Armenian Lady, GG Gagarin (1840s). Daghestan Museum of Fine Arts PS Gamzatova.
Archive for February, 2012
National Geographic October 1915. Collection of Maggie Land Blanck "ARMENIAN GIRLS, CONSTANTINOPLE, 1914, REPRESENTING VARIOUS TYPES OF ARMENIAN PEOPLE"
Armenian from Sasoun (19th c.)
An Armenian merchant portrayed by Giovanni Grevembroch in the 18th century. -Correr Museum, Venice
I found this wonderful article (from New York Times) full of interesting insights into the historic relations between the Italian city of Venice and Armenia.
EXHIBITION REVIEW
The Key to Armenia’s Survival
By RODERICK CONWAY MORRIS Published: February 23, 2012VENICE — Armenian civilization is one of the most ancient of those surviving in the Middle East, but for large parts of its history Armenia has been a nation without a country. This has given the spoken and written word, the primary means through which Armenian identity has been preserved, enormous prominence in its people’s culture.
Over the centuries this emphasis has fostered a particular regard for books and the means of producing them. Scribes added notes on the proper care and conservation of books and advice on hiding them during dangerous times, even on “ransoming” them should they fall into the wrong hands. A late 19th-century English traveler observed that the Armenians prized the printing press with the same “affection and reverence as the Persian highlanders value a rifle or sporting gun.”
A collection of old Armenian Postcards. The image quality is not the best, but they’re still interesting to view.
Armenian from Sasoun (ca1910) Publisher: D. Ephimov
Armenian woman from Shemakha (1910) D.Ephimov
This poster was issued by Intourist, the official travel agency of the former Soviet Union, in around 1936. It was included in the V&A's Art Deco exhibition in 2003. It advertises the former Soviet Republic of Armenia as a tourist destination. Intourist had the state monopoly on travel during the Soviet era, and still dominates the travel trade to many provincial Russian locations. The image of Soviet Armenia communicated here is a glamorous and varied one. The train and the car in the foreground boast the advanced modern machinery of the period and the high railway bridge is an example of Soviet engineering skills. The beauty of the country's natural landscape is shown in the background. The poster creates an image of glamorous tourism, and is similar to travel posters produced in western Europe at the time.
Here is a selection of some beautiful old religious Armenian pastoral staffs that I found on the internet.
Armenian pastoral staff (1700-1825). Portions of a priest's staff, silver gilt, comprising the head and three knops; the volute is in the form of a serpent's neck and head, covered with scales, which are formed by small 'cloisons', filled with coloured enamels; the jaws are wide open, showing rows of teeth and a long tongue. The lower part of the head of the staff is of filigree work, and the three knops are each divided into four compartments, decorated with synmetrically arranged floral ornament, formed in the same manner as the scales.
This is a slightly outdated news but I found this article from the official Vatican news agency, very interesting to say the least. In the light of what’s recently going on in France and the huge amount of pressure Turkey is forcing on the French government to dismantle the newly adopted Genocide bill, it’s worthy to mention this striking descovery.
The chilling testimonies will be published in a book. The news came during the presentation of the “Lux Arcana” exhibition which will display the treasures of one of the world’s oldest archives
ALESSANDRO SPECIALE
VATICAN CITY
In the Secret Vatican Archives documents are stored that testify to the unprecedented and shocking genocide by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians during the First World War. Documents that will be published soon in a book co-edited by the same Vatican Archives.
The advanced news arrived, a little by surprise, during the presentation in the Vatican of the exhibit “Lux Arcana”, which – from next February – will open to the public, for the first time, the treasures of one of the oldest and most extensive archives in the world.
The testimonials, explained the prefect of the Secret Archives, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, describe “in detail” the “procedures of torture that the Turks used towards the Armenians”. For example, he said, there is evidence of how the soldiers of the Sublime Porte would bet “on the sex of fetuses in the wombs of pregnant women before they quartered them and with the same knife killed the babies”.
These episodes, said the Vatican archivist, “make me ashamed to be a man, and if it were not for faith, I would see only darkness”.
It is easy to imagine that the publication of these documents reignite the tension between the Holy See and Turkey, at a time when the memory of the killing of Monsignor Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, a year ago June 3rd, is still alive.
The Catholic Church is still waiting for an acknowledgment by the Turkish state, although recently some progress has been made. For example, it has become easier to perform pilgrimages to the church in Tarsus, the birthplace of St. Paul.
Among the highlights of the exhibit, there are also the authentic and complete dossier of the trial of Galileo Galilei, the ‘Dictatus papae’ in which Gregory VII (1073-1085) sanctioned the supremacy of the papal theocracy over any other power and an autographed document of Michelangelo.
