The Byzantine Renaissance

The `Byzantine Renaissance'
Author(s): C. R. Morey
Source: Speculum, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Apr., 1939), pp. 139-159
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2849484
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CULM- -
A JOURNAL OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
VOL. XIV APRIL, 1939 No. 2
THE 'BYZANTINE RENAISSANCE'

BY C. R. MOREY
THE title given this article is also the title of the last chapter in Hugo Buchthal,
The Miniatures of the Paris Psalter: A Study in Middle Byzantine Painting (Lon-
don: The Warburg Institute, 1938). It is a brief chapter, consisting of three pages
only, but sufficient for the summation of the material out of which the 'renais-
sance of the tenth century' is constructed, since this material comprises no more
than the illustrations of four manuscripts: the Homilies of Gregory Nazianzen
in Paris Bibl. Nat. gr. 510; a manuscript of Mt Athos (Stavroniketa 43); the
Rotulus of Joshua in the Vatican Library; and the Paris Psalter (Bibl. Nat. gr.
139). On the basis of these miniatures is developed the concept of a revival of
antique style described by Buchthal in such phrases as the following: 'Here, an-
cient Greek art comes to an end, as it were, with a development very similar to
that which many centuries ago had led to its classic stage in the fifth century
B.C.... For one brief moment only Byzantine art culminated in a glorious syn-
thesis of the classical and the Christian.'
The miniatures of the Paris Gregory were executed in the last quarter of the
ninth century, and, as will appear later in this discussion, there is some question
whether those of its miniatures that are cited as examples of the 'renaissance' can
be considered independent data in that connection. With reference to Stavroniketa
48, there exists some difference of opinion whether the style of its four portraits
of the evangelists is typically 'renaissance' or typically mid-Byzantine. It is on
the illustrations of the Paris Psalter and the Rotulus of Joshua, therefore, that
the concept of the 'renaissance of the tenth century' is really based.
There is no parallel phenomenon in monumental painting. 'C'est justement cet
intervalle de temps,' says Muratoff,l 'qui n'a laisse aucun monument authentique
de peinture; ... la periode d'apogee de la dynastie macedonienne qui commence
a Basile i (867-886), et qui se termine 'a Basile ii (976-1025) continue, dans l'his-
toire de la peinture byzantine, a briller par son absence.' Among the Byzantine
illustrated manuscripts to which a definite date can be attached, the Paris Greg-
ory and the Menologion of the Vatican (gr. 1613), executed under Basil i and
Basil ii respectively; reflect the style of the capital at the beginning and the end
of the epoch in question, and neither one nor the other, exception made of the
I La peinture byzantine (Paris, 1928), p. 91.
139
140 The 'Byzantine Renaissance'
equivocal Gregory miniatures mentioned above, provid

for renaissance of antique style of the sort that can be predicated on the illustra-
tions of the Paris Psalter and the Joshua Roll. The tenth century is represented
in Byzantine ivories by the least impressive of the groups established by Gold-
schmidt and Weitzmann,' the 'triptych'-group whose monotonous repetition of
types and whose flat and undistinguished figures afford no material wherewith
to reconstruct an evocation of antique form. It is only at the end of the tenth
century that the makers of the Byzantine 'rosette' caskets display an imitative
curiosity in the remains of antique art about them, but their imitation is for the
most part imperfect in its assimilation of antique style and without real under-
standing of the mythological or artistic significance of the objects copied. In
literature as well, the intelligent appropriation of the antique begins not with the
tenth but with the following century.2
The foregoing will explain the importance attached by students of Byzantine
style to the dating of the miniatures of the Paris Psalter and the drawings of the
Joshua Roll, and also the length of the controversy that has been carried on in
this connection. The text of the Paris Psalter is generally accepted by palae-
ographers as of the tenth century, and this dating was long inferred for the minia-
tures as well. The first to point out the possibility of separate dating for text and
pictures was Labarte (1866), but it was left to Bordier in 1883 to assemble the
evidence which imposes such a separation, viz.: (1) the versos of the miniatures
are blank, showing that they are inserts in the text; (2) the ornament of their
borders, consistent in style throughout the fourteen miniatures, is radicallv differ-
ent from the ornament found on the text-pages; (3) the pictured leaves have been
cut down to fit the dimensions of the text-pages; (4) the gold used in the minia-
tures is of quality different from that employed in the ornament of the text.
Bordier's analysis left the Psalter miniatures with no chronological anchorage
beyond what could be predicated on their style, and since at this time the draw-
ings of the Joshua Roll, of similar style, were generally regarded as dating no
later than the eighth century, an almost complete stylistic vacuum, so far as
securely dated examples were concerned, was left in the tenth. This was so
what lamely filled by Springer (1883), who defended the tenth-century dating of
the Psalter's miniatures, though admitting that, while no 'mere copies,' they were
based on earlier models. A more categorical statement came in Kondakoff's His-
toire de l'art byzantin of 1891, which flatly claimed the miniatures as original
works of the tenth-century 'renaissance,' a verdict followed by Bayet, Tikkanen,
and Dobbert. In the last decade of the nineteenth century and the opening years
of the twentieth, the Kondakoff dictum, essentially unquestioned, underwent
some modification, von Schlosser in 1890 holding the miniatures to be 'copies of
a very old, perhaps even Hellenistic, archetype,' and Wickhoff (1893) placing this
archetype no later than the fourth century. Kraus (1896) took it to be of Alex-
andrian origin; Strzygowski (1906) ascribed it to Antioch.
1 Die byzantinischen Elfenbeinsskulpturen, vols. i, ii (Berlin, 1930-1934). For the chronology of thes
groups see also Keck and Morey, Art Bulletin, xvii (1935), 397 if.
2 Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (Munich, 1897), p. 29.
The 'Byzantine Renaissance' 141
In 1911, Rudolf Berliner made a careful examination of the manuscript, dis-

