23
East Meets West: The Art and Architecture of the Crusader States
Historiographically the origins of the modern study of Crusader architecture and art can be located in French scholarship during the nineteenth century. The beginnings of the modern European rediscovery of Syria-Palestine are associated with the scholars who followed Napoleon’s campaigns in the Near East from May 1798 to August 1799. Shortly thereafter, J. F. Michaud began the publication of his Histoire des croisades, starting in 1812, drawing attention to the history of the Crusaders in the Levant.1 Study of the material culture of the Crusaders was begun in terms of coinage, and the first attempt at a comprehensive study appeared in 1847 by Louis Felicien de Saulcy.2 Interest in the Crusaders was indirectly intensified in France during the Crimean War (1853–6), in which one of the major issues was French protection of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem and the holy sites under the Capitulations of 1620 and 1740, firmans signed by the Ottoman sultan. Four years later, in 1860, the count Charles-Jean-Melchior de Vogüé (1829–1916), published a pioneering study entitled Les Eglises de la terre sainte.3 This book marked the beginning of modern research into the art and architecture of the Crusaders in the Holy Land.
The Study of the Art of the Crusaders in the late Nineteenth Century
De Vogüé approached the study of Crusader churches as the work of French architects who produced buildings in three phases: phase 1, from 1099 to 1187; phase 2, from 1187 to 1291; and phase 3, on Cyprus from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Essentially, he argues for the importation of Romanesque architecture from Western Europe as the basis of Crusader architecture, and he sees the development of Crusader art as controlled by French artistic ideals (fig. 23-1).4 As he saw it, the Crusaders brought Romanesque architecture with them, but he was well aware of two aspects that influenced it in its new setting. First, the local climate, materials, and local masons were different from those in France, and second, the fact that local Christians also had their own distinctive architectural traditions.
De Vogüé thereby opened the discussion of Crusader architecture in the Holy Land, focusing on ecclesiastical architecture. Emmanuel-Guillaume Rey followed in 1871 with the first extended discussion of Crusader castles and fortifications.5 Rey began his study by surveying the Crusader States geographically with reference to the main Crusader fortifications. Then he introduces the main characteristics of the castles, differentiated as he interprets the origins of their design into three schools: the first that of the Hospitallers, the second that of the Templars, and the third, which was a combination of types from the first two including certain Western features.
Rey in fact published a number of important studies on the Crusader Levant, including a book entitled Les Colonies franques de Syrie aux XIIe et XIII siècles, which appeared in 1883.6 Here he clearly presents the Crusaders in the Holy Land as a colonial experience in a multicultural setting and he provides a comprehensive historical geography that comments on all major known Crusader sites. He also expands the picture of Crusader artistic interests in the Levant quite significantly, based especially on written sources, particularly the Assises de Jérusalem and the diplomatic documents of the major chanceries, joined by a selection of the Arab chroniclers. And he has interesting and comparatively extensive comments on Crusader art.
Work on the history of the Crusades, the culture of the Crusaders, and Crusader monuments continued in the last 25 years of the nineteenth century by English and German as well as French scholars. One of the most important publications was a new and remarkably comprehensive study of Crusader coins by Gustave Léon Schlumberger. Published in 1878 with a supplement in 1882, this work remained a standard text into the latter part of the twentieth century, and can still be consulted with profit.7 Many of the publications we have are found in the form of archaeological reports, e.g., the Survey of Western Palestine.8 By this means the repertoire of sites published is enlarged somewhat, but the focus of the Survey was on antiquity, biblical and classical, and there are relatively few Crusader monuments. Also, Hans Prutz published a work of cultural history hard on the heels of Rey’s later (1883) work, but he is not as interested in the artistic material and contributes more to the study of the military orders in the Crusader States, especially the Teutonic Order.9 But in 1896 there was Charles Diehl, a scholar of quite a different background, an orientalist who studied Byzantium and Byzantine Art, who discussed “Les Monuments de l’Orient Latin” in a lecture, published as an article a year later.10 In a sense he summarized and epitomized the French view of the Crusaders at the fin de siècle. What is striking about his view of the Crusader East is that France and the Frankish Levant are linked so closely. The Crusader States are conceptualized as if they were a massive projection of medieval French civilization directly into the Near East.
FIGURE 23-1 Interior of nave looking east, Church of Saint Anne, Jerusalem, mid-twelfth century. Photo: J. Folda.
The Study of the Art of the Crusaders in the Early Twentieth Century
French archaeologists worked intensively in the Holy Land in the first third of the twentieth century. Of particular interest for Crusader monuments was the work of Fathers Hugues Vincent and F.-M. Abel in Jerusalem,11 and that of Father Prosper Viaud in Nazareth.12 Vincent and Abel devoted a substantial part of their investigations to the Crusader monuments, and, in particular, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for which they provided the first comprehensive study with detailed plans and measured drawings, quite different from the art historical study of the church published by Karl Schmaltz in 1918.13 In Nazareth, Viaud produced a similar study of the foundations of the Crusader Church of the Annunciation, and combined that with the dramatic discovery of the famous Nazareth Capitals (fig. 23-2). It was on the solid foundations of these and earlier works that Camille Enlart (1862–1927) arrived in the Holy Land, in the period of the French and British Mandates, to pursue his investigations.14 His research, carried out between 1921 and 1927, resulted in the publication of Les Monuments des croisés dans le royaume de Jérusalem, the first comprehensive study of the art and architecture of the Crusaders in the Holy Land.15
Enlart’s approach to the study of the Crusader monuments was distinct from those of his distinguished predecessors in three important ways. First, Enlart addressed the study of Crusader art and architecture as a mature scholar, someone who had extensive experience working in Europe and the Near East. Second, Enlart was commissioned to study the Crusader monuments by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, so he received the full support and cooperation of the Mandate authorities. Third, Enlart defines his agenda at the start of chapter 1, where he states his intention to study the influence of the West on the Levant in the Latin Kingdom, the last chapter of a vast inquiry he had started 30 years before.16 Thus Enlart makes clear that he was pursuing his art historical inquiry in effect backwards in chronological time, having started with Lusignan Cyprus (1191–1474), to which he had devoted a major study published in 1899,17 turning then to the Frankish art, culture, and history of the Crusader States in Syria-Palestine, 1098–1291, in the 1920s.
