Muslim artists and Christian models in the painted ceilings of the Cappella Palatina

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Romanesque and the Mediterranean (2015), 59–89

© British Archaeological Association 2015

MUSLIM ARTISTS AND CHRISTIAN MODELS IN THE PAINTED CEILINGS OF THE CAPPELLA PALATINA

Jeremy Johns

The ceilings of the Cappella Palatina were decorated by Muslim artists who probably trained in FāÐimid Egypt before coming to Norman Palermo in c. 1140. Most of the fi gural scenes belong to the traditional Islamic palatial cycle. Less than 10% of them have been attributed to a variety of Christian sources, and were presumably commissioned by the Norman patron or his agents. Four groups of Christian scenes, derived principally from Romanesque models, are discussed, and their likely impact upon the newly arrived Muslim artists is imagined, as they were set to work alongside other immigrant artisans to create the visual aspect of King Roger’s new monarchy, the most characteristic feature of which was the deliberate and polemical juxtaposition of the three cultures of his kingdom — Arabic, Greek and Latin.

INTRODUCTION

The building now known as the Cappella Palatina or palace chapel was commissioned by Roger, the fi rst king of Sicily (r. 1130–54), at the centre of his principal palace in Palermo (Fig. 1). It was built above an earlier chapel, now usually but misleadingly called a crypt, which occupies the ground fl oor, so that the Cappella Palatina is elevated on the fi rst fl oor of the palace (Figs 2 and 3).1 Construction is most unlikely to have begun before Roger’s coronation on Christmas Day 1130, and the mosaic inscription running round the base of the cupola and bearing a date equivalent to the year 1143 demonstrates that the shell of the build-ing was then complete and its decoration already advanced.2 There is general agreement amongst schol-ars that the aisled hall to the west of the sanctuary served, at least under King Roger, as an aula regia in which the king sat enthroned on a dais in the middle of the west wall (Figs 4 and 5).3 The central nave and two side aisles of that hall are covered by the painted wooden ceilings that are the subject of this paper (Fig. 6).

The nave ceiling, upon which I shall concentrate, measures 18.5 m × 5 m and is built upon a trabeate framework suspended from wooden brackets slotted into the side walls. The lowest edge of the ceiling just overlaps the mosaics of the walls 10.5 m above the pavement, while the tops of the coffers of the central zone rise to 13 m. The ceiling may be divided into three zones. First, the ‘horizontal’, central zone, is com-posed of three types of coffers — octagons enclosing

eight-pointed stars, octagons enclosing cupola, and rhombuses — separated by massive stalactite pen-dants. Second, the ‘vertical’, muqarnas zone, which make the transition from the central zone to the walls of the nave, is built of three types of large, multifac-eted, three-dimensional units composed of small cells according to a strict geometrical scheme: twenty large units (nine on the north and south sides and one on the east and west), alternating with twenty-four small units (ten on each of the long sides and two on each end), and the four corner units which are, in effect, composed of the cells of two large units.4 The third zone is the bottom cornice, now bearing a 15th-century Latin inscription, which masks the gap between the lower edge of the muqarnas and the top of the mosaics of the walls. A hidden superstructure, which can only be seen in the space between the ceiling and the roof, supports the painted surfaces of the central section and the muqarnas zone, which are built up from thousands of wooden panels, no more than a few millimetres thick, the largest of which measure 660 mm × 430 mm, while the smallest (not including the border panels) are 250 mm × 120 mm. Fir (Abies alba and possibly A. nebrodiensis) seems to have been used for most of the panels, but pine (Pinus negra and P. sylvestris), beech, birch and poplar are all present.5 Once assembled, the multi-faceted surface of the ceiling was covered with a thin layer of gesso, before being painted with tempera and gilded.6

Contrary to what has sometimes been thought, there can be no doubt that the ceiling of the nave was

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Figure 1

Hypothetical reconstruction of the plan of Palazzo dei Normanni in the 12th century showing the Cappella Palatina (no. 1) in the heart of the palace (© R. Longo 2011)

part of the original plan for the building.7 The slots for the wooden brackets from which it is suspended, and the slits for the ventilation of the space between the ceiling and the roof, were built into the original masonry of the walls of the nave.8 Again contrary to what has often been suggested, it is clear that the carpenters and painters worked together as a single co-ordinated team, because the massive stalactite pendants of the central part of the ceiling were built and painted on the ground before they were hoisted and fi xed into place.9

It is highly probable that the ceiling of the nave was completed before 29 June 1143, although the cornice that runs round the four walls of the nave immediately below the ceiling proper, and now bears a 15th-century Latin inscription, was added after the mosaics of the nave had been set, but clearly within a genera-tion or so of the completion of the paintings of the nave. The similarities in style between the painting of the ceilings of the two aisles and that of the inscription cornice suggests that they may have been painted at about the same time.10 The intricate complexity of the

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the painted ceilings of the cappella palatina

Figure 3

Section (west–east looking north) through Cappella Palatina and Lower Church, and plan of the Cappella Palatina, by Monti and Prescia (© T. Dittelbach, Stiftung Würth, Künzelsau & Swiridoff Verlag 2011)

Figure 2

Hypothetical reconstruction of the view of the Palazzo dei Normanni in the 12th century from the north-east, showing the bell tower and dome of the Cappella Palatina (centre) rising above the eastern buildings of the palace (© R. Longo 2011)

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that could be adjusted proportionally to cover any rectangular space. Second, except for the small number of scenes that refl ect the intervention of the Sicilian patron or his agents — some of which will be discussed in detail below — all of the paintings of the nave belong to the cycle of scenes and inscriptions with which Islamic palaces and their contents had tradi-tionally been decorated since the ʿAbbāsid heyday in 9th-century Baghdad and Samarra.13 And third, most of the painted scenes and all of the inscriptions are too high to be read clearly by a viewer standing on the pavement of the nave, suggesting that this type of ceiling and its decoration may originally have been designed to cover a space with a much lower roof, such as a palatial hall or pavilion. While, at the planning stage, it may have seemed wholly appropriate to cover Roger’s aula regia with a type of ceiling developed for an Islamic palace, the much greater height of the build-ing that was in architectural terms the nave of a church, greatly reduced the visual impact of the ceiling once it had been constructed, concealing in the gloomy heights of the nave both the drama of its vertical articulation and the detail of its paintings.

Both the wooden structure of the ceiling of the nave and its painted decoration were executed by an itinerant workshop of carpenters and painters who had clearly already collaborated in the construction of similar ceilings over palatial halls in the Islamic Mediterranean and possibly beyond. No comparable wooden ceiling now survives and the most likely expla-nation for that absence is that throughout the Islamic world, from Qu½ayr ʿAmra in the mid-8th century to the Alhambra in the mid-13th, no palace has survived with its decoration in place, except in Norman Sicily. There are no Islamic painted ceilings from this period because there are no Islamic palaces, and the sole surviving example of a more or less complete painted wooden palace ceiling from the Islamic world before the 13th century was commissioned by a Norman king to cover what is now the nave of a Christian church.

There are good reasons to think that similar painted, wooden muqarnas ceilings may once have been wide-spread. The long-destroyed 12th-century palace of the Moukhroutas in Constantinople was covered by a muqarnas ceiling painted with images of a royal majlis from the Islamic palatial cycle, and a philological case can be made that it was built of wood and not, as once thought, of brick and plaster.14 Surviving fragments of plaster muqarnas ceilings, also painted with scenes from the Islamic palatial cycle, come from a bath-house that should probably be dated to the mid-10th to mid-11th century near the Sanctuary of Abū l-Suʿūd in FusÐāÐ (Egypt), from 12th-century Coptic churches, and from a mid-12th-century palace beneath Santa Clara la Real in Murcia (Spain).15 Fragments of simi-lar muqarnas units, again in plaster but painted with geometric and vegetal ornament, have been excavated in the palaces of the Qalʿat Banī ©ammād (Algeria), the capital of the ©ammādid state that succeeded

Figure 4

Palermo, Cappella Palatina: interior view from east (© Cosimo Franco Panini Editore Spa 2010)

Figure 5

Palermo, Cappella Palatina: interior view from west (© Cosimo Franco Panini Editore Spa 2010)

design for the ceiling of the nave, the manner in which the carpenters instructed the masons to allow for the spaces and systems necessary for the support, ventila-tion and maintenance of the ceiling, and the mastery with which the ceiling was executed and integrated into the structure of the building, all demonstrate that the carpenters were already expert in the construction of similar wooden ceilings before they started in the Cappella Palatina.11 Three considerations together suggest that, while they were accustomed to provide ceilings for Islamic palaces, this was the fi rst time that they had made such a ceiling for a Christian church. First, in the north and south elevations of the nave, the rhythm of the units of the muqarnas sides of the ceiling is out of time with the rhythm of the clerestory windows and the arcades.12 This awkward irregularity suggests that the original design was not created spe-cially for the chapel but was conceived as a template

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the FāÐimids in Western Ifrīqiya, dating to the early 11th century.16 In none of these cases do the muqarnas fragments seem to belong to domes; on the contrary, they all appear to have come from drums, zones of transition and vaults covering rectangular spaces.17 The ceiling of the ©ammādid palace of Bijāya (mod. Bougie, Algeria), celebrated in verse by Ibn ©amdīs, also seems to have covered a rectangular hall. While its decoration, consisting of vegetal ornament, golden birds and hunting scenes, was certainly painted, the Arabic verses imply that the ceiling was conceived of as having been ‘carved’ (mukharram, literally ‘pierced’), a term which under poetic licence could well have been applied to a multifaceted muqarnas ceiling constructed, like the nave ceiling of the Cappella Palatina, from multiple geometric wooden cells.18

The forms of the individual muqarnas cells employed in Norman Sicily are closer to those found in the Maghrib than to those from the Mashriq, and the closest surviving comparanda for the design of the muqarnas units in the ceiling of the nave of the Cappella Palatina are today found in the Almoravid and Almohad mosques of Algeria and Morocco, such as al-Qarawiyīn in Fez (Morocco), but those vaults are built of masonry and plaster not of wood, and — of

course — are not painted with scenes from the palatial cycle.19 The likelihood of a direct link between the painted wooden ceiling of the royal hall in Palermo and the plaster muqarnas vaults of Maghribī mosques, which are for the most part now undecorated, is remote. It is more probable that Almoravid and Almohad builders adapted to religious architecture a type of muqarnas that was already widespread in the palaces of the Islamic Mediterranean. If so, then the fact that the mosques and their ceilings have survived, while the palaces have not — except in Norman Sicily — has created the misleading impression that the nave ceiling of the Cappella Palatina may have derived from the ceilings of Almoravid and Almohad mosques.

As might be expected of a ceiling built and deco-rated by an itinerant workshop of specialised carpen-ters and painters who had worked at different courts throughout the Islamic Mediterranean and beyond, the structure of the muqarnas, the style of the painting, and the range of iconographic subjects all refl ect the infl uence of a variety of models from different sources. We shall see shortly how susceptible the painters of the Cappella Palatina were to the Christian models that they encountered on arriving in Sicily.

Figure 6

Palermo, Cappella Palatina: the three painted wooden ceilings of the aisles and nave of the from below (Photo: Gigi Roli, © Cosimo Franco Panini Editore Spa)

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It is by no means universally accepted, however, that the carpenters and painters of the ceiling of the nave of the Cappella Palatina were indeed imported to Palermo from elsewhere.20 Nonetheless, there are strong historical grounds a priori for believing this to be so. Before the creation of the Norman monarchy in 1130, there had been no royal court on the island for approximately ninety years. An indigenous workshop expert in the construction and decoration of palace ceilings could not have survived unemployed and without court patronage for three generations only to reappear at the height of its powers after Roger’s coronation. This historical case is frequently misun-derstood, or even ignored, and so must be rehearsed in some detail.

Sicily had been conquered by Arab and Berber troops from Aghlabid Ifrīqiya during the 9th century. For the fi rst hundred years, the island served essen-tially as a military base from which the Aghlabid emirs and their governors in Sicily launched successive attacks against Christian outposts in the east of the island and against mainland Italy. However, after 949, when the FāÐimid caliph installed the Kalbid family as governors of Sicily, Palermo developed into a centre of Islamic culture and learning. By 973, when the geographer Ibn ©awqal visited Sicily, he could com-pare Palermo, ‘the only famous and well-known city’ of the island, to Umayyad Cordova for its large number of mosques.21 But Kalbid Palermo fl ourished for only about a century and, during the late 1030s and 1040s, civil war tore apart the unifi ed emirate.22 As rival warlords struggled to assert their authority, the surrounding Christian powers took the opportunity to invade. In 1038–42, a Byzantine expedition led by the general George Maniakes nearly succeeded in conquering the island. It included a large contingent of the Varangian guard commanded by Harald Hardrada, and reinforced by Lombards and Normans from southern Italy led by the two elder brothers of the de Hauteville family from Normandy, William Iron Arm and Drogo. In 1060, Robert Guiscard and Roger, the two youngest de Hauteville brothers, crossed the Straits of Messina ostensibly as mercenaries of the warlord Ibn al-Thumna and, on his death in 1062, began the conquest of Sicily for themselves.

The Norman conquest of Sicily lasted for more than thirty years and caused massive damage to the island. So much so that, in 1093, Count Roger de Hauteville wrote:

Who, seeing the huge and widespread destruction of the castles and cities of the Muslims, and observing the vast destruction of their palaces, built with such great skill [. . .] could not consider this to be a great and manifold disaster and an incalculable loss.23

The damage done by the Norman conquest to Muslim Palermo was left largely unrepaired until, in 1130, Count Roger’s son had himself crowned and founded the new kingdom of Sicily. Between the Norman

conquest and the coronation of Roger II, there is little evidence in Sicily of new building in the Islamic tradi-tion.24 Mostly ecclesiastical monuments survive, and these attest above all to the importation of new archi-tectural ideas from beyond the Alps via the Italian mainland.25 The few churches claimed to date from this early period that exhibit Islamic features, such as San Giovanni dei Lebbrosi in Palermo, or SS Piero e Paolo di Agrò with its muqarnas brick pendentives, can all be shown to have been built or rebuilt after 1130.26

The material and visual culture of the new Norman monarchy was created above all through the importa-tion of artists, craftsmen and scholars from outside the island — mosaicists from Byzantium, scribes from FāÐimid Egypt, silk weavers from Byzantine Greece, porphyry-workers from Rome, sculptors from the Italian mainland and southern France, and so on.27 This is amply attested not just by the material evidence, but also by contemporary witnesses who comment on the importation of those scholars and artisans who built the kingdom.28 Local Sicilian craftsmen presumably participated as assistants and labourers from the outset, and seem to have gradually assimilated the ideas and techniques introduced by their foreign masters, so that by the 1170s and 1180s, in William II’s great church and palace complex at Monreale, forms and motifs fi rst imported under King Roger are ‘now distilled, refi ned and blended so that they cannot be separated’.29 This characteristically Sicilian synthesis only fully emerged under William II and was the culmination of a process that had begun forty years earlier with the systematic importation of foreign craftsmen and scholars who were commis-sioned to create a deliberately syncretizing material and visual culture for the new monarchy — a culture which, in the words of William II’s minister and panegyrist, Eugenius of Palermo, was intended to demonstrate how the unifying power of the Norman king could ‘harmonize the inharmonious and mix together the unmixable [. . .] blending and uniting into a single race disparate and incongruent peoples’.30

The itinerant workshop that built and decorated the ceiling of the nave of the Cappella Palatina was active in the late 1130s or 1140s. Thereafter, other wooden ceilings in Sicily were painted in a style and with an iconographic repertoire that demonstrates how local artists appropriated and assimilated motifs fi rst intro-duced in the Cappella Palatina. The remnants of the ceiling of the nave of the cathedral of San Salvatore at Cefalù assume particular importance because they alone survive in suffi cient quantity to reconstruct the decorative scheme.31 Although the stellate coffers at Cefalù are clearly meant to evoke the far more elabo-rate stellate cupolae of the central section of the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina, the simple trabeate structure used at Cefalù, and above all the absence of muqarnas, suggests that the carpenters had learnt little from the

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masters of the Cappella Palatina. Similarly, the quality of the painting, which is much cruder at Cefalù than in the Cappella Palatina, and the fact that the paint was applied directly to the bare wood without a prepara-tory layer of gesso, suggest that the artists imitated what they had seen in Palermo, but were not them-selves trained by the master painters of the Cappella Palatina. While the basic iconographic subjects at Cefalù are virtually all represented in the Cappella Palatina, many of the scenes in Palermo do not reap-pear in San Salvatore.32 Moreover, at Cefalù, there are no Arabic inscriptions, nor even pseudo-epigraphic designs, and stock fi gures from the Islamic palatial cycle are transformed into explicitly Christian images at Cefalù, so that seated nudamāʾ hold crosses instead of wine-cups, and royal eagles and bulls become symbols of the Evangelists.33 All this suggests that the ceiling of Cefalù was a work of synthesis executed by local carpenters and painters who sought to imitate the paintings of the foreign masters that they had seen in the Cappella Palatina, but who lacked the expertise to do so with exactitude.34 The same appears to be true for the ceilings of Palermo cathedral, Santo Spirito and La Magione.35 It is remarkable that no wooden muqarnas ceiling survives in Sicily after the Cappella Palatina, but only imitations of muqarnas forms, such as may be seen in the Sala Magna of Palazzo Chiaramonte (Lo Steri) in Palermo (1377–80).36 This suggests that the masters who built the ceiling of the nave of the Cappella Palatina left Sicily without having trained local carpenters in their specialised craft, so that later Sicilian builders who wished to reproduce the muqarnas of the royal palace could only imitate its outer form without recreating its underlying structure.

