Five Late Byzantine Panels and Greco's Views of Sinai

Author(s): D. Talbot Rice

Source: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 89, No. 529 (Apr., 1947), pp. 92-94
Published by: Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/869452
Accessed: 25-04-2016 17:04 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs

This content downloaded from 140.192.113.143 on Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:04:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The Landscape Background in Rubens's " St. George and the Dragon "
the great palaces which formerly bordered the Thames

between Westminster and the City of London, and

occupied a strip of ground extending from the western

extremity of the Strand down to the River between

Suffolk (later Northumberland) House and Durham

House. Its only surviving relic, besides certain street

names in the locality (Villiers Street, Buckingham Street,

etc.), is the famous Water Gate designed by Inigo Jones.

Gerbier's dwelling is known to have been situated on

the E. side of the Strand gateway to York House.12

From its position on the N. bank, just where the

Thames makes a sharp bend to the E. below Whitehall,

the York House estate could well have been the place
mentioned above from which, it is thought, Rubens
saw the various buildings that he introduced into the
background of his St. George ; and indeed, lodging at
Gerbier's house, these landmarks must have been to his
eye amongst the most familiar inf London.13 In this

connexion it may be noted that in the background of the

central and earlier portion of the Gerbier Family Group,

12 A drawing of York House by Hollar, in the Pepysian Library,

is reproduced in the L.C.C. Survey, vol. XVIII, pl.2(b) ; its site is

given on a modern plan, Idem, p.ii.

which was painted in England at about the same time as

the St. George, there appears between the columns a
building, also at the water's edge, which, though less

well defined, is not unlike the suggested Lambeth

Palace in the latter picture.

Though there is in the Print Room at Berlin a drawing

for some of the figures and horses in the St. George, no

studies for the architecture or landscape in the background are known to exist, so it is impossible to tell

whether the artist worked these London elements into

his composition from preliminary sketches, or whether he

painted them direct on to the canvas. In either case the

level on which they appear in the picture gives the

impression that Rubens saw them from an upstairs

window ; and it is tempting to think that this window

may have belonged to the room at Gerbier's, or in

another part of York House, where the artist lived or

worked, and where he may have been inspired to give a

London setting to his glorification of our national Saint.

13 Cf. B.F.A. Club Exhib. Cat., Early Drawings and Pictures of

London [1920], p.52, No. 91, and pl. XXXVIII, which is a late

seventeenth century painting of Westminster from below York Watergate

(Coll. Mr. E. C. Grenfell).

FIVE LATE BYZANTINE PANELS AND GRECO'S

VIEWS OF SINAI BY D. TALBOT RICE
HE five small panels illustrated in

PLATED are framed together in the following order ; The Annunciation; Mount Sinai ;
The Resurrection; Christ, St. Catherine and St.
Mercurios; and, lastly, The Transfiguration.

All the scenes except for the Mount Sinai are

identified by inscriptions, as are the Archangel
Gabriel, St. Catherine and St. Mercurios and the

bust of our Lord above these saints, which bears the

title " The Just Judge."'

The iconography of the three principal scenes,

The panels are not dated, but they are to be

assigned with little doubt to round about the year

I6oo. An icon of the Annunciation in the Benaki
Museum at Athens, which is closely akin, is signed

Ioannou Kypriou, and bears the date 1581.3 Another

panel in the same collection, which shows the

Anastasis, is again closely similar, though its Style

suggests a rather later date than that to be assigned

to Mr. Blunt's panels ; it is dated by Xyngopoulos

to the middle of the seventeenth century.4 Quite a

number of icons in other collections in Greece,

The Annunciation, Resurrection and Transfiguration, calls

notably an Annunciation in the Herakopou collection

St. Catherine and St. AlIercurios is however unusual, and

their execution was very probably Salonica, where a

school existed from early to quite late times which
showed something of that high quality of workmanship that distinguished the work of Constantinople.

for no special comment. The panel bearing Christ,

the view of Sinai is especially interesting. They were
no doubt included owing to the fact that the church

for which the icons were intended was dedicated to

St. Catherine, who was renowned as patron of the

famous Sinai monastery. The icons were probably
intended for the upper row of an iconostasis, and

other scenes, such as some of the other major feasts

of the Church, that is, essential scenes from Christ's
life, or perhaps even scenes from St. Catherine's life2,
may well have been included in the series.
1 It has unfortunately proved impossible to include the inscrip-

tions in Greek.

