Hakobyan, Zaruhi A. The Frescoes of the Church of Tigran Honents (St. Gregory) (1215) in Ani: Confessional Aspect

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.18688/aa177-2-27
Title The Frescoes of the Church of Tigran Honents (St. Gregory) (1215) in Ani: Confessional Aspect
Author email zaruhy@yandex.ru
About author Hakobyan, Zaruhi Avetis — Ph. D., associate professor. Yerevan State University, Alex Manoogian Str., 1, 0025 Yerevan, Republic of Armenia.
In the section Eastern Christian Art DOI 10.18688/aa177-2-27
Year 2017 Volume 7 Pages 269–279
Type of article RAR Index UDK 7.033.2; 7.033.12 Index BBK 85.14
Abstract

The Church of St. Gregory, also known by the name of Tigran Honents, is one of the most renowned monuments in Ani, one of the historical capitals of Armenia, now a ghost city. Unlike many other local monuments, the church has reached our days in a good state of preservation, thanks to which its murals have been preserved. The frescoes of Tigran Honents have long been a subject of interest for researchers: information regarding them can be found in the works by N. Marr, N. Sichyov, H. Orbely, D. Gordeyev, N. Thierry, A. Kakovkin, and others. They are of great interest both from artistic and iconographic standpoints; besides, they have a number of peculiarities which still keep specialists from reaching a unanimous viewpoint regarding their national and confessional identity. For this reason, we have devoted our report to the frescoes of Tigran Honents, especially taking into account the recent approaches to the issue, elaborated in the past several decades, and the fact that the monument has become accessible for researchers. We shall discuss the frescoes of Tigran Honents only from the standpoint of their confessional and national belonging.The murals of Tigran Honents are particularly distinguished for their stylistic affinity with the local Oriental tradition, while their iconography makes them akin to the Byzantine tradition. Besides, they are accompanied with bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Georgian, while their subject and characters are connected with an important event in the history of Armenia — the adoption of Christianity as the state religion. The frescoes include a hagiographic cycle depicting Gregory the Enlightener, the only one of the kind to have reached our days. There are also two scenes depicting the virgin followers of St. Hripsime.The frescoes of Tigran Honents have been attributed to Armenian Chalcedonian art, which took form as a result of the convergence of various traditions. We particularly have focused our attention on the language of the aforementioned inscriptions, the issue that has not always been interpreted in the context of the medieval realm. The iconographic and stylistic analyses of the frescoes have enabled us to reveal the precise features typical of Armenian Chalcedonian art and to clarify the issue of the confessional and national belonging of the Churchof Tigran Honents.
Keywords
Reference Hakobyan, Zaruhi A. The Frescoes of the Church of Tigran Honents (St. Gregory) (1215) in Ani: Confessional Aspect. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 7. Ed. S. V. Mal’tseva, E. Iu. Staniukovich-Denisova, A. V. Zakharova. — St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Univ. Press, 2017, pp. 269–279. ISSN 2312-2129. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.18688/aa177-2-27
Publication Article language russian
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