covered evidence of retouching of the miniatures and their inscriptions, and ar-
rived at the conclusion that the miniatures were painted between 450 and 550.
In the meantime the Vatican Library had published in 1906 its facsimile edition
of the Rotulus of Joshua, and the editors had assigned to its drawings the old
dating of vii-viii century, in spite of a tendency prevailing at the time to con-
sider them, like the illustrations of the Psalter, as contemporary with their tenth-
century text.
The 'renaissance of the tenth century' was thus left with the insufficient sup-
port of such antique reminiscences as could be gleaned from the miniatures of the
Paris Gregory and the Menologion of Basil ii, Stavroniketa 43 being at this time
still uncited. Lietzmann came first to the rescue of the endangered concept in
1926, with an article on the Joshua Roll in which he sought to show that the
text and the drawings must be of like tenth-century date because, since the text
copied was excerpted to correspond to the subjects of the drawings, drawings and
text must have been copied from the original at the same time. Buchthal does not
discuss Lietzmann's theory, but finds it 'not entirely convincing,' doubtless be-
cause of the obvious objections: (1) that a copy of text and pictures d'un coup
would have provided space for the text on the roll, which on the contrary is so
crowded that the text must at times even invade the drawings; (2) the excerpted
text might well have been written in another roll or codex to accompany the draw-
ings, which text, becoming damaged or worn, was crowded on to the original
drawings by the scribe of the tenth century.'
Another lance was broken in defence of the tenth century by Grilnwald,2 in an
article that received a surprising degree of serious attention. Grtinwald discov-
ered a remarkable likeness between the 'Night' (Fig. 7) of the thirteenth minia-
ture of the Psalter (Isaiah's Prayer), and the Selene who approaches Endymion
on a sarcophagus of the Capitoline Museum at Rome. Troubled by the fact that,
while Selene has in common with 'Night' the frequent Hellenistic motif of a flying
veil over her head, she is yet very different in the lower part of the figure, he con-
cluded that the 'Night' of the Psalter is a pasticcio made up of the Selene from the
sarcophagus and an antique figure of the type of the Demeter in the Berlin mu-
seum. The lower part of Selene's figure, unused for the 'Night' served, however,
as model for the Isaiah of the same miniature. The little 'Dawn' who stands at
Isaiah's left was derived from one of the putti of the sarcophagus, differences
being explained by the later re-working of the putto. In the first miniature of the
Psalter, representing David as harper, Grtinwald found that the reclining moun-
tain-god 'Bethlehem' must be an imitation of the sleeping Endymion, and was
particularly struck with the resemblance of the dog in the miniature to a dog
belonging to a shepherd on the left end of the sarcophagus, despite the fact that
the latter animal is restored as to his head and whole upper body, his right leg,
and right hip. The Paris miniatures being thus in his view directly dependent on
1 For more technical objections to Lietzmann's view see the Art Bulletin, xi (1929), 46.
2'Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Pariser Psalters,' Byzantinische Studien, Schriften der philoso-
phischen Fakultdt der Deutschen Universitdt Prag, Heft i, 1929.
the sarcophagus, they cannot be derived from an earlier archetype of the same
sort, but must be pasticcios originating in the 'renaissance' of the tenth century.
How the Greek illustrator of the Psalter happened on a sarcophagus obviously
Italian in origin and history is a problem left unsolved.
The year 1929, when Gruinwald's article appeared, was prolific for the Psalter-
problem. The present writer added his contribution in the course of a monograph
on East Christian Miniatures published in the Art Bulletin,' in which, on the
basis of Omont's reconstruction of the fourteen miniatures into a quaternion and
a ternion, he distributed the miniatures among five painters who collaborated
in the illustration of the Psalter, noted evidence that indicated copying from
some of the miniatures by the illustrator of the Leo Bible in the Vatican (Reg. 1;
first half of the tenth century), and adopted the conclusion already formulated
by Myrtilla Avery,2 that the miniatures of the Psalter are to be dated in the same
general period as the 'Greek' frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua at Rome, viz., the
second half of the seventh century or the early years of the eighth.
The third article of the year was published by Kurt Weitzmann in Jahrbuch
fuir Kunstwissenschaft,3 and followed the trail so rashly blazed by Gruinwald,
though with more circumspection and with the mastery of material which one
expects from this distinguished specialist in Byzantine manuscripts. To Weitz-
mann we owe some remarkable identifications of the antique prototypes for the
Psalter's figures, notably the Melodia of the first miniature, whose almost iden-
tical replica he found in a figure of Jo on a fresco of Pompeii. But in other figures
he saw, like Grtinwald, an artificial combination of parts derived from different
antique or even Byzantine models, while the personifications which had hitherto
been ranked by all critics as the most antique symptom evinced by the miniatures,
he regarded as deliberate insertions by the tenth-century artist - 'antikisie-
rende Bestandteile.' The latter term is applied as well to all the obvious reminis-
cences of antiquity: e.g., Hezekiah's diadem, which he wears as would any Hel-
lenistic dynast, is characterized as an intrusive attempt at antique effect, and his
gesture of supplication, with veiled hands uplifted in good Hellenistic fashion, is
described as 'ein ungewohnlicher Betgestus.' The personifications are considered
artificial creations of the tenth century because they are not known by such labels
in antiquity as they bear in the Psalter, and because, unlike their counterparts
in ancient art, they take an active part in the episodes. The first of these argu-
ments has been pretty well met by the plethora of personifications with all sorts
of abstract labels which were found in the recently excavated mosaics of Antioch-
on-the-Orontes: e.g., Joy, Foundation (KTICIC), Luxury, Life, Fruitfulness,
Courage, Power (Dynamis, the same who supports David in the conflict with
Goliath in the Psalter), Magnanimity, Enjoyment, Freedom from Care, Renew-
al, Usefulness. The second argument is hard to defend against the participation
of Heuresis (Discovery) and Epinoia (Reflection) in the scenes depicted on the
pages of the Dioscurides of Vienna (early sixth century), after a fashion not es-
sentially different from the r6le of the personifications of the Psalter. It is difficult
1 'Notes on East Christian Miniatures,' Art Bulletin, xi (1929), 21 if.
2 Art Bulletin ViI (1925), 149; ibid. xi (1929), 49 f. 3 1929, pp. 178 if.
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in any case to explain the introduction of such pagan motives into Christian
scenes as a Byzantine practice, especially as no parallel for it can be found in
Byzantine art.
Weitzmann took due note of the close relation of the Psalter's miniatures to
corresponding scenes in the Leo Bible of the Vatican, but attributed the resem-
blances to copying of the Bible by the Psalter, or more probably to employment
of a common archetype. He was more impressed with the intimate correspond-
ence existing between the Psalter and the Homilies of Gregory in Paris in the case
of the miniatures of the Anointing of David, the Penitence of David, the Cross-
ing of the Red Sea, Moses on Sinai, and the Story of Jonah. The correspondence
in his eyes is so great as to compel the assumption either of a relation of copy to
model or a common archetype. Inasmuch as he uses the relation (p. 191) as an
argument for dating the Psalter's miniatures later than the Gregory, the impli-
cation results that he prefers the explanation of copy-model, the Psalter occupy-
ing of course in his view the derivative r6le.
His comparisons emphasize in every case of correspondence a unified and con-
sistent composition in the Gregory miniature, disturbed in the Psalter by rear-
rangement or the introduction of 'antikisierend' intrusions: e.g., the addition
of a picturesque Hellenistic background of architecture, or landscape such as the
flowery strip beside the praying Moses in the Sinai miniature; the superposition
of the right half of the Crossing of the Red Sea over its left half; the 'intrusion' of
the personification of Meekness in the Anointing and of Repentance in the Peni-
tence. He even includes as tenth-century insertions the natural allegories of the
Red Sea scene - Night, Desert, Abyss - since these are omitted in the Gregory.
The argument can be made clearer by reference to the accompanying illustra-
tion (Fig. 1) showing, above, the Psalter's version of the Anointing of David by
Samuel, and below, the same scene in the Paris Gregory. The latter is an excellent
paradigm of incipient mid-Byzantine style: the figures are beginning to flatten
and are turning to full frontality; the background is neutral and spaceless, push-
ing the figures into a single forward plane; the grouping is isocephalic; the archi-
tecture reduced out of natural proportion to a symbolic accessory; especially to
be noted is the tight precision of the drawing which makes the indication of form
in flesh and drapery a set of formulae.
Certainly the Gregory-miniature is a better executed piece of drawing than
the illustration in the Psalter, which is from the hand of an inferior imitator of
the head-master of the Psalter's atelier. But even his unsteady composition and
awkward handling of the figures reveals an art still clinging, however weak its
grasp, to authentic Hellenistic tradition. The figures are conceived with Hellen-
istic amplitude, their poses still have Hellenistic freedom. They are still in scale
with the spatial background, and this background of architecture or garden wall
still maintains, in spite of its precarious equilibrium, the fresh impressionism of
the frescoes of Pompeii. Above all, the miniature retains a sense of bulk in the
figures and of actual depth in the composition: these cannot be described as
'antikisierende Bestanrdteile'; they are the imponderables of artistic instinct, bea
ing the imprint of native style. If there be between the two miniatures a relation
of copy to model, which the present writer for his part is quite ready to accept,
it is difficult to explain the laborious process by which the Psalter's artist could
have elaborated his antique-looking scene out of the abbreviated version of the
Gregory; it is not difficult at all to see how the Psalter's composition was reduced
to Byzantine terms by the Gregory-painter.
His method of reduction is in fact betrayed by the disposition he makes of the
left pavilion in the background of the Psalter's picture, diminished out of scale
with the figures, but a close replica nevertheless, with exception of the plinth
under the column supporting the angle of the pavilion, which was invisible in
the Psalter miniature and has been supplied. Here, if we may borrow from Weitz-
mann's vocabulary, is an 'intrusion'; the plinth is set askew, and contradicts the
antique foreshortening of the pavilion with its characteristically mediaeval ex-
panding perspective. But more significant is the fact, revealed by examination
of other miniatures in the Gregory-manuscript, that this reduction in scale and
the bringing 'down-stage' of inconvenient background architecture in the models
he was copying, was an habitual practice of the illustrator of this manuscript.'
Thus in the picturesque Story of St Cyprian (fol. 332v), the colonnaded building
separating Cyprian from his inamorata Justina, and interfering with the render-
ing of the demon who is flying in dismay from the Christian maiden, has been
reduced to a toy-structure in the foreground; in the Vision of Ezekiel (fol. 438v)
the same thing has been done, with even greater absurdity, to a considerable ar-
chitectural complex.
The result of our comparison, if we accept Weitzmann's impressive portrayal
of the identities existing between the Paris Gregory and the Paris Psalter as in-
dicating a relation of copy to model, is to reverse his chronological inference, and
confirm a dating of the Psalter's miniatures earlier than the years 880-886, during
which the Gregory received its illustration.
The issue between the Gruinwald-Weitzmann theory of pseudo-antique pas-
ticcios and imitations originating in the tenth-century, and the view which would
consider such reminiscence of antiquity a survival of Hellenistic and late antique
repertory and practice, is well posed by Weitzmann's observation on the figure of
Jesse in the miniature we have just discussed. 'In the place of the Jesse who in
the Gregory leads with reverence the boy David to Samuel, there is substituted
in the Psalter an antique rhetor-figure, which is without any inner relation to the
youth.' Why not say, with more deference to the general probabilities: 'in place
of a figure in the Psalter that is still stamped with the Hellenistic formula for
figures of maturity and distinction, wearing his tunic and pallium in correctly
antique guise, even to the characteristic resting of the arm in a fold of the mantle
as in a sling, the copyist of the Gregory has substituted a figure modelled after
the Byzantine type of Peter, consistent with his time in its formulae for figure and
drapery'? The persistence of the native Hellenistic formulae used in the Psalter,
throughout late antiquity, which may be said to end with the opening of the
1 I owe to Dr Weitzmann the observation that the variation of style in Paris gr. 510 is due less to
different hands than to the various manuscripts whose illustrations the artist was imitating or copy-
ing.
iconoclastic controversy, is a matter of common knowledge; if the miniatures of

