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Exhibition Review
The Key to Armenia's Survival
Correr Museum, Venice
An Armenian merchant portrayed by Giovanni Grevembroch in the 18th century.
By RODERICK CONWAY MORRIS
Published: February 23, 2012
VENICE - Armenian civilization is one of the most ancient of those
surviving in the Middle East, but for large parts of its history
Armenia has been a nation without a country. This has given the spoken
and written word, the primary means through which Armenian identity
has been preserved, enormous prominence in its people's culture.
Library of the Mekhitarist Fathers, San Lazzaro
A gospel dating from 1331 with an illumination of St. Matthew with
the artist himself, Sargiz Pitzak, kneeling at the feet of the
evangelist.
Zvartnots Cathedral Museum, Echmiadzin
A 7th-century sundial with Armenian numbers from Zvartnots Cathedral
in Echmiadzin, Armenia.
Over the centuries this emphasis has fostered a particular regard for
books and the means of producing them. Scribes added notes on the
proper care and conservation of books and advice on hiding them during
dangerous times, even on `ransoming' them should they fall into the
wrong hands. A late 19th-century English traveler observed that the
Armenians prized the printing press with the same `affection and
reverence as the Persian highlanders value a rifle or sporting gun.'
In 1511 to 1512 (the exact date is uncertain), the first Armenian book
was printed in Venice. The event was especially significant for this
scattered nation, which did not acquire a modern homeland until 1918
and then only in a small part of its ancestral lands.
The anniversary is the occasion for `Armenia: Imprints of a
Civilization,' an impressive exhibition organized by Gabriella
Ulluhogian, Boghos Levon Zekiyan and Vartan Karapetian of more than
200 works spanning more than 1,000 years of Armenian written
culture. These range from inscriptions and illuminated manuscripts to
printed and illustrated books, including many unique and rare pieces
from collections in Armenia and Europe.
The show opens with the atmospheric painting of 1889 by the Armenian
artist Ivan Aivazovski, `The Descent of Noah From Mount Ararat,'
from the National Gallery in Yerevan. It shows the Old Testament
patriarch leading his family and a procession of animals across the
plain, still watery from the subsiding Flood, to re-people the earth.
The extraordinary grip that this mountain has had on the Armenian
imagination is tellingly demonstrated by subsequent sections on
sculpture, the Armenian Church and the Ark - the conical domes of
Armenian churches seeming eternally to replicate this geographical
feature that symbolizes the salvation of the human race.
Christianity reached Armenia as early as the first or early second
century. And Armenia lays claim to having been the first nation that
adopted the faith as a state religion, sometime between 293 and 314, a
date traditionally recorded by the Armenian Church as 301.
There followed, in around 404 or 405, an initiative that has been one
of the cornerstones of the endurance of the Armenian ethnos: the
invention of a distinctive alphabet capable of rendering the
language's complex phonetic system. This made possible the translation
of the Bible - the majestic 10th-century Gospel of Trebizond is on
show here - and the foundation of Armenian literature in all its
manifestations, sacred and secular.
The desire to illustrate the gospels and other Christian texts was the
primary impetus for the development of Armenian art, which drew on an
unusually wide range of sources thanks to the country's position at
the crossroads of several civilizations.
As Dickran Kouymjian writes in his essay in the exhibition's
substantial and wide-ranging catalog, which is available in English,
French and Italian: `Armenian artists were remarkably open to artistic
trends in Byzantium, the Latin West, the Islamic Near East and even
Central Asia and China.'
A sumptuous display of these illuminated books brings together some of
the finest surviving examples from the ninth to the 15th centuries,
and it is curious to discover that even after the advent of printing,
the tradition of illumination continued in Armenian monasteries for a
further two and a half centuries.
The acme of the Armenian miniature was reached in the 13th century,
during the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which ruled over a substantial
part of Asia Minor (1198-1375), until it was overthrown by the Mamluks
of Egypt.
Armenian contacts with Venice date to the period when the nascent
lagoon republic was a remote western outpost of Byzantium, where
Armenians held senior positions in the administration and the
military. In the sixth century the Armenian governor Narses is
credited with introducing the cult of Theodore, or Todoro, Venice's
first patron saint and Isaac the Armenian is recorded as the founder
of the ancient Santa Maria Assunta basilica on the island of Torcello.
Contacts became frequent during the Kingdom of Cilicia as Venetian
merchants expanded their activities in the Levant and their Armenian
counterparts sought opportunities in Europe.
In 1235 the Venetian nobleman Marco Ziani left a house to the Armenian
community at San Zulian near Piazza San Marco, which came to be called
the Casa Armena and provided a focal point for Venice's ever more
numerous Armenian residents and visitors.
