Lev Arie Kapitaikin
Born in Sanct-Petersbourg, Russia. BA, Arabic Literature & Classical Archaeology Hebrew University,Jerusalem.
MA, Art History,Tel-Aviv University.
M. St., Islamic Art & Archaeology, Oxford University.
D. Phil , Oriental Studies, Oxford University.
MA thesis: Themes of Courtly and Popular Entertainment in Fatimid Art: the Case of a Group of Lustre Ceramics.
Supervisors:
Asher Ovadiah and Hana Taragan
Doctoral Thesis (Oxford University):
The Twelfth-Century Paintings of the Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo.
Supervisor: Jeremy Johns.
Phone: Telephon : +972-779100122
Address: Department of Art History,
The Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts
Tel Aviv University
Ramat Aviv
Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
levkapit@gmail.com
MA, Art History,Tel-Aviv University.
M. St., Islamic Art & Archaeology, Oxford University.
D. Phil , Oriental Studies, Oxford University.
MA thesis: Themes of Courtly and Popular Entertainment in Fatimid Art: the Case of a Group of Lustre Ceramics.
Supervisors:
Asher Ovadiah and Hana Taragan
Doctoral Thesis (Oxford University):
The Twelfth-Century Paintings of the Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo.
Supervisor: Jeremy Johns.
Phone: Telephon : +972-779100122
Address: Department of Art History,
The Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts
Tel Aviv University
Ramat Aviv
Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
levkapit@gmail.com
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Papers by Lev Arie Kapitaikin
to Buddhist myths, to the Sasanian scenes illustrated in the Hermitage’s famous Sasanian silver dish. This essay contends, instead, that the Palatina‘s flying birds conveying humans are to be identified as the fabulous avians of Islamic lore – either the Arabic ʿanqāʾ, the Persian sīmurgh, or the Turkic k.arā-k.uş/t.ughril. Anecdotes and tales about such super-birds’ extraordinary powers, including their ability to fly humans, abound in Islamic, Turkic, and Persianate cultures, including Zāl’s nurturing by the sīmurgh in the Iranian Shāhnāma, the black eagle transporting the hero in the Central Asian epic of Er-Töshtük, and Arabic sailors’ tales-of-rescue by giant birds. The iconography of the Palatina apotheosis scenes – showing the hero tied by a rope
to the super-bird – is traceable to tenth- to twelfth-century Iranian art, especially metalwork and textiles from Khurasan. The horned ears and double heads and/or prey of the Palatina birds (and in analogous Iranian scenes) derive from Iranian and Central Asian or Turkic traditions, connoting these legendary predators’ might and cosmic mastery. Notions and images of apothesios were associated with the ruler in totemic signification and pictorial emblematization, as the fabulous super-birds depicted in the Palatina ceiling transport the princely couple
to a symbolic heaven.
Full download:
http://www.brepolsonline.net/toc/convi/2016/3/2
Talks by Lev Arie Kapitaikin
to Buddhist myths, to the Sasanian scenes illustrated in the Hermitage’s famous Sasanian silver dish. This essay contends, instead, that the Palatina‘s flying birds conveying humans are to be identified as the fabulous avians of Islamic lore – either the Arabic ʿanqāʾ, the Persian sīmurgh, or the Turkic k.arā-k.uş/t.ughril. Anecdotes and tales about such super-birds’ extraordinary powers, including their ability to fly humans, abound in Islamic, Turkic, and Persianate cultures, including Zāl’s nurturing by the sīmurgh in the Iranian Shāhnāma, the black eagle transporting the hero in the Central Asian epic of Er-Töshtük, and Arabic sailors’ tales-of-rescue by giant birds. The iconography of the Palatina apotheosis scenes – showing the hero tied by a rope
to the super-bird – is traceable to tenth- to twelfth-century Iranian art, especially metalwork and textiles from Khurasan. The horned ears and double heads and/or prey of the Palatina birds (and in analogous Iranian scenes) derive from Iranian and Central Asian or Turkic traditions, connoting these legendary predators’ might and cosmic mastery. Notions and images of apothesios were associated with the ruler in totemic signification and pictorial emblematization, as the fabulous super-birds depicted in the Palatina ceiling transport the princely couple
to a symbolic heaven.
Full download:
http://www.brepolsonline.net/toc/convi/2016/3/2
A case in the point are several ruler-depictions in the painted ceilings of the Cappella Palatina – the royal chapel of the palace of Palermo, constructed and decorated ca. 1132-1154. Whereas the nave-ceiling is of typically Islamic muqarnaṣ construction and is painted with courtly banquet and hunt themes in overall Fatimid style, it also features intermittent Andalusi-Maghribi and Romanesque-Christian scenes. The vast painted ensemble is presided by a pair of crowned rulers set on the nave-ceiling’s central axis, in a power-nexus apparently echoing Arabic panegyrics (madīḥ) and ‘mirrors for the princes’ (siyar al-mulūk). While this ruler imagery follows the conventional mould of Islamic royal iconography, the ruler’s faces in his various ‘incarnations’ attain certain specificity verging on portraiture.The ensuing hybridity of the Palatina ruler-imagery were the product of an extraordinary cooperation amongst Muslim and Christian artisans and designers engaged in the building and the artistic workshops initiated by the Sicilian monarchy. In the course of that creative collaboration differences were harmonized to forge a distinctive visuality – neither Islamic, Byzantine, or Romanesque – but a Sicilian-one, communicable to the three Abrahamic people of the island with the purpose of exalting Sicily’s monarchy and its ideology.
Exhibition of Andalusi Art at the L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem
Lecture Recording:http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/resources/video/levkap25102016.mp4
Repertoire and Innovation in the Decoration of the Painted Ceilings in the Middle Age, organized by Angela Bellia and Licia Buttà, within: Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, July 6-9, 2015,Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels