Armenian decorated documents
Armenian illuminated manuscripts (), form an Armenian tradition of formally prepared documents where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. They are related to other forms of Medieval Armenian art, Persian miniatures, and to Byzantine illuminated manuscripts. The earliest surviving examples date back to the Golden Age of Armenian art and literature in the 5th century. Armenian illuminated manuscripts embody Armenian culture; they illustrate its spiritual and cultural values.
The most famous Armenian miniaturist, Toros Roslin, lived in the 13th century. The art form flourished in Greater Armenia, Lesser Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora. Its appearance dates back to the creation of the Armenian alphabet in Armenia, in the year 405 AD. Very few fragments of illuminated manuscripts from the 6th and 7th centuries have survived. The oldest fully preserved manuscript dates from the 9th century. Art experienced a golden age in the 13th and 14th centuries when the main schools and centers started to pop up (fifteen hundred centers of writing and illumination). The most striking are those of Syunik, Vaspurakan and Cilicia. Many Armenian illuminated manuscripts outside the country of Armenia have also survived the centuries. Despite the creation of the Armenian printing press in the 16th century, the production of miniatures continued until the 19th century and survives through modern Armenian painting and cinema.
Armenian miniaturists have always been in contact with other artists of the East and the West whose art has deeply and richly influenced Armenian illumination. According to the Russian poet Valery Bryusov, "crossing and intertwining before merging into a single and entirely new whole, two forces, two opposing principles have, over the centuries, governed the destiny of Armenia and shaped the character of its people: the principle of the West and that of the East, the spirit of Europe and the spirit of Asia". The most famous works of Armenian miniaturists are distinguished by precise skill in execution, originality of composition and color treatment, brilliance due to the use of pigments mainly prepared with the bases of metal oxides and an extremely stylized portrayal of the world.
The Matenadaran Institute in Yerevan has the largest collection of Armenian manuscripts, including the Mugni Gospels and Echmiadzin Gospels. The second-largest collection of Armenian illuminated manuscripts is stored in the depository of the St. James Cathedral, of the Holy Apostolic Church's Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Other collections exist in the British Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and other large collections at the Mechitarist establishments in Venice and Vienna, as well as in the United States. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) holds the Gladzor Gospels (cf. University of Gladzor), a richly illuminated Armenian Gospel manuscript dating to the 14th century, among its collection of Armenian manuscripts, the largest in the United States.
Origins.
Emergence.
The Armenian form of miniatures and illuminations probably originated with the creation of the first Armenian books at the beginning of the 5th century, but a hiatus of four centuries separated the emergence of the art from the oldest preserved illuminated manuscripts (with the exception of the 'Final Four Miniatures' of the Echmiadzin Gospels); the latter, however, is probably inspired by earlier manuscripts. At its beginnings, the art of the illuminator was done by the same scribe who wrote the manuscript, the ornamentations like the text, only simple copies of earlier models, but in the 9th and 10th centuries, it became more refined and sophisticated until it separated from the work of the scribe to form a unique role in the making of manuscripts. The first surviving manuscripts are the tetra-gospels (including, in addition to the four gospels, the "Letter of Eusebius" and the Eusebian canons and the "mystical allegory of the economy of salvation") which already demonstrate the diversity in genre, style and technique of the illustrations. The art got influenced by Byzantine art, with its monumental appearance (see for example the "Gospel of Trebizond", 11th century, San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Ms. 1400), and by oriental art, with its taste for heavily ornamented pages (illustrated in the Mughni gospel, 11th century, Matenadaran, Ms. 7736.), the two influences were sometimes found in one manuscript (such as the Gospel of King Gagik of Kars, 11th century, Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Ms. 2556).
The time period stretching from the 10th to the 11th centuries encompassed the formation of Armenian artistic traditions, which witnessed the development of its diversity, a balance between early Christian elements and new influences, as shown by "the special role of missals, the important contributions made by the patrons and the goal to express in images the power of the Gospel", and a reinterpretation of Byzantine decorative elements in the light of Islamic art, as well as the taste for bright and brilliant colors. The miniatures usually occupy full pages, most often at the beginning of the manuscript, but sometimes also appear in the body of the text, and are expressed with great liberty in the Eusebian canons.
The oldest of the well-preserved ornamented manuscripts is the Gospel of Queen Mlke, named after the wife of King Gagik I of Vaspurakan, who had it restored in the 10th century(San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Ms. 1144). Made in Vaspurakan around 862 AD, it is the first illuminated manuscript known after the Arab occupation period (7th - 9th centuries) and the oldest of the fully preserved Armenian manuscripts. Inspired by an older manuscript, its illustrations, in particular, the Nilotic landscape of the tables and the frontispiece resemble the Syriac Rabbula Gospels while presenting an early Christian echo, something common in the East at the time, but show a solemnity only found in Armenian examples of illuminated manuscripts. With a somewhat stern style, the thin and light lines and the subtle gradations of colors are reminiscent of the art from the Macedonian renaissance, while standing out from it by using a lively and saturated palette. These characteristics make this Gospel “a unique example of reception and interpretation of the ancient heritage in the Armenian milieu”.