the Psalter be dated to the end of this epoch, their antique reminiscences are
readily explained. To prove a dating in the tenth century one must first demon-
strate by dated examples the existence in that period of the capacity to assimilate
as completely as was done by the best of the Psalter's illustrators and the
draughtsman of the Joshua Roll (even through inadequate techniques) the quali-
ties of depth of composition, amplitude of scale, plastic form, and picturesque
impressionism, which reveal not an artificial revival of the outward forms, but a
survival of the instinct, of antiquity. To prove that the miniatures of the Paris
Psalter belong to a 'renaissance' of the tenth century, one must first prove the
existence of a renaissance; i.e., to quote Berliner,' 'eine Zeit, deren Gestaltungs-
trieb aus innerer Verwandschaft Vorbilder des Formens in der Vergangenheit
findet.'
This difficulty was evidently felt by Weitzmann, and he has made attempts
to meet it both in the article we have been discussing and in his admirable mono-
graph on Byzantine miniatures.2 The present writer finds the 'two styles' which
Weitzmann traces through the Psalter miniatures, over and above the varying
manners of the different artists, a complication which is too subjective to be con-
vincing: one of these, according to Weitzmann, belongs to the 'Byzantine core'
of the compositions, the other to the 'antique intrusions.' More to the point are
the comparisons which he makes with the miniatures of manuscripts dated in
the tenth century or with some reason ascribed to that epoch; but these in the
last analysis are less illustrative of a 'renaissance' than they are of the inevitable
hardening of the ancient types into the formulae of mid-Byzantine style. The
miniatures cited, such as those of a Paris Gospel-book (with a fifteenth-century
note dating it in 964; Bibl. Nat. gr. 70), another in Vienna (Theol. gr. 240), and a
Prophetae in the Vatican (Chis. R. viii. 54) are often superior in technique to all
but the best of the Psalter's miniatures, but where the painters of the latter draw
freely, these Byzantine artists are meticulous and tight. Antique influence there is,
especially in the evangelist-portraits of the gospel-books which Friend3 has shown
to descend from prototypes of great antiquity, and not only in the figures, but
also in such evocations as the Pompeian garden-wall which forms the background
for the Vienna evangelists.4 But the remoteness of the evocation transpires in
the careful tooling of this background into the gold ground of the miniature, leav-
ing the figure in the ideal vacuum which is the characteristic mid-Byzantine
ambiente. The contrast with the Psalter is one of a rationalizing style reducing its
antique models to meticulous line, as compared with a technique which depicts,
however badly, with the free instinct of impressionism. The most certain, in point
of date, of the examples cited by Weitzmann, is the manuscript of Mt Athos
mentioned above, Stavroniketa 43, whose period is certified by the appearance in
its ornament of the 'Sassanian palmette' which became domesticated in the
1 Zur Datierung der'Miniaturen des Cod.Par.gr.139, p. 12.

2 Byzantinische Buchmalerei des IX. und X. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1935).
3 'Portraits of the Evangelists in Greek and Latin Manuscripts,' Art Studies, (1927), pp. 124 if.
4 Weitzmann, Byz. Buchm., figs. 85, 86.
repertory of Byzantine illumination in the tenth century.' The evangelists of this

gospel-book are well constructed (with the possible exception of Luke) and classic-
looking figures, and the backgrounds offer fair parallels with the architectural
settings of the Psalter. But the difference in the rendering of antique motifs is at
once apparent in both figures and backgrounds; the former are drawn in every
detail with mid-Byzantine precision as against the sketchy irregularity of the
Psalter; the backgrounds are already assuming a balanced symmetry which an-
nounces the formula of wall-with-lateral-pavilions - the regular feature of By-
zantine architectural settings from ca 1000 on.
For the picturesque impressionism of the Psalter's miniatures and of the draw-
ings in the Joshua Roll no authentic parallels in tenth-century manuscripts exist.
The stylistic contrast becomes more apparent when we turn from figures to epi-
sodes and from static compositions to action. In this case the standard paradigm
for the end of the century is furnished by the numerous miniatures of the Meno-
logion of Basil II; a comparison of two versions of the same episode in the
Menologion and the Roll (Joshua meeting the angel before Jericho), illustrates
sufficiently the disparity between Macedonian style and that of the Psalter and
the Rotulus (Fig. 2).
In the absence of corroborative examples it follows that if a tenth-century 'ren-
aissance' produced the miniatures of the Psalter and the Roll, it must in the last
analysis derive the proof of its existence from these two manuscripts themselves.
But in the absence of material evidence wherewith to date these miniatures in the
tenth century, the 'renaissance' must be in turn assumed in order to prove the
date. Hence arises the peculiar fault which haunts the criticism of these two sets
of pictures: the dating in the tenth century is implicit in the process of proving
it. Which brings us, with apologies for a long introduction, to the consideration of
Mr Buchthal's book.
Hugo Buchthal has done for Byzantine studies a service of the highest order
in his publication of the miniatures of the Paris Psalter, not only in reproducing
them in usable form, but also by incorporating in his plates nearly all of the es-
sential material of a collateral nature. This includes enough of the antique pro-
totypes available for comparison with the Psalter's figures and groupings to show
the wealth of the Hellenistic vocabulary of types from which the antique motifs
of the miniatures descended, and to make even more improbable the hypotheses
of Grunwald and Weitzmann that this or that motif is derived from this or that
particular employment of it in the art of antiquity. To quote our author: 'if we
consider the custom of antique artists of using the same artistic formula innu-
merable times and for different purposes, there is no need to derive a figure which is
part of a group from an isolated antique figure, if there exist antique groups show-
ing the same striking similarity.' The same objection is made to the Grunwald-
Weitzmann 'synthetic' theory of the construction of some of the Psalter's figures
out of heterogeneous models: 'because the existence of any standing full-length
1 Op. cit., figs. 169-172.
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figures that might have served as models for our miniaturist made such a com-
plicated process superfluous' (apropos of figures in Isaiah's Prayer). Buchthal
also makes a number of useful citations showing the existence in antiquity of
most of the personifications which Weitzmann thought to be inventions of the
tenth-century 'renaissance.'
In his discussion of the miniature of the Anointing of David (Fig. 1), Buchthal
opposes the view of the present writer that the illustrator of the Vatican Bible
(Reg. 1) used some of the Psalter's illustrations as models for his own, agreeing
rather with the explanation preferred by Weitzmann that the resemblances are
due to use by both of a common archetype. The divergencies he cites, however,
are rather in favor of the Bible's dependence on the Psalter than otherwise. One
of the principal discrepancies (others being so minor as to be explainable as a
copyist's corrections) is the dress of the personification Praotes, whose mantle
in the Bible is 'tied in a knot under her right arm ... drawn across her breast to
her left shoulder and gathered up under the left arm, whence it falls over her hip.'
In the Psalter 'the whole motive and its function have been misinterpreted.'
Buchthal's description is not clear, but he seems to have failed to realize that the
personification in the Psalter wears both tunic and mantle: the tunic, whose
knotted shoulder-strap has slipped down on the right arm, passes over the breasts
and under the left shoulder, as shown in reverse in the tunic of Alazoneia of the
Goliath-scene; the mantle has fallen down around her waist and is caught over
the left arm. The same garments are worn by Dynamis in the next miniature,
and by Repentance in the Penitence of David. The miniaturist of the Vatican
Bible has merged the two garments in misunderstanding or an attempt at cor-
rection.
Similar confirmation of the copy-model relation is obtained from the differ-
ences cited by Buchthal to prove that the derivation of the Psalter-miniature
from the Bible is 'out of the question.' The shortened left arm of Praotes in the
Vatican Bible is much more easily explained as an exaggeration of the Psalter's
bad drawing than as derivative from an archetype. It is true that 'Samaa,' in
the group of the brothers of David, is 'clumsily obscured' in the Psalter minia-
ture, but the leftward turn of his head is motivated by the hand he lays on his
brother's shoulder. In the Bible the half-obscured head has been corrected to a
fully visible profile, but the motivating hand was left out. The most significant
evidence for the relation of the Bible's illustration to that of the Psalter is duly
recorded by Buchthal: in the Anointing scene, and again in the Sinai miniature,
the colors are identical.
The 'agreements in error' wherewith the writer of this article sought to con-
firm this relation between the two manuscripts are met by Buchthal with courte-
ous contradiction. Nevertheless, even the reproductions of the Anointing of
David reveal that the unnatural indentations of Samuel's leg by the amphora
that stands beside him are repeated in the Bible, and the same is true of the mis-
take made by the Psalter's miniaturist with respect to Pharaoh's left hand in the
Crossing of the Red Sea. But in addition, the writer is indebted to Buchthal's
treatment for further instances of the kind that had escaped his notice. Eremos,
personification of the Desert in the Red Sea Miniature, looks up at Night in