One important aspect of Enlart’s approach was that, in the context of the early years of the twentieth century, he was arguing against the idea that artistic creativity and its influence basically flowed East to West.18 Furthermore, though he was intensely Francocentric in his outlook, he nonetheless saw and understood some of the complexities and independent characteristics of the art of the Crusaders on the mainland. Basically, Enlart saw the architecture of the Crusaders as Romanesque French in origin, but he recognized the Eastern character of much that he found in French Romanesque. As a context for this architecture, Enlart clearly understands the Crusader States to be essentially French colonies. He also sees Cyprus and the Crusader States as fundamentally and closely interconnected after 1191/2.
FIGURE 23-2 King Hyrtacus from the St Matthew Capital, Crusader Shrine of the Annunciation, Nazareth, c.1170s/early 1180s. Photo: Garo Nalbandian.
Enlart identifies the years of greatest prosperity for the Latin Kingdom as between 1131 and 1174, when also significant art was produced. Soon after that, in 1187, the difficulties begin. Only Frederick II, who reopened the holy sites to Christians between 1229 and 1244, and Louis IX, who rebuilt fortifications and churches while in residence in 1250–4, are identified as bright spots in the deepening gloom. Between 1265 and 1291, he sees the history of the Crusader States as an unbroken stream of losses and defeats at the hands of a series of powerful Mamluk sultans. Despite this bleak picture, however, Enlart recognizes the existence of significant Crusader artistic work in the thirteenth century, especially churches and fortifications, some executed by specific artists and architects. He is the first to think in terms of Crusader work by individual, identifiable artists, but he identifies them essentially as Frenchmen working in the Holy Land. Enlart imagines that most were transient; few came East as settlers. Even though the identifiable Western masters were few, he does not entertain the idea of resident Frankish settlers who were artists, despite his recognition of the existence of masons’ marks, some with signatures – indeed in one case with Armenian signatures.19
On the problem of how Crusader architecture develops, Enlart’s basic conception of the nature of architecture (and in effect the art) of the Crusaders is revealed. The same basic stylistic change seen in France from Romanesque to Gothic is found in the Crusader East.20 For Enlart, the developments in the East are parallel to those in the West; he basically sees the Latin Kingdom and Lusignan Cyprus as part of a French cultural continuum linked to France.
It is evident that the level of sophistication of Enlart’s analysis and method enormously enlarged and deepened the terms of the art historical discussion. Not only did he begin the ongoing examination of the nature of Crusader artists and workshops, and masons’ marks, based on concrete evidence, but he also brought Crusader art into the forum of discourse on larger issues such as East–West problems, the nature of artistic “schools,” and ideas of artistic development in medieval art. Enlart effectively introduced Crusader art as a potential new chapter in the history of European medieval art. It was a phenomenon he dramatically revealed with the aid of 196 plates and 598 figures. It was also an art he argued to be much more complex than previously suspected. It is important to realize further that he recast the shape of the argument from one that focused on the art of the Crusaders as the art of the pilgrimage sites to that of a colonial French (and Italian) art in the Crusader States with a focus on “architecture réligieuse et civile.” His achievement was such that he must be regarded as the founding father of the study of Crusader art. What de Vogüé began, Enlart brought to a full conceptual realization, but the architectural work remained incomplete in regard to Crusader fortifications.
In 1927 Enlart “passed the baton” to his younger colleague Paul Deschamps (1888–1974), handing him the opportunity and the responsibility to study the Crusader castles in Syria-Palestine. The first of his three volumes, on Crac des Chevaliers, came out in 1934; the last, though dated 1973, appeared posthumously after Deschamps died in 1974.21
The achievements of Deschamps and his architects were remarkable. Not only did their fieldwork produce the most accurate and useful measured drawings of these complex constructions, but also the photographic documentation is invaluable. Photographs for the study of Crusader art had become a reality in the mid-nineteenth century, and Louis de Clercq produced four albums on Antioch and the Holy Land, including one entire volume on Crusader castles.22
What Deschamps achieved still serves to help guide us in identifying twelfth-century masonry from that of the thirteenth. And even though the work of Paul Deschamps represents for the larger world of Crusader studies the culmination and final flowering of the pioneering French view that Crusader and French were somehow equivalent in the medieval Near East, his legacy along with that of Camille Enlart was to provide us all with a fully structured historical paradigm of Crusader architectural and artistic developments. Even if the French approach overall consistently subordinated the figural arts to architecture in methodology, the work of Enlart and Deschamps is still today an essential and important entrée into the world of Crusader art and architecture, but one that requires serious revision in light of new finds.
The Study of Art of the Crusaders before and after World War II
In the 1930s new views and different perspectives on Crusader art and architecture had begun to emerge. Already before Deschamps published his first two volumes, T. E. Lawrence had written a thesis, mainly on twelfth-century Crusader castles, as an undergraduate at Jesus College, Oxford. Lawrence’s work was eventually published posthumously, in 1936.23 Lawrence basically knew nothing of Deschamps’s work, and although Deschamps had read Lawrence’s study, he only referred to it once in passing in his volume on La Défense du royaume de Jérusalem in 1939.24 Lawrence’s thesis is still worth reading, but it is more celebrated in the English-speaking world than elsewhere, partly because of the fame of the author. But Lawrence was a bell-weather for another prominent Englishman and fellow Oxonian, whose historical work would approach the art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land from a new point of view. Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase, writing in 1939, proposed the following idea: “in sculpture, painting and architecture, the West and the East meet and effect exchanges in Palestine: there was also a similar interaction in literature.”25
Tom Boase (1898–1974) turned his attention to Crusader art with increasing intensity from the late 1930s until his death in 1974, the same year as Paul Deschamps. Boase broke new ground in his 1939 article by interpreting the art of the Crusaders against a European rather than primarily a French background. He also proposed the idea that there was a genuine exchange of artistic ideas between the Western art the Crusaders brought with them and the art of the Levant, which the Crusaders found. Boase was the first in effect to suggest that what identified Crusader art was the multiplicity and diversity of its sources. While he himself never used the term “Crusader art,” he paved the way for others to coin it.
