Review: Architecture as Icon: Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art

Abstract

Architecture as Icon: Perception and Representation of Architecture in Byzantine Art . Princeton University Art Museum. 6 March–6 June 2010 Discussion of the Byzantine icon almost invariably focuses on images of sacred persons as intermediaries for communication with the divine. Architecture as Icon challenges this notion to ask how architectural representations-in contrast to figural representations-function in the Byzantine and Orthodox East. This ambitious exhibit brings together seventy-six objects in a variety of media from a vast territory (thirty-four separate collections from eleven countries) and spanning a broad chronology (fourth through nineteenth centuries) that represent architecture or that include images of architecture within their visual fields. The exhibit was co-organized by the Princeton University Art Museum and the European Center for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments in Thessaloniki, Greece, curated by Slobodan Curcic of Princeton, and formulated in collaboration with Evangelia Hadjitryphonos of Thessaloniki. An earlier iteration of the exhibit appeared at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki. The exhibit suggests that an icon forms a screen or a window that separates the world of the faithful from the world of the sacred, while fostering communication between the two realms. This idea is laid out at the entrance to the exhibit through the selection and juxtaposition of objects and images. A seventeenth-century reliquary from Serres (northern Greece) takes the form of a centralized domed church; its luxurious materials express the inherent sanctity of its contents. However, although its gilded walls are lined with windows, these decorative …