Keywords: Byzantine - Evangelist Mark Seated in his Study - Walters W530A.jpg In Byzantium the revival of classical forms during the Macedonian Renaissance briefly reinstated naturalism as an aesthetic principle But the desire to represent things as they are in the natural world soon disappeared In this illuminated leaf from a gospel lectionary produced in Constantinople in the second quarter of the eleventh century the Evangelist Mark is depicted sitting at his desk thinking The pose replicates that commonly used in Antiquity to represent philosophers The persistence of the ancient prototype is evident in the style of dress which is rendered with fluid brushstrokes Highlights pick up the play of light on the drapery folds conveying a sense of the body underneath On the other hand any illusion of space is subverted by the uniform gold ground behind the Evangelist; the furniture is flattened out with no pretence of foreshortening or perspectival rendering The supernatural status of the saint is thus reaffirmed by the unreality of his surroundings between 1025 1050 ink paint and gold on parchment cm 26 9 19 accession number W 530 A 19629 Léon Gruel Paris date and mode of acquisition unknown Henry Walters Baltimore date and mode of acquisition unknown Walters Art Museum Henry Walters Acquired by Henry Walters Early Christian and Byzantine Art Baltimore Museum of Art Baltimore 1947 Byzantine Manuscript Illumination Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin 1957 From Icon to Image Byzantine Influence on Pre-Renaissance Art in the East and West Stanford University Museum of Art Stanford 1961-1962 The Hebrew Bible in Christian Jewish Muslim Art The Jewish Museum New York 1963 Pages from Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from the 10th to the Early 15th Centuries University Art Gallery University of California Berkeley Berkeley 1963 Illuminated Greek Manuscripts from American Collections; An Exhibition in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann Princeton University Art Museum Princeton 1973 Illuminated Manuscripts Masterpieces in Miniature The Walters Art Gallery Baltimore 1984-1985 The Book and the Author Portraits of the Evangelists in Eastern and Western Manuscripts The Walters Art Gallery Baltimore 1990-1991 The Glory of Byzantium The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York 1997 Eureka The Archimedes Palimpsest The Field Museum Chicago; The Walters Art Gallery Baltimore 1999-2000 Byzantium Faith and Power 1261-1557 The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York 2004 Illuminating the Word Gospel Books in the Middle Ages The Walters Art Museum Baltimore 2004 Lost and Found The Secrets of Archimedes The Walters Art Museum Baltimore 2011-2012 place of origin Constantinople present-day Istanbul Turkey Walters Art Museum license 2D Desks in art Walters MS W530 - Byzantine Gospels Book Miniatures of Saint Mark |