev?ada?, k?kklvov
r?ijL<l>ieo-iJL?voi oto?t/v ?vkco? ?e?afjbfxevriv Kal 7r?errjc wpai?rrjToc

Treirkripwixevriv, ol b? Trabes avtBv xwvoetbeV;, irepLe?(uo~p,?voi ?wvaq
(ocnrep kcjpovs K T?&ovpaviov to?ov tt]v evxpoiav KeKTrux?vov? Kal
airao-TpaTTTOvTac, em be toV; KopwfraV; avf&v xpwfx: e<f>epov

biabr\ixaTa ev kidois koI fxapy?poic TrokvT??xoLs cocrei ?okal k?av
TTavevrrpeireo-TaTa Kal TTOiK?ka vrr?pxovTa.
99. For the scriptural tradition of associating whiteness and transparency

with paradise, see Janes, God and Gold, 72-74, 84-86.
100. Trans. Sullivan et al., Vita Basilii Iunioris, 36-46: ??Treip?crTo?;
ctKaTav?riTo?; ?<j>pao-T?)?; ?v?K<f>pacrTO<;; ?d?aTov; ovbel? bvvaTai
k?yos ?p?Teis bir\yecrao~Bai'y ?ireipo?; aveKk?kr\Toc\ ?vepixiqvevT s;
vor\T?<;; voV? koX koyo? oC bvvaTat ?v$p6)7nve<; bir\yr\o~ao,Qai\
?pprfro?; ?vkai odaai ?>? ai T/?iaKai aKTTve?', KpaTeTcrdai irap?

cr piaTiK?dv x^P^v abvvaTov; evfypocrvvr) Kal eimp?rreLav
?ovyKpLTOv wpat?TT/T? T Kal T)bovr)V yk?)craxi ?vdpo)7rivxi
in Photiou Homiliai, ed. V. Laourdas, Hetaireias Makedonikon Spou

don, 12 (Thessaloniki: Hetaireias Makedonikon Spoudon, 1959), 101:
?? odrrep r?? ?ipeis ovv?xovcrai koli 7rpo? eaur?? kiricrTpefyovcrai
?vep[Xf}V VTOV Kal O?KOX? avT?KOVO~TOV, y??m? /XVptOjLLtKTW?
kvS?repa, ?XX' kv otvr? irporepiev?o-fiaTL toV KaXXd?? Oeajutaro? ?

TTpoai?v kjJLTTLTrX?^jievo^ Kai toV; bp iL?vois kpei?ojv r? ?jipbara
tt\v evocrpXav; a(/)pao"To? t/?vtt/to?; r?bovrJ<; Kal 6vpiiqb?a<; aireipov

Trkr)povp, voi.
ovK kdeXeiv iroidvcrai tov ?earrjv iL Tax(opr}aai irpo? r?
?HTTTep Tt? kppL???lx?vO? T? QOLVILOLTI ?CTT7]K?V.
89. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 185; Photios, Homily X, sec. 5,
in Photiou Homiliai, 101: 'fk elavrbv y?p tov ovpavbv pL7}8evb<;
kiMTpoa?dvPToc ?jnr)Oa?ji?dev kp,?e?ir}Ku)<; Kai toT? TToXvp,?p<\>oi<;
Kai iravTax?dev wrofyaivoyLevois K?XXecriv <w? aorpoi?
TTepiXa?j?TTOixevo<; oXo? kKTTeTrXr\yixevo<; ylverai. AoKeT?? Xonrbv
kvrevOev r? re ?XXa ev eKcrravei elvai kol? avrb irepL?iv??&dai to

t?/x ?>o?* toV; y?p otKeiai? Kal 7rai^To?a7raT^ irepicrTpoâV; Kai
ovvex?crL KLvqaecriv, ? 7r?vT0)q iraOeTv t?v 0eaTJ)v r? iravrax?Bev
TToiKiX?a ?iaCerai to?? Be?jiaToc, ei? avrb t? bp(?p,evov to oiKeTov
<j>avT??eTai Tr?BiqfjLa.
?v pp,T)vevT?)<; tc Kai ?v K?iT)'yf/T?)?; TravT?Ta ?wv Kal p?bcjv

