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How to Paint Destruction

The Role of Material Objects in the Work of Armenian Painter Vardges Sureniants
Comment peindre la destruction : la place des objets matériels dans l’œuvre du peintre arménien Vardges Sureniants
Christina Maranci
p. 73-97

Résumés

Le Sanctuaire profané de Vardges Sureniants compte parmi ses œuvres les plus célèbres des années 1890. Représentation contemporaine des massacres hamidiens, ce tableau attire l’attention sur le sort des objets matériels, ainsi que sur les actes de profanation et de destruction matérielle. Inspiré par l’attention de Sureniants à la culture matérielle, cet essai propose une lecture formelle approfondie du Sanctuaire profané, qui met en évidence la manière dont l’artiste représente la destruction du patrimoine culturel arménien. Les représentations de Sureniants doivent être comprises non seulement comme une manière de documenter visuellement la destruction d’artefacts, mais aussi comme une représentation de la ruine comprenant la quasi-totalité du répertoire artistique arménien. Son utilisation d’un style impressionniste et son insistance sur la spécificité de chaque objet peint nous invitent à examiner de près ces matériaux détruits, un véritable catalogue d’objets, de monuments et de textes à travers les détails picturaux de l’ensemble. Le Sanctuaire profané invite ainsi à une méditation sur la perte et la responsabilité, la représentation par l’image et la commémoration.

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1The attackers are not in the picture, but their crimes are visible. They have scattered holy books on the floor and knocked down candles. They have torn down the altar veil and pried open a chest. They have murdered a cleric, whose thurible has been knocked to the ground, its ashes spilled on the pavement. Against the back wall is a large carved cross on a pedestal and an icon panel. Having witnessed the attack, these material objects – made of paper and leather, metal and cloth, stone, wax, and wood– meet our gaze, confronting us as we confront the aftermath.

  • 1 Sureniants scholarship is vast, almost all of it is in Armenian, and much of the remainder is in Ru (...)
  • 2 For relevant scholarship on the atrocity image, see V. K. Davidian, 2018. See also B. Zelizer, 1998 (...)
  • 3 V. K. Davidian, 2018, 8.
  • 4 On cultural genocide with reference to the Armenians, see R. Lemkin, 2005 [1944], 84-85. For Lemkin (...)

2Vardges Sureniants’ Trampled Sanctuary of 1895 [Ոտնահարուած Սրբութիւն or Ոտնակոխ արուած սրբութիւն], hanging in the National Gallery of Armenia, is an oil on canvas painting depicting the massacres ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II (see figure 1).1 It belongs to a category of atrocity images including paintings, prints, photography, and drawings which circulated at the time in the European, Armenian, Russian, and American press.2 Like Ivan (Hovhannes) Aivazovsky’s Massacre of the Armenians at Trebizond 1895 (1897) (see figure 2), Sureniants’ image depicts the slaughter of Armenians at the hands of the Turks. Aivazovsky’s image, as Vazken Davidian has shown, is carefully composed to entice viewers by the beauty of the seascape “before confronting them with the horror of the unfolding tragedy, viewed safely from afar.”3 In contrast to that work, Trampled Sanctuary and its sister painting, After the Massacres [Ջարդից յետոյ, 1899], insist that violence has been done not only to the physical bodies of Armenians, but to their religious and cultural practices, and to their sacred monuments and objects. Forty years before Raphael Lemkin introduced the concept of cultural genocide, Sureniants’ paintings speak eloquently, and in expert detail, of the destruction of Armenian material culture.4

Figure 1 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895

Yerevan: National Gallery of Armenia

Figure 2 Ivan (Hovhannes) Aivazovsky’s Massacre of the Armenians at Trebizond 1895 (1897)
Tinted print, published in Fraternal Help for the Suffering Armenians in Turkey (in Russian) in 1898

  • 5 I thank both Vazken Davidian and Dzovinar Derderian for pointing this out to me.
  • 6 For biographical information, see A. Adamyan, 2012, 7-11; and M. Ghazaryan, 1960, 3-19.

3It is important to note that Sureniants did not witness the Hamidian massacres firsthand.5 He was born in 1860 in Akhaltsikhe (Armenian Akhaltska) in the Tiflis guberniya of the Russian empire (mod. Rep. of Georgia). He studied art in Moscow in 1876-1879 and spent the years 1879-1885 in Munich, during which time he visited San Lazzaro in Venice. In 1885-1886, he travelled to Iran with a group led by the Russian Persianist Valentin Zhukovski, visiting Tabriz, Shiraz, and Isfahan. In 1890-1891, he taught art history at the Gevorkian Academy at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin. During 1892, he travelled to and sketched historical Armenian sites of Ani and Sevan, seeing firsthand the medieval monuments and furnishings which would inform his painted works. For the remainder of the 1890s, he was based in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, where his works were shown in group exhibitions. 1916 saw him briefly in Tiflis; the following year he moved to Yalta, where he decorated the newly-built Armenian church of Saint Hṙip‘simē. In 1921, while working on this church, Sureniants fell sick and died; his tomb is located there.6 For much of his life, therefore, he lived and worked within Russian-Armenian and European intellectual circles, learning of the fate of Ottoman Armenians only from a distance.

  • 7 For a sense of his achievements in each of these spheres, see M. Ghazaryan, 1960. For a recent stud (...)
  • 8 V. Azatyan, 2012, 277-292. For Sureniants’ own writing on Armenian architecture, see for example, V (...)
  • 9 For a discussion of his historical paintings, see G. Gyurjyan, 1960.
  • 10 See for example S. Melik‘yan, 2016, 258.

4Sureniants is widely celebrated by experts and admirers of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Armenian art. Not only was he an extraordinarily prolific and versatile painter, but he was also a sculptor, book illustrator, set designer, art historian, and art critic.7 He translated Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and Goethe into Armenian; he read European and Anglophone scholarship and art criticism. As Vardan Azatyan has recently discussed, Sureniants was particularly engaged with the work of Karl Schnaase, who himself wrote about medieval Armenian art and architecture.8 Sureniants’ imagery encompasses a wide variety of genres, including portraits of historian Michael Chamchian and the Catholicos Mkrtich Khrimian “Hayrig”, architectural studies of the church of Hṙip‘simē and of the Alhambra, and watercolors of refugees from the Genocide. Yet he is best known for his narrative paintings, which depict a range of epic, historical, biblical, and mythological subjects, such as Ferdowsi Reading the Shahname to Shah Mahmud Ghazni (1913), Shamiram and Ara the Beautiful (1899), Salomé (1907), and the Knight-Woman (Ասպետ կինը, 1909).9 Art historians connect Sureniants’ work to painting styles such as Realism and Pointillism, and his subject matter to nineteenth-century symbolist and orientalist movements.10

  • 11 See V. K. Davidian, 2019, 274-277; B. Goryan, 1973, 8-9; V. Harut‘yunyan, 1960, 44-51; G. Gyurjyan, (...)
  • 12 For relevant theoretical discussions regarding genocide, memory, archive, and loss, see M.-A. Baron (...)

5Sureniants’ Trampled Sanctuary, along with After the Massacres and The Abandoned (Լքեալը, 1894) is among his most celebrated works of the 1890s. Scholars including Berj Goryan, Vahan Harut‘yunyan, Gabriel Gyurchyan, Manya Ghazaryan, and, more recently, Shahen Khachaturian, Ararat Aghasyan, Mekhak Ēlbakyan, Shushanik Zohrabyan, Sat‘enik Melik‘yan and many others have called attention to these images as responses to the Hamidian massacres.11 As contemporary representations of the violence against Ottoman Armenians that occurred prior to the Genocide of 1915-1922, Sureniants’ works offer a powerful point of departure for reflecting on the past, and one which can be productively read alongside, or against, textual documentation. Sureniants’ pointed attention to the fate of material objects, and to acts of desecration and material destruction, makes his work of particular importance to scholars of cultural heritage and cultural genocide, and to theoretical discussions about the archive and its loss, the representation of atrocity, the construction of memory, and the relationship between documentation and fiction.12

  • 13 As noted particularly by Manya Ghazaryan, medievalist and foremost specialist of medieval Armenian (...)

6I am not a specialist in modern Armenian painting, let alone on Sureniants. As a medievalist, however, I find within his paintings a fascinating corpus of manuscripts, carved cross-stones (Armenian khach‘k‘ars), textiles, wood and stone carving, buildings, their decoration, and epigraphy.13 Moreover, as a teacher of art history (as was Sureniants), I am drawn to his attention to composition, to his close renderings, his almost didactic sense of detail, and his awareness of contours, textures, and colors.

  • 14 On the construction of “prosthetic” images, see, M.-A. Baronian, 2010.

7Inspired by Sureniants’ engagement with material culture, I offer here a close formal reading of Trampled Sanctuary, in which I hope to draw out the ways he confronts the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage. As we shall see, his representations should not be understood only as visual documentation of destroyed artifacts. Sureniants has constructed a visual experience of material objects within an architectural interior, staging a scene of wreckage comprising almost the entire repertoire of Armenian art. His use of an impressionistic style and his simultaneous insistence on the specificity of each painted object invite us to take close account of the destroyed materials, while, at the same time, diverting our attention to the strokes and daubs of paint which seem to obstruct such careful inspection. Pictorial details lie just beyond the viewer’s perception, hinting at, but never delineating clearly, a catalogue of objects, monuments, and texts, producing a tension between the documentation of artifacts and his creation of them anew. Looking at Sureniants’ paintings of the 1890s, one feels compelled to ask: how does one recover a heritage that was lost in violence, and how does one confront the painful forensic task of sifting through destruction, knowing that there is no way to comprehend its scope, let alone recover it? Who, indeed, is the viewer, granted access to this scene of crime, and what action can or should be taken in its wake? Trampled Sanctuary demonstrates how the painterly surface of the canvas, and the material culture represented upon it, offer together meditations on loss and responsibility, image-making and commemoration. Presenting the destruction of artifacts, and, at the same time, giving them new poetic life in a painting, Sureniants provides a uniquely powerful commentary on the Hamidian massacres.14

The Architectural Setting

8Trampled Sanctuary (or “Sanctity”, depending on how one wishes to translate Սրբութիւն) is a large (112 x 89 cm) vertical painting, depicting, as described above, the interior of a church after an attack: dead cleric, strewn books, torn curtain, open chest. The viewer is not told where in the Ottoman empire this crime took place, let alone the specific church.

9Yet Trampled Sanctuary insists on its own architectural specificity. The sanctuary arch is supported on attached double columns with elongated imposts, and adorned with cushion capitals and bases. The attached column to the right of the khach‘k‘ar is articulated with muqarnas-like niches in its corners, and adorned, lower down, with a design of pipe molding (often referred as the “Seljuk chain”), features which suggest a thirteenth-century date for the structure. Sureniants further delineates the stylobate, the sanctuary stairs, and even the seams between stone pavers.

  • 15 M. Ghazaryan, 1960, 31 and Id., 1998, 10.
  • 16 M. Ghazaryan, 1998, 10. She gives no further explanation, justification, or references for this rem (...)
  • 17 B. Goryan, 1973, 8.

10Many scholars, following Manya Ghazaryan, associate the scene with the church of Surb Nshan (Holy Cross) at Varagavank‘ in Vaspurakan (modern Republic of Turkey), which was sacked in June of 1895.15 Ghazaryan writes, “As the architectural environment for the painting, Sureniants used a section of the ante-porch (nakhagavit‘) of the church of Varagavank‘.”16 Comparisons of what is known of the monastic complex with Sureniants’ interior, however, demonstrate no clear correlation. The painting shows a southern side chamber immediately at the base of the triple stair of the sanctuary. To the south of the door to the side chamber, and projecting into the area of the nave, is the large khach‘k‘ar, framed by an attached column. This organization does not conform to even the most generalized plan of any of the churches of Varagavank‘. Ghazaryan’s identification of an antechamber is even more baffling given the visible altar area in the painting. For these reasons, I was, until recently, inclined to agree with Berj Goryan, who downplays the importance of identifying a specific setting for Trampled Sanctuary in light of the widespread suffering the painting is meant to capture.17

  • 18 I am grateful to Arpine Asryan for discussing these cross-shaped khach‘k‘ars with me.

11I have now, however, identified a precise and much more convincing source for the Trampled Sanctuary: the gavit‘ of the monastery of Yovhannavank‘/Hovhannavank‘ (see figure 3). A comparison of Sureniants’ painting with the northeast corner of this chamber demonstrates a powerful correspondence: Sureniants has isolated for representation the northwest attached column of the gavit‘, which forms the support for the rib arch of the vaulting, and the large khach‘k‘ar to its north. The unusual (although not unique) cross-shape of the khach‘k‘ar that is attached to the column is identical to that of the cruciform icon in Sureniants’ painting.18 The large slab-shaped khach‘k‘ar at Yovhannavank‘ also served as a model for Sureniants’ painting: in both cases, the podium is decorated with three pointed arcades framing relief crosses; three channel moldings separate the podium from the khach‘k‘ar base; and the format of the khach‘k‘ar itself is quite similar; both feature a cornice with a central square frame, and both feature inscriptions on the lip of the cornice. This is not to say that Sureniants did not depart in significant ways from his model: most obviously, his painting adds anthropomorphic figures: he transformed the bas-relief cruciform khach‘k‘ar with a painted icon, and replaced the cross in the cornice with a figural image. Nevertheless, church and painting share seemingly incidental details, such as the contours of the stepped base and the precise decorative elements of the attached pier. Most telling of all is the semi-circular deformation, or cavity, which extends across the top two courses of the attached pier. Sureniants thus based his scene not only on the specific formal details, but also on the contemporary condition of the gavit‘ of Yovhannavank‘, while at the same time making radical changes to some of its most important elements.

Figure 3 Yovhannavank‘, gavit‘, northwest corner

Photograph by the author

  • 19 For this image see M. Ghazaryan, 1984.

12The identification of Yovhannavank‘ is only one small part of understanding Trampled Sanctuary, however; it is equally important to understand how and why Sureniants transformed his source. All of the elements of his painting serve to direct and control the gaze of the viewer: the orthogonals created by the pavers lead the eye back to the khach‘k‘ar and icon, the twin visual foci of the painting, but the diagonal sightlines are interrupted by intervening wreckage: flung books, spilled ashes, and dead priest. Trampled Sanctuary seems, therefore, a deliberate distortion of Sureniants’ religious paintings. In his Mother of God Enthroned (Աստուածամայրը գահի վրայ) of 1895, for example, Sureniants framed the Virgin and Child between twin columns and capitals, and sheltered them carefully and symmetrically within a semicircular molding.19 Trampled Sanctuary offers no such stable enclosure; Sureniants has sliced the altar in half and shifted the vantage point to the south. This decision not only eliminates the possibility of a frontal view of the apse, it also pushes the viewer, in ecclesiological terms, over to the left hand of Christ, and, therefore, quite literally, into a sinister position.

