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Protection and salvation: an eleventh-century silver vessel, its imagery, and its function

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2018

Lara Frentrop
Lara Frentrop*
Affiliation:
The Courtauld Institute of [email protected]
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Abstract

A small silver bowl, discovered in Russia and usually attributed to eleventh-century Byzantium, displays a range of unusual imagery that has complicated its interpretation. The role of the saint and prayer on the vessel and the emphasis placed on intercession as well as on protection, this paper will suggest, was to protect the vessel's owner both on earth and in his afterlife. The vessel, which makes visible contemporary ideas about punishment, Last Things, and salvation, presents a fragmentary image of the Last Judgement designed to stress the importance of heavenly justice and to remind its viewer to remain virtuous.

Keywords

Byzantine artLast Judgementmetalworkapotropaic imagery
Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 2018 , pp. 26 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 2018 

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References

1 The dish is now in the collections of the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, together with a group of vessels attributed to Byzantium, which are catalogued in Darkevich, V. P., Svetskoe iskusstvo Vizantii: proizvedeniia vizantiiskogo khudozhestvennogo remesla v Vostochnoi Evrope X-XIII veka (Moscow 1975)Google Scholar. Bank, A., 'Monuments des arts mineurs de Byzance (Xe-XIIe siècles) au Musée de l'Ermitage (Argenterie, stéatites, camées)’, Corsi di cultura sull'arte ravennate e bizantina IX (1962) 125–138. 128Google Scholar.

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19 On the protective function of beasts such as dragons, sphinxes, and serpents in combination with epigraphy on a monumental scale, see: Eastmond, A., ‘Other encounters: popular belief and cultural convergence in Anatolia and the Caucasus’, in Peacock, A., De Nicola, B. and Yildiz, S. Nur (eds.), Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia (Farnham 2015) 183–213 Google Scholar.

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27 Ševčenko, ‘Images of the Second Coming’, 253.

28 Ševčenko, ‘Images of the Second Coming’, 254.

29 Matthew 25:31-46; Daniel 7:9-10.

30 Revelation 20:11-15.

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36 The beasts on the bowl might represent the punishments meted out to the sinners, therefore possibly serving as ’shorthand’ images of hell.

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40 Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 3; vices included are ploughing out of one's furrow, and virtues such as respect for the local priest, i.e. virtues and vices which weigh heavily on local networks of kin, village, and parish.

41 Apocalypse of the Theotokos, trans. Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, §17.

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54 Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 311.

55 Baun, Tales from Another Byzantium, 97.

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