Deësis

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Deësis icon from St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, 12th century.

The term Deësis (ancient Greek δέησις, “please”, “supplication”, “prayer”) describes the submission of an originally usually selfish concern, both in the secular and legal as well as in the religious area. In the Byzantine Empire the term u. a. related to profane petitions addressed to the emperor . In the linguistic usage of modern art history , however, the meaning of the term is limited to religious and fundamentally non-profit intercession (Latin intercessio ) and, as a technical term, is related to an image motif of Christian iconography . This motif usually shows a group of three figures with Christ in the middle and the Mother of God Mary and John the Baptist on his sides. Mary and John raise both arms and turn to Christ in a humble and pleading attitude (so-called Oranten pose ). If other saints stand in the same or a similar position next to Mary and the Baptist, one speaks of a "great Deësis".

Origin of the motif

The motif does not appear until after the end of the Byzantine picture dispute . It has come down to us from Cappadocia in provincial Byzantine works from around 900 AD (including from Ayvalı-Kilise in the Güllüdere Valley near Çavuşin ). The oldest surviving examples from Constantinople date back to the 10th century and are works of cabaret such as the enamel in the Limburg storage library or the ivory carving of the Harbaville triptych in the Louvre . The monumental Deësis mosaic on the south pore of Hagia Sophia dates from the 13th century. Another capital city Deësis mosaic is preserved in the Pammakaristos Church .

Deësis as an element of the Last Judgment

Little Deësis, Harbaville triptych from the 10th century

Since the 11th century, the so-called “little Deësis” with Christ, Mary and the Baptist has also become a central component of Byzantine pictures of the Last Judgment , for example in the earliest miniature on this subject, sheet 51v. of the illumination “Ms. Grec 74 “of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. From this constellation of the judge with the Blessed Mother and the Baptist as intercessors, images of the Last Judgment were also inspired in the occidental area up to the post-medieval period. B. Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel from the Renaissance period or the Last Judgment by Peter Paul Rubens from the Baroque period .

The Deësis in the Occident

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Since the 12th century the Deësis has also appeared in the Roman-Latin culture, initially in the Italian contact centers for the Byzantine Empire, e.g. B. in a mosaic in the apse of a monastery church on Murano in the lagoon of Venice , which is now in the Friedenskirche in Potsdam . Deësis has also appeared north of the Alps since the 13th century and is in turn part of larger representations of the Last Judgment, e.g. B. in one of the portals of the Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral in Reims . For representations with John the Evangelist in place of the Baptist, as in the Gothic World Court portal of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral , spiritual roots of a separate Western-Latin Deësis conception in high medieval scholasticism have been discovered.

Spiritual foundations of the Deësis

From the Bible or other legends , no narrative is known as a template for the Deësis motif. The religious concept of invoking God to ask for the well-being or peace of mind of other living or deceased people or of humanity is historically attested in the cultural area of ​​the Levant long before Christianity emerged . At the core of this concept is the idea that certain saints are particularly suitable as intercessors or promise particular success due to their proximity to God. This thought is also expressed in the New Testament : “Therefore… pray for one another…. The ardent prayer of a righteous man can do much ”(Jas 5:16). Mary and the Baptist are considered particularly suitable. According to Eastern Orthodox theology and popular piety , John is considered the Baptist as the author of a second birth of Jesus and occupies a special position in the heavenly hierarchy, after Mary, but before the apostles . According to recent research, the concept of Deësis is preserved even if not the Baptist, sometimes not Mary, but other saints appear in a corresponding picture.

Image and name as Deësis

The oldest evidence of the designation of a picture as "Deësis" is a description of the hermitage of the monk Symeon from Constantinople, which dates from the second half of the 11th century. Nothing has been reported about the appearance of the picture there. For the time of the Byzantine Empire, only about twenty sculptures are listed in research that were explicitly referred to as "Deësis" in inscriptions or inscriptions or contemporary inventories . After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the originally Greek term used to denote images of the intercession of saints before Christ in the Russian cultural area and from there around 1900 it came into the language of modern art history.

A world court in miniature?

It is controversial in research whether the Deësis as a single image with three or a few more figures also stands outside of large-scale representations of the Last Judgment as part of the whole or as a pictorial abbreviation ( abbreviation ) of the subject of the judgment. The question is therefore whether Christ is always to be understood as judge in the small or in a large Deësis, even if the picture does not otherwise give any indication of the judgment. On the other hand, the objection is that Christ always shows a movement of his hands in court pictures, with which he separates the good on his right from the bad on his left (as he predicted according to the Gospel of Matthew himself: “And all nations will come before him will be called together and he will separate them from one another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats ”(Matt 25:32). There are numerous variants of the parting gesture : Christ opens his hands and raises his arms up or down, he does this in the same direction or on the right differently than on the left, etc. In contrast, in pictures of the Deësis he often appears with a gesture of blessing . Insofar as Christ does not appear with the gesture of parting, pictures with a deësis are not to be understood as pictures of the Last Judgment either. The use of the scene of the Deësis in pictures of the Last Judgment is then to be understood as a special case of the Deësis, and the Deësis does not always represent a world judgment in general.