2 Those indicated in the Painter's Guide are :-(i) The Saint

learning from her confessor. (ii) Christ averts His face from St.

Catherine because she is not baptised. (iii) The baptism of the

Saint by her confessor. (iv) The Saint receives a token of Her

betrothal from Christ. (v) The Saint speaks boldly to the Emperor.
(vi) The Saint disputes with fifty philosophers. (vii) The Saint is

fastened to the wheel. (viii) The beheading of the Saint. See

DENYS OF FOURNA ; The Painter's Guide, edited by Papadopoulos

K6ramaeus, St. Petersburg [Igog], p. x85. It has been in part

translated by M. STOKES: Christian Iconography, London [2892].

See Vol. II, p. 370.

at Athens,5 are again similar in style. The place of

Great attention was paid to detail, and a manner

characteristic of this, the second city of the Empire

in later times, was developed, which shows an

elegance absent in work of the other local schools of

Greece. The location of schools of icon painting at

this late date is however by no means easy, and until

a great deal of further study has been undertaken, it
is not possible to do more than hint at the probable

location of the school to which Mr. Blunt's panels

belong.
The combination of Saints in Mr. Blunt's panel,
showing Christ, St. Catherine and St. Mercurios is
unusual. St. Catherine is clothed in royal costume,
3 A. XYNGOPOULos : Benaki Museum : Catalogue of Icons, Athens

[1936], No. 7, Pl. ga. The catalogue is in Greek.

* Loc. cit. No. 6o, pl. 37.
5 This icon has not been published. A photograph of it is in the

writer's possession.

93

This content downloaded from 140.192.113.143 on Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:04:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

A-MOUNT SINAI. BY EL GRECO. PANEL, 41 BY 47.8 CM. (BARON

FRANZ VON HATVANY, BUDAPEST)

B-DETAIL OF D. HEIGHT, 21 CM.

C-MOUNT SINAI. BY EL GRECO. PANEL,

37 BY 24 CM. (PINACOTECA, MODENA)

D-THE ANNUNCIATION ; MOUNT SINAI; THE RESURRECTION ; CHRIST, ST. CA THERINE AND ST. MERCURIOS;

THE TRANSFIGURATION. BYZANTINE PANELS, PROBABLY PAINTED AT SALONICA ABOUT 1600. OVERALL SIZE,

INCLUDING FRAME, 30 BY 88 CM. (MR. WILFRID BLUNT)

FIVE LATE BYZANTINE PANELS AND GRECO'S VIEW OF SINAI

This content downloaded from 140.192.113.143 on Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:04:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Five Late Byzantine Panels and Greco's Views of " Sinai "
with the martyr's palm in her left hand and in her
right a spear, with which she transfixes a crowned
figure, symbol of pagan tyranny.6 St. Mercurios
also transfixes a pagan tyrant ; the figure probably
represents that of Julian the Apostate.7 The inscription associated with the figure of Christ usually

accompanies Him when He is shown in the Last

Judgment. The whole composition is thus probably

to be interpreted as symbolic of the Victory of
Christianity over pagan tyranny and of the fate
awaiting the unjust oppressors of the Faith.

The other panel, that showing Mount Sinai

[PLATE B], is of special interest owing to its close

similarities with two renderings of the same subject

by El Greco, one on the Modena altarpiece [PLATE

C], the other on a panel in the Hatvany Collection

in Budapest [PLATE A]. The former is usually

dated to 1567 or 15688 ; the latter to between 1571

and I576.9 The close relationship of the iconography
of all these renderings is clear from a glance at the
plates. Especially noteworthy is the almost exact
similarity of the angels and tomb at the summit of
the right-hand mountain, of the monastery itself,
and of the travellers arriving on camels in the right
foreground. It is clear that El Greco and the painter

of the icon followed the same model, and it is equally

clear that this model is to be sought in the Byzantine

world and not in the West; the character of the

mountains, the nature of the composition, and,

outlook, though less easy to define in words, is none

the less clearly to be discerned when a number of

later Byzantine paintings on wall or panel are com-

pared. Greco's two paintings are, in fact, not only

close copies of some Byzantine iconographical

model; they are, in addition, painted with all the

feeling of a Byzantine artist.

