Heaven & Earth EDITED BY ANASTASIA DRANDAKI DEMETRA PAPANIKOLA-BAKIRTZI ANASTASIA TOURTA HELLENIC REPUBLIC BENAKI MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND SPORTS MUSEUM national gallery of art ATHENS 2013 The catalogue is issued in conjunction with the exhibition Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections, held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from October 6, 2013, through March 2, 2014, and at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from April 9 through August 25, 2014. The exhibition was organized by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Athens, with the collaboration of the Benaki Museum, Athens, and in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. EXHIBITION CATALOGUE GREECE Editors ANASTASIA DRANDAKI, DEMETRA PAPANIKOLA-BAKIRTZI, ANASTASIA TOURTA General Coordination MARIA ANDREADAKI-VLAZAKI Benaki Museum research team PANOREA BENATOU, ELENI CHARCHARE, Exhibition concept–Curators JENNY ALBANI, EUGENIA CHALKIA, ANASTASIA DRANDAKI, MANDY KOLIOU, MARA VERYKOKOU DEMETRA PAPANIKOLA-BAKIRTZI, ANASTASIA TOURTA Bibliography CONSTANTINA KYRIAZI Supervision JENNY ALBANI, ANASTASIA DRANDAKI Translators from Greek Entries: MARIA XANTHOPOULOU Research assistant MANDY KOLIOU Essays: DEBORAH KAZAZI, VALERIE NUNN Packaging and Trasportation MOVEART SA Translator from French ELISABETH WILLIAMS Coordination BYZANTINE AND CHRISTIAN MUSEUM, ATHENS Text Editor RUSSELL STOCKMAN Financial Management DIMITRIS DROUNGAS Photographs of the exhibits VELISSARIOS VOUTSAS, ELPIDA BOUBALOU USA Photographs of Mount Athos exhibits GEORGE POUPIS Designer FOTINI SAKELLARI NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART Map PENELOPE MATSOUKA Curator SUSAN MACMILLAN ARENSBERG Color separations PANAYOTIS VOUVELIS, STRATOS VEROPOULOS Exhibitions D. DODGE THOMPSON, NAOMI REMES, DAVID HAMMER Printing ADAM EDITIONS-PERGAMOS Design and Installation MARK LEITHAUSER, JAME ANDERSON, BARBARA KEYES Printed on Fedrigony 150 gsm Registrar MICHELLE FONDAS Conservation BETHANN HEINBAUGH, KIMBERLY SCHENCK Education FAYA CAUSEY, HEIDI HINISH J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM Curator MARY LOUISE HART Exhibitions QUINCY HOUGHTON, ROBIN MCCARTHY Design MERRITT PRICE, ROBERT CHECCHI Registrars SALLY HIBBARD, AMY LINKER, KANOKO SASAO Antiquities Conservation and Mount-Makers JERRY PODANY, MARIE SVOBODA, MCKENZIE LOWRY, BJ FARRAR, DAVID ARMENDARIZ Education TOBY TANNENBAUM, SHELBY BROWN, CATHY CARPENTER, AUDREY CHAN, LISA GUZZETTA SPONSOR The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities Published by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Benaki Museum, Athens © 2013 Benaki Museum, Athens © 2013 Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information retrieval system, without permission from the publishers. ISBN 978-960-476-130-2 (HC) ISBN 978-960-476-131-9 (PBC) Jacket / Cover illustration Icon with Archangel Michael (cat. no. 59) • Frontispiece The Evangelist Matthew from the Four Gospels (cat. no. 83) | 4 | FOREWORDS [CHAPTER 3] Intellectual Life | 007 | PANOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS Minister of Culture and Sports | 166 | BYZANTIUM AND THE ART OF ANTIQUITY ANTHONY CUTLER | 008 | LINA MENDONI General Secretary, Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports | 176 | Education and Social Identity CHRISTINE ANGELIDI | 010 | MARIA ANDREADAKI-VLAZAKI Director General of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, | 179 | Reading, Writing, and Books in Byzantium Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports ANNEMARIE WEYL CARR | 012 | NIKOLAOS ZIAS | 183 | CATALOGUE ENTRIES 81–96 President of the Organizing Committee | 013 | ANGELOS DELIVORRIAS [CHAPTER 4] Director of the Benaki Museum, Athens The Pleasures of Life | 014 | EARL A. POWELL III | 202 | THE PLEASURES OF LIFE Director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington EUNICE DAUTERMAN MAGUIRE AND HENRY MAGUIRE TIMOTHY POTTS | 211 | Houses, Markets, and Baths: Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Secular Architecture in Byzantium | 016 | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ROBERT OUSTERHOUT | 019 | CONTRIBUTORS TO THE CATALOGUE | 214 | Natural Environment and Climate, Diet, Food, and Drink JOHANNES KODER | 020 | INTRODUCTION ANGELOS DELIVORRIAS | 218 | Household Furnishings DEMETRA PAPANIKOLA-BAKIRTZI | 024 | Map | 223 | Clothing and Personal Adornment: The Semantics of Attire PARI KALAMARA [CHAPTER 1] From the Ancient to the Byzantine World | 228 | CATALOGUE ENTRIES 97–157 | 028 | FROM MAN TO GOD, OR THE MUTATION OF A CULTURE (300 B.C.