v?crp,(x)v Ib?ai eTreKeivro; kv k?yq> ?(j)paaTov; kv oo-<f>pr)cr i Kal
aicrdr)o- L avdp?)Trivr?<; biavo?as ?KaTavor)To? Kal avekbir)yr\Tov
101. See Pentcheva, "Epigrams on Icons." Here, I am concerned with the

epigram's performative aspect and circular structure.
102. Margaret Mullett, "Writing in Early Medieval Byzantium," in Uses of
Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 156-85, esp. 179-85.
103. The connection between the icon and the Davidic Psalms will appear
again in the discussion of the sense of taste.
104. On the performative nature of epigrams, see Amy Papalexandrou,
"Text in Context: Eloquent Monuments and the Byzantine Beholder,"
Word and Image 17, no; 3 (2001): 259-83. On the orality of Byzantine

literature, see Guglielmo Cavallo, "Trace per una storia d?lia lettura ?
Bisanzio," Byzantinische Zeitschrift 95, no. 2 (2002): 423-44; idem, "Le
rossignol et l'hirondelle: Lire et ?crire ? Byzance, en Occident," An
nales: Histoire et Sciences Sociales 4, no. 5 (2001): 849-61; and Mullett,
"Writing in Early Medieval Byzantium," 156-85.
105. See nn. 88-89 above.
106. Robert Nelson, "Byzantine Art vs Western Medieval Art," in Byzance et

le monde ext?rieur: Contacts, relations, ?changes; Actes de trois s?ances du XXe
Congr?s International des ?tudes Byzantines, Paris, 19-25 ao?t 2001, ed.
Michel Balard et al., Byzantina Sorbonensia, 21 (Paris: Publications de

la Sorbonne, 2005), 255-70.
107. Theodore Hyrtakenos, quoted in Fran?ois Jean Gabriel de la Porte-du
Theil, "Notice et extraits d'un volume de la Biblioth?que Nationale,
cot? MCCIX parmi les mansucrits grecs et contenant les Opuscules et
letters anecdotes de Th?odore l'Hyrtakc?nien," Notices et Extraits des
Manuscrits de la Biblioth?que Nationale et Autres Biblioth?ques 6 (1800):
1-48, esp. 42, letter no. 75: 'Eyc? 8', kvavTevi?c?v toV; yp?pifxacnv,
avrbv cr? ?Xeireiv T)yo?p,iqv, Kai Tff? ?xeXixp&s oifs kpLcfropeTtrdai
creipijVoc, Kal T&v kp,fxeXBv a.KpO?to~Bai <$>Qbyyo)v Tff? dva?iacr?aq
TjôiT?. Translated into Italian and discussed in Cavallo, "Trace per

una storia della lettura ? Bisanzio," 426.
108. Mullett, "Writing in Early Medieval Byzantium," 179, discusses Symeon

Metaphrastes on writing and drinking (letter no. 89) and John Mavro
pous on writing and music (letter no. 1). See also Cavallo, "Trace per
una storia della lettura ? Bisanzio," 425-26.
109. On the role of orality in Byzantine literature, see n. 104 above.
110. Trans. Sullivan et al., Vita Basilii Iunioris, 44: ??v 8e b krrl t?ls ?vXoi?
eKeivoL? rfXioêyyecn irornpioi? KLpv?fievo? oivo?, t tf XP0La
kpvOp? TJVpaK?o~iiaTi Xiav evTrvpio? aTrao-TparrTC?v, Kal birr?v?Ka
rt? avTc5v ?m x??jt>a? k???aTo ttjv dav?iaaT7]v eKe?vr\v Kal
<j)?)To?bXov KvXiKa, v?KTapo? api?pocriac Tr TrXr)pa)pi?vr?v, Kal t@
?O?q) ar? fian Tairrr\v irpocrfiyaye to?j meTv. . . . rfiya?e 8e t?
Trpbo~(?Trov avroV Kal ?ri rrXeov kXap,7rpvveTo, (oairep pb?ov ?pTi
tG>v KaXvK(ov vire?eXdc?v.
111. The Treasury of San Marco, 159, cat. no. 16: Iltere e? avrd? navres'
T?VTO puOi) kcTTl TO ?LjUL?, TO Tff? KOUV?f? ?taOTJKTJ? T? VTTep Vp,i?v KO.I
iroXXGv eKXvv?pLevov et? ?êaiv appuaTiBv. The translation comes

