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Telling stories with pictures: narrative in middle and late Byzantine monumental painting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2019

Vicky A. Foskolou
Vicky A. Foskolou*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the narrative strategies employed in the monumental painting of the middle and late Byzantine period and considers whether the different methods of narration and the degree of narrativity can reveal anything about the function of the work, its creators, its audience and finally its period; in other words whether a narratological approach to visual representation could be a tool for analysing a work of art in socio-historical terms. This is determined firstly by identifying similar narrative structures in contemporary literature and secondly by looking for information on how contemporary viewers ‘read’ the ‘story’ in monumental narrative paintings.

Keywords

Visual narrativeByzantine monumental paintingiconographyPalaiologan romancesKomnenian novels
Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , October 2019 , pp. 194 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham, 2019 

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Footnotes

This study was first presented at the 2016 Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies Colloquium entitled ‘Monumental Painting in Byzantium and Beyond: New Perspectives’. I would like to thank the anonymous readers of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies for their insightful comments and Valerie Nunn for the English translation.

References

1 Weitzmann, Kurt, ‘The origin of the threnos’, in De artibus opuscula XL. Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, I (New York 1961) 476–90Google Scholar.

2 Maguire, Henry, ‘The depiction of sorrow in middle Byzantine art’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977), 123–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar (145, 161ff.); idem, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton N.J. 1981) 97–108.

3 Unfortunately to date there is no comprehensive historiography of research into Byzantine art, and the few brief articles on the subject give a rather restricted picture as they focus on the work of English-speaking academics, see L. Brubaker, ‘Critical approaches to art history’, in E. Jeffreys, J. Haldon, R. Cormack (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford 2008) 59–66, with earlier bibliography. For a brief historiographical presentation of the study of iconography, see the relevant chapter by K. Corrigan in The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, 67–76.

4 An exception to this rule is the article by Maguire, H., ‘Two modes of narration in Byzantine art’, in Moss, C., Kiefer, K. (eds.), Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-historical studies in honor of Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton N.J. 1995) 385–91Google Scholar and its expanded version in his monograph The Icons of their Bodies. Saints and their Images in Byzantium (Princeton N.J. 1996) 146–194. See also Maguire, H., ‘The art of comparing in Byzantium’, Art Bulletin 70 (1988) 88–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 On Weitzmann's role in the study of pictorial narrative, see G. Horváth, From Sequence to Scenario. The Historiography and Theory of Visual Narration (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia, 2010) 51–4.

6 The most typical example is the pictorial cycle of the Life of the Virgin, which is attributed to a, now lost, illustrated copy of the Protevangelium of James, see J. Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de l'enfance de la Vierge dans l'empire byzantin et en Occident, I (Bruxelles 1964) 190–1, 196ff. On the supposed dependency of monumental painting on illustrated manuscripts, Kitzinger, E., ‘The role of miniature painting in mural decoration’, in Weitzmann, K. (ed.), The Place of Book Illumination in Byzantine Art (Princeton N.J. 1975) 99–142Google Scholar.

7 G. Horváth, ‘A passion for order: classifications for narrative imagery in art history and beyond’. in Visuelle Narrative – Kulturelle Identitäten / Visual Narratives – Cultural Identities. Special Issue of Visual Past, A Journal for the Study of Past Visual Cultures, 3.1 (2016). http://www.visualpast.de/archive/content.html) 254–5.

8 The basic thesis of O. Demus, Byzantine Mosaic Decoration (London 1947 [1948]), was that the interior space of a Byzantine church reflected the hierarchy of the heavenly kingdom and the relationship between humanity and divinity with images of saints on the lower part of the church walls leading upwards to the narrative of Christ's life and finally to representations of the Pantokrator in the dome. These principles have remained paradigmatic in the study of Byzantine monumental painting, see Kitzinger, E., ‘Reflections on the Feast Cycle in Byzantine Art’, Cahiers Archéologiques XXXVI (1988) 51–73Google Scholar; Maguire, H., ‘The cycle of images in the church’, in Safran, L. (ed.), Heaven on Earth. Art and the Church in Byzantium (Philadelphia 1998) 121–51Google Scholar. On the importance of this study, Brubaker, ‘Critical approaches’, 60. On the persistence of Demus’ scheme in the interpretation of the Byzantine church interior decoration, Ćurčić, S., ‘The church as a symbol of the cosmos in Byzantine architecture and art’, in Drandaki, A., Papanikola-Bakirtzi, D., Tourta, A., (eds.) Heaven & Earth. Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections (Athens 2013) 105–6Google Scholar.

