Steven Avery
Administrator
Dionysius of Fourna: Artistic Identity Through Visual Rhetoric
A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History (2015)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
Mateusz Jacek Ferens
https://escholarship.org/content/qt61n600dz/qt61n600dz_noSplash_23ee560b3084214ac090a3ef86a65ef7.pdf
8
Previous Literature on the Hermeneia
The Hermeneia of Dionysius was copied and subsequently disseminated
across the Balkans within the first few decades of its completion.7 However, it
took almost a century for it to be noticed by Western scholars. A partial copy of
Dionysius’s Hermeneia was first mentioned in a publication by G. Schorn in 1832.8
Schorn described a painter’s manual used by Euthymios Dimitri, who painted
some frescos at a Greek Orthodox chapel in Munich in 1828.9 However, not much
attention was given to this manual, and it was not until Adolphe Didron’s
publication that the study of Dionysius’s Hermeneia really began. During his
travels to several monasteries on Mount Athos in 1839, French archeologist
Didron came across copies of a painter’s manual used by artists in the Monastery
of Esphigmenou and in Karyes.10 To Didron, these texts where a kind of
revelation, and he came to the conclusion that they explained the similarity and
7. Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna, 57.
8. G. Schorn, „
8
Previous Literature on the Hermeneia
The Hermeneia of Dionysius was copied and subsequently disseminated
across the Balkans within the first few decades of its completion.7 However, it
took almost a century for it to be noticed by Western scholars. A partial copy of
Dionysius’s Hermeneia was first mentioned in a publication by G. Schorn in 1832.8
Schorn described a painter’s manual used by Euthymios Dimitri, who painted
some frescos at a Greek Orthodox chapel in Munich in 1828.9 However, not much
attention was given to this manual, and it was not until Adolphe Didron’s
publication that the study of Dionysius’s Hermeneia really began. During his
travels to several monasteries on Mount Athos in 1839, French archeologist
Didron came across copies of a painter’s manual used by artists in the Monastery
of Esphigmenou and in Karyes.10 To Didron, these texts where a kind of
revelation, and he came to the conclusion that they explained the similarity and
7. Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna, 57.
8. G. Schorn, „Nachricht über ein neugriechisches Malerbuch,“ Kunstblatt, No. 1-5, 1832.
9. Some parts of the painter’s manual used by Euthymios date to 1741 while the rest date to 1820.
10. Adolphe Napoleon Didron, Manuel d’Iconographie Chrétienne Grecque et Latine, trans. Paul
Durand, (Paris : Imprimerie Royale, 1845), iii-xlviii and xxii.
9
iconographic uniformity of the entire Medieval artistic tradition.11 Didron left
some money for the monks on Mount Athos to provide him with a copy of the
manuscript. However, this copy was not completed by the time Didron received
a different version of the manuscript, copied by Constantine Simonidis.
Simonidis’s copy of the Hermeneia was then translated into French by Paul
Durand and published by Didron in 1845. Later, Athanasius Papadopoulos-
Kerameus revealed that Simonidis’s copy was a forgery and that parts of it were
not genuine.12 Simonidis, who became a notorious forger, had inscribed the front
page of his version with the fictitious date of 1458, perhaps to add an element of
prestige and to raise the monetary value of the work.13 Simonidis’s spurious text
was translated into German by Godehard Schäfer in 185514 and partially
translated into English in 1886.15
11. Ibid, xxii-xxiii.
12. Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Ερμηνεία της Ζωγραφικής Τέχνης (Hermeneia of the art
of painting), (St. Petersburg: Imprimerie B. Kirschbaum, 1909). δ’-η’.
13. Hetherington, The ‘Painter’s Manual,’ i. The copy by Simonidis, kept at the municipal library of
Chartres, was destroyed in 1944 according to Hetherington.
14. Godehard Schäfer, Ερμηνεία της Ζωγραφικής: Das Handbuch der Malerei vom Berge Athos aus
dem handschriftlichen neugriechischen Urtext übersetzt mit Anmerkungen von Didron d. Ä. und eigen
von G. Schäfer (Trier, 1855).