the Psalter (Fig. 5); the reason for this attitude is removed by the omission of
Night in the crowded Vatican version for lack of space, but the uplifted head of
Eremos remains. The detached effect of the horse's head in the lower part of
the Psalter's picture of the Crossing of the Red Sea is exaggerated in the Vatican
manuscript by its removal from the figure that overlaps it in the Psalter. The
inverted child's head in the procession of Israelites, faithfully repeated in the
Bible, is not a common enough mistake, in spite of the parallels cited by Buch-
thal, to be reasonably explained otherwise than as the repetition of an error, and
an error difficult to ascribe to an archetype.
Some of these errors were corrected, as one might expect, by the miniaturist
of the Bible. In fact, it seems to the writer that Buchthal exaggerates the stupid-
ity of a copyist in expecting him to follow blindly all the mistakes of his model.
In the Coronation of David we are asked to observe the fact that in the group
to the left the Psalter's version shows two pairs of legs and one extra leg, whereas
the Vatican Bible has four pairs. In its absurd rendering of the bodyless legs that
dangle below the shield on which David stands (this miniature is by the poorest
of the collaborators on the series) the Psalter shows three legs, the Vatican Bible
four. 'We must therefore assume that the Vatican version was not copied from
the Paris miniatures.'(!) Buchthal seems quite ready to accept the corrections of
copyists in other cases, notably in the upturned face of Eremos which he supposes
to be a 'correction' from a backward looking profile in the archetype, and for
reasons that are not nearly so obvious as a natural distaste for disconnected legs.
Altogether, it seems to the writer that his own case for the dependence of the
miniatures of the Vatican Bible on those of the Psalter's parallel scenes is less
convincing than that which has emerged from Buchthal's more detailed com-
parison.
The discussion of the miniature of David's encounter with Goliath points outs
the Egyptian prototype for the composition (already noted by Weitzmann) in a
fresco of Bawit, and its close correspondence with the scene on one of the silver
plates from Cyprus in the Morgan collection of the Metropolitan Museum. The
attempt to show a parallel on early Christian sarcophagi reveals, however, an
imperfect control of the data of early Christian art which is apparent in other
sections of the monograph. The 'winged angel' that protects David on one sar-
cophagus is certified only by the dubious testimony of drawings, and the 'wing-
less' ones so dubbed by Gerke are more than doubtful. The faulty use of early
Christian examples is seen again in the parallel Buchthal draws between the su-
perposition of the two parts of the Crossing of the Red Sea, in the Psalter, and
the panel depicting the scene on the fifth-century doors of S. Sabina in Rome.
In the latter there is no superposition of the two sections of the scene, but the
inevitable spiralling upward of a long composition to fit the vertical elongation
of the panel. The superposition of the two halves of the picture in the Psalter
is the result of the adaptation of a strip-composition to a full-page miniature, by
which, however, anything but 'a consistent balanced composition with full pic-
torial unity' results. Our author rightly observes that the original form of this
strip-composition is preserved in the Octateuchs, but his statement that the rep-
lica of the Psalter's miniature in the Paris Gregory keeps this form is disproved
by his own reproduction of the Gregory miniature (Plate XXIII, fig. 62), which
shows clearly the same superposition. The fact that this miniature in the Greg-
ory and the corresponding one in the Vatican Bible are the only examples of the
scene in the early manuscripts which repeat the Psalter's arrangement is as good
evidence as one could wish that the pictures in the Gregory and the Bible are
dependent on the Psalter's miniature and not derived from a strip-archetype that
served as model for all three.
Buchthal's treatment of 'Moses receiving the Law on Mt Sinai' is an interest-
ing illustration of the difficulty of reconstructing an archetype from which the
miniature in the Psalter and the corresponding one in the Vatican Bible could
both be derived. The Vatican Bible's figure of Moses is, according to him, origi-
nal, since it is striding to the right and really ascending Sinai, whereas 'the empty
undifferentiated space on the left of Sinai (in the Psalter) proves that the copyist
here deviated from his model.' (It might prove rather an early attempt to adapt
a strip-composition to a page). But the Psalter, we are told, was right in its loca-
tion of the mountain-god at the lower left of the picture. The Vatican Bible,
however, includes Moses removing his sandals in the sequence of episodes, and
consequently derives from a different model than the Psalter's miniature, stem-
ming rather from an early Christian sequence like that on the doors of S. Sabina.
'That we are really dealing with a survival of this old tradition and not with an
independent addition to the pictorial material of the model is also shown by the
fact that the figure of Moses discarding his sandals appears a second time in this
Bible manuscript, and in a far more appropriate place, namely, in the miniature
illustrating the Crossing of the Red Sea.' If one is allowed to indulge one's com-
mon sense in these learned matters, it would seem that the repetition of a subject
already included is good evidence that the second instance was an addition; in
this case the addition was suggested to the Bible's miniaturist by the otherwise
unexplained pair of sandals and the Burning Bush which the Psalter's illustrator
has depicted on the slopes of Sinai; the readiness with which the artist of the
Bible lent himself to repetition is to be seen in the fact that after reproducing 'in
all essential features, including coloring' the Psalter's group of Israelites, he du-
plicated this group with another on the left of his picture. The upshot of Buch-
thal's rather confusing discussion of this picture is to eliminate for the moment
the 'common archetype'; 'the model of the Paris miniature was a pictorial com-
position; the (direct or indirect) prototype of the Reginensis (the Vatican Bible)
miniature was . . . a consecutive narrative in strip form.'
This reconstruction is further complicated by the curious identification of the
praying figure of Moses inserted at the right of the Psalter's miniature, as 'Moses
striking the Rock.' Buchthal believes that the strip of flowery landscape at the
feet of this figure contains enough traces of a 'water-course' to pass for the brook
from the rock. The inclusion in the Psalter's picture of 'Moses striking the Rock,'
he says, 'may be due to the direct influence of the other, consecutive type.' The
picture in the Vatican Bible preserves 'the scenic sequence of the continuous nar-
rative,' and 'elements of the lower half of the Psalter picture.' It is therefore a
combination of these two elements, its upper part taken from the strip-model,
the lower from the model followed by the miniature in the Paris Psalter - an
application of the 'synthetic' method that even Grtinwald might envy.
It is hardly necessary to point out that in the scene of the Striking of the Rock
Moses carries a wand and looks not upward but toward the rock. The artist of
the Psalter used for his praying figure of Moses the type employed by the artists
of the Octateuchs to illustrate the first of the two episodes labelled by the Index
of Christian Art 'Moses, Burning Bush.' The same figure standing in the flowery
landscape of which the grassy strip of the Psalter with its dubious 'water-course'
is a reminiscence, extending his hand toward the flaming bush which has been
transposed to the left in our miniature, is to be found in one of the Octateuchs of
the Vatican.' This and the rest of the miniature are evidently excerpted from an
Exodus narrative in strip-compositions like those in the Octateuchs; once we are
rid of the strange inclusion of 'Moses striking the Rock,' and the quite unneces-
sary assumption that the Vatican Bible's illustration is other than an adaptation
and enlargement of the Psalter's picture, the make-up of the latter is not hard
to understand.
The confusing method by which Buchthal reconstructed the 'archetypes' of
the Sinai miniatures in the Psalter and the Bible is repeated with reference to
the Penitence of David (Fig. 6). Giving equal value to all the Byzantine render-
ings of the scene without reference to their date or derivation, Buchthal finds
that since in those cases where David is shown enthroned an angel stands behind
him, the cut-out figure behind the seated David in the Psalter must have been
an angel as well. But Bathsheba appears in the corresponding space in the Greg-
ory's replica of the scene, whose close relation to the Psalter's picture is clear
from the identity in the two miniatures of the figures of the kneeling David and
of Nathan. Moreover, the bust of Bathsheba appears in the same place in the
Bristol Psalter, whose miniaturist certainly borrowed from the Paris Psalter the
compositions of his Goliath scenes and the Prayer of Isaiah, and must therefore
have had access to our manuscript. (To say, as Buchthal does, that the Goliath-
scenes in the Bristol Psalter 'cannot be derived either directly or indirectly from
the Paris manuscript' is to deny the evidence of one's eyes; not only these scenes
in the Bristol Psalter, but the Prayer of Isaiah as well, are the most obvious copies
from the Paris Psalter we have.) The Psalter's artist, excerpting (as we have seen
in the case of the Sinai miniature) from the strip-compositions of a continuous
narrative, made the blunder of leaving out the second figure of Nathan before
whom David is kneeling and toward whom the personification of Repentance is
turned. This amputated picture, impossible to reconcile with other versions of
the scene by any theory of 'common archetype,' was very naturally rationalized
and unified in time in the miniatures of the Gregory manuscript and of the Bris-
tol Psalter, by omitting the seated David, leaving his empty throne, and trans-
1 Gr. 746, fol. 157. The identity of Moses' gesture of hand to face in both miniatures was pointed
out to the writer by Dr Weitzmann.
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ferring the standing Nathan to the right where he would explain the attitudes
of the kneeling king and of Metanoia. The priority of the Paris Psalter's minia-
ture as contrasted with these two adaptations is indicated by two things: (1)
the survival in it of the antique continuous method of narration with its repeti-
tion of the actors in successive scenes; (2) the personification, which though re-
tained in the more faithful adaptation of the Bristol Psalter, was replaced in the
Gregory miniature and in later versions by the angel symbolic of retribution, in
accor(lance with the mid-Byzantine practice of eliminating such pagan parapher-
nalia from religious texts. The Gregory has but one such allegory - the figure
of Thalassa in the Crossing of the Red Sea. Such personifications survive in By-
zantiiie illustration only where copyists are unusually faithful to early models as
in the case of the Bristol Psalter and the Octateuchs.
Buchthal, however, arrives at a very different conclusion. The statistic of
of later examples having convinced him that 'in all probability we are justified
in assuming that the missing figure of the Paris Psalter picture was also an angel'
he advances the probability to a premise in opposing the possibilitythat Metanoia
was replaced by an angel in the Paris Gregory: 'for the presence of both these
figures in the Paris Psalter does not allow us to regard either of them as a more
recent derivation, likely to have replaced the older invention.' This leads him
in turn to assume two archetypes, one the Denunication of the King by Nathan,
the other David kneeling in penitence before the prophet. The second scene was
'enlarged' by the addition of the empty throne 'in some cases surmounted by a
canopy, through which Bathsheba witnesses from a window of the adjoining
palace David's humiliation on her behalf.... Both scenes, when complete, con-
taine(I the angel symbolizing the divine punishment about to be inflicted on
David, the second one also Metanoia (Repentance) and Bathsheba appearing be-
hind the empty throne .... . We recognize in the miniature a combination of two
distinct scenes....' The missing Nathan is for Buchthal no blunder: 'the eyes of
David and Metanoia are deprived of any concrete object on which to focus their
attention and are left to gaze without hope into the distant void, a motive
deeply moving as an expression of the contrite mood of the sinful king.' (! !) The
whole of the literature of art-history contains no better example of reading mod-
ern content into mediaeval art.
From the above review of some of Buchthal's analyses of the miniatures we
are prepared for the indeterminate summation of his results in the section en-
titled 'Conclusion.' The Gregory manuscript, we are told, did not furnish the
model for the corresponding Paris miniatures (vs. Weitzmann). A large propor-
tion of the Psalter's scenes occur in similar form in early Christian and early
Byzantine art, which used antique formulae where possible. But no line of de-
velopment leads from the earliest versions to the formulae of the Paris Psalter.
In general there was a tendency 'to replace the continuous narrative of early
Christian representations by self-contained and isolated compositions.' Personi-
fications are 'included in some miniatures and omitted in others.' 'In several
instances we have been able to reconstruct in all its successive stages the com-
plicated process of which the miniatures of the Paris Psalter are the outcome,
an(I to trace in full the iconographic development of the theme in question.

