Cairos relief (Torcello)

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Historical drawing of the relief (1896)

The Kairos relief is a spolia located in the church of Santa Maria Assunta on the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon.

context

The marble relief plate has only survived in fragments. The panel was cut to size for the cladding of a stringer on the new Ambo . The larger part is in situ in the church as part of the ambo. A smaller fragment with the upper left corner of the relief is exhibited in the Museum of Torcello.

The plate was originally used to decorate the interior of this church and probably belonged to the predecessor of the current ambo.

description

The framed, rectangular panel shows a symmetrically constructed scene with five figures; Kairos is the central figure in the middle.

Kairos is depicted as a beardless young man, wearing an apron (perizoma) and the following attributes: scales, knife and winged cogs. He is traveling from right to left. Its attributes are taken from ancient literature. Deviating from this tradition, however, the knife is not an antique razor, but a kind of sword that is waved over the head. This corresponds to a statement by the Byzantine author Tzetzes.

An accompanying figure grasps the kairos, i.e. the opportunity, as it is proverbial in German, by the head. This actor is crowned by the figure on the far left (fragment in the Torcello Museum), the personification of foresight (Pronoia). A mirror image of this can be seen in the right half of the picture, that is, behind Kairos, an actor who “tried unsuccessfully to grab him from behind,” that is, missed the opportunity, and on the right-hand side of the picture the personification of remorse (metanoia) accompanying him.

interpretation

The relief tablet is dated to the 11th century. The artist resorted to late antique and Byzantine literature, but the iconographic tradition of depicting the ancient Kairos was torn down. In the context of a church, the motif, according to a thesis by Renato Polacco, should illustrate the Pauline word Gal 6,10  LUT .

literature

  • Balbina Bäbler: Oknos, Kairos and Chronos. About (life) times and (missed) opportunities . In: Dorothea Sattler, Michael Wolter (eds.): Time (Yearbook for Biblical Theology 2013) Neukirchen-Vluyn 2014, ISBN 978-3-7887-2711-6 , pp. 185–212.
  • Dietrich Boschung: Works and Active Power: Morphomatic Reflections on Archaeological Case Studies . Leiden 2017, ISBN 978-3-7705-6282-4 , pp. 193-194.
  • Évelyne Prioux: Regards alexandrins: histoire et théorie des arts dans l'épigramme hellénistique (Hellenistica Groningana 12), Leuven 2007. ISBN 978-90-429-1842-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Raffaele Cattaneo: Architecture in Italy, from the sixth to the eleventh century; historical and critical researches. 1896, p. 235 , accessed May 25, 2018 .
  2. ^ A b Dietrich Boschung: Works and power . S. 193 .
  3. ^ A b Sibylle Appuhn-Radtke: Occasio. In: RDK laboratory. Retrieved May 25, 2018 .
  4. ^ Évelyne Prioux: Regards alexandrins . S. 242 .