Interview with Valentino Pace

by
Vahram Emiyan

05/03/08

Valentino Pace is professor of Art History at the University of Udine and Principal Lecturer in Art History at the Trinity College Rome Campus, where he has taught since 1976. He is a distinguished scholar of late antique, early Christian, Byzantine, and medieval art, he is the author of several books and more than 130 articles.
Valentino Pace has been an editor of several scholarly journals, including University of Siena’s Iconographica, and Belgrade University’s Zograf. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters. Before becoming a professor in the Italian university system, he worked for three years at American research universities, as Visiting Associate Professor at the John Hopkins University (1985-1987) and Visiting Senior Fellow at Princeton University (1987-88).
During a visit to “Aztag’’ newspaper Valentino Pace granted me the following Interview.

Vahram Emiyan: When did you become interested in Armenian art and why?

Valentino Pace: In 1980, during my first visit to Jerusalem, I was introduced to the Armenian Patriarchate and there I had this grate luck of looking at the manuscripts, and I fell in love with Armenian art and Armenian miniatures. And that was the very beginning.

V. Emiyan: What importance do symbols represent in Icons?

V. Pace: Symbols have a great importance in Christian art in general. The importance is that they try to touch the feelings and devotion of the faithful in a visual way. And they have been widely used in both Western and Byzantine art.

V. Emiyan: Are those symbols similar in different cultures?

V. Pace: There are certain symbols which have been used more in certain areas and less in others and vice versa. I wouldn’t say that the whole branch of symbolism is common to every facet of the Christian world. Christian symbols in early Christian art in Italy may be not understandable here and vice versa.

V. Emiyan: What are the basic qualities of Iconography?

V. Pace: Iconography is rather a fixed grammar which must help you trough the images to make clear the ideas of the patron. So if the patron is a religious figure, a bishop or a priest, he knows the system of signs which would make his faithful confident with its beliefs. If there is a good system of communication, if there is a clear net of images Iconography can work very well. In some cases Iconography could be difficult, if the patrons perhaps did not make their message clear. Normally Christian Iconography works very well, since it is based on an established net of images which can be understood by every one.

V. Emiyan: What about the basic qualities of the artist?

V. Pace: During the Middle Ages the artist relied on his experience, his visual experience, on tradition, which he learned from elders, and in this way he transmits his ideas further and it depends on the quality of the artist. Great artists, like Toros Roslin for example, make the message even more beautiful. Iconography does not need to reach for itself a very high quality, because if you represent a cross it’s a cross, you understand it whether its just two lines or something flourished around. An artist makes it also possible to give an esthetic visual impact. And there are great artists and bad painters or sculptors.

V. Emiyan: Is Iconography an elitist art?

V. Pace: No I wouldn’t say so. If Iconography turns into an elitist art it looses its message. It becomes a kind of secret society. It can be as well like that. But since Iconography is basically a way of transmitting a meaning…if you and me were to join a secret society to prepare something which may not be pleasant for others, we will use cryptic Iconography and then it goes like that. But basically Iconography is a system of images which makes the idea clear for every one.

V. Emiyan: But in a secular world people don’t understand the Bible very well, and when an Icon represents two images, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New Testament and fuses them together…

V. Pace: This is a crucial question that you are dealing with, and as a professor I know that the situation is getting worse and worse. Thirty years ago I would have never expected questions from students that I get today. Since the students and society are becoming more and more lay, and they don’t read any Christian text, I wouldn’t be surprised that sometime in the near future a student will ask me “who is this nice lady who is surprised to meet a person who has wings”? Without realizing it’s simply the Annunciation. I would say chances of getting this kind of questions are getting greater. It’s a tragedy in away, because whether you are Catholic or not you should know History at least. But it goes like that. It’s a disaster. An Italian student, three months ago, after my first or second class came to me and asked “professor could you be more clear about some issues you are saying”? When I said sure, he asked: “you have been speaking about an Old and New Testament. What do they mean”? I think even in soviet Russia in the worst times, and perhaps just for that reason, people knew what are the Old and New Testaments. And this was in Italy three months ago! That’s desperate. I’m sure if I go to China I wouldn’t understand anything of the symbolism of the images in China, but in that case I’m ignorant. If I belonged to that society I think I should at least have an idea. You know there has been a lot of discussion about the Christian roots of Europe. I’m a quite lay scholar, but I must say that we can not deny the Christian roots of Europe. That is a part of our society and it must be stressed in a way.