9 S. Dufrenne, ‘L'enrichissement du programme iconographique dans les églises byzantines du XIIIe siècle’ and Velmans, T., ‘Les valeurs affectives dans la peinture murale byzantine au XIIIe siècle et la manière de les représenter’, in L'art byzantin du XIIIe siècle. Symposium de Sopoćani 1965 (Belgrade 1967) 35–46Google Scholar and 47–57; Lafontaine-Dosogne, J., ‘L'évolution du programme décoratif des églises de 1071–1261’, in Actes du XVe Congrès International d'Études Byzantines, Rapports et co-rapports, III (Athens 1976) 131–56Google Scholar; Velmans, T., La peinture murale byzantine à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris 1977) 102–13Google Scholar; Wharton, A. J., ‘Church programs of decoration’, in Kazhdan, Alexander P., et al. (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (Oxford 1991) I, 459Google Scholar.

10 L. Hadermann-Misguich, ‘La peinture monumentale tardo-comnène et ses prolongements au XIΙIe siècles’, in Actes XVe C.I.É.B., 99–127.

11 Zarras, N., ‘The Passion cycle in Staro Nagoričino’, JÖB 60 (2010) 181–213Google Scholar, esp. 202–5; I. Jevtić, ‘Narrative mode in late Byzantine painting: questions it raises about sacred images’, in Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art. Papers from the Third Annual International Symposium in Art History and Theory of Art (St Petersburg 2013) 195–200.

12 Zarras developed his theory in more detail in a later article, in which he once again interprets the visual narrative in theological terms and attributes the narrativity of the late Byzantine period to developments in liturgical ritual, Zarras, N., ‘Narrating the sacred story: New Testament cycles in middle and late Byzantine church decoration’, in Krueger, D., Nelson, R. S. (eds.), The New Testament in Byzantium (Washington, D.C. 2016) 239–75Google Scholar.

13 The scholarship on literary narrative theory is immense. Rooted in structural linguistics and semiology, narratology has nowadays expanded beyond the study of texts and is regarded as an autonomous field dedicated to research into the logic, principles, and practices of narrative representation across various media; see Herman, D., ‘Introduction’, in Herman, D. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge 2007) 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J.C. Meister, ‘Narratology’, in P. Hühn et al. (eds.), The Living Handbook of Narratology (http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/narratology [view date: 3 Sep 2018]).

14 Abbott, H. Porter, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (Cambridge 2002)Google Scholar; H. Porter Abbott, ‘Story, plot, and narration,’ in Cambridge Companion to Narrative, 39–51.

15 Abbott, Narrative, 6–9. The viewer acquires an important place in decoding a visual narrative in the work of Ernst Gombrich, see Horváth, From Sequence to Scenario, 64–5. On the role of the viewer in pictorial narrative, see Kemp, W., ‘Narrative’, in Nelson, R. C., Shiff, R. (eds.), Critical Terms for Art History (Chicago 1996) 67–9Google Scholar.

16 Lewis, S., ‘Narrative’, in Rudolph, C. (ed.), A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe (Oxford 2006) 86–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The same is true of the literary forms of narrative in the Byzantine world, Bourbouhakis, E. C. and Nilsson, I., ‘Byzantine narrative: the form of story-telling in Byzantium’, in James, L. (ed.), A Companion to Byzantium (Oxford 2010) 264Google Scholar.

17 For a definition of framing narrative, Abbott, Narrative, 25–26; J. Pier, ‘Narrative Levels’, in The Living Handbook of Narratology, http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/narrative-levels-revised-version-uploaded-23-april-2014 [view date: 7 Sep 2018]. In narrative theory, master narrative or master plot defines the archetypical stories, the narrative schemes that order and explain knowledge and experience of the world in a given historical and social context, see Abbott, Narrative, 42–3. Herman, D., Jahn, M., Ryan, M. L. (eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (London and New York 2005)Google Scholar s.v. ‘master narrative’.

18 On the monastery dating to the last quarter of the 11th c.: Ch. Bouras ‘The Daphni monastic complex reconsidered’, in I. Ševčenko, I. Hutter (eds.), ΑΕΤΟΣ. Studies in honour of Cyril Mango (Stuttgart and Leipzig 1998) 1–14, with the earlier bibliography on the architecture and history of the monument. On its mosaic decoration: L. James, Mosaics in the Medieval World: from Late Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge 2017) 339–344. James dates the mosaics to the mid-11th c., but a dating to the end of the century seems more convincing, see Mouriki, D., ‘Stylistic trends in monumental painting of Greece during the eleventh and twelfth centuries’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980/1981) 77–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 On the church's iconographic programme, see Maguire, ‘The cycle of images in the church’, 137–50. On the life cycle of the Virgin at Daphni : Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de l'enfance de la Vierge, passim.

20 On the typological relationship between the scenes from the Life of the Virgin and those in the Christological cycle at Daphni: Maguire, The Icons of their Bodies, 150–69.