As to the paintings, Lev Kapitaikin has now assem-bled a mass of evidence that demonstrates that the style of painting in Palermo is most closely paralleled in FāÐimid Egypt.37 The vast majority of the images belong to what has loosely been called the ‘princely cycle’ that had fi rst been formulated under the Umayy-ads of Syria in the second quarter of the 8th century and the ʿAbbāsid caliphs in 9th-century Baghdad and Samarra, and had then spread widely throughout the Islamic world. Again, the closest comparanda for most of the vegetal and geometrical ornament, and for the calligraphic designs, can be found in FāÐimid Egypt. For this reason, there can be little doubt that the painters had trained in Cairo or FusÐāÐ. Kapitaikin has made a strong case that their repertoire included elements used by Coptic painters. Nonetheless, the balance of the evidence indicates that the painters of the nave ceiling were Muslims, and that they, together with the palatial cycle with which they decorated most of the ceiling, were not part of the indigenous culture of Islamic Sicily that the Normans had appropriated on their conquest of the island but, on the contrary, were imported to Sicily from the Islamic Mediterra-nean, probably from FāÐimid Egypt, by King Roger

and his ministers after his coronation in 1130. The panel-by-panel study of the ceilings that I recently undertook for the Mirabilia Italiae, and the even more detailed analysis of the ceilings by Kapitaikin which I had the privilege to supervise, have only strength-ened my conviction that the artists came from Egypt and introduced both a style of painting and an iconographic repertoire that were in effect completely new to the island.38

It has long been recognized that a small number of scenes in the ceilings — less than 10% of those involv-ing human fi gures — do not belong to the traditional repertoire that constitutes the Islamic palatial cycle. Scholars, including Ugo Monneret de Villard, André Grabar, Dalu Jones, Erica Dodd, Maria Vittoria Fontana, David Knipp, Ernst Grube, Annliese Nef, Kapitaikin, Francesca Anzelmo and myself, have attributed these to a variety of Christian sources, from Byzantium, to East Christian Mesopotamia and Syria, to Coptic Egypt, to Sicily itself, and also to northwest Europe.39 It is principally upon the latter — sources that may be traced at least in part to northwest Europe, what I am loosely calling Romanesque models — that I wish to concentrate in this paper. I would like to do so by imagining the likely impact of these Roman-esque models upon the Muslim artists, newly arrived in Palermo from Egypt, who set to work alongside the host of other immigrant artists and artisans that King Roger and his ministers had assembled in order to construct the visual aspect of the new monarchy — mosaicists invited from Constantinople, silk-weavers kidnapped from Corinth, ecclesiastical architects, masons and stone-carvers drawn from southern Italy, France and the Anglo-Norman world, palace archi-tects and masons from the FāÐimid Mediterranean, Latin notaries from Rome, Montecassino and north-western Europe, Greek logothetes and scribes trained in the great monastic scriptoria of Eastern Sicily and Calabria, Arabic secretaries from FāÐimid Cairo and many more besides. It has long been recognized that one of the most characteristic features of the visual language of the new monarchy was the deliberate and, indeed, the polemical juxtaposition of the three main cultures of the kingdom — Arabic, Greek and Latin. What might have been the effect of that juxtaposition upon the artists themselves?

KING DAVID AND NABĪ DAʾŪD

The western end of the Sanctuary is replete with Solomonic references. The western arch of the cupola rests upon a pair of spiral columns that evoked the columns of Boaz and Jachin at the entrance of the Temple.40 On the eastern face of that arch is repre-sented the Presentation of the Infant Christ in the Temple.41 King Solomon is fi gured on the western side of the drum, and King David on the eastern.42 The ceil-ing joins with the architecture and the mosaics adding,

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in the precise centre of the east side above the apex of the arch leading to the Sanctuary, a pair of lions in combat with serpentine dragons, which not only guard the entry to the Sanctuary but also carry a reference to the two lions that stood beside Solomon’s throne.43 But it is with two adjacent panels that I wish to begin.

In the north-east corner of the ceiling, abutting the arch that leads to the Sanctuary, a large rectangular panel in the second tier of the muqarnas is painted with a Musician tuning a Triangular Psaltery (Fig. 7).44 This instrument is unique in the ceilings and is very different from the rectangular psaltery played by fi ve dancing girls (qiyān).45 Nor does it seem to occur else-where in early Islamic depictions of musicians. It is to be distinguished both from the harp with a wide, richly decorated sound-box (ponticello) that is drawn on the so-called Siculo-Arabic painted ivory caskets, and also from the similar (if not identical) harp played by musi-cians in the Islamic palatial cycle that appears in the ceiling of the FāÐimid Western Palace in Cairo.46 Such harpists are always depicted with their instrument held vertically or inclined towards them, with the pillar towards the body, plucking the strings with both hands.47 The artist in the royal chapel has drawn the triangular psaltery with the top and one side forming a right angle and represented as two sides of a frame, while the third and longest side is open and without a border. Eight pegs project from the top, and eight double courses of strings run from them not, as one might expect, diagonally to the other side of the frame but vertically to the third open side. There are no sound-holes, and it is not clear whether the instrument had a hollow box or merely a raised board. No attempt has been made to show a bridge or any method of fastening the strings to the third side. In short, an instrument of precisely the form drawn here could never have existed. It is probable that the model that artist struggled to follow was intended to represent the triangular psaltery that Christian writers, from at least the time of Isidore of Seville, had particularly associ-ated with David the Psalmist.48 What appears to be the same instrument is given a variety of names in 12th-century representations. In the Hortus deliciarum, King David tunes a triangular psalterium dicitur decacordium (Fig. 8). In the capital depicting King David and his Musicians in the cloister at Moissac, a standing fi gure playing a triangular instrument is identifi ed as Name (i.e. [H]eman reversed) cum rota.49 The painters of the ceilings were far more successful in depicting realistically the rectangular psaltery, an instrument that clearly belonged to their organologi-cal repertoire and with which they may even have been personally familiar. All this suggests strongly that the artist of this panel was unaccustomed to draw the triangular psaltery, and reproduced the instrument not from his own stock repertoire but rather from a pictorial model that was new and unfamiliar to him.

The Musician tuning a Triangular Psaltery is depicted not playing but rather tuning the instrument, with his

right hand turning the peg of the shortest string with a tuning lever, while his left hand plucks the fourth string (Fig. 7). He sits upon a curule chair (sella curulis), one of only two fi gures in the ceilings to do so. In nearly all other respects, the fi gure is painted in the same style and composed according to the same icono-graphic formula as the other musicians in the ceilings. He is bare headed, and there is nothing to suggest that the nimbus surrounding his head is anything but purely conventional. His facial features are those of a young man, and are wholly in keeping with other male musicians in the muqarnas zone.50 His body is arranged in one of the standard poses for a musician — turned one quarter to the right and sitting with the right leg crossed over the left — a pose that looks rather awkward when adapted to the curule chair and trian-gular psaltery. He wears the long gown worn by other male musicians, in a plain, unpatterned fabric and without unusual decoration. Only shoes, which are rarely depicted in the ceilings, distinguish his costume from that of other male musicians. The usual trays bearing fruit and a wine-jug hover in the background, next to foliate sprigs. The scene is enclosed by an elab-orate inner polylobed frame of a type not infrequently employed to surround musicians, nudamāʾ and other fi gures, in the large rectangular panels in the middle of all three muqarnas units.51 For all that, three anoma-lous elements — the triangular psaltery, the manner in which the musician does not play but rather tunes his instrument, and the curule chair (sella curulis) upon which he is seated — are not found in earlier Islamic painting and were almost certainly drawn from a Romanesque model depicting King David tuning his Psaltery. All three elements appear in that very scene in the Hortus deliciarum, as well as in in other 11th- and 12th-century examples (Fig. 8).52

In the same north-east corner unit, the large rectan-gular panel immediately to the north was painted by the same artist with the fi gure of a Scribe (Fig. 9).53 The bearded man wears a turban tied around a conical cap, a long robe adorned with gold bands ornamented in black, and very prominent shoes of exactly the same type as worn by the Musician tuning a Triangular Psaltery (Fig. 7). With his left leg crossed over his right knee, he too sits upon on a curule chair — the only other fi gure in the ceiling to do so. He holds with his left hand what appears to be a long scroll to which he points with the index fi nger of his right hand. Floating in the background behind his shoulders are a bottle and a tray laden with fruit. Foliate ornament is restricted to a few sprigs at the bottom of the panel, not least because of the tight confi nes imposed by the elaborate polylobed inner frame. Although the fi gure does not hold a pen he is usually identifi ed as a Scribe because he adheres closely to the iconographic formula for the scribe in early Islamic art. While scribes as such are not often depicted, they are by no means unknown. The scribe in the famous birth-scene

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Figure 7

Musician tuning a Triangular Psaltery. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, North-east corner unit, Panel 27. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.15002 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). See also Plate II in print edition

Figure 8

King David: David rex. Psalterium dicitur decacor-dium. From the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Hohenbourg (Landsberg 1176–96), fol. 59v (detail). After The Hortus Deliciarum fol. 59v, no. 81, pl. 37; I, 97; II, 123

Figure 9

Scribe. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, North-east corner unit, Panel 26. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.15002 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 694. See also Plate III in print edition

of the Schefer Maqāmāt, is shown as a bearded fi gure, wearing a turban, holding a long scroll in his left hand and a pen in his right; an almost identical scribe, seated on a stool, appears in the episode of Abū Zayd and his son in front of the cadi.54 In the other 13th-century Paris Maqāmāt, a scribe holds the long scroll in the shape of an inverted U that later can be seen to be a standard element of the iconographic formula.55 The fi gure of a scribe far more commonly represents the planet Mercury, al-ʿUÐārīd, known in Arabic also as al-Kātib, ‘the Scribe’, and thus drawn as a seated male fi gure holding either an open book or a long, U-shaped scroll, for example on a late-13th- or early-14th-century metal basin from Mamlūk Egypt, and in the illustrations to later Arabic astronomical and astro-logical treatises, such as the famous manuscript of Abū Māʾshar al-Balkhī’s Kitāb al-Mawālid copied in Cairo in the 15th century.56

Perhaps the closest formal parallels for the Scribe in the Cappella Palatina come from Norman Sicily. One of the two notarii saraceni in Peter of Eboli’s famous

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illustration of the trilingual royal chancery is a bearded fi gure, wearing a turban and shoes, and with his left leg crossed over his right knee, writing on a long scroll.57 Less well known, in the painted beams from Cefalù Cathedral, a bearded and bareheaded fi gure, appar-ently seated, holds in his left hand a long scroll to which he points with his right hand, while a wine jug fl oats in the background.58 The artists of both these Sicilian images associated the scene with other images of royalty, so that there is some reason to identify the Scribe in the Cappella Palatina as a royal scribe, a symbol of Roger’s monarchy, and also, perhaps, as one of the ‘self-referential’ genre scenes in which the ceiling refers to the daily activities — in this case the administration — of the royal court and palace.59 The Cefalù Scribe was probably modelled directly upon the Scribe in the Cappella Palatina and so adheres to the conventional Islamic iconographic formula, while Peter of Eboli’s Scribe also seems to owe more than a little to the Islamic al-Kātib.

The artist responsible for this pair of adjacent panels in the north-east corner of Cappella Palatina was care-ful to establish a close visual connection between the Musician tuning a Triangular Psaltery and the Scribe: both scenes are enclosed by elaborate polylobed frames, both fi gures wear shoes, and both sit upon curule chairs (Fig. 7 and Fig. 9). That these two panels, one of which drew heavily upon a Romanesque model of King David tuning his Psaltery, form a pair in the midst of all the Solomonic references in the east end, leaves little room for doubt that one represents David the Harpist and the other his Scribe who records the words of the Psalms.60 This pairing of harpist and scribe (or scribes) is familiar, as King David and his Scribe(s), from many Romanesque illustrations of the revelation of the Psalms. For example, in the mid-9th-century Psalter probably originally from St Remi at Sens, now in the Bibliothèque municipale at Angers (MS 0018), King David and one musician are illus-trated on the left-hand page of an opening, opposite the page depicting three more musicians in the upper register and, below them, two seated scribes, both writing upon long scrolls (Fig. 10).61

The Prophet Dāwūd —David in Muslim guise — is mentioned in the Qurʾān, and three passages refer to the revelation of the zabūr — a book usually identifi ed with the Psalms.62 Unlike the Bible, the Qurʾān is never illustrated, but Dāwūd fi gures largely in the Arabic Qi½a½ al-anbiyāʾ, or ‘Tales of the Prophets’, where he is celebrated as the psalmist and, especially, as a musician and singer of miraculous power.63 But in the illustrated copies of these tales, the episodes from the life of Dāwūd most commonly represented are those relating to Uriah and Bathsheba, and I dare say that Dāwūd is never depicted in early Islamic art as a musi-cian or as the psalmist, still less with an accompanying scribe. In short, there seems to be no source in Islamic art from which a scene of King David and his Scribe could have been drawn.

The most likely reconstruction of events is that the patron or his commissioners instructed the painters to insert images of David the harpist and the scribe of the psalms into the eastern end of the ceiling, where they would complement the cluster of Solomonic references in the Sanctuary. Because the Muslim artists carried no image of David in their repertoire, they were pro-vided with a Romanesque model to follow, presum-ably an illuminated manuscript, perhaps containing the scene of King David and his Scribe. In translating that image to the ceiling, the painters retained some elements of the model formula, including the distinc-tive triangular psaltery, the tuning lever, the curule chair on which both David and his scribe sit, and their outlandish shoes, but omitted others, such as the crown that the Romanesque model is likely to have worn. The style of the painting and the composition of the scene are completely in harmony with the rest of the ceiling, and owe nothing to the Romanesque model.

While this fi rst example seems to be straightforward, a second will reveal some of the hidden pitfalls in the search for the iconographic models of the paintings of the Cappella Palatina.

DANIEL AND DĀNIYĀL

The axis that runs north–south through the centre of the ceiling associates another series of royal images. A pair of representations of a Seated ruler with Atten-dants to the south, is juxtaposed on the north side with a pair of panels representing the royal Palace and, within it, the royal Chapel — the Cappella Palatina itself.64 To the south, the large landscape panel at the base of the muqarnas unit is occupied by a Mounted Dragon-slayer, modelled on a Byzantine icon of St Theodore — to whom we shall return later (Fig. 13). To the north, the equivalent panel shows a Man seated between Two Lions, which he appears to be holding by the neck (Fig. 11).65 It is tempting to identify this scene as Daniel in the Lions’ Den. Daniel with his arms out-stretched in an orans pose is frequently represented standing between two lions in early Christian art and, in medieval sculpture and painting, is often repre-sented either seated or standing in the same pose.66 One or both of Daniel’s arms often drop on to the heads or necks of the lions, as on the capital of the column to the north of the main door of the west façade of San Donnino di Fidenza, conventionally attributed to the workshop of Benedetto Antelami, c. 1175, where Daniel, identifi ed by an inscription, entrusts his right hand to the mouth of one lion and drapes his left arm around the neck of the other (Fig. 12).67 If this scene in the Cappella Palatina were indeed intended to represent the Prophet Daniel, then it would contribute to the royal programme of this north–south axis by referring to the mosaic fi gure of Daniel in the soffi t of the drum of the cupola,

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Figure 10

King David composing the Psalms with his musicians and scribes. Psalter. Sens, Abbey of St Remi (?), c. 842–850. Angers, Bibliothèque municipal, MS 0018, fols 13v–14r (© Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes – CNRS)

Figure 11

Man seated between Two Lions. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, North side, Large unit 5, Panel 1. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.15102 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 588. See also Plate IVA in print edition

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who holds a text read on the vigil of the Nativity, the anniversary of Roger’s coronation, which refers to Daniel’s prophecy of the eternal kingdom of God — a double reference to Roger’s new monarchy.68

On the other hand, one of the iconographical sources for the Christian image of Daniel, the ancient Near Eastern image of the Royal Lion-Strangler or the Master of Beasts, had long been incorporated into the repertoire of Muslim artists and, by the mid-12th century, had spread throughout the Islamic world, as is attested by its appearance on an Almoravid silk, the so-called Dalmatic of St Bernard Calvó in New York.69 What is more, from at least the mid-9th century, Muslims understood this ancient scene to represent Dāniyāl in the Lions’ Den.70 The following tradition, reported on the authority of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā (d. 894), appears in a variety of popular collections, including the Qi½a½ al-anbiyāʾ of Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373).71 After the Arab conquest of Tustar in Khūzistān, south-western Iran:

I saw a seal-ring on the hand of Abū Burda ʿĀmir b. Abī Mūsā al-Ashʿarī.72 The stone of the ring was carved with two lions with a man between them, whom they were licking. Abū Burda said: ‘This is the ring of that deceased man whom the people of this town [Tustar] say is Dāniyāl; Abū Mūsā took it on the day of his [Dāniyāl’s] [re]burial’.73 Abū Burda contin-ued: ‘Abū Mūsā asked the ulema of that town about the engraving of that seal. They replied that the king under whose rule Dāniyāl lived consulted astrologers and wise men, who told him: “On a certain night a youth will be born who will destroy your kingdom and depose you”. The king said: “By God! No child born that night shall remain except I shall have him killed”. However, they seized Dāniyāl and threw him into the lions’ den. But the lion and lioness went on licking him and did not attack him, until his mother arrived

Figure 14

Mounted Dragon-Slayer. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, North side, Large unit 7, Panel 1. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.15060 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 627. See also Plate VA in print edition

Figure 12

Daniel in the Lions’ Den. Attributed to workshop of Benedetto Antelami, Fidenza, San Donnino: The capital of the column to the north of the main door of the west façade (© J. Johns 2014)

Figure 13

Mounted Dragon-Slayer. Palermo, Cappella Pala-tina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, South side Large unit 15, Panel 1. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.15431 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 850. See also Plate IVB in print edition

and found them licking him. Thus, God saved him in this manner, and so what happened did’. Abū Burda concluded: ‘Abū Mūsā said: “The ulema of this town said: ‘And so Dāniyāl carved his image and the image of the two lions licking him into the stone of his seal-ring, lest he forget God’s blessing upon him in this”.’ This tradition is reliable.