15. Adolphe Didron, Christian Iconography; or, the History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages, Vol. II,
The most trusted or accurate versions of the Hermeneia were first
published by scholars in the East. In 1868, the Russian bishop Porphyrii
Uspenskii published a Russian translation of the Hermeneia from a manuscript
that he found in Jerusalem, one which, according to Uspenskii, closely
corresponded to the earliest copies of Dionysius’s original.16 In 1909,
Papadopoulos-Kerameus published an edition of the entire Hermeneia in its
original Greek language.17 He based his edition on an eighteenth-century
manuscript, Codex Grecus 708, now located in the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public
Library in St. Petersburg. To this day, his publication remains the authoritative
text of the Hermeneia. In this edition, Papadopoulos-Kerameus exposed the
spurious nature of Didron’s source, and he included five other texts in the
appendices as possible sources for
the Hermeneia. Vasile Grecu, a Romanian
scholar, published another edition based on Romanian versions of the text in
1936.18
16. Porphyrii Uspenskii, Eрминия или наставление в живописном искусстве составленное
иеромонахом и живописцем Дионисием Фурнографиотом (Kiev, 1868). The original manuscript
that Uspenskii translated into Russian is now lost.
17. Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kérameus, Ερμηνεία της ζωγραφικής τέχνης (manual of the art of
painting), (St. Petersburg: Imprimerie B. Kirschbaum, 1909).
18. Vasile Grecu, Cărti de pictură bisericească bizantină (Cernauti, 1936). This edition is also a
republication of the Hermeneia copied by Archimandrite Makarie in 1805
A number of translations and editions have been made from copies of
Dionysius’s Hermeneia as early as the second half of the eighteenth century; many
of these were hand-copied by artists for use in the field. George Kakavas has
catalogued over 41 manuscript copies of the Hermeneia, and it is thought that
many more existed but are now lost or destroyed through arduous usage.19 The
original autograph manuscript of Dionysius also remains lost, and no known
copy of the manuscript dates back from before the second half of the eighteenth
century. However, the edition published by Papadopoulos-Kerameus is very
likely an exact replication of the archetypal text, at least in terms of content.
Having compared two of the earliest manuscript copies of the Hermeneia (the
Codex Grecus 708, dating to the second half of the eighteenth century, and the
Codex Benaki 58, dated 1768), Kakavas found both to be virtually identical.20
According to Kakavas, both manuscripts were probably copied directly from the
original, and they can be trusted in its stead.21
Two crucial works must be given special consideration in relation to the
argument at hand. The first is the English translation of the Hermeneia by Paul
19. Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna, Appendix IV.
20. Ibid, 18.
21. Ibid, 18-19.
Hetherington, published in 1974.22 Hetherington translated the Codex Grecus 708
into English, and he provided copious annotations and explanations of the
manuscript within his edition. The second is a recent study of Dionysius and the
Hermeneia by George Kakavas published in 2008.23 Kakavas incorporated
Dionysius’s painted works together with the literary context of the Hermeneia in
order to interpret the ideas expressed by the eighteenth-century painter and
author. Kakavas also provided the reader with a translation of the biography of
Dionysius, recorded by the hiero-monk Theophanes of Agrapha, and descriptions
of several important primary sources, such as the documented exchanges
between Dionysius and his correspondents.24
C
ritical literature and scholarly interpretations of the Hermeneia are few.
Some information is available in the summary of post-Byzantine art published in
1957 by Andreas Xyngopoulos.25 Nevertheless, much work remains to be done
on eighteenth-century post-Byzantine culture in general. Regarding the
Hermeneia of Dionysius, the publications by Hetherington and Kakavas remain
the most extensive studies on the subject to date.
22. Hetherington, The ‘Painter’s Manual.’ The version published in 1974 was republished in 1989.
The study at hand references the more recent publication.
23. George Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna (c.1670-1745): Artistic Creation and Literary Description
(Leiden: Alexandros Press, 2008).
24. Ibid, 64-72. In these pages Kakavas translated the biography of Dionysius, written by
Theophanes of Agrapha, found in the Codex Benaki 37 on folia 73-80.
