Heghnar Watenpaugh: Armenian Church and the Getty Should Work Together
[Heghnar Watenpaugh is an associate professor of art history at UC Davis. She is a former Getty postdoctoral fellow and is of Armenian descent.]
Seven illustrated pages ripped out of a medieval Gospels manuscript: Who owns them; who should own them? Those who value them as works of art, or those who revere them as religious objects? The seven pages feature beautiful illuminations by Toros Roslin, the most important Armenian miniatures painter of the Middle Ages. Their value is immense as artifacts, but also as rare witnesses to the memory of a nation almost erased from history. The manuscript from which the pages were torn was lost during the Armenian genocide of 1915-22 The Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America believes those seven pages are holy and belong to the church: It is suing the J. Paul Getty Museum to get them back. The Getty says it owns the pages as works of art and acquired them legally.
The story begins in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the Crusades. The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, located in Asia Minor, was a cultural crossroads. Its far-flung commercial and cultural ties paved the way for artistic ideas to circulate between Europe and the Middle East and East Asia. In his workshop in the fortress of Hromkla (now Rumkale, Turkey), Roslin illustrated the Gospels in 1256 for the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Constantine I. The pages at the Getty feature Canon Tables — concordance lists of passages that relate the same events in the four Gospels. Roslin enlivened his work with ornate frames and scenes of birds and flowers.
The finished Gospels, used in the Church of Zeytun (now Suleymanli, Turkey), acquired a reputation for supernatural powers. Priests paraded the book in the city streets to ensure the protection of Zeytun at the onset of World War I. In the chaos of 1915, the Zeytun Bible was entrusted to an individual for safekeeping....
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Seven illustrated pages ripped out of a medieval Gospels manuscript: Who owns them; who should own them? Those who value them as works of art, or those who revere them as religious objects? The seven pages feature beautiful illuminations by Toros Roslin, the most important Armenian miniatures painter of the Middle Ages. Their value is immense as artifacts, but also as rare witnesses to the memory of a nation almost erased from history. The manuscript from which the pages were torn was lost during the Armenian genocide of 1915-22 The Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America believes those seven pages are holy and belong to the church: It is suing the J. Paul Getty Museum to get them back. The Getty says it owns the pages as works of art and acquired them legally.
The story begins in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the Crusades. The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, located in Asia Minor, was a cultural crossroads. Its far-flung commercial and cultural ties paved the way for artistic ideas to circulate between Europe and the Middle East and East Asia. In his workshop in the fortress of Hromkla (now Rumkale, Turkey), Roslin illustrated the Gospels in 1256 for the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Constantine I. The pages at the Getty feature Canon Tables — concordance lists of passages that relate the same events in the four Gospels. Roslin enlivened his work with ornate frames and scenes of birds and flowers.
The finished Gospels, used in the Church of Zeytun (now Suleymanli, Turkey), acquired a reputation for supernatural powers. Priests paraded the book in the city streets to ensure the protection of Zeytun at the onset of World War I. In the chaos of 1915, the Zeytun Bible was entrusted to an individual for safekeeping....