Gospel Book (Main View (.193v) / book image source)

This lavish Gospel book was illustrated by the famous Armenian painter Mesrop of Khizan (ca. 1560-ca. 1652). The manuscript contains eight canon tables (indices that correlate related material across the four Gospels), four portraits of the Evangelists, and several elaborate page headings. Its imagery is rendered in bold, dramatic colors and is animated throughout by a rhythmic geometric patterning that looks like volumetric folds on the page. The style of the illustrations is characteristic of the vibrant art produced in early modern Armenia. Although the artist was born in Khizan near Lake Van in historic Armenia, he, as well as thousands of other Armenians, were forcibly relocated to Isfahan, Persia after a defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Shah Abbas in 1603-1618. An inscription at the end of the manuscript explains that Mesrop produced the illustrations in New Julfa, an area of Isfahan. He added: “God gave my feeble body strength to complete this book…” However, the book, like many precious manuscripts, has been fractured and reassembled in the centuries since his death. It was rebound at least once, and the sixteen-page image cycle showing scenes from Christian sacred history that was once found at the beginning of the manuscript was cut out and dispersed at some point in the early twentieth century, long before the book came to the Getty. Since the acquisition of the main portion of the manuscript in 1983, the museum has acquired two leaves from the original cycle, showing a Nativity and a Baptism of Christ. Three of the other leaves belong to the Chester Beatty library in Dublin, but the fate of the remaining eleven leaves is unknown.