List of Byzantine Spolia in Venice

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Relief icon of Saint Demetrios, west facade of San Marco

The list of Byzantine spoils includes Byzantine architectural decorations, especially reliefs, of secondary use in the urban area of ​​Venice. It is difficult to distinguish it from Venetian works based on the Byzantine model. In general, recent research anticipates a larger number of Venetian-Byzantine reliefs. For example, the Madonna della Grazie in San Marco is called an icon “made in Italy” despite its Greek inscription ΜΗΡ ΘΥ.

San Marco

Altar plate of an Orthodox church (red) as a decorative element of a tympanum on the south facade of San Marco

The number of spoils on the facade of San Marco is unprecedented and requires an explanation. The Venetians were able to bring Byzantine architectural jewelery to their city even before the fall of Constantinople (1204), for example as booty from the battles of the united Byzantine-Venetian fleets against the Arabs in Sicily, or through transfers from the older cities of the lagoon ( Altino , Aquileia , Eraclea , Oderzo , Concordia). There is a source for such a practice, the will of Doge Giustiniano Particiaco , who decreed that architectural jewelry should be brought from Torcello for the construction of San Marco.

The art historian Fabio Barry is cautious about the thesis that the facade of San Marco was an easel for the exhibition of the booty of the year 1204 - which Venetian sources of the 16th century suggest in retrospect. Instead, he recognizes a “Spolia style” in Byzantine church buildings from the 9th to 12th centuries (example: the Panagia Gorgoepikoos church in Athens, built around 1182 to 1204). With this type of facade decoration one wanted to place oneself in a tradition.

Sigma-shaped altar plate in a tympanum of the north facade of San Marco
Spolie with Etimasia relief, north facade of San Marco
Capital, Pilastri Acritani

North facade

  • Fragments of Ambo stair strings, reused as decorative forms in several tympana of the north facade.
  • Etimasia relief: Christ's empty throne and apostles depicted as lambs.
  • Aviation of Alexander the Great. The motif comes from the Alexander novel . It was popular in medieval Western Europe but came from the Orient, as can be seen in San Marco in an original Byzantine relief from the 10th or 11th century. This has a striking similarity to Byzantine textiles that represent charioteers. But the inspiration for this representation of a heavenly chariot came from the Byzantine artists from the Sassanid Empire .
  • Altar plate in the form of a sigma , from a Byzantine church (5th – 7th centuries), recycled in a tympanum. Sigma-shaped tables were common in antiquity, and the Lord's Supper with the disciples was often depicted on such a semicircular dining table in early Christian art. Some refectories of Orthodox monasteries have preserved this form of table ; because of the reference to the Lord's Supper, orthodox altar plates also had the shape of a sigma. Typical is the elevation of the edges, interrupted on the straight side by a kind of groove. In the case of dining tables, this was used for easy cleaning; altar plates retained this design in a stylized form. (The sigma-shaped altar plates are usually smaller than a square meter.)
  • Fighter capital with braided frame on the northwest corner of San Marco (pillar of San Alipio), lowest floor. As well as two other capitals in San Marco from the Polyeuktoskirche of Constantinople.
    Aviation of Alexander the Great, north facade of San Marco

West facade

  • Quadriga
  • Hercules defeats the Erymanthian boar . Probably a late antique relief from Byzantium, integrated into a sequence of six reliefs at the same height in the 13th century on the ground floor of the west facade of San Marco (north). Although these were created at different times, their similar format and the material used for all of them - Greek marble - create an impression of togetherness. The Hercules relief clearly shows ancient iconography, but it can also be an antique Byzantine work.
  • Saint Demetrios , opposite to Saint George (a Venetian work), relief icon to the right of the central portal arch. The soldier saint is depicted sitting on a throne, but at the same time also drawing his sword. This image program was developed at the Byzantine imperial court; corresponds to the fact that Demetrios is adorned like a prince with a diadem . Byzantine work, around 1200.
  • Portal San Alipio. Some capitals on the lower floor are typical varieties of the early Byzantine warrior capital.

South facade

  • So-called Carmagnola , head of an Eastern Roman imperial figure, porphyry , 40 cm high.
  • Pilastri Acritani . The fact that it is looted art from the plundering of Constantinople in 1204 is considered certain, while many other spolia assume it is. The two pillars come from the Polyeuktoskirche and are examples of a new style of decoration that emerges in this church building (524-527) in Constantinople: “The individual motifs have been worked so far that the surface dissolves into a fine web of intertwined ornaments begins. "
  • Group of tetrarchs , two spolia on the facade of the Tesoro.
  • Sigma-shaped altar plate of a Byzantine church, above the entrance to the sacristy .

inner space

  • Porta di San Clemente : bronze door, a gift from Emperor Alexios to the city of Venice.
  • Lattice door of the Zeno Chapel.
  • Deesis (trimorphon) in the south aisle, a three-part relief icon from a Constantinopolitan workshop, marble, 11th or 12th century.
  • Madonna del Bacio , near the entrance to the Tesoro. Image type of Theotokos Hodegetria , a relief icon with great proximity to a painted icon. The broad stone frame speaks for its origin from Byzantium.

San Giovanni Crisostomo

  • Maria Orans in the Cappella Bernabò of the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo . Relief icon, revised after damage. It differs stylistically from the Venetian-Byzantine Marian icons of San Marco.
Campiello del Angaran

Campiello del Angaran

  • Marble tondo with a relief representation of a Byzantine emperor (diameter about 90 cm). It is located in a small courtyard ( Campiello del Angaran ) on a house wall between doors. The Dumbarton Oaks Collection owns an almost identical, but better preserved (because it has not been exposed to the elements) .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles Davis: Byzantine Relief Icons . S. 7 .
  2. ^ A b Fabio Barry: Disiecta membra . S. 21 .
  3. Fabio Barry: disiecta membra . S. 23-24 .
  4. Reinhold Merkelbach: Mythical episodes in the Alexander novel . In: Elmar Schwertheim, Sencer Sahin, Jörg Wagner (eds.): Studies on the religion and culture of Asia Minor . tape 2 . Brill, Leiden 1982, pp. 613 .
  5. ^ A b Fabio Barry: Disiecta membra . S. 23 .
  6. Guido Fuchs: Mahlkultur: grace and table ritual . Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1998, p. 138 .
  7. Joachim Kramer: Comments on the methods of classifying and dating early Christian Eastern Roman capitals . In: Urs Peschlow (Ed.): Spätantike und Byzantinische Bauskulptur, Stuttgart 1998, pp. 47–48.
  8. Ulrich Rehm: Hercules and the lion . S. 166 .
  9. ^ Hans Belting: Image and Art . 6th edition. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-37768-8 , p. 221.
  10. Ulrich Rehm: Hercules and the lion . S. 169 .
  11. ^ Oskar Wulff: The Byzantine art. From the first bloom to its end (Early Christian and Byzantine Art, Volume 2). Berlin-Neubabelsberg 1918, p. 411.
  12. ^ Arne Effenberger, Hans Georg Severin: The Museum for Late Antiquity and Byzantine Art Berlin . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1992, ISBN 3-8053-1185-0 , p. 38 .
  13. ^ John Beckwith, Richard Krautheimer, Slobodan Ćurčić: Early Christian and Byzantine Art . Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1993, pp. 279 .
  14. ^ Charles Davis: Byzantine Relief Icons . S. 12 .
  15. ^ Charles Davis: Byzantine Relief Icons . S. 25 .