Painter as scribe: artistic identity and the arts of graphē in late Byzantium IVAN DRPIĆ In Greek, as in several other languages, the activities of painting and writing are designated by the same verb — graphō . The noun graphē could accordingly mean ‘‘script’’ and ‘‘that which is written,’’ but also ‘‘line,’’ ‘‘drawing,’’ ‘‘delineation,’’ and ‘‘picture.’’ This semantic multivalence was productively probed in the Byzantine world. It was invoked, perhaps most notably, during the iconoclastic controversy in the service of arguments advanced to defend the legitimacy of religious images and stress their equivalence with the Scriptures. The patriarch Nikephoros, one of the leading iconophile authors, characteristically writes: Graphē [. . .] is spoken of in two manners. There is graphē which is in the characters of letters like these, inscribed in a series and ordered; proceeding in syllables, it is expressed in writing. Then, there is graphē which is formed and impressed through likenesses in imitation of the paradigm [i.e. that which the graphē depicts].[. . .] The former presents the message of the strung-together words through utterance. The latter shows the imitation of exemplary persons through representation. 1 Scholars have long explored how the expansiveness and ambi- guity of graphē were problematized in Byzantine culture to tease out the similarities and differences between words and images, and, more broadly, between verbal and visual forms of repre- sentation. 2 Less attention, however, has been paid to the ways in which the fluidity of the boundaries between writing and paint- ing was exploited by the practitioners of these arts of graphē to make claims about their status and assert their professional identity. In this essay, I will examine several instances in which Late Byzantine fresco-painters adopted a strategy of self-presen- tation associated specifically with scribes. 3 They signed their works in Greek by using textual formulae of the type commonly found in scribal colophons, or subscriptions. By styling them- selves as scribes, these painters, I will argue, asserted the value of their pictorial craft and also claimed for themselves some of the prestige attached to scribal activity and, more generally, to books and learning, that is, to the domain of logos. The identifi- cation of painters with scribes evinced in these signatures repre- sents an overlooked yet highly significant facet of Byzantium’s artistic culture. 4 Colophons for pictures Byzantine artists emerge from the historical record as rather shadowy figures. 5 There was no Byzantine equivalent Vasari to narrate their lives; no artistic treatises have come down to us; no contracts or account books survive to illuminate artists’ dealings with patrons and commissioners. The little we know derives for the most part from occasional references in chronicles, saints’ lives, letters, and other sources, or from the evidence of inscrip- tions and artists’ signatures, which, from the twelfth century onward, begin to appear with an increasing frequency, espe- cially in monumental painting. 6 Yet this epigraphic evidence, precious as it is, rarely yields anything more than names, leaving us with a fairly substantial dossier of artists who emerged from the proverbial anonymity of medieval art-making shorn of bio- graphical details. 7 One of these artists, about whom virtually nothing is known, is John — a painter who in the early 1320s, probably aided by an assistant, decorated with frescoes the church of Saint Demetrios in the complex of the Serbian Patriarchate at Pec ´ , Kosovo. 8 John ‘‘signed’’ his work in Greek in an elegant uncial inscription placed in the conch of the sanctuary apse, at the side of an imposing Virgin orans flanked by two archangels (figures 1–2). This painted text reads as follows: eoῦ tὸ dῶron ἐk weirὸB Ἰoάnnou (‘‘The gift of God from the hand of John’’). 9 By the ‘‘gift of God,’’ the painter refers to the fine classicizing murals of the church, a pictorial ensemble which he executed, but for which he cannot be credited, for its true author was God. At first glance, this pithy statement seems to epitomize the notion of the self-effacing medieval craftsman piously toiling away for the greater glory of the Almighty. Yet, at a closer look, John’s signature proves to be quite self-assertive. By ascribing the agency behind the creation of the murals to God, the painter implicitly proclaims that his pictorial craft is a divinely sanc- tioned and divinely inspired enterprise. 10 Besides, the reference to the painter’s hand — a common pars pro toto for the artist — draws attention to John’s skill, his mastery of technē , a quality that made him suitable to serve as God’s instrument. Equally significant as its wording is the placement of the signature. Clearly legible from the nave, the painter’s written pronouncement was meant not only to preserve his name for posterity, but also to prompt all those assembled in the church to pray for him. This commemorative dimension of the inscription is further underscored by the fact that John’s name is strategi- cally displayed in the sanctuary apse, the most sacred space within the church, as if to allow him to participate vicariously in the eucharistic sacrifice enacted on the altar table below. 11 Moreover, it is notable that the painter chose to couch his signature in poetic form. Compressed into twelve syllables, with a caesura after the fifth and a stress on the penult, the 334 WORD & IMAGE, VOL. 29, NO. 3, JULY–SEPTEMBER 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2013.771921 # 2013 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [Ivan Drpic] at 06:41 27 October 2013