from the King James Version.
112. Vie de Th?odore de Sykeon, ed. A.-J. Festugi?re, Subsidia Hagiographica,
48 (Brussels: Soci?t? des Bollandistes, 1970), 11.
113. Vita Theodori Syceotae, bk. 13, trans, in Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H.
Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (Oxford: B. Blackwell Press, 1948), 95;
A.-J. Festugi?re, ed., Vie de Th?odore de Syke?n, Subsidia Hagiographica,
48 (Brussels: Soci?t? des Bollandistes, 1970), 11: 'Avaor?im yo?v
avrt$ 6K toV e??Qov?, Kal TfjeiKbvi To?rX(uff?po<; TTpoa?xovTi Kal

8eo???v?), i) adeTo yXvKvrr)Ta r)8vrepov jut??lto? kyxvd?ttrav kv rQ
or?/mcm avrcfi?. 'O 8? yvov? rrfv x?nv To?T deo?r Kal p.eTaXa?oiv Tff?
yXvKVT7)Tos Kal vxapio-Tr)0~a<; Tc$Xpio~T<$ airo Tff? ?opa? eKeiviq?
evK?X??s Kal etyiadid? ?ireo'T'qdLê to ipaXTr?piov, kv bXiyai? Tj/x?pai?
airav avrb eKpiadcjv.
114. Paul Speck has contested the seventh-century date of the passages
about icons in this life and argued instead that these references were
interpolated in the mid-eighth or early ninth century. His theory
brings the date of the text closer to the context and use of the S.
Marco enamel icon. Speck, "Wunderheilige und Bilder: Zur Frage des
Beginns der Bilderverehrung," in Poikila Byzantina, vol. 11, Varia III
(Bonn: Dr. R. Habelt, 1991), 163-247, esp. 245-46.
115. This and the following biblical quotations follow the text and num
bering of the Greek Septuagint, Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rahlfs (1935;
reprint, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelstiftung, 1935).
116. Geoffrey Lampe, ed., Patristic Greek Lexicon (1961; reprint, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2001).
117. Susan A. Harvey, "St. Ephrem on the Scent of Salvation," Journal of

Theological Studies 48, no. 1 (1998): 109-28; and idem, "Incense Offer
ings in the Syriac Transitus Mariae. Ritual and Knowledge in Ancient
Christianity," in The Early Church and Its Context: Essays in Honor of Ever
ett Ferguson, ed. Abraham Malherbe, Frederick Norris, and James
Thompson, Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 90 (Leiden: Brill,

1998), 175-91. Harvey will offer an extensive study on the role of
scent in late antiquity in her forthcoming monograph, Scenting Salva
tion: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, Transformation of
the Classical Heritage, 42 (Berkeley: University of California Press,

2006). For an anthropological point of view, see Constance Classen,
David Howes, and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of
Smell (London: Routledge, 1994).
118. For an excellent analysis revealing how the lavish imperial ceremonial
shaped the imagined realm of paradise, see Liz James, "Art and Lies:
Text, Image and Imagination in the Medieval World," in Eastmond
and James, Icon and Word, 59-71.
119. Constan tine Porphyrogennetos, De ceremoniis aulae byzantinae, ed. Jo
hann Jacob Reiske, 2 vols., CSHB, 9-10 (Bonn: Impensis ed. Weberi,
1829), 160 (bk. 1, chap. 28), 438 (bk. 1, chap. 96).
120. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus: Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expedi
tions, trans. John F. Haldon, Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, 28

(Vienna: ?sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990),
108-9; Constantine Porphyrogennetos, De ceremoniis, ed. Reiske, 468:
Hapap,r]pLOv ev akeiTTT?, KaTrv?crjxaTa Oi?ôpa, dv?jiia?jba, (xao-T?xr)v,
ki?avov, cr?xap, Kp?KOv, fi?crxov, apuTrap, ?vkakor)v vyp?v Kal ?,r\p?v,
KLvv??x(?fxov akr)Qiv?v TTp?dTov Kal bevrepov, Kal ^vkoKLvv?pLCjpiov,
?jLVp?criiaTa koiu?. For the specialized terms, see also Charles Du

Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis (Lyons: Anis
son, Posuel, Rigaud, 1688; reprint, Graz: Akademische Druck, 1958).