In the Hatvany panel Greco's own individual

style shows perhaps rather greater development than

in the Modena picture. In the former the mountains
are rather heavier and the figures more substantial ;

in the latter all is still conceived in that symbolic,

abstract manner characteristic of the true Byzantine.

The Byzantine character of Greco's Sinai pictures

has already been pointed out by more than one

writer.1' But hitherto the only Byzantine parallels
available for comparison have been in the form of
engravings, done in the West, but Byzantine in

character. The earliest, dated I566, appeared in

Christopher FUirer's Itinerariumll ; but it is rather

more Western in style, and though based on the same

model, has deviated quite considerably from it.

The next was produced at Lvov in I688 ; it is very
closely similar. The last, an engraving preserved

in the Sinai library, is dated 1736 and is again

close to the Byzantine model.12 But Mr. Blunt's icon

iow provides us with a more satisfactory piece of

evidence, since it is unquestionably Byzantine, is of

indeed, the whole comprehension of the subject are

much the same date as the Greco paintings, and

obviously follows an earlier iconographical proto-

paralleled in numerous Byzantine paintings from

in the evolutionary chain of this scene. One day,

all essentially Byzantine. The mountains are

the thirteenth century onwards, and the similarity of

* The wheel, normally associated with St. Catherine in the West,
is not usually included in Byzantine iconography.

'According to a legend prevalent in the Byzantine world, St.

Mercurios was called upon to slay the Emperor Julian the Apostate,
and did so in battle, with a spear. See H. DELEHAYE ; Les Legendes

type. It takes its place, beyond possibility of doubt,

perhaps, a wall painting, panel, or manuscript

illustration will be discovered, dating from the

fifteenth, fourteenth or even the thirteenth century

showing us an earlier link. Till that day we can only

reconstruct its appearance in our own minds with

grecques des Saints militaires, Paris [9gog], p. 96 ; or JAMESON : Sacred

and Legendary Art, London [1900oo], Vol. II, p. 762.

the aid of the later copies that survive.

Estense di Modena," in Bolletino del Ministero della Educazione

TALBOT RICE: The Birth of Western Painting, London [x930], pp. 195 f.

8 See R. PALLUCCHINI : " Un politico del Greco nella R. Galleria

Nazionale [March 19371, PP- 389-392.

* It is dated to about 1571 by M. LEGENDRE and A. HARTMANN :
Domenicos Theotokopoulos, called el Greco, [1937], pl. 481. GOLDSCHEIDER : El Greco, [1938], pl. 14, assigns it less definitely to 1571
to 1576.

10 F. RUTTER : El Greco, London [1930], p. 27. R. BYRON and D.

and pls. 90 to 9311 Also reproduced in E. S. BATES : Touring in I6oo, London [191 I],
plate facing p. 222. I am grateful to Mr. Wilfrid Blunt for calling
my attention to this plate.
1 BYRON and TALBOT RICE : op. cit., pls. 90, 91 and 92.

NOTES ON SOME PAINTINGS FROM THE

STRASBOURG MUSEUM BY P. WESCHER
Exhibition of the Art Treasures of

Museum of Strasbourg. Now they can be seen to

trasbourg was opened at the Bile Museum

possess the same quality as the Madonna of Solothurn, the

Annunciation of the Reinhard Collection at Winterthur

hown were the two panels of the Education

and the other works of the artist. The catalogue dates

n January i8th. The earliest paintings

of Mary [PLATE I, A] and the Doubts of

Joseph by the master who has been named after his

charming Garden of Paradise, in the Stfidel-Museum at

Frankfort. Since Ilse Futterer' published these two

pictures, which are parts of a lost altarpiece, and

ascribed them to this master, they have been cleaned

and transferred from the hospital of Saint Mark's to the

1 Jahrbuch der preussischen Kunstsammlungen [1928], p. 187.

them "about I4Io," but "between 1420 and I430 "

would be more accurate. As the only works which,
through the centuries, have remained in their original

setting, they are of special historical interest.

Although most of the religious panels at Strasbourg

were destroyed by the iconoclasts in the Reformation
of 1525, a few have survived and gradually have been

grouped together. Two groups, ascribable to two

94

This content downloaded from 140.192.113.143 on Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:04:06 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms