moving eyes.pdf

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Moving Eyes: Surface and Shadow in the Byzantine Mixed-Media Relief IconAuthor(s): Bissera V. PentchevaSource: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 55/56, Absconding (Spring - Autumn,2009), pp. 222-234Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the PeabodyMuseum of Archaeology and EthnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25608845Accessed: 25-04-2016 17:04 UTC

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222 RES 55/56 SPRING/AUTUMN 2009

Figure 1. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. Wood carving and metal revetment before the restoration, approx. 139 x 48 cm. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo: Soprintendenza Beni Culturali, Veneto.


Moving eyes

Surface and shadow in the Byzantine mixed-media relief icon

BISSERA V. PENTCHEVA

a Claudio Rorato e alle suore del Monastero della Visitazione a Treviso

Just as the divine Logos became humanly perceptible when it acquired the cover of flesh, so too the divine pneuma (spirit), according to the Byzantines, could be sensed in veils of materiality whether coruscating gold, or the smoke of incense, or the layering of lacy shadows of polykandela (candelabra) on the translucent reflective marble surfaces of walls and floors, or the covers of unfurling opalescent silks. Epiphany in Greek derives from epiphaneia, meaning "appearance" and "surface/' To perceive the divine mystery means to experience its reflection in matter. The Byzantine mixed-media relief icon is the best example of this phenomenon of swaddling the ineffable.1 Its material sheaths of gold and gems interact with the shifting ambient light and human presence in space. I will argue that these myriad appearances?epiphaneiai?give rise to a powerful experience of animation in the image. Like a reflective mirror, the meaning of the Byzantine eikon rises from the interaction of subject and object; the faithful projects his/ her own image and breath on the surfaces of the icon. This essay is an exploration of animation arising in the eye of the beholder but triggered by artistic creation anticipating and responding to the diversity and change of the ambience.

We tend to view Byzantine icons in the controlled environment of the museum display. Here the steady electric light flattens their surfaces, making them fully visible. Such artificial, steady light stabilizes one aspect of an appearance and reduces the experience of the mixed-media relief icon to that of a panel painting.2 By contrast, the medieval display embedded the icon in

space, setting it up like a sculpture in an extended field. In focusing on one such relief icon, the Virgin and Child atTreviso (ninth to fourteenth centuries), my essay will explore the Byzantine display of pneuma and animation paradoxically achieved through the spectacle of myriad appearances emerging from darkness, moving shadows, flickering lights, and metallic glitter.

A slender standing Mother of God holds the Christ Child in her arms (fig. 1). Both figures are carved in bas-relief on a thick board. Originally, their plastic shapes were painted; yet, only their faces are now exposed, free of metal sheaths, showing a flesh-like tawny-olive color (fig. 2).3 The rest of the reliefs and the entire background are covered in glittering gilded silver revetments. This rich assembly of metal pieces bears the

marks of centuries of production: the revetment of the sides and the vault of the arch are of the twelfth century; the cabochons, haloes, the decorative border of the tunics, and the acanthus rinceaux are of the fourteenth

century, while the rest of the drapery suggest a later, post-Byzantine date.4

This is a hybrid icon-relic (figs. 1-5). It consists of two boards, bound together on one side with hinges. The upper displays the carved bas-reliefs of the Mother and Child. Its backside is gently hollowed out, forming a cavity (fig. 3). This repository is closed by a second board,5 whose interior is lined with ninth- or tenth

1. This article presents a case study of a larger exploration of phenomenology and aesthetics in Byzantine art developed in my forthcoming book, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009).

2. For further critique of the modern museum display of medieval art, see S. Gerstel, "The Aesthetics of Orthodox Faith," Art Bulletin

87/2 (2004):331-341, esp. p. 332; and D. Kinney, "The Apse Mosaic of Santa Maria in Trastevere," in Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 19-25.

3. E. Fedeli and C. Stangherlin, "Le analisi stratigrafiche," in L'icona della "Madre di Dio" e il Crocifissio del Monastero

della Visitazione di Treviso, eds. C. Delfini Filippini and L. Majoli (Venice: Soprintendenza per il Ratrimonio Artistico, Storico e Demoetnoantropologico del Veneto, 2002, andVillorba: Grafische Marini Villorba, 2002), pp. 55-59. For the dating of the reliefs to the ninth century, see M. Mason, "Un'icona lignea mediobizantina. La 'Beata Vergine della cintura detta 'di Costantinopoli' nel Monastero della Visitazione di Treviso," Miscellanea Marciana 17 (2002):7-46. Further confirmation for the earlier date is given by the position of the hands of Mary, which wrap the body of the Child, unlike the later post Iconoclast iconography of one hand lifted in prayer. See Pentcheva, Icons and Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), pp. 110-120.

4. C. Mattiello, "II restauro della fodera d'argento," in L'icona della "Madre di Dio" (ibid.), pp. 51-54.

5. A. Bigolin, "II restauro dell'icona," in L'icona della "Madre di Dio" (note 3), pp. 43-50.



Figure 2. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. View of the painted surfaces after the removal of the metal revetments. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo: Mara Mason.

century Byzantine silk (figs. 4 and 5).6 The C-14 analysis of the front panel, identified as poplar, has given a dating in the late seventh to the late eighth or ninth centuries.

The back cover, recognized as wood of a plane tree, has not been subjected to the C-14 study.7

This icon-relic container is kept in a luminous chapel in the Monastery of the Visitation in Treviso.8 Its historical, artistic, and cultural significance has only recently been uncovered in a series of scholarly studies.9 Starting in 1998, Claudio Rorato gave the

6. G. Passarella, "La pulitura del tessuto applicato sul supporto ligneo," F. Piovan, "II tessuto: Dati tecnici e descrittivi," C. Cagnoni, "La ricostruzione grafica del frammento di tessuto," and M. Marchesini, S.

Marvelli, P. Torri, "Le indagini palinologiche," in L'icona della "Madre di Dio" (note 3), pp. 73-105. The silk is of three files, red, yellow, and green. The design, identified as a Tree of Life, shows alternating pairs of griffins, eagles/peacocks, and parrots.

7. N. Martinelli, "La datazione radiometrica del supporto ligneo col C-14" and A. Zanaboni, "Analisi qualitativa per il riconoscimento dell a essenza legnosa," in l'icona della "Madre di Dio" (note 3), pp. 63-69.

8. C. Rorato, "L'esposizione dell'icona," in L'icona della "Madre di Dio" (note 3), pp. 13-15.

9. On the history of the icon and the monastery of San Giuseppe, seeV. Carini Venturini, "La Madonna 'di Costantinopoli' e San Giuseppe di Castello," in L'icona della "Madre di Dio" (note 3), pp. 1 7-39. The Augustine nunnery moved from Verona to Venice, settling in to the monastery of San Giuseppe, in the second decade of the sixteenth century. Although an image of a Madonna in this monastery of San Giuseppe is mentioned in a document from 1567, the first identification of an object with the miraculous icon of the Virgin of

Constantinople only appeared in 1618. In the seventeenth century,


Pentcheva: Moving eyes 225

impetus for the icon's restoration and research. Mara Mason and Gianfranco Fiaccadori have suggested two hypotheses about the possible Constantinopolitan provenance. Mason has identified it with the icon of the famous Chalkoprateia church, an imperial foundation, where the relics of Mary's belt?zone?were kept.10 Fiaccadori, by contrast, has seen it as the palatial icon of the Mother of God, Oikokyra, "The Mistress of the House."11 The Oikokyra was kept in the imperial chapel of the Virgin of the Pharos.12 It formed the focus of the baptismal ceremony of the newborn offspring. During this ceremony, a long piece of cloth was extended from the Oikokyra to the arms of the new mother, holding the baby in these folds of silk. This symbolic gesture of hands covered with cloth, linking the empress on earth with the empress of Heaven, signified the joint terrestrial/celestial protection of the new imperial progeny.13

Despite the attraction of these two studies, Mason's Chalkoprateia and Fiaccadori's Oikokyra remain hypothetical identifications. There is no independent textual or material evidence to secure a conclusion.

Only in the seventeenth century do the sources about the Treviso icon begin to suggest a link with the Byzantine capital by naming the object "la Madonna di Costantinopoli."14 As tempting as it is to reconstruct a hypothetical medieval ritual with this icon-relic, this essay will refrain from such an approach. Instead of exploring the ritual use of the image and its lost relic, my analysis will focus on the corporeal perception of this object?aesthesis in Greek.

Figure 3. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. The back side of the figural panel, revealing the relic cavity. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo by the author.

Poikilia: Simulation versus mimesis

The moving diurnal light and flickering of candles across material surfaces create highlights and shadows, giving rise to myriad appearances. The Byzantines designated such a polymorphous surface poikilos (an adjective, meaning "diverse") or having poikilia (a noun meaning "diversity"). These words describe phenomenal effects sensually experienced.15 Poikilia was understood as animation: the presence of the spirit in matter. The design of the mixed-media relief icons anticipated the spectacle of poikilia. Not surprisingly, such icons of repousse gold, pearls, gems, and enamel emerged as the preferred form in Constantinople in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. This development started already during Iconoclasm (726-843); it was signaled by the shift away from painting towards a new definition of e/7con as the imprint?typos?of visual characteristics on matter, which established the relief icon in precious metals as the privileged form.16

As a mere imprint of exterior features, the typos lacked sacred energy. By contrast, true presence resided

the foundation profited from the patronage of the rich mercantile (goldsmiths) family of Bontempelli (called "Dal Calese"), who traded in the East, especially Syria; the Bontempelli might have been the

ones who brought the miraculous icon to Venice. See Venturini, "La Madonna 'di Costantinopoli" (ibid.), pp. 24-25. In 1801, the Augustinian nuns accepted the suore from the French royal order of St. Francis de Sales, who had fled Lyon in 1 793 after the Revolution. It is this order of the Visitandine that today preserves the icon of the

Madonna di Costantinopoli. In 1913, the nuns transferred from Venice to a new monastery of Santa Maria del Rovere alle Corti in Treviso. For further discussion, see also A.D. 2000. Nativita e Giubileo, ed. A. Alexandre (Treviso: GMV Libri, 2000).

10. Mason, "Un'icona lignea mediobizantina" (see note 3), pp. 7-46.

11. G. Fiaccadori, "Parergon tarvisinum," Miscellanea Marciana 1 7 (2002):47-70.

12. M. Bacci, "La Vergine OIKOKYRA, Signora del Grande Palazzo. Lettura di un passo di Leone Tusco sulle cattive usanze dei greci," Annali della Scuola Normale Supehore di Pisa, series IV, vol. 111/1 (Pisa, 1998):261-279.

13. Pentcheva, Icons and Power (see note 3), pp. 30-31, 35. 14. Venturini, "La Madonna 'di Costantinopoli'" (see note 9), pp.

25-29.

15. On poikilia as an aesthetic category in Byzantine culture, see Pentcheva, "The Performative Icon," Art Bulletin 88 (2006):631-655 and The Sensual Icon (see note 1), chaps. 4-5.

16. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (see note 1), chaps. 3-7.



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Figure 4. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. The inside of the cover of the relic cavity with ninth or tenth-century Byzantine silk. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo: Soprintendenza di Beni Culturali, Veneto.

Figure 5. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. A plaster cast showing the mounting of the two boards and the relic cavity. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo by the author.

in the relic, yet access to it was restricted by material covers.17 The Treviso icon is a carefully constructed object; it combines the icon with the relic. Its relief surfaces respond to the light; their poikilia generates a sense of animation. Yet, sacred energy is nonreflective, nonglittering: It is the hidden relic in the core of the wood.

The Byzantine mixed-media eikon presents a meaning in flux, consolidating and unraveling in the phenomenal

world of breathing space, flickering and moving

1 7. On the Byzantine concealment of the relic, see Pentcheva, "The Performance of Relics," in Performing Byzantium, ed. M. Mullet (Aldershot, Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate, forthcoming).



light, and drafts of air. It is the human voice, breath, movement that bring about animation in the icon. With each gesture, or word, or simple breathing, the faithful causes the flame of candles to flicker, bringing about the shimmering splendor of the gold and the dance of shadows across the complex surfaces of the image. It is this dynamic poikilia that endows the object with life.18 The Byzantine icon acquires life through the changes in the ambiance, and especially through human presence.

Byzantine culture employed a series of terms to designate the icon's animation: empsychos, empnous ("in-spirited," from en?"in,".psyche or pneuma? "spirit"), and teleiotes (from teleo?"to accomplish, complete, perfect, and induct into the mysteries").19 Spirit in Greek is pneuma, and pneuma designates a series of interlinked concepts: spirit, incense, fire, and breath. It is human breath that agitates the glitter of gold, and this shimmer itself manifests trembling fire, which in turn marks the entry of divine spirit into matter?an empsychosis?making the object an empsychos/ empnous graphe. Matter becomes kecharitomene, meaning the descending charis/grace has infused the surface, manifesting its presence through the trembling glitter of gold.20

The second term, teleiotes, is interlinked with empsychos and empnous; it captures the mystery of the Eucharist, of the Holy Ghost descending in matter and transforming the ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Teleiotes and its noun teleiosis designate completion, perfection, realization, and induction into the mysteries. It is a term about fulfillment and divine dispensation to access the mysteries. Both empsychos and teleiotes eikon speak of concealment and revelation: of presence understood as perfection and realization of the spirit in matter.21

Moving eyes and shimmering body

The eyes of the bas-relief face of the Treviso Mother of

God are painted on the surface of the wood (fig. 2). The irises, colored brown, appear closer to the upper lid. In normal, unfocused light, Mary's gaze is thus always ever so-slightly drifting upward, towards heaven. Seen under

the even and steady electric lights, the face is bland and inanimate (fig. 1). By contrast, seen under the unsteady flicker of a candle or oil lamps, this face acquires life. Something miraculous happens with her gaze changing directions and giving expressions of emotion. As one moves a candle towards her face, the shadow in her upper lids decreases, lending the impression that she is turning her gaze straight on or down to look at you (fig. 6). At the same time, when the candle is pulled down, the shadow spreading at the lower lid convinces the viewer to experience Mary's gaze as peaking upward towards heaven (fig. 7). Similarly, the movement of the candle to the left or to the right creates new shadows on the opposite sides, triggering the perception of a movement of her eyes to the right and to the left respectively (figs. 8 and 9). All these changes are subtle, difficult to capture on a photograph, but perceptible to the eye of the beholder. Furthermore, the trembling, flickering light also spreads pulsating shadows, endowing the surface of the face with liveliness and suppleness.

This play of shadows affecting the perceived gaze of the icon captures the significance of prayer. As the faithful lift their candles in the act of prayer, they perceive Mary's benevolence. She opens herself to their requests; her gaze falls on the supplicant (fig. 6). As the prayer culminates and the human hands bring the candle down, Mary's gaze moves in the opposite direction? upward?escorting the human prayer to an upper, celestial realm (fig. 7).

The Treviso icon of the Mother of God becomes

empsychos graphe (in-spirited image) through the play of phenomenal shadows in her eyes. Because this is a wood relief image, animation manifests itself as skiagraphia (skia?"shadow," graphia?"image-making") of actual light and shadow drifting across the face.22 Other Middle Byzantine icons, such as the luxurious gold repousse image of the Archangel Michael in the Treasury of San

Marco, Venice, present a variation of this experience of animation manifested in the glitter of precious metal. His

18. For the perception of phenomenal presence effects as animation of the icon, see Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (note 1), chaps. 5 and 6.

19. Ibid., introduction, chaps. 1-2, 5-7. 20. Ibid., chaps. 5-7. 21. On empsychos, empnous, teleiotes, and on charis as glitter, see

Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (note 1).

22. Victor Stoichita has studied the concept of shadow in the development of Western artistic tradition starting with Pliny and Plato, skipping the Middle Ages and Eastern art in order to focus on the Renaissance and later periods. He is concerned with the hermeneutics of shadow and its role in the discourse on pictorial naturalism and abstraction (Stoichita, A Short History of the Shadow [London: Reaktion, 1997]). By contrast, my analysis focuses on the Greek skiagraphia, understood as the changes phenomenal (nonpictorial) light and shadow reflected/absorbed by the surfaces made on the appearance and perception of medieval objects. My interest is also directed towards sculpture and presence effects (sculpture in the expanded field).



Figure 6. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. A close-up of the face of the Mother of God; the shadows conveying the impression of her gazing straight on. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo by the author.

eyes, bas-relief repousse gold, capture the flicker of light in bright, shining accents. Thus, the Archangel's gaze has an incinerating power of the fiery divine all-seeing eye. His burning gaze also rotates as the candlelight moves, but differs from the gentle play of phenomenal shadows, which create the impression of the Treviso Madonna moving her eyes.23

For the Byzantines, the glitter of gold?denoted as charis?manifested divine presence: the spirit descending in matter.24 While the Treviso icon does not express charis through the gleam of Mary's eyes (something achieved in the repousse icon of the

Archangel), it conveys the presence of charis through the shimmer of its vast metal revetments. We know from

Byzantine sources, such as the typikon of the monastery of the Mother of God Kosmosoteira (kosmos?"world," soteira?"savior") in Pherrai/Bera (Northern Greece,

founded in 1152) that the trembling candlelight made these icons appear empsychai.25 A section of this document narrates how the series of lights, prescribed for the annual celebrations of the feasts of the Mother of

God, transformed the images into empnontai (filled with the breath/spirit) eikones:

I order on each feast of the Mother of God throughout the year. . . that the four torches (lampada) are lit for the center of the naos and two eight-pronged candleholders {manoualia) [are placed] one pair for each of the

proskynesis icons, the Exceedingly Holy Christ and the exalted Theometor [Mother of God, from Theos?"God," and meter?"mother"] Kosmosoteira that is so masterfully fashioned in iconic form {eikonistai), that it seems to the

eyes [of the viewers] that the image is empnous, and almost graceful (alive) {charitoessan) to the ones seeing [her]. Such is the miracle (thauma) to be seen, which the bas relief

23. On the moving eyes of the Archangel Michael icon, see Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (note 1), chap. 5.

24. On charis as glitter, see Pentcheva (ibid.).

25. L. Petit, "Typikon du monastere de la Kosmosotira pres d'Aenos/' Izvestija Russkogo Archeologiceskago Instituta v KonstantinopoleM (1908):17-75; section 9, pp. 23-24.



Figure 7. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. A close-up of the face of the Mother of God, the shadows suggesting she is gazing upward. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo by the author.

(typous) [proskynesis icons made] according to lifelikeness {zographian), so that [they appear] empnous and as if

moving (kinoumenen) spatially (topiko diastemati) and in this respect one could praise the craftsman {technourgon)

who obtained from the first Creator and Lord the wisdom/

inspiration (sophias) of lifelike representation (zographian). For who, would not call him [the craftsman] blessed (makariseie) after wiping clean the form/surface (eidos) of the typoi, looking like it is alive with his sight and his heart? But before each of these icons I would like to light triform meshed silver [candle holders], which should hang fittingly before each [eikon]. . . . In this way, I would like this most splendid effusion of light (photagogian lamprotaten) to be executed (teleisthai) during the feasts of the Theometor, from whom we have acquired our hope of intercession (mesiteias) and salvation (soterias), which I would like to honor above all with expensive perfumes (polytelesi myrois) and incense (thymiamasi).2b

Already in the description of the Marian image, the subject of the sentence shifts from the object (eikonisma) to the Virgin herself, emphasizing the power of shimmering presence effects?this phenomenal

26. TTdaav uev ouv EopTrjv, Asyco Tfjs 0sourj-ropos nap' oAov Eviauxov. . . . TEoadpcov AauTTaScov uspi toO vaou to UEaafxaTov Kai OKTa())cbTcov uavouaAfcov 5uo uspi tqs 5uo TTpoaKuvrjaeis icrrauevcov,

TTepi uipn. <4>r|Mi toO vaou xd SKdxspa, iv ois 6 xd uTTEpdya06s uou

Xpiaxos Kai f| ?Eouiyrcop Kai KoauoacbxEipa ayav xsxvriEvxtos EtKovioxai, coc SokeFv xofs opcbai xd EiKovfauaxa suTrvoa Kai auxf)v XapxoEaoav uiKpou 5rj $r\[\\ dTTO0Af(3Eiv TTpos xous opcbvxas xou axouaxos, Sauna ovxcos iSsaSai xous xuttous xfjv ?toypa<(Mav aSaUEp xfjv euttvoov Kai Kivouuivriv xoTTiKcp Siaaxrjuaxi Kai ouxco Ka0uu.vrjaai xov xsxvoupyov xov ek xou Trpcoxou 5r]|JioupyoO Kai Seottoxou xfjv oo(j>fav xfjs Ccoypa(j>fas KaivoTTpETrcbs KAr|pcoadu.EVov. Tfs yap xouxov OU MCXKOplOElE XCOV XUTTCOV XO ?<?>V COOTTEp ElSos TT) OpaOEl Kai xf)

KapSfa aTrouop^duEvos; aAAd ys xafs eikooiv auxafs avdirxEaSai xouxcov EKdoxrj Kai xpi^usfs 0puaAAi5as xds apyupoxsuKxous PouA6u.E0a, as evcottiov auxcov euttpettcos avripxrjaauEV . . . ouxco SrjiTEp xrjv ())coxaycoyfav Aaupoxdxnv xEAEta0ai pouA6u.E0a xats Tfjs 0Eourjxopos Eopxafs, TTpos rjv xds tt)s Msoixsfas Kai acoxriptas r)ucbv EATrf5as KEKxrjusSa, rjv dpa TTpos Tofs aAAois Kai uupois ttoAueAeoi Kai 0uu.idu.aai 5E^ioOa0ai PouA6u.E0a, from Typikon of the Monastery of theTheotokos Kosmosoteira (ca. 1152), section 9, edited by Petit (ibid.), pp. 23-24.



Figure 8. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. A close-up of the face of the Mother of God, the shadows creating an impression as if she is gazing to the right and up. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo by the author.

poikilia?to seduce the viewer into perceiving the object as the Mother of God in person.

As stated earlier, in the Byzantine understanding, charis often expressed itself in metallic glitter and reflection. Therefore, in calling the icon of the Mother of God charitottousa, the writer was simultaneously describing both a welcoming and, more importantly, a shining face of metallic glitter. This leads me to suggest that the term zographia should not be immediately identified with the normative "painting," but as designating lifelikeness achieved phenomenally.27This interest in poikilia is also expressed in the request for multiple candelabra and oil

lamps that would also in turn animate the icons through flickering light.

In the process of composing his typikon, Isaakios Komnenos was seeing in his mind's eye the agitated spectacle of flickering light catching metallic reliefs, reflecting vividly from the rich surfaces of the mixed media icons. Divine presence is initiated and performed through the brightest splendor: photagogia lamprotate: And this photismos is simultaneously immersed in the fragrance of burning thymiama and perfume. The mixture of vivid reflections (in Greek zotikai emphaseis) with incense achieved the type of sensual saturation sought by the patron.28

The animation issuing from metallic glitter has a strange touch of sacrifice in it. The technique of fire gilding in the Middle Ages was achieved with mercury. Red-hot gold grains or thin plates were thrown in heated

27. Later on, the typikon specified that the proskynesis icon of the Virgin is full-length and memouseiomene (sect. 89, vv. 26-28), meaning it was either made of mosaic or enamel. Similarly, the second Marian icon at the tomb of the founder is said to be a bas-relief in silver

{egkolaphtenai dia tou argyrou ergou, eyKoAa^Sfjvai tt\v Seotokov to euov eykoAttiov ev UTncp Tcp axrjuaTi PouAouai 5id tou dpyupou Epyou). See Typikon of the Monastery of the Theotokos Kosmosoteria (ca. 1152); section 89 vv. 22-23, p. 63, in Petit (see note 25).

28. On the glitter of gold and the perfume of incense as indicators of the descent of the Spirit in matter, see Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (note 1), chaps. 1, 2, and 5.



^^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^^^Blll ^^^^ Figure 9. The Icon of the Virgin and Child, ninth-fourteenth centuries. A close-up of the face of the Mother of God, the shadows creating an impression as if she is gazing to the left and up. Monastery of the Visitation, Treviso. Photo by the author.

mercury (in proportion 1/6 to 8 gold to mercury). When the amalgam had cooled down, it was squeezed through leather to remove the excess mercury. The resulting

mixture had the consistency of butter and a yellowish silvery color. The surface of the metal object was prepared with a layer of mercury (freshly quicked), and then the amalgam was applied to it. Then the object was gently heated in order to evaporate the excess mercury.29 Mercury by itself is very poisonous.30 While creating an intricate maze of gold rinceaux and molding the material into a beautiful shining surface, the craftsman poisoned himself by breathing the noxious fumes of mercury. Thus the very production of the glittering splendor demanded sacrifice of human life.31

The reality of empsychos graphe

In uncovering the vanished performance of the moving eyes of the Treviso icon of the Mother of God and the life-consuming splendor of its epiphaneiai (surfaces), this essay would like to recuperate a mode of human perception/interaction with objects that has been lost today. This disappearance of the phenomenal poikilia has made philologists and art historians (when reading Byzantine texts about animated images) to interpret "animated"(empsyc/7os) and its synonyms as literary topoi, lacking reality, or to view these words as

markers of Platonic or Aristotelian philosophical leaning, disengaged from any disocurse on the making of and presentation of the eikon.32

29. On fire-gilding and the related bibliography, see Grove Dictionary of Art (Oxford University Press) at www.oxfordartonline.com.

30. The technique of fire-gilding has been banned in modern goldsmithing.

31. This human sacrifice for the sake of artistic beauty dominates a series of myths from the Balkans, narrating how the stonemason

immured a living human being in the fabric of the building. See I. Kadare, The Three-Arched Bridge, trans. J. Hodgson (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1997).

32. Two recent interpretations of empsychos graphe have appeared: 1) as literary topos, an argument put forward by E. Papaioannou in



Michael Psellos, a writer, intellectual, philosopher turned-monk of the eleventh century, often used the "metaphor" of the moving gaze and the animated image or statue: empsychos graphe/andrias. In his address to the emperor, he likened the imperial presence to one such empsychos andrias:

[You, emperor Constantine IX Monomachos 1042-1054] stand before me on your highest mountain (oros), an animated statue {empsychos andrias), made in repousse {sphyrelatos), you have established a ring (kyklose) by casting {periago) your eye around and with your pupil illuminating {perilampon) everything.33

This passage starts with the animated gaze of the statue and escalates into the crescendo of the incandescent all

seeing eye, rotating and scanning all around itself. In a recent study, Stratis Rapaioannou has masterfully

exposed how the Psellan metaphor of animated statues is indebted to the Late Antique literature of Gregory of Nazianzos, Plotinos, and Proklos. These early literary sources equated external beauty with internal virtue, yet giving priority to internal beauty. In embracing his Late Antique predecessors, Psellos pushed the metaphor even further, towards the prioritization of exteriority. He was fascinated with the animation of surface and

with the exterior to an extreme, identifying his writing and his spirituality to the animated statue, chiastically morphing the spiritual body into the material soul.34 For Papaioannou, Psellos surpassed his predecessors, prefiguring in his discursive metaphor the prevalence and independence of exteriority.

Both eloquent and convincing, Papaioannou's philological argument emphasized the discursive nature of the metaphor of the moving eyes. Yet, is Psellos's fascination, with exteriority just a marker of his literary genius and proleptic insight? I will argue that Psellos was not the agent of change. Rather, he was affected by the poikilia of the Byzantine mix-media icon. This object performed animation as a series of shifting presence effects. Both the moving shadows in the eyes of the Theotokos in Treviso or the fiery rotating gaze of the Archangel Michael icon from San Marco offer such examples. They show the Byzantine atechnes kinesis, a movement without art, a sense of animation and lifelikeness achieved through changing phenomenal effects. The Byzantine category of lifelikeness, of something zen (from zao?"to live") and empsychos, was often connected to phenomenal effects, not pictorial naturalism. Animation arose from the interaction of

the object with the changing environment and human presence in space. The viewer perceiving the icon's poikilia then recognized the image as full of life. The empsychos eikon needed shifting light and human breath in order for its surfaces to become kecharitomene:

infused with the glitter of reflected light and playful slithering shadows. Its intricate complex surfaces anticipated the phenomenal poikilia.

The mixed-media relief icon required partial visibility, the visual but not the visible. Georges Didi-Hubermann has introduced the opposition of visible versus visual in medieval art in his discussion of figura. He has argued that this term cannot be narrowed down to an anthropomorphic shape and simply studied through iconography. Instead, the medieval figura is a visual

marker. Didi-Hubermann identifies it in Fra Angelico's blotches of color and fictive marbles that function

allegorically and apophatically, establishing a link between terrestrial and celestial by contrasting them. The Didi-Hubermannian figura emerges as the rupture in the world of recognizable and classifiable shapes, allowing for the supernatural, the divine, to manifest itself.35

While inspired by Didi-Hubermann's discussion, my analysis differs from his. My concern is not with the opposition of anthropomorphic (iconic) versus non iconic figurae, but with the role of phenomenal effects

"Animated statues: aesthetics and movement/' in Reading Michael Psellos, ed. Ch. Barber and D. Jenkins, The Medieval Mediterranean:

Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1500, vol. 61 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006), pp. 95-116; and 2) as a marker of Aristotelian and Platonic thinking with no formal bearing on the artistic form, Ch. Barber, Contesting the Logic of Painting: Art and Understanding in Eleventh Century Byzantium (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007) and his article "Living painting, or the limits of pointing? Glancing at icons with Michael Psellos," in Reading Michael Psellos (ibid.), pp. 235-253. For an extended critique of these two interpretations, see Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (note 1), chap. 7.

33. lTf|0i uoi iv TfjToOooO opous aKpoTnri 6uv|ajxos dvSpias Kai o<()uprjXaTos, kukAcooe TTEpiccycov tov 6<|)0aAudv kou ttocvtcxs TrepiAcxuTTcov xcp pAeuucm, Psellos, Enkomion to Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos, in Orationes panegyricae, ed. G. Dennis (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1994), oration VI, vv. 247-250. Passage quoted and discussed by Rapaioannou (ibid.), pp. 95-116.

34. Rapaioannou (note 33). S. Efthymiades, who reviewed the article, insisted that Psellan aesthetics of exteriority is a prefiguration of

modern sensitivity, a claim absent from Papaioannou, Speculum 83/2 (2008):401-403.

35. On visual versus visible, see G. Didi-Hubermann, "Puissance de la figure: Exegese et visualite dans l'art chretien," Encyclopedia Universalis: Symposium (Paris, 1990), pp. 608-621; and The Power of the Figure. Exegesis andVisuality in Christian Art, trans. K. Burman and R. Spolander (Umea, Sweden: Department of the History and Theory of Art, Umea University, 2003).



in the perception of medieval objects. While employing the same terms?visible and visual?my analysis identifies the visual as the changing appearances of surfaces, shifting the perception of the Byzantine icon from painting towards sculpture in an extended field.

My use of "visual" refers to the totality of everything seen: light, reflection, faint gleam, shadow, darkness; to the experience of volume, three dimensionality, and sculptural presence of the object. I am even tempted to supplant "visual" with the term "sentient," enriching the optical apprehension with the auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile experience of the object.

By contrast, the "visible" stands for the draining of the visual, sculptural, and spatial from the icon. It depends on the perfectly and statically lit object, enabling the eye to grasp the shape and categorize it as flat and two-dimensional. The visible conforms

to our standard understanding of the Byzantine icon as flat painting. Moving away from the "visible" and recuperating the "visual" and "sentient" in Byzantine art

would enable us to recognize a connection between the performative mixed-media icon of Constantinople and the late twentieth-century discourse on sculpture in the expanded field.36

The perceptual experience of the "moving eyes" of the Marian icon at Treviso, or its coruscating metal sheaths, conveys divine presence and hence life/ animation in the image. It was the Byzantine relief icon, with its poikilia of ever-changing appearances that gave rise to an aesthetic of exteriority and to the perception of lifelikeness as phenomenal presence effects. Thus, empsychos graphe/andrias is not a simple discursive figure in Psellos's writings, but the reality of the icon production and display in eleventh century Constantinople. Both Psellan discourse and the Middle Byzantine plastic icon with "moving eyes" and shimmering body prioritized the poikilos surface, which affected the soul through its chameleonic changes.

Only in recognizing the material reality of the Psellan discursive metaphor of the empsychos graphe and andrias in eleventh-century Constantinople can we understand for the first time the development of a mature Byzantine Christian equivalent to the Late Antique modes of viewing and perception. The luxurious mixed

media icon became the focus of and the inspiration behind the renewed Middle Byzantine interest in empsychos andrias. But as a teleiotes eikon, the mixed media relief icon allowed for a full, unreserved, and unrestricted acceptance of exteriority; it fostered the appreciation of aesthetic appearance and the perception of phenomenal poikilia as movement/animation. So rather than Papaioannou's conclusion that "the valuation of what is aesthetic is Psellos's contribution within the

history of theories about the function, value, or non value of exterior appearance/'37 it is the eleventh-century Constantinopolitan performative mixed-media icons that formed the valuation of exteriority. It is their poikilos materiality that securely established the dominance of the epiphanic. Psellos was not its generator, but the product of these performative icons, reared and seduced by their phenomenal power. At the same time, he clearly recognized how the empnous quality of these objects emerged from the interaction of the human hand with the human eye: the artistic creation of the mixed-media relief icon interacting with its environment and human presence in space.

The Byzantine icon no longer presents itself to our eyes as it did for Psellos. The static and controlled conditions of the museum display usually work against its poikilia. Only when placed once again in the diurnal cycle of light and the trembling flicker of candles does this object come to life: an empnous and empsychos eikon of moving shadows and shimmering reflections activated by human breath but experienced as divine pneuma. In the case of the Treviso icon, this outward display of poikilia is a marker of the relic, kept in the interior container and removed from sensual access.

Its mysterious presence colors the exterior display of animation. The icon thus harmoniously veils divine presence in the transient poikilia of shimmering surfaces. It rises as the kecharitomene object, overshadowed by the spirit.

It is this succession of presence effects on the surface of the bas-relief, created by the flicker of candles, that enables us to experience the eikon of the Mother of God as being before us: an empsychos graphe. Life?psyche and pneuma?emanates from her moving eyes. Presence in a medieval object is in the visual and sentient, not the visible; it is lurking in the shadow, being animated by human gesture and breath.38 It is this cftar/s/glitter

36. This embeddedness of the Byzantine icon in its environment resonates with R. Krauss, "Sculpture in the expanded field," October 8 (1979):30-44. The interaction of earthwork with its specific site is also present in M. Heidegger, "The origin of the work of art," in Poetry Language, Thought, ed. and trans. A. Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).

37. Rapaioannou (see note 33), p. 97. 38. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon (see note 1).



of gold and moving shadows that veil, and by covering paradoxically uncover the presence of something ineffable and evanescent, present as long as our being in space remains. Seeing the animation, the empsychosis of the eikon, means adjusting to the darkness, to the cover of the shadow, learning to read the discreet, delicate perceptible movements that cumulatively bring about an indescribable sense of otherworldly presence. Turning away from the museum-type display of the uniformly lit surface, leaving the regime of the fully visible, the Byzantine visual experience unveils the spirit in the shadow of the moving, flickering flame; of seeing as faith and as sensually saturated experience.


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