160 Part Two: Epigrams in Context
commissioned a work of art and paid for it, there is nothing wrong with it.
However, if it implies that the donor is to be credited with the invention of
refined iconographic programmes (in the mould of Renaissance maecenatism),
the term would be misleading. Dedicatory epigrams may provide useful infor-
mation on the donor’s intentions and motives, but they do not tell us much
about the actual work of art. Thus it is a grave error to assume that we can
reconstruct the appearance of a lost work of art simply by reading what the
accompanying epigram has to say. Works of art and epigrams constitute two
autonomous forms of imagination. They respond to each other, but they speak
in different tongues. Let us look again at the epigram of John Geometres. The
epigram tells us what the picture of the Holy Virgin that Geometres donated
was made of: “gold” and “stones”, and we understand that it must have been
a mosaic depicting the Theotokos against a golden background, such as we find
in many Byzantine churches. The epigram also discloses what Geometres’
motives for donating this particular image had been: he was suffering from bad
health and hoped that the Holy Virgin could provide a cure. But what the
epigram regrettably does not tell us is what the image looked like. Was her face
slightly turned away, or directed towards the viewer? Was she looking at him
with a stern expression? Was she smiling gently, perhaps even with an air of
complacency? Or did her eyes express a feeling of sorrow and compassion with
fallen mankind? Even if we knew the answers to these questions, the epigram
by Geometres would still tell us only what he read, or hoped to read, in the
picture that he had paid for. It would express his own emotions toward the
Theotokos, not the emotions that the artist rendered visible in the mosaic. It
would reveal to us how he looked at the picture, but not how the picture looked
at him. Epigrams often do not describe the actual mosaic or painting, but
rather elaborate on the holy figure depicted. Epigrams on pictures of the
Theotokos, for instance, usually do not pretend to comment upon the images
themselves, but rather treat the Holy Virgin’s role in the salvation of mankind.
Although we would expect that the mosaic donated by Geometres showed the
Holy Virgin with a sorrowful expression on her face as a sign of compassionate
understanding, she may have faced the sinful world with a look of austerity or
have stared down at us with a Mona Lisa-like smile. Pictures and epigrams do
not necessarily correspond. Epigrams are important as textual evidence inas-
much as they tell us how poets responded to the visual arts, but what epigrams
do not reveal is the actual appearance of the images they describe.
Dedicatory verse inscriptions can be divided into two categories: texts on
public buildings and texts on churches, monasteries and religious works of art^29.
(^29) On dedicatory inscriptions, see A. and J. STYLIANOU, JÖBG 9 (1960) 97–128; P. ASEMA-
KOPOULOU-ATZAKA, in: ^Armöß. Timhtikñß tömoß stñn kaqhghtë N.K. Moytsöpoylo. Thes-
salonica 1990, I, 227–267; S. KALOPISSI-VERTI, Dedicatory Inscriptions and Donor