Architectural Relief with 'Nilotic' Motifs

Architectural Relief

This nearly complete architectural frieze presents an angel in a medallion amid comparatively large-scale Nilotic, vegetal, and figural motifs. On either side of the central medallion, a jeweled wreath snakes past lush fruits and leafy rosettes in medallions below; above are, at left, a pair of fish among leaves and, at right, fruit and another fish, over which another small-scale figure seems to execute an acrobatic maneuver. Such motifs evoked the legendary fertility of the Nile and in Christian settings may have been interpreted literally as the wonders of Creation, or allegorically as earthly paradise, or perhaps the souls of the just in heavenly paradise.[2]

Divergence from symmetricality and from exact repetition of motifs enhances the impression of liveliness created by the figures’ postures. The head of the angel, at the center of the composition, is turned to the right and tilted down, suggesting that this frieze would have been placed at head height or higher. Self-assured, crisply economical carving articulates depth by beveling shallow planes into the deep relief. Originally, paint mitigated the angularity of the carving and depicted features in more detail by adding outlines and color. Traces of color survive throughout: on the somersaulting figure, for example, the hair was black, the body light brown, and the jewel in the wreath below brownish red. The manner of carving and the polychromy are similar to those features in a frieze from al-Mu’allaqa, the Hanging Church, in Old Cairo, recently redated to the eighth century (cat. no. 42 in this volume).[4]

Thelma K. Thomas in [Evans and Ratliff 2012]

Footnotes:

2. Henry Maguire. Earth and Ocean: The Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art. University Park, Pa. 1987, pp. 23–29; specifically pp. 435–44 on Nilotic imagery, pp. 60–66 on the souls of the just, and p. 32 on their literal interpretation. On human creation and adornment compared to God's Creation of the world, pp. 48–49.

3. On polychromy in architectural decoration, see Elizabeth Bolman. "Painting Skins: The Illusions and Realities of Architectural Polychromy, Sinai and Egypt." In Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, edited by Sharon Gerstel and Robert S. Nelson, pp. 119–40, 563–74. Turnhout, 2011; on recently discovered relief carvings with well-preserved polychromy, see Dominique Bénazeth 2010, pp.130–31, figs. 7a, 7b (relief sculptures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel), 113 (details of 7b, Gabriel) and 134 (details of Michael); on the the redating of the similar carving from al-Mu’allaqa, see Leslie S.B. MacCoull. "Redacting the Inscription of El-Moallaqa." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 64 (1986), pp. 230–34.

Hagop Kevorkian, New York ( by 1941–d. 1962); The Hagop Kevorkian Fund, New York (1962–70; gifted to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition," March 14–July 8, 2012, no. 136.

Evans, Helen C., and Brandie Ratliff, ed. Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. no. 136, p. 195, ill. (color).