History Of Armenian Frescoes And Wall Paintings
Extensive wall painting fragments were discovered during the excavations of the Urartian fortress of Arin Berd-Erebuni, the original settlement of Erevan, and the source of the name of the Armenian capital. Several of the site's reconstructions of chambers have been repainted using the patterns and colors of the original vestiges. The figural and decorative art that was produced in Armenia between the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. can now be better understood.
Fresco painting, a significant and highly impressive area of Armenian medieval art, has not received the proper attention for a long time because it was thought that there were not many examples left, they lacked national originality and other reasons.
A break of more than a thousand years has occurred in Armenian monumental painting history. Some churches had frescoes painted in their apses in the late sixth and early seventh centuries of the Christian era. This custom has occasionally survived into the modern era.
The churches of Lmbat (late sixth or early seventh century), Talin (seventh century), Aght'amar (915–921), Tatev (tenth century), Haghbat (thirteenth century), Tigran Honents' at Ani, and K'obayr (twelfth–13th century) in Lori are home to the most significant wall paintings that have survived.
The largest and best preserved of these can be found in the palatine church on the island of Aght'amar in Lake Van. An extensive New Testament cycle was painted throughout the church's interior, from the floor to the dome, to complement the Old Testament cycle carved into the building's exterior façade. In the dome, there was once an Adam cycle. Sadly, the church hasn't been maintained since 1915, and what little is left is slowly vanishing.
It appears that western European painters created the artwork for the Tatev church. The extensive cycle that covers the entire interior of the church of Tigran Honents' at Ani, including a series on the life of St. Gregory the Illuminator, is of a mixed Armenian-Georgian tradition, as are those in the church at K'obayr to the north. Those of Haghbat are stylistically Armenian. Numerous other examples of wall painting have persisted, but unlike the Byzantine tradition or even the nearby Georgian practice, the majority of Armenian churches lack any wall decoration.
The Development Of Armenian Art
One of the least researched and most difficult areas of medieval Armenian art history is wall painting. The few remaining fragments and their poor condition, the complexity of the historical-religious foundation, the near destruction of the heritage in the country's historical western region, and, in the case of the fragments that have miraculously survived, their inaccessibility to fieldwork are a few causes for this situation.
As a result, there is still no in-depth understanding or body of knowledge regarding early Christian and medieval Armenian wall painting art. Particularly little is known about the artistic decorations on monuments from the seventh century. The conditions at the time were ideal for the development of wall painting art. Here are the main two:
Armenian architecture experienced its first "Golden Age" in the late sixth century, particularly between the late 620s and the early 690s. Diffusely high-quality, unique, and innovative religious buildings were constructed in Armenia during that brilliant period. These dome-shaped structures featured exquisite and distinctive sculptural ornamentation as a part of their intricately planned compositions. Architectural sculpture gained a distinctiveness that was unusual for Armenia and even a certain level of luxury after Zvartnots was built, starting in the middle of the seventh century. The style of monuments with column- or cross-crowned quadrilateral-carved memorials also emerged during this time. Furthermore, during that time when Armenian architecture and sculpture experienced such a rapid upsurge, Byzantium and Syria—two other important Christian centers in the East—were going through a severe crisis and almost no notable structures were being built there.
The Armenian Church fought against iconoclasm and took a definite stance in favour of wall painting in the sixth and seventh centuries. The chronicler Vrtanes Kertogh was one of the defenders of iconography in Armenia. On the interior walls of some Armenian churches from the seventh century, there are numerous remnants of the paintings. However, until recently, the number of fragments of visible images was too small. Only four monuments were mentioned by the scientific community as having "readable" wall painting relics. These are the churches of Mren, Lmbat, Arutch, and Talin. The altar apse and its conch both contain remnants of paintings, along with a few smaller pieces on other walls.
