The Art of Armenia

The Art of Armenia
Author: Christina Maranci
Publisher:
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0190269006

The Art of Armenia offers a sweeping survey of the arts of Armenia from antiquity to the eighteenth century C.E., addressing a range of media including architecture, sculpture, works in metal, wood, and ivory, manuscript illumination, and ceramic arts.

Treasures from the Ark

Treasures from the Ark
Author: Vrej Nersessian
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2001-06-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0892366397

Armenia was the first country to recognize Christianity as the official state religion in 301 AD, twelve years before Constantine's decree granting tolerance to Christianity within the Roman Empire. Ever since, Armenia has claimed the privilege of being the first Christian nation, and the wealth of Christian art produced in Armenia since then is testimony to the fundamental importance of the Christian faith to the Armenian people. This extensive new survey of Armenian Christian art, published to accompany a major exhibition at The British Library, celebrates the Christian art tradition in Armenia during the last 1700 years. The extraordinary quality and range of Armenian art which is documented includes sculpture, metalwork, textiles, ceramics, wood carvings and illuminated manuscripts and has been drawn together from collections throughout the world—many of the examples have never before been seen outside Armenia. In his authoritative text, Dr. Vrej Nersessian, Curator at The British Library, charts the development of Christianity in Armenia. This fascinating history is essential to an understanding of the art and religious tradition of Armenia, a country in which the sense of the sacred extends well beyond the purely religious, infiltrating the entire fabric of Armenian affairs to create a fascinating culture. This sumptuously illustrated book will be of immense value to anyone with an interest in Byzantine art and culture, the history of Christianity and the history of Armenia and the Middle Orient.

Art of the Armenians

Art of the Armenians
Author: Vrej Nersessian
Publisher: Gower Publishing Company, Limited
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2004
Genre: Art
ISBN:

On the far edge of the Christian world, often isolated or overwhelmed by Muslim cultures, the Armenians have produced a distinctive artistic tradition unlike any other. The collection in this book opens with objects from the great medieval periods in Greater Armenia and the Kingdom of Cilicia and later centuries are represented by paintings and books. The artists, including Ghazar, Arak'el of Gegham, Yovanes Gharietsi, Markos "The Illuminator," and Nagash Hovnat'nan, demonstrate to us how they were able to enrich their works by taking the best elements of Persian, Turkish, Greek, and Western European art and absorb and fuse them into a particular Armenian art.

Armenia

Armenia
Author: Helen C. Evans
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2018-09-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588396606

At the foot of Mount Ararat on the crossroads of the eastern and western worlds, medieval Armenians dominated international trading routes that reached from Europe to China and India to Russia. As the first people to convert officially to Christianity, they commissioned and produced some of the most extraordinary religious objects of the Middle Ages. These objects—from sumptuous illuminated manuscripts to handsome carvings, liturgical furnishings, gilded reliquaries, exquisite textiles, and printed books—show the strong persistence of their own cultural identity, as well as the multicultural influences of Armenia’s interactions with Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Muslims, Mongols, Ottomans, and Europeans. This unprecedented volume, written by a team of international scholars and members of the Armenian religious community, contextualizes and celebrates the compelling works of art that define Armenian medieval culture. It features breathtaking photographs of archaeological sites and stunning churches and monasteries that help fill out this unique history. With groundbreaking essays and exquisite illustrations, Armenia illuminates the singular achievements of a great medieval civilization. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}

Feast of Ashes

Feast of Ashes
Author: Sato Moughalian
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 557
Release: 2019-04-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1503609154

The compelling life story of Armenian ceramicist David Ohannessian, whose work changed the face of Jerusalem—and a granddaughter's search for his legacy. Along the cobbled streets and golden walls of Jerusalem, brilliantly glazed tiles catch the light and beckon the eye. These colorful wares—known as Armenian ceramics—are iconic features of the Holy City. Silently, these works of ceramic art—art that also graces homes and museums around the world—represent a riveting story of resilience and survival: In the final years of the Ottoman Empire, as hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forcibly marched to their deaths, one man carried the secrets of this age-old art with him into exile toward the Syrian desert. Feast of Ashes tells the story of David Ohannessian, the renowned ceramicist who in 1919 founded the art of Armenian pottery in Jerusalem, where his work and that of his followers is now celebrated as a local treasure. Ohannessian's life encompassed some of the most tumultuous upheavals of the modern Middle East. Born in an isolated Anatolian mountain village, he witnessed the rise of violent nationalism in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire, endured arrest and deportation in the Armenian Genocide, founded a new ceramics tradition in Jerusalem under the British Mandate, and spent his final years, uprooted, in Cairo and Beirut. Ohannessian's life story is revealed by his granddaughter Sato Moughalian, weaving together family narratives with newly unearthed archival findings. Witnessing her personal quest for the man she never met, we come to understand a universal story of migration, survival, and hope.

Treasures in Heaven

Treasures in Heaven
Author: Thomas F. Mathews
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 1994
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9780691037516

For over a thousand years the pre-eminent expression of Armenian culture was the illuminated manuscript--above all, the illustrated Gospel Book. Brilliantly painted and often bound in silver and decorated with jewels, these volumes constitute the principal source of information on the history, religion, language, and art of Armenia. Treasures in Heaven is the first comprehensive introduction in English to the art and history of Armenian manuscript painting. It reveals the degree to which this art form embodies a distinctively Armenian aesthetic and religious experience. Eighty-eight of the most significant examples of Armenian manuscript illumination are reproduced and extensively discussed in the catalog. Essays by a team of international scholars examine each of the principal schools and periods of Armenian illumination--from the earliest surviving works of the seventh century to manuscripts produced by the Armenian Diaspora communities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chapters on the history and religion of Armenia place illuminated manuscripts within the broader context of Armenian culture. The distinctive techniques and materials of Armenian manuscript painting and bookbinding are also explained. Contributors to this volume include Helen C. Evans, Nina G. Garsoian, Thomas F. Mathews, Krikor H. Maksoudian, Sylvie L. Merian, Mary Virginia Orna, and Alice Taylor.

Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century

Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century
Author: Sirarpie Der Nersessian
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1993
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780884022022

Sirarpie Der Nersessian's scholarship has influenced the understanding of Armenian art and its Byzantine context. These two volumes are the culmination of six decades devoted to the exploration of Armenian art, and reflect a deep knowledge of the manuscripts and their creators.

Portraits of Hope

Portraits of Hope
Author: Huberta v. Voss
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2007-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1845452577

Elie Wiesel called the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War ‘the Holocaust before the Holocaust’. Around one and a half million Armenians - men, women and children – were slaughtered at the time of the First World War. This book outlines some of the historical facts and consequences of the massacres but sees it as its main objective to present the Armenians to the foreign reader, their history but also their lives and achievements in the present that finds most Armenians dispersed throughout the world. 3000 years after their appearance in history, 1700 years after adopting Christianity and almost 90 years after the greatest catastrophe in their history, these 50 ‘biographical sketches of intellectuals, artists, journalists, and others...produce a complicated kaleidoscope of a divided but lively people that is trying once again, to rediscover its ethnic coherence. Armenian civilization does not consist solely of stories about a far-off past, but also of traditions and a national conscience suggestive of a future that will transcend the present.’ [from the Preface]