21 P.A. Underwood, The Kariye Djami (New York 1966) I, 29, 60–99; II, pl. 14–15, 83–99; Lafontaine-Dosogne, J., ‘The cycle of the life of the Virgin’, in Underwood, P.A. (ed.), The Kariye Djami, IV: Studies in the Art of Kariye Djami and its Intellectual Background (Princeton and London 1975) 163–94Google Scholar.

22 J. Lafontaine-Dosogne, ‘The cycle of the infancy of Christ’, op. cit., IV, 197–241.

23 Underwood, Kariye Djami, I, 81; II, pl. 143–5.

24 Op. cit., I, 68–9; II, pl. 104–7.

25 Op. cit., I, 72–3; II, pl. 119, 121, 123, 124.

26 ‘Supplementary events are events that do not drive the story forward and without which the story would still remain intact’: Abbott, Narrative, 20–2. Embedding narrative on the other hand involves: ‘a “story within a story”, the structure by which a character in a narrative text becomes the narrator of a second narrative text framed by the first one’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, s.v. ‘embedding’.

27 The elaborate treatment of the lament over the dead children in the Chora monastery is noteworthy. It is represented in a separate scene occupying a very large surface of the outer narthex, whereas in the typical Byzantine scene of the Massacre of the Innocents usually only one mother is depicted as a secondary motif expressing her grief, Underwood, Kariye Djami, I, 102–3; II, pl. 194–6; Lafontaine-Dosogne, ‘The cycle of the infancy of Christ’, 229–34 (esp. 233–4). For the textual sources of the subject: Maguire, Art and Eloquence, 31–3. For an appealing interpretation of the treatment of the theme in the Chora, based on the historical background of the period and the biography of the patron, Theodoros Metochites, Nelson, R. S., ‘Taxation with representation. Visual narrative and the political field of the Kariye Camii’, Art History 22 (1999) 56–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Underwood, Kariye Djami I, 65–6; II, pl. 96–7.

29 The lengthy passages, quoted directly from the Gospels, narrate the story in the third person and sometimes address the viewer, e.g. the inscription on the scene of Joseph's dream: ‘Behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying…’ (Matt. 1:20), Underwood, Kariye Djami, I, 86, 152.

30 Maguire, H., ‘Rhetoric and reality in the art of the Kariye Camii’, in Klein, H. A., Ousterhout, R. G. and Pitarakis, B. (eds.), The Kariye Camii Reconsidered (Istanbul 2011) 57–69Google Scholar.

31 For a recent presentation of the painted programme in the Perivleptos with earlier bibliography, M. Emmanuel, ‘Το εικονογραφικό πρόγραμμα του καθολικού της μονής Περιβλέπτου στον Μυστρά και το ζήτημα του κτήτορα’, in V. Katsaros and A. Tourta (eds.), Αφιέρωμα στον Ακαδημαϊκό Παναγιώτη Λ. Βοκοτόπουλο (Athens 2015) 407–16. See also Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de l'enfance de la Vierge, passim.

32 Dufrenne, S., Les programmes iconographiques des églises byzantines de Mistra (Paris 1970) 14–16Google Scholar.

33 For the lengthy inscriptions with direct quotations from the Protoevangelium see also D. Mouriki, ‘Tέσσαρες μη μελετηθείσαι σκηναί του βίου της Παναγίας εις την Περίβλεπτον του Μυστρά’, Ἀρχαιολογική Ἐφημερίς 1968 (Chronika) 1–6.

34 For a similar approach, Maguire, H., Image and Imagination: The Byzantine Epigram as Evidence for Viewer Response (Toronto 1996)Google Scholar.

35 Mullett, M., ‘Novelisation in Byzantium: narrative after the revival of fiction’, in Burke, J. (ed.), Byzantine Narrative (Melbourne 2006) 1–28Google Scholar.

36 Bourbouhakis and Nilsson, ‘Byzantine narrative’, 268, 271–273; Nilsson, I., Raconter Byzance : la littérature au XIIe siècle (Paris 2014)Google Scholar, esp. ch. III. For a recent survey of 12th-c. novels with updated bibliographies: Nilsson, I., ‘Romantic love in rhetorical guise: the Byzantine revival of the twelfth century’, in Cupane, C. and Krönung, B. (eds.), Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond (Leiden and Boston 2016) 39–66Google Scholar.