Shortly after the end of World War II, in 1950, Boase wrote the first version of a study that would only be published in 1977, three years after his death, in volume four of A History of the Crusades. In the meantime, between 1950 and 1974, Boase would also publish two books on the art and history of the Crusaders which clearly indicated how dramatically the field was changing.26 By contrast to his introductory article in 1939, Boase attempted a comprehensive survey of the material in his chapters for volume four.27 Whereas he does not in effect enlarge the corpus of architecture published by Enlart and Deschamps, he does enlarge it significantly in terms of other media in the chapter entitled “Mosaic, Painting, and Minor Arts,” reflecting the fruits of recent scholarly work.
It will become evident there were major changes in the study of the art of the Crusaders between the 1930s and 1977. Among the important contributions made by Tom Boase himself, we can cite, first, the extensive use of color plates to illustrate his wide-ranging 1967 and 1971 texts.28 These plates are effective in conveying a real sense of the building materials and the sites, the terrain and the overall setting.29 Secondly, Boase explores the idea of East–West interchange that he introduced, discussing how Crusader figural works were influenced by Byzantine and even Arab art. Thirdly, Boase expands on the work of his predecessors by enlarging on their French frame of reference and spending a quarter of his discussion on figural arts they did not know. In dealing with newly introduced material, Boase is cautious, but he focused on the importance of Byzantine influence for painting, unlike the Church architecture. Finally, Boase attempts to distinguish thirteenth-century work from that of the twelfth century in all media.
The Study of the Art of the Crusaders from 1957 to the Present
Three areas have emerged as central to the study of the art of the Crusaders since the 1950s when Boase was working.
Crusader figural arts including painting and the decorative arts
Hugo Buchthal (1909–96) and Kurt Weitzmann (1904–93), two prominent German scholars trained as Byzantinists, introduced Crusader manuscript illumination and Crusader panel painting, respectively, into the discourse on Crusader art and architecture. Buchthal30 built a corpus of 21 illustrated Crusader manuscripts and he also had important things to say about the nature of this art and the artists in the twelfth and the thirteenth century:
Miniature painting in the Crusading Kingdom… was not a colonial art. It had a distinctive style of its own, which was not derived from any single source, but emerged as the result of copying illuminations from a variety of Byzantine and western manuscripts, and of developing certain features of these models in a highly original and individual manner…. The masters of Jerusalem or Acre were either foreigners themselves, Frenchmen or Italians who had been specially recruited for work in Outremer, or Frankish natives who had perhaps served part of their apprenticeship at Constantinople, or in some well-known scriptorium in the Latin West. Not only did they work in their own native tradition but, more often than not, they were also given models to copy which had been imported from a different region of the Latin West, or from Byzantium. They were thus bound to produce works in which several different styles are superimposed on one another…. Thus miniature painting in the Crusading Kingdom developed into a very composite art, subject to influences which were the result of local conditions, and which differed with each succeeding generation…. The surprising thing is… that, in spite of the obvious lack of continuity, something like a local style and a local tradition of unmistakable identity should have emerged at all.31
This “local style” and “local tradition of unmistakable identity” is what Buchthal identified as “Crusader art” (fig. 23-3).
Kurt Weitzmann also discussed Crusader painting shortly thereafter, in two pioneering articles on Crusader icons.32 In these two publications Weitzmann presented 43 images from a total of 26 newly attributed Crusader icons from the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, combined with two model books and two other icons, one on Cyprus and one now in Grottaferrata, which he called possibly Crusader. In the earlier, 1963, article Weitzmann compared a crucifixion image in one of the Acre manuscripts published by Buchthal to various “Western-influenced” crucifixion icons at Sinai he was presenting. He concluded with an important formulation of the artistic phenomenon that also built on Buchthal’s earlier comments:
Attempts to distinguish the nationalities of the icon painters may not always be successful, simply because Italian and French artists working side by side and apparently having models from both countries available, gradually developed a style and iconography which, when fused with Byzantine elements, resulted in what one might simply call Crusader art.33
Thus Buchthal and Weitzmann effectively first conceived or coined the terms “Crusader manuscript illumination” and “Crusader art” with regard to newly recognized book and panel painting, and substantially broadened the concept of the artists’ origins in the publications just mentioned. Notably, these innovations hinged on the study of painting, most of which was dated to the thirteenth century, a medium heretofore little associated with the Crusaders after 1187. It is not too strong to say that this new material revolutionized the study of Crusader art and the publications by these two scholars laid the foundations for and marked the turning point into what we might describe as the current discourse on the art of the Crusaders.
FIGURE 23-3 Christ mosaic in the Calvary Chapel, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, mid-twelfth century. Photo: J. Folda.
The publication of this new material also stimulated other contributions on painting, e.g., a study of seven manuscripts illustrated by an artist trained in Paris who came to Acre to work in a good French Gothic style, a painter we now call the “Paris-Acre Master.”34 There is also a systematic study of the twelfth-century column paintings in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, with magnificent plates, and a study on the famous mosaics in the same church is also well advanced by the same scholar.35 A survey of the entire corpus of approximately 120 “Western-influenced icons” in the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai is included in the two-volume synthesis on the art of the Crusaders, the second volume of which has just been published.36 Bianca Kühnel has renewed attention to the Crusader “minor arts.”37 Revived interest in the Crusaders and their art can also be seen as part of the impetus for several major international exhibitions in recent years, such as those in Rome and Toulouse (1997),38 Milan (2000),39 and Mainz-Mannheim (2004).40
The study of Crusader archaeology and material culture
The second area is the archaeological work that has dealt with Crusader material since the time of C. N. Johns and his excavations during the 1930s at ‘Atlit, including the Templar castle and the fortified town.41 Johns’ successor in the Crusader States has been Denys Pringle, who along with his magisterial corpus of Crusader churches in the Latin Kingdom, in progress, has also published many other important studies, e.g., on domestic architecture and fortified towers in the context of crusader settlements.42 Invigorated by the archaeological enthusiasm and accomplishments of Israeli scholars following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, major new archaeological work has added important new dimensions to the study of Crusader art and architecture. The survey work of Meron Benvenisti, stimulated by the historical studies of Joshua Prawer, has been followed by the contributions of Ronnie Ellenblum and Adrian Boas.43 For specific sites we find important contributions: the work of V. Corbo and Martin Biddle at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem;44 B. Bagatti has contributed important material at Nazareth, leading to further studies;45 Eliezer and Edna Stern are leading a team currently excavating at Acre.46 Pottery has therefore become a major focus of attention for scholars like D. Pringle,47 A. Boas,48 and E. Stern, and a recent exhibition in Jerusalem of Crusader work has included examples of the pottery as well as other finds.49 Clearly, archaeological work has been important and increasingly fruitful for the study of the art and architecture of the Crusaders.
FIGURE 23-4 Initial “A,” for the book of Judith, with the scene of Judith decapitating Holofernes, from Bible of San Danieli del Friuli, late twelfth century, possibly from Antioch. Biblioteca Guarneriana, MS III, fol. 131v. Photo: J. Folda.
The debate over the nature and development of Crusader art
The third area of great importance for the study of Crusader art is the discussion that has been going on since the 1950s dealing with the concept of “Crusader Art” and the artists who made it. The late Otto Demus began the debate in an important review of volume IV of A History of the Crusades, when he stated:
[I]t is… questionable whether this label [Crusader art] should be used at all for the sum total of the art that originated in the Crusader territories…. Some branches may be legitimately designated in this way, especially miniature and icon painting … but others do not seem to qualify for such a definition. There is, for instance, hardly such a thing as “Crusader Sculpture,” the few surviving works being stylistically so heterogeneous that they cannot be brought under a common heading.50
At the same time that Demus was writing, Hans Belting was mounting a serious challenge to the idea of Crusader art from a different point of view. Belting introduced the idea of a “lingua franca” in art, that is, the existence of works of art in which painters working in the Mediterranean region integrated fully understood Byzantine principles with certain Western European characteristics so seamlessly that we cannot discern the artist’s place of origin.51 It is in effect an artistic lingua franca on the linguistic model.
Belting enlarged on his characterization of the artistic lingua franca in his papers for the session on “Near East and West in Thirteenth-Century Art” in the Acts of the 24th International Congress of the History of Art held in Bologna in 1979.52 He proposed that certain thirteenth-century works exemplified an art neither Western nor Byzantine, but which developed a new synthetic language of components difficult to distinguish. This art, in his view, was distinct from the old notion of the Italian maniera greca which lacked specificity. By contrast, the art of the lingua franca was very specific and could also be called the art of the Mediterranean commonwealth of Venice.53 Finally, Belting asserted that we must reserve the idea of Crusader art for the twelfth century.54
As the debate continued, Kurt Weitzmann was not willing to relinquish either the idea of the maniera greca when dealing with the issue of Italian painting in the Byzantine manner, or the idea of “Crusader art” as distinct from the maniera greca, or, for that matter, the lingua franca in the thirteenth century.55 But these questions about Crusader art in the thirteenth century as related to the idea of an artistic lingua franca also raised again the issue of who the Crusader artists may have been. In 1979, Marie-Luise Bulst, in her study of the mosaic decoration in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, stated forthrightly that Crusader art is better and more correctly characterized as the “art of the Frankish colonialists in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.”56 In particular, she points out that it was not the Crusaders, that is, the actual crucesignati, who came as soldiers and/or pilgrims, who built, painted, or sculpted the works we call Crusader art. It was mainly the resident Franks, and the Italians from Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, that is, the settlers. They were Western Europeans who came and stayed, some to intermarry, and their children, who generated the art either as patrons or even as the artists.57 Finally, she asserts, the Kingdom of Jerusalem remained a Western colony, and this colonial outlook characterized Crusader art in the twelfth century.
This proposal, limited as it is, made an important contribution to the idea of who the Crusader artists were, because it focuses attention on the importance of the settlers and their resident offspring. This view complements the ideas of Weitzmann and Buchthal,58 and marks an important change by challenging the assumption that Crusader artists were all originally from Western Europe. The implications of Bulst’s idea are, if spelled out further, that Crusader artists could be the offspring of second or later generation settlers, born in the Latin Kingdom and trained there.
Along with this expanded idea of who the Crusader artist could be, the debate intensified on what the background and training of these artists may have been, and what we could know about it. When Buchthal and Weitzmann first proposed their idea of Crusader art and its style, they envisioned the notion that the Crusader artists were Westerners who came to the East. There they developed into Crusader style painters by gradually learning to combine Byzantine style and technique with their own native tradition. In contrast to this view, Valentino Pace, writing in 1986, argued that “the very nature of ‘Crusader painting’ eludes all efforts to verify the nationality of its artists; we could go so far as to say that if the origin of the artist can really be detected, his work must no longer be labeled as ‘Crusader’.”59 In effect, therefore, Pace maintains the identifiability of Crusader art in the thirteenth century, but it appears that he is thinking of the Crusader artist as a manifestation of the lingua franca artistic idea.
A number of other scholars have entered this discussion since the 1980s. A range of their ideas can be indicated with regard to a “Crusader” icon of St Sergios with a kneeling female donor, a work probably done in the 1260s in Acre, but now in the collection of St Catherine’s on Mount Sinai.60 When Weitzmann first published this icon, he thought at first that it was done by an Apulian painter working at Sinai, but then he immediately wondered if the painter might not have been a southern Italian with strong Venetian training.61 Meanwhile, Doula Mouriki proposed that the artist was not Crusader at all, but instead was a Cypriot of Syrian background working at Sinai.62 Alternatively, Lucy-Anne Hunt, also recognizing Syrian characteristics, suggested it was done by a Syrian Orthodox painter working in the County of Tripoli, comparing it to local wall paintings.63
Expanding on this issue before her untimely death, Mouriki challenged Weitzmann’s proposal that approximately 120 icons now at St Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai could be called “Crusader” on the basis of what she identified as Weitzmann’s criteria: (1) executed by a (Crusader) Western artist, (2) produced in Crusader territory, and (3) commissioned by a Crusader donor.64 She has been joined in this discussion by Robin Cormack, who writes that “as a consequence of her [Mouriki’s] systematic studies on the icons of Cyprus and Sinai, she reached the conclusion that the category of Crusader icons which Weitzmann had proposed should be almost entirely deconstructed.”65 Mouriki had already concluded in 1986 that, “we may wonder if Crusader painting, according to the traditional definition, is a less substantial reality than has been assumed.”66
In the face of these challenges, and other comments on the nature of especially thirteenth-century art in the Mediterranean world, clearly some reconsiderations are in order. As one example, Annemarie Weyl Carr, looking at the situation from the vantage point of medieval Cyprus, added her voice to those validating and problematizing the idea of the artistic lingua franca. In 1995 she wrote, “On many levels – of style, iconography, ornament, Morellian detail – thirteenth-century Cyprus belongs with Syria and South Italy to an artistic commonwealth.”67 Earlier, from her point of view based on the art of the Eastern Christians in the Near East, Lucy-Anne Hunt had written, “The art historical concept of ‘Crusader’ art is grounded… in a preoccupation with colonialization from a western point of view. It is envisaged as a composite, the output of western artists of different nationalities confronting Byzantine art.”68
Drawing on the stimulus of this debate, further reassessment of the art of the Crusaders is being carried on in the work of Jaroslav Folda, among others. In a paper given at Dumbarton Oaks in 2002, he proposed the following prolegomenon to a full reevaluation. When Kurt Weitzmann formulated his idea about Crusader icons in 1963, he said, as we quote again here: “attempts to distinguish the nationalities of the icon painters may not always be successful, simply because Italian and French artists working side by side and apparently having models from both countries available, gradually developed a style and iconography which, when fused with Byzantine elements, resulted in what one might simply call Crusader art.”69 In fact, what Folda proposes is that “what we normally have in a Crusader workshop is, not ‘Italian and French artists working side by side,’ but Crusader artists working side by side, although obviously they may reflect different artistic traditions in their backgrounds and training, and they may be also working with local eastern Christian artists as well.”70 The important evidence for this reconsidered interpretation is the works of art themselves and their – the artists’ – remarkable immersion in the Byzantine and Levantine circumstances of their training, development, working conditions, and patronage, as well as the functions of their art.
It is of course possible that from time to time, a young western artist may have come to Acre, for example, and joined the painting establishment. Such an artist theoretically could have learned the Crusader style on the spot, transforming whatever early training he might have already received. The problem is that we have few, if any, documented examples of such an artist.71
The conclusion this suggests in light of the debate outlined above, is that the imbedded assumptions about the nature of Crusader artists as being transplanted Westerners, whether French or Italian, should be reconsidered. In fact, the evidence of the overwhelming number of paintings in manuscripts and icons of the thirteenth century suggests these artists should be thought of as born in Crusader territory in the Near East of possible Frankish or Italian ancestry, and perhaps representing second or later generations of settler stock. They were apparently trained in the Near East, primarily by Crusader masters. Accordingly, the styles they worked in should be characterized, not as, e.g., Veneto-Byzantine or Franco-Byzantine styles, but as Veneto-Byzantine Crusader styles, or Franco-Byzantine Crusader styles.
Although we have very few if any documented examples of such a Crusaderborn and trained artist among the book and icon painters heretofore identified as Crusader, we do have documented evidence of one Western artist who left Paris and came to Acre to work in the 1280s. This artist, whom we now refer to as the Paris-Acre Master, appears to have been a French painter trained in Paris in the 1270s. When he came to Acre to work c.1280, he was fully developed and mature and he essentially retained the Parisian Gothic style in which he had been trained during his entire time in the Latin Kingdom.72
What the work of the Paris-Acre Master forces us to reflect on is this. As a documented Western painter working in Acre, he is comparatively rare, among those so far identified as Crusader. This is an important fact, contrary to the assumption that all or most Crusader artists were Westerners. What characterized his work is that he maintained his mature personal Parisian Gothic style despite his Eastern surroundings and his various Crusader patrons. Therefore, in light of the fact that his work is so unusual in Crusader Acre during the 1280s, it appears highly unlikely, in the absence of other clearly documented evidence, that an artist who came from the West, already mature and fully formed as a painter, suddenly, or even gradually, would become an artist working in a developed Crusader style. That is, it is unlikely that such a Western artist came to Acre and suddenly, under the impact of Byzantine and Levantine training and influence, began working in a fully developed Crusader style, e.g., a Veneto-Byzantine Crusader style, a South Italian-Byzantine Crusader style, a Franco-Byzantine Crusader style, or some other Byzantine-influenced Levantine Crusader style.
This brings us to the current point in the state of the question concerning certain major aspects of the study of the art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land between 1098 and 1291. Clearly, many important aspects of Crusader art are presently under serious study and discussion and certain issues remain unresolved, so we can expect many new developments in future years. But here we now have space only to offer a few concluding remarks.
Study of the art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land has had a rich development starting in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to its current flourishing state. When scholarly work began, attention was more focused on architecture and more on the twelfth century; recently we have been dealing more with the figural arts in the thirteenth century. Major questions pertaining to the issue, “What is Crusader Art?” are currently a central focus of concern.