The testament drawn up in 1354 by the governess of this house, `Maria
the Armenian,' indicates that by that time there was not only a
thriving community of merchants, but also clerics and an archbishop,
to whom she left three of her six peacocks. Later the church of Santa
Croce was founded on the same site, still today an Armenian place of
worship. Both Marco Ziani and Maria's wills are on show.
A precious copy of the first Armenian book printed in 1511-1512, a
religious work titled the Book of Friday, is also on display. The
innovation led to the setting up of a host of Armenian presses all
over the world. The fruits of these - from locations as far-flung as
Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg to Istanbul, Isfahan,
Madras and Singapore - form the absorbing last section of the
exhibition.
Venice was given a further boost as the global center of Armenian
culture by the arrival in the lagoon of Abbot Mekhitar and his monks
in 1715. This visionary was born in Sivas (ancient Sebastia) in
Anatolia, and had spent time in Echmiadzin and Istanbul. Later he took
the community he had created to Methoni in the Peloponnese, which had
been conquered by the Venetians in the 1680s. But the prospect of the
town's recapture by the Ottomans led to Mekhitar's decision to take
refuge in Venice. In 1717 he and his followers were granted a lease on
the island of San Lazzaro, which has been their headquarters ever
since.
Under Mekhitar, San Lazzaro became the epicenter of a worldwide
Armenian cultural revival. The community created a study center and
library, was responsible for printing scores of books in Venice and
elsewhere, and established an international network of schools, where
a high proportion of Armenia's religious and secular elite received an
education into modern times.
The Armenian Academy of San Lazzaro has published Bazmavep, a
literary, historical and scientific journal since 1843, one of the
oldest continuous periodicals of its kind. And the first Armenian
newspaper-magazine was Azdara (The Monitor), founded in Madras in
1794.
San Lazzaro's most famous foreign student was Lord Byron, who learned
Armenian there with the scholar Harutiun Avgerian, with whom he
collaborated on the production of an Armenian and English grammar,
containing translations by the poet. Armenia: Imprints of a
Civilization. Correr Museum, Venice. Through April 10.
A version of this article appeared in print on February 24, 2012, in
The International Herald Tribune.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/arts/24iht-conway24.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all
The Key to Armenia's Survival
Correr Museum, Venice
An Armenian merchant portrayed by Giovanni Grevembroch in the 18th century.
By RODERICK CONWAY MORRIS
Published: February 23, 2012
VENICE - Armenian civilization is one of the most ancient of those
surviving in the Middle East, but for large parts of its history
Armenia has been a nation without a country. This has given the spoken
and written word, the primary means through which Armenian identity
has been preserved, enormous prominence in its people's culture.
Library of the Mekhitarist Fathers, San Lazzaro
A gospel dating from 1331 with an illumination of St. Matthew with
the artist himself, Sargiz Pitzak, kneeling at the feet of the
evangelist.
Zvartnots Cathedral Museum, Echmiadzin
A 7th-century sundial with Armenian numbers from Zvartnots Cathedral
in Echmiadzin, Armenia.
Over the centuries this emphasis has fostered a particular regard for
books and the means of producing them. Scribes added notes on the
proper care and conservation of books and advice on hiding them during
dangerous times, even on `ransoming' them should they fall into the
wrong hands. A late 19th-century English traveler observed that the
Armenians prized the printing press with the same `affection and
reverence as the Persian highlanders value a rifle or sporting gun.'
In 1511 to 1512 (the exact date is uncertain), the first Armenian book
was printed in Venice. The event was especially significant for this
scattered nation, which did not acquire a modern homeland until 1918
and then only in a small part of its ancestral lands.
The anniversary is the occasion for `Armenia: Imprints of a
Civilization,' an impressive exhibition organized by Gabriella
Ulluhogian, Boghos Levon Zekiyan and Vartan Karapetian of more than
200 works spanning more than 1,000 years of Armenian written
culture. These range from inscriptions and illuminated manuscripts to
printed and illustrated books, including many unique and rare pieces
from collections in Armenia and Europe.
The show opens with the atmospheric painting of 1889 by the Armenian
artist Ivan Aivazovski, `The Descent of Noah From Mount Ararat,'
from the National Gallery in Yerevan. It shows the Old Testament
patriarch leading his family and a procession of animals across the
plain, still watery from the subsiding Flood, to re-people the earth.