25. Andreas Xyngopoulos, Σχεδίασμα Ιστορίας της Θρησκευτικής Ζωγραφικής μετά την
Άλωσιν (An Outline of the History of Religious Painting after the Fall), (Athens: Archeological
Association of Athens, 1957), 292-311
A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art History (2015)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
Mateusz Jacek Ferens
https://escholarship.org/content/qt61n600dz/qt61n600dz_noSplash_23ee560b3084214ac090a3ef86a65ef7.pdf
8
Previous Literature on the Hermeneia
The Hermeneia of Dionysius was copied and subsequently disseminated
across the Balkans within the first few decades of its completion.7 However, it
took almost a century for it to be noticed by Western scholars. A partial copy of
Dionysius’s Hermeneia was first mentioned in a publication by G. Schorn in 1832.8
Schorn described a painter’s manual used by Euthymios Dimitri, who painted
some frescos at a Greek Orthodox chapel in Munich in 1828.9 However, not much
attention was given to this manual, and it was not until Adolphe Didron’s
publication that the study of Dionysius’s Hermeneia really began. During his
travels to several monasteries on Mount Athos in 1839, French archeologist
Didron came across copies of a painter’s manual used by artists in the Monastery
of Esphigmenou and in Karyes.10 To Didron, these texts where a kind of
revelation, and he came to the conclusion that they explained the similarity and
7. Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna, 57.
8. G. Schorn, „
8
Previous Literature on the Hermeneia
The Hermeneia of Dionysius was copied and subsequently disseminated
across the Balkans within the first few decades of its completion.7 However, it
took almost a century for it to be noticed by Western scholars. A partial copy of
Dionysius’s Hermeneia was first mentioned in a publication by G. Schorn in 1832.8
Schorn described a painter’s manual used by Euthymios Dimitri, who painted
some frescos at a Greek Orthodox chapel in Munich in 1828.9 However, not much
attention was given to this manual, and it was not until Adolphe Didron’s
publication that the study of Dionysius’s Hermeneia really began. During his
travels to several monasteries on Mount Athos in 1839, French archeologist
Didron came across copies of a painter’s manual used by artists in the Monastery
of Esphigmenou and in Karyes.10 To Didron, these texts where a kind of
revelation, and he came to the conclusion that they explained the similarity and
7. Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna, 57.
8. G. Schorn, „Nachricht über ein neugriechisches Malerbuch,“ Kunstblatt, No. 1-5, 1832.
9. Some parts of the painter’s manual used by Euthymios date to 1741 while the rest date to 1820.
10. Adolphe Napoleon Didron, Manuel d’Iconographie Chrétienne Grecque et Latine, trans. Paul
Durand, (Paris : Imprimerie Royale, 1845), iii-xlviii and xxii.
9
iconographic uniformity of the entire Medieval artistic tradition.11 Didron left
some money for the monks on Mount Athos to provide him with a copy of the
manuscript. However, this copy was not completed by the time Didron received
a different version of the manuscript, copied by Constantine Simonidis.
Simonidis’s copy of the Hermeneia was then translated into French by Paul
Durand and published by Didron in 1845. Later, Athanasius Papadopoulos-
Kerameus revealed that Simonidis’s copy was a forgery and that parts of it were
not genuine.12 Simonidis, who became a notorious forger, had inscribed the front
page of his version with the fictitious date of 1458, perhaps to add an element of
prestige and to raise the monetary value of the work.13 Simonidis’s spurious text
was translated into German by Godehard Schäfer in 185514 and partially
translated into English in 1886.15
11. Ibid, xxii-xxiii.
12. Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Ερμηνεία της Ζωγραφικής Τέχνης (Hermeneia of the art
of painting), (St. Petersburg: Imprimerie B. Kirschbaum, 1909). δ’-η’.
13. Hetherington, The ‘Painter’s Manual,’ i. The copy by Simonidis, kept at the municipal library of
Chartres, was destroyed in 1944 according to Hetherington.
14. Godehard Schäfer, Ερμηνεία της Ζωγραφικής: Das Handbuch der Malerei vom Berge Athos aus
dem handschriftlichen neugriechischen Urtext übersetzt mit Anmerkungen von Didron d. Ä. und eigen
von G. Schäfer (Trier, 1855).