37 Agapitos, P. A., ‘In Rhomaian, Frankish and Persian lands: fiction and fictionality in Byzantium and beyond’, in Agapitos, P. A. and Mortensen, L. B. (eds.), Medieval Narratives between History and Fiction: From the Centre to the Periphery of Europe, c. 1100–1400 (Copenhagen 2012) 249–54Google Scholar; Nilsson, I., Zagklas, N., ‘“Hurry up, reap every flower of the logoi!” The use of Greek novels in Byzantium’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017) 1120–48Google Scholar. On the 12th-c. authors’ lively dialogue with ancient literature: Agapitos, P. A., ‘Ancient models and novel mixtures: the concept of genre in Byzantine funerary literature from Photios to Eustathios of Thessalonike’, in Nagy, G., and Stavrakopoulou, A. (eds.), Modern Greek Literature. Critical Essays (New York and London 2003) 12–15Google Scholar. For a more holistic interpretation of the phenomenon as the expression of a new identity adopted by Byzantine scholars, Macrides, R. and Magdalino, P., ‘The fourth kingdom and the rhetoric of Hellenism’, in Magdalino, P. (ed.), The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe (London and Rio Grande, Ohio 1992) 139–56Google Scholar.

38 Agapitos, P. A., ‘Narrative, rhetoric and “drama” rediscovered: scholars and poets in Byzantium interpret Heliodorus’, in Hunter, R. (ed.), Studies in Heliodorus (Cambridge 1998) 125–56Google Scholar.

39 Agapitos, ‘Narrative, rhetoric and “drama”’, 156.

40 Agapitos, P. A., ‘Genre, structure and poetics in the Byzantine vernacular romances of love’, Symbolae Osloenses 79 (2004) 34–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 On the narrative structure of Comnenian novels as an indication of oral recitation, Agapitos, P. A., ‘Writing, reading and reciting (in) Byzantine erotic fiction’, in Mondrain, B. (ed.), Lire et écrire à Byzance (Paris 2006) 135–152Google Scholar; Nilsson, ‘Romantic love in rhetorical guise’, 52–3.

42 Alexiou, M., ‘Ploys of performance: games and play in the Ptochoprodromic poems’, Dumbarton Oaks papers 53 (1999) 91–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Mullet, ‘No drama, no poetry, no fiction, no readership, no literature’, in Companion to Byzantium, 227–9. On 12th-c. theatra: Mullet, Μ., ‘Aristocracy and patronage in the literary circles of Comnenian Constantinople’, in Angold, M. (ed.), The Byzantine Aristocracy IX to XIII Centuries (Oxford 1984) 73–197Google Scholar; Magdalino, P., The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos 1143–1180 (Cambridge 1993) 352–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacAlister, S., Dreams and Suicides: Τhe Greek Novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire (London and New York 1996) 155–6Google Scholar; Marciniak, P., ‘Byzantine Theatron – a place of performance?’, in Grünbart, M. (ed.), Theatron. Rhetorische Kultur in Spätantike und Mittelalter (Berlin and New York 2007) 277–85Google Scholar.

43 On the church in Nerezi and its wall-paintings, Sinkević, I., The Church of St. Panteleimon at Nerezi. Architecture, Programme, Patronage (Wiesbaden 2000)Google Scholar.

44 The emphasis on the themes of the Passion and intercession at Nerezi, along with the presence of a tomb in the north-west chapel, suggest that the patron, Alexios Komnenos, may have intended the church for his own burial place, Sinkević, op. cit. 48–58.

45 It is interesting to note that Agapitos mentions the common narrative aesthetic that connects the fiction and the monumental painting of the period: ‘Genre, structure and poetics’, 49–50.

46 On the patrons and the intended audience of the Comnenian novels, Agapitos, P. Α., ‘Η θέση της αισθητικής αποτίμησης σε μια «νέα» ιστορία της βυζαντινής λογοτεχνίας’, in Odorico, P., Agapitos, P. A. (eds.), Pour une ‘Nouvelle’ Histoire de la Littérature byzantine. Actes du Colloque international philologique (Paris 2002) 202–7Google Scholar; Agapitos, ‘Writing, reading and reciting’; P. Roilos, ‘“I grasp, oh artist, your enigma, I grasp your drama”: reconstructing the implied audience of the twelfth–century Byzantine novel’, in Cupane and Krönung (eds.), Fictional Storytelling, 463–78.

47 Agapitos, P. A., Narrative Structure in the Byzantine Vernacular Romances. A Textual and Literary Study of Kallimachos, Belthandros and Libistros (Munich 1991)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Η θέση της αισθητικής αποτίμησης’; idem, ‘Genre, structure and poetics’. For a recent survey of the Palaiologan romances with updated bibliographies, C. Cupane, ‘In the realm of Eros: the late Byzantine vernacular romances – original texts’, in Cupane and Krönung (eds.), Fictional Storytelling, 95–126.