–A.D. 762) [CHAPTER 5] Byzantium between East and West POLYMNIA ATHANASSIADI | 278 | BYZANTIUM BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: | 044 | The Christianization of the Past OPPONENTS AND ALLIES ANTHONY KALDELLIS EVANGELOS CHRYSOS | 048 | Eternity | 289 | Byzantium and the Integration of the Slavs in EFTERPI MARKI the Orthodox Oikoumene | 051 | CATALOGUE ENTRIES 1–17 ANTHONY-EMIL N. TACHIAOS | 292 | Exchanges between Byzantium and the Islamic World: [CHAPTER 2] Spiritual Life Courtly Art and Material Culture ANNA BALLIAN | 074 | IMPERIAL POWER AND THE CHURCH IN BYZANTIUM | 297 | Byzantium between Ottomans and Latins MARIE-FRANCE AUZÉPY in the Palaiologan Age | 084 | CATALOGUE ENTRIES 18–37 TONIA KIOUSOPOULOU | 300 | The Morea | 094 | The Early Christian Church, 4th–7th Centuries SHARON E. J. GERSTEL CHARALAMBOS BAKIRTZIS | 304 | Crete under Venetian Rule: Between Byzantine Past | 098 | Iconoclasm and Venetian Reality MARIA PANAYOTIDI CHRYSSA MALTEZOU | 102 | The Church as a Symbol of the Cosmos | 309 | CATALOGUE ENTRIES 158–172 in Byzantine Architecture and Art ´ ´ SLOBODAN CURCˇIC | 326 | BYZANTINE ART IN THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE | 109 | Icons in the Devotional Practices of Byzantium ROBERT S. NELSON ANASTASIA DRANDAKI | 336 | Abbreviations | 115 | Mount Athos. The Monastic Commonwealth of | 337 | Bibliography the Middle Ages KRITON CHRYSSOCHOIDIS | 359 | Glossary | 118 | CATALOGUE ENTRIES 38–80 | 360 | Index | 5 | The Christianization of the Past ANTHONY KALDELLIS n 1935 Getrude Stein visited her to begin with, far less one built up hometown of Oakland, California, over thousands of years in the Ibut everything about the place presence of ancient and medieval had changed. She could not find her monuments, and the relentless former house, the town reflected turnover of neighborhoods in none of her memories, and she American towns would have famously wrote that “there is no undermined incipient feelings of there there.”1 Her sense of place, “thereness.” history, and memory had been disrupted and effaced. A European traveler might have felt that a town incorporated in 1852 could not have had a deep sense of its own history Fig. 19 | Odysseus bound to the mast, bronze, Late Roman, 3rd-4th century. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund (67.20). Photo: ©Virginia Museum of Fine Arts/Ron Jennings. | 44 | In the western provinces of their built up in part by borrowing—or stealing, on a theological point: If the gods were empire especially, Roman planners did in some argued—that of more ancient places. held to be mere human delusions, then fact design “Identikit” cities whose purpose Constantinople acquired huge collections there could be no harm in keeping was often to disrupt prior ethnic or of statues from Greece and Asia Minor sculpted stones around. But if they were political configurations and historical that acquired new symbolic meanings, (see demons who dwelt in statues and haunted memories. Latin gradually replaced the A. Cutler below, 166-75) thereby creating the faithful, then they had to be smashed. local languages and native cults took on a and defining the city’s past. The Baths of Both views are found, and indeed there Roman appearance and nomenclature. The Zeuxippos contained a collection of more was much smashing and symbolic eastern cities, by contrast, were already than eighty statues of heroes, poets, and disfigurement, especially in Syria and drenched in their own sense of the past, gods with a prominent Trojan theme. Egypt. Crosses were carved to keep the and this was the world in which most These linked New Rome to the older demons out—or to seal them in (fig. 22 early Christians originated. The past was Rome via their common ancestor, Ilium.2 and cat. no. 6) But imperial officials often defined by mythical associations with In the Hippodrome stood a row of took a different approach, one that would founders, heroes, and oracles; by the antiquities, each with its own associations, have dramatic consequences: they memory of political history, recent and including the Serpent Column from redefined ancient statues as “art,” which ancient; by monuments; and by hundreds Delphi (fig. 20). At first this signified should be preserved for its aesthetic rather if not thousands of statues of gods, heroes, perhaps the emperors’ intention to defeat than religious value (artis pretio quam artists, and notables. It was enhanced by Persia, thus appropriating Greek glories for divinitate),7 so long as there was no pagan literary references and sometimes recorded the Christian emperor, but later it acquired worship. in works of history. The leaders of the new magical functions, such as keeping snakes The same approach was being applied faith struggled to decide how much of this out of the city.3 A high official, Lausos, by Christian thinkers to ancient texts such past could be absorbed into the Christian created a magnificent collection including as those of Homer,