Sirarpie The Nersessian

Sirarpie Véronique The Nersessian ( Armenian Սիրարփի Միհրանի Տեր-Ներսեսյան Sirarpi Mihrani Ter-Nersessjan ; born September 5, 1896 in Constantinople , † July 5, 1989 in Paris ) was an Armenian art historian who specialized in Armenian and Byzantine art . She was the first female professor of Byzantine art and archeology at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection and at Harvard University .

biography

Escape and training

Sirarpie The Nersessian was the youngest of three children of a well-off family from the Armenian minority of Constantinople. A maternal uncle was Malachia Ormanian , Patriarch of Constantinople of the Armenian Apostolic Church , who had great influence on her. Her mother Akabi died when she nine, and the father Mihran, when she was 18 years old, in the First World War . She graduated from the Armenian Yesayan School and the English High School in Constantinople. From a young age she spoke fluent Armenian , English and French .

1915, at the height of the Armenian genocide , fled the Nersessian with her sister and an aunt Arax over Bulgaria in Switzerland . In Geneva, she began studying at the university there until she went to Paris with her sister in 1919 . There she was admitted to study at the Sorbonne , where she studied with the Byzantinists Charles Diehl and Gabriel Millet and with the art historian Henri Focillon . Since her uncle died in Constantinople in 1918, she had to finance her studies herself. In 1922 she became Millet's assistant and, with his support, published one of her first articles in 1929. As prescribed at the time, she wrote two dissertations , L'illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph, and a study of Armenian illuminated manuscripts from the late Middle Ages. Her research in the mother house of the mechitarist on San Lazzaro degli Armeni near Venice was made more difficult by the fact that as a woman she was not given unrestricted access there. After the works were published in 1937, they were awarded by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and the Revue des Études Grecques .

Pioneer in her field

In 1930 Sirarpie The Nersessian went to the United States on the advice of mentors who had recognized their intellectual pontential to teach part-time at Wellesley College in Massachusetts . In 1934, after completing her dissertations, she was given a full-time position as a professor and later became Chair of the Department of Art History and Director of the University of Farnsworth Museum . From 1944/45 she worked at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection . She then was appointed professor of Byzantine art and archeology at Dumbarton Oaks and was awarded the Henri-Focillon Professor-of-Byzantine-style-and-Archeology - Chair , as the first and also the only woman in Harvard at this time. From 1954 to 1955 and from 1961 to 1962 she was a department head in Dumbarton Oaks and a member of the Science Council. She was also a member of other international institutions such as the British Academy (1975), the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1978) and the Armenian National Academy of Sciences (1966).

Sirarpie The Nersessian established new standards in the discipline of Byzanist art history and proved above all that Armenian art was more than just its offshoot. She was considered a precise and correct working scientist. She was a pioneer and trailblazer in several ways: She was the first woman to read about Byzantine art at a women's university, the first woman to teach at the Collège de France in Paris, and the first woman to be a full professor at Dumbarton Oaks and at Harvard and became the second to be honored with a gold medal by the Society of Antiquaries of London (1970). In 1960 she was also the first woman with the medal of the Order of St. Gregory the Illuminator from the Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church , I. Vazgen was excellent. In 1947 she received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women .

The Nersessian stayed in Dumbarton Oaks until her retirement in 1963 , where she lived in a building on the premises with her sister, who worked as a research assistant from 1954 to 1964. Then the two women moved to Paris, and Sirarpie the Nersessian lectured at European universities. When Dumberton Oaks celebrated its 25th anniversary, she gave a final lecture there in 1965 on Scholarship in Byzantine Art and Archeology, 1940-1965 . She left her entire library to the Matenadaran in Yerevan . After her death in 1989, the Sirarpie Der Nersessian fund for history students from Armenia was set up in her honor at the Institut de Recherches sur les Miniatures Arméno-Byzantines in Paris .

Trivia

Sirarpie The Nersessian remained unmarried. For most of her life she lived with women, with an aunt and with her sister, whom she also looked after when she was seriously ill. At a meeting she was asked, "Where is your husband?" And she replied, "I am the husband."

Publications

• Armenia and the Byzantine Empire . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1945.
• Aght'amar: Church of the Holy Cross . Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1964.
• Armenian Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery . Baltimore: The Trustees, 1973.
• Armenian miniatures from Isfahan . Brussels: Les Editeurs d'Art Associés, 1986.
• The Armenians . New York: Praeger, 1969.
• L'Art arménien . Paris: Art européen. Publications filmées d'art et d'histoire, 1965.
• L'illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph . Paris: de Boccard, 1937.
• Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century . Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 1993. Online: ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

literature

• Dickran Kouymjian: Sirarpie The Nersessian (1896-1989): Pioneer of Armenian Art History . In: Jane Chance (ed.): Medievalists and the Academy . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2005, ISBN 0-299-20750-1 , pp. 482-493 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jelisaveta Allen / Nina G. Garsoïan / Ihor Ševčenko / Robert W. Thomson: Sirarpie Der Nersessian: 1896-1989 . In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers . tape 43 , 1989, pp. xiii – xi .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} The Nersessian, Sirarpie. In: Dictionary of Art Historians. February 21, 2018, accessed February 21, 2020 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Levon Chookaszian: Տեր-Ներսեսյան, Սիրարփի Միհրան [Ter Nersesyan, Sirarpi Mihrani] . In: Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia . tape 11 . Armenian Encyclopedia, Yerevan 1985, pp. 683 (Armenian).
4. ↑ Kouymjian, Sirarpie Der Nersessian , p. 483.
5. ^ ^{A b} Sirarpie Der Nersessian, First Professor of Byzantine Art and Archeology. Dumbarton Oaks, March 1, 2019, accessed February 21, 2020 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Kouymjian, Sirarpie Der Nersessian , p. 485.
7. ^ Who Was Who at Dumbarton Oaks, 1940-2015 - Dumbarton Oaks. In: doaks.org. Retrieved February 22, 2020 . 

Web links

• The Nersessian, Sirarpie .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .