TIME: BEyOND LATE ANTIQUITy | 33“Semitic wedge.”^52 Here, despite his interest in the region’s Christian art,
Strzygowski never established the warm sympathies he achieved elsewhere.
In particular, he failed to get substantially to grips with the genesis and com-
plex development of Islamic art.^53 Not for want of trying, though, and partly
in response to Riegl’s Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Or-
namentik (translated into English as Problems of style: Foundations for a his-
tory of ornament), published in 1893. This book is a neglected and remark-
ably early milestone in our progress toward an integrated understanding of
late Antiquity and Islam. Something needs to be said of Stilfragen here, be-
fore we return to Strzygowski.
Extending his early interest in Eg yptian textiles and Oriental carpets,
Riegl had next turned to a more general concern with the construction and
history of ornament. Unlike figural art or its self- conscious avoidance, both
of which can give one a sense of direct access to “meaning,” ornament has
often seemed an unattractively formal subject of research. yet it is capable of
telling historians a lot about quieter yet still substantial contacts, continu-
ities, or evolutions between civilizations. In this arcane field of study, Riegl’s
achievement in Stilfragen was to trace the “historical and genetic continuity”
of vegetal and tendril ornament “in an unbroken sequence” through Eg yp-
tian, Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Iranian, and Greek art to the arabesque in
late Antiquity and East Rome and, finally, in Islamic art right down to
fifteenth- century Cairo.^54 In the Introduction to Kunstindustrie, Riegl sum-
marized his earlier findings as follows:
I believe I have demonstrated in the Stilfragen that the Byzantine and
Saracen tendril ornament of the Middle Ages was developed directly
from the classical tendril ornament of Antiquity, and that the connect-
ing links are present in Hellenistic and Roman imperial art. Accord-
ingly, at least for tendril ornament, the late Roman period does not
mean decay, but rather progress, or at least an achievement of indepen-
dent worth.^5552 J. Strzygowski (tr. O. M. Dalton and H. J. Braunholtz), Origins of Christian Church art (Oxford
1923) 2, 32.
53 For an overview, G. A. Reisenauer, Josef Strzygowski und die islamische Kunst (Diplomarbeit,
Vienna University 2008, http://othes.univie.ac.at/917/1/2008-08-18_9105823.pdf ).
54 A. Riegl, Stilfragen (Berlin 1893; tr. E. Kain [Princeton 1992], with abundant commentary),
esp. 338 (298) and 346 (305) for the quotations; also 258, 273, 291 (228, 240, 256) for references to “late
Antiquity.” Cf. the lucid recapitulation and contextualization of Riegl’s argument by J. Trilling, The lan-
guage of ornament (London 2001) 113–25; also the discussion of arabesque scholarship before and after
Riegl by G. Necipoǧlu, The Topkapı scroll (Santa Monica, Calif. 1995) 61–87. New early Islamic materials
in B. Finster, “Researches in ʿAnjar II,” Bulletin d’archéologie et d’architecture libanaises 11 (2007)
143–65.
55 Riegl, Kunstindustrie [2:30] 7 (9, modified). On Islamic art in Riegl’s Historische Grammatik der
bildenden Künste (1897–99) [2:32] see J.- P. Caillet, “Alois Riegl et le fait social dans l’art de l’antiquité
tardive,” Antiquité tardive 9 (2001) 50.