AZTAG INTERVIEW WITH VALENTINO PACE
by Vahram Emiyan

Aztag Daily
March 5 2008
Lebanon

Valentino Pace is professor of Art History at the University of
Udine and Principal Lecturer in Art History at the Trinity College
Rome Campus, where he has taught since 1976. He is a distinguished
scholar of late antique, early Christian, Byzantine, and medieval art,
he is the author of several books and more than 130 articles.

Valentino Pace has been an editor of several scholarly journals,
including University of Siena’s Iconographica, and Belgrade
University’s Zograf. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of
Sciences and Letters. Before becoming a professor in the Italian
university system, he worked for three years at American research
universities, as Visiting Associate Professor at the John Hopkins
University (1985-1987) and Visiting Senior Fellow at Princeton
University (1987-88).

During a visit to "Aztag" newspaper Valentino Pace granted me the
following Interview.

Vahram Emiyan: When did you become interested in Armenian art and why?

Valentino Pace: In 1980, during my first visit to Jerusalem, I was
introduced to the Armenian Patriarchate and there I had this grate
luck of looking at the manuscripts, and I fell in love with Armenian
art and Armenian miniatures. And that was the very beginning.

V. Emiyan: What importance do symbols represent in Icons?

V. Pace: Symbols have a great importance in Christian art in
general. The importance is that they try to touch the feelings and
devotion of the faithful in a visual way. And they have been widely
used in both Western and Byzantine art.

V. Emiyan: Are those symbols similar in different cultures?

V. Pace: There are certain symbols which have been used more in
certain areas and less in others and vice versa. I wouldn’t say
that the whole branch of symbolism is common to every facet of the
Christian world. Christian symbols in early Christian art in Italy
may be not understandable here and vice versa.

V. Emiyan: What are the basic qualities of Iconography?

V. Pace: Iconography is rather a fixed grammar which must help you
trough the images to make clear the ideas of the patron. So if the
patron is a religious figure, a bishop or a priest, he knows the
system of signs which would make his faithful confident with its
beliefs. If there is a good system of communication, if there is a
clear net of images Iconography can work very well. In some cases
Iconography could be difficult, if the patrons perhaps did not make
their message clear. Normally Christian Iconography works very well,
since it is based on an established net of images which can be
understood by every one.

V. Emiyan: What about the basic qualities of the artist?

V. Pace: During the Middle Ages the artist relied on his experience,
his visual experience, on tradition, which he learned from elders,
and in this way he transmits his ideas further and it depends on the
quality of the artist. Great artists, like Toros Roslin for example,
make the message even more beautiful. Iconography does not need
to reach for itself a very high quality, because if you represent
a cross it’s a cross, you understand it whether its just two lines
or something flourished around. An artist makes it also possible to
give an esthetic visual impact. And there are great artists and bad
painters or sculptors.

V. Emiyan: Is Iconography an elitist art?

V. Pace: No I wouldn’t say so. If Iconography turns into an elitist
art it looses its message. It becomes a kind of secret society. It
can be as well like that. But since Iconography is basically a way of
transmitting a meaning…if you and me were to join a secret society
to prepare something which may not be pleasant for others, we will
use cryptic Iconography and then it goes like that. But basically
Iconography is a system of images which makes the idea clear for
every one.

V. Emiyan: But in a secular world people don’t understand the Bible
very well, and when an Icon represents two images, one from the
Old Testament and the other from the New Testament and fuses them
together…

V. Pace: This is a crucial question that you are dealing with, and
as a professor I know that the situation is getting worse and worse.

Thirty years ago I would have never expected questions from students
that I get today. Since the students and society are becoming more
and more lay, and they don’t read any Christian text, I wouldn’t be
surprised that sometime in the near future a student will ask me "who
is this nice lady who is surprised to meet a person who has wings"?

Without realizing it’s simply the Annunciation. I would say chances
of getting this kind of questions are getting greater. It’s a tragedy
in away, because whether you are Catholic or not you should know
History at least. But it goes like that. It’s a disaster. An Italian
student, three months ago, after my first or second class came to
me and asked "professor could you be more clear about some issues
you are saying"? When I said sure, he asked: "you have been speaking
about an Old and New Testament. What do they mean"? I think even in
soviet Russia in the worst times, and perhaps just for that reason,
people knew what are the Old and New Testaments. And this was in
Italy three months ago! That’s desperate. I’m sure if I go to China
I wouldn’t understand anything of the symbolism of the images in
China, but in that case I’m ignorant. If I belonged to that society I
think I should at least have an idea. You know there has been a lot
of discussion about the Christian roots of Europe. I’m a quite lay
scholar, but I must say that we can not deny the Christian roots of
Europe. That is a part of our society and it must be stressed in a way.