The extraordinary grip that this mountain has had on the Armenian
imagination is tellingly demonstrated by subsequent sections on
sculpture, the Armenian Church and the Ark - the conical domes of
Armenian churches seeming eternally to replicate this geographical
feature that symbolizes the salvation of the human race.
Christianity reached Armenia as early as the first or early second
century. And Armenia lays claim to having been the first nation that
adopted the faith as a state religion, sometime between 293 and 314, a
date traditionally recorded by the Armenian Church as 301.
There followed, in around 404 or 405, an initiative that has been one
of the cornerstones of the endurance of the Armenian ethnos: the
invention of a distinctive alphabet capable of rendering the
language's complex phonetic system. This made possible the translation
of the Bible - the majestic 10th-century Gospel of Trebizond is on
show here - and the foundation of Armenian literature in all its
manifestations, sacred and secular.
The desire to illustrate the gospels and other Christian texts was the
primary impetus for the development of Armenian art, which drew on an
unusually wide range of sources thanks to the country's position at
the crossroads of several civilizations.
As Dickran Kouymjian writes in his essay in the exhibition's
substantial and wide-ranging catalog, which is available in English,
French and Italian: `Armenian artists were remarkably open to artistic
trends in Byzantium, the Latin West, the Islamic Near East and even
Central Asia and China.'
A sumptuous display of these illuminated books brings together some of
the finest surviving examples from the ninth to the 15th centuries,
and it is curious to discover that even after the advent of printing,
the tradition of illumination continued in Armenian monasteries for a
further two and a half centuries.
The acme of the Armenian miniature was reached in the 13th century,
during the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, which ruled over a substantial
part of Asia Minor (1198-1375), until it was overthrown by the Mamluks
of Egypt.
Armenian contacts with Venice date to the period when the nascent
lagoon republic was a remote western outpost of Byzantium, where
Armenians held senior positions in the administration and the
military. In the sixth century the Armenian governor Narses is
credited with introducing the cult of Theodore, or Todoro, Venice's
first patron saint and Isaac the Armenian is recorded as the founder
of the ancient Santa Maria Assunta basilica on the island of Torcello.
Contacts became frequent during the Kingdom of Cilicia as Venetian
merchants expanded their activities in the Levant and their Armenian
counterparts sought opportunities in Europe.
In 1235 the Venetian nobleman Marco Ziani left a house to the Armenian
community at San Zulian near Piazza San Marco, which came to be called
the Casa Armena and provided a focal point for Venice's ever more
numerous Armenian residents and visitors.
The testament drawn up in 1354 by the governess of this house, `Maria
the Armenian,' indicates that by that time there was not only a
thriving community of merchants, but also clerics and an archbishop,
to whom she left three of her six peacocks. Later the church of Santa
Croce was founded on the same site, still today an Armenian place of
worship. Both Marco Ziani and Maria's wills are on show.
A precious copy of the first Armenian book printed in 1511-1512, a
religious work titled the Book of Friday, is also on display. The
innovation led to the setting up of a host of Armenian presses all
over the world. The fruits of these - from locations as far-flung as
Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg to Istanbul, Isfahan,
Madras and Singapore - form the absorbing last section of the
exhibition.
Venice was given a further boost as the global center of Armenian
culture by the arrival in the lagoon of Abbot Mekhitar and his monks
in 1715. This visionary was born in Sivas (ancient Sebastia) in
Anatolia, and had spent time in Echmiadzin and Istanbul. Later he took
the community he had created to Methoni in the Peloponnese, which had
been conquered by the Venetians in the 1680s. But the prospect of the
town's recapture by the Ottomans led to Mekhitar's decision to take
refuge in Venice. In 1717 he and his followers were granted a lease on
the island of San Lazzaro, which has been their headquarters ever
since.
Under Mekhitar, San Lazzaro became the epicenter of a worldwide
Armenian cultural revival. The community created a study center and
library, was responsible for printing scores of books in Venice and
elsewhere, and established an international network of schools, where
a high proportion of Armenia's religious and secular elite received an
education into modern times.
The Armenian Academy of San Lazzaro has published Bazmavep, a
literary, historical and scientific journal since 1843, one of the
oldest continuous periodicals of its kind. And the first Armenian
newspaper-magazine was Azdara (The Monitor), founded in Madras in
1794.
San Lazzaro's most famous foreign student was Lord Byron, who learned
Armenian there with the scholar Harutiun Avgerian, with whom he
collaborated on the production of an Armenian and English grammar,
containing translations by the poet. Armenia: Imprints of a
Civilization. Correr Museum, Venice. Through April 10.
A version of this article appeared in print on February 24, 2012, in
The International Herald Tribune.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/arts/24iht-conway24.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all