121. On the contemporary perception of power and smell, see Classen et
al., Aroma, 161-79. Similarly, the modern utopia created by Hollywood
is "totally inodorate, existing only in the sensory domain of sight and
hearing," 175, in contrast to the complex fragrance of the Byzantine
imperial and liturgical ceremonial and the concomitant image of par
adise.
122. See n. 81 above.

123. On the association of perfume with salvation and paradise, see Har
vey, "St. Ephrem," and idem, "Incense Offerings"; and Suzanne Evans,
"The Scent of a Martyr," Numen 49 (2002): 193-211. On the connec
tion between odors and dreams and the imagined world of the be
yond, see Classen et al., Aroma, 155-58.
124. Pss. 33:8: "Taste and see that God is good."

125. Conforming to the conclusion of Nelson, "Byzantine Art vs Western
Medieval Art," 269-70.
126. Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Poetry, Lan
guage, Thought, trans, and ed. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper
and Row, 1971), 36, 62.
127. On the saturated phenomenon, see Marion, Being Given: Towards a

Phenomenology of Givenness, 199 -221.

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The Performative Icon

Author(s): Bissera V. Pentcheva

The Performative Icon

Icon (ikon, eiKcov) in Greek is understood as image, repre

wind, light, touch, and smell. This object thus offers us a

it is rarely discussed in medieval studies. Whenever a link

According to Byzantine image theory as it emerged in the

of as a painting created by brushstrokes but as an imprint?

a typos impressed on a material surface. The relief icon

Byzantium as the culture of the imprint, mold, or seal

rienced as touch.6 Not surprisingly, Byzantine icons address

and reliefs. They employ a baroque pastiche of metal re

of museum displays, the painted holy face on the revetted

ate at the brink of the extramission and intromission models of

visuality. They deny the tangibility and even visibility of the

images and the way they sensorially engage the faithful

jects, rather than being exceptions, lead us instead to a

and music?these inundated all senses. In saturating the

to the intangible, invisible, and noetic.8 This phenomenolog

lighting, the icon has been deprived of life?its surface,

In Byzantine culture, mimesis is the word closest to the

sound of prayer to animate the panel.12 The icon thus goes

before the faithful,

These shifting sensations triggered through sight, touch,

the holy figure projects in relief, whereas in the former, the

sacred form recedes in darkness. It is painted on the flat

project their whirling psychological state and sensual experi

surface of the wood and surrounded by a raised silver-gilt or

532 ART BULLETIN VOLUME LXXXVIII NUMBER 4

1 Icon of the Archangel Michael, late 10th century, enamel on

2 Icon of the Archangel Michael, late llth-12th century,

icon appear alive. Animated by the projected human

clastic period. The definition of the icon as absence has

7r?0T)/xa, it turns into a living painting: an empsychos graphe

paradoxically heightened the materiality of this object. A

(e/xi/fu^o? ypa</>ff). A new meaning of "living painting"

presence, a tension that will be resolved in the icon's perfor

The Byzantine icon has a legacy of tactile visuality, sensu

mance (mimesis) : the way it plays with appearances before the

performance. While all five senses are engaged, a subtle

Byzantine Mimesis: Essence and Appearance

imitation of form, Byzantine mimesis is the imitation of pres

ence. The icon is just an imprint of form, but it simulates

Christ's divinely human nature? The eighth-century defense

of divine form. This nonessentialist definition of the icon

nation manifests the divine acquiring a human form, lending

developed in the ninth-century writings of Patriarch Nike

validity to the visible and representation. By extension, the

phoros and Theodore of Stoudios. Charles Barber has al

clasm.14 What remains to be explored is how this nonessen

pr?figurai divine, represented by the throne, book, dove, and

THE PERFORMATIVE ICON 533

3 Harbaville triptych, late 10th century, ivory, 9V? X WA in.

5 Mosaic of the Hetoimasia, late 7th or early 8th century.

Museum, St. Petersburg)

inscription, is transformed into the Child held in the arms of

the Virgin in the apse. We witness a metamorphosis by fol

carnal light: the golden-clad Child in Mary's arms. By equat

charges of idolatry.18 The figurai representation at Nikaia

aniconic shape of the cross sometime in the mid-eighth cen

To counteract the charges of idolatry in the incarnational

istics of Christ on matter, or appearance imprinted on

4 Double-sided processional icon of the Virgin Hodegetria,

Macedonia (artwork in the public domain; photograph ?