We have found in every case that the connexion between these miniatures and
the cognate pictures of other manuscripts was not as close as has been generally
assumed. Not a single picture of the Paris Psalter was directly copied from any
other picture of the related manuscripts or served as an immediate model (a
note excepts the copies in Vat.Pal.gr.381 and Petrop.269; the rest of this
sweeping statement remains to plague its author, we fear, in time to come).
It is thus necessary to assume that a large number of intermediate versions have
been lost. In a few particularly clear instances we have been fortunate enough to
discover the exact role played by these lost versions in the iconographic develop-
ment.'
The present writer, however, found an unconvincing complication in Buch-
thal's reconstruction of his putative archetypes, discovered much in his com-
parisons to confirm the dependence of the related manuscripts on the miniatures
of the Psalter, and feels that the 'clear instances' and the 'exact r6le' mentioned
in the last sentence are still to seek.
The second part of Buchthal's monograph bears the title 'Style and Date'
and opens with a discussion of 'Previous Attempts.' This section is mainly de-
voted to refutation of Alison Frantz' conclusion,' in her study of Byzantine
illuminated ornament, that the style of the ornament in the borders of our
miniatures (Fig. 1) points to an early date, specifically earlier than that of the
Paris Gregory in which certain of the borders seem to her to be diminished imita-
tions of those of the Psalter. Buchthal gives a generous resume of her argument,
but fails, it seems to the writer, to meet it. He points to the close affinity of the
ornament of the Psalter with that of Paris Coisl. 195, and records Miss Frantz'
conclusion that the latter manuscript must be a product of the seventh or eighth
century or must have exactly copied the decoration of a manuscript of that
period. 'The former alternative,' says Buchthal, 'is definitely ruled out for
stylistic reasons.' No reasons are given, their place being taken by a reference to
Weitzmann, who dates Coisl. 195 in the tenth century, we find, because of the
resemblance of its ornament to that of the Paris Psalter! The second alternative,
we are told, 'could be applied with equal justice to the borders of the Psalter
miniatures.' Buchthal did not here read Miss Frantz with sufficient attention;
she makes in this connection the point that the borders of the miniatures, con-
sistent throughout in style, cannot be distributed like the pictures they inclose,
to the corresponding artists of the atelier. The inference is that they were not
copied along with the miniatures from any model, but done by one artist in the
contemporary style of the workshop.
The remainder of this section deals with the stylistic parallel that has been
observed between the miniatures of the Psalter and certain frescoes of S. Maria
Antiqua of the latter part of the seventh century and the early years of the
eighth (Figs. 3, 7). The remarkable analysis (Art Bulletin, 19925) that isolated
1 'Byzantine Illuminated Ornament,' Art Bulletin, xvi (1934).
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8. Landscape; detail of the Rotulus of Joshua
these frescoes of Greek style out of the mass of the paintings in the Roman
church was the work of Myrtilla Avery, not of Dvorak and of Kitzinger after
him, as Buchthal's citations imply. We shall have more to say later on concern-
ing the stylistic affinity pointed out by Miss Avery; here it is necessary only to
remark that Buchthal again meets the argument with no more than the citation
of Dvorak and Weitzmann, and his own impression of contrast between the 'soft
drawing' and 'free and unconstrained motion of the drapery' of the Psalter's
miniatures, and the 'massive solidity and rigid compactness' of the frescoes.
Such a characterization of the Roman frescoes is difficult to understand, espe-
cially to those who knew them when first uncovered. Even in their present faded
condition, however, they evince in many passages, as in the heads of the angels
above the apse, a delicate impressionism equal to anything in the Psalter. The
forced nature of such criticism is revealed in the diametrically opposite character-
ization of the styles of the miniatures and the frescoes by Weitzmann, who saw
in the Roman paintings a 'malerisch-flichig' style contrasting with the more
plastic one of the Psalter!l Dvorak's remark that in comparison with the frescoes,
the Psalter's illustrations reveal 'einen Verlust an klassischen Stilempfinden' is
no more than an unsupported dictum. Nevertheless, our author concludes that
'to date the Psalter miniatures the ground of their kinship with the S. Maria
Antiqua frescoes is obviously impossible' (italics mine).
The section entitled 'Compositional Problems' can be summed up with a
brevity consistent with its own. The Cosmas Indicopleustes of the Vatican, dat-
ing in the ninth century, shows indications of the transformation of an original
with strip-illustrations into full-page pictures.2 This is assumed to be the first
stage in a process, in the perfection of which the Paris Gregory is considered to
be the second step and the miniatures of the Psalter the 'culmination.' This is
said in spite of the fact that in such features as the omission of the second
figure of Nathan in the Penitence-scene (Fig. 6), the superposition of the right
half of the Red Sea episode above the left half, the amputation of the Hand of
God in the Prayer of Hezekiah, and the displacement of the mountain-god from
his mountain to the foreground in the first miniature, the Psalter is rather the
best example we have of the very beginning of such conversion from strip-com-
positions to the full page, with the resulting maladjustments still in evidence.
Buchthal admits that the full-page miniature was a familiar phenomenon in
late antiquity, and that the transformation of the strip to full-page may well
have been an early practice, but maintains that in the case of the Psalter it
must be due to the neo-Hellenism of the 'renaissance.' It is here that the assump-
tion of date becomes pretty clear, unless we are to take as a serious argument
the implication that because the Vatican Cosmas may have converted the strip-
1 Jb.f.Kunstw., p. 192, note 6.

2 It is to be noted in this connection that in the descent of the Cosmas text, the Vatican copy is the
nearest to the first recension of the work, while the Cosmas of Sinai, whose illustrations are considered
by Weitzmann to reproduce more accurately the original pictures, is the child of a second revision.
Cf. Winstedt, Cosmas Indicopleustes (Cambridge, 1909), Introduction.
compositions of a model into full-page pictures, the Paris miniatures cannot be