Although no medieval Islamic representation of Dāniyāl between two lions is known, this written tradition demonstrates that, as early as the mid-9th century, what was presumably the image of the Royal Lion-Strangler or the Master of Beasts, engraved on an ancient Near Eastern seal-ring was interpreted by

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Muslim scholars as representing Dāniyāl in the Lions’ Den. Given the extremely poor survival of Islamic painting before the 12th century, it is by no means impossible that the scene in the Cappella Palatina is the sole surviving example of an otherwise lost early Islamic tradition of depicting Dāniyāl. After all, in the Book of Daniel, God shuts the mouths of the lions, while in the Islamic tradition the lions open their mouths to lick Dāniyāl, just as one of the lions in this scene would seem to be doing.74

Be that as it may, this example serves as a salutary warning against relying too heavily upon the absence of evidence, especially when searching for formal prototypes in early Islamic iconography.

ST THEODORE, ST GEORGE AND THE MARVELLOUS COMBAT BETWEEN HORSEMAN AND DRAGON

I now wish to explore a little further the impact of Christian models upon the Muslim painters of the ceilings. We have already seen that, on the royal axis that runs north–south through the centre of the ceiling, on the south side, below the pair of seated rulers with attendants, the large landscape panel at the base of the unit — the equivalent panel to that depict-ing Daniel in the Lions’ Den on the north side — is occupied by a Mounted Dragon-Slayer, almost cer-tainly ultimately derived from a Byzantine icon of St Theodore (Fig. 13).75 In this case, once again, I believe that the choice of image represents the wishes of the royal patron or his agents, and refl ects the well-known love of the Norman kings for warrior saints, so amply documented in the mosaics of the sanctuary of the Cappella Palatina and, indeed, in the other royal churches of Cefalù and Monreale.76

In all, four panels in the ceiling depict a mounted horseman fi ghting a serpentine dragon. Two of the four scenes occupy the ‘landscape’ panels at the base of large units of the muqarnas zone — that with which we began in the middle of the south side (Fig. 13), and another to the east of the middle of the north side (Fig. 14).77 The centre of the panel is occupied by the fi gures of a horse and rider, facing right. The rider’s head and upper body are turned three-quarters towards the viewer. He wears a robe or surcoat with decorated golden bands at the neck, cuffs, central opening and hem, and a small cloak fl utters awk-wardly behind his right shoulder. The former rider has a sash diagonally across his chest that seems to develop into the cloak, but the latter wears what may just be a cuirass of segmented armour indicated by three hori-zontal bands around his waist and chest.78 Both riders are bareheaded with short black hair and beards. Their horses are drawn from the painters’ stock repertoire and have the same tack and trappings as those of the other riders in the ceiling. In each panel, with both hands, the rider drives his spear into the neck of the

dragon on the ground, whose coils occupy the two sides and base of the panel. Both dragons have a fox-like head with pointed ears, a spotted muzzle and a mane, but the rest of the body is serpentine and covered in scales, except for the striped belly. The third scene occupies one of the rhombuses in the central zone of the ceiling (Fig. 15).79 Despite the constraints imposed by the tight, eight-lobed frame, the composi-tion is close to that in the two panels already discussed above. The only signifi cant differences are in the details of the dress of the rider. Although the artist has struggled to accommodate the small cloak that hangs from the rider’s right arm, he has taken pains to show both the folds in the surcoat and the details of the length of fabric draped over his left arm. (Elsewhere in the ceiling, riders use a similar length of cloth, again folded over the left arm, to ward off an attack by lions — suggesting that, again, it is drawn from the painters’ stock repertoire.)80 There are compelling reasons to conclude that the three images discussed so far are closely modelled upon the Byzantine icon of St Theodore. One wears an armoured cuirass (Fig. 13), all are bearded, all plunge long spears into the necks or throats of dragons, and all have short, stiff, military cloaks (which are drawn as if the artist had copied the detail without fully understanding what it was origi-nally intended to represent) — these elements are all standard in the Byzantine icon of St Theodore the dragon-slayer (Figs 13–15). St Theodore was a 4th-century Greek military saint who is depicted as a mounted dragon-slayer from as early as the 5th century, well before St George was generally repre-sented in the same manner. By the end of the 10th century, St Theodore was commonly represented as a mounted dragon-slayer throughout Byzantium and the Eastern Churches, from Armenia, to Cappadocia, to Coptic Egypt.81 Such images of St Theodore often add explicit Christian identifi ers, such as the name of the saint and a cross at the end of the shaft of the spear or elsewhere in the composition.

In the Cappella Palatina, the three mounted dragon-slayers so far discussed were demonstrably inspired by a Byzantine prototype. While the artists were perplexed by details such as the saint’s armour and his military cloak, they nonetheless successfully translated the composition as a whole into their own stylistic idiom while adhering closely to the Greek icono-graphic formula. They decorate the ceiling of a Chris-tian chapel built under the patronage of a Christian king, and at least one of these images — the fi rst to be considered — is given a prominent location on the royal axis than runs north–south through the centre of the ceiling, indicating that it must have been selected and positioned by the royal patron or his ministers or their agents (Fig. 13).82 And yet none of these images incorporates any explicit Christian identifi er.

All three images preserve one further characteristic of the Christian icon; they show the moment of triumph over the dragon, the victory of good over evil,

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Figure 15

Mounted Dragon-Slayer. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, Central zone, Rhombus 3 (3rd rhombus from west end). Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.16084 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 1055. See also VB in print edition

Figure 16

Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, South side, Large unit 18, Panel 14. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.15060 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 913. See also Plate VI in print edition

giving the symbolic meaning of the icon priority over its narrative content. This symbolism is made explicit in a poorly preserved 10th(?)-century wall-painting of St Theodore and St George slaying a double-headed dragon from Yılanlı Kilise, in the Ihlara Valley, Cappadocia; the pairing of the two holy dragon-slayers has no narrative source, and the symbolic meaning of the scene is spelled out in an inscription written on both sides of the central cross, which compares the victory of the two saints over the dragon to Christ’s triumph over evil on the cross.83

The Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon — the fourth image of a mounted horseman fi ghting a serpentine dragon in the Cappella Palatina — occupies one of the large square panels in the muqarnas zone to the right of the throne platform in the west end (Fig. 16).84 Its composition is markedly different from that of the three scenes discussed so far, and raises a series of intriguing problems about the artists of the paintings of the ceiling and their models. The rider is young and beardless, and wears a tall conical cap with a gold band, presumably intended to indicate an inscription, and a surcoat that falls open to reveal his robe.85 The dragon twists around the body of the horse and rears up to attack from behind. The rider turns in the saddle and uses his left arm to fend

off the dragon with a small round shield, drawing back his sword ready to strike at the beast’s neck. (In the top left corner, a disproportionately large detail, which may represent either a curled acanthus leaf or, less plausibly, a panache, arches above the horse’s head; the red lines of the preliminary sketch are clearly visible here, and suggest that the artist changed his mind about this detail.) The torsos of the rider and dragon, and the adjoining background, are damaged and were heavily restored in 1949–53, so that much detail has been lost.

In the Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon, the narrative predominates over the symbolic so that, rather than representing a completed triumph of good over evil, this fi ght is very much in progress (Fig. 16). While the icon of St Theodore and the painted panels that it inspired emphasize the distance and superiority of the saint high on his horse over the dragon laying dead on the ground by interposing the long shaft of the spear, here the artist has raised the two combatants to the same level, placing them eyeball-to-eyeball. They are equally matched foes, both in the act of attacking, and neither is yet victori-ous. The uncertainty of the outcome strengthens the narrative charge of the scene by adding an element of suspense, and thereby dilutes its symbolic signifi cance.

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While the icon of the saintly dragon-slayer always symbolizes the triumph of good over evil, in this image their combat seems to hang in the balance, and the viewer is left wanting the end of the story. Like its three counterparts, it carries no Christian charge and would be completely at home amongst the ʿ ajāʾ ib, the marvels and wonders that were traditionally part of the Islamic princely cycle.

In the Latin West, most early images of St George and the Dragon seem ultimately to derive from the Byzantine icon of the military-saint impaling a dragon with his spear.86 It is thus especially intriguing that a small number of late-11th- and early-12th-century Romanesque images not only share a common basic iconography with the Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon, but also emphasize the marvel-lous and wondrous aspects of the scene over and above its symbolic meaning. Closest is a historiated initial in the Bury St Edmunds Miscellany, dated 1125–35 (Fig. 17).87 This image of the military saint and martyr in mortal combat with a monstrous foe introduces Abbo of Fleury’s Passio Sancti Edmundi, the tale of St Edmund’s struggle against, and martyrdom at the hands of, the pagan Viking leader, Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Ragnarsson.88 The rider, identifi able as St George by his youthful features and Phrygian helmet, is shown in desperate struggle with a dragon that bites down upon his left shoulder and blocks his sword-arm with both feet. Another scene of a mounted swordsman attacking a dragon introduces Jerome’s commentary on the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16: 1–13) in Lectionary F of the cathedral chapter of Reims (Fig. 18).89 While the youthful features, pointed helmet, military cloak, and white horse of the rider are attributes conventionally belonging to St George, the addition of a second dragon to form the tail of the ‘Q’ suggests that the artist did not feel himself to be tightly constrained by either the stock iconographic formula or the original narrative.90 The Lectionary was made for Manasses, the provost and treasurer of the cathedral before he was elected archbishop in 1096, so that the scene may the earliest dated representation of St George and the Dragon in which the saint uses his sword.91

Most of the mounted dragon-slayers depicted by Muslim artists from the mid-12th century onwards conventionally transfi x the dragon with a spear, but a few do wield a sword.92 One of the earliest to do so is a ceramic fi gurine from a decorative pool or fountain in a palatial complex in Raqqa (Syria), that was probably made in that city during the second half of the 12th century (Fig. 19).93 It portrays a rider with Turkic features, dark beard and long tresses, wearing a pointed, segmented helmet and mounted upon a white horse.94 With his right hand, he raises his sword against the small serpentine dragon that coils around the left foreleg of his horse to bite down upon the rim of the small round shield with which he seeks to defend

himself. While there can be little doubt that this fi gu-rine is in some way related both to the Romanesque sword-bearing dragon-fi ghters discussed above and to the Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon, the precise nature of that relationship remains far from clear.

One possibility is that all were inspired by the romantic tale of St George and the Princess, which, once incorporated into the Golden Legend in the late 13th century, came to inspire most subsequent repre-sentations of St George and the Dragon.95 It is fi rst known in an 11th-century Georgian manuscript, and the Georgian text is apparently a source for the earliest known versions of the episode in both Greek and Latin.96 St George fi rst rescues a pagan princess from the dragon, which he subdues by making the sign of the cross, then tethers it with her girdle while he converts her people to Christianity, and fi nally rewards them by dispatching the dragon with his sword (or, in the Latin version, fi rst by transfi xing it with his lance, and then by decapitating it with his sword). The early history and development of the iconography of this episode is yet to be fully studied. Early depictions in Georgian wall-painting show the saint and princess with the tethered dragon, but not the death of the beast.97 Similarly, Byzantine depictions of the episode represent the dragon subdued and tethered, but only rarely illustrate its death, and I dare say that no Byzantine or medieval East Christian image of St George and the Dragon portrays him as a mounted swordsman.98 The earliest depiction known to me in Latin Europe of a scene identifi able as St George and the Princess is the wall-painting to the south of the window above the door on the west wall of the Tem-plar chapel at Cressac-St-Genis (Poitou-Charentes), dated 1170–80: the saint stands with drawn sword between the princess standing on his right and the dragon on his left.99

In order to link the depictions of a mounted swords-man in combat with a dragon to the legend of St George and the Princess it would be necessary to imagine that the tale had reached northwest Europe before 1096 — the latest possible date for the composi-tion of Lectionary F of Reims Cathedral — and had immediately inspired Romanesque artists to create an image illustrating the desperate combat between the saint and the dragon — an episode that is not in fact described in the text.100 Within a generation, this new scene would have spread to Norman Sicily, where it would have been adopted by the Muslim painters in the Cappella Palatina, and also to Frankish Syria whence, by unknown byways, it would have reached the potters of Raqqa before 1200.101 Such a path of transmission seems to me both implausible and over-complicated, and I am inclined to suspect that the iconographic type of the mounted dragon-slaying swordsmen is independent of the tale of St George and the Princess.102

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Before concluding this section, it will be helpful to return to the historiated initial from Reims Lectionary F— the earliest known example of the type (Fig. 18). As observed above, the attributes of the rider include those conventional to St George, but here he is pitted against not one but two dragons. The artist has capri-ciously chosen to stray from the narrative frame even though he might have drawn upon at least two well-tried models for the letter ‘Q’, either of which would have permitted a literal depiction of St George and the Dragon. In the more conventional of the two, the saint would have fi lled the loop of the letter and speared the monster at his feet in the tail of the ‘Q’, in much the same way as may be seen in three initial letters ‘Q’ from the same Reims scriptorium, which show the Lord piercing the heads of leonine and human enemies with the shaft of His cross.103 In the other model, exem-plifi ed in the slightly later Moralia in Job from Cîteaux, the mounted swordsman would have charged the dragon in the tail of the letter.104 Either solution would have illustrated the original narrative and dispensed with the need for a second dragon. Instead, the Rémois artist has chosen to invest a hackneyed scene with new

Figure 18

Horseman in combat with two dragons. Initial ‘Q’ from Jerome’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, copied for Manassès de Châtillon, before 1096, in Lectionary F of the cathedral chapter of Reims. Reims, Bibliothèque municipal, fol. 185v, detail (© Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes – CNRS)

Figure 17

Horseman in combat with dragon. Initial ‘A’ at the beginning of Abbo of Fleury, Passio Edmundi, Bury St Edmunds, c. 1125–35, in the Miscellany on the Life of St Edmund, The Morgan Library, New York, MS M.736, fol. 78r, detail (© The Morgan Library)

Figure 19

Horseman in combat with a serpentine dragon (coiled around the left foreleg of horse and biting rim of shield). ‘Raqqa ware’ fi gurine, Raqqa. Damascus, National Museum, inv. no. A/5819 (© Museum With No Frontiers 2004–14)

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drama and suspense, just as did the Muslim painter of the Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon in the Cappella Palatina.105

In the fi nal analysis, programmatic and not icono-graphic considerations probably weight the argument in favour of there being a Romanesque model for the Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon (Fig. 16). The particular devotion of the Norman rulers to warrior saints, including St George, and the location of the image in one of the large square panels in the muqarnas zone to the right of the throne plat-form, suggest that both the subject and its position were chosen by the royal patron or his agents.106 Even had the Muslim artist’s repertoire included the image of a combat between a mounted swordsman and a dragon — for example, one cast in the same icono-graphic mould as the Raqqa Horseman — he would have been be unlikely to have recognized the dragon-fi ghter as St George (Fig. 19).107 He must therefore have been provided with an iconographic model, presumably in a Romanesque manuscript, at the same time that he was instructed to insert the image of St George and the Dragon into the panel to the right of the throne platform. The Romanesque image of St George locked in mortal combat with the dragon, far more than the icon of St Theodore, would have appealed to the artist’s taste for ʿajāʾ ib, the marvels and wonders so prominent in the conventional Islamic palatial cycle. So much so, it would seem, that he was inspired to interpret St George’s pointed helmet as the tall conical cap known as the qalansuwa. The artist may, or more probably may not, have known that the legendary caliph Harūn al-Rashīd had worn into battle against the Byzantines just such a qalansuwa, deco-rated with an epigraphic band that proclaimed him to be Ghāzi, ©ājj, ‘Warrior for the Faith, Pilgrim’ — a text that would have been no less appropriate to St George himself.108

SAMSON AS SUPER-MODEL

A rather different interaction between the Muslim artist and his Romanesque model may be seen in my fi nal example — the Man rending a Lion (Fig. 20).109 The scene occupies one of the large landscape panels at the base of the large muqarnas unit that is a little to the east of the centre of the south side of the ceiling.110 The whole width of the panel is occupied by the fi gure of a lion, to which the artists have given all of the conventional features of the FāÐimid lion, shown from the side and moving from right to left.111 The lion’s back legs are extended and fl exed, one pointing forward, the other back, as if it were struggling to gain momentum, and its tail thrashes the air. The nearside front leg is stretched fl at on the ground, and the other hangs limply in space, as if the whole weight of the animal were resting on its chest, which is forced to the ground by the man who sits fully astride the lion’s

shoulders, with his legs wrapped tightly around its neck. He uses both arms to force back the lion’s head, twisting it towards the viewer so that its face is seen fully frontal but upside down, emphasizing the unnat-ural character of the episode. Although not immedi-ately obvious from the panel itself, the iconographic type dictates that the fi gure is prising apart the lion’s jaws, with his right hand pushing down on the lower mandible. His face is turned three-quarters towards the viewer and surrounded by a nimbus. He has thick brown hair, a heavy beard, and wears what seems to be a plain brown robe with gold decorative bands, and a short, fl uttering cloak which transforms into the scrollwork.

