Fragment from a Two-Sided Sanctuary Screen with Birds Eating Grapes

Screen fragment

This small, fragmentary screen was originally placed in a church or chapel. In early churches of the eastern Empire, including Egypt, screens were set up as altar enclosures and barriers. Waist-high, free-standing screens divided the nave, where the congregation gathered, from the sanctuary, where only clergy was allowed. Sanctuary screens did not block the congregation's view of the sanctuary or their communication with the clergy within: the lay faithful in the nave were allowed to see, touch, and press against the sanctuary barrier, but not to pass beyond it. Behind the screen was the holiest part of the church, oriented to face the rising sun. There, at the altar, priests performed one of the mysteries of Christian worship, when the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ to be taken by the faithful in communion.

The nave and sanctuary sides of this screen have decoration appropriate to their original placement and audience. On the side that would have faced the congregation is a general reference to the sacramental wine of communion: in an interlaced vine rinceau, birds drink the juice of grapes. (One wonders whether there was another panel referencing to the sacramental bread.) On the side originally facing the clergy and the altar is a two-part composition alluding to the mystery of the sacraments and Christ's resurrection. Below are peacocks flanking a chalice on a cloth within an archtectural setting, and in the center above is a bird with outstretched wings and spread tail features in a wreath. The chalice is a symbol of the sacraments, the peacocks representing officiating clergy in the church, and the bird in the wreath is an image of the ascended Christ. Similar two-zoned compositions representing the earthly church below and the majesty of the kingdom of heaven above are found in the painted decoration of church sanctuaries in early Byzantine Egypt.[1]

The relief bears traces of red color on the grapes, but no traces of the necessary layers of ground. There are similar examples of color on bare stone, in red and black, which may have been either guides for the painters or the remains of pigments that leached through the ground before it was lost. That this relief was originally polychromed is indicated by the rough surface and the lack of detail in the carving. The relief was broken along a diagonal line through its center, but has been repaired.

Thelma K. Thomas in [Friedman 1989]

Footnotes:

1. For a discussion of these wall paintings and their lithurgical references, see van Moorsel, P. P. V. " The Coptic Apse Composition and its Living Creatures," in Nubia, Recentes Recherches. Cambridge, 1978, pp. 325–33.

Government of Egypt(until 1910; sold to MMA)

Providence, RI. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. "Beyond the Pharaohs: Egypt and the Copts in the 2nd to 7th Centuries A.D.," February 10, 1989–April 16, 1989, no. 119.

Strzygowski, Josef. "Koptische Kunst." In Catalogue Generale du Musee du Caire. vol. 12. Vienna, 1904. p. 85, no. 7368 a,b.

Friedman, Florence D. "Egypt and the Copts in the 2nd to 7th Centuries AD." In Beyond the Pharaohs. Providence, R.I.: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 1989. no. 119, p. 206, ill. (b/w).