More work – archaeological and art historical – is clearly needed in the areas that were the counties of Tripoli and Edessa and the Principality of Antioch. The art of the Crusaders in other important areas of the Near East, especially on Cyprus and in the Latin Empire of Constantinople and the Morea, has also received new attention, but there is much work that needs to be done in these areas as well. Greater knowledge about the art of the Crusaders on Cyprus and in the Latin Empire will help clarify the nature and development of the Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land.
1 Michaud, Histoire des Croisades, in three volumes; then expanded to seven volumes (6th edn., 1824–9, repr. 1966–8).
2 de Saulcy, Numismatique des Croisades.
3 de Vogüé, Eglises de la Terre Sainte.
4 [On Romanesque architecture, see chapter 14 by Fernie in this volume (ed.).]
5 Rey, Etude sur les monuments.
6 Rey, Les Colonies franques. See also, idem, “Etude sur la Topographie.”
7 Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient Latin.
8 Warren and Conder, Survey of Western Palestine, and Conder and Kitchener, Survey of Western Palestine.
9 Prutz, Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge. Book 5, part II, deals with “Die bildenden Künste bei den Franken und die Einwirkung der Kreuzzügge auf die bildenden Künste im Abendlande,” pp. 416–35, 566–7.
10 Diehl, “Les Monuments de l’Orient Latin.”
11 Vincent and Abel, Jérusalem.
12 Viaud, Nazareth.
13 Schmaltz, Mater Ecclesiarum, knew the work of Vincent and Abel and made good use of it.
14 Enlart started on the basis of the studies by de Vogüé and Rey, and he also relied heavily on the work of Guérin, Description géographique.
15 Enlart, Les Monuments des Croisés, in 2 vols., with two albums, containing 196 plates.
16 Enlart, Les Monuments, vol. 1, p. 1.
17 Enlart, L’Art gothique, in two vols., recently translated into English: Enlart, Gothic Art and the Renaissance, with an introduction by Nicola Coldstream. [On the art and architecture of Lusignan Cyprus, see chapter 24 by Papacostas in this volume (ed.).]
18 It was Josef Stryzgowski in Vienna most prominently who was advocating the Eastern origins thesis in a series of publications after 1900.
19 Enlart, Les Monuments, vol. I, pp. 22–5. For signatures, he mentions twelfth century examples such as Ode, Ogier, Johannes, Jordanis, and refers to Armenian signatures at Nazareth (ibid., pp. 24–5)
20 [On Gothic architecture, see chapter 18 by Murray in this volume (ed.).]
21 Deschamps, Les Châteaux des croisés.
22 Folda, “Crusader Art and Architecture.” Volume 2 of Louis de Clercq’s albums, Voyage en Orient: Chateaux du temps des Croisades (1859–60), dealt with the Crusader castles.
23 See Lawrence, Crusader Castles, which is the essential new edition of his thesis, with detailed scholarly notes by D. Pringle. Lawrence had made numerous notes and revisions on his thesis but died before any final changes were made. Pringle’s annotated edition is essential for understanding the state of the thesis at the time of publication and the thoughts of the author in regard to the issues he addressed.
24 Deschamps, Les Châteaux des croisés, vol. 2, p. 122 n.1.
25 Boase, “The Arts in the Latin Kingdom,” p. 20. [On Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, see chapters 15, 16, and 19 by Hourihane, Maxwell, and Büchsel, respectively, in this volume (ed.).]
26 Boase, Castles and Churches and Kingdoms and Strongholds.
27 Boase, (chapter III) “Ecclesiastical Art in the Crusader States in Palestine and Syria: A. Architecture and Sculpture, B. Mosaic, Painting and Minor Arts,” (chapter IV) “Military Architecture in the Crusader States in Palestine and Syria,” (chapter V) “The Arts in Cyprus: A. Ecclesiastical Art,” and (chapter VI) “The Arts in Frankish Greece and Rhodes: A. Frankish Greece (with D. J. Wallace), B. Rhodes,” in Hazard, History of the Crusades, vol. IV, pp. 69–195, 208–50.
28 Boase, Castles and Churches, 24 color plates. Actually Paul Deschamps was the first to use color photography to illustrate his book, Terre Sainte Romane, but there are only four color plates printed in a strangely dark process that gives the scenes an eerie abandoned look.
29 Boase engaged Dr Richard Cleave to do the photography. Cleave’s excellent photographs were part of a large archive he amassed over a period of many years on the Near East, eventually surpassing Alistair Duncan’s photo collection.
30 Buchthal, Miniature Painting.
31 Ibid., pp. xxxii–xxxiii. [On Romanesque and Gothic manuscript illumination, see chapters 17 and 20 by Cohen and Hedeman in this volume (ed.).]
32 Weitzmann, “Thirteenth-Century Crusader Icons,” and “Icon Painting in the Crusader Kingdom.”
33 Weitzmann, “Thirteenth-Century Crusader Icons,” p. 182.
34 Folda, Crusader Manuscript Illumination. This “Crusader” artist, first dubbed the “Hospitaller Master”, can now be seen to have more to do with Paris and less to do with the Hospitallers leading to a change in nomenclature.
35 Kühnel, Wall Painting.
36 Volume 1: Folda, The Art of the Crusaders; volume 2: idem, Crusader Art in the Holy Land.
37 Kühnel, Crusader Art of the Twelfth Century, pp. 61–153.
38 Rey-Delqué, Le Crociate (French edition: Les Croisades).
39 Piccirillo, ed., In Terrasanta.
40 Siede, ed., Die Kreuzfahrer.
41 The material published in the 1930s and in 1950 by Johns has now been assembled with his work on two other fortifications in Jerusalem and at Qal’at ar-Rabad in Jordan, introduced and edited by D. Pringle: Pilgrims’ Castle. For a discussion of archaeological contributions to Crusader studies, mainly after 1985, see Porëe, “La Contribution de l’Archéologie.”
42 See Pringle, The Red Tower and Secular Buildings.
43 Benvenisti, Crusaders in the Holy Land; Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement; Boas, Crusader Archaeology.
44 Corbo, Il Santo Sepolcro; Biddle The Tomb of Christ.
45 Bagatti, Excavations in Nazareth, and, with E. Alliata, Gli scavi di Nazaret. Building on the new finds in vol. II, see, Folda, The Nazareth Capitals.
46 See, e.g., Stern, “Excavation of the Courthouse Site.”
47 See, e.g., Pringle, “Medieval Pottery.”
48 Boas, “Import of Western Ceramics.”
49 Rozenberg, ed., Knights of the Holy Land.
50 Demus, review of A History of the Crusades, vol. IV, pp. 636–7.
51 Belting, “Zwischen Gotik und Byzanz.”
52 Belting, “Introduction,” and “Die Reaktion der Kunst des 13. Jahrhunderts auf den Import von Reliquien und Ikonen.”
53 Belting, “Introduction,” p. 3.
54 Ibid., p. 1.
55 Weitzmann, “Crusader Icons,” pp. 143–4.
56 Bulst-Thiele, “Die Mosaiken.”
57 [On patronage, see chapter 9 by Caskey in this volume (ed.).]
58 See Buchthal, Miniature Painting and Weitzmann, “Thirteenth-Century Crusader Icons,” and “Icon Painting in the Crusader Kingdom.”
59 Pace, “Italy and the Holy Land,” p. 334.
60 Folda, entry on the Icon of St Sergios from Sinai (BYZ3910), in Evans, ed., Byzantium.
61 Weitzmann, “Icon Painting in the Crusader Kingdom,” pp. 71–3.
62 Mouriki, “Thirteenth-Century Icon Painting.”
63 Hunt, “A Woman’s Prayer.”
64 Mouriki, “Icons,” pp. 117–18.
65 Cormack, “Crusader Art,” p. 165. Cormack is joined in this view by Zeitler, “Two Iconostasis Beams,” pp. 223–7.
66 Mouriki, “Thirteenth-Century Icon Painting in Cyprus,” p. 77.
67 Weyl Carr, “Images of Medieval Cyprus,” pp. 97–8.
68 Hunt, “Art and Colonialism,” p. 69.
69 Weitzmann, “Thirteenth Century Crusader,” p. 182.
70 Folda, “The Figural Arts.”
71 Ibid.
72 Weitzmann, “Thirteenth-Century Crusader Icons,” and “Icon Painting in the Crusader Kingdom.”
Important published bibliographies for Crusader studies and the art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land may be found in the appropriate section in Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge and New York, 2005).
B. Bagatti, Excavations in Nazareth: from the beginning till the XII century, vol. 1, trans. E. Hoade (Jerusalem, 1969).
B. Bagatti, with E. Alliata, Gli scavi di Nazaret: dal secolo XII ad oggi (Jerusalem, 1984).
H. Belting, “Introduction,” and “Die Reaktion der Kunst des 13. Jahrhunderts auf den Import von Reliquien und Ikonen,” Il Medio Oriente e l’Occidente nell’arte del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell’Arte, vol. 2 (Bologna, 1982), pp. 1–10, 35–53.
——, “Zwischen Gotik und Byzanz,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 41 (1978), pp. 217–57.
Meron Benvenisti, The Crusaders in the Holy Land (Jerusalem, 1970).
M. Biddle, The Tomb of Christ (Phoenix Mill, 1999).
A. J. Boas, Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East (London, 1999).
——, “The Import of Western Ceramics to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Israel Exploration Journal 44 (1994), pp. 102–22.
T. S. R. Boase, “The Arts in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 2 (1938/9).
——, Castles and Churches of the Crusading Kingdom (London, 1967).
——, Kingdoms and Strongholds of the Crusaders (London, 1971).
H. Buchthal, Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Oxford, 1957).
Marie Luise Bulst-Thiele, “Die Mosaiken der ‘Auferstehungskirche’ in Jerusalem und die Bauten der ‘Franken’ im 12. Jahrhundert,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 13 (1979), pp. 442–71.
C. R. Conder and H. H. Kitchener, The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography and Archaeology, vol. I, Galilee, vol. II, Samaria, vol. III, Judaea (London, 1881–3; repr. Kedem, 1970).
V. C. Corbo, Il Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme, aspetti archeologici dalle origini al periodo crociato, 3 parts (Jerusalem, 1982).
R. Cormack, “Crusader Art and Artistic Technique: Another Look at a Painting of St George,” in M. Vassilaki, ed., Byzantine Icons: Art, Technique and Technology (Heraklion, 2002).
O. Demus, review of A History of the Crusades, vol. IV, in Art Bulletin 61 (1979), pp. 636–7.
Paul Deschamps, Les Châteaux des croisés en Terre Sainte (Paris; vol. 1, Le Crac des Chevaliers, 1934; vol. 2, La Défense du Royaume de Jérusalem, 1939; vol. 3, La Défense du Comté de Tripoli et de la Principauté d’Antioche, 1973).
——, Terre Sainte Romane (Abbaye Ste-Marie de la Pierre-Qui-Vire, 1964; rev. edn., 1990).
Charles Diehl, “Les Monuments de l’Orient Latin,” Revue de l’Orient Latin 5 (1897), pp. 293–310.
R. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1998).
C. Enlart, L’Art gothique et de la Renaissance en Chypre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1899).
——, Gothic Art and the Renaissance on Cyprus, trans. D. Hunt (London, 1987).
——, Les Monuments des Croisés dans le Royaume de Jérusalem: Architecture religieuse et civile, 2 vols., Haut Commissariat de la République Française en Syrie et au Liban: Service des Antiquités et des Beaux-Arts, Bibliothèque Archéologique et Historique, T. VII, VIII (Paris, 1925 and 1928), with two albums (Paris, 1926).
Helen C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557) (New York, 2004).
Jaroslav Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge, 1995).
