Renaissance Retouching

Rabbula Gospels Repainted

By Stan Parchin
Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Many modern-day Americans are fascinated with makeovers. People enlist the help of professionals (medical and otherwise) to improve their physical appearances, personal lives, homes and their pets. Why, then, should Italians of the High Renaissance (the privileged ones) have been any different from us when it came to their possessions, particularly their art?

Scientific findings revealed earlier this month at Germany's Max Planck Institute indicate that the famous Rabbula Gospels, a rare, early Christian illustrated manuscript dated firmly to 586 A.D., were repainted in the Sixteenth Century after the text entered the collection of Florence's Laurentian Library. The Proto-Baroque edifice, with its architecturally peculiar elements, was commissioned by the Medicis, designed by Michelangelo in 1525 and currently houses the Gospels.

Completed at the Monastery of St. John the Evangelist in Beth Zagba, Syria in February 586 A.D., the Rabbula Gospels are named for the scribe who signed the illuminated manuscript. The two-column text in black or dark brown ink includes footnotes executed in red ink. This Syriac translation is visually enhanced by some of the folios' intricate floral and architectural border designs. Vignettes or small narrative scenes populate some of their margins. The pages also contain illustrations of New Testament subjects (e.g., the Crucifixion, Ascension and Pentecost). Its somewhat sketchy provenance after completion suggests that the book changed hands and ownership several times before the Medicis acquired it during the Italian Renaissance.

Results from the recent examination of the large-scale manuscript's pigments and other scientific tests reveal that repainting the illustrations significantly altered the image of Jesus Christ. In one instance, Christ's curled red locks of hair were overpainted with straightened black ones. Of course, once the original images beneath the pages' later additions are published, art historians will be invited to reinterpret the Rabbula Gospels in light of other illuminated manuscripts from the same early Christian era.