Abstract:
The rapid military successes of the Muslims, who at the beginning
of the eight century were able to subdue the lands of the Middle
East and North Africa posed a great threat to the Byzantine Empire.
The Empire’s failed attempt to regain territories lost in the wars
demonstrated the weakness of Byzantine war ideology and the need
to revise the concept of war. A changed ideology was formed by the end of the IX century,
during the rule of the Macedonian dynasty, and especially during
the reign of Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetus
(945-959).
The changes in rhetoric had a reflection in Byzantine visual media.
The religious iconography underwent a significant conceptual
change and acquired a semantic meaning of war.
The paper analyzes Byzantine ivory plaque from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, which is only surviving portion of a triptych
whose wings are now missing. The plaque’s iconography is unique
among the surviving Byzantine representations of the Crucifixion
and no other related images survive.
While the crucified Christ, Virgin, St John and the two angels
are frequent elements of the iconography of Crucifixion, there are
unusual iconographic details. First of all is unique depiction of the
reclining figure at the foot of the cross whose belly is pierced by
Christ’s cross. The scholarly discussion has been concentrated on
this remarkable innovation. Some identified it as Hades- the god of
the underworld, another as Adam-a usual image of the Crucifixion
iconography.
The paper will off er a new analyze of this unique iconography. It
will show that to decipher its complex visual syntax, it is necessary to
understand the components of the composition as a whole system,
as well as to take into account the historical and political context in
which such changes in the crucifixion iconography were made. The
paper offers a new opinion on the date and the possible donor of
the ivory plaque.
