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Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St.Antony at the Red Sea
 
 
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Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St.Antony at the Red Sea (Hardcover)

by ES Bolman (Author) "At the end of the fourth century, less than fifty years after the death of St. Antony the Great, John Cassian journeyed from either Scythia..." (more)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 342 pages
  • Publisher: Yale University Press (1 Feb 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0300092245
  • ISBN-13: 978-0300092240
  • Product Dimensions: 31 x 26.2 x 3.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 617,258 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #51 in  Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Styles & Movements > Byzantine > Painting

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Product Description

Review

"Bolman makes the arcane accessible and the spiritual meaningful. This is how art history, usually seen as an elitist activity, should be written up in a democratic society." Anthony Cutler, Penn State University Art

Product Description

An ancient church in the Coptic Monastery of St Antony at the Red Sea contains a unique cycle of 13th-century wall paintings. They constitute by far the most complete and best-preserved iconographic programme of Christian paintings to come from mediaeval Egypt. Ignored for centuries because they were covered with soot and overpainting, these compelling images have recently undergone conservation. This volume reproduces the cleaned paintings. It also describes and analyzes their amalgam of Coptic (Egyptian Christian), Byzantine and Arab styles and motifs as well as the religious culture to which they belong. In 1996, funded by the United States Agency for International Development and at the request of the Monastery of St Antony, the Antiquities Development Project of the American Research Center in Egypt began the conservation of the paintings in the church. The paintings revealed by the conservators are of extremely high quality, both stylistically and conceptually. While rooted in the Christian tradition of Egypt, they also reveal explicit connections with Byzantine and Islamic art of the 12th and 13th centuries. Some paintings can even be dated back to the 6th or 7th century. The contributors to this book - who include art historians, conservators, historians, an archaeologist and an anthropologist - discuss the significance of these revelations and place the church and the paintings within the artistic and historical traditions of both Coptic Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean region in the Middle Ages.
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First Sentence
At the end of the fourth century, less than fifty years after the death of St. Antony the Great, John Cassian journeyed from either Scythia or Gaul to Palestine and thence to Egypt on a spiritual and geographical odyssey to discover in the desert both the roots of Christian monasticism and the God-given springs that nourished those roots (fig. 1.1). Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Vision Restored, 17 Nov 2002
By Abba Seraphim (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
In 1996, funded by the United States Agency for International Development, the Antiquities Development Project of the American Research Center (ARC) in Egypt began the conservation of the wall paintings in St. Antony’s monastery at the Red Sea. For generations these paintings had been all but hidden by the accumulated soot and grime of centuries but are now revealed in their full splendour. This beautifully illustrated book is not only a record of that restoration but also an impressive guide to Coptic Orthodox spirituality and iconography. Interspersed with the high quality coloured plates are a delightful series of black and white photographs taken during the Whittemore Expedition of 1930-31, which not only contrast the changes but also throw valuable light on the Coptic Church at this period.
The book is a collection of scholarly but readable essays. The Rev’d Tim Vivian gives an outline history of the monastery from its foundation in 251 to 1232/1233 when most of the paintings were created. The archaeologist Michael Jones, project manager of the ARC writes about the monastic architecture as preparation for Professor Bolman’s chapters on the paintings themselves. Earlier considered “mask-like” and of modest artistic quality, because of later overpainting which had concealed the originals, these now supply information about Coptic iconography in a period previously wanting concrete examples. The earliest paintings of Christ and the apostles appears to fall sometime in the 150 years between 550 and 700 and stylistically resembles early Coptic iconography at Saqquara and Bawit. Professor Bolman admits that Coptic art has but rarely been considered a serious field of study and that we are therefore only beginning to understand it. From surviving inscriptions we now know that the majority of paintings date from a team of artists led by a master painter called Theodore in 1232/33 but that their work was incomplete and was only finished by a second team a few decades later. This second team showed clear Byzantine and some Islamic influence in the use of arabesques.
On entering the Church of St. Antony one’s attention is immediately directed to the sanctuary or haykal which is raised higher by a progression of steps and a narrowing towards the apse where the ikons depict Christ in Majesty, surrounded by choirs of angels and flanked by St. Mark the Evangelist with great Alexandrian patriarchs. Above in the dome, archangels and the four living creatures support another image of the Pantocrator within a roundel. Images of the four and twenty elders of the Apocalypse and Old Testament types of the eucharist remind us that the sanctuary is the place where heaven and earth meet. The choir or khurus, a peculiarly Coptic feature symbolising the ark of salvation, is cunningly lit from its barrel vault by two rows of hexagons filled with gypsum. Here we can find Old Testament patriarchs and scenes proclaiming the Resurrection, whilst out in the nave are the fathers of monasticism, and armed Coptic warrior martyrs astride magnificent horses circling the church in perpetual wide-eyed vigilance.
A discussion of these figures and their specific iconography contains considerable incidental detail about the lives and traditions of these saints which supplements the official Synaxarion and draws the discerning reader into popular Coptic hagiology, assisting an understanding of the continuing deep relationship modern Copts enjoy with their saints. A chapter analysing ‘The Handwriting on the Wall’ reveals the succession of pilgrims from many lands who came in search of blessings and the very human dimensions of their needs. Learned articles on the ‘Conservation of the Wall Paintings’ demonstrates a creative fusion between scientific techniques and respect for the artists’ vision.
Although the quality of the photographs and the printing is of a very high standard this is much more than a coffee-table book. It is a precious resource of a rich artistic and spiritual tradition which still flourishes today despite the vicissitudes of history.
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