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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
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
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
dead.9
sound, smell, and taste stir the faithful. They are then led to
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God.
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Resource, NY)
?ir>#?^*Z&1*xz?.
i ftl J;
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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)
(759-826):
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
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Washington, D.C.)
the relation between Christ and the icon but also a process
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,
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
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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.
on wood.
copper relief image. The passage mentions the icon and its
location at the gates:40
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which refers to the gates, yet the rest of the sentence has 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
quite clear. Just as the Greek word stele presents figures in low
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Museum, Moscow)
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
pos and sphragis). The image is not the imitation of form but
rather the imprint of form. This Eastern perception of paint
ambience.
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with the relief icon, matter fills an empty shell and gives
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
emanating from the gold surface visualizes the rays that the
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Resource, NY)
Book of Gifts and Rarities, enamel and purple silk were the two
ritual.67 The proskynesis sets off the optical dazzle of the icon
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
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14 Icon of the Archangel Michael, late 10th century, head (artwork in the public domain; photograph by Cameraphoto, provided
by Art Resource, NY)
violets were the color of the sea with its calm ruffled by a light
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domain; photograph by
Cameraphoto, provided
by Art Resource, NY)
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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.
NY)
gold.
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Venice)
hue, fresh green (chloe) and gold were for them equivalents.
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19 Chalice of the Patriarchs, sardonyx
Marco, Venice)
air which was like lightning illuminated it, and in the joints
of those golden tiles there were flowering plants of every
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paradise.97
The angels appear in scarlet tunics with loroi radiating the
colors of paradise. On their heads they carry luminous gold
crowns:
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Resource, NY)
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
the faithful, but with his own stance and hand movement he
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.
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W:??W~?
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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&^
:;??pp
Paris)
esthesis.
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that of the bread and wine transformed into body and blood
during the liturgy. This metamorphosis of the icon, or better,
faces alight as they feel the sweetness of the Holy Spirit after
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itself before the human gaze, touch, hearing, smell, and taste.
A Circle Completed
As the worshiper approaches the icon and begins praying, the
God.124
ence.
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.
coming) .
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(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).
50.
1963), 29-31. For ancient Greek thought on vision, see David Lind
1968), 130-55.
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,
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'?TJ^e KUl /XeTeCT^Ke T??
XOLpaKTffpo? ?ke?vov ?l? Tff? T?T? T6XV?TOV ?iavoia? Kai x LP0<>
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,
barton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Trustees for Harvard Uni
versity, 1980).
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
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.
(2004): 225-38.
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.
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
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
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1990).
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).
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
41. Vita Stephani Iunioris, bk. 10, in La vie d'Etienne le Jeune par Etienne le
irapaot?vPai.
193.
61. See Antonio Pasini, II tesoro di San Marco in Venezia, 2 vols. (Venice:
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
45-60.
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
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."
Chalke image was a bronze relief, which was replaced after 843 by a
mosaic. Berger, Untersuchungen zu den Patria Konstantinupoleos, Poikila
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.
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.
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.
52. For the evolution of processions with icons, see Pentcheva, Icons and
Power, 37-59.
Penguin, 1991).
56. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study of the Psychology of Pictorial
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
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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
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
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):
served for the select few. Political power in Byzantium translated into
the fullness of sensual delight.
col. 776D.
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.
36.
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,
51.
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
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 e^aarp?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;.
89. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 185; Photios, Homily X, sec. 5,
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
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Congr?s International des ?tudes Byzantines, Paris, 19-25 ao?t 2001, ed.
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,
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:
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,
adise.
126. Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Poetry, Lan
guage, Thought, trans, and ed. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper
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