The problem of adaptation of byzantine patterns in the scriptoria of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia on the example of the Lvov Gospel Book of Skevra (1198/1199)

The illuminated Lvov Gospel Book of Skevra is the most valuable work of Armenian art in Polish collections (Warsaw, The National Library, manuscript Akc. 17680 as a deposit of the primate of Poland). Research into the manuscript that was commenced during the first decades of the twentieth century was stopped after 1945 because, right up until 1993, the Gospel Book was considered to be lost. The announcement as to the ‘renewed discovery’ of the Lvov Gospel Book of Skevra at the Library of the Archdiocesan Archive at Gniezno was published by Günter Prinzing in 1993, consequently initiated a subsequent stage in research into this exceptional work. The introductory comments on the artistic and iconographic features of the miniatures in the Lvov Gospel Book of Skevra that are enumerated here show that their direct connection with patterns of Byzantine art are not so clear-cut: while close with regard to the style of the figurative presentation they differ in their iconographic formulas of the incipits as well as in the ornamentation and, moreover, the colour - intensive and saturated. There consequently appears a clear need for further specifications regarding the links of the scriptoria of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia with Constantinople or other centres of Byzantium art such as the monasteries at Athos or Trapezus, as equally the possible dependence on western patterns as well as their distinction from the specifically inherent features derived from the Great Armenian book painting tradition.