From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 05 2001 - 17:24:48 EDT
I'm forwarding this message to the list on behalf of Randy Leedy:
>Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 15:27:58 -0400
>From: "Randy Leedy " <Rleedy@bju.edu>
>To: <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu>
>Subject: Off-topic: Byzantine icon attributions
>
>The Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery has a significant
>collection of medieval icons. I was asked to translate the text on one
>of them today, and, not having much background on these things, I
>unsuprisingly encountered something puzzling. The lower right corner
>contains an attribution, beneath which there appears a parenthetical
>note: (APOQ). When the researcher told me that it would have been
>considered sacrilege for the artists to sign their icons, I surmised
>that this must be an abbreviation of APOQANWN ("deceased"), signifying
>that the attribution was supplied later, making clear that the artist
>himself did not presume to sign his work. My first question, then, is
>whether I have interpreted this parenthesis correctly.
>
>I saw an image of a similar attribution from another icon, and both
>had a couple of puzzling features: there is a dot under the alpha, and
>the legs of the pi slant downward to the left. My second question is
>whether these details have meaning. The pi in particular could easily
>be a matter of writing style, for all I know, but I can't recall ever
>having seen one like this, and all the other vertical strokes in the
>attribution are actually vertical, or very nearly so.
>
>Thanks in advance for any help, and I hope I can be forgiven for
>posting something that is at best very, very marginally germane to
>this list.
>
>Blessings! (Acts 3:26)
>
>Randy Leedy
>Bob Jones University
>RLeedy@bju.edu
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