15. Adolphe Didron, Christian Iconography; or, the History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages, Vol. II,
The most trusted or accurate versions of the Hermeneia were first
published by scholars in the East. In 1868, the Russian bishop Porphyrii
Uspenskii published a Russian translation of the Hermeneia from a manuscript
that he found in Jerusalem, one which, according to Uspenskii, closely
corresponded to the earliest copies of Dionysius’s original.16 In 1909,
Papadopoulos-Kerameus published an edition of the entire Hermeneia in its
original Greek language.17 He based his edition on an eighteenth-century
manuscript, Codex Grecus 708, now located in the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public
Library in St. Petersburg. To this day, his publication remains the authoritative
text of the Hermeneia. In this edition, Papadopoulos-Kerameus exposed the
spurious nature of Didron’s source, and he included five other texts in the
appendices as possible sources for
the Hermeneia. Vasile Grecu, a Romanian
scholar, published another edition based on Romanian versions of the text in
1936.18
16. Porphyrii Uspenskii, Eрминия или наставление в живописном искусстве составленное
иеромонахом и живописцем Дионисием Фурнографиотом (Kiev, 1868). The original manuscript
that Uspenskii translated into Russian is now lost.
17. Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kérameus, Ερμηνεία της ζωγραφικής τέχνης (manual of the art of
painting), (St. Petersburg: Imprimerie B. Kirschbaum, 1909).
18. Vasile Grecu, Cărti de pictură bisericească bizantină (Cernauti, 1936). This edition is also a
republication of the Hermeneia copied by Archimandrite Makarie in 1805
A number of translations and editions have been made from copies of
Dionysius’s Hermeneia as early as the second half of the eighteenth century; many
of these were hand-copied by artists for use in the field. George Kakavas has
catalogued over 41 manuscript copies of the Hermeneia, and it is thought that
many more existed but are now lost or destroyed through arduous usage.19 The
original autograph manuscript of Dionysius also remains lost, and no known
copy of the manuscript dates back from before the second half of the eighteenth
century. However, the edition published by Papadopoulos-Kerameus is very
likely an exact replication of the archetypal text, at least in terms of content.
Having compared two of the earliest manuscript copies of the Hermeneia (the
Codex Grecus 708, dating to the second half of the eighteenth century, and the
Codex Benaki 58, dated 1768), Kakavas found both to be virtually identical.20
According to Kakavas, both manuscripts were probably copied directly from the
original, and they can be trusted in its stead.21
Two crucial works must be given special consideration in relation to the
argument at hand. The first is the English translation of the Hermeneia by Paul
19. Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna, Appendix IV.
20. Ibid, 18.
21. Ibid, 18-19.
Hetherington, published in 1974.22 Hetherington translated the Codex Grecus 708
into English, and he provided copious annotations and explanations of the
manuscript within his edition. The second is a recent study of Dionysius and the
Hermeneia by George Kakavas published in 2008.23 Kakavas incorporated
Dionysius’s painted works together with the literary context of the Hermeneia in
order to interpret the ideas expressed by the eighteenth-century painter and
author. Kakavas also provided the reader with a translation of the biography of
Dionysius, recorded by the hiero-monk Theophanes of Agrapha, and descriptions
of several important primary sources, such as the documented exchanges
between Dionysius and his correspondents.24
C
ritical literature and scholarly interpretations of the Hermeneia are few.
Some information is available in the summary of post-Byzantine art published in
1957 by Andreas Xyngopoulos.25 Nevertheless, much work remains to be done
on eighteenth-century post-Byzantine culture in general. Regarding the
Hermeneia of Dionysius, the publications by Hetherington and Kakavas remain
the most extensive studies on the subject to date.
22. Hetherington, The ‘Painter’s Manual.’ The version published in 1974 was republished in 1989.
The study at hand references the more recent publication.
23. George Kakavas, Dionysios of Fourna (c.1670-1745): Artistic Creation and Literary Description
(Leiden: Alexandros Press, 2008).
24. Ibid, 64-72. In these pages Kakavas translated the biography of Dionysius, written by
Theophanes of Agrapha, found in the Codex Benaki 37 on folia 73-80.
25. Andreas Xyngopoulos, Σχεδίασμα Ιστορίας της Θρησκευτικής Ζωγραφικής μετά την
Άλωσιν (An Outline of the History of Religious Painting after the Fall), (Athens: Archeological
Association of Athens, 1957), 292-311
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