Byzantine Frescos at the Church of Chora

Imagine it like an opera. The prologue contains statements of dedication setting the purpose and theme a figure of authority direct gaze massive above the lintel holding the book. The issue here authority and dominance. The first note therefore is of authority and dominance, ownership and power. You pass under him. This power must symbolise both the linkage with Christs and the Church’s authority but also a sense of grand dominance in the lives of the people who enter. Then facing him, the second theme dedicated to the maternal source and a humble link to pro-creation. The …links the two with the largest dedication of all, “Deeis” with the figure of Christ in relation to his mother Mary. Their relationship an expression then of a quality of both kinship and respect. This very large mosaic presents a powerful theme, which because it is about relatedness links to a human experience the weakened ground in. As it were a quality of idealised companionship and respect the strength of human affection or the strength that comes from human affection and the power of that kind of bonding. This is a magnificent evocation of friendship and presence. What is so powerful is the mutuality of the forms, the way she cleaves to him and his responsiveness.

Then the overture ends with as it were a signature of the author a mosaic where he presents his church to the divine dedictee. There is an enormous pride and genuineness in the way the gift is framed and presented.

After the introduction, then the narrative cycles. The narrative fixed into every niche and cranny of the church roofs in sequence like a story board and completely rightly compared to the Giotto Frescos in the Arena Chapel in Padua. Again here the narrative is being boiled down to a number of storyboard scenes the key scenes firmed up and refined in iterations of story telling the key scenes selected to be the strongest most representative points of a narrative. A whole cycle is dedicated to the preparations of Mary, important for the Orthodox tradition clearly. The ones that stand out are the preparation with her parents and the annunciation which is not particularly prominent but given that this was done in 1317 is an amazingly coherent and worked image that anticipates numerous repetitions in the work of four phases of the renaissance. It has the same structure as so many from Giotto to Poussin but is not the greatest representation of it.

Then the second narrative cycle begins in its recounting of the life and ministry of Christ. The first fresco has Jacobs dream and a wonderful serial explication of the journey to Bethlehem done in a narrative time sequence over a hill leading to the scene of the tax inspectors, the rejection, and the birth sequence. The birth sequence was Mary lying on a plane kit which echoes in a posture that echoes her death sequence with the born baby at the end of a descending shaft of light. A related image then has the first washing with the baby being held and a mosaic representation of falling water. The father Joseph looks unbemused and beyond him the shepherds in the field taken aback by the angel. This mosaic in the most vivid way recruits the common experience of child birth and infant care into this depiction and the shock of new life. The narrative sequence then is wonderful for pedestrians cycling through familiar vignettes.

There is an absence that if anything related to the crucifixion or death of Jesus. The narrative then links to an extraordinary depiction of the death of Mary. She lies on a bier with Christ above her holding her soul as a baby encased in a flame like mandaloria which links up into a mystical 6 winged seraph. The mandaloria must be something very specific to Greek orthodoxy it has echoes of the flame abreast (also called areola) and into an aura. There is some sort of mystical sense of rebirth from death in this image the kind of reincarnation at the same time is in the foreground a man with a censor who is St Peter. It is a very curious image though a celebration of death and rebirth. This forms the central movement of the peace which then leads into the decoration of a funerary chapel and the decoration turns to Fresco. Although the guidebook says that the transfer from mosaic to Fresco illustrates the declining Byzantine economy (done on the cheap) another way of looking at it is a spring of the medievalism of the mosaics into a clear fresco light of a renaissance. This is an extraordinary emergence where the artist is able using the fresco to be freer more rhythmic more alive or celebratory. These frescos must be amongst the best ever. They bare the quality with Piero in San Sesculpro. In a bound they leap frog Giotto by 50 years in their freedom imagination and space. Who did these frescos and mosaics ? There is a surprising lack of interest in the question. But this accidental anonymity obscures an artist at least as good as Giotto. He must have done other work previously or later. Any division here between the eastern and western churches seems not to really exist except in some of the iconography. Maybe he was brought over from Italy?

The sequence ends with a finally, a most extraordinary and unique image of the “harrowing of hell” or Anastasia that must be specific to Greek orthodoxy.

Christ is depicted stylistically in a most extraordinary combination of Giotto and El Greco as he pulls Adam and Eve from their graves . He has one in each hand and with a muscular dancing rhythmic powerful energy pulls their half dead or half sleeping bodies up out of their graves. It is the most extraordinary image of muscular energy with a kind of mystical clarity about it that is like nothing else until El Greco 300 years later. He also anticipates El Greco in the elongated angular rhythmic bodies, which seem to come from a music quite different to the harmonic resonance of the Latinate west. The last judgement scene anticipates the Sistine chapel in virtually every respect. This is a coalescence of even by then archetypal images. The touch on Adam’s hand that brings him to life, the dividing into heaven and hell the kind of mystical aspects in orthodoxy: the mandalera, the transubstantiation on Mary’s death. The final dome the celebratory joyous image, which ends the opera in a dancing light.

Istanbul
December 2011