DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55207#0035
THE EMPRESS 25
blond hair were much admired in Irene’s time, and the royal coiffeur for this
occasion, in acknowledged conformity to taste, elaborated a head-dress for
the empress, perhaps by adding to her own hair long heavy blond tresses [61].
Her sidelong glance is directed hesitatingly towards the central figure, her
lips are pursed, her expression constrained.
The raiment of the empress is like that of other imperial personages, whose
representations in Byzantine art make possible the reconstruction and descrip-
tion of the here partly vanished mosaics. Over a tunic of which only the
high jewelled collar is seen, Irene wears the long imperial divitission of heavy
flaming red silk into which is woven with gold thread a profusion of curves,
spirals, and flowering scrolls. Their designs are found in earlier Fatimide and
pre-Fatimide weavings and stucco, and later in the rich figured silks of Bursa
(Brusa) and Uskiidar (Scutari) [62]. In the hundred years denoted by the art of
these panels, the taste of the imperial weavers shows no predilection for motives
of birds or animals. Wherever in the Near East the origin of the bifurcation
of the ivy leaf is sought, the ambient union of these particular forms here
creates a new synthesis and reveals a secondary nature from a fresh intuition
in the artists of Constantinople in the time of the genius of the Comnenoi [63].
The long wide opening of the right sleeve is bordered by a running design
in blue and gold thickly set with pearls, and the same ornament is repeated on
the arm-bands. Partly hidden by the loros, the shoulder-piece is woven in
blue floriated design on gold ground, bordered with a double row of pearls,
interspersed with gems and trimmed on its edge with sprays of pearls. Around
the neck the opening has a string of pearls between rows of small garnets or
carnelians. Like the shoulder-piece the loros is of heavy cloth of gold woven
with floriated scroll pattern in deep sapphire-blue terminating in jewels and
is similarly bordered; it ends over the forearm in a lengthwise fold, leaving
only half of the scroll pattern visible.
The girdle [64] is woven in deep sea-green with an oval buckle composed of
a carbuncle set in pearls. Below the girdle the shield-shaped lower part of the
loros is ornamented with a heart-like design in deep blue enhanced by jewelled
flowers on a gold ground. The centre is a beryl.
The empress wears a gold modiolos greatly surpassing all the other crowns
in magnitude. It has the usual semblance of battlemented walls and gates,
shining translucently with the lustre of jewels: beryls, carnelians, carbuncles,
lapis-lazuli, and with rows of pearls tier upon tier, until sparkling particles on
invisible wires appear actually to fly upwards around the cross that surmounts
the crown.
Beneath the crown a diaphanous red flame-like veil, thrown back over the
D
blond hair were much admired in Irene’s time, and the royal coiffeur for this
occasion, in acknowledged conformity to taste, elaborated a head-dress for
the empress, perhaps by adding to her own hair long heavy blond tresses [61].
Her sidelong glance is directed hesitatingly towards the central figure, her
lips are pursed, her expression constrained.
The raiment of the empress is like that of other imperial personages, whose
representations in Byzantine art make possible the reconstruction and descrip-
tion of the here partly vanished mosaics. Over a tunic of which only the
high jewelled collar is seen, Irene wears the long imperial divitission of heavy
flaming red silk into which is woven with gold thread a profusion of curves,
spirals, and flowering scrolls. Their designs are found in earlier Fatimide and
pre-Fatimide weavings and stucco, and later in the rich figured silks of Bursa
(Brusa) and Uskiidar (Scutari) [62]. In the hundred years denoted by the art of
these panels, the taste of the imperial weavers shows no predilection for motives
of birds or animals. Wherever in the Near East the origin of the bifurcation
of the ivy leaf is sought, the ambient union of these particular forms here
creates a new synthesis and reveals a secondary nature from a fresh intuition
in the artists of Constantinople in the time of the genius of the Comnenoi [63].
The long wide opening of the right sleeve is bordered by a running design
in blue and gold thickly set with pearls, and the same ornament is repeated on
the arm-bands. Partly hidden by the loros, the shoulder-piece is woven in
blue floriated design on gold ground, bordered with a double row of pearls,
interspersed with gems and trimmed on its edge with sprays of pearls. Around
the neck the opening has a string of pearls between rows of small garnets or
carnelians. Like the shoulder-piece the loros is of heavy cloth of gold woven
with floriated scroll pattern in deep sapphire-blue terminating in jewels and
is similarly bordered; it ends over the forearm in a lengthwise fold, leaving
only half of the scroll pattern visible.
The girdle [64] is woven in deep sea-green with an oval buckle composed of
a carbuncle set in pearls. Below the girdle the shield-shaped lower part of the
loros is ornamented with a heart-like design in deep blue enhanced by jewelled
flowers on a gold ground. The centre is a beryl.
The empress wears a gold modiolos greatly surpassing all the other crowns
in magnitude. It has the usual semblance of battlemented walls and gates,
shining translucently with the lustre of jewels: beryls, carnelians, carbuncles,
lapis-lazuli, and with rows of pearls tier upon tier, until sparkling particles on
invisible wires appear actually to fly upwards around the cross that surmounts
the crown.
Beneath the crown a diaphanous red flame-like veil, thrown back over the
D