Getty Museum

Canon Table Page

Date

1256

Medium

Tempera and gold paint

Culture

Armenian

Department

Manuscripts

Institution

Getty Museum

Like the other canon table pages from the Zeyt'un Gospels, this illumination is notable for its busy decoration, varied color, and architectural structure. Some of these features recall the characteristics of Byzantine church architecture as discussed in literature. The Byzantine author Procopius, for example, described the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in this way: "Who could recount the beauty of the columns and marbles. . . . For one would surely marvel at the purple hue of some, the green of others, at those on which the crimson blooms. . . . And so the visitor's mind is lifted up to God. . . ." In this canon table, which is heavily indebted to Byzantine art, Procopius's aesthetic of colorful variety instilling wonder in the viewer was surely still at work. The diversity of hue--green, blue, orange, gold, and pink--and the foliate decoration of the framework surrounding the text must have suggested a similar heavenly context to the manuscript's readers.

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