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Meaningful mingling: classicizing imagery and Islamicizing script in a Byzantine bowl
Art Bulletin, The, March, 2008 by Alicia Walker
Among the sacred relics, precious liturgical implements, and luxurious curios assembled in the treasury of the church of S. Marco, Venice, sits a well-known middle Byzantine vessel of purple-red glass embellished with bright polychrome enamel and gold paint (Fig. 1). Measuring only 6 5/8 inches (17 centimeters) in height and the same in diameter, this delicate object fits in the palm of one's hand. When light passes through the vessel's walls, the motifs are dramatically illuminated. Ivory-colored figures highlighted in gold fill seven large medallions. Brilliant frames of blue, green, yellow, and red florettes encircle these almost monochrome vignettes. Fourteen smaller medallions enclose profile busts, and a web of gilded tendrils weaves through the interstices. The vessel's translucent material, vibrantly painted details, and diminutive size endow it with a jewellike quality. The exact date and location of the object's production are unknown, but scholarly consensus places it in the mid-tenth to early eleventh century and associates it with the luxury art industry of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. (1)
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Because the vessel resides in a church treasury, alongside liturgical objects, a modern viewer might at first glance mistake it for a chalice. (2) But the two handles, which make it possible for the vessel to function as a cup, were not part of the initial design. Since the outer surface is decorated with an odd number of vignettes, one grip always overlaps a roundel, a design that seems unlikely to have been intentional. It is more logical to assume that the object originally functioned without handles, as a bowl. Furthermore, close examination reveals a decorative program clearly unsuitable for a liturgical implement. The large roundels feature classicizing male figures, and the profile busts in the smaller medallions recall Greco-Roman and late antique numismatic and glyptic models (Figs. 1, 2). (3) These themes were certainly inappropriate for an object used in Christian rites. Additionally, whereas middle Byzantine chalices were commonly inscribed with prayers and dedications in Greek, the interior rim and bottom of the S. Marco bowl are embellished with bands of pseudo-Arabic, that is, forms that closely resemble Arabic script but are illegible (Figs. 3, 4). (4) Both the classicizing and Islamicizing features were part of the original design; a distinctive leaf motif appears in the inscriptions and in two of the figural vignettes, evidence of their common conception and execution (Figs. 3, 4, 9, 12). At the same time, their arrangement on the vessel distinguishes the two categories of decoration, with the classicizing elements depicted prominently on the outer wall of the vessel and the pseudo-Arabic bands positioned in less visible areas of the inner rim and base.
The presence of a non-Christian object in the decidedly religious context of a church treasury is not surprising. Following the Fourth Crusade in 1204, a multitude of Byzantine luxury objects, both secular and sacred, were removed from Constantinople and eventually found their way into ecclesiastical and private collections in the West. (5) The bowl may well have traveled as Crusader booty, its material and symbolic value making it a fitting trophy for a Latin Christian and, later, his church. Still puzzling, however, is the object's combination of two seemingly unrelated categories of motifs: classicizing imagery and Islamicizing script. In isolation, each theme is commonly found in middle Byzantine art. Although Christian, medieval Byzantines perceived themselves as inheritors and renovators of Greco-Roman culture. Antique mythological narratives and vignettes feature prominently in middle Byzantine secular objects, especially those of the tenth and eleventh centuries. (6) Although the medieval Islamic world was a perennial political and military adversary of Byzantium, animosity did not preclude artistic exchange. Pseudo-Arabic ornament found in numerous tenth- to thirteenth-century Byzantine buildings and portable objects attests to Islamic artistic impact in Byzantium during this era. (7) Yet the bulk of these Byzantine works of art and architecture are religious, and their Christian character inflects the meaning that their Islamicizing decoration conveyed. In contrast, the pagan imagery of the S. Marco bowl creates a different context and significance for pseudo-Arabic.
The classicizing motifs on the vessel vary in their relations to antique models. Some figures possess clear parallels to Greco-Roman and late antique depictions of specific deities, while the identities and sources of other figures are ambiguous. In response to this iconographic uncertainty, some historians of Byzantine art argue that the maker of the vessel misunderstood or disregarded the identities of his ancient models. (8) Other scholars discern a generic relationship among the figures, interpreting the classicizing decoration as a formulaic allusion to the prestigious aura of antique art and culture. (9) Still others suggest that the figures' iconographic ambiguity and lack of identifying inscriptions are intentional omissions, serving to disempower pagan images. (10)