Manuscripts

  • 20 On the afterlife of medieval manuscripts, see H. Zeitlian Watenpaugh, 2019.
  • 21 Sylvie Merian, “Slash and Burn: How Two Manuscripts Survived a Violent Past”, Invited speaker: Tuft (...)
  • 22 This manuscript is now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, shelfmark Houghton MS. Arm. 1 (...)

13Manuscripts, large and small, deluxe and modest, litter the floor. Their abundance and centrality in Trampled Sanctuary reflects the central importance of the Armenian written word, of manuscripts, and above all, of the Gospels, to Armenian Christian identity. Armenian manuscripts survive in abundance (almost forty thousand are known), and preserved examples are dated as early as the fifth century. Gospels were not only a focus for devotion during the church liturgy, but were treasured in private homes and passed down from one generation to another.20 Armenian manuscripts, moreover, are unusual in that they traditionally contain a colophon, or memorial inscription, which records the place, date of production, identities of scribe, patrons and their families, and sometimes painters and binders, as well as precious historical information about the time of writing. As Sylvie Merian has recently shown, during the Hamidian massacres, as in the Genocide, Armenian manuscripts were the focus for violent attacks.21 One example, from Kharpert, was hacked with a sword or axe, cutting through forty-six sheets of parchment.22

14The manuscripts in the foreground of Trampled Sanctuary are of various sizes and types: the one closest to foreground is small and thick, featuring the typically Armenian fore-edge flap: a rectangular piece of leather attached to the back binding, covering the text block, and fastened at the front (see figure 4). In its form, size, and page format, it resembles one of many handheld liturgical books of the Armenian tradition from the thirteenth century onward (psalters, hymnals [sharaknots‘], breviaries, etc.). One can clearly discern the foliate marginal ornamentation in red and blue on the verso, as well as rubrics and lines of text. This manuscript, located at the bottom of the painting and in the extreme foreground, seems to offer itself directly to the viewer. Yet it is not easily read in any sense: Sureniants has positioned it upside down, and the lines of text are merely daubs of paint. After examining, rotating, and enlarging this pictorial passage, I believe the rubric on the verso folio begins with Բ followed by ռ, perhaps recalling to the assiduous (and imaginative?) viewer the many terms for “violence” in Armenian that begin with those letters (բռնաւոր, բռնութիւն). Yet this hunt for meaning is itself noteworthy. Sureniants presents to us the impossibility of recovering what has been lost, beyond a letterform here or there. Close observation and study of the canvas leads only to greater unease, with barely readable letters seeming to spell out the crime before us.

Figure 4 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail of manuscripts in foreground)

Yerevan: National Gallery of Armenia

15Just above is a heap of additional books. None of these can be read; they are either closed, or open, facing down. Sureniants nonetheless carefully represents various types of books: small and large, some with traditional Armenian bindings with fore-edge flaps, some bound in a deluxe European style, with gilt decoration and ridged spines. Noteworthy is the large manuscript to the right in the distance, with its double columns and ruling typical of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This book has fallen open to a chapter heading, but some of its pages are curled back upon themselves, as though the object had been flung through the air. Was it snatched from the open chest, judged worthless, and then discarded?

16The violence visibly directed against the books clashes with the clear evidence that they were used and cherished. Bookmarks appear between pages whose discolored edges suggest frequent handling; bindings show wear at edges and corners. Drawing a visual parallel between the strewn, split-open books and the dead ecclesiastic, Sureniants shows pictorially the violation not only of Armenians but of a learned, worldly, and affluent culture, and an ancient literary and religious tradition.

The Khach‘k‘ar

17Next to the manuscripts are traces of the cleric’s interrupted service. Fallen candles lie in front of the icon and khach‘k‘ar: some gilt-striped, others plain and thin, all with dark wicks suggesting use. The censer takes the form of a traditional Armenian buruaṙ, or thurible, with the vessel suspended on chains and perforated for the emanation of fragrance.

  • 23 In general, see H. Petrosyan, 2008. For an English-language introduction to khach‘k‘ars, see C. Mar (...)

18The disposition of the thurible, and the spill of ash, suggests the attack occurred during an actual censing, and that the cleric was approached as he venerated either the icon or khach‘k‘ar. The latter is the central and largest element of the painting, mounted on a podium carved with three additional crosses (see figure 5). Khach‘k‘ars are stone slabs, sometimes rising several meters high; they are always carved with a cross, but exhibit variation in their iconography and style. Tens of thousands survive from the medieval period, occurring throughout the regions of historical Armenia. Many bear inscriptions, offering precious historical and prosopographical evidence. They were often erected for commemorative purposes, to beseech God for the spiritual salvation of a person, living or dead.23

Figure 5 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, khach‘k‘ar)

Yerevan: National Gallery of Armenia

  • 24 For the former, see C. Maranci, 2018, 145-146; for Momik’s khach‘k‘ar, see S. Der Nersessian, 1978, (...)

19The khach‘k‘ar depicted in Trampled Sanctuary conforms to the stylistic and iconographic conventions of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: the vertical borders of the stone panel, divided into eight separate squares of fine geometric and vegetal patterns, resemble those of the Gōshavank‘ khach‘k‘ar by Pōghos of 1291 and the 1308 khach‘k‘ar carved by Momik and now at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin.24 The downward curve of the cornice and its figural sculpture also suggest a date from this era.

20Inscriptions run across the khach‘k‘ar’s uppermost surface and also between the cornice and the cross zone. Like those of the manuscripts, these texts also defy easy, complete comprehension. Based on epigraphic norms, however, one would expect that the upper line of Sureniants’s khach‘k‘ar to present a record of donation, including a date, a plea for intercession, and the name of the donor. This line might also include mention of the sculptor, as there is a faint suggestion of the word ԳՈՐԾԵԱԼ (made) in the upper right zone. Much more legible is the lower line of text, which reads:

ՆՇԱՆԴԱՅՍԵՒՅՍԱՐԳՍԻ

  • 25 I am grateful to Robert Dulgarian for his crucial decipherment of the Յ as Յ[իշատակ]. It is possibl (...)
  • 26 I thank Marie-Aude Baronian for this insight.