48 Franz Wickhoff was the first to recognize the continuous narration as a distinct type of narrative imagery in his seminal book, Die Wiener Genesis (Vienna 1895). This mode, renamed cyclic or polyscenic method of narration, was further studied by K. Weitzmann, mainly in his Illustrations in Roll and Codex (Princeton 1947, repr. 1970), see Lewis, ‘Narrative’, 88–9; Horváth, From Sequence to Scenario, 41–4; eadem, ‘A passion for order’, 252–4.

49 For example in the Perivleptos at Ochrid (1295), in the Katholikon of the Protaton (ca 1310) and Vatopedi (1312) monasteries on Mount Athos, in St Nikolaos Orphanos in Thessaloniki (ca 1310–20), in St. George at Staro Nagoričino (1317/18), in St. Niketa at Čučer (ca 1321): see Marković, M., ‘Iconographic program of the oldest wall paintings in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos at Ohrid: a list of frescoes and notes on certain program particularities’, Zograf 35 (2011) 119–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nastou, A., ‘Το εικονογραφικό πρόγραμμα του Πρωτάτου’, in Kanonidis, I. (ed.), Πρωτάτο ΙΙ. Η συντήρηση των τοιχογραφιών, vol. 2 (Polygyros 2015) 15–16Google Scholar, 142–51; Tsigaridas, Ε., ‘Τα ψηφιδωτά και οι βυζαντινές τοιχογραφίες’, in Ιερά Μεγίστη Μονή Βατοπαιδίου. Παράδοση–Ιστορία–Τέχνη (Mount Athos 1996), 259–79Google Scholar, figs 218, 224; Tsitouridou, A., Ο ζωγραφικός διάκοσμος του Αγίου Νικολάου Ορφανού στη Θεσσαλονίκη (Thessaloniki 1986), 109–27Google Scholar; Zarras, ‘Staro Nagoričino’; Marković, M., Saint Niketas near Skopje. A foundation of King Milutin (Belgrade 2015)Google Scholar (in Serbian with an English summary) 339–40, fig. 8-9.

50 Bourbouhakis, Nilsson, ‘Byzantine narrative’, 273. This comment refers specifically to the work Libistros and Rhodamne, which is the most interesting example of a complex narrative structure in the group of late Byzantine romances, Agapitos, P. A., Ἀφήγησις Λιβίστρου καὶ Pοδάμνης. Kριτικὴ ἔκδοση τῆς διασκευῆς «ἄλφα» (Athens 2006) 58–60Google Scholar; idem, ‘Genre, structure and poetics’, 31–36; Cupane, ‘In the realm of Eros’, 101–110.

51 On the role of the discursive mode, and especially of dialogues, in the narrative strategies of the late Byzantine romances: Agapitos, Narrative structure, 159–176. On the inscriptions that accompany the Christological scenes in Palaiologan painted cycles, Zarras, ‘Staro Nagoričino’, 204; Jevtić, ‘Narrative mode’, 197–8, Zarras, ‘Narrating the Sacred Story’, 264–5.

52 See, for example, the scene with the conversation between Joseph and Mary after the Annunciation in the Chora Monastery, where the inscription records Joseph's words: ‘Mary, what is this deed?’, Underwood, Kariye Djami, I, 83; II, pl. 148–50. Another typical example is the episode of the Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane in paintings from the workshop of Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the monuments mentioned above. The gestures and the poses of the main characters hint at the dialogue going on between them (see Nastou, ‘Το εικονογραφικό πρόγραμμα του Πρωτάτου’, 16, fig. 2), and above all in the scene in the Perivleptos in Ohrid (1295) and St Nikolaos Orphanos (1310–20) which preserve the inscriptions with the relevant passages from the gospel transmitting Christ's words, see Acheimastou-Potamianou, M., Βυζαντινές τοιχογραφίες (Athens 1985) 238Google Scholar, fig. 110 and Tsitouridou, Ο ζωγραφικός διάκοσμος, 112–13, pl. 34. The cycle of Christ's infancy from the Hodegetria Church in Mistra is an extraordinary case: the lengthy inscriptions from the Protevangelium of James representing the dialogues between the dramatis personae of the visual narrative create, according to Titos Papamastorakis: ‘a kind of cinematic art of speaking pictures’, see ‘Reflections of Constantinople: the iconographic program of the south portico of the Hodegetria church, Mystras’, in S. E. J. Gerstel (ed.), Viewing the Morea: Land and People in the Late Medieval Peloponnese (Washington, DC 2013) 371–95.

