The Friends of Mount Athos Book Reviews
© 2007
Athos: Monastic Life on the Holy Mountain. Helsinki City Art Museum: Maahenki, n.d.
344 pages. Hardback. ISBN 978-952-5328-88-2. 82 euros.
This volume is the catalogue of the eponymous exhibition that was mounted
by the Helsinki Art Museum and displayed in the Art Museum Tennis Palace from
18 August 2006 to 21 January 2007. In his article about the exhibition that
appeared in last yearÕs Annual Report Joseph Roilidis mentioned that a
catalogue was in preparation which Ôfor technical reasonsÕ could not be made
available at the inauguration. My suspicion is that the real reason for the
catalogueÕs late appearance was that it was not until the very last moment that
the organizers knew exactly what they were going to get in the way of treasures
from the Holy Mountain. But whatever the reason for the delay, its appearance
now is all the more welcome. It serves as a most pleasurable reminder of a
particularly successful and impressive exhibition for those of us who were
fortunate enough to see it and a handsome consolation prize for those who were
not. It is also a valuable work of reference since many of the exhibits have
not been published before.
The
volume begins with a collection of essays by various hands on a range of
Athonite and iconographic topics of which two are particularly noteworthy. In a
piece entitled ÔAn unfathomable miracleÕ Berndt Arell, the Helsinki City Art
MuseumÕs Director, writes movingly about the history of the exhibition:
first and foremost, it was the will of the Mother of God, to which His Holiness Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, gave his warm and active support [É] but I think it is fair to say that the values cherished by the monasteries of Mount Athos for over a thousand years, and still cherished by them today, have been a powerful driving force for those working to create the exhibition.
Of its purpose Dr Arell writes: ÔWe emphasized from the outset that we
wished to bring to the fore the spiritual side of Orthodox monastic life and
the practise of the Orthodox faith.Õ
The other introductory essay worth noting here is that
by Yu. A. Pyatnitsky, Head of the Byzantine Icons Collection at the Hermitage
in St Petersburg, who concentrates on relations between Russia and Mount Athos
and highlights the activities of Pyotr Ivanovich Sevastyanov (1811–67).
Sevastyanov made numerous visits to Athos in the 1850s in order to take
photographs, copy documents, and collect icons. His collection was displayed at
a special exhibition for the imperial family in the Winter Palace in March 1861
and subsequently moved to the Imperial Academy of Art where it was opened to
the public. The icons that he brought back from Athos have now been added to
the Byzantine collection in the Hermitage from where, together with many other
precious examples, they were loaned to Helsinki for the recent exhibition.
The
catalogue reveals (as was not entirely obvious from the arrangement of the
exhibition itself) that the material sent from Athos formed a minority of the
exhibits. This in no way diminished the value of the display which, as was made
clear in its title, focused on monastic life, but inevitably it has an impact
on the catalogue as a work of reference. Of the forty icons sent by the
monasteries, for example, all but one or two were post-Byzantine (though they
included five glorious examples by Theophanes the Cretan from Stavronikita).
Similarly all the manuscripts in Helsinki were post-Byzantine (though there is
virtue in this too in showing that Athos remained a centre of copying as late
as 1800). By contrast the collection of paper icons was excellent, as was the
Ôother materialÕ, viz. photographs, contemporary paintings, postcards, and
maps, material that is not easily available to the average pilgrim and all of
it carefully described in the catalogue.
Located
somewhat uncomfortably between ÔEmbroideryÕ and ÔOther materialÕ is a short but
nonetheless important section on Moni Zygou. This is an Athonite monastery
whose ruins all of us can visit because it lies (according to the
archaeologist, Joachim Ath. Papaggelos) 40 metres outside the current boundary
of the Holy Mountain. Indeed it makes a pleasant evening stroll to walk south
along the line of the coast from Ouranoupolis to see it. It was, so Dr
Papaggelos tells us, one of the principal monasteries of Athos in the eleventh
century, though it had been abandoned before 1206 when it became the
headquarters of a Latin ÔcrusaderÕ who used it as a base from which to conduct
raids on the Holy Mountain (hence its modern name Frangokastro). Fragments of
an impressive marble iconostasis were reconstructed in Helsinki to form a focal
point of the exhibition.
Part
two of the catalogue, entitled ÔWorks from the collections of MuseumsÕ, details
exhibits (icons, manuscripts and documents, paper icons, wood carvings and
minor art, liturgical utensils, embroidery) that were once on Athos but are now
scattered among museum collections, notably in Russia but also in Greece,
Serbia, and Germany. The icons (which number more than 100) are in a different
league from those sent by the monasteries (though for some reason the quality
of the photographic reproduction of the latter is greatly superior in the
book). Not all of them were painted on Athos, but all were there for at least
some (perhaps all) of their ÔcareerÕ as liturgical objects. The assembly
illustrates just a fraction of what Athos has lost (or should one say, what
Athos has bequeathed to the world?) and it testifies to the discerning taste of
collectors such as Sevastyanov. Worthy of particular mention are: (1) the
twelfth-century Transfiguration from Vatopedi (Hermitage); (10) the Christ
Enthroned, possibly by Rublev (Tretyakov); (22) the twelve double-sided icons
of the ChurchÕs feasts, possibly produced by a group of Greek and Russian
painters working together on Athos in the fifteenth century (Sergiyev Posad
Museum, Moscow), (43) a Transfiguration in the Cretan style painted on Athos in
the early seventeenth century (Benaki); (57) Sts Cosmas and Damian in the
post-Byzantine style, typical of the output of the Athonite icon painters of
the seventeenth century (Hermitage); (89) a pilgrimÕs icon of St Panteleimon by
a Russian painter of the nineteenth century, a type that would have been
mass-produced for the many thousands of Russians who travelled to Athos from
1830 onwards (Icon Museum, Recklinghausen).
Nor
was the interest of Russian collectors confined to icons: the selection of
manuscripts exhibited is small but the quality is incomparable. Especially
notable are (2) an eleventh-century menologion from Stavronikita, (4) another
of similar date from Konstamonitou, and (5) an eleventh-century illuminated
Gospel from Philotheou, all of them brought to Moscow by Arseni Sukhanov in
1654 where they are now in the State Historical Museum.
Though
less spectacular than the icons and illuminated manuscripts, it is perhaps the
liturgical utensils that do most to fulfil the curatorsÕ purpose and
demonstrate the spiritual side of Orthodox monastic life. Pride of place among
these surely belongs to the elaborate but remarkably delicate bronze choros (chandelier) that would have been suspended
from the central dome of an Athonite katholikon and in Helsinki occupied an
equivalent position at the spiritual heart of the exhibition. Most of the choroi
on Athos are Russian and
date from the nineteenth century. This one, possibly originating from Asia
Minor, dates from the late Byzantine period and was loaned by the
ArchŠologische Staatssammlung in Munich. (How did it get there?) It should have
been set revolving with every candle alight for the duration of the exhibition
to celebrate this astonishing triumph of Finnish diplomacy.