Meaningful mingling: classicizing imagery and Islamicizing script in a Byzantine bowl

The final two vignettes show more ambiguous iconography, but these scenes might still depict antique characters associated with divination. Rather than deities, they represent a different category of ancient mantic figures: heroes. The roundel to the right of Hermes portrays a winged, fully robed figure standing on a pedestal and gesturing emphatically toward a warrior, who is seated on a bench and rests his feet on a stool (Fig. 17). (66) Both turn inward; their poses disassociate them from the scenes in the adjacent roundels. The warrior's lower body is draped, and a red scabbard hangs from his waist. His upper body is encircled by golden straps and bangles. He wears a helmet with a pointed top. His right elbow rests on a shield, and he holds a golden spear in his left hand. In keeping with the theme of divination, the vignette may depict the Homeric warrior Odysseus consulting a ghost. Odysseus's necromantic skills were legendary and familiar to educated Byzantines from book 11 of the Odyssey, the Nykeia, in which the hero raises the spirit of the deceased seer Teiresias, to advise him on his journey home. Odysseus's successful catabasis, or descent, into Hades may have qualified him for securing the dead to answer divinatory inquiries. (67)

The seated figure rests his chin in his hand, a position that recalls Odysseus's depiction in a scene of the conjuring of his deceased crewman Elpenor (Odyssey 11.51-83) on a well-known fifth-century BCE Greek vase in which Odysseus appears in the company of Hermes and wears a scabbard on his left shoulder (Fig. 18). (68) Similar images of classicizing figures in late antique art--especially those of Odysseus and Oedipus--offer chronologically closer visual models for the S. Marco bowl and attest to the iconographic lineage that bridged ancient and medieval artistic traditions (Fig. 19). (69) Elpenor does not, however, resemble the figure atop the column, who is winged and clothed in a full-length robe. In Byzantine iconography, spirits--whether the souls of the deceased or demons--were sometimes depicted with wings. This convention might have led a Byzantine viewer to interpret an antique winged and robed figure--perhaps Nike (Fig. 20) or Psyche--as a disembodied soul and combine this motif with a depiction of Odysseus conjuring the dead. (70)

Although echoing classical and late antique precedents, the Odysseus vignette innovates on earlier models. Byzantine viewers would have drawn from their knowledge of Odysseus's adventures and familiarity with ancient and medieval iconography to reconcile this unusual scene with the program of the bowl.

[FIGURE 19 OMITTED]

Like the preceding roundel, the final vignette is self-contained. Here a male figure distinguished by a highly developed physique stands between two columns, which frame and isolate him (Fig. 21). His body is nude except for a cloak hanging from his left shoulder and gold rings encircling his ankles, wrists, upper arms, and head. He rests his right hand on top of a pillar. From the other column hangs a red scabbard. The figure may represent the Greco-Roman hero Herakles. Relaxed, frontal depictions of Herakles abound in ancient and late antique art, although typically the hero leans against his club, positioned vertically with the end resting on the ground. In the S. Marco vessel, the hero's pose recalls these earlier models, such as the late antique silver plate depicting Zeus (Fig. 15). (71)