FRIENDS OF MOUNT ATHOS BOOK REVIEWS

© 1999

Icons of the Holy Monastery of Pantokrator. Edited by Stelios Papadopoulos and Chrysoula Kapioldassi-Soteropoulos. Mount Athos: Holy Monastery of Pantokrator, 1998. 386 pages. Price (HB) $120.00.

The Holy Monastery of Aghiou Pavlou: The Icons. By Maria Vasssilaki, Ioannis Tavlakis, Euthymios Tsigaridas. Mount Athos: Holy Monastery of Aghiou Pavlou, 1999. 263 pages. Price (HB) 20,000 drachmas. ISBN 960-85542-2-5.

The nineteenth-century British image of the monastic communities of Mount Athos as totally oblivious to their artistic surroundings was finally and decisively put to rest by the exhibition in Thessaloniki in 1997 of the Treasures of Mount Athos (managing editor A. Karakatsanis). This enormous collection of artistic and functional materials brought from the monasteries and publicly exhibited showed just how much of its past has been preserved on the Holy Mountain. One of the worst offenders in the negative portrayal of the monks of Mount Athos was Robert Curzon in his best-selling book published in London in 1849, Visits to Monasteries in the Levant. He used the text in part to justify his own acquisitive motives in visiting the east. He was a genuine connoisseur of medieval illuminated manuscripts, unlike many of his contemporaries whose interest in searching the monasteries of the east was to find the lost books and authors of classical antiquity. But the deception of his writings was to persuade his readers that he was justified in his determination to transfer the treasures of Athos and other monasteries to his own collection. One of his most notorious coups was at the monastery of St Paul, from which he removed two major illuminated gospel books. One of these was the famous fourteenth-century Bulgarian gospels of Ivan Alexander, which in due course passed to the British Museum and is now in the holdings of the British Library in London. His portrayal of this monastery in his travel book is distinctly ambivalent. He commends the building activities which he observed in the monastery, the linguistic abilities of the monks, the comfort of the guest room, and the good order and condition of the library. Yet he also claims that the abbot had no interest in the manuscripts and allowed him to take away the two he wanted without demur--'We make no use of the old books, and should be glad if you would accept one.' He goes on to say that both the books he took 'were utterly valueless to the monks, and were not saleable in the bazaar at Constantinople, Smyrna, Salonica or any neighbouring city. However, before I went away, as a salve to my conscience I gave some money to the church.'

No doubt we shall never know the true story of the circumstances that led to the loss of these manuscripts from St Paul's. But we are now beginning to be able to appreciate just how many possessions from the past have in fact been preserved in the monasteries. This new understanding is thanks to the exhibition and its catalogue, but also to the considerable energies in the individual monasteries devoted to restoring, studying, and publishing full and scholarly records of their artistic holdings. The two books covered here contain excellent photographs and authoritative commentaries on the icons of the monasteries of St Paul and of Pantokrator and they are major additions to Athonite literature (made possible, we are told, by the financial support of the Organization for the Cultural Capital of Europe--Thessaloniki 1997).

The introduction to the St Paul’s volume by the present abbot, Archimandrite Parthenios, makes no mention of the visits of Robert Curzon and the like, but is a positive statement about the policy of the monastery, and introduces the present book on the icons as the first of a projected four volumes on its artistic treasures. The format is of a series of discursive chapters contributed by three specialist art historians rather than as a set catalogue of individual items. The same format is adopted for the longer book on Pantokrator, which is introduced by Patriarch Bartholomaios, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and by the abbot, Archimandrite Vissarion. A preface by K.Chrysohoidis covers the history of the monastery (founded around 1400); the collection of 104 icons is discussed chronologically. The formidable nature of the task of publishing the art of Athos is implied by the overview of the number of icons on the Holy Mountain suggested by Maria Vassilaki (St Paul's, pp. 43-4). She notes that in the recent publication of the Vatopedi Monastery it is stated that this monastery alone possesses 3000 icons. The icons of the Grand Laura have been estimated to number 2500, and Iviron to number around 1000. She suggests, therefore, that there must be around 10,000 icons on Mount Athos, and that nearly all of these are unpublished. In the case of the monastery of St Paul, it emerges that only seven icons from the Byzantine period proper are in the collection (this book ends the Byzantine period in 1423 when the Ottoman rule on Athos began; the Pantokrator book follows the conventional ending of Byzantium with 1453). The great majority at St Paul's belong therefore between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The earliest icon in the monastery of Pantokrator is a double-sided icon with the Crucifixion, dated by T. Papamastorakis to the early thirteenth century; the side with Christ Pantokrator was repainted in the early fifteenth century. Several of the Byzantine pieces are of great quality (such as the double-sided icons of the Pantokrator and St Athanasios of Athos and of St John the Baptist and St John and the Theotokos, both attributed here to 1363; and the painted Crucifix from an iconostasis attributed to the early fifteenth century).

