Sirarpie Der Nersessian (1896-1989). Pioneer of Armenian Art History

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I do not think she would have approved of such a description, even though she never married and much of her adult life, in the personal realm, was shared with women. Motherless at age nine, fatherless at eighteen, she lived with her aunt (1914–18) and her sister, Arax, until the latter’s marriage, but the untimely death of her sister’s husband in 1947 brought the sisters together again. Arax died a few years before Sirarpie after a long illness. The Der Nersessian sisters shared a common house at Dumbarton Oaks (1947–63), known afterward as the “Der Nersessian house,” and an apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris. Though she was regarded by students and even colleagues as an extremely well organized teacher, researcher, and administrator, she was also known for her keen sense of humor; for example, during a social gathering when she was asked, “Where is your husband, Professor Der Nersessian?” she quipped, “I am the husband.” 9 Though she was a pioneer as a female medievalist, she never made much of it. She was the Wrst woman to teach Byzantine art in a woman’s college, the Wrst woman to be decorated with the very distinguished medal of Saint Gregory the Illuminator by His Holiness Catholicos Vazgen I (1960), the Wrst woman invited to lecture at the prestigious Collège de France in Paris, the only woman in her time to gain full professorship at Dumbarton Oaks, and the second woman to be honored with a gold medal from the Society of Antiquaries of London (1970). While teaching in America, she Wnally completed her French doctorate with the required two major dissertations, both published in 1936–37: one devoted to Byzantine manuscript illumination, L’Illustration du “Roman de Barlaam et Joasaph,” and the other to Armenian miniatures, Manuscrits arméniens illustrés des 12e, 13e, et 14e siècles de la Bibliothèque des Pères Mekhitharistes de Venise. Each of these books received a special prize. 10 Thus, Byzantine and Armenian manuscript studies were to be the poles of a career extending over six decades. Though scholars before her had studied Armenian manuscript art—notably Father and later Catholicos Garegin Yovsēp’ian—it was Der Nersessian who established the parameters of the discipline and provided a conceptualization of its scope and characteristics. She was always known for her sense of organization and order. Because she was so Wrmly grounded in Byzantine and European art with a Wne appreciation of Islamic painting as well, Der Nersessian was able to demonstrate that Armenian art was not just a provincial oVshoot of Byzantine art but a distinct cultural expression with its own characteristics. Building on the studies of Yovsēp’ian and always using clear language replete with concrete references, she laid out the essentials of Armenian iconography, deWned the styles of various periods, reconstructed numerous workshops, and revealed the characteristic features of the most proliWc painters. This was often done in conjunction with the publication of catalogs of important collections of illuminated Armenian manuscripts: the Mekhitarist Library Collection in Venice (partial); the Chester Beatty Collection, Dublin; the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Walters Gallery of Art, Baltimore; the Library of the Armenian Prelacy, New Julfa, Isfahan. 11 Dickran Kouymjian 485
486 Sirarpie Der Nersessian (1896–1989) Der Nersessian’s early historical training and her excellent command of classical, Western, and oriental languages inclined her toward providing at every step of the way a textual basis in her art-historical research. The text of manuscripts, especially the colophons of scribes and painters, were as important to her as the images. More than once she wrote pure history or analyses of liturgical and other texts. Her historical scholarship was not only impeccable but also methodologically exemplary and always based on primary sources. I believe it would be more instructive to trace the way Der Nersessian treated some of the problems in her last book as a paradigm of her approach to scholarship than to provide an annotated catalog of her important works (see the bibliography). For years she spoke to close colleagues about a major study on Cilician Armenian art. This last monograph in two volumes, titled Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century, was issued posthumously in 1993. Her Wrst book on Armenian art, published sixty years earlier, was already deeply immersed in precisely the same period. During the decades between them, Der Nersessian meticulously gathered notes and photographs of the 150 surviving illustrated manuscripts and fragments executed by artists working in Cilician Armenia. Many of the major monuments she had already analyzed in separate articles or as chapters in books and catalogs, including two of the most densely illustrated manuscripts of the most distinguished artist of the period, T’oros Roslin. After retiring she worked tirelessly on this major opus, but other commitments, the care of her sister, Arax, during the very long illness before her death, and, Wnally, her own age delayed its completion until the end of her life. She died while reviewing and revising the Wnal manuscript with the help of art historian and late disciple Sylvia Agemian. Sumptuously printed with 666 black-and-white illustrations and 51 color plates, Miniature Painting of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia is a vast chronological investigation of the history of Cilician book art. Yet, it has neither introduction nor conclusion. Explanation of the massive data and insights or generalities to be derived from them are given as the author moves through section after section, discussing artists and patrons and schools and monasteries. One suspects it was a matter of time, and none was left for such niceties as beginnings and endings or even in some cases, notes. But there is continuity throughout, as the story of Cilician illumination moves along from decade to decade. Of the six chapters, the last is devoted entirely to portraiture and the other Wve to the history of Cilician art from start to Wnish. The Wfth chapter is principally about the proliWc artist-scribe Sargis Pidsak and the slow decline in painting in the fourteenth century paralleling the gradual diminishing of the power of the Armenian kings. The initial chapter of the book treats the beginning of Cilician painting in the Wrst decades of the twelfth century. Der Nersessian starts by establishing in clear terms the necessity to reject received notions based on faulty information: “The general picture of the early stages of miniature painting in Cilicia had been distorted through the erroneous dating and attribution of the Gospels of the University of
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Page 8 and 9: Dickran Kouymjian 489 I have dwelt
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Sirarpie Der Nersessian (1896-1989). Pioneer of Armenian Art History

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