21I construe this as “Նշանդ այս եւ յ[իշատակ] Սարգսի” (This sign is also in memory of Sargis).25 It is tempting to ask: who is Sargis? Or, taking a step back, does Sureniants offer here the inscribed text of an actual historical object? Has he inserted here the name of a contemporary of his own (as we shall see below)? Has he invented this person entirely? One can imagine various answers to these questions, yet the very fact that the viewer is able to detect the name of an individual is itself important. Locating and deriving meaning from Sureniants’ inscribed texts is not achieved by a casual or quick glance at the canvas, but requires sustained and painstaking engagement. Standing before the canvas today in the National Gallery, the “Sargis” text is barely visible, not because of its size (it is about five times the height of the adjacent gallery label), but because Sureniants seems deliberately to have effaced some of the words. Unlike the manuscript texts, in which paint daubs suggest, rather than define, letters, the khach‘k‘ar’s inscriptions seem to record meaningful text. The uppermost line bears recognizable letterforms: one can identify the slash of the Ա, the curl of a Ծ, the bent mid-stroke of Ւ. Did Sureniants paint the text and then partially obscure it by rubbing or blurring? Whether or not this is so, the patient, intense search for meaning required by the khach‘k‘ar texts is itself meaningful, and recalls, perhaps deliberately, the practice of prayer before a khach‘k‘ar. Sureniants thus evokes in his canvas not only sacred objects and images, but also their veneration through looking. In this way, the viewer stands before the painting much as the cleric once stood before the khach‘k‘ar. A memorial function is also shared: just as the khach‘k‘ar asks us to remember “Sargis”, Sureniants asks us to remember the victims of the massacres. What was intended by “Sargis” as a religious plea for salvation, in Sureniants’ hands, becomes also a plea for the viewer (and the public) to save the Armenian nation from the massacres.26

The Icon

22The practice of veneration is also evoked by the painted icon to the right of the khach‘k‘ar (see figure 6). An icon, as the term is used in art history, can signify any sort of image used in worship; most often, however, it refers to painted panels depicting holy figures. The panel in Trampled Sanctuary, whose crimped corners suggest a cross shape, is, as discussed above, directly related to the cruciform khach‘k‘ar of Yovhannavank‘. It features a large, haloed standing saint who looks out at the viewer and raises his right hand in benediction. His drapery consists of a white cloak-like garment worn over a belted, shorter over-layer (perhaps a tunic?) of yellow, with close-fitting white sleeves and contrasting cuffs. Based on close inspection of his right leg he appears to be wearing white trousers or boots.

Figure 6 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, Icon of Bartholomew)

Yerevan: National Gallery of Armenia

  • 27 Manya Ghazaryan records the existence of this copy in her 1960 monograph, p. 84, but states that th (...)

23I have discussed this image elsewhere: most remarkable is the uncanny resemblance between Sureniants’ saint and those pictured in the frontispiece pages of one of the most celebrated Armenian manuscripts, the “Etchmiadzin Gospels”, located in the Matenadaran Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (shelfmark 2374) (see figure 7), raising all kinds of questions about icon panel production in medieval Armenia, Sureniants’ training as an art historian, his time spent at Etchmiadzin in the early 1890s, and his attested manufacture of a copy of manuscript MS 2374.27

Figure 7 Etchmiadzin Gospels, Evangelists Luke and John, 989 (Detail)

Yerevan: Matenadaran, MS N2374, fol. 7r

  • 28 I thank Irene Giviashvili for this important point.
  • 29 It is also possible that Sureniants was commenting, in the specific inclusion of an icon of Barthol (...)
  • 30 For this painting, see V. Harut‘yunyan, 1960, 42-44.

24More relevant to the present discussion is the identity of the saint: careful inspection of the text line just above the head reveals the name Բ[ԱՐ]ԹՈՂ[Ո]ՄԷՈՍ, identifying this figure as the apostle Bartholomew. According to tradition, Bartholomew, along with the apostle Thaddeus, evangelized in Armenia, a role emphasized by the manuscript just below him.28 A portrait of Bartholomew could hardly be more apt when we remember the intention of the Hamidian massacres specifically to crush the Christian communities of the Ottoman empire (and thus largely, although not exclusively, the Armenians) and which culminated in the horrific burning of nearly three thousand Armenians within the Cathedral in Urfa in 1895. Bartholomew, in Sureniants’ image, thus bears witness to the persecution of Armenians for belonging to the very religion he evangelized.29 With his alert countenance and erect posture, Bartholomew is the most lively element of the painting. Are we to regard his portrait less as a sacred image than as a piece of ecclesiastical furniture within a larger scene? If we follow the theology of Armenian icon worship, Bartholomew clearly expects to be addressed. In this sense, Sureniants’ “icon” finds a partner in his famous painting “Come Unto Me” [Եկայք առ իս], showing the full-length Christ, hands raised, addressing the viewer.30 Yet in that painting, the monumental Christ stands against a shallow background, and makes immediate and direct contact with the viewer. By contrast, Bartholomew appears in the middle ground, behind the heaped-up manuscripts and toppled candles. What can or should be said to him across this destroyed landscape? Should we venerate him in the wake of a violent attack? Why are we looking at all? Sureniants provides no answers, but by including this icon he calls attention to two very different kinds of viewing: the veneration of a saint, and the witnessing of a crime.

The Desecrated Sanctuary

25The left half of the painting is equally dense with traces of the attack. The central zone of the image, above the dead priest, is the door of the side chapel. Sureniants has shown it slightly ajar, pushed away from the church interior. The door is closely observed, its wooden surface covered with rectangular zones of mother-of-pearl, and opened by a door ring fastened to a decorated metal plate.

  • 31 For this painting, see S. Khachaturyan, 2010, 40; for the Sevan doors, see H. C. Evans, 2018, 186-1 (...)
  • 32 A beautiful example of mother-of-pearl doors, dated from 1731, is known from the chapel of St. Jame (...)

26Decorated wooden doors often feature in the works of Sureniants. In the Return of Queen Zabel of 1909 (National Gallery of Armenia), armed guards flank a large inscribed wooden door decorated with a vegetal pattern. In After the Massacres, quite similar in composition to Trampled Sanctuary, Sureniants depicts a closed wooden door with an elaborate design of multiple registers, and including figures, intercrossed arches, and a large medallion, a design which finds an almost identical match in the famous fifteenth-century doors of the church of the Holy Apostles in Sevan.31 These doors were in situ at the time of Sureniants’ visit, entering the Historical Museum in Yerevan in 1926. The door in Trampled Sanctuary is not as elaborate in its carving, but its ample mother-of-pearl inlay points to the wealth and connections of this church.32

  • 33 This khach‘k‘ar recalls, among others, those from the Armenian Monastery of Saint James in the Arme (...)
  • 34 On Sureniants’ Mother-of-God imagery, see recently S. Vardanyan, 2009.

27To the left of the door is the sanctuary area. At the very top of this zone is an additional khach‘k‘ar, resting on the lintel above the altar. Only a fraction of the size of the other khach‘k‘ar, it is square and pale in color. Within its beveled frame is, I believe, an equal-armed cross, with additional motifs – perhaps rosettes or small crosses – in the interstices.33 Below this khach‘k‘ar is the torn altar veil, revealing the apsidal curvature behind (figure 8).34 The fabric has been forcibly ripped from its rings. Sagging in the center, it hangs by a few remaining threads.

Figure 8 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, Altar area)

Yerevan: National Gallery of Armenia

  • 35 Z. Arzoumanian, 2008, 85-6.
  • 36 S. Aslanian, 2011, 51-53.
  • 37 For examples and analysis, see D. Kouymjian, 2015.
  • 38 R. T. Marchese and M. R. Breu, 2010, 284-301.

