THE OUTSIDER: HAKOB AND ARMENIAN ILLUMINATION
Sam Fogg
Indepth Arts News
Absolutearts.com
April 26 2006
London, UK United Kingdom
Following the success of the first selling exhibition of Armenian art
staged by the gallery in 2004, Sam Fogg is delighted to present an
exhibition of a major Armenian manuscript which will be accompanied by
a groundbreaking publication. Entitled The Outsider: Hakob and Armenian
Illumination, the exhibition will display the Gospels illuminated
by Hakob Jughayets’i, the most celebrated Armenian illuminator of
the 16th century, at Sam Fogg, 15d Clifford Street, London W1, from
Tuesday 25 April to Tuesday 16 May 2006. The manuscript once belonged
to the celebrated collector and diplomat Jean Pozzi (1884-1967).
The Pozzi Gospels, completed by Hakob Jughayets’i in the winter
of 1586, includes an extraordinary series of portraits, narrative
miniatures and marginal figures. The manuscript contains narrative
cycles drawn from the Old Testament and the Gospels, the evangelists
and paired images of Christ and the Virgin. In the colophon, Hakob
explains that he copied and illuminated the manuscript under the
protection of a church in the city of Keghi (modern Kigi, fifty
miles south-west of Erzerum). At the time he was itinerant and,
when passing through Erzerum on his way to Istanbul, Hakob records
that he had met a priest, Astuatsatur, who invited him to travel back
to Keghi. With a humility born of convention as much as conviction,
Hakob describes himself as ‘the most useless of the servants of God’
and the ‘false-living deacon of Jugha’. He remarks that the book
was completed at ‘a bitter time’, again a familiar expression found
in many colophons. In this instance, however, he could be referring
to the war that raged between the Safavid and Ottoman empires across
Armenia during the 1580s, or to his precarious personal circumstances
and the harshness of winter. Hakob’s sparkling, vibrant palette,
expressive wide-eyed figures, and iconographic inventiveness are at
their most distinctive in this early phase of his career.
>From antiquity, Armenian history can be seen in terms of periods of
independence interleaved with longer spells under the dominion of
neighbouring powers. Throughout these centuries, Armenian cultural
traditions proved both resilient and distinctive. If Armenia is
one of the least understood regions of the Christian Orient, late
medieval and early modern Armenia remains one of the least studied
periods. Hakob’s illuminated manuscripts reveal that Armenian art
cannot be explained simply as a fusion of artistic influences from
its powerful neighbours and conquerors but needs to be recognised as
a separate tradition and assessed on its own terms.
The study of this manuscript for this exhibition has resulted in a
groundbreaking publication on Hakob’s life and career. Researched and
written by Dr Timothy Greenwood and Dr Edda Vardanyan, and published
by Paul Holberton, Hakob’s Gospels: The Life and Work of an Armenian
Artist of the Sixteenth Century is the first monograph to trace
Hakob’s development in Armenia in the 1580s to his later works in
Safavid Persia, at Isfahan, in 1607 and 1610. In the Pozzi Gospels,
completed in 1586, Hakob is experimenting with subjects and styles.
Through comparison with Gospels dated 1585 and 1587, this Gospel
book seems to mark an important moment of transition, when he moved
away from the influence of his teacher, bishop Zak’aria Gnuneants’,
and began to develop his own repertoire, drawing on images of the
divine from the Far East and on western European traditions.
Using the nine manuscripts written and illuminated by Hakob,
all of which include informative colophons, Dr Tim Greenwood
and Dr Edda Vardanyan construct Hakob’s biography, explore his
artistic development, and evaluate his career within the context of
late 16th-century Armenian politics, culture and devotion. Richly
illustrated with reproductions of miniatures produced at every stage
of his career, this study reveals the singular artistic vision of
Hakob himself and the dynamism of contemporary Armenian illumination.
In addition to this splendid manuscript, the exhibition will also
present a selection of Armenian manuscripts and bookbindings,
woodcarvings and icons, dating from the 12th to the 18th centuries,
all of which will be for sale.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