53 The scene appears for the first time in monumental painting in the abovementioned programmes connected with Thessaloniki, and in some cases indeed, such as at Staro Nagoričino, it is accompanied once again by a lengthy inscription transmitting the words of the episode's protagonist, Zarras, ‘Staro Nagoričino’, 184–5. Traces of a similarly lengthy inscription can be seen in the corresponding scene in the Protaton, I. Kanonides, ‘Ο τοιχογραφικός διάκοσμος του ναού του Πρωτάτου, κορυφαία καλλιτεχνική έκφραση της εποχής των Παλαιολόγων’, in Πρωτάτο ΙΙ, 1: 286–7 no. 233. See also the interesting analysis of this scene - and of the Passion Cycle in general- in the above mentioned monuments taken by Judith Soria, according to whom the fact that the disciples are simultaneously ignorant of and being initiated into the significance of the event they had witnessed adds tension to the narrative, Soria, J., ‘Structure et tension narrative dans les cycles pariétaux de la Passion du Christ à l’époque tardobyzantine: le role des apôtres’, in Messis, Ch., Mullet, M. and Nilsson, I. (eds.), Storytelling in Byzantium. Narratological Approaches to Byzantine Texts and Images (Uppsala 2018) 177–97Google Scholar.

54 Agapitos, Narrative Structure, 177–204, 282–333; idem, ‘Dreams and the spatial aesthetics of narrative presentation in Livistros and Rhodamne’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999) 111–47. Cupane, C., ‘Künstliche Paradiese. Ortsbeschreibungen in der vulgärsprachlichen Dichtung des späten Byzanz’, in Ratkowitsch, C. (ed.), Die poetische Ekphrasis von Kunstwerken: eine literarische Tradition der Großdichtung in Antike, Mittelalter und frühere Neuzeit (Vienna 2006) 231–45Google Scholar; Agapitos, Ἀφήγησις Λιβίστρου, 60–3.

55 Agapitos, ‘Dreams’; Cupane, ‘Künstliche Paradiese’, 232.

56 Hjort, O., ‘“Oddities” and “refinements”: aspects of architecture, space and narrative in the mosaics of Kariye Camii’, in Rosenqvist, J.O. (ed.), Interaction and Isolation in Late Byzantine Culture (London 2005) 27–43Google Scholar; Vasilakeris, A., ‘Theatricality of Byzantine images: some preliminary thoughts’, in Öztürkmen, A., Birg, E. (eds), Medieval and Early Modern Performances in the Eastern Mediterranean (Turnhout 2014) 388–9Google Scholar, who, however, sees the buildings in Palaiologan scenes as a theatrical backdrop, thus limiting their narrative function.

57 On the allegorical significance of spatial motifs, such as the castle in Palaiologan romances, see Cupane, ‘In the realm of Eros’, 100–1 with earlier bibliography.

58 It should be noted here that architectural settings appear in the background to narrative scenes from as early as the twelfth century and more especially towards the end of that century. These motifs, usually ‘small, isolated and flat’ according to Tania Velmans, are on the same scale as the figures and are ranged behind them. They do not define a space within which the figures move around, but function as visual conventions depicting an interior or exterior landscape, Velmans, T. ‘Le rôle du décor architectural et la représentation de l'espace’, Cahiers Archéologiques 14 (1964) 183–216Google Scholar, esp. 184. Thus, they have a very different and more restricted function compared to the later Palaiologan examples. Moreover, although some examples of architectural backdrops in late Comnenian works of art have prompted allegorical interpretations, they are few and far between and in some cases rather ambiguous, see Maguire, H., Nectar and Illusion: Nature in Byzantine Art and Literature (Oxford 2012) 69–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 135–165.

59 Agapitos, ‘Η θέση της αισθητικής αποτίμησης’, 216–24; idem, ‘Genre, structure and poetics’; idem, ‘Writing, reading and reciting’. Carolina Cupane has expressed a somewhat different view, suggesting, based on the romances, that there is no clean break in chronological terms between oral presentation and private reading, C. Cupane, ‘“Let me tell you a wonderful tale”: audience and reception of the vernacular romances’, in Cupane and Krönung (eds.), Fictional Storytelling, 479–94.

60 Jevtić also notes that the arrangement of the narrative cycles in Palaiologan painted programmes gives the viewer the sense of ‘being in a book’ (‘Narrative mode’, 196). However, she does not connect this observation with the changes that occurred in the reception mode of fiction around the same time.

61 P. Agapitos has attributed the creation of Libistros and Rhodamne to mid-13th-c. Nicaea. Despite the fact that this attribution has not been endorsed by all scholars (see Cupane, ‘In the realm of eros’, 101), Agapitos has deployed some very convincing arguments to show that the Laskarid court was the connecting link between Comnenian fiction and the Palaiologan romances, see also ‘The “Court of Amorous Dominion” and the “Gate of Love”: rituals of empire in a Byzantine romance of the 13th century’, in A. Beihammer et al. (eds.), Royal Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in the Medieval Mediterranean: Comparative Perspectives (Leiden and Boston 2013) 389–416; Agapitos, P., ‘”Words filled with tears”: amorous discourse as lamentation in the Palaiologan romances’, in Alexiou, M. and Cairns, D. (eds.), Greek Laughter and Tears: Antiquity and after (Edinburgh 2017) 371–374Google Scholar. On the readership/audience for late Byzantine romances, see Agapitos, ‘Genre, structure and poetics’; idem, ‘Writing, reading and reciting’; Cupane, ‘Audience and reception’.

62 This interpretation comes from the pen of Manuel Philes and is related to a romance, written by the prince Andronikos Palaiologos, cousin of Emperor Andronikos II (1282– 1328), Cupane, ‘In the realm of Eros’, 95–8 with the relevant bibliography.

63 Agapitos, ‘Η θέση της αισθητικής αποτίμησης’, 212–214; idem, ‘Genre, structure and poetics’, 45–50.

64 Agapitos, Ἀφήγησις Λιβίστρου, 171–198; Cupane, ‘In the realm of Eros’, 118–19.

65 The notion that the romances had a restricted readership because they were incompatible with religious morality was first refuted by H.-G. Beck (see esp. Byzantinisches Erotikon (Munich 1986) 160–200). However, the question of how widespread the distribution of such texts or of fiction in general might have been in a religious context cannot be answered until research is carried out into their manuscript tradition, cf. Agapitos, ‘Narrative, rhetoric and “drama”’, 125–7. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that in the 16th century Orthodox prelates were making collections of manuscripts with this sort of content: Agapitos, ‘Writing, reading and reciting’, 166, n. 212. Another telling case is that of the expurgated 13th-c. manuscript from which folia containing scenes judged obscene have been removed and which was perhaps intended for use in a clerical milieu, Cupane, ‘Audience and reception’, 483. Over and above their didactic value or the allegorical interpretations of their content, the fact that ancient and Comnenian novels were perhaps also used as teaching material (see Nilsson and Zagklas, ‘The use of Greek novels’, 1133–48) may have helped disseminate them to a wider public.

66 Mullet, ‘Novelisation’, 14–21; Bourbouhakis, Nilsson, ‘Byzantine narrative’, 269–71; Ch. Messis, ‘Fiction and/or novelisation in Byzantine hagiography’, in St. Efthymiades (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography II (Farnham and Burlington 2014) 313–41.

67 Nilsson, I., ‘Desire and God have always been around, in life and romance alike’, in Nilsson, I. (ed.), Plotting with Eros: Essays on the Poetics of Love and the Erotics of Reading (Copenhagen 2009) 235–60Google Scholar; eadem, Raconter Byzance, 111–33; Messis, ‘Fiction and/or novelisation’; Messis, Ch., ‘The Palaiologan hagiographies. Saints without romance’, in Goldwyn, A. and Nilsson, I. (eds.), Reading the Late Byzantine Romance: A Handbook (Cambridge 2018) 230–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Mullet, ‘Novelisation’; Nilsson, Raconter Byzance. Ch. Messis has expressed a quite different opinion about the mutual influence of Palaiologan romances and late Byzantine vitae, see ‘The Palaiologan hagiographies’.

69 Dolezal, M.-L., Mavroudi, M., ‘Theodore Hyrtakenos’ description of the garden of St Anna and the ekphrasis of gardens’, in Littlewood, A. R. et al. (eds), Byzantine Garden Culture (Washington, D.C. 2002) 105–58Google Scholar.

70 Dolezal and Mavroudi, ‘Theodore Hyrtakenos’ description’, 140.

71 See also K. Stewart, ‘Literary landscapes in the Palaiologan romances. An ecocritical approach’, in Reading the Late Byzantine Romance, 272–98, esp. 285–6.

72 For a recent overview of the text with earlier bibliography, Puchner, W. and Walker-White, A., Greek Theatre between Antiquity and Independence: A History of Reinvention from the Third Century BC to 1830 (Cambridge 2017) 76–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Agapitos, ‘Narrative, rhetoric, and “drama”’, 142–3. Whether this cento poem was intended for some sort of staged performance, for example if it was recited in a literary salon of the Comnenian aristocracy, or even whether it was meant to be some sort of religious drama, still remains an open question. Some scholars resolutely deny its theatricality, while others find elements of performability in it. The main supporter of the former view is W. Puchner (Greek Theatre, 79–80 with earlier bibliography). On the other hand, M. Μullet has suggested that the text ‘shows enough awareness of ancient tragedy to suggest more than reading on the page’ (communication entitled ‘Contexts for the Christos Paschon’, presented at the 23rd Int. Congress of Byzantine Studies, Belgrade 22–27 August 2016); also ‘No drama, no poetry’, 228. See also Marciniak, P., Greek Drama in Byzantine Times (Katowice 2004) 89–95Google Scholar, esp. 93 n. 39.

74 In making this comparison I am not contending that this particular text directly influenced the religious iconography of the period as Cottas, Venetia, Le Théâtre à Byzance: L'influence du drame ‘Christos paschon’ sur l'art chrétien d'Orient (Paris 1931)Google Scholar once maintained, but rather that text and image share a common narrative strategy in depicting the Passion. It should be noted that Cottas’ theory never received any endorsement and has been strongly criticised, cf. Puchner, W. (with the advice of Nicolaos Conomis), The Crusader Kingdom of Cyprus – a Theatre Province of Medieval Europe? (Athens 2006) 28–32Google Scholar.

75 Another interesting case of a 12th-c. text with religious content that adopts the same rhetorical dramatization of a narrative is that of the Homilies of James Kokkinobaphos. The six homilies on the Marian feasts look as if they were composed as a biography of the Virgin, show narrative qualities and are comparable to the contemporary Comnenian novels, Linardou, K., ‘The Homilies of Iakovos of the Kokkinobaphou Monastery’, in Tsamakda, V. (ed.), A Companion to Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts (Leiden and Boston 2017), 389–92Google Scholar.

76 The so-called Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople survives in fragmentary form. It was composed by Mesarites, a prelate of the patriarchate, around the end of the 12th c. and probably presented to Patriarch John X Kamateros (1198–1206). For the critical edition of the text, Heisenberg, A., Grabeskirche und Apostelkirche, zwei Basiliken Konstantins, II. Die Apostelkirche in Konstantinopel (Leipzig 1908) 10–96Google Scholar; Eng. tr. Downey, G., ‘Nikolaos Mesarites, Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society n.s. 47.6 (1957) 855–924CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 861–918; Nicholas Mesarites. His Life and Works (in Translation), translated with notes and commentary by Michael Angold (Liverpool 2017). On the interpretation of the text as an encomium of the church and the context of its composition, Daskas, B., Mesarites, ‘Nikolaos, ‘Description of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople: new critical perspectives’, Parekbolai 6 (2016) 79–102Google Scholar. On the author, Daskas, B., ‘A literary self-portrait of Nikolaos Mesarites’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 40.1 (2016) 151–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Angold, M., ‘Mesarites as a source: then and now’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 40.1 (2016) 55–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 For a presentation of the relevant bibliography, Daskas, ‘A literary self-portrait’, 152, n. 3, 4; Angold, ‘Mesarites as a source’, 65–8.

78 James, L. (ed.), Constantine of Rhodes, On Constantinople and the Church of the Holy Apostles, with a new edition of the Greek text by Ioannis Vassis (Farnham 2012) 216Google Scholar.

79 Abbott, Narrative, 37–40.

80 ‘… But what is happening to me? I have fallen somehow into the depths of the Jordan itself and do not know where I shall make land… and the insatiate desire to see… forces me to steer the skiff of my mind with full sails toward the sea which faces me, Gennesaret, so that I may spend my time on the sights there’: Downey, ‘Nikolaos Mesarites’, 878b.

81 Angold, Mesarites. His Life and Works, xxix, 114.

82 Cf. the comment by A. Kazhdan: ‘The same Christological scenes that Constantine (Rhodios) saw as emblems of truth, Nicholas described as emotionally charged fragments of time’: Kazhdan, A.P. and Wharton-Epstein, A., Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Berkeley 1990) 224Google Scholar. B. Daskas has also shown that, in his narrative about the attempted coup by John the Fat, Mesarites constructs the story out a series of ekphastic scenes with similar dramatic content and gives the narration a quasi-theatrical presentation: ‘Images de la ville impériale dans les ἐκφραστικαί διηγήσεις de Nicolas Mésarites. Le récit sur la révolution de palais’, in P. Odorico and C. Messis (eds), Villes de toute beauté. L'ekphrasis des cités dans les littératures byzantine et byzantino-slaves (Paris 2012) 134–48.

83 See for example the scene of Christ Walking on the Water and the Raising of Lazarus (Downey, ‘Nikolaos Mesarites’, 878b-879, 880a-b).

84 Baseu-Barabas, T., Zwischen Wort und Bild: Nikolaos Mesarites und sein Beschreibung des Mosaikschmucks der Apostelkirche in Konstantinopel (Vienna 1992)Google Scholar; Zarras, N., ‘A gem of artistic ekphrasis: Nicholas Mesarites’ description of the mosaics in the church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople’, in Simpson, A. (ed.), Byzantium, 1180–1204: ‘The Sad Quarter of a Century’? (Athens 2015) 261–82Google Scholar, with earlier bibliography.