28 | CHAPTER 2
- doctoral thesis titled Ellinisticheskie osnovy vizantiiskogo iskusstva,
published in Saint Petersburg in 1900–1901 (and translated into English as
The Hellenistic origins of Byzantine art). In this book, Ainalov develops and
systematizes the thought of his teacher Nikodim Kondakov (d. 1925), pro-
fessor of art history at Saint Petersburg. Kondakov belonged to a generation
of Russians that, in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, embarked
on the rediscovery of Russia’s Byzantine heritage after almost two centuries
of forced Europeanization. The icon was central to this undertaking, and be-
hind Russian icons lay the whole history of Christian painting in the East,
from even before Constantine. In a sequence of expeditions throughout the
East, Kondakov gathered materials.^33 What Ainalov made of them was a nar-
rative of Christian art history that saw it as, to be sure, an outgrowth from
Greek and Roman Antiquity, but modified by borrowings from Asia Minor,
Syria, Eg ypt, Iran, and even Central Asia. In Ainalov’s analysis, Alexandria
plays a prominent role. And the whole is articulated in explicit opposition to
the Roman, especially Catholic view that art produced in the provinces was
merely a series of variations on models created in the imperial city on the
Tiber, particular weight being assigned to the catacomb paintings. Naturally,
the foundation of New Rome on the Bosphorus hugely increased the force of
Greek and Oriental influence.^34
Kondakov’s far- flung travels in the East, and the intellectual perspectives
he communicated to his pupil, have to be seen in the light of Russia’s geo-
graphical position, its Orthodox and viscerally anti- Roman Church, and the
abundance of conveniently sited religious institutions it possessed in many of
the areas in question. Nothing came more naturally than to look to Constan-
tinople and the Christian Levant and Caucasus which had in varying ways
depended on it—the East Roman Commonwealth to be discussed in chap-
ter 4, but also the later “Byzantine Commonwealth” in the Slavic lands, of
which Russia itself was a leading member. For a West European Catholic or
Protestant to achieve this perspective required much more imagination and
application, qualities possessed in superabundance by the fourth member of
our quartet of art historians, another Austrian and a contemporary and class-
mate of Riegl, namely Josef Strzygowski (d. 1941).^35
33 C. Mango, “Editor’s Preface,” in D. V. Ainalov (revised tr. E. and S. Sobolevitch), The Hellenistic
origins of Byzantine art (New Brunswick, N. J. 1961) viii–ix; W. E. Kleinbauer, “Nikodim Pavlovich Kon-
dakov,” in D. Mouriki and others (eds), Byzantine East, Latin West (Princeton 1995) 637–42; H. Belting,
Bild und Kult (Munich 2004^6 ) 30–32.
34 Ainalov, Hellenistic origins [2:33] 3–7.
35 On Strzygowski’s life see A. Karasek- Langer, “Josef Strzygowski. Ein Lebensbild,” Schaffen und
Schauen. Mitteilungsblatt für Kunst und Bildungspflege in der Wojewodschaft Schlesien 8 (7/8) (1932)
36–46; H. Schödl, Josef Strzygowski—Zur Entwicklung seines Denkens (diss. Vienna 2011) 12–20; A.
Zäh, “Josef Strzygowski als Initiator der christlich- kunsthistorischen Orientforschung”, Römische Quar-
talschrift 107 (2012) 251–69; id., “Josef Rudolf Thomas Strzygowski,” in S. Heid and M. Dennert (eds),