The interpretation of the picture statement as a Last Judgment has i.Ü. Consequences for the interpretation of the book that the blessing Christ holds in his left hand in pictures of the small or large Deësis. When interpreting the Deësis as the Last Judgment, the “ Book of Life ” is obvious, which is not mentioned in the Last Judgment discourse of Christ according to Matthew (Matthew 25:31, 46), but in the Revelation of John (Rev 20: 12-15). According to Revelation, the candidates for the kingdom of heaven are listed in this book (Revelation 20:12 and 15; 21:27). As a book in the right hand of the blessing Jesus Christ, however, i. d. R. identified the gospel . This interpretation is supported by numerous pictorial examples in which the book bears a reference to a passage in the Gospels.

literature

  • Brenk, Beat: Tradition and Innovation in Christian Art of the First Millennium , Vienna 1966
  • Cutler, Anthony: Under the Sign of the Deësis: On the Question of Representativeness in Medieval Art and Literature . In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 41, 1987, pp. 145 ff.
  • Gallon, Thomas-Peter: ruler, judge, blessing giver? On the presence of Christ in the Veneto-Byzantine intercession mosaic of the Church of Peace at Sanssouci . In: Announcements of the Association for Culture and History Potsdams Studiengemeinschaft Sanssouci e. V., Potsdam 2013, p. 39 ff.
  • From Bogyay, Thomas: Deesis and Eschatology. In: Polychordia (Festschrift Franz Dölger) Vol. 2, Amsterdam 1967, p. 59 ff.
  • Walter, Christopher: Further Notes on the Deësis. In: Revue des études byzantines, Vol. 28, 1970, pp. 161 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter, Christopher: Two Notes on the Deësis. In: Revue des études byzantines, vol. 26, 1968, p. 317 ff.
  2. ↑ Guilland, R .: Le Maître des Requêtes . In: Byzantion, Vol. 35, 1965, pp. 97 ff.
  3. ↑ Jolivet-Lévy, Catherine: Premières images du jugement dernier en Cappadoce Byzantine (Xe siècle). In: Pace, Valentino u. a .: Le jugement dernier entre orient et occident , Paris 2007, p. 47
  4. ^ Brenk, Beat: The beginnings of the Byzantine world judgment representation. In: Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Vol. 57, 1964, p. 126
  5. ↑ Colored illustration in Christe, Yves: The Last Judgment. Regensburg 2001, Fig. 8
  6. ↑ De Bogyay, Thomas: L'adoption de la Déisis dans l'art en Europe centrale et occidentale. In: Le comte d'Adhémar de Panat u. a .: Mélanges offerts à Szabolcs de Vajay, Braga 1979, p. 65 ff.
  7. ^ Gallon, Thomas-Peter: ruler, judge, blessing giver? On the presence of Christ in the Veneto-Byzantine intercession mosaic of the Church of Peace at Sanssouci. In: Announcements of the Association for Culture and History Potsdams Studiengemeinschaft Sanssouci e. V., Potsdam 2013, p. 39 ff.
  8. ↑ Boerner, Bruno: Par caritas par meritum. Studies on the theology of the Gothic World Court portal in France - using the example of the central west entrance of Notre Dame in Paris , Freiburg i. Ü. 1998
  9. ↑ Michel, O .: Prayer II (Intercession). In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum, Vol. 9, 1976, Col. 1 ff.
  10. ↑ Kantorowicz, Ernst: Ivories and Litanies. In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 5, 1942, pp. 71 f., 77 f.
  11. ↑ Cutler, Anthony: Under the Sign of the Deësis: On the Question of Representativeness in Medieval Art and Literature, in: Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 41, 1987, pp. 145 ff.
  12. ↑ From Bogyay, Thomas: Deesis. In: Lexikon der Christian Ikonographie, Vol. 1, 1968, Col. 494
  13. ↑ Walter, Christopher: Two Notes on the Deësis. In: Revue des études byzantines, vol. 26, 1968, p. 311 ff.
  14. ↑ From Bogyay, Thomas: Deesis. In: Reallexikon zur Byzantine Kunst, Vol. 1, 1966, Sp. 1179
  15. ^ Gallon, Thomas-Peter: ruler, judge, blessing giver? On the presence of Christ in the Veneto-Byzantine intercession mosaic of the Church of Peace at Sanssouci. In: Announcements of the Association for Culture and History Potsdams Studiengemeinschaft Sanssouci e. V., Potsdam 2013, p. 59 ff.
  16. ↑ From Bogyay, Thomas: Deesis and Eschatology. In: Polychordia (Festschrift Franz Dölger) Vol. 2, Amsterdam 1967, p. 59 ff.
  17. ↑ Wessel, Klaus: The picture of the Pantokrator. In: Polychordia (Festschrift Franz Dölger) Vol. 1, Heidelberg 1966, p. 528 f.

Web links

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