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Ivana Jevtić
Koç University, Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Istanbul, Turkey;
ijevtic@ku.edu.tr
Rethinking the Passion Cycle:
Representation of Emotions, the Emphatic Response
and Narration in Late Byzantine Painting
Dense narrative cycles inflected with theatric, dramatic and emotional qualities represent a
distinctive feature of Late Byzantine wall painting. Realistic approach to expression of suffering and
the psychological characterization of grieving are particularly striking in the cycle of the Passion of
Christ where painted figures show their state of emotions in telling facial expressions, sometimes of
unprecedented intensity and overtness. Building up on recent work of David Freedberg and Vittorio
Gallese on motion, emotion and empathy in the esthetic experience, this paper explores how the
depiction of such emotionally charged expressions and evocative gestures influenced the way in
which the beholder approached and perceived the Passion of Christ. New ways in which emotions
were represented in such narrative cycles seem to follow the logic of the ‘embodied simulations’,
neural processes that, according to David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese, lie at the core of the
emphatic response to art. By looking closely at the cycle of Passion, the aim of this paper is to
discuss the relation between the representation of emotion, the need for strong emphatic response
and the narrative turn in Late Byzantine painting.
Warren Woodfin
City University of New York, Queens College, New York NY, United States;
warren.woodfin@qc.cuny.edu
The Passion and Liturgical Textiles: Veiling and Revealing the Sacrifice of Christ
The Epitaphios of Milutin Uroš, one of the earliest of preserved Byzantine
epitaphioi,
is also one
of the most interesting from a liturgical standpoint. The unusual, vertical orientation has attracted
comment, but so too has the dress of Christ. Instead of the usual loincloth to cover his nudity, there
is what is unmistakably a representation of a veil, the little
aër,
used to cover the bread on the paten.
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The image on the textile thus uncovers a paradox: the veil covering the Eucharistic offering shows
the bread to be the crucified body of Christ, while the fictive veil, covering the image of Christ like
the veil over the
prosphora,
shows him to be bread. The
epitaphios
is unmistakably liturgical in its
function, which would originally have been to cover the gifts of bread and wine during the Great
Entrance. Its imagery aligns with the Byzantine mystagogy of the liturgy that sees in this procession
a symbolic reiteration of Christ’s burial procession. At the same time, it speaks directly to the real
(or anticipated) presence of Christ’s body in the gifts as they are brought to the altar.
Painted images of the
melismos,
or Eucharistic fraction, similarly manipulate representations of
liturgical veils and vessels to bring out the sense in which the Eucharist is a reenactment of Christ’s
passion, death, and resurrection. The sequence of liturgical actions and their symbolism is frequently
blended, as, for example, the preparation of the bread in the
prothesis
and the actual consecration
of the gifts on the altar. At St. George in Kurbinovo, the apse fresco of the
melismos
shows a fictive
altar directly behind the actual altar. On this painted altar lies the young Christ Emmanuel, covered
by a decorated
aër,
and accompanied by the
asterisk,
the article meant to keep the veil from physical
contact with the bread. In different compositions of the
melismos,
one sees the adult Christ of the
epitaphios,
or the infant Christ. In a handful of cases, the infant Christ is seen as being dismembered
by the painted holy clergy. Paradoxically, this is precisely the vision recorded as the unbearable sight
afforded an unbelieving Jew who happened to witness the Divine Liturgy. When, according to the
legend, he confessed the truth of Christianity, the vision was taken away and the likeness of bread
restored to the
prosphora.
The paradox of the image of the
melismos
is that it purports to show “the
really real” but cannot in fact be taken literally as a theologically sanctioned view of the Eucharistic
sacrifice. Moreover, it is not the adult Christ of the crucifixion that is seen, but an infant, who cannot
be literally the subject of the sacrifice. Nevertheless, it is the infant Christ, or the Christ Emmanuel
type, that dominates the imagery embroidered on veils for the paten and chalice.
Unlike the West, where the image of the
akra tapeinosis,
transformed into the
imago pietatis,
assumes the role of embodying the Eucharistic sacrifice, Byzantium avoided the collapse of the symbol
and its referent by keeping the liturgical symbolism from fully merging with the symbolism of the
Passion. The exchanges between the young Christ and the Christ of the Passion, as well as between
iconographic markers of a liturgical context (veils, vessels, attendant angels) and a narrative context
(mourners, cross, tomb) always represent cross-references rather than the full merging of the two. The
imagery on veils helps to sustain both the link and the difference between Passion and Liturgy.
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