Wrapped in Silk and Written in Stone. Aesthetics of illusion and authenticity in Ottoman legal documents

Lecture by Nino Zchomelidse

Abstract

This presentation investigates the aesthetic interplay between illusion and authenticity that define the Marriage Charter of Empress Theophanu (972) and the Privilegium Ottonianum (962). The masterfully painted scrolls dissolve the material quality of colorless parchment into purple dyed silk and porphyry. I claim that this media transfer is indebted to a conscious artistic and intellectual play with illusion as means of authentication. The documents’ powerful visuality artfully deceives the viewer’s eyes, and at the same time provides them with legal authority. The conceptual thinking behind these objects, draws on practices in monastic scriptoria where mimetic strategies were used to blur the material spheres of text and image in the context of the sacred.