28This veil, or curtain, belongs to a large and relatively understudied corpus of Armenian liturgical textiles. In the Armenian church, as in other ancient churches, fabrics were traditionally hung across the altar; this is attested by textual sources such as the History by the tenth-century Armenian bishop Ukhtanēs.35 Sureniants’ depiction of the fabric is noteworthy: it seems to represent painted or stamped cotton, a textile produced in eighteenth-century Armenian communities principally in Tokat (Arm. Evdokia) in the Ottoman Empire, and Madras (modern Chennai) in India.36 Madras, the most important Armenian settlement in India, and a port on the Armenian merchant trade network and settled already by Julfan Armenians in the seventeenth century, was a major production center for stamped fabrics, made by using carved wooden ink blocks stamped on cotton fabrics.37 Such embellished altar curtains survive today in the patriarchal treasuries of Etchmiadzin, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Antelias (Lebanon), and also in museums and private collections.38

29Because the veil is tugged back into deep folds, its figures, texts, and floral decorations appear only as strips. The most complete figure appears at the left: a saint whose wide eyes resemble those of Bartholomew. His torso is cut off by the open lid of the chest. Just above and to his right is an inscription, partially concealed because of the curtain’s violent handling. One can nevertheless detect the letters ՅԻՇԱ, the root for “memory” (յիշատակ). As in the khach‘k‘ar inscription, with its memorial of Sargis, here too we might imagine that the veil recorded the name of the donor, his/her family, and other related individuals related to its manufacture. Yet the larger implications of this word are clear: Sureniants’ visual slicing has turned what was most likely spelled out as “յիշատակ է”(this is a memorial of) into “յիշա”, not far from the imperative “յիշեա՜”, or Remember!

  • 39 I thank Irene Giviashvili for this observation.
  • 40 I owe this insight to Haig Utidjian.

30The liturgical meanings of the painting are also noteworthy. Placing the body of the ecclesiastic near the sanctuary would recall to the faithful the sacrifice of Christ and the liturgy of the eucharist.39 The precise disposition of the curtain is also noteworthy in this respect. In the Armenian church liturgy, the veil is generally open, revealing the sanctuary behind. Except for Great Lent, when the veil is closed entirely, the veil is typically closed only for a few minutes during the divine liturgy: once during the preparation of the gifts, and just after communion towards the end of the service.40

31It is difficult to tell whether Sureniants’ veil was in a closed or open position prior to the crime. The long hanging threads and loop at the extreme left of the painting suggest only that it was roughly pulled from its support. Yet it is clear that Sureniants has rendered the veil to show the violence of the attack, and also to reveal, but only partially, the painting of the sanctuary behind. The painted scene is cut off on the left by the frame and on the right by the altar veil. Careful inspection reveals that the two long stretched threads of the veil frame the head of the Virgin, whose golden halo contrasts with her mantle and face. Upon her chest one can see the haloed head of the Christ Child, and just below, a smaller, standing haloed figure, perhaps a saint.

  • 41 “Կանոն նաւակատեաց եկեղեցւոյ եւ պղծելոյ յանաւրինաց եւ զշարժեալ սեղանն վերստին հաստատել”. See G. Tēr- (...)
  • 42 Ա(ստուա)ծ մտին հեթանոսք՛ի ժառանգութի(ւն) քո. Պղծեցին զտաճար սուրբ քո, արարին զԵրուսաղէմ որպէս զհիւղ (...)

32Although positioned off-center on the canvas, the torn curtain and the violation of the altar area are of central significance to the painting, informing its very name, Trampled SanctuaryՈտնահարուած (or Ոտնակոփ արուած) Սրբութիւն” (literally, a sanctuary trodden or beaten down underfoot). As the son of a priest and as a teacher in the academy at Etchmiadzin, Sureniants surely well knew that such desecration constituted both a material and a spiritual pollution of the altar, necessitating purification before the church could be used again. A special re-consecration rite is known from Armenian tradition, recorded already in the late tenth or eleventh centuries. Known as the “Canon for the consecration of the church having been polluted by the lawless and for the re-establishment of the altar that has been disturbed”, this rite requires the bathing of church walls, doors, and floors, the re-sanctification of church instruments, furniture, vestments, and curtain, and the removal and reinstallation of the altar.41 The rite opens with Psalm 78 (79) read in full, which concerns the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (v. 1): “O God, the heathen have entered and polluted your holy temple: they have made Jerusalem into fruiterers’ huts.”42 This line is echoed shortly after, when the bishop addresses the Lord:

  • 43 Մտին հեթանոսք եւ պղծեցին զտաճար սուրբ քո, կոխելով պիղծ գարշապարաւքն զսուրբ զատակ սորա, որ սրբոց եղ (...)

The heathen have entered and polluted your temple, trampling with their filthy heels your holy floor, which has been the dwelling place of the saints, and with their filthy hands touched your holy altar […].43

  • 44 “[…]սրբեա՜յ զպիղծ գարշապարացն զգնացսն ի սրբութենէ քումմէ […]”. See G. Tēr-Vardanyan, 2012, 151.

33In a later prayer, the bishop asks the Lord to “cleanse the tracks of filthy heels from your sanctuary.”44 By representing the torn curtain and exposed sanctuary, Sureniants visualizes powerfully the contamination of the holiest area of the church by “filthy heels” and “filthy hands”, as wrought by the Hamidian massacres.

Remembering the Dead

  • 45 The last letter, Ց, is conjectural; I cannot see the upper righthand part of the loop.

34Inscriptions appear above the wooden door and to the right of the icon. The latter, more legible text opens with Ա[ստուա]ծ աւրհնեսցէ[...], asking God to give his blessing to a series of individuals including a Step‘anos and a Varduhi; it closes with the doxology, “Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and ever amen” (figure 9). Noteworthy is the fifth line of the inscription, bearing the words “ԵՒ ԵՒՍ ԱՌ ՅԱԿՈԲ ԱՒԱԳԵՐէՑ [...]”, or “and also to Yakob awagerēts‘ [senior priest, or archpriest].”45

Figure 9 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, “Yakob Awagerets‘” inscription at right)

Yerevan: National Gallery of Armenia

  • 46 See for example those of the region of Loṙi in S. G. Barkhudaryan et al., 2012.
  • 47 In Hracheay Achaṙean’s Dictionary of Armenian Names, the earliest attestation of “Varduhi” dates fr (...)

35This text follows the conventions for a medieval Armenian memorial inscription, beseeching intercession and divine salvation on behalf of an individual and family members. Many such texts appear on the walls of churches and monasteries across the historical lands of Armenia, testifying to the faith of individuals, indicating their economic commitment to the institution, and offering scholars a wealth of historical information in the process.46 Perhaps we are to understand Yakob, Step‘anos, and Varduhi as individuals from the deep past, perhaps a donor and family members.47 Yet here it is worth noting that the earliest attestation of the name “Varduhi” dates from 1609, opening the possibility that this text is not a transcription of an existing medieval lapidary text but a modern artistic invention.

  • 48 Awag erets‘ translates as archipresbyter; see Nor Baṙgirk‘ Haykazean Lezui vol. 1, 387.
  • 49 Y. Surēniants, 1881.

36At least regarding one name in that series, for example, invites, a more personal association with Sureniants. “Yakob” was Sureniants’ own middle name, but it was also the name of his father, who served as a priest in the Armenian diocese of Moscow, and who signed his correspondence “Yakob Avag K‘ahanay” (Yakob the senior priest).48 His tomb, located in the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow, was sculpted by Sureniants in 1888-1889. We might thus read his name “Yakob‘” as a simultaneous commemoration of a medieval past and a much more recent and personal loss.49

37If I am right, Sureniants has not simply recorded an extant inscription, but rather deliberately employed the convention of epigraphic memorials, a tradition preserved in Armenian inscriptions as early as the fifth century, to offer a personal prayer to God also (“եւ եւս”) for his own Yakob. With its inscription, Trampled Sanctuary thus takes on additional, and quite personal, dimensions of memory and history, painted by a living descendant of the Sureniants family, who has generated a new image from the wreckage of the massacres.

*

  • 50 I owe this point entirely to Vazken Davidian.
  • 51 A. Adamyan, 2012, 8.
  • 52 See V. K. Davidian, 2018 and Id., 2019.
  • 53 V. K. Davidian, 2018.
  • 54 I thank Vazken Davidian for this suggestion.

38A different essay (and one written by an expert on Sureniants) would comb published writings and archives for his and others’ reactions to the Hamidian massacres. It would compare his images with contemporary visual representations of those events, including photographs, drawings, postcards, and cartoons. I offer instead a few general reflections. First, it is important to remember that Sureniants produced and exhibited his works within Russian-Armenian circles.50 He was a member of the artists’ cooperative known as “Peredvizhniki” (Wanderers), and in 1895, Trampled Sanctuary was exhibited at the twenty-third exhibition organized by this group.51 Furthermore, like many other Armenian intellectuals of his era, Sureniants envisioned a shared experience of Armenians across the Russian and Ottoman empires. Like Aivazovsky, he contributed to the volume Fraternal Help for the Suffering of Armenians in Turkey, a collection of articles and illustrations published in 1897 and again in 1898, which sought to solicit attention and aid from the Russian public for the Hamidian Massacres in the face of Russian tsarist government’s inactions.52 Davidian has suggested that the Massacre at Trebizond 1895, published within Fraternal Help as a tinted engraving (the original is lost), functioned both as a j’accuse of the Ottomans and as a plea for help from the Russians.53 It seems probable that Sureniants’ Trampled Sanctuary was created with the same goals in mind.54

  • 55 V. K. Davidian, 2018.
  • 56 R. P. Adalian, 2010, 190.

39In light of such shared goals, it is fascinating to compare how differently these two works engage the viewer. The former image presents, upon first glance, a seaside town below a vast sky, with calm waters and ships in the middle ground and background.55 Only upon close inspection does the viewer see the rowboats packed with people, the struggles, and the beating, and notice similar violence along the coastline that winds in the background on the right. Trampled Sanctuary is more rapidly identified as an atrocity image. Its focus, however, is not just human death, but also material desecration and destruction. Sureniants’ close observation of objects – the gilt of European bindings, the printed patterns of cotton textiles, the marginal ornaments in a manuscript – gives dimension and power to their discarded state. His distinctive style of painting, sometimes described as “pointillist”, juxtaposes visible strokes and daubs of various sizes and shapes in related color shades, often layering slashes and spots of highlight over this base, thus suggesting a gradual and deliberate painting process.56 Rather than creating uniform or smoothly modulated zones of color, the result is a hazy, light-suffused pictorial effect.

  • 57 P. Balakian, 2013, 68. I owe the observation about the senses to Marie-Aude Baronian.
  • 58 See above, note 4.

40One might argue that such a painterly style might suit well Sureniants’ representations of biblical, epic and courtly images, scenes of the remote past or distant lands, but that it clashes disturbingly with the overtly violent theme of Trampled Sanctuary and with the grisly nature of the subject matter. Yet like Aivazvosky’s work, but in a very different way, Sureniants’ style heightens the power of the imagery. He invites one to perceive the canvas not so much as a totality but as a composite of discrete chromatic and compositional zones. Dwelling upon the manuscripts, or curtain, or icon, the viewer accumulates and identifies ever more details. The process of looking seems as much an archaeological or forensic task as an aesthetic experience. Tactile and olfactory senses are evoked, too, in the soft folds of the altar veil and the burning ash from the thurible, the latter perhaps evoking a ghoulish memory of the burning of Armenian churches.57 While scholarship has come increasingly to attend the cultural dimensions of genocide, Sureniants’ imagery provides a striking, and strikingly visceral, contemporary perspective, not to mention a grim omen of what would transpire only a few years later.58

41In its intimacy, Trampled Sanctuary also differs from the more public and populated view of Massacre at Trebizond 1895. Instead of showing a crowded townscape, with victims massed in large groups, Trampled Sanctuary uses a vertical format and a much closer vantage point focusing on one corner of an interior. It is as though Sureniants envisioned a single viewer standing before the canvas, engaged in a solitary confrontation with the dead priest and ecclesiastical wreckage.

42Yet if Sureniants has imagined a single witness to the scene of Trampled Sanctuary, further questions arise. Is there something unethical, or at least ethically ambiguous, about such close looking in the face of devastation? What are we to make of these physical traces of a culture which has been slated for destruction? Why are we looking and who precisely are “we”– victim, churchgoer, cleric, passerby? Are we somehow culpable? While we try to read inscriptions or identify textile patterns, should we not be seeking help, catching the perpetrators, or indeed running for our lives? Perhaps someone lurks behind that slightly ajar, mother-of-pearl door; or perhaps a door has opened off-canvas, to the right of the image, where light spills in. As we gaze and discover, meanwhile, Saint Bartholomew, the apostle and martyr responsible for the Christianization of Armenia, looks back at us.

43As is well known, Sureniants belonged to a wave of Armenian artists and architects trained in the modern European tradition. Yet there is a heavy irony in applying the Europeanizing visual mode to the Hamidian massacres, atrocities against which, notoriously, the European powers themselves failed to take action, despite repeated, insistent, and urgent requests. Perhaps among Sureniants’ imagined viewers is a European, who only sees the attack through a hazy, impressionistic lens, taking note of exotic objects and interesting-looking texts but ultimately failing to do anything but stand in front of a painting. Trampled Sanctuary, therefore, offers more than a site of represented artifacts to be scrutinized, identified, and catalogued. It asks us also to reflect upon the role of viewer, and upon the act of looking itself.

  • 59 Y. K‘ēosyēean, 2003, 493-500.

44In closing, I offer a perspective from over a millennium before Surienants, in the person of the seventh-century theologian and locum tenens catholicos of Armenia, Vrt‘anēs Kert‘ogh. Vrt‘anēs is famous for his written defense of holy images and their veneration, produced in response to violent attacks, from within the Armenian community, on images as “vile matter” and their veneration as idolatry. Vrt‘anēs responded by defending holy images because of, not despite, their material status. He presented biblical antecedents for church decoration (the Temple Veil and the Cherubim of the Ark of the Covenant), and cited the memorial function of images. Most unique and striking, however, is Vrt‘anēs’ impassioned defense of holy images as material things, made from God’s creation, and from ingredients sometimes edible and even medicinal.59 Yet if Vrt‘anes defended images in part by their status as materials, Sureniants emphasizes something else: that material objects are (usually) apprehended by the eyes, and that how we see matters as much as what we see.

45As I hope to have shown, Sureniants’ Trampled Sanctuary requires work across conventional academic disciplines, offering at once an archaeological and textual corpus to study, an art history lesson in looking, a powerful visualization of the destruction of material culture that accompanied the atrocities of the Hamidian era, and a poetic restoration of what was lost with the massacres– a creation made from destruction.

