Early Medieval Art

Antiquité Tardive for Late Antique art in French collections

I am back to teaching after a brief stint in the museum world, and as I will be teaching the survey of ancient and medieval art many times this upcoming year, most of my postings will likely be over at my other web site.  But I will check in here from time to time, as the spirit moves me.

In the meantime, I have discovered that a great source for photographs of church art, Sacred Destinations, now has a photostream on Flickr (only to imply that it is only more recent than when I last taught in the Spring of 2008).  I have found many photos for teaching on Sacred Destinations and always assumed that they were a travel agency, or something like that, but just by reading their “About Us”, I realize it is one individual and her husband.  Amazing.

Oldest known portrait of St Paul revealed by Vatican archaeologists

Pope Says Tests ‘Seem to Conclude’ Bones Are the Apostle Paul’s

An Expected Update:

First, let’s imagine that a university art museum has among its treasures a small painted chamber from a site that it excavated many years ago.  This small painted chamber is no ordinary painted chamber of antiquity (if there is such a thing), but one which features in every survey of western art.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the state of this chamber’s preservation is deplorable.  In fact, the chamber is preserved in a number of panels of plaster on which no paint remains (at least, so it is reported, for no outside scholar has been permitted to view them for decades).

Now, let’s say that the museum, as it plans for the re-installation of its ancient galleries, has a plan for their conservation.  They will simply repaint the original plaster to recreate the original program.  Yes, repaint.

Am I the only art historian who would finds this intellectually dishonest?

Now, I specialize in wall painting, and the church that figures most centrally in my research, that of the Monastery of Saint John in Muestair, Switzerland, has suffered from repaintings and retouchings.  Plaster, similarly removed, but merely retouched,  languishes in the off-site storage  of the Landesmuseum in Zurich.  But at least it is preserved.   And conservators painstakingly reverse the retouchings that paintings still on the wall were subjected to in the mid-twentieth century.  But full repaintings were reversed soon after they were made, their offense quickly understood.

I appreciate the usefulness of a recreation.  The Museo Archeologico dell’Alto Adige in Bolzano/Bozen usefully recreates the interior of the Chapel of Saint Benedict in Malles/Mals.  You can see a small photo of it here.

But such recreations should not come at the cost of the original, such as this museum has planned.  The panels of plaster, although no longer the bearers of art, should still be preserved as artifacts.  Isn’t it possible that one day, elements of the wall painting, invisible to the naked or even microscopic eye, could one day be discovered on or within the original plaster?  Why can’t the museum just use new plaster, which would simulate much more authentically the original visual effect?  Does this imminent action by the museum warrant coordinated scholarly outrage?

At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard

A Turnaround Specialist Takes on Italy’s Museums

Although I rather enjoy the challenge of finding obscure objects in Italy’s poorly-presented museums, it would be better for the cultral patrimony itself, if the visitor were more of a priority; so, I am inclined to look forward to the changes promised by Mario Resca.

The New York Times has a nice review of the new installation of medieval works at the Met, along with a slideshow.

At the Royal Academy of Arts in London, opening in October.

Unfortunately a news item on fake Coptic reliefs in the Art Newspaper should not surprise anyone. This disclosure comes in anticipation of an exhibition that will open February 2009 at the Brooklyn Museum on “Coptic Sculpture in the Brooklyn Museum”and for which you may only find an old description (on page 7).

I myself wrote an entry on a Coptic medallion with Thekla bound to Two Beasts from the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri in the catalogue for the 2002-2003 exhibition Byzantine Women and Their World. The article dates the earliest suspicions to Gary Vikan in the 1970s, and at the time of the Byzantine Women exhibit, doubts likewise surrounded the authenticity of the Nelson-Atkins medallion. Most of the fakes entered American collections in the 1960s, and, from the accession number, 48-10, I can only assume that this medallion was acquired in 1948. My earliest scholarly reference to it, however, dates to 1962, so this assumption could be wrong.

Needless to say, I eagerly await determination of its authenticity (so that I can cross the entry off my CV!). I am more curious, however, about what reliefs remain and what they can tell us about Coptic art.