On the Miniatures of the Tetraevangelion (Russian National Library, gr. 53)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18688/aa2414-2-9Keywords:
Manuscript illumination, purple codex, evangelists’ portraits, Macedonian renaissance, court scriptoriumAbstract
The Purple Tetraevangelion held in the National Library of Russia (gr. 53) was written and decorated with golden headpieces and initials at the court scriptorium of Constantinople in the late 9th – early 10th century. It seems likely that miniatures were painted at that time or a few decades later during the Macedonian Renaissance. The Evangelists’ portraits on separate folios were probably created specifically for this codex, as evidenced by the purple codices depicted on desks in front of the authors of the Gospel texts. The miniatures are not the same highest quality as the ones in such famous manuscripts of the Macedonian renaissance, as Paris Psalter, so-called Leo Bible, Tetraevangelion in the Stavronikita monastery on Mount Athos, etc., but they could have been copied from artistically more sophisticated images. A hypothesis can be put forward (although it lacks any proof) that the purple Tetraevangelion in the National Library of Russia was originally embellished with evangelists’ portraits on purple bifolios, which was the case with the Tetraevangelion found in Tirana (cod. Beratinus II); for some unknown reasons those purple bifolios were soon lost and a few decades later replaced with the existing images. Probably in the last quarter of the 11th century the Tetraevangelion was restored for the first time. Then the folios taken from an ancient purple codex were inserted instead of those that had been lost by that time, and miniature images were pasted with only one of these still surviving.
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