dated before the ninth century.
The assumption of the tenth-century dating becomes still more apparent in
the next section, dealing as it does with 'The Style of the Figures.' It is true that
after a discussion of the Vatican Cosmas, the Paris Gregory, and the Vatican
Ptolemy in an attempt to define the style of the ninth century, Buchthal comes
to the conclusion that the date of the Psalter's miniatures cannot be determined
on the basis of comparison with those of the last two of these three manuscripts.
But convinced that it is 'impossible to establish the date of the Paris Psalter
on stylistic grounds by comparison with illustrated manuscripts of earlier date
than the Gregory,' he announces his intention of tracing 'the development of
style from the Gregory onwards.' The subjectivity of his analysis of style has
already been revealed in the contradiction existing between his and Weitzmann's
contrast of the frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua with the Psalter's miniatures, and
this impression is confirmed in the present section. It is to his credit, how-
ever that he limits his citation of authentic tenth-century parallels to the evangel-
ists of Stavroniketa 43, in the discussion of which he shows himself naively aware
of the mid-Byzantine characteristics which differentiate the handling of antique
prototypes in that gospel-book from the native treatment they receive in the
Psalter: this is evident in such phrases as 'the almost purely linear handling of
the drapery' which 'no longer embraces the figure,' follows a 'definite rhythm of
its own and is disposed in hard angular lines.' 'The stiffness and inflexibility of
the forms,' he observes, 'far surpasses that of the Psalter.' Assuming the Gregory
as the beginning, and the Athos manuscript as the culmination, of a stylistic
evolution extending through the tenth century, 'the Paris Psalter . . . must
surely be involved in this development . . . and so must the Joshua Roll.' The
rest is not difficult: by comparing a seated figure in all four of the manuscripts,
and a standing one in the Gregory, Rotulus and the Psalter, a chronological
sequence of Gregory, Rotulus, Psalter, Stavroniketa 43 is established in no more
than two paragraphs.
In the discussion of the Rotulus of Joshua the similarities to the Roll in the
Gregory's Joshua-scenes are duly noted, but ascribed again to a common arche-
type, which is assumed to have been in color. The translation of this hypothetical
painted original into the line-drawings of the Roll fixes according to Buchthal a
late date for the Roll, since 'the renunciation of the illusionistic method of paint-
ing and the use of nothing but a purely linear mode of expression is a typical
manifestation of the transition from the formal idiom of antiquity to that of
the Middle Ages.' Buchthal finds, however, only one parallel to support this shift
to line in the tenth century - an Athos gospel-book, Philotheu 33,1 whose'washed
drawing of Mark resembles the technique of the Joshua Roll. The citation is un-
fortunate, because the miniature is an insertion independent of the dating of the
text, and is ascribed by critics other than Weitzmann to a date centuries earlier.
The assumption of date crops up again in a comparison of the figures in the Roll
I Weitzmann, Byz. Buclim., figs. 302, 303.
to those in the Gregory; they are more plastic, but 'not plastic in the antique
sense'; their relative plasticity is therefore not to be ascribed to early date, but
to the 'renaissance.' So also the continuous method of narration, long considered
a sign of the Roll's proximity to antiquity, is imperfectly observed, there being
many caesurae to be noticed in the story as depicted in the drawings. This is
symptomatic of a 'transitional stage in the development of compositional forms'
and thus again indicative of a late dating. To this and similar deductions from
the undoubted breaks in the narrative of the Joshua Roll one may respond with
the observation that interruptions of a far more disruptive nature appear in the
locus classicus of the continuous method in antiquity, the spiral frieze of the
Column of Trajan.'
From what has preceded, the reader will be prepared for the d6nouement in
the section 'Date and Locality of the Paris Psalter.' The 'broad rendering of
forms . . . simplicity and monumentality,' the figures that 'again possess volume,'
the 'new feeling for the tactile value of the human body,' are not, according to
Buchthal, symptoms of a style still early enough to be instinct with antique
feeling. Berliner's observations which showed the extensive overpainting of some
of the miniatures and a consequent indication of their antiquity, led him to
'conclusions which a stylistic analysis of the miniatures does not support.' 'The
full plastic figure drawing, the broad handling of forms are not a consequence of
direct borrowings from antique frescoes and sculpture. They are the outcome of
the stylistic development of the first half of the tenth century.' As to locality,
the miniatures were probably executed in Constantinople but, because of the
carelessness of their execution, not in a 'palace school.'
The section 'Origin and Date of the Cycle' is in part a repetition of what is
sensus communis among latter-day students of Byzantine art, viz., that the Old
Testament scenes of the Psalter, the Rotulus, and their related manuscripts stem
from an early cycle best represented by the illustrated Octateuchs. The state-
ment: 'all we can say with certainty is that the original source of about half of
the Paris Psalter miniatures is a series of Early Christian Old Testament illustra-
tions in continuous strip form,' is safe enough, the half referred to being the
David and Moses scenes. An excellent observation is made on the miniature in
the Gregory containing the pictures of Daniel, Manasseh, the Three Hebrews,
and Hezekiah, which must have been copied from an illustrated psalter, since
they correspond to four consecutive odes in the Byzantine psalters. Of these,
the Hezekiah, the only one of the four present in the Paris Psalter, 'is so closely
akin to the Gregory miniature that the Psalter which must have served as model
for this picture was certainly a kind of ancestor of the Paris Psalter cycle.'
Buchthal here overlooks the fact pointed out by the writer in his treatment of
the Psalter,2 that the present series of miniatures in the Paris manuscript must
originally have been longer, and since two folios are lacking in the gathering
which according to Omont once preceded the Canticles in the original codex,
I Cf. Stuart Jones, 'The Historical Interpretation of the Reliefs on Trajan's Column,' British School
in Rome, Papers, v (1910) no. 7. 2 Art Bulletin, xi (1929), 42.
the miniatures for the canticles of Daniel, Manasseh, and the Three Hebrews
may well have been present in the complete series, and have furnished, as is
quite possibly the case with Hezekiah, the models for the corresponding pictures
in the Gregory.
The monograph ends with a summation of the 'Byzantine Renaissance' from
which a passage or two has already been quoted in the opening paragraph of this
review. A parallel is sketched with the Carolingian renaissance as exemplified in
the school of Tours, this being viewed as a similar case of the evolution from
strip-compositions to 'pictorial unity and firmness in the construction of the
page as a whole' -an evolution that so far as the Turonian Bibles are con-
cerned may be said to need more demonstration. The 'Hellenistic revival' of the
tenth century, however, was only a short episode in Byzantine art and had no
very profound effect: ' . . . in the Menologion of Basil Ii ... the synthesis which
had rendered possible the approximation of the Paris Psalter miniatures to
classical painting is gone forever.' Byzantine art, of all the mediaeval arts, ex-
hibits the most unruffled and conservative of evolutions; nevertheless we are
asked to believe that in this one case its even tenor was suddenly interrupted by
a conscious revival of antique style which then was "spurlos versenkt" almost
within a generation of its apogee.
The relation of the Psalter's miniatures to the manuscripts with similar

miniatures of the ninth and tenth centuries - the Paris Gregory and the Vatican
Bible - has been explained, as we have seen, by three different theories: that
of Weitzmann, according to which the Psalter's miniatures are either derived
from an archetype which served also for the Gregory and the Bible, or were
adapted from those manuscripts themselves (with Weitzmann apparently in the
case of the Gregory leaning toward the second alternative); that of the writer,
who sees in the corresponding miniatures of the Gregory and the Bible copies
or adaptations of the miniatures of the Psalter; that of Buchthal who explains
all the resemblances by the employment on the part of all three manuscripts of
a common archetype or common archetypes. It is evident that when this relation
lends itself to so divergent explanations, no one of these explanations is likely to be
universally accepted as valid evidence for the date of the Psalter's miniatures.
The material evidence is scanty; such as it is it points without question to
the earlier date. The miniatures of the Psalter have been inserted in their tenth-
century codex, and part of the original series is lost. They have been to some
extent repainted.' They are stylistically coeval with the drawings of the Joshua
Roll, and the retouching of the latter includes repairs to the labels of the pictures
which were done in the ink, and presumably in the hand, of the tenth-century
scribe. The original labels of the Roll that still survive show an early form of
lettering, distinctly earlier in appearance, for example, than that used in the
titles of the ninth-century Gregory.
I Buchthal's 'impression that the overpaintings cannot be dated very much later than the minia-
tures themselves' (p. 65) is not further explained.
When we come to the stylistic evidence for the dating of the miniatures we
find ourselves on the uncertain ground of opinion. The one tenth-century manu-
script of undoubted date that offers anything resembling the style of the Psalter
is Stavroniketa 43, and it is Buchthal's merit that he has eliminated the other
parallels that have hitherto been suggested, unconvincing in style or dubious
in date, and offered the testimony of the Stavroniketa evangelists alone. It is
also to his credit that he has not failed, as was pointed out above, to realize the
contrast between the Psalter's more native classicism and the mid-Byzantine
stiffening which the ancient evangelist types have received in the Athos gospel-
book. The 'restless and agitated, contradictory interplay of lines' in the Psalter
is compared with the 'extreme of stylistic rigidity reached in the Gospels,' and
in a further comparison one of the Stavroniketa figures is described as exhibiting
'the wide folds of the classical toga hardened into an almost cylindrical form.'
If these four evangelists of Stavroniketa 43 give us no satisfactory parallel to
the style of the Psalter's miniatures, the possibilities of the tenth century are
exhausted. Nothing survives in the authentic and dated Byzantine art of the
Macedonian period that reveals affinity with the Psalter. What the tenth century
in Constantinople had to begin with, at the close of the ninth century, is to be
seen in the illustrations of the Paris Gregory; not in those cited by Buchthal and
Weitzmann which are the result of the artist's effort to copy early models, but
in scenes depicted in his native and immediate tradition such as those from the
Life of Christ, whose style is authenticated as the characteristic manner of the
period by its reappearance in the pictures of the Cosmas Indicopleustes. This is
an art emerging from the small scale of early Christian book-illustration of the
type found in the gospel-book of Rossano, enlarging its figures, but retaining
from the preceding minuscule style the too large heads; a two-dimensional
manner, with a distaste for overlapping or other suggestions of depth; reducing
the background where possible to neutrality, and movement to a minimum;
drawing its figures in the time-honored formulae handed on to late antiquity by
the Neo-Attic school; preparing the way for the monumental unreality of the
great mosaic cycles of the eleventh century. The intermediate stage between
the early Christian childhood of this style and its ninth-century aspect can be
seen in the frescoes of S. Saba at Rome, and in the miniatures of the gospel-book
Petropolitanus xxi in Leningrad. Its continuation can be traced in the flat and
frontal figures of the ivories of the triptych-group in the tenth century and its
fin-de-siecle phase in the illustrations of the Menologion of Basil ii (Fig. 2). The
style is not without its reminiscences of antiquity (what Byzantine phenomenon
is?), but the Greek blood that flows in its veins is thin.
Parallels to the Psalter's style, lacking in the tenth century, are not wanting
in earlier periods. The closest stylistic parallel to the drawings of the Rotulus
that has yet been found outside of the miniatures of the Psalter themselves, is the
silver plate from Cyprus with the scene of David's combat with Goliath. It is
dated by the numismatic evidence discovered with it and by the types of its
silver stamps in the end of the sixth century or the early years of the seventh.
Weitzmann's comparison,' emphasizing in contrast to the forms of the silver

plate the 'schmaichtigen, des Geftihls fur Korperschwere entbehrenden Gestalten'
of the Rotulus, merely describes the rapid decadence of technique in the seventh
century that separates the Cyprus plate from the dating given the Roll by the
Vatican editors, and the inevitable difference between the plastic effect of re-
pousse and that of wash-drawings. It is probable that even he would admit
that the drawings are closer to the plate than to any authentic example of the
tenth century, including the copies of the Joshua scenes on the ivory caskets.
It is generally agreed that the drawings of the Roll and the miniatures of the
Psalter cannot be far apart in date. The only arresting parallel for the style of
both these sets of miniatures is furnished by the seventh-century and early
eighth-century frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua. The comparisons which were made
by Miss Avery and the writer2 need not all be repeated here; some of them are
reproduced in the accompanying illustrations, together with one or two to which
Miss Avery has recently called the writer's attention. Fig. 3 reproduces the
famous angel's head from the apse of S. Maria Antiqua, and the repetition of its
formula in the heads of Joshua in the Roll and that of Moses in the miniature of
the Crossing of the Red Sea in the Psalter. It is a formula impossible to duplicate
in mid-Byzantine art save in cases of careful copying, but its history can be
traced from the sculpture of Roman times in Alexandria, in which it is the preva-
lent type of female head, through its use for heads in the designs incised on the
bone-and-wood caskets of late antiquity in Egypt, to the stylization seen here
of its characteristic broadly domed cranium tapering to a narrow chin, and the
sharp turning of the head upon the neck. The profiles (Figs. 4, 5) speak for them-
selves; in both the Psalter and the frescoes the profiles here shown are many
times repeated, sharply cut with a series of slashing horizontals, and with the
common characteristic of the jutting lower jaw and chin. An almost Morellian
identity has been noted by Miss Avery in the baluster-like folds encircling the
leg of Christ in one of the eighth-century Anastases of S. Maria Antiqua, re-
peated on the leg of the kneeling David in the Penitence scene (Fig. 6). Lastly
may be recalled the correspondence in the formula for the lower body between
the Night of Isaiah's Prayer and the Salomone of the group of the Maccabees,
and between the head of Dawn in the same miniature and the head of the older
of the two boys in the fresco (Fig. 7). For good measure we reproduce a detail
of Pompeian landscape from the Roll (Fig. 8), too completely antique in feeling
to have been thus understood by any tenth-century copyist.
This completes the evidence on the date of the miniatures of the Paris Psalter.
The material evidence being what it is, an argument from style is inevitable.
But not, it seems to the writer, an argument of the sort we have been examining,
which assumes a dating in the tenth century and manufactures therewith a
chronology of style with which to prove it.
It_is perhaps the chief contribution of Buchthal's monograph that it demon-
I Byz. Buchm., p. 45.

2 'Alexandrian Style in S. Maria Antiqua,' Art Bulletin, viI (1925), 149; ibid., xi (1929), 49 ff.
strates the impossibility of proof of a tenth-century dating for the miniatures,

since no one can deny that he has done his best. Lacking such proof, the minia-
tures can be no longer employed to implement the concept of the Macedonian
'renaissance,' nor can the coeval drawings of the Joshua Roll. And lacking these,
the concept evaporates, and with it a number of stylistic stumbling-blocks,
iconographic contradictions, and artificially maintained relationships of manu-
scripts. Relieved of this artifice, the evolution of Byzantine art can be followed
as a normal and logical development. Particularly is this true if one keeps in
mind the dual character of the artistic legacy that the Byzantine received from
the late antique - a feature commonly overlooked by those students who like
Buchthal approach mid-Byzantine style from the mediaeval side. The division
of late antique style into the two-dimensional mode inherited from the Neo-
Attic wing of Hellenism, and on the other hand the picturesque spatial impres-
sionism that has often been associated with Alexandria, is a consideration with-
out which no theory of the formation of Byzantine art can be valid. Dated, in
accordance with their stylistic affinities with the Cyprus plate and the frescoes
of S. Maria Antiqua, in a period roughly corresponding to the turn of the
seventh into the eighth century, the miniatures of the Psalter and the drawings
of the roll are logically placed as consistent examples of the 'Alexandrian' wing
of the late antique. Their presence in the libraries of Constantinople explains
the frequent copying of them in the illustrations of codices of the ninth, tenth,
and eleventh centuries, and the native Neo-Attic tradition of Constantinople
explains the altered character of the copies. But it was through them and like
examples of the 'Alexandrian' style that one can best explain the slow infiltra-
tion of a fresher Hellenistic strain into Byzantine art, and thus account for the
classic grandeur and nobility of its culmination in the eleventh century.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

The Byzantine Renaissance

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The Byzantine Renaissance

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The `Byzantine Renaissance'

VOL. XIV APRIL, 1939 No. 2

THE 'BYZANTINE RENAISSANCE'

I La peinture byzantine (Paris, 1928), p. 91.

equivocal Gregory miniatures mentioned above, provid

In 1911, Rudolf Berliner made a careful examination of the manuscript, dis-

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t S' K . S ? < 1 ' .9 ? m0

iconoclastic controversy, is a matter of common knowledge; if the miniatures of

1 Zur Datierung der'Miniaturen des Cod.Par.gr.139, p. 12.

repertory of Byzantine illumination in the tenth century.' The evangelists of this

1 Op. cit., figs. 169-172.

personification of the Desert in the Red Sea Miniature, looks up at Night in

an(I to trace in full the iconographic development of the theme in question.

_~wlE__ V L_= r~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~c

8. Landscape; detail of the Rotulus of Joshua

1 Jb.f.Kunstw., p. 192, note 6.

compositions of a model into full-page pictures, the Paris miniatures cannot be

I Weitzmann, Byz. Buclim., figs. 302, 303.

The relation of the Psalter's miniatures to the manuscripts with similar

Weitzmann's comparison,' emphasizing in contrast to the forms of the silver

I Byz. Buchm., p. 45.

strates the impossibility of proof of a tenth-century dating for the miniatures,

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