——, “Crusader Art and Architecture: A Photographic Survey,” in K. M. Setton, A History of the Crusades, vol. IV, ed. H. W. Hazard (Madison and London, 1976), pp. 281–8.
——, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge, 2005).
——, Crusader Manuscript Illumination at Saint Jean d’Acre, 1275–1291 (Princeton, 1976).
——, “The Figural Arts in Crusader Syria and Palestine, 1187–1291: Some New Realities,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2005).
——, The Nazareth Capitals and the Crusader Shrine of the Annunciation (University Park and London, 1986).
V. Guérin, Description géographique, historique et archéologique de la Palestine (Paris;
Judée, in 3 vols., 1868–9, Samarie, in 2 vols., 1874–5, Galilée, in 2 vols., 1880; repr. 1969).
Lucy-Anne Hunt, “Art and Colonialism: The Mosaics of the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem (1169), and the Problem of ‘Crusader’ Art,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991).
——, “A Woman’s Prayer to St Sergios in Latin Syria: Interpreting a Thirteenth-Century Icon at Mount Sinai,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15 (1991), pp. 106–10.
C. N. Johns, Pilgrims’ Castle (‘Atlit), David’s Tower (Jerusalem) and Qal’at ar-Rabad (‘Ajlun), introduced and ed. D. Pringle (Aldershot, 1997).
B. Kühnel, Crusader Art of the Twelfth Century (Berlin, 1994).
G. Kühnel, Wall Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Berlin, 1988).
T. E. Lawrence, Crusader Castles, ed. with notes by D. Pringle (Oxford, 1988).
J. F. Michaud, Histoire des Croisades, 3 vols. (Paris, 1817–19; 6th edn., 7 vols. Paris, 1824–9; repr. 1966–8).
D. Mouriki, “Icons from the 12th to the 15th Century,” in K. Manafis, ed., Sinai: Treasures of the Monastery (Athens, 1990).
——, “Thirteenth-Century Icon Painting in Cyprus, The Griffon n.s. 1–2 (1985–6), pp. 66–71.
V. Pace, “Italy and the Holy Land: Import-Export. I. The Case of Venice,” in V. P. Goss, ed., The Meeting of Two Worlds (Kalamazoo, 1986).
M. Piccirillo, ed., In Terrasanta: dalla Crociata alla Custodia dei Luoghi Santi (Milan, 2000).
B. Porée, “La Contribution de l’Archéologie à la connaissance du monde des Croisades (XIIe–XIIIe siècle): l’exemple du Royaume de Jérusalem,” in M. Balard, ed., Autour de la Première Croisade (Paris, 1996), pp. 487–515.
R. D. Pringle, “The Medieval Pottery of Palestine and Transjordan (ad 636–1500): An Introduction, Gazeteer and Bibliography,” Medieval Ceramics 5 (1981), pp. 45–60.
——, The Red Tower (al-Burj al-Ahmar), Settlement in the Plain of Sharon at the Time of the Crusaders and the Mamluks, AD 1099–1516 (London, 1986).
——, Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, An Archaeological Gazetteer (Cambridge, 1997).
H. Prutz, Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 1883).
E.-G. Rey, Les Colonies franques de Syrie aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Paris, 1883; repr. New York, 1972).
——, Etude sur les monuments de l’architecture militaire des Croisés en Syrie et dans l’ile de Chypre (Paris, 1871).
——, “Etude sur la Topographie de la Ville d’Acre au XIIIe Siècle,” Mémoires de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 39 (1879), pp. 115–45, with a “supplément”, Memoires SNAF, 49 (1888), pp. 1–18.
M. Rey-Delqué, Le Crociate: L’Oriente e l’occidente da Urbano II a San Luigi, 1096–1270 (Milan, 1997).
——, Les Croisades, trans. I. Baudet et al. (Milan and Toulouse, 1997).
S. Rozenberg, ed., Knights of the Holy Land: The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 1999).
Louis Felicien de Saulcy, Numismatique des Croisades (Paris, 1847; repr. 1974).
G. Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient Latin (Paris, 1878; supplement, Paris, 1882).
Karl Schmaltz, Mater Ecclesiarum: Die Grabeskirche in Jerusalem (Strassburg, 1918).
K. M. Setton, ed., History of the Crusades, vol. 4, ed. H. W. Hazard (Madison and London, 1976).
I. Siede, ed., Die Kreuzfahrer: Europe’s Encounter with the Orient (Mainz-Mannheim, 2004).
E. Stern, “Excavation of the Courthouse Site at ‘Akko: The Pottery of the Crusader and Ottoman Periods,” Atiqot XXXI (1997), pp. 35–70.
P. Viaud, Nazareth et ses deux églises de l’Annonciation et de Saint-Joseph (Paris, 1910).
H. Vincent and F.-M. Abel, Jérusalem: Recherches de topographie, d’archéologie et d’histoire (Paris; vol. II, Jérusalem nouvelle, fasc. I–II, 1914; fasc. III, 1922; fasc. IV, 1926).
M. de Vogüé, Les Eglises de la Terre Sainte (Paris, 1860; repr. 1973, with an introduction by J. Prawer).
C. Warren and C. R. Conder, The Survey of Western Palestine: Jerusalem (London, 1884).
K. Weitzmann, “Crusader Icons and Maniera Greca,” in I. Hutter, ed., Byzanz und der Westen (Vienna, 1984), pp. 143–4.
——, “Icon Painting in the Crusader Kingdom,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 20 (1966), pp. 51–83.
——, “Thirteenth-Century Crusader Icons on Mount Sinai,” Art Bulletin, 45 (1963), pp. 179–203.
A. Weyl Carr, “Images of Medieval Cyprus,” in P. W. Wallace, ed., Visitors, Immigrants, and Invaders in Cyprus (Albany, 1995).
B. Zeitler, “Two Iconostasis Beams from Mount Sinai,” in A. Lidov, ed., The Iconostasis: Origins – Evolution – Symbolism (Moscow, 2000).