The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian ArtDumbarton Oaks
Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert L. Kessler
ISBN: 0884021823
price: $68.00
The extensive fresco cycle discovered more than fifty years
ago in the synagogue of Dura Europos has generated decades of
scholarly debate over the role played by Jewish traditions in the
initial development of Christian Bible illustration.
Kurt Weitzmann returns the question to the primary evidence, the
Dura synagogue frescoes themselves. Untangling the
transformations introduced when the pictorial narrative was
translated into the local idiom and adjusted to the monumental
context, he argues that the fresco painters based their
compositions on lost illustrated manuscripts of the Septuagint.
By presenting numerous close parallels to these compositions in
later Middle Byzantine and Western representations, he
demonstrates that such lost Jewish manuscripts must have served
as the foundation of Christian Bible illustration. Herbert L.
Kessler considers the frescoes' program and structure in the
context of pagan and Christian sanctuary decoration.
|
