Sirarpie Der-Nersessian

Infobox academic
name = Sirarpie Der Nersessian
box_width =


image_size = 200px
caption = Art historian Sirarpie Der-Nersessian
birth_date = birthdate|1896|9|5
birth_place = Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
death_date = death date and age|1989|7|5|1896|9|5
death_place = Paris, France
field = Armenian studies, Byzantine studies
work_institutions = Dumbarton Oaks, Wellesley College, Harvard University
alma_mater = Sorbonne University
doctoral_advisor = Gabriel Millet
doctoral_students =
known_for = "L'Art arménien"
"Armenia and the Byzantine Empire"
influences = Charles Diehl, Henri Focillon, Gabriel Millet
influenced =
prizes = Order of Saint Gregory the Illuminator (1960, First Class)
Award after Anania Shirakatsi (1981, Armenian Academy of Sciences)
religion =
footnotes = Sirarpie Der-Nersessian ( _hy. Սիրարփի Տեր-Ներսեսյան; September 5 1896 – July 5 1989) was an Armenian art historian who specialized in Armenian and Byzantine studies. Der-Nersessian was a well-respected academic and a pioneer in Armenian art history and taught at several institutions in the United States, including Wellesley College in Massachusetts and as Henri Focillon Professor of Art and Archaeology at Harvard University. [Kouymjian, Dikran, "Sirarpie Der Nersessian (1896-1989). Pioneer of Armenian Art History" in cite book
last = Chance
first = Jane (ed.)
title = Women Medievalists and the Academy
publisher = University of Wisconsin Press
year = 2005
pages = p. 483
isbn=0299207501] Allen, Jelisaveta, and Nina Garsoïan, Ihor Ševčenko, and Robert W. Thomson. "Sirarpie Der Nersessian: 1896-1989." "Dumbarton Oaks Papers", Vol. 43, 1989, pp. ix-xi.] She was a senior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, its deputy director from 1954-55 and 1961-62 and a member of its Board of Scholars. Der-Nersessian was also a member of several international institutions such as the British Academy (1975), the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1978) and the Armenian Academy of Sciences (1966).

Biography

Education

Der-Nersessian was born the youngest of three children in Constantinople in 1896. Her family was well off and her maternal uncle happened to be the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, Malachia Ormanian. Her parents died while she was still young: her mother, when she was age nine, and her father, when she was age 18.Anon. [http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/dernersessians.htm Sirarpie Der-Nersessian] . Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved August 4 2008.] She attended and graduated from Esayan Parochial School and the English High School in Constantinople, gaining fluency in Armenian, English and French. Due to the Armenian Genocide throughout the Ottoman Empire, Der-Nersessian and her sister Arax were forced to leave for Europe in 1915 (by then orphaned), residing in Geneva and studying at the University of Geneva for several years until settling in Paris, France in 1919.hy icon Chookaszyan, Levon. "«Տեր-Ներսեսյան, Սիրարփի Միհրանի»" (Ter-Nersesyan, Sirarpi Mihrani). Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia. vol. xi. Yerevan, Armenian SSR: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1985, p. 683.]

Der-Nersessian was admitted to Sorbonne University, studying at the École des Hautes Études de l'université de Paris. She studied under the notable Byzantinologists Charles Diehl and Gabriel Millet and art historian Henri Focillon. In 1922, she became Millet's assistant, and with his help, published her first article in 1929. The two theses that she presented for her "doctorat d'etat", "L'illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph" and a paper on Armenian illuminated manuscripts during the late medieval period, were well-received (earning a "Mention très honorable"), and both of them were awarded with prizes by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and "Revue des Études Grecques" when they were published in 1937.

Professor and pioneer

In 1930, Der-Nersessian moved to the United States at the suggestion of her three mentors, Byzantinists Charles Rufus Morey, Albert M. Friend Jr., and Walter Cook, becoming a part-time lecturer at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She taught art history at Wellesley, quickly gaining a full professorship and later becoming the chairwoman of the Department of Art History and Director of Farnsworth Museum. Der-Nersessian was the first woman to teach Byzantine art in a woman’s college, the first woman to be decorated with the medal of Saint Gregory the Illuminator by His Holiness Catholicos Vazgen I in 1960, the first woman invited to lecture at the Collège de France in Paris, the only woman in her time to gain full professorship at Dumbarton Oaks, and the second woman to be honored with a gold medal from the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1970. [Kouymjian. "Sirarpie Der Nersessian", pp. 482-493.]

Der-Nersessian remained at Dumbarton Oaks until 1978, retiring to France and reuniting with her sister in Paris. Upon retirement, she had her entire library shipped to the Matenadaran in Yerevan so as to help Armenian scholars in their studies. Shortly after her death in 1989, an endowment fund for aspiring art historian students in Armenia, Fonds Sirarpie Der Neressian at the Institut de Recherches sur les Miniatures Arméno-Byzantines, was created in her honor.

Works

Der-Nersessian's work primarily concerned Armenian art history, including the study of church architecture, illuminated manuscripts, miniatures and sculpture. Below is a partial list of books and articles that she authored. [For a more comprehensive list, see: Dumbarton Oaks Papers. "Sirarpie Der Nersessian." "Dumbarton Oaks". Vol. 21, 1967, pp. 1-5.]

Books

*"Aght'amar: Church of the Holy Cross". Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945.
*"Armenia and the Byzantine Empire: A Brief Study of Armenian Art and Civilization". Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945.
*"Armenian Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery". Walters Art Gallery, 1973.
*"Armenian miniatures from Isfahan". 1986.
*"The Armenians". New York: Praeger, 1969.
*fr icon "L'Art arménien". Paris: Art européen. Publications filmées d'art et d'histoire, 1965.
*fr icon "L'illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph". Paris: de Boccard, 1937.
*"Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century". Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 1993.

Articles

*"The Armenian Chronicle of the Constable Smpad or of the 'Royal Historian.'" Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 13, 1959, pp. 141-168.
*"An Armenian Gospel of the Fifteenth Century." "The Boston Public Library Quarterly". 1950, pp. 3-20.
*hy icon "A General View of the Manuscripts of San Lazarro." "Bazmavep". Venice, 1947, pp. 269-272.
*"Pagan and Christian Art in Egypt. An exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum." "The Art Bulletin". Vol. 33, 1941, pp. 165-167.
*"Two Miracles of the Virgin in the Poems of Gautier de Coincy." Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 41, 1987, pp. 157-163.
*"The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia", "A History of the Crusades", edited by Kenneth M. Setton, 1969.

References