In Christian art, the same iconographic type, which Julian Raby called The Riding Samson and Striding Lion — ‘Samson riding fully astride [. . .] pulls back the beast’s head and rends its jaws’ — illustrates similar episodes from the lives of two Biblical heroes: David strangling the lion that attacked his father’s fl ock (I Samuel 17: 33–36), and Samson rending the lion that he met in the vineyards of Timna (Judges 14.5–6; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 5: 8.5).112 David may carry a club and be accompanied by one or more of his fl ock, elements which serve to identify him, while Samson often has long or shaggy hair, which helps to distinguish him from David, but the visual confusion of the two fi gures was extreme, and artists frequently had to resort to written labels to make the subject absolutely clear.113 In this case, the fi gure’s long beard probably identifi es him as Samson, because represen-tations of the young David with a beard are rare, while — as we shall see in a moment — the presence in the ceiling of another hirsute ‘lion-rider’, who bears an emblem that in Christian art is exclusive to Samson, seems to rule out David.114 The Man rending a Lion belongs to a distinct sub-type of Riding Samson and Striding Lion in which the hero does not so much ride the lion as attempt to strangle it by wrapping one or both legs tightly around its neck in a scissors-hold (Fig. 20). This sub-type was used as early as c. 1108 for Samson (?) in a Moralia in Job copied in Rochester, and for David in the Ennarationes in Psalmos made for Cîteaux in the fi rst quarter of the 12th century (Fig. 21).115 It is attested in southern France soon after 1150, and perhaps even earlier in Apulia where it was used at San Giovanni al Sepolcro in Brindisi for a carving of Samson on the north-west portal, conven-tionally dated to the fi rst half of the 12th century.116 I dare say that Samson and the Lion is never found in Islamic art before the 14th century, and that there can be little doubt that the artist of the Man rending a Lion in the Cappella Palatina followed a Romanesque model, presumably drawn from an illuminated manu-script.117 While he did so with the greatest care and attention, reproducing accurately the precise positions of the fi gure’s hands and legs, the style of painting is once again wholly at one with the rest of the ceiling,

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and exhibits not the slightest trace of having been infl uenced by the style of the model.

A second scene in the ceiling, the Man rending a Griffi n, was clearly inspired either directly by the Man rending a Lion or by their common Romanesque model (Figs 20–22).118 The man sits fully astride a long-necked griffi n with his legs wrapped tightly around its neck in a scissors-hold and both hands pulling apart its jaws in exactly the manner of the Man rending a Lion. Griffi n-riders are known from Sasa-nian art and were thence transmitted to Byzantium and the west, but in such images the human peaceably rides the griffi n while hunting or playing a musical instrument, and never attacks his mount.119 I imagine that the artist carried such a griffi n-rider in his stock repertoire but was so stimulated by his encounter with the new Christian formula of the Man rending a Lion that he immediately drew upon it so as to add new drama and wonder to the conventional scene.

The image of a Man riding a Lion is another unique composition and occupies the large landscape panel on the eastern side of the north-east corner of the muqarnas zone, midway between the Musician tuning a Harp-Psaltery and the Scribe, but in the lowest tier (Fig. 23).120 The artist of this scene brought together elements from at least three different iconographic

formulae. The lion, again exhibiting all the conven-tional characteristics of the FāÐimid lion, is depicted walking from left to right, with its head turned three-quarters frontal and its tail raised.121 A bearded fi gure, shown three-quarters frontal, perches upon the lion’s back with his left leg raised as if he is riding side-saddle; what has become of his right leg is unclear, for the panel is heavily damaged at that point. The fi gure’s left arm appears to be wrapped around the lion’s neck and what might be his fi ngers are to be seen in its open mouth; in his raised right arm, he holds an implement with a rounded top, decorated blade and serrated edge. He wears a robe decorated with bands of gold and, resting on his nimbus, what now appears to be an elaborate headdress, the details of which are diffi cult to read. The most explicit clue to the identity of the rider is provided by the implement in his right hand, the jawbone of an ass with which Samson slaughters the Philistines (cf. Judges 15.15–16; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 5:8.8); Shamsūn, the Muslim Samson, wields the jawbone of a camel.122 The jawbone is depicted in precisely this manner as early as the 4th century in the Via Latina catacombs, and thereafter remains Samson’s most particular emblem.123

Two of the four principal iconographic formulae used in Christian art to depict Samson rending the

Figure 20

Man rending Lion. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, South side, Large unit 13, Panel 1. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre (Oxford), image no. ISL.15491 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 806. See also Plate VIIA in print edition

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lion of Timna, in addition to the Riding Samson and Striding Lion discussed above, show Samson pinning down the lion with one knee or foot on its back or rump.124 The pose adopted by the rider in this image seems to belong to one of these types, in that he appears to have only his left leg on the lion and has his left arm around its neck and perhaps even his left hand in its mouth. But, far from rending apart the lion’s jaws, the rider brandishes the jawbone in his right hand, thereby merging elements from two distinct formulae illustrating two different episodes in the hero’s life — conventionally, he should be either rending the lion

while sitting on its back, or killing Philistines with the jawbone, but not simultaneously riding the lion and waving the jawbone.125

At fi rst sight, the fi gure’s headdress might also indicate Samson, because his strength lay in his hair (Judges 16.17), Samson was accordingly nearly always represented with long or shaggy hair and, at a later stage, a variety of tresses and hats, and eventually a long fl owing cape.126 That this fi gure wears what seems to be a large headdress should accordingly identify him as Samson. On closer inspection, however, this line of reasoning fails. The precise form of the headdress

Figure 21

Samson and the Lion. Initial ‘D’ from the beginning of Book 29 of Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job (Parts 4–6, Books 17–35), Rochester, c. 1108–before c. 1122. British Library, Royal MS 6 C VI, fol. 152v detail (© The British Library)

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is now diffi cult to determine, but both the drawing of the panel published by Aleksei Andreevich Pavlovsky in 1890, and the photograph taken in 1991 under the supervision of Robert Hillenbrand, show that what originally lay across the top of the fi gure’s nimbus was an animal (Figs 24 and 25).127 Hanging down the left side of the rider’s head (the viewer’s right) is an almost feline head, drawn in profi le, with two pointed ears, one eye, a nose, and what may be an open mouth. Below its chin was originally a foliate terminal belong-ing to the background scrollwork. The rest of the animal’s body is less well preserved: Pavlovsky’s drawing suggests that the arch of the body above the fi gure’s left eye and the more distinct volute above his right eye correspond, respectively, to the shoulder and thigh joints of a quadruped and accordingly, in his reconstruction, Pavlovsky’s artist stressed the animal’s cat-like features. But it would also be possible to read

the same elements as the coils of a serpentine dragon with a feline head, or even as the coils of two serpents with their heads hanging down on each side of the nimbus, that on the rider’s right more heavily dam-aged than the one on the left.128 The image is simply too badly damaged and too heavily restored to be sure, but what might be an intriguing parallel occurs on one of the capitals in the cloister of Cefalù, where the head of an anthropomorphic lion (with mous-taches) of the South Italian type, is given the ‘head-dress’ of a pair of human-headed dragons with long serpentine tails that curl around its head in a manner very reminiscent of the rider’s headdress (Fig. 26).129

There is nothing in the life of Samson, not in the Book of Judges, nor in the Jewish Antiquities, nor in the scant Muslim tradition, nor in Jewish or Muslim myth and legend, that might explain his depiction with an animal — whether a cat or a pair of snakes — upon his head. The artist of the Man riding a Lion has intro-duced a new and alien element into a scene in which two distinct iconographic formulae, belonging to two separate episodes in the life of Samson, are already confused (Fig. 23). On the one hand, Pavlovsky’s cat might suggest a headdress made from the mask of a lion, and thus point to Hercules who wore the mask of the Nemean Lion — a hero with whom, as has often been observed, Samson has more than a little in common.130 Indeed, two of the standard Christian formulae for Samson rending the Lion — but not the one employed for this scene — were adapted from classical images of Hercules and the Nemean Lion or the Keryneian Doe. Alternatively, serpentine coils might suggest a Gorgon’s mask, and thus Perseus, whose sickle is related to Samson’s jawbone, or even

Figure 22

Man rending griffi n. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, North side, Panel 4. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre, ISL.14992 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 539. See also Plate VIIB in print edition

Figure 23

Man riding a Lion. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, North-east corner unit, Panel 2. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre, ISL.14992 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 686. See also plate VIIIA in print edition

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raise the possibility of a link to the lion-tamer of Islamic art, who controls the lion that he rides with a bridle of snakes and a serpentine whip.131

I imagine that the artist came — or was brought — into contact with two different Christian images: Samson rending the Lion, and Samson slaying the Philistines with the Jawbone of an Ass. He faithfully copied the former in the Man rending a Lion, and was inspired to adapt it for the Man rending a Griffi n but, instead of slavishly reproducing Samson slaying the Philistines, he borrowed from it only Samson’s emblem of the jawbone to place in the hand of the Man riding a Lion (Figs 20, 22 and 23). The fact that he clearly associated the jawbone with the lion-rider indicates that his model for the Man riding a Lion was Samson, and not David. This confusion of two distinct formu-lae suggests that the artist was not familiar with the underlying biblical narrative, and treated the scenes simply as further examples of ʿajāʾ ib, marvels and wonders. (And this, in turn, adds to the mass of evidence from the ceilings of the Cappella Palatina that the painters were Muslims, not Christians.) The artist’s apparent ignorance of the biblical narrative might also explain why he took the lion-rider’s extraor-dinary headwear from yet a third source, which cannot be identifi ed with certainty but which may be traced back to the ancient tradition of the lion-rider, or in

some way linked to the Islamic fi gure of the lion-tamer with snakes, or both.132

CONCLUSIONS

Two fi rm conclusions emerge from the foregoing dis-cussion. First, although the painters of all of the scenes from the ceiling examined in detail — the Musician tuning a “Triangular” Psaltery and the Scribe (Figs 7 and 9); the Man seated between Two Lions (Fig. 11); the Mounted Dragon-Slayer (Figs 13–15) and the Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon (Fig. 16); the Man rending a Lion, the Man rending a Griffi n and the Man riding a Lion (Figs 20–23) — derived the basic iconographic formulae for these scenes from Romanesque models — respectively, David the Psalmist and his Scribe, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, St Theodore and St George and the Dragon and Samson rending the Lion — the style of painting into which they translated the formulae was entirely their own and at one with the rest of the paintings of the ceilings, so that it owed nothing to the Romanesque.

Second, although all these scenes were commis-sioned by a Christian king or his agents for the ceiling of a Christian chapel, none carries an overt religious charge. This is not because the Muslim artists baulked

Figure 24

Drawing by Pomerantsev and Chagin from Pavlovsky, Zhivopis’ Palatinskoi Kapelly v Palermo 1891. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, Northeast corner unit, Panel 2: Man riding a Lion. Compare with Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 686

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Figure 25

Man riding a Lion, detail showing head and headdress. Palermo, Cappella Palatina: Nave ceiling, Muqarnas, North-east corner unit, Panel 2. Photo taken in 1989 under direction of Robert Hillenbrand: Khalili Research Centre, ISL.14992 (© Barakat Trust and University of Edinburgh). See also Plate VIIIB in print edition

Figure 26

Cefalù, cathedral, San Salvatore, cloister, south side, capital 16, south face: Head of anthropomorphic lion wearing ‘headdress’ of a pair of human-headed dragons with long serpentine tails (© Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut)

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at painting explicitly Christian scenes, as is demon-strated by the Male half-fi gure holding Two Crosses, the Chapel interior with Altar, Priest and Youth ringing Bell and the many signs of the cross throughout the ceilings.133 In part, of course, it is because these scenes, except for the depictions of warrior saints, illustrate episodes from the Old Testament, which, for all that they had Romanesque models, were not exclusively Christian. Indeed, as has been seen, Daʾūd was a prophet and leading protagonist in Islamic sacred history, while Dānīyāl, Shamsūn and Jirjīs all play minor roles. Whether, or to what extent, the Muslim painters of the Cappella Palatina recognized their own Muslim sacred fi gures in the Romanesque models and in the images that they derived from them remains an intriguing but ultimately unanswerable question; only for the Man seated between Two Lions is there clear evidence that at least some Muslims would have recog-nized the scene as illustrating the episode of the Islamic Prophet Dānīyāl in the Lions’ Den (Fig. 11). All these scenes, despite their origins in Christian art, once they had been translated into the artists’ own style, sat comfortably within the celebration of the royal majlis, where they became ʿajāʾ ib alongside the other scenes of marvels and wonders that belonged to the conventional decorative programme of an Islamic palace.

In addition to these fi rm conclusions, a series of interesting questions remain open. The fi rst concerns the medium or media through which the Muslim painters in the Cappella Palatina encountered their Romanesque models.134 In the foregoing discussion, it has repeatedly been observed that the models must have been transmitted on portable objects, very probably manuscripts. The diffi culty is that very few illuminated manuscripts made in north-west Europe before the fall of the Norman kingdom are known from South Italy and Sicily. This is not, of course, to suggest that such manuscripts did not exist in the libraries of the Latin churches and monasteries of the kingdom, but merely to observe that there are now large gaps in the chain of transmission. However, no more than a dozen scenes amongst the original paint-ings in the ceiling of the nave of the Cappella Palatina were based upon Romanesque models, so that it is possible to imagine that all might have been found in just one manuscript, or at most a few manuscripts, housed in the royal palace and adjacent Latin religious institutions.135

The problem of the medium of transmission is closely connected to the second open question, which concerns the identity of the agents who, I imagine, sourced and provided the models that best represented the instructions of the royal patron and his ministers to have a particular scene painted at a specifi c location in the chapel. While we are relatively well informed about Greek and Muslim ministers and intellectuals in the court of King Roger and his successors, Latin

fi gures remain largely obscure.136 For example, George of Antioch, Roger’s chief minister from 1126 until 1151, was probably an Armenian, born in Byzantine Antioch, trained in Zīrid Ifrīqiya, who defected as a young man to Norman Sicily. Not only can he be shown to have been chiefl y responsible for different aspects of Roger’s monarchy, most notably the Arabic dīwān, but also, in his own church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, George tried out many of the visual ideas that were subsequently expressed in the Cappella Palatina.137 No comparable individual can be identi-fi ed amongst the Latins in Roger’s court, although the presence can be inferred of at least one substantial fi gure, familiar with Romanesque art, who played a crucial role in the design of the ceiling.

The third and fi nal open question concerns the role of the artists themselves in the selection and adaptation of Romanesque models. I have argued that most of the scenes discussed in this study refl ect the programmatic concerns of the royal patron or his agents: the Musician tuning a Triangular Psaltery and his Scribe amongst the evocations of Jerusalem and Solomon in the east end of the chapel (Figs 7 and 9); the Man seated between Two Lions on the royal axis running north–south through the centre of the ceiling and referring to the mosaic of the Prophet Daniel in the cupola (Fig. 11); and the images of the Mounted Dragon-Slayer and the Marvellous Combat between Horseman and Dragon that catered to the patron’s enthusiasm for warrior-saints (Figs 13–16).

In these cases, and perhaps in a few others, possibly including the Man rending a Lion, I imagine that the patron or his agents decided that a particular scene should be placed at a particular point in the ceiling (Fig. 20).138 In conveying that instruction to the paint-ers, the need for a Romanesque model became appar-ent, and a suitable one was duly provided. In other cases, however, the Muslim artists seem to have acted independently from the patron and his agents in drawing inspiration from Romanesque models. This is most clearly seen in the Man rending a Griffi n and in the Man riding a Lion (Figs 22–23), but may also be found in the various scenes of Combat between a Lion and a Serpentine Dragon, in which the painters appear to have modifi ed the stock formula for the FāÐimid lion with elements borrowed from a variety of Roman-esque models without the intervention of the patron and with no programmatic intent.139 These are only fl eeting glimpses of what, I imagine, must have been the profound impact upon the Muslim painters of the Byzantine and the Romanesque images that they encountered in Palermo. They had left Cairo when dynastic crisis, economic decline and social unrest had reduced the FāÐimid court almost to the nadir of its fortunes. The brilliant effl orescence of the arts and architecture that had lasted until the 1060s, and had been to some lesser extent sustained into the 1120s, had withered. The sources of patronage were running

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dry and some of the most highly prized arts of the late 10th and 11th centuries, such as carved ivory and carved rock-crystal, seem to have completely ceased; even painting on lustreware had lost its early vigour.140 From that already depressed and still declining artistic environment, the painters were transplanted to Roger’s Palermo and set to work at the very centre of one of the greatest artistic enterprises of the 12th-century Mediterranean, the very point of which was to assemble and juxtapose a variety of elements drawn from different visual traditions, to ‘harmonize the inharmonious and mix together the unmixable’.141 Whereas in Cairo they had been increasingly deprived of patronage and isolated from new artistic develop-ments outside Egypt, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by artists and artisans from every corner of the Mediterranean and beyond, by the treasure house of portable objects that fl ooded into the Norman palace, and by a range of new ideas and images that would have been unimaginable in Cairo. Because no later work by either the painters of the Cappella Palatina or their successors is known to have survived, we can now only imagine the impact of this encounter upon the Muslim artists as they sailed away from Palermo towards their next commission.142

NOTES

1 T. Dittelbach, ‘La chiesa inferiore’, in La Cappella Palatina a Palermo, ed. B. Brenk, Mirabilia Italiae XVII, 4 vols (Modena 2010), I Testi: Saggi, 283–93; D. Sack, ‘Bauforschung in der Unterkirche der Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in Die Cappella Palatina in Palermo — Geschichte, Kunst, Funktionen. Forschung-sergebnisse der Restaurierung Hg. im Auftrag der Stiftung Würth, ed. T. Dittelbach (Künzelsau 2011), 87–109.

2 J. Johns, ‘The Date of the Ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in E. J. Grube and J. Johns, The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, Islamic Art Supplement I (Genoa and New York 2005), 1–14. For the inscription in the cupola, see now B. Crostini, ‘L’iscrizione greca nella cupola della Cappella Palatina: edizione e commento’, in La Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), I Testi: Saggi, 187–202.

3 E. Kitzinger, ‘The Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. An Essay on the Choice and Arrangement of Subjects’, The Art Bulletin, 31 (1949), 284; S. Ćurčić, ‘Some Palatine Aspects of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in Studies in Art and Archaeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, ed. W. Tronzo and I. Lavin, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 41 (1987), 125–44; B. Brenk, ‘La parete occidentale della Cappella Palatina a Palermo’, Arte medievale (1990), 135–50; B. Brenk, ‘Zur Bedeutung des Mosaiks an der Westwand der Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in Studien zur byzantinischen Kunstgeschichte. Festschrift für Horst Hallensleben zum 65. Geburstag, ed. B. Borkopp, B. Schellewald and L. Theis (Amsterdam 1995), 185–94; W. Tronzo, The Cultures of His Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton 1996), passim but especially 16–18, 96–125; S. Ćurčić, ‘Further thoughts on the palatine aspects of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in Die Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), 525–26; T. Dittelbach, ‘Der Herrscherthron — Topologie und Utopie’, in Die Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), 147–67.

4 The Arabic term muqarnas is problematic and is more used by modern historians of art and architecture than ever it was in the medieval Arabic-speaking world; there is no evidence that it was

used of the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina before the 19th century. The word muqarnas is almost certainly the passive participle of the verb qarnasa, and seems originally to have indicated an object or structure ‘furnished with projecting overhanging elements’, precisely the function performed by the muqarnas zone in the chapel — projecting from the side walls of the nave, and overhang-ing the space between them and the outer edges of the central zone. In modern European languages, muqarnas is often translated as ‘stalactite’, an infelicitous usage that should be restricted to just one particular variety, the so-called ‘dripping’ muqarnas in which the cut sides of the niches in a muqarnas composition are projected downwards into space to form stalactite-like pendants. It is worth stressing here that the stalactite pendants in the central zone of the ceiling are not formed in this manner (see above 2, note 9). For further discussion and for bibliography, see J. Johns, ‘Le pitture del soffi tto della Cappella Palatina’ and ‘Iscrizioni arabe nella Cappella Palatina’, in La Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), I Testi: Saggi, 353–407, II Testi: Schede, 429–56, 487–510, 540–665, III Atlante I, fi gs 133–47, 158–94, 286–303, 369–84, IV Atlante II, fi gs 473–1220, 384–823, especially II Testi: Schede, 540, scheda 473.

5 M. Romagnoli, M. Sarlatto, F. Terranova, E. Bizzarri and S. Cesetti, ‘Wood identifi cation in the Cappella Palatina ceiling (12th century) in Palermo (Sicily, Italy)’, International Association of Wood Anatomists (IAWA) Journal, 28/2 (2007) 109–23.

6 J. Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), I Testi: Saggi, 390–94, II Testi: Schede, 429, scheda (north aisle); 488–90, scheda 370 (south aisle), 540–55, schede 473–75 (nave ceiling).

7 L. Trizzino, ‘La Palatina’ di Palermo: dalle opere funzionali al restauro, dal ripristino alla tutela (Palermo 1983), 34; Brenk, ‘Parete occidentale’ (as n. 3), 48 n. 50; Tronzo, Cultures (as n. 3), 57 note 105; E. Borsook, Messages in Mosaic: The Royal Programmes of Norman Sicily 1130–1187 (Oxford 1990), 43 notes 17, 100–01; Johns, ‘Date’ (as n. 2), 6; D. Knipp, ‘Die almoravidischen Urspünge der Holzdecke über del Mittelschiff der Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in Die Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), 221.

8 V. Zorić, ‘Sulle tecniche costruttive islamiche in Sicilia: il soffi tto della Cappella Palatina di Palermo’, in Scritti in Onore di Giovanni D’Erme, ed. M. Bernardini and N. L. Tornesello (Napoli 2005), 1281–1349.

9 P. Pastorello and C. Tomasi, ‘Conservazione e presentazione estetica della Cappella Palatina’, in Die Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), 330 and 332 fi g. 2 (to which it must be added that the muqarnas sides and most, if not all, of the ceiling of the nave, except for these stalactite bosses, were clearly decorated in situ after the surface had been prepared for painting with the layer of gesso or gypsum plaster which runs over the joints between the panels), pace Knipp, ‘Die almoravidischen Urspünge’ (as n. 7), 221–22.

10 Johns, ‘Date’ (as n. 2), 6–7; Johns, ‘Le pitture’ (as n. 4). 11 F. Agnello, ‘Rilievo e rappresentazione del soffi tto della

navata centrale della Cappella Palatina’, in La Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), I Testi: Saggi, 297–351; F. Agnello, ‘The painted ceiling of the nave of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo: an essay on its geometric and constructive features’, Muqarnas, 27 (2010), 407–48; Zorić, ‘Sulle tecniche costruttive’ (as n. 8), 1289–91.

12 Ibid., 1290.13 F. Gabrieli and U. Scerrato, Gli Arabi in Italia. Cultura,

contatti, e tradizioni (Milan 1979), 63, fi g. 43, caption; E. J. Grube, ‘The painted ceilings of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo and their relation to the artistic traditions of the Muslim world and the Middle Ages’, in Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 23; Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), I Testi: Saggi, 397–400.

14 Ibid., 398–99; I plan to revisit the question in a separate study. Meanwhile see also: A. Walker, ‘Middle Byzantine aesthetics of power and the incomparability of Islamic Art: the architectural ekphraseis of Nikolaos Mesarites’, Muqarnas, 27 (2010), 79–101; and F. Anzelmo, ‘I soffi tti dipinti della Cappella Palatina di Palermo e l’orizzonte mediterraneo’, 2 vols (unpublished Tesi di dottorato di ricerca, Università degli studi della Tuscia di Viterbo, Dipartimento di scienze dei beni culturali, 2013), I, 67–72 and notes (I am most grateful to Dr Anzelmo for kindly sending me her excellent thesis).

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15 Cairo: Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo, inv. nos 12880 etc. L. ʿA. Ibrāhīm and ‘A. Yāsīn, ‘A Æūlūnid ©ammām in Old Cairo’, Islamic Archaeological Studies: Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo, 3 (1988), 35–78; for further bibliography, see Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 118, fi g. 16.3; Anzelmo, ‘I soffi tti dipinti’ (as n. 14), I, 74 and note 421, II, fi gs 19–23. For the scenes appropri-ate to painting in baths, see N. Warner, ‘Taking the plunge. The development and use of the Cairene bathhouse’, in Historians in Cairo. Essays in honor of George Scanlon, ed. J. Edwards, (Cairo 2002), 57–59. I am extremely grateful to Dr Mat Imerzeel of Leiden University for providing me with colour images of the painted muqarnas drum of the Chapel of Mar Jirjīs in the church of Abū Sayfayn, Old Cairo, see G. J. M. van Loon, The Gate of Heaven. Wall Paintings with Old Testament Scenes in the Altar Room and the Hūrus of Coptic Churches, Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul 85, (Istanbul 1999), 17–30, pls 2–36 (esp. 6–8, 13, 19). The date of these paintings remains problematic — either c. 1094–1121 (the likely date of the muqarnas drum) or post-1168 to 1184 (see ibid., 27–30) — but there is a strong probability that the muqarnas drum would have been painted even before the fi re of 1168. While not true muqarnas, the painted niches of the octagon of the haykal of St Mark in the church of Abū Maqār, Dayr Abū Maqār in the Wādī al-NaÐrūn, may date from as early as 1133: see ibid., 31–60, pls 38–61. Murcia: F. Dahmani, ‘Remarques sur quelques fragments de peinture murale trouvés à Murcie’, Tudmīr. Revista del Museo de Santa Clara, 1 (2009), 163–75 with earlier bibliography; for further discussion and bibliography, see Anzelmo, as above, I, 75–79 and notes.

16 L. Golvin, ‘Les plafonds à muqarnas de la Qal‘a des Banû Hammâd et leur infl uence possible sur l’art de la Sicile à la periode normande’, Revue de l’Occident musulman et méditerranéen, 17 (1974), 63–69.

17 Y. Tabbaa, ‘The muqarnas dome. Its origin and meaning’, Muqarnas, 3 (1985), 61–2. This somewhat qualifi es the observations regarding the adaptation of muqarnas to cover a rectangular space in Almoravid mosques fi rst made by M. Écochard, Filiation de mon-uments grecs, byzantins et islamiques. Une question de géometrie (Paris 1977), 65–76, and cited with approval by Knipp, ‘Die almora-vidischen Urspünge’ (as n. 7), 221 and note 12.

18 Ibn ©amdīs, Dīwān, ed. I. ʿAbbās (Beirut 1960), no. 349, 545–49, ll. 40–48; see also the translation and commentary by F. Gabrieli, ‘Il palazzo ©ammādita di Biǧāya descritto da Ibn ©amdīs’, in Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst, Festschrift für Ernst Kühnel zum 75. Geburtstag am 26.10.1957, ed. R. Ettinghausen (Berlin 1959), 54–58. It was (and still is!) a common misapprehension that the muqarnas of the Cappella Palatina was carved from solid beams, rather than constructed on a superstructure from thousands of small wooden panels: e.g. Philagathos Kerameos in Johns, ‘Date’ (as n. 2), 13, para. 2, and ‘Hugo Falcandus’ in S. Tramontana, Lettera a un tesoriere di Palermo (Palermo 1988), 136. See also Nikolaos Mesarites on the Moukhroutas ceiling in Walker, ‘Middle Byzantine aesthetics’ (as n. 14), 94, para. 27.

19 V. Garofalo, ‘A methodology for studying muqarnas: the extant examples in Palermo’, Muqarnas, 27 (2010), 357–406; Knipp, ‘Die almoravidischen Urspünge’ (as n. 7) (with earlier bibliography).

20 D. Jones, ‘The Cappella Palatina in Palermo: problems of attribution’, Art and Archaeology Research Papers, 2 (1972), 41–57; Grube, ‘painted ceilings and their relations’ (as n. 13), passim, esp. 25 with exhaustive bibliography to 2005.

21 Ibn ©awqal, Opus geographicum auctore Ibn ©au±al secundum textum et imagines codicis Constantinopolitani conservati in Bibliotheca antiqui Palatii no. 3346 cui titulus est ‘Liber imaginis terrae’ (Kitāb ½ūrat al-arÅ), Bibliotheca geographorum arabico-rum: pars secunda (Leiden 1938–39), 118 and 120; idem, Confi guration de la terre (Kitāb ½ūrat al-arÅ), trans. J. H. Kramers and G. Wiet, 2 vols (Beirut 1964), II, 117–19. For Palermo in the early 11th century, see J. Johns, ‘Una nuova fonte per la geografi a e la storia della sicilia nell’XI secolo: il Kitāb Gharāʾ ib al-funūn wa-mula¬ al-ʿ uyūn’, in La Sicile à l’époque islamique. Questions de

méthode et renouvellement récent des problématiques, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Âge, 116/1 (Rome 2004), 409–49, and ‘La nuova “Carta della Sicilia” e la topografi a di Palermo’, in Nobiles Offi cinae: perle, fi ligrane e trame di seta dal Palazzo Reale di Palermo, ed. M. Andaloro, 2 vols (Catania 2006), II, 15–23 and 307–12. For the Kitāb Gharāʾ ib al-funūn, see now Y. Rapoport and E. Savage-Smith ed., An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe. The Book of Curiosities, Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science. Text and Studies no. 87 (Leiden and Boston 2014), with a new edition and English translation of the chapter on Sicily (136/١٧٨–145/١٨٧, 456–77).

22 The comparison that is sometimes drawn between the Iberian Ðawāʾ if or ‘party kings’ who ruled Islamic Spain for most of the 11th century and the petty warlords who squabbled over the ruins of Kalbid Sicily for less than a decade (c. 1053–61) is inappropriate at least insofar as regards art, architecture and literature; it is a priori unlikely, and no evidence whatsoever survives, that any of the latter had the inclination, opportunity, resources or time to be patrons of the arts.

23 J. Becker ed., Documenti latini e greci del conte Ruggero I di Calabria e Sicilia, Ricerche dell’Istituto storico germanico di Roma, 9, Rome, 2013, no. 33, 144–45 and no. 36, 152–55.

24 The two principal Norman palaces in Palermo — the Castellamare and the Palazzo Reale — are both built upon struc-tures dating from the period of Muslim rule and were certainly refortifi ed after the conquest of Palermo in 1072; however, the extent to which surviving structures may be dated to the period before the foundation of the monarchy in 1130 remains unclear: R. Santoro, La Fortezza del Castellamare in Palermo. Primi scavi e restauri (1988–94). Fronte sud-ovest e ‘Torre Mastra’, Ima parte (Palermo 1996); R. Longo, ‘The Royal Palace of Palermo: the medi-eval palace’, in The Royal Palace of Palermo, ed. M. Andaloro (Modena, 2011), 83–85. Recent excavation by the Soprintendenza dei Beni Culturali ed Ambientali di Palermo at the suburban palace of the Favara or Maredolce has revealed that perimeter walls of King Roger’s palace, on at least three sides, are built upon founda-tions dating to the 10th century: S. Vassallo, ‘Il complesso mounumentale di Maredolce: E le pietre restituiscono le vestigia del castello arabo’, Kalós, 24/3 (2012), 23–25.

25 For example, the episcopal churches founded by Roger I at Troina, Catania and Mazara del Vallo. See the classic studies of H. M. Schwarz, ‘Die Baukunst Kalabriens und Siziliens im Zeitalter der Normannen, I: Die lateinischen Kirchengründungen des 11. Jahrhunderts und der Dom von Cefalù’, Römisches Jahrbuch fü r Kunstgeschichte, 6 (1942–44), 1–112, and W. Krönig, ‘La Francia e l’architettura romanica nell’Italia meridionale’, Napoli Nobilissima, n.s. 1 (1961–62), 203–15, and G. Di Stefano, Monumenti della Sicilia normanna, 2nd rev. edn W. Krönig (Palermo 1979), 1–13 and pls I–XII.

26 S. Giovanni is still widely believed to have been founded in 1071, according to a legend long discredited by M. Amari, Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia, 2nd rev. edn C. A. Nallino, 3 vols (Catania 1933–39), III, 120 no. 1 and 845 no. 1. The supposed foundation document of SS Piero e Paolo di Agrò, dated October 6625 A.M., Indiction IX (sic!), presumably intended to indicate 1115 or 1116, is a 13th-century ‘pastiche diplomatistico’ (V. von Falkenhausen, ‘La fondazione del monastero dei SS Pietro e Paolo d’Agrò nel contesto della politica monastica dei Normanni in Sicilia’, in La valle d’Agrò: un territorio, una storia, un destino. Convegno internazionale di studi, Hotel Baia Taormina — Marina d’Agrò (Messina) 20, 21 e 22 feb-braio 2004. I: L’età antica e medievale, ed. C. Biondi (Catania 2005), 171–79, especially 175–76; Becker, Documenti latini e greci (as n. 23), no. 29, 131–42). In February 1133, when the monastery was placed under the authority of the newly founded archimandrite of Messina, it was suffi ciently important to be a kephalikon and autodespoton under its own abbot (von Falkenhausen, ‘La fondazi-one’, as above, 173). The church was reconstructed after the 1169 earthquake for the Abbot Theosterictos of Taormina in 1171–72 by Gerard the Norman (A. Guillou, Recueil des inscriptions grecques médiévales d’Italie, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 222

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(Rome 1996), no. 205, 227–28) but the extent of the reconstruction is debatable. I interpret the muqarnas brick pendentives, and the interlaced arches decorating the façades, as evidence that Gerard was keeping up with the latest, mid-12th-century Palermitan styles; see also G. D. Lowry, ‘L’Islam e l’Occidente medievale: l’Italia meridionale nell’XI e XII secolo’, Rassegna del Centro di cultura e storia amalfi tana, 3 (1983), 7–56. For a different view, see C. Guastella, ‘Aspetti della cultura artistica nel Valdemone in età normanno-sveva: note e rifl essioni’, in La valle d’Agrò, 225–34, esp. 225–27, with further bibliography; and C.E. Nicklies, ‘Builders, patrons, and identity: the domed basilicas of Sicily and Calabria’, Gesta, 43/2 (2004) 99–114, especially 102, 109–10, and 112, note 24 where it is stated that ‘Girard’s renovations appear to have been restricted to the rebuilding of the west and south portals, and perhaps the upper sections of the two western towers’ (citing C. E. Nicklies, ‘The architecture of the church of SS Pietro e Paolo d’Agrò, Sicily’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois, 1992, 101–03, which I have been unable to consult).

27 Mosaicists: O. Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily (London 1949), 369–74. Scribes: J. Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Dīwān (Cambridge 2002). Silk-weavers: U. Monneret de Villard, ‘La tessitura palermitana sotto i Normanni e i suoi rapporti con l’arte bizantina’, Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati: III, Letteratura e storia bizantina, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Studi e Testi, 123 (Vatican City 1946), 464–89. Porphyry-workers: J. Déer, The dynastic porphyry tombs of the Norman period in Sicily (Cambridge, Mass. 1959). Sculptors: see the superb online resource for a study of the capitals of the cloisters of Cefalù and Monreale, with bibliography: <http://cenobium.isti.cnr.it> [accessed 03/05/2015].

28 ‘Hugo Falcandus’, Liber de regno Siciliae, ed. G.B. Siragusa, Istituto per il medio evo (Rome 1897), 6; al-Maqrīzī’s ‘Life of George of Antioch’, trans. Johns, Arabic Administration (as n. 27), 82.

29 Tronzo, Cultures of His Kingdom (as n. 3), 152.30 Eugenius of Palermo, Versus iambici, ed. M. Gigante, Istituto

Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, Testi e Monumenti, Testi X (Palermo 1964), no. XXIV (Laudes regis Guilielmi gloriosissimi trophaeis insignis), 127–31, trans. 162–64, ll. 65–69.

31 M. G. Aurigemma, Il Cielo Stellato di Ruggero II: Il Soffi to Dipinto della Cattedrale di Cefalù (Milan 2004); V. Zorić, ‘Una grande carpenteria: tra struttura e decorazione’, in La basilica cattedrale di Cefalù: Materiali per la cognoscenza storica e il restauro, 8 parts (Palermo 1985–89), I, 307–40; Anzelmo, ‘I soffi tti dipinti’ (as n. 14), I, 81–84, II, fi gs 42–47.

32 For a particularly telling example of direct transmission of the iconographic shell without the semantic content, compare the Scribe in the Cappella Palatina (Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante II, fi g. 694 — see above, Fig. 9 and below, note 58 — with the Scribe at Cefalù (Aurigemma, Il Cielo Stellato (as n. 31), 227, fi g. 209 bottom left, wrongly identifi ed as a musician playing the cetra; see also below, note 58).

33 Aurigemma, Il Cielo Stellato (as n. 31), fi gs 58, 60, 136, 217.34 In the absence of a secure chronology for the complicated

constructional history of the nave of Cefalù, the date of its painted ceiling remains far from clear. For reasons outlined in the text, I very much doubt that they can belong to the reign of Roger II and suspect that they must have been painted well into the second half of the 12th century.

35 For these, see the important new data collected and discussed in Anzelmo, ‘I soffi tti dipinti’ (as n. 14), I, 84–99, II, fi gs 47–51, 53–56, 59–61, 64–65. The publication of her article devoted to these ceilings is anticipated.

36 E. Gabrici and E. Levi, Lo Steri di Palermo e le sue pitture (Milano 1932); F. Bologna, Il soffi tto della Sala Magna allo Steri di Palermo (Palermo 1975); F. Vergara Caffarelli ed., Il soffi tto dello Steri di Palermo: rilievo fotogrammetrico digitale (Palermo 2009); L. Buttà, ‘Storie per governare: iconografi a giuridica e del potere nel soffi tto dipinto della Sala Magna del palazzo Chiaromonte Steri di Palermo’, in Narrazione, exempla, retorica. Studi sull’iconografi a dei

soffi tti dipinti nel Medioevo Mediterraneo, ed. L. Buttà (Palermo 2013), 69–126.

37 L. A. Kapitaikin, ‘The Twelfth-Century Paintings of the Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo’, 2 vols (unpublished DPhil thesis, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford 2011).

38 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4).39 U. Monneret de Villard, Le Pitture Musulmane al Soffi tto della

Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Rome 1950); A. Grabar, ‘Image d’une église chrétienne parmi les peintures musulmanes de la Chapelle Palatine à Palerme’, in Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst (as n. 18), 226–33; D. Jones, ‘The Cappella Palatina in Palermo: problems of attribution’ (as n. 20); E. C. Dodd, ‘Christian Arab sources for the ceiling of the Palatine Chapel, Palermo’, in Arte d’Occidente: temi e metodi. Studi in onore di Angiola Maria Romanini, ed. A. Cadei, M. R. Tosti-Croce, A. S. Malacart and A. Tome (Rome 1999), 823–31; M. V. Fontana, La pittura islamica: dalle origini alla fi ne del Trecento (Rome 2002), 67–71; D. Knipp, ‘Image, presence, and ambivalence: the Byzantine tradition of the painted ceiling in the Cappella Palatina, Palermo’, in Visualisierungen von Herrschaft. Frühmittelalterliche Residenzen: Gestalt und Zeremoniell. Akten des internationalen Kolloquium, ed. F. A. Bauer, Byzas, 5 (Istanbul 2006), 283–328; Grube, ‘painted ceilings and their relations’ (as n. 13); A. Nef, Conquérir et gouverner la Sicile islamique aux XIe et XIIe siècles, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athénes et de Rome, fasc. 346 (Rome 2011), 145–74; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37); Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4); L.-A. Hunt, ‘Ceiling and casket at the Cappella Palatina and Christian Arab art between Sicily and Egypt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Islamic Painting 1100–1300. Proceedings of the International Conference, Berlin, 6–8 July 2007, ed. D. Knipp, Römische Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana, 36 (Munich 2011), 169–98; Anzelmo, ‘I soffi tti dipinti’ (as n. 14).

40 As noted by Ćurčić, ‘Some Palatine Aspects’ (as n. 3), 143, and Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (as n. 7), 22 n. 52. The pulpit obscures the view of the southern column from the nave: see La Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), fi gs 83–86, 195, 274, 457. For the idea: W. Cahn, ‘Solomonic elements in Romanesque art’, in The Temple of Solomon. Archaeological Fact and Mediaeval Tradition in Christian, Islamic and Jewish Art, ed. J. Gutmann (Missoula, MT 1976), 50–51, and H. Rosenau, Vision of the Temple: the image of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity (London 1979), 67. For the currency of the idea in 12th-century Sicily, see the spiral columns depicted in the following representations of the Temple in the Christological scenes at Monreale: The Presentation, Christ among the Doctors, The Second Temptation of Christ, The Cleansing of the Temple; pairs of spiral columns also identify the synagogue in Christ curing the Woman with the Spirit of Infi rmity, Christ healing the Man with the Withered Hand and Christ healing the Mother of Peter’s Wife, the church in The Baptism of Paul, and even the Praetorium in Christ before Pilate (E. Kitzinger, I mosaici del periodo normanno in Sicilia, 5 parts (Palermo 1992–97), III, Il Duomo di Monreale: I Mosaici dell’abside, della solea e delle cappelle lateriali, fi gs 191–93, IV, Il Duomo di Monreale: I Mosaici del Transetto, fi gs 18–19, 29, 99; V, Il Duomo di Monreale: I Mosaici delle Navate, fi gs 170, 184, 206, 217).

41 B. Brenk ed., La Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), IV Atlante II, fi g.1225.

42 Ibid., IV Atlante II, fi gs 1258 (Solomon) and 1254 (David: the fi gure was completely restored in the 18th century; see the discus-sion by B. Brenk in La Cappella Palatina (as n. 1), II Testi: Schede, 680, where earlier bibliography is cited).

43 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi gs 711 and 720–21.44 Ibid., IV Atlante II, fi g. 695 (Panel 27).45 Ibid., fi gs 628 (left), 718 (right), 738 (left), 753, and 888 (left).

For a general discussion of musicians in the ceilings, see ibid., II Testi: Schede, 497–509, scheda 381, now revised and amplifi ed in idem, ‘Baghdad and Jerusalem: musicians and dancers in the painted ceilings of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in M. Ritter (ed.), On iconography and Islamic art, Welten des Islams — Worlds of Islam — Mondes de l’Islam (Berlin 2015 (forthcoming)).

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46 Ivories: P. B. Cott, Siculo-Arabic Ivories (Princeton 1939), fi gs 33d–e (Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, inv. no. KFMV 60), 34b left (Palma de Mallorca, Cathedral, Treasury), 47a second from left (Würzburg Casket). Ceilings: E. Pauty, Les bois sculptés jusqu’à l’époque ayyoubide (Cairo 1931), pl. LII; S. Khemir, ‘The Palace of Sitt al-Mulk and Fatimid Imagery’, 2 vols (unpublished PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1990), II, pl. 74d left.

47 Harpists are depicted in the same pose, playing what appears to be the same instrument in the late Sāsānian rock-reliefs at Æāq-i Bustān: H. G. Farmer, ‘The Instruments of Music on the Æāq-i Bustān Bas-Reliefs’, in idem, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments (Glasgow 1939), 75–76, fi gs 2 and 3.

48 J. W. McKinnon, N. van Ree Bernard, M. Remnant and B. Kenyon de Pascual, ‘Psaltery: The ancient Greek and Latin terms’, Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/22494> [accessed 3 May 2015] citing M. Gerbert, Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, I (Milan 1931), 23.

49 C. M. Engelhardt, Herrad von Landsperg, Aebtissin zu Hohenburg, oder St. Odilien, im Elsass; im 12ten Jahrhundert, und ihr Werk; Hortus deliciarum (Stuttgart 1818), 8, pl. 4; R. Green, M. Evans, C. Bischoff and M. Curschmann ed., The Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Hohenbourg (Landsberg 1176–96): A Reconstruction, 2 vols (London 1979), fol. 59r, no. 81, pl. 37; I, 123; II, 97 and pl. 162. Moissac: south gallery, capital 8: V. Debiais, ‘Le chant des formes. L’écriture épigraphique, entre matérialité du tracé et transcendance des contenus’, Revista de poética medieval, 27 (2013) 118–24, fi g. 7 (lower right).

50 Compare the head of the Musician in fi g. 7 with the heads of the musicians in Johns ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 832, and also fi gs 671 and 792.

51 Ibid., IV Atlante II, fi gs 765–66, 740–41, 807–08, III Testi: Schede, 541–50, scheda 474: Large Units, Panels 13–14; Corner Units, Panels 25–27; Small Units, Panel 4.

52 For the various instruments played by David in Romanesque art, see I. Marchesin, L’image organum: la représentation de la musique dans les psautiers médiévaux 800–1200 (Turnhout 2000), 24–27. For the act of tuning, compare Fig. 7 with, for example, ibid., colour illus. F (Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale, fonds L’Escalopier, MS 2, fol. 115v: Psalter, Angers, mid-11th century) and illus. 16 (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. MS 343, fol. 12v: Psalter, Milan, late 10th century), 29 (Pommersfelden, Schlossbibliothek, Codex 334 (2776), fol. 148b: Bible, Cologne, c. 1100). For the curule chair: Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Schede, 600; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 122 and 475. Romanesque artists usually seat King David upon a throne, but often instead place him on a curule chair, e.g. Marchesin, L’image organum, as above, illus. 18 (Klosterneuburg bei Wien, Stiftsbibliothek, CCL. 987, fol. 11v: Bible, Franconia, late 9th or early 10th century) and 39 (Mantua, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 340 (C.III.20), fol. 1v: Psalter, San Benedetto Po, c. 1125); see also the relief panel from the portal of the chapter house of Notre-Dame la Daurade, Toulouse (3rd atelier; c. 1165–75), now in the Musée des Augustins, K. Horste, Cloister Design and Monastic Reform in Toulouse: The Romanesque Sculpture of La Daurade (Oxford 1992), pl. 198. However, the curule chair was known in medieval Islam: J. Sadan, Le Mobilier au proche Orient médiéval (Leiden 1976), 131–33. In Islamic painting of the early 13th century, it is particularly associated with royalty: a curule chair serves as the throne for Badr al-Dīn Luʾluʾ in frontispieces of the Cairo and Istanbul Kitāb al-Aghānī (Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, 579 adab, vol. IV, fol. 2a, Baghdad, AH614/1217–1218AD: B. Farès, Une miniature religieuse de l’école arabe de Bagdad: son climat, sa structure et ses motifs, sa relation avec l’iconographie chrétienne d’Orient, Mémoires de l’Institut d’Egypte no. 51 [Cairo 1948], pl. XI; and Millet Kü tü phanesi, MS Feyzullah Efendi 1566, fol. 1b, Mosul, c. 1218–19; R. Ettinghausen, Arab Painting [Geneva 1962], 65), while the three examples of curule chairs illustrated in the early-13th-century Cairene Kalīla wa-Dimna (Bibliothèque nationale, MS Arabe 3465, fols 15b, 77a, 83a) — all

serve as thrones. For other Romanesque comparanda with Fig. 7, see also the image of a young musician tuning his harp-psaltery, representing the fi rst musical mode, from the late-11th- or early-12th-century Gradual of St-Etienne of Toulouse, British Library, Harley MS 4951, fol. 295v; H. Steger, David Rex et Propheta (Nuremberg 1961), pl. 19.3 and good colour image at <http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=22906> [accessed 03/05/2015].

53 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 694 (Panel 27).54 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Arabe 5847, respectively,

fol. 122b and fol. 21a.55 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Arabe 3929, fol. 53a.56 The Islamic personifi cation of Mercury as al-Kātib presum-

ably continues the ancient association of the planet Mercury with the Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian scribe-god Nabū, the Egyptian Thoth: W. M. Senner, ‘Theories and Myths on the Origin of Writing: a Historical Overview’, in idem (ed.), The Origins of Writing (Lincoln, Nebraska and London 1991), 10–12. Metal basin: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 91.1.553: S. Carboni, Following the Stars: Images of the Zodiac in Islamic Art (New York 1997), 12–13, cat. no. 3; Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), fi g. 28.10; K. al-Mawālid: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Arabe 2583, fols 4b, 5b (bis), 6b, 7b, 8b, 9b, 10b, 11b, 12b, 14b, 15b, 17b, 18b, 19b, 20b and 32b.

57 Peter of Eboli, Liber ad honorem Augusti, circa 1196. Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex 120 II, fol. 101a: Peter of Eboli, Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis: Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern; eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, ed. T. Kölzer and M. Stähli (Sigmaringen 1994), 59.

58 Aurigemma, Il Cielo Stellato (as n. 31), 226, fi g. 209 bottom left: wrongly identifi ed as ‘suonatore di cetra’; A. Bellia, ‘Twelfth-century musical symbols in the star-studded sky of King Ruggero II’, Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography 37 (2012), 30, fi g. 9.

59 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), I Testi: Saggi, 400–01.60 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 684: the view of the

corner unit shows only the Scribe (fi g. 694) because the Musician tuning a Triangular Psaltery (fi g. 695) is hidden by a projection of the muqarnas. The relationship between the two panels (nos 26 and 27) is shown diagrammatically on II Testi: Schede, 596, and can be reconstructed by comparing fi gs 684 and 705, and focusing on the Male servant with basin (fi g. 698) which appears in both. See also Monneret de Villard, Le Pitture Musulmane (as n. 39), fi gs 41–42.

61 L. Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols in 6 (Paris 1955–58), II/i, 255–56, 263–64, 281–86; E. Kirschbaum et al., Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 8 vols (Rome, Freiburg, Basel and Vienna 1968–76), I, cols 477–90, III, cols 466–81; Steger, David rex (as n. 52), 36, 40, 75, 77, 110, 120 and especially 155–57 cat. no. 3 and pl. 3 (London, British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian A I, fol. 30v: Psalter, Canterbury, mid-8th century), 160–62 cat. no. 7 (Angers, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 18, fols 13v–14r: Psalter, Sens, Abbey of St Remy, c. 842–50; see also Marchesin, L’image organum (as n. 52), illus 10–11 and colour good image at <http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/> [accessed 3 May 2015]), 168–70 cat. no. 12 (Rome, San Paolo fuori le Mura, fol. 147v: Bible, Reims, 870–75), and 179–80 cat. no. 19 (Rome, Biblioteca Vaticana Cod. Lat. 82, fol. 12v, Bobbio (?), 10th century); Marchesin, L’image organum (as n. 52), illus. 16 (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. MS 343, fol. 12v: Psalter, Milan, late-10th century); Grube and Johns, Painted ceilings (as n. 2), 141, fi gs 28.9–10, 148–50, fi gs 32.1–33.3; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-century paintings’ (as n. 37), 256–58, misses the crucial point that the association of David the Psalmist with his scribe(s) belongs fi rmly within the Romanesque iconographic tradition.

62 I. Hasson, ‘David’ and A. Schippers, ‘Psalms’, in Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾ ān, ed. J. Dammen McAuliffe, 6 vols (Leiden 2001), I, 495–97 and IV, 314–18. See also the relevant sections of R. Tottoli, I profeti biblici nella tradizione islamica, (Brescia 1999; Eng. trans. Richmond 2002).

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63 R. Milstein, K. Rührdanz and B. Schmitz, Stories of the proph-ets: illustrated manuscripts of Qi½a½ al-anbiyāʼ (Costa Mesa 1999), 142–44.

64 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi gs 844, 853–54 (south side) and 583, 590–91 (north side).

65 Ibid., fi gs 844, 850 (south side) and 583, 588 (north side); II Testi: Schede, scheda 588, 579–80.

66 See, for example, capital 5 in the north end of the west side of the cloister of St-Pierre-de-Moissac, c. 1100: M. Schapiro, The Sculpture of Moissac (London 1985), 65, fi g. 86; T. Droste, Die Skulpturen von Moissac: Gestalt und Funktion romanischer Bauplastik (Munich 1996), 124–25, 133, no. 61; and the closely related capital from the monastery of Notre-Dame la Daurade (Toulouse), now in the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (inv. no. ME 104), c. 1100–10: M. Lafargue, Les Chapiteaux du cloître de Notre-Dame la Daurade (Paris 1940), pl. III, fi gs 1–2 (usefully illustrating both Moissac and la Daurade). For Daniel in medieval art, see Réau, Iconographie, II/i (as n. 61), 401–06; R. B. Green, ‘Daniel in the Lions’ Den as an example of Romanesque typology’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago 1948); Kirschbaum, Lexikon, I (as n. 61), cols 470–73; W. Travis, ‘Daniel in the Lions’ Den: Problems in the iconography of a Cistercian manuscript. Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 132’, Arte medi-evale, 2nd ser., 14 (2000), 49–71; Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 218–19, fi gs 71.1–9; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 372–78, argues that this panel represents not Daniel but rather the legendary Iranian lion-strangler Bahrām Gūr.

67 W. Déonna, ‘Daniel, le maître des fauves, à propos d’une lampe chrétienne du musée de Genève’, Artibus Asiae, 12 (1949), 119–40 and 347–74, esp. pls 1a–b; G. De Francovich, Benedetto Antelami, architetto e scultore, e l’arte del suo tempo, 2 vols (Milano 1952), II, pl. 233, fi g. 383. See the same pose in a 12th-century capital in the cathedral of Chur, Switzerland (Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 219, fi g. 71.7; W. Weisbach, ‘Das Daniel-Kapitell im Dom von Chur und der dämonische Stoffkreis der romanischen Plastik’, Phoebus, 1 (1946), 151–55, fi gs 1–4), and another capital attributed to Antelami’s workshop, from the pontile of Modena Cathedral, in which Daniel rests both hands upon the lions’ necks (De Francovich, Benedetto Antelami, pl. 43, fi gs 81–82). See also: Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 2, fol. 324r: Y. Zaluska, Manuscrits enluminés de Dijon (Paris 1991), cat. no. 104, 132–36, pl. 40, and good colour image at <http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/> [accessed 3 May 2015]; and the several capitals in the nave of San Michele Maggiore, Pavia, pre-1155, in which a male fi gure conventionally identifi ed as Daniel holds variously the head, neck and ears of a pair of lions (G. Chierici, Le sculture della Basilica di San Michele Maggiore a Pavia (Milan 1942), pls CXV(b), CXXV(a–b), CXXVII(b), CXLI(a), CXLIII).

68 The text is an amalgamation of Daniel 2: 34 and 2: 45. La Cappella Palatina, (as n. 1), IV Atlante II, fi g. 1265; I Testi: Schede, 682–83. See also Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (as n. 7), 25–26, 46–47.

69 Déonna, ‘Daniel, le maître des fauves’ (as n. 67), 136–40, who cites early bibliography. For more recent studies of the ancient iconography, see D. B. Counts and B. Arnold ed., The Master of Animals in Old World iconography (Budapest 2010). For the Dalmatic of St Bernard Calvó (New York, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, inv. no. 1901-1-220); J. D. Dodds, Al-Andalus: the art of Islamic Spain (New York 1992), 320, cat. no. 88.

70 G. Vajda, ‘Dāniyāl’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. H. A. R. Gibb et al., 13 vols (Leiden 1960–2002), II, 112–13.

71 A. Dietrich, ‘Ibn Abi ʾl-Dunyā’, Encyclopaedia of Islam (as n. 70), III, 684: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā < Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd Allāh [b. al-©asan al-Muthannā b. al-©asan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Æālib] < A¬mad b. ʿAmr b. al-Sar¬ < [ʿAbd Allāh] Ibn Wahb [b. Muslim al-Fihrī al-Qurashī] < ʿAbd al-Ra¬mān b. Abī al-Zanād < Abū al-Zanād; Ibn Kathīr, Qi½a½ al-anbiyāʾ , ed. M. ʿA. al-Q. Shāhīn, (Beirut 1998), 368–69. See also al-Æabarī, The History of al-Æabarī (Taʾ rīkh al-rusul waʾ l-mulūk). Volume XIII: The Conquest of Iraq, Southwestern Persia and Egypt, trans. and annotated G. H. A. Juynboll (Albany, NY 1989), 148.

72 The editor misreads: ‘Ibn Burda b. Abī Mūsā al-Ashʿarī’. See J. Schacht, ‘al-As̲h̲ʿarī, Abū Burda’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, I (as n. 70), 693–94.

73 That is, following the initial discovery and excavation of Dāniyāl’s tomb at the time of the conquest. For Abū Mūsā, see L. Veccia Vaglieri, ‘al-As̲h̲ʿarī, Abū Mūsā’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, I (as n. 70), 695–96.

74 In Mozarabic painting, the detail of the lions licking Daniel’s feet — e.g. in the Biblia de Leon, where Daniel sits in the orans pose between two lions who lick his feet (Leon, Archivo Capitular de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro, fol. 325v: Monastery of Sts Peter and Paul, Valeranica, 960; J. Vallejo Bozal, ‘El ciclo de Daniel en las miniaturas del códice’, in Codex Biblicus Legionensis: veinte estudios, ed. C. Alvarez Alvarez (León 1999), 178–79, and 154 illus. 37) — may derive independently from Visigothic art, and seems to be in part the product of confusion between the alternative mean-ings of lacus, as is suggested by the capital showing Daniel in the Lions’ Den in the crossing of San Pedro de la Nave, Zamora, dated to the late 7th or early 8th century, in which the lions appear to lick or to suck up the water from the lacus leonum in which Daniel is paddling: H. Schlunk, ‘Observaciones en torno al problema de la miniatura visigoda’, Archivo español de arte, 18/71 (1945), 241–65. Alternatively, the artist of Fig. 11 may have intended to represent the protruding tongue of a strangled lion. An 11th-century painted capital in the nave of the abbey of St-Sever (Landes) — a much frequented stop on the Via Lemovicensis to Santiago de Compostela — represents a standing fi gure, conventionally identifi ed as Daniel, grasping with outstretched hands the long tongues that protrude from a pair of monstrous lion-heads: J. Cabanot, ‘Le tympan du portail nord de St-Sever (Landes): Le Beatus et le décor sculpté de l’abbatiale’, in Ex quadris lapidibus. La Pierre et sa mise en oeuvre dans l’art medieval, ed. Y. Gallet (Turnhout 2011), 400 and fi g. 13. In Romanesque art, too, Daniel is often depicted as the Master of the Beasts, as in the remarkable historiated initial that opens the prologue to the Book of Daniel in a Bible made for St-Pierre-de-Jumièges in c. 1080, where Daniel strangles a lion with his left hand and, in two Christ-like gestures, holds the globe with his right hand and with each foot tramples a lion: Rouen, Bibliothèque munici-pale, MS 8, fol. 127r: Travis, ‘Daniel’ (as n. 66), 54 and fi g. 6, and good colour image image at http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/ [accessed 3 May 2015].

75 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 850; and II Testi: Schede, 587–89, scheda 627.

76 La Cappella Palatina, (as n. 1), III Atlante I, fi gs 223–29; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 392–97; M. J. Johnson, ‘The Episcopal and Royal Views in Cefalù’, Gesta 33 (1994), 118–31, 127–29; Borsook, Messages in Mosaic (as n. 7), 10 and 15 notes 40–45, and 23, 46, notes 64–65; Kitzinger, ‘Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina’ (as n. 3), 284.

77 Large Unit 15: Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 850, and II Testi: Schede, 587–89, scheda 627; Large Unit 7: ibid., IV Atlante II, fi g. 627.

78 Ibid., IV Atlante II, fi g. 1055.79 Rhombus 3 — the third from the west end — ibid., IV Atlante

II, fi g. 1055.80 Ibid., IV Atlante II, fi g. 661.81 For the well-studied history and iconography of St Theodore:

C. Walter, ‘Saint Theodore and the Dragon’, in Through a Glass Brightly: Studies in Byzantine and Medieval art and archaeology presented to David Buckton, ed. C. Entwhistle (Oxford 2003), 95–106; C. Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Aldershot 2003), 44–66; C. Jolivet-Lévy, ‘Saint Théodore et le dragon: nouvelles données’, in Puer Apuliae. Mélanges Jean-Marie Martin, ed. E. Cuozzo, V. Déroche, A. Peters-Custot and V. Prigent (Paris 2008), 357–71; P. L. Grotowski, Arms and Armour of the Warrior Saints (Leiden 2010), 57–123. See also Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 228–33, fi gs 76.1–78.7 and 79.3; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 382–401.

82 See the ingenious arguments for a programmatic role for all the dragon- and lion-slayers in the ceiling advanced by Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 397–401.

87


83 O. Pancaroğlu, ‘The Itinerant Dragon-Slayer: Forging Paths of Image and Identity in Medieval Anatolia’, Gesta, 43 (2004), 155, fi g. 4.

84 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 913: Large Unit 18, Panel 14, paired with a Nadīm fl anked by Two Attendants within a Palace (IV Atlante II, fi g. 912) in Panel 13. See also above 19, note 106 below.

85 D. Nicolle, ‘The Cappella Palatina ceiling and the Muslim military inheritance of Norman Sicily’, Gladius, 16 (1983), 45–145, 70 and fi g. 4) cautiously, but wrongly, identifi es it as a pointed nasal helmet: see also above 20, and note 108 below.

86 Walter, Warrior Saints (as n. 81), 109–44. Strangely, the ico-nography of St George is not yet as well studied for the medieval Latin West as it is for Byzantium and the Christian East: J. A. Aufhauser, Das Drachenwunder des heiligen Georg in der griechis-chen und lateinisichen Überlieferung, Byzantinisches Archiv 5 (Leipzig 1911), 231–36; Réau, Iconographie, III/ii (as n. 61), 571–79; Kirschbaum, Lexikon (as n. 61), VI, cols 365–90; S. Braunfels-Esche, Sankt Georg: Legende, Verehrung, Symbol (Munich 1976); K. J. Dorsch, Georgszyklen des Mittelalters (Frankfurt 1983); G. Didi-Huberman, R. Garbetta and M. Morgaine ed., Saint Georges et le dragon: versions d’une légende (Paris 1994); S. Hahn, S. Metken, B. Steiner, ed., Sanct Georg: der Ritter mit dem Drachen (Lindenberg 2001). See also: Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 135, fi g. 25.4 and 228–33, fi gs 76.1–78.7 and 79.3; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 382–401.

87 Horseman, initial ‘A’, Miscellany on the Life of St. Edmund, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.0736, fol. 78v: Bury St Edmunds, 1125–35 (The New Palaeographical Society, Facsimiles of ancient manuscripts, ed. E. M. Thompson et al. (Oxford 1903–30), pl. 113, and the good colour image at <http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/45/143847> [accessed 3 May 2015]; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 388–89, fi g. 11.39.

88 It is tempting to speculate that the serpentine dragon may somehow play on Ivar’s nickname — in Old Norse, Ívarr hinn beinlausi, ‘Ivar the Boneless’ (or ‘Legless’).

89 Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, MS. 294, fol. 185v, Lectionnaire F du chapitre de Reims: good colour image at <http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/>.

90 See also the discussion of the Man Rending a Griffi n (Fig. 22) and the Man Riding a Lion (Fig. 23), see above 21–24, and notes 119–32 below.

91 H. Loriquet, Catalogue général des manuscrits des biblio-thèques publiques de France. Départements. Tome XXXVIII–XXXIX, Reims, 2 vols (Paris 1904–09), II, 283–90, esp. 289–90; M. de Lemps and R. Laslier, Trésors de la Bibliothèque municipale de Reims (Reims 1978), cat. no. 19.

92 See S. Kuehn, The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art (Leiden 2011), 92–100, and Pancaroğlu, ‘The itinerant dragon-slayer’ (as n. 83). Combat between a mounted swordsman and a dragon might be depicted on the Bobrinski Bucket, dated 559/1163, probably made in Herat — Kuehn, The Dragon, as above 96 and fi g. 90; despite its fame and importance, the object is not well published, for bibliography see M. B. Piotrovsky, J. Vrieze et al. ed., Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art: Art of Islam (Amsterdam 1999), 159, cat. no. 114 — but neither of the two horsemen framing the dragon wields what is indubitably a sword. For other late-12th- or early-13th-century examples of the use of the sword in dragon combat, see Kuehn, The Dragon, as above fi gs 91, 93, 96–99, 102.

93 Damascus, National Museum, inv. no. A/5819: E. Delpont ed., L’Orient de Saladin: l’art des Ayyoubides. Exposition présentée à l’Institut du monde arabe, Paris du 23 octobre 2001 au 10 mars 2002 (Paris 2001), cat. nos 53, 56–59; Pancaroğlu, ‘The itinerant dragon-slayer’ (as n. 83), 157–58; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 388–89, fi g. 11.40; Kuehn, The Dragon (as n. 92), 99–100, misdates it to the ‘mid-13th century’.

94 For his equipment, see D. Nicolle, Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era, 1050–1350, 2 vols (White Plains, NY 1988), 163, illus. 412A–D.

95 Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 387–89.

96 Jerusalem, Greek Patriarchal Library, Cod. 2: R. P. Blake, ‘Catalogue des manuscrits géorgiens de la Bibliothèque patriacale grecque à Jérusalem’, Revue de l’Orient chrétien, 3rd ser., 3/23 (1922–23), 357–62. Russian trans. in E. L. Privalova, Pavnissi (Tbilisi 1977), 73, from which the English trans. in C. Walter, ‘The Origins of the Cult of Saint George’, Revue des études byzantines, 53 (1995), 320–22, and Walter, Warrior Saints (as n. 81), 140–42. The Georgian legend of St George and the Princess reached Byzantium before the 13th century and is fi rst known in a late-12th- or 13th-century manuscript in the Bibliotheca Angelica (Rome), MS 46, fols 189r–191v: Aufhauser, Das Drachenwunder (as n. 86), 52–69. The earliest known Latin version of the legend is in the early-13th-century Vitae Sanctorum from St Emmeram, Regensburg, now in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Clm. MS 14473, fol. 5r; ibid., 182–86; E. Klemm, Die romanischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek: Teil 1. Die Bistümer Regensburg, Passau und Salzburg (Wiesbaden 1980), 43, cat. 50). Only in the Latin version, does George transfi x the dragon with his spear before beheading it with his sword (see below, note 100).

97 Privalova, Pavnissi (as n. 96): Adisi (late 11th century), 77, fi g. 18, pl. XVIII; Bočorma (c. 1100), 83 fi g. 20; Ikvi (12th century), 80, fi g. 19; Pavnisi (1170–80) 18, fi g. 5 (right).

98 For example: the church of St George in the Novgorodian fortress of Staraya Ladoga (Volkhovsky District, St Petersburg Oblast, Russia), datable to 1180–1200 (V. N. Lazarev, ‘A new paint-ing from the twelfth century and the fi gure of St George the Warrior in Byzantine and Medieval Russian art’, in idem, Studies in Early Russian Art (London 2000), 85–162, esp. 148–50 and fi g. 15; Visoki Dečani (Peć, Metohija, Kosovo), fresco on the east wall of the east dome of the north nave of the narthex, c. 1350; C. Walter, ‘The cycle of St. George in the Monastery of Dečani’, in Dečani i vizantijska umetnost sredinom XIV veka: Medjunarodni naučni skup povodom 650 godina manastira Dečana septembar 1985. Primljeno na 9 skupu Odeljenja istorijskich nauka, održanom 25. novembra 1987, ed. V. J. Ðurić (Belgrade 1989), 347–54, drawing 3 and fi g. 5, and good colour image of the fresco at <http://www.srpskoblago.org/Archives/Decani/exhibits/Collections/CycleStGeorge/CX4K3205_l.html> [accessed 3 May 2015]. For an example of George spearing the dragon with the princess in attendance, see the carving in the tympanum of the window in the west façade at Visoki Dečani in J. Maglovski, ‘The sculpture of Dečani — Programme and meaning’, in Dečani, 222 and fi gs 28–29, and colour image at <http://www.srpskoblago.org/Archives/Decani/exhibits/architecture/arch_outside/D015_DSC_0037_l.html> [accessed 3 May 2015].