I wish to thank Kathryn Babayan, Marie-Aude Baronian, and Dzovinar Derderian for their invitation to join this volume and the attendant workshop, and Baronian and Derderian for their insightful comments on an earlier draft. This paper was also much improved by conversations with Satenik Chookaszian, Erin Piñon, and by the comments of Irene Giviashvili and Arpine Asryan. I am particularly grateful to Haig Utidjian for his patience, erudition, and insights. Finally, Vazken Davidian, by his own scholarship and by his generous suggestions, greatly improved this essay. Earlier versions were presented at Abdul Hamid II Era and Beyond: Massacres and Reform, Rupture and Continuity, 25-26 October 2018, at Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, where I benefitted from discussions with Taner Akçam, Marc Mamigonian, Anna Aleksanyan, Ani Ohanian, Ronald Suny, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Varak Ketsemanian, and many others; and at Ahead of Time: Exploring the Relationship Between Ancient and Modern Armenian Studies, organized by Lisa Gulesserian and Julia Hintlian at Harvard University on 28 March 2019. I also wish to thank the Director of the National Gallery of Armenia, Arman Tsaturyan, for his kindness in allowing me permission to publish photographs of the painting in this volume, and I thank the museum guards for their bemused companionship as I stumbled through the Sureniants rooms. As always, Robert Dulgarian improved both the substance and the writing of this essay. Finally, I thank all those who have shared with me their fascination and love for the magnificent Sureniants. All errors are my own.

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Melik‘yan Sat‘enik [Սաթենիկ Մելիքյան], “Մտորումներ Վարդգես Սուրենյանցի Կորած Կտավի Շուրջ [Reflections on the Lost Canvas of Vardges Surenyants‘]”, Գիտական հոդվածների ժողովածու [Gitakan hodvatsneri zhoghovatsu], 2016 (4), 257-265.

Petrosyan Hamlet [Համլետ Պետրոսյան], Խաչքար: Ծագումը, Գործառույթը, Պատկերագրությունը, Իմաստաբանությունը [Khach'k'ar: Origins, Function, Iconography, Meaning]. Yerevan: PrintInfo, 2008.

Sontag Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.

Suny Ronald Grigor, They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Surēniants‘ Yakob [Յակոբ Սուրէնեանց], “Նամակ Մոսկվայից [Letter from Moscow]”, Արարատ Ամսագիր [Ararat Amsagir], 14 (5), 1881, 239-242.

Sureniants Vardges [Վարդգես Սուրենյանց], “Հայկական ճարտարապետութեան տեղը գեղարուեստի պատմութեան մէջ [The place of Armenian architecture in art history]”, Վտակ. Գրական-բանասիրական ժողովածու [Vtak: Grakan-banasirakan Zhoghovatsu], Tiflis: Martirosyants‘, 1901, 236-254.

Stambolyan Astghik [Աստղիկ Ստամբոլյան], “Աշխարհ, որ կոչվում է Սուրենյանցական [A world called Surenyants]”, Եջմիածին [Ēchmiadzin], 12, 2012, 70-77.

Tēr-Vardanyan Gēorg [Գէորգ Տէր-Վարդանյան] (ed.), Մատենագիրք Հայոց/Armenian Classical Authors 11, 10th Century, Book 1, Antelias: Armenian Catholicossate of Cilicia, 2010.

Tēr-Vardanyan Gēorg [Գէորգ Տէր-Վարդանյան], Մայր Մաշտոց [Mayr Mashtots‘], vol. 1, Etchmiadzin: Holy See, 2012.

Vardanyan Sat‘enik [Սաթենիկ Վարդանյան], “Վարդգես Սուրենյանցի Տիրամոր Պատկերը Գյումրիի Յոթ Վերք Եկեղեցու Խորանում [The Image of the Mother of God by Vardges Surenyants on the Altar of the Seven Wounds Church in Gyumri]”, Էջմիածին [Ēchmiadzin], 5, 2009, 106-109.

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Notes

1 Sureniants scholarship is vast, almost all of it is in Armenian, and much of the remainder is in Russian. For a recent comprehensive bibliography and catalogue that takes into account the publications and exhibitions associated with the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth in 1860, see A. Adamyan, 2012. For a discussion of Sureniants’ portrayal of Ottoman Armenian suffering, see V. K. Davidian, 2019, 274-277; and S. Khachaturian, 2010. On the Hamidian Massacres, see R. G. Suny, 2017, esp. 105-123; K. D. Watenpaugh, 2015, 62-69; B. Adjemian and M. Nichanian, 2018.

2 For relevant scholarship on the atrocity image, see V. K. Davidian, 2018. See also B. Zelizer, 1998; S. Sontag, 2003; S. Crane, 2008; G. Batchen et al., 2012.

3 V. K. Davidian, 2018, 8.

4 On cultural genocide with reference to the Armenians, see R. Lemkin, 2005 [1944], 84-85. For Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide, see T. Akçam, 2012, 287-288; and P. Balakian, 2013. For case studies of Armenian cultural heritage and genocide, see H. Zeitlian Watenpaugh, 2019 and 2014.

5 I thank both Vazken Davidian and Dzovinar Derderian for pointing this out to me.

6 For biographical information, see A. Adamyan, 2012, 7-11; and M. Ghazaryan, 1960, 3-19.

7 For a sense of his achievements in each of these spheres, see M. Ghazaryan, 1960. For a recent study of Sureniants’ illustrations and sketches, see V. Badalyan, 2010 and S. Zohrabyan, 2010, 22-34. For a study of Sureniants’ compositional elements, and a close art-historical reading of his work as a whole, see S. K. Zohrabyan, 2014.

8 V. Azatyan, 2012, 277-292. For Sureniants’ own writing on Armenian architecture, see for example, V. Sureniants, 1901.

9 For a discussion of his historical paintings, see G. Gyurjyan, 1960.

10 See for example S. Melik‘yan, 2016, 258.

11 See V. K. Davidian, 2019, 274-277; B. Goryan, 1973, 8-9; V. Harut‘yunyan, 1960, 44-51; G. Gyurjyan, 1960, 134-147; M. Ghazaryan, 1960, 30-33; M. Ghazaryan, 1998, 8-20; S. Khachaturian, 2010, 19; A. Aghasyan, 2018, 21-22; A. Aghasyan, 2010; M. Ēlbakyan, 2018; S. Melik‘yan, 2016, 259; and A. Stambolyan, 2012, 72. I hope that the specialist will forgive me if, despite due diligence, I have inadvertently omitted here important studies which might duplicate what I present; nevertheless I hope that my offering, at the very least, is useful as one of the only critical English-language studies of Sureniants, who deserves far more attention in the European and Anglophone world than he has received thus far, particularly in this moment, when art history purports increasingly to be global and to acknowledge modernisms in the plural.

12 For relevant theoretical discussions regarding genocide, memory, archive, and loss, see M.-A. Baronian, 2014; Id., 2010.

13 As noted particularly by Manya Ghazaryan, medievalist and foremost specialist of medieval Armenian wood carving: see M. Ghazaryan, 1960.