The earliest icon in the monastery of St Paul is a small panel which shows only the head of the Theotokos (in three-quarter view) and which is dated here to the end of the twelfth century. It is so precious within the monastery that it is kept in the sanctuary of the Katholikon together with the sacred relics. Two of the Byzantine icons are double-sided; one large one of the fourteenth century must have been intended for processional use and shows the Theotokos and Child on one side and the Synaxis of the Archangels on the other. It is attributed here to an artist from Thessaloniki. A noticeable feature is the inscription for Mary: 'Mother of God, the More than Blessed'. This demonstrates the interest of the St Paul’s collection in adding to current studies on the character of icons of the Theotokos, of which the most significant work of scholarship is the major contribution of Chrysanthe Baltoyianni, Icons: Mother of God (Athens, 1994). It is clear that new materials from Athos will add substantially to our understanding of how such icons were used in ritual and worship. The other double-sided Byzantine icon has a Hodigitria on the front (and it is labelled as such in the inscription) and a Crucifixion on the reverse. Tsigaridas rightly identifies this as the work of a major artist, working in the manner of the icons of Constantinople and Thessaloniki in the late fourteenth century, but he equally seems to suggest that there is a connection between this icon and icons and wallpaintings at the monastery of Vatopedi. This introduces the issue whether the production of icons on Athos was due to the presence of itinerant artists who set up studios on the Holy Mountain and may have become monks there. A similar scenario may account for a number of the high-quality icons found in the monastery of St Catherine at Sinai; and correspondingly, there is the speculation that rough-and-ready icons on Athos might be also the work of monks, but in this case of men without a distinguished career before their arrival.

The circumstances of production of icons become much better documented in the post-Byzantine period. We know on Athos of the precise careers of a number of artists--for information on these artists the invaluable guide is the two-volume publication of M.Chatzidakis and E.Drakopoulou, Greek Painters after the Fall of Constantinople (1450-1830) (in Greek) (Athens, 1987-97). One of these is Theophanes the Cretan (Strelitzas-Bathas Theophanes) who lived between the last decade of the fifteenth century and his death in 1559). Theophanes was a highly productive artist from Crete who produced wallpaintings and icons at Meteora and Athos and who went with his two sons to the Holy Mountain where they became monks. He nevertheless went home to Crete before his death.

Vassilaki covers the nature of the icons at St Paul’s from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, and also addresses the issues of the nature of patronage and place of production of these icons, and what can be discovered about their artists and their careers. She compares the Great Deisis of the mid-sixteenth century in the monastery with works produced by Theophanes the Cretan and his sons, and comes to the conclusion that this epistyle (on the iconostasis of the Chapel of St George) was, despite many similarities with their work, produced by a weaker artist but one who was profoundly influenced by their presence on Athos (and particularly by the iconostasis of the monastery of Stavronikita). Papamastorakis covers the possible work of Theophanes at Pantokrator, accepting the attribution of wallpaintings to him which are now detached from their original setting (two pieces were taken to St Petersburg in 1861, and are now in the Hermitage Museum), and also a number of major icons from an iconostasis screen. These are major paintings which must feature in any discussion of this artist’s work. The arguments for his attributions expressed by Papamastorakis are controversial, but the icons discussed in these two books must be taken into account in future studies of Theophanes.

The icon store of the Pantokrator monastery has a substantial number of post-Byzantine pieces. Katerina Kalamartzi-Katsarou and Titos Papamastorakis have a special section on the long epistyle from an iconostasis which has thirty-one scenes on it and dates from the late sixteenth century (coming from the Katholikon). According to them it is the work of two artists. Katerina Kalamartzi-Katsarou covers the icons from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, some of which are signed by the artists. She connects this period of production on Athos with stylistic features of other regions of Orthodox icon production. Ioannis Tavlakis covers the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century icons of the Pantokrator collection. He convincingly shows the expertise and interest of some of these panels.

Although the (prosperous) history of the monastery St Paul in the post-Byzantine period is well documented, there is little in the way of inscriptions about the icons. Vassilaki sets out a division of the material between Athonite workshops which operate in the traditions of Crete, Macedonia, northern Greece, and the Slav world. Tavlakis studies the Russian icons, including a group of five seventeenth-century Menologia icons which individually illustrated the calendar saints for one month. He assumes that the monastery originally would have owned a set of twelve panels. In this case the loss of seven panels shows that a significant proportion of its icons may have been lost as a result of the fires and other problems faced by Mount Athos over the centuries.

Among the eighteenth-century icons of St Paul's are three which Vassilaki attributes to Dionysios of Fourna, who is known to art historians as the compiler of the Painter’s Manual (1728-33) which sets out the technical and iconographic principles according to which Orthodox icons were to be produced. His icons show a return in the eighteenth century to the forms and style of the fourteenth century, and this reflects the instruction in his book that artists should imitate the work of Manuel Panselinos (thought to be the artist who around 1300 produced the wallpaintings of the Protaton church at Karyes). Others icons in the monastery show the same interest in reviving late Byzantine painting. The final section of the book by Tavlakis covers eighteenth- and nineteenth-century icons, and includes panels which date from the period of Robert Curzon’s visit. Curzon published in his book an engraving of the monastery of St Paul which he described as a 'curious Greek engraving … from one of the prints given to pilgrims who visit the monasteries of Athos'. It is this very same engraving which forms the inner jacket at the front and back of this book.

Both books have useful bibliographies and detailed information in the notes. The monasteries deserve thanks and gratitude for the decision to publish these icons with superb plates and thorough scholarship.

ROBIN CORMACK

Courtauld Institute of Art, London