Treasures in Heaven, Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts.

Thomas F. Mathews and Roger S. Wieck, eds. New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, and Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994. 161 b/w illus. + 48 c. pls. + xv + 229 pp. $75(cl), $39.50 (pap). ISBN: 0-8759-8100-3 (cl), 0-6910-3751-5 (pap).

As Mount Ararat stood at the physical center of ancient Armenia, the first Christian nation, so the illuminated sacred book, the principal subject of this volume, lay at the heart of Armenian culture. Treasures in Heaven considers its topic within the framework of the society that produced it from the fifth century in Armenia through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of a diaspora that reached from northern Europe to Tibet. Conceived as a catalog for the handsome exhibition in 1994 of Armenian manuscripts drawn from North American collections held at the Pierpont Morgan Library and the Walters Art Gallery, the volume also contains eight essays incorporating significant related material that was not exhibited. It readily accomplishes its stated goals. It offers a new assessment of the material, dependent upon fruitful collaborative study, and, with attention to the consistency as well as the peculiarities of Armenian manuscripts, it serves as the best available introduction to the field.

The first of the book's two major sections, the collection of essays, opens with Nina G. Garsofan's discussion of relevant geographical and historical contexts. Next, Fr. Krikor H. Maksoudian considers Armenia's unique Christian vision. Then follow five essays focusing on Armenian manuscripts. The first, by editor Thomas F. Mathews, summarizes their special character, and the second, again by Mathews, examines illumination of the classic phase of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Helen C. Evans, Alice Taylor, and Sylvie L. Merian treat, respectively, Cilician illumination (twelfth to fourteenth centuries), illumination under Georgian, Turkish, and Mongol rule (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries), and illumination and binding plaques of the diaspora. The final essay, by Merian, Mathews, and Mary V. Orna, O.S.U., considers characteristic Armenian materials and techniques of manuscript production and binding. There is an appended analysis of pigments. The second major section, the catalog, discusses the contents of the exhibited manuscripts and provides a physical description of each. Then follow bibliographies, exhibition checklist, and index. There are ample illustrations, including 48 fine color reproductions, and period maps provide indispensable guides to Armenia's chaotic history.

Treasures in Heaven testifies to expanded interest in Armenian manuscripts, the most extensive and important body of Armenian art, as do recent surveys of major collections and editor Mathews' monographic study of the Glajor Gospel. The authors naturally build on their own and others' work in areas of iconography, attribution, localization, and the stylistic influences of the art of Armenia's powerful neighbors. New emphasis is given here, however, to manuscript features that are distinctly Armenian, and images are explored especially in terms of the purposes they served and the meanings they held for those for whom they were made.

Armenia's undefendable position at a strategic crossroad was determinative, as was its dual heritage of western Christian traditions and eastern social structures, the latter preserved into the seventeenth century as hereditary church offices. After destruction of the Armenian States in the mid-eleventh century and the disappearance of Armenia Minor in the fourteenth century, Armenia's culture and distinctive religious practices survived primarily in monastic communities. Iconography inspired by Armenian monastic exegesis is only now being explored, but the national character of Armenia's Church, and especially the role played by its distinctive Gospel Book, were unquestionably crucial in the preservation of cultural continuity. Though these fascinating manuscripts display a delightful freedom of invention and a remarkable diversity of styles (overlays of native, Byzantine, Islamic, Western, and Far Eastern conventions upon Hellenistic foundations), after the thirteenth century faith remained the only reliable constant in an Armenian's uncertain world. The Divine Liturgy changed little, and Armenian scribes, illuminators, and binders remained largely faithful to traditional formats, images, and even materials (for illuminators a palette of limited, intense, mineral pigments). Though many silver plaques binding later Armenian holy books derive from the woodcuts based on works by Durer and Goltius that illustrated the first printed Armenian Bible of 1666, inherited structures and images survived even the introduction of printing. Tradition, like the embellished book itself, was sacred. The general reader as well as the scholar should find an investigation of this handsome, carefully edited volume stimulating as well as accessible. Those who study Armenia and Armenian manuscripts will find Treasures in Heaven essential.

ELLEN COOPER ERDREICH Washington, D.C.