The Echmiadzin Gospel Book (Matenadaran, Ms. 2374) is another famous example of these early manuscripts. Produced in 989 at the monastery of Bgheno-Noravank, the sumptuous work has a Byzantine ivory binding (second half of the 6th century) and incorporates four full-page miniatures, grouped on two leaves, from the 6th to 7th centuries, in a style similar to 7th-century frescoes while reflecting a Sassanian influence that is especially noticeable with the clothing and hairstyles of the Magi, these four miniatures with a monumental character in the treatment of the characters, characterized by their large eyes and freely brushed modeled faces, whose architectural decoration recalls Christian house of worship from the late antiquity, are part of the early Christian pictorial tradition and thus constitute a persistence of the ancient tradition. Other miniatures from the 11th and 12th centuries are found in this manuscript, notably introductory miniatures illustrating the major themes of salvation and the four Evangelists, and are of a less antique style than those of the late 6th century pages from the same manuscript and those of the queen Mlke Gospel. While demonstrating freshness and eloquence and adopting neutral backgrounds. "An exceptional example of the blossoming of painting can be seen in the aftermath of Arab domination", Jannic Durand, a French art historian, also describes the Gospel of Queen Mlké as "the highest expression of a classical antiquizing current which crossed in the 9th and 10th centuries paintings in Armenia, perfectly distinct from the more abstract and decorative current which also characterized it at the same time, represented in particular by the Gospel of Baltimore”.
Other manuscripts include: the Gospel of Baltimore (The Gospels of the Translators or The Four Gospels) (Walters Art Museum, Ms. 537) produced in 966, which is an example of a radical transformation of the architectural decorations with its use of small geometric patterns, or the 'Gospel of Vahapar' (Matenadaran, Ms. 10780), produced before 1088 in Vaspurakan or Melitene, it includes sixty-six Christological illustrations in the text, in a naïve but lively style, and accompanied by speech scrolls reminiscent to modern comic strips, it is the probable source of inspiration in the 14th century for the Gospel of Gladzor.
The Seljuk invasions of the second half of the eleventh century marked another halt, and it also started the beginning of a period of decline for the art of miniatures in Greater Armenia until the thirteenth century (with rare exceptions, such as the Gospel of Matenadaran, Ms. 2877, decorated with great attention to small details), while a renewal was taking place in Cilicia.
Development.
Apotheosis.
The political and cultural life in Greater Armenia experienced a brief development at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, with the support of neighboring Georgia. The Armenians then managed to fight off the Seljuk invasions and experienced a certain boom called the “Zakarid renaissance”. As a result, they formed an independent principality governed by the Zakarids in which a brief period of relative peace reigned before the coming of the Mongol invasions of Transcaucasia between 1220 and 1240.
Construction projects of palaces and churches grew in number in the first half of the 13th century. In parallel, the activity of the schools of miniaturists and scriptoria was in full expansion; grammar, language, rhetoric, theology, philosophy, music, painting and calligraphy were all taught there, notably in the universities (hamalsaran) of Tatev and Gladzor, often called as the “second Athens”. This last university, "almost contemporary with one of the main centers of European thought, the University of Paris, could compete with the latter as much in terms of cultural training as by the richness of its library and the diversity of the subjects taught. ”. Only a few ruins of the University of Gladzor remain today, a result of the Mongol and Timurid invasions.
As if to compensate for the catastrophic losses by these invasions, the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia flourished from the eleventh century to the end of the fourteenth century. Art and culture developed there until its fall at the end of the 14th century under the conquering advance of the Egyptian Mamluks.
This period saw the peak of Armenian illuminated manuscripts: “For example, the miniatures painted in the northeastern regions are distinguished by their monumental character and the intensity of their colors; while the ones in the Vaspurakan school by their simplicity and a tendency to stylization. The illuminations of Bardzr Khaïk, or Upper Armenia, can be recognized by the majestic gravity of the characters and the variety of their ornamentation; while the Cilician miniatures display remarkable refinement and virtuosity”. The miniatures of Cilicia and Greater Armenian were variants of the same national art of which they share the fundamental features, they were however distinguished: “the Cilician miniatures acquired in a short time a brilliant level and a great depth of expression. While keeping their own unique style, they reflect their miniaturists' interest in the early western European Renaissance. The miniatures of Greater Armenia, from which many schools and currents arose in the 13th and 14th centuries, are simpler, more monumental and more original. They were able to retain an expressiveness that was unparalleled in any painting of the time”.
Miniatures of Greater Armenia.
Upper Armenia.
The surviving manuscripts of upper Armenian origins, a northwestern region of historic Armenia, crossing several roads of transit axis in the 13th century, are "always decorated with rich vegetal motifs, curved leaves with the sharpness of a sickle and scrolls with palmettes”. At first, treated "in a fairly realistic manner", these motifs gradually experienced an "increasingly pronounced stylization", to end up spreading to the art of Transcaucasia, the Near East and the Middle East.
In the largest of the known Armenian manuscripts, the Homiliary of Mush (monastery of the Holy Apostles, 1200-1202, Matenadaran, Ms. 7729), written in "erkataghir" (Armenian uncials), the pages are filled with vignettes and marginal motifs of Armenian pagan origin. This is largely due to the pagan and Zoroastrian sanctuaries getting consecrated as temples dedicated to Christianity, a result of the Christianization of the country in 301 AD with the conversion of the king of Armenia, Tiridates III from paganism to Christianity. Subsequently, elements inherited from ancient paganism mixed with Christian art, but they carried new meanings. This homily symbolizes with its ornamentation a search for the renovation of already existing shapes and an effort to create new motifs. It seems to be the work of three artists