36 | CHAPTER 2
pened entirely separately in Ireland: the designs in the Book of Kells
are very much like arabesques based on a different set of geometric con-
structions and using different motifs.^69It is not just the technical art- historical analysis of the arabesque, but also the
universalist perspective reaching as far as Ireland, that puts us in mind here of
Riegl. At the same time, Allen’s recognition that there was a mutual openness
between Roman and Eastern art, and insistence that the motifs in East
Roman art, which foreshadowed the arabesque, were themselves of Eastern,
especially Sasanian origin,^70 betrays the enduring but often (as here) unac-
knowledged influence of Strzygowski.
In her recent book on the architecture of Alexandria and Eg ypt, Judith
McKenzie has adopted a fully Ainalovian/Strzygowskian reading of Alexan-
drian influence on the art of Constantinople, Armenia, and even Ravenna.^71
Strzygowski is acknowledged. McKenzie also pursues Alexandrian influence
into the arts of the early Islamic world, so bringing about a timely synthesis
of Riegl and Strzygowski. And by emphasizing the role of Alexandria’s
schools of mathematics both theoretical and applied (to engineering and ar-
chitecture), as well as its workshops, McKenzie draws out not just the artistic
but also the intellectual continuities underlying the First Millennium, to
which we shall turn in chapter 5.
On the eve of the First World War, we can say that the concept of a dis-
tinctive, not merely transitional period known as late Antiquity had come to
stay. Riegl even claimed that “the problem of late Antiquity [he meant its art]
is the most important and radical one in the entire history of mankind so
f a r.”^72 In some minds this period was associated particularly with Rome and
the West on the eve of the barbarian invasions and the Middle Ages, while
others looked to the dynamic cultures of the Christian East and Iran. In
other words the whole extended geographical zone from the Mediterranean
to Afghanistan, which I shall sketch in chapter 4, had already been brought
69 T. Allen, “The arabesque, the beveled style, and the mirage of an early Islamic art,” in F. M. Clo-
ver and R. S. Humphreys (eds), Tradition and innovation in late Antiquity (Madison 1989) 210, 230. Cf.
Necipoǧlu, Topkapı scroll [2:54] 95: “a concern with rupturing the classical ideal of mimesis... direct
translations or reinterpretations of classical prototypes, reflecting a programmatic process of abstraction
whose rationale has so far escaped explanation” (she proceeds to offer a philosophical one).
70 Allen, in Clover and Humphreys (eds), Tradition and innovation [2:69] 226–28; and cf. M. P.
Canepa, The two eyes of the earth: Art and ritual of kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran (Berkeley
2009) 330 n. 82, on S. Polyeuctus in Constantinople.
71 J. McKenzie, The architecture of Alexandria and Eg ypt c.300 BC to AD 700 (New Haven 2007)
329–75.
72 A. Riegl, “Spätrömisch oder orientalisch?,” Beilage zur Allgemeine Zeitung München 93
(23.4.1902) 153–56, 162–65, ad init. Cf. Herzog, “Wir leben in der Spätantike” [2:21] 26: “In der Tat...
ist die Eroberung der Spätantike die letzte grosse Epochenkonstitution, die letzte grosse historische An-
eignung der Antike gewesen.”