14 On the construction of “prosthetic” images, see, M.-A. Baronian, 2010.

15 M. Ghazaryan, 1960, 31 and Id., 1998, 10.

16 M. Ghazaryan, 1998, 10. She gives no further explanation, justification, or references for this remark.

17 B. Goryan, 1973, 8.

18 I am grateful to Arpine Asryan for discussing these cross-shaped khach‘k‘ars with me.

19 For this image see M. Ghazaryan, 1984.

20 On the afterlife of medieval manuscripts, see H. Zeitlian Watenpaugh, 2019.

21 Sylvie Merian, “Slash and Burn: How Two Manuscripts Survived a Violent Past”, Invited speaker: Tufts University Annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration. Tufts University, April 18, 2018 (Medford, MA) and Sylvie Merian, “Slash and Burn: How Two Houghton Manuscripts Survived a Violent Past”, Invited speaker: Houghton Library, Harvard University, July 10, 2018 (Cambridge, MA). Publication of this work is planned by the author.

22 This manuscript is now in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, shelfmark Houghton MS. Arm. 12.

23 In general, see H. Petrosyan, 2008. For an English-language introduction to khach‘k‘ars, see C. Maranci, 2018, chapters 3, 5, and 6.

24 For the former, see C. Maranci, 2018, 145-146; for Momik’s khach‘k‘ar, see S. Der Nersessian, 1978, 203, fig. 156.

25 I am grateful to Robert Dulgarian for his crucial decipherment of the Յ as Յ[իշատակ]. It is possible also that the “ԱՅ” in what I construe as “այս” is the common abbreviation for “of God” (Աստուծոյ), very commonly found as formula “նշանդ ա[ստուծո]յ” (this sign/cross of God). But there is no evidence for a superscript line above the two letters, as is conventional and also found on other inscriptions in the painting. Nevertheless my reading remains conjectural.

26 I thank Marie-Aude Baronian for this insight.

27 Manya Ghazaryan records the existence of this copy in her 1960 monograph, p. 84, but states that the location of this copy is unknown.

28 I thank Irene Giviashvili for this important point.

29 It is also possible that Sureniants was commenting, in the specific inclusion of an icon of Bartholomew, on the sacking of the Monastery of Surb Bart‘oghomeos in Aghbak (Vaspurakan). A report from 1896 records that all the Armenian churches and monasteries in “Haghbak” were ruined. See A. Aghasyan, 2018, 15, who draws from: “Ազգային: Հայաստանեացն եկեղեցին տաճկաստանում”, Արարատ Ամսագիր 29/2 (1896), 87-92 (p. 89). I thank Vazken Davidian for both references and for raising this question.

30 For this painting, see V. Harut‘yunyan, 1960, 42-44.

31 For this painting, see S. Khachaturyan, 2010, 40; for the Sevan doors, see H. C. Evans, 2018, 186-187, cat. no. 79.

32 A beautiful example of mother-of-pearl doors, dated from 1731, is known from the chapel of St. James’ Head in the Armenian Patriarchate of Saint James in Jerusalem (see B. Narkiss, 1979, 127).

33 This khach‘k‘ar recalls, among others, those from the Armenian Monastery of Saint James in the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. See B. Burjek‘yan, 2015; and the khach‘k‘ar of “Vasil” (perhaps Pahlawuni), preserved in the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Antelias. See H. C. Evans, 2018, 142, cat. no. 53. I thank Jirair Christianian for discussing this with me.

34 On Sureniants’ Mother-of-God imagery, see recently S. Vardanyan, 2009.

35 Z. Arzoumanian, 2008, 85-6.

36 S. Aslanian, 2011, 51-53.

37 For examples and analysis, see D. Kouymjian, 2015.

38 R. T. Marchese and M. R. Breu, 2010, 284-301.

39 I thank Irene Giviashvili for this observation.

40 I owe this insight to Haig Utidjian.

41 “Կանոն նաւակատեաց եկեղեցւոյ եւ պղծելոյ յանաւրինաց եւ զշարժեալ սեղանն վերստին հաստատել”. See G. Tēr-Vardanyan, 2012, 145-159.

42 Ա(ստուա)ծ մտին հեթանոսք՛ի ժառանգութի(ւն) քո. Պղծեցին զտաճար սուրբ քո, արարին զԵրուսաղէմ որպէս զհիւղս մրգապահաց: It is noteworthy that the same image of “fruiterer’s huts” [հուղս մրգապահաց] as a figure for modest or unworthy buildings is used also in relation to the construction of Aght‘amar. See Thomas Artsruni edited by R. W. Thomson, 1985, 355; and G. Tēr-Vardanyan, 2010, 287.

43 Մտին հեթանոսք եւ պղծեցին զտաճար սուրբ քո, կոխելով պիղծ գարշապարաւքն զսուրբ զատակ սորա, որ սրբոց եղեալ էր աւթեւան, եւ պիղծ ձեռաւք շաւշափեցին զսեղան քո սուրբ […]”. See G. Tēr-Vardanyan, 2012, 148.

44 “[…]սրբեա՜յ զպիղծ գարշապարացն զգնացսն ի սրբութենէ քումմէ […]”. See G. Tēr-Vardanyan, 2012, 151.

45 The last letter, Ց, is conjectural; I cannot see the upper righthand part of the loop.

46 See for example those of the region of Loṙi in S. G. Barkhudaryan et al., 2012.

47 In Hracheay Achaṙean’s Dictionary of Armenian Names, the earliest attestation of “Varduhi” dates from 1609. See H. Achaṙean, 1942, 115

48 Awag erets‘ translates as archipresbyter; see Nor Baṙgirk‘ Haykazean Lezui vol. 1, 387.

49 Y. Surēniants, 1881.

50 I owe this point entirely to Vazken Davidian.

51 A. Adamyan, 2012, 8.

52 See V. K. Davidian, 2018 and Id., 2019.

53 V. K. Davidian, 2018.

54 I thank Vazken Davidian for this suggestion.

55 V. K. Davidian, 2018.

56 R. P. Adalian, 2010, 190.

57 P. Balakian, 2013, 68. I owe the observation about the senses to Marie-Aude Baronian.

58 See above, note 4.

59 Y. K‘ēosyēean, 2003, 493-500.

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Table des illustrations

Légende Figure 1 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Légende Figure 2 Ivan (Hovhannes) Aivazovsky’s Massacre of the Armenians at Trebizond 1895 (1897)Tinted print, published in Fraternal Help for the Suffering Armenians in Turkey (in Russian) in 1898
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 650k
Légende Figure 3 Yovhannavank‘, gavit‘, northwest corner
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 130k
Légende Figure 4 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail of manuscripts in foreground)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 640k
Légende Figure 5 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, khach‘k‘ar)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 993k
Légende Figure 6 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, Icon of Bartholomew)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 920k
Légende Figure 7 Etchmiadzin Gospels, Evangelists Luke and John, 989 (Detail)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-7.png
Fichier image/png, 4,6M
Légende Figure 8 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, Altar area)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 908k
Légende Figure 9 Vardges Sureniants, Trampled Sanctuary, 1895 (Detail, “Yakob Awagerets‘” inscription at right)
Crédits Yerevan: National Gallery of Armenia
URL http://journals.openedition.org/eac/docannexe/image/3793/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 578k
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Christina Maranci, « How to Paint Destruction »Études arméniennes contemporaines, 16 | 2025, 73-97.

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Christina Maranci, « How to Paint Destruction »Études arméniennes contemporaines [En ligne], 16 | 2025, mis en ligne le 15 décembre 2025, consulté le 10 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/eac/3793 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15gme

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