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Post-Byzantine Figured Silks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

D. Talbot Rice
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Extract

At one time it was generally assumed, even by distinguished Byzantinists, that the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 put a sudden stop to the production of all objects of quality in the East Christian world, and that after that date Byzantine art at once degenerated into a peasant art throughout the whole of the area touched by the Turks. Recent research has, however, led to some modification of this view, and though work of the same superb quality as that produced in the great middle period of Byzantine art was not executed, we now know that in addition to painted icons, such things as embroideries, carved reliquaries, crosses of chased metal work or champlevé enamel and objects in bone or even ivory, were produced, which were by no means negligible from the artistic standpoint. Their production continued, moreover, through the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries; only after that date did Christian art in Greece and the Balkans assume an essentially ‘peasant’ character. It is indeed to the sixteenth century that the greater number of painted icons that are now to be found in museums and private collections in Greece are to be assigned, and though there was much hack-work, paintings of very high quality were also produced amongst them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 46 , November 1951 , pp. 177 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1951

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References

1 See Riefstahl, R. M., ‘Greek Orthodox vestments and ecclesiastical fabrics’, in Art Bulletin XIV (1932), 359 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A number in the Byzantine Museum at Athens are mentioned in the guide but are not illustrated: see Sotiriou, G., Guide du Musée Byzantin d'Athènes, 1939, 139.Google Scholar

1a Sotiriou, G., ADelt II (1916)Google Scholar, παραρτῆμα, 40 and fig. 30.

2 Tafrali, O., Le Trésor de Putna (Paris, 1925), 69 and PI. LX.Google Scholar

3 I am indebted to Professor Sir E. H. Minns of Cambridge for this information.

4 See Öz, Taksin, Turkish Textiles and Velvets, Turkish Press, Broadcasting, and Tourist Department, Ankara, 1950, Pls. I–V.Google Scholar

5 The Serail collection comprises ah amazingly rich array of silks, some of which are still in the rolls in which they were originally delivered from the factories. In some cases the receipts of manufacture have also been preserved. Theodore Macridy and Taksin Öz, Director of the Serail, were preparing a publication of this material before the war, but Macridy's death and present-day difficulties for long postponed its appearance. The first volume of a three-volume publication, by Taksin Öz alone, has now been issued—see previous note. It deals with the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

6 Loc. cit. Both are illustrated.