99 P. Deschamps and M. Thibout, La peinture murale en France. Le Haut Moyen Âge et l’époque romane (Paris 1951), 132–37 and fi g. 46; C. Davy, ‘Les peintures murales de la chapelle des templiers de Cressac’, in Congrès archéologique de France. 153e session, 1995, Charente, Société française d’archéologie (Paris 1999), 171–78, where the princess is sometimes identifi ed as Ecclesia: E. Dehoux, ‘Représenter le martyre. Images de saint Georges et de saint Maurice dans le Regnum Francorum (IXe–XIIIe siècles)’, in Corps outragés, corps saccagés. Regards croisés de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, ed. L. Bodiou, V. Mehl and M. Soria (Turnhout 2011), 117–37, fi g. 8. The fresco is best seen at <http://www.panoglobe.com/les-fresques-de-la-chapelle-des-templiers-de-cressac/> [accessed 3 May 2015].

100 The tympanum of the west door of San Giorgio in Ferrara, carved by Nicholaus in c. 1135, is an important exception — the saint charges with raised sword at a dragon whose throat is already been transfi xed by a shattered lance: A.M. Romanini ed., Nicholaus e l’arte del suo tempo. Atti del seminario tenutosi a Ferrara dal 21 al 24 settembre 1981 organizzato dalla Deputazione provinciale ferrarese di storia patria, 3 vols (Ferrara 1985), III (Atlante), 143–5, 177–81; see also E.N. Lusanna, ‘Nicholaus a Ferrara’, in ibid., II, 407–40, and G. Zanichelli, ‘Iconologia di Niccolò di Ferrara’ in ibid., II, 561–605. This composite scene follows the earliest Latin version of St George and the Princess almost to the letter: Ad hec autem porrigens manus beatus Georgius pilo draconis fauces transfi xit et evaginato gladio eius caput amputavit: Aufhauser, Drachenwunder (as n. 86), 186. (The persistent tradition that Robert II Count of

88

jeremy johns

Flanders gave to Ferrara the arm of St George that he had acquired on the First Crusade is contradicted by his well-documented gift of the relic to the monastery of Anchin in Flanders: J. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131, (Cambridge 1997), 151–52 and notes.)

101 And, presumably, the metalworkers of Anatolia, the Jazīra and even Khurāsān (see Kuehn, The Dragon (as n. 92), fi gs 91, 93, 96–99, 102) — at least, these would seem to be the implications of the discussion in Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 387–89.

102 The type is perhaps more likely to have emerged from ‘the new cultural mélange’ created by the Turkish incursions into Anatolia after the battle of Manzikert in 1071 — Pancaroğlu, ‘The itinerant dragon-slayer’ (as n. 83) — and thence to have spread westwards to Europe and throughout the Muslim East.

103 Cambridge, St John’s College, MS B.18, fol. 86r: Psalterium Triplex, Reims, early-12th century; W. Cahn, Romanesque Manuscripts: The Twelfth Century, 2 vols (London 1996), I, fi g. 159, II, 83–84, cat. no. 66,; further bibliography and a colour image at <http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/psalterium-triplex-rheims> [accessed 3 May 2015].

104 Dijon, Bibliothè que municipale, MS 173, fol. 20a: see below, note 105.

105 It is from about this time that representations of dragon-combat unrestrained by any narrative frame begin to multiply. See, for example, the famous four-volume manuscript of Gregory’s Moralia in Job (Cîteaux, c. 1110–20: Dijon, Bibliothèque munici-pale, MSS 168–70 & 173: Cahn, Romanesque manuscripts (as n. 103, II, 73–74, cat. no. 59), in which there are no less than seven different representations of dragon-combat (MSS 168, fols 4v, 52v, and 173, fols 20r, 29r, 111v, 122r, 156r), most with two dragons, only one of which may be related more or less distantly to St George (MS 173, fol. 20r): colour images at <http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/> [accessed 3 May 2015].

106 Note, however, that the panel is angled towards the north-east so that it cannot be seen from the throne platform.

107 I know of no early Islamic Life of George (nor of al- KhiÅr) that has him slay a dragon, not even those rare episodes that seem to be loosely based upon the legend of St George and the Princess: e.g. al-Rabghūzī, The Stories of the Prophets: Qi½a½ al-anbiyāʾ , an Eastern Turkish version, ed. and trans. H. E. Boeschoten, M. Vandamme and S. Tezcan, 2 vols (Leiden 1995), vol. 2, 460–62. But, for modern legends of St George and the Dragon in Lebanon, see M. Ayoub, ‘Cult and culture: common saints and shrines in Middle Eastern popular piety’, in Religion and Culture in Medieval Islam, ed. R. G. Hovanissian and G. Sabagh (Cambridge 1999), 109–10.

108 al-Æabari, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk, ed. M.J. de Goeje et al., 15 vols (Leiden 1879–1901), vol. 3, 709; al-Æabari, The History of al-Æabarī (Taʾ rīkh al-rusul waʾ l-mulūk). Volume XXX: The ʿAbbāsid Caliphate in Equilibrium, trans. and annotated C.E. Bosworth (Albany, N.Y. 1989), 262–63.

109 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 806 and II Testi: Schede, 617–20, scheda 806.

110 North side, Large Unit 13, Panel 1. Kapitaikin advances a series of ingenious arguments for the programmatic signifi cance of this unit: Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 235–50, 332–44 and pl. VI.

111 Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 192–99, fi gs 58.1–61.9; Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), II Testi: Schede, 492–94, scheda 374; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 152–56.

112 G. Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East (New York and London 2006), is now the indispensable introduction to all aspects of Samson in the ancient Near East. For similarities between Biblical Samson and David, see ibid., 80–84; Réau, Iconographie, II/i (as n. 61), 240–41, 258–59; Kirschbaum, Lexikon, I (as n. 61), cols 477–90, IV, cols 30–38. For the iconogra-phy of Samson in Islamic art, and much else: J. Raby, ‘Samson and Siyāh Qalam’, Islamic Art, 1 (1981), 160–63. For Samson and lion-riders in general, see Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 204–17, fi gs 64–70.12.

113 R. Favreau, ‘Le thème iconographique du lion dans les inscrip-tions médiévales’, Comptes Rendues de Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1991), 613–36.

114 Pace Knipp, ‘Image, Presence, and Ambivalence’ (as n. 39), 294–96.

115 Samson: British Library, Royal MS 6 C VI, fol. 152v: notes, extensive bibliography and colour image at <http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6068&CollID=16&NStart=60306> [accessed 3 May 2015]. The manuscript must be earlier than 1122: I therefore am not persuaded that the sub-type originated in southern France, pace G. Swarzenski, ‘Samson Killing the Lion, a Mediaeval Bronze Group’, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 38 (1940), 71. David: Dijon, Bibliothèque munic-ipale, MS 147, fol. 2a: Y. Załuska, L’Enluminure et le scriptorium de Cîteaux au XIIe siècle (Cîteaux 1989), 204–06, no. 5, pl. 56, illus. 105, and good colour image at <http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/> [accessed 3 May 2015].

116 Southern France: in capitals at St-André-le-Bas, Vienne (Isère) datable to 1152 (Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), fi g. 64.7) and from the abbey of St-Ruf(?), Avignon (now in the Fogg Museum, Harvard, and attributed to Nôtre-Dame-des-Doms, Avignon) datable 1156 to c. 1160 (L. V. Seidel, ‘Romanesque Sculpture in American Collections. X. The Fogg Art Museum. II. The Rhone Valley, Provence, Languedoc, Western and Nothern France’, Gesta, 11/2 (1972), 62–63, no. 3, fi g. 8), and in the medal-lion on the so-called ‘Lanterne de Bégon’ (or ‘de St Vincent’), in the Trésor de Ste Foy, Conques, datable to the second half of the 12th century (D. Gaborit-Chopin and E. Taburet-Delahaye, Le trésor de Conques: exposition du 2 novembre 2001 au 11 mars 2002, musée du Louvre (Paris 2001), 46–49, fi gs 40 and 44; in Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 204, fi g. 64.5, the medallion is regrettably misdated). Apulia: B. Sciarra, La Chiesa di S. Giovanni del Sepolcro in Brindisi (Brindisi 1962), fi g. 12 (see also fi g. 16, which illustrates the carving of a bare-breasted woman riding a lion side-saddle, from the other jamb of the same portal); Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 368 and fi g. 11.8.

117 Raby, ‘Samson’ (as n. 112); A. Rippin, ‘The Muslim Samson: Medieval, Modern and Scholarly Interpretations’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 71 (2008), 239–53; Milstein et al., Stories of the Prophets (as n. 63), 175, note 64, cite the depiction of the Samson story in the 15th-century section of the Jāmi ʿal-tawārīkh, Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Müsezi, Hazine Library MS 1654, fol. 16r, which I have not seen.

118 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 539. The scene occupies the large rectangular Panel 4 in Small Unit 3, towards the western end of the north side of the muqarnas zone.

119 Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 242–43, fi gs 85.1–13. Although, as Grube notes, similar scenes do appear in Romanesque art — e.g. the roundel in the top left corner of the back of the late-12th-century abbatial throne in the Museo del Santuario di Montevergine, Campania (S. De Mieri, ‘Cattedra abbaziale [di Montevergine]’, in L’Enigma degli Avori Medievali da Amalfi a Salerno, ed. F. Bologna, 2 vols (Naples 2008), II, 482–88, cat. no. 90, with good colour images and bibliography), a capital in the chapter house of St-Lazare, Autun (c. 1130: Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 242, fi g. 85.10), and the two corner panels at the foot of the Good Samaritan Window (no. 13) in the ambula-tory of St-Etienne, Bourges (c. 1210–15: A. Martin and C. Cahier, Monographie de la Cathédrale de Bourges: Vitraux du XIIIe siècle (Paris 1841–44), pls 6 and 196: ‘Je n’oserais pas me prononcer sur la fonction de cette espèce d’autruche chevauchée par un enfant [. . .] Serait ce le symbole adopté par un métier (par example, par des paonniers ou chapeliers plumassiers), qui auraient partagé la dépense de cette verrière? Je ne puis rien alléguer qui me convainque [. . ].’) — all these fi gures are merely riding giant birds and not, Samson-like, strangling them with the scissors-hold. Nonetheless, it is striking that, in the upper two registers of the back of the Montevergine throne, Samson rending the Lion is juxtaposed with fi ve other scenes of ‘beast-riders’: a man with a threshing fl ail riding an ostrich, another man with a fl ail upon a camel, three soldiers

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in the castle on an elephant, and a centaur loosing an arrow at a unicorn: here, at least, Samson seems to be conceived as a lion-rider.

120 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 686: Northeast Corner Unit, Panel 2.

121 See above, note 111.122 Réau, Iconographie (as n. 61), II.i, 243; Rippin, ‘The Muslim

Samson’ (as n. 117), 241.123 A. Ferrua, Le Pitture della Nuova Catacomba di Via Latina

(Rome 1960), 63–65, pls 46.2, 50.1, 105; For the complicated history of the jaw-bone see: M. Schapiro, ‘Cain’s Jaw-Bone that did the fi rst Murder’, Art Bulletin, 24 (1942), 205–12; A. A. Barb, ‘Cain’s Murder-Weapon and Samson’s Jawbone of an Ass’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 35 (1972), 386–89.

124 Raby, ‘Samson’ (as n. 112), 160–61, formulae 2 and 3.125 The two episodes are often juxtaposed, even within a single

frame (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Français 159, fol. 104r, image at <visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Mandragore&O=8100222&E=35&I=24559&M=imageseule> [accessed 3 May 2015]), but almost never confused. Indeed, I have come across only one other medieval iconographic confl ation of the two episodes: in an early-14th-century French translation of the Bible copied in Paris (Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale MS 59: images at <http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/> [accessed 3 May 2015]), a conven-tional image of Samson rending the Lion appears at the end of fol. 142r while, on the next opening (fol. 143r), Samson is depicted astride the lion apparently preparing to dispatch it with the jawbone.

126 Rippin, ‘Samson’ (as n. 117), 242; Raby, ‘Samson’ (as n. 112), 161. See also Mobley, Samson (as n. 112), 22–25; R. Wenning and E. Zenger, ‘Der siebenlockige Held Simson: Literarische und ikonographische Beobachtungen zu Ri 13–16’, Biblische Notizen, 17 (1982), 43–55.

127 This is one case where the new image — Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 686 — made after the restoration of 2005–08, only obscures the issue. A. A. Pavlovsky, Zhivopis’ Palatinskoi Kapelly v Palermo (St Petersburg 1890), 212, fi g. 101 (reversed), is reproduced in Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 209, fi g. 66.1B, and in Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), II Testi: Schede, 618 fi g. 396. The artists, Aleksandr Nikanorovich Pomerantsev, better known as the architect of what is now the GUM building in Red Square, Moscow, and his assistant F. I. Chagin, worked from a scaffolding erected as part of a project for the Esposizione Nazionale held at Palermo in 1891: Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4) I Testi: Saggi, 390. Hillenbrand’s 1989 photograph: Oxford, Khalili Research Centre, Image Archive, slide no. ISL 14992; Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), II Testi: Schede, 618 fi g. 397 (detail).

128 Compare with the dragons’ heads in Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante I, fi g. 182, and IV Atlante II, fi gs 899 and 941.

129 South side, capital 16, west side, C. Valenziano, Introduzione alla basilica cattedrale di Cefalù (Palermo 1981), no. 7; R. Alaimo, S. Calderone and M. Carapezza, ‘Il Chiostro del Duomo di Cefalù. Cause ed effetti del degrado’, in La Basilica Cattedrale di Cefalù: Materiali per la Cognoscenza Storica e il Restauro, 8 parts (Palermo 1985–89), VI, 57–97, no. 4 (not illustrated); Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), II Testi: Schede, 619, fi g. 398 — best seen at <http://cenobium.isti.cnr.it/cefalu/capitals/S/S16V7CC4> [accessed 3 May 2015]. Kapitaikin’s objections to this comparison — ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 371 n. 33 — ignore the fact that we cannot now reconstruct with any confi dence the headdress originally worn by the Man riding a Lion.

130 Mobley, Samson (as n. 112), 7–12, goes against the trend set by F. Dornseiff, ‘Das Buch der Richter. 2. Ist Herakles ein griechischer Samson?’, Archiv für Orientforschung, 14 (1941–44), 324–28; B. C.

Brundage, ‘Heracles the Levantine’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 17 (1958), 226–36; and O. Margalith, ‘Samson’s foxes’, Vetus Testamentum, 35 (1985), 224–29, ‘Samson’s riddle and Samson’s magic locks’, Vetus Testamentum, 36 (1986), 225–34, ‘More Samson legends’, Vetus Testamentum, 36 (1986), 397–405 and ‘The legends of Samson/Heracles’, Vetus Testamentum, 37 (1987), 63–70.

131 See above, note 129. Raby, ‘Samson’ (as n. 112); Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings (as n. 2), 216–17, fi gs 70.1–12.

132 Ibid., 208–17.133 Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 511 and II Testi:

Schede, 564–65, scheda 511; see also the discussion of the same panel in idem, ‘Arabic Inscriptions in the Cappella Palatina: Performativity, Audience, Legibility and Illegibility’, in Viewing texts: Inscriptions as image and ornament in the Late Antique and Medieval Mediterranean, ed. A. Eastmond and E. James (Cambridge, pp. 132–33, 2015); Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 591 and II Testi: Schede, 581–82; Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 487–95 and 671–79, Appendix 2.

134 See the discussion in ibid., 89–91, 522–24.135 In addition to those discussed in this study, see the Man dining

between Two Attendants, modelled on various scenes of Christ dining, Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 609 and II Testi: Schede, 584–85, scheda 609, and Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 440–42, fi gs 13.20–24; the Two Servants Well, possibly modelled on Christ and the Samaritan Woman, Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 870 and II Testi: Schede, 629–30, scheda 870, and Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 449–50, who vigorously rejects the derivation; the Chapel interior with Altar, Priest and Youth ringing a Bell, Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 591, II Testi: Schede, 581–82, scheda 591, and Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 432–40, 13.1–10; and elements in the various scenes of Combat between a Lion and a Serpentine Dragon, Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), III Atlante I, fi g. 182, IV Atlante II, fi gs 720–21, 899, II Testi: Schede, 604–5, scheda 720, and Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 354–63 and fi gs 10.20–28. While Kapitaikin (‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’, 152, fi gs 3.40–45) gives Romanesque comparanda for the Tricorporate Lion (Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 1150, II Testi: Schede, scheda 1150), this type of visual puzzle was so widely diffused that it is likely to have travelled indepen-dently to north-west Europe and to the Islamic world, as was almost certainly the case with the Three Hares Motif (Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), IV Atlante II, fi g. 1126 and II Testi: Schede, scheda 1126).

136 Kapitaikin, ‘Twelfth-Century Paintings’ (as n. 37), 524, does his best to make the case for Robert of Selby, Roger’s chancellor, and the much-cited Master Thomas Brown, but the evidence is desperately thin.

137 Johns, Arabic Administration (as n. 27), passim, esp. 80–90, 258–68; Johns, ‘Pitture’ (as n. 4), I Testi: Saggi, 406.

138 The Man dining between Two Attendants, the Chapel and, possibly, the pair of Combat between a Lion and a Serpentine Dragon in the middle of the east end of the muqarnas, and the Two Servants at a Well — for all of which, see above, note 135.

139 See above, note 135.140 J. Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious: Islamic Art and

Architecture in Fatimid North Africa and Egypt (New Haven and London 2007), 157. Lustre ceramics, pace Bloom, did not entirely cease to be produced in Egypt under FāÐimid rule.

141 See above, note 30.142 One possible destination may have been the Mouchroutas

Palace in Constantinople: see above, note 14.

Muslim artists and Christian models in the painted ceilings of the Cappella Palatina

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