Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity: Histories of Art and Religion from India to Ireland

Description

This book reveals the rewards of exploring the relationship between art and religion in the first millennium, and the particular problems of comparing the visual cultures of different emergent and established religions of the period in Eurasia - Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and the pagan religions of the Roman world. Most of these became established and remained in play as what are called 'the world religions'. The chapters in this volume show how the long traditions of studying these topics are caught up in complex local, ancestral, colonial and post-colonial discourses and biases, which have made comparison difficult. The study of Late Antiquity turns out also to be an examination of the intellectual histories of modernity. Cover Half-title Title page Copyright information Contents List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 1. Religion 2. Art History 3. This Volume Part I The Imperial Context 2 The Gandharan Problem 1. The First Strategy: Coomaraswamy, the Silpashastras and an Indian Art History 2. The Second Strategy: Removing the Western 3. The Third Strategy: The Art-Archaeological 4. Conclusion 3 Writing the Art, Archaeology and Religion of the Roman Mediterranean 1. Historians' Constructions of Roman Religion What Is 'Roman Religion'? The Privileging of Texts 2. Art Historical and Archaeological Formulations of Religion Roman Art and Religion: Category and Style Archaeology and Religion: 'Ritual' versus 'Religious' Classification 3. Conclusions Plates 4 Mystery Cult and Material Culture in the Graeco-Roman World 1. Religion, Mystery and Text 2. A Christian Model and Its Assumptions 3. Cumont, Mithras and Avestan Texts 4. Material Evidence without Texts: Two Case Studies Initiation and the Roman Worship of Mithras Classifying the Worship of Jupiter Dolichenus 5. Beyond Expectations in the Evidence 5 The Viennese Invention of Late Antiquity: Between Politics and Religion in the Forms of Late Roman Art 1. Vienna c. 1900: The Light of Catholic Europe and Darkness from the East 2. Christian Origins, Infallibility and the Fall of Rome 3. Riegl's Late Antiquity and the Discipline of Art History 4. The Continuity of the Dual Narrative of Late Antique Art 6 The Rise of Byzantine Art and Archaeology in Late Imperial Russia 1. N. P. Kondakov and the History of Byzantine Art 2. The Origins of Byzantine Art 3. Sinai and the Discovery of the Earliest Icons 4. Byzantine Reflections (Concluding Remarks) 7 Ferdinand Piper's Monumentale Theologie (1867) and Schleiermacher's Legacy: The Attempted Foundation of a Protestant Theology of Art 1. Schleiermacher's Concept of Anschauung 2. Ferdinand Piper and the Introduction to Monumental Theology 3. Devout Anschauung as the Basis for Monumental Theology 4. Setting Monumental Theology to Work: Protestant Problems Part II After Imperialism: Orientalism and its Resistances 8 The Road from Decadence: Agendas and Personal Histories in the Study of Early Islamic Art 1. 1910: Ernst Herzfeld and the Jewish Discovery of Islamic Art Reconsidering the 'Eastern-Sasanian Element' in Early Islamic Art Palatial Architecture The Samarra Paintings Between Assimilation and Resistance: Thoughts on the Jewish Discovery of Islamic Art 2. From Brothel to Cloister: Louis Massignon and the Spiritualization of Islamic Art A Brief Biography The Effects of These Events 3. Protestant Ideology and the Opposition between Normative Aniconic Islam and the Decadent Use of Figurative Art in Palaces Grabar's Princely Cycle Image and Text, Decadence and Theology 4. Conclusions 9 Connecting Art and Zoroastrianism in Sasanian Studies 1. From Ubiquity and Consistency of Sacred Significance in Art . . . 2. . . . To the Absence of Sacred Significance in Art 3. Sasanian Art and Religious Continuity 4. Antiquity and Continuity in Iranian Kingship: The Secularization of Sasanian Art 5. Antiquity and Continuity in Zoroastrianism: Fitting Art in the Narrative 6. Shared Interests in Antiquity for Modern Identities 7. Concluding Thoughts 10 'Hindu' Art and the Primordial Siva 1. Hindu Art, Hindus, and Hinduism 2. The Agamaambara 3. The Origin of Timelessness and the History of Ahistoricity 4. Timeless Hinduism and the Study of Art History 5. Wesho and Siva Plates 6. Mahesvara, Siva and Two Episodes of Debate The First Debate The Second Debate 7. Conclusion Part III Post-Colonialist, Old Colonialist and Nationalist Fantasies 11 Jewish Art: Before and After the Jewish State (1948) 1. A Cipher for Christian Origins 2. A Jewish Art History Romantic Zionism In the Wake of the Third Reich After Independence 3. Missing Elements of the Story 4. Conclusion 12 Whose History Is It Anyway? Contests for India's Past in the Twentieth Century 1. Introduction 2. A Caricature of Indian Historiography 3. 1947 and Two Positions on Indian Identity The Spinning Wheel and the Dharma Wheel Pitribhu and Punyabhu 4. Is There a Hindutva Historiography? 5. The Textbook Controversy 6. The California Textbook Case 7. Cultural Heritage, Restitution and Ayodhya 8. The Babri-Masjid and the Ramayana 9. 300 Ramayanas, Five Controversies, and Three 'Bans' Kali's Child Ramanujan and the University of Delhi The Laine Controversy The Hindus: An Alternative History 10. Conclusion 13 Acculturated Natives Who Rebel: Revivalist, Ottomanist and Pan-Arabist Engagements with Early Islamic Art (1876-1930s) 1. Introduction 2. Between Theological Aniconism and Modernity: The Image's Loss of Power 3. The Ottoman Encounter with Early Islamic Art (1876-1923) The Acquisition of Early Islamic Items and Old Qurans The Restoration of Early Islamic Sites and Its Publicizing in the Popular Press Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910) and the Establishment in 1889 of an Islamic Department in the Imperial Museum The Repudiation of Mshatta Categorizing Mshatta as 'Non-Islamic' The Arab Periphery Minimizing the Exotic and Downplaying the (Oriental) Ornamental 4. Arab Nationalism: Early Islamic Art in the Service of Self-Determination in Syria, Jordan and Iraq (1930s) Pan-Arabism and the Dome of the Rock Muhammed Kurd 'Ali (1876-1953) and the Invention of Damascus as the Birthplace of Islamic Art Iraq: Arab History and Islamic Archaeology through the Lens of Sati' Al-Husri 5. Concluding Thoughts: Conflicted Identities and Ideology 14 Barbarians at the British Museum: Anglo-Saxon Art, Race and Religion 1. Early Medieval Identities in the Museum Plates 2. But Is It Art? 3. Barbarism and Religion? Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects