Evgenia Kalinina
Saint Petersburg State University, Russia
The Four Gospels in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien Theol. gr. 154, belongs to the Golden age of Byzantine book design. The manuscript dating from 1070s to 1080s was written on parchment and contains, in addition to the Four Gospels, the catena (commentary) strung together like the links of a chain on the margins to set off the text.
The manuscript is decorated with Canon plates, portraits of the Evangelists and 39 pictures illustrating various events described in the Gospels, with tiny figures represented in a masterly calligraphic style.
The miniatures, mostly in binary form, are placed on the margins astride the text. They depict the critical points including individual events or persons. The pictures are inserted in respective lines, integrating narration into figurative reality.
The study intends to define the main principle governing subject selection and icon design in the manuscript. The pictorial series in this Vienna codex differs, both in design and in meaning, from any other illuminated series found on the margins of 6th-, 10th- or 11th century manuscripts.
Some of the patterns suggest that the artists refrained from the narrative character typical for many late 11th century illuminated manuscripts. The Vienna codex now includes the synaxarion and menologion dating between the 13th and 14th century. That was the time when St. John’s narration was taken from the end to the beginning of the manuscript in order to use the Four Gospels as a Lectionary. Comparison of images and text suggests that subject selection for miniature painting depended on liturgical cycle, i.e. the craftsmen were to illuminate more important service texts. The use of miniature icons for the smart “embedding” of the synaxarion and menologion in the Four Gospels confirms the designation for church service.
The iconography of the Vienna manuscript appears in this context as an intermediary for the emerging 12th and 13th century approach to book illustration far more connected with liturgical practice.