Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum

The Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum is a part of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, near the University of St. Thomas, and displays the only intact Byzantine frescoes in the entire western hemisphere. The Byzantine frescoes were taken from a church in Lysi, Cyprus in the 1980s.

History

The chapel museum was opened in February 1997 and displays masterworks from the 13th century -- a dome with Christ Pantocrator and an apse depicting the Virgin Mary the Panayia. These frescoes were stolen out of a chapel near Lysi in the Turkish-occupied section of Cyprus in the 1980s, cut into 38 pieces, and shipped to Germany by thieves prepared to sell them in the arts black-market. [Slessor, Christine. Out of this world - Chapel Museum, Houston, Texas - Glass and Transparency. "The Architectural Review". May, 1998.]

The 38 fresco fragments were bought from the thieves by the Houston-based Menil Foundation with the knowledge and approval of the Church of Cyprus, the rightful owner of the frescoes. The Menil Foundation then funded a careful two-year restoration of the paintings. [ [http://www.menil.org/byzantine.html Menil Collection website] ] These intact frescoes are unique in the western hemisphere. [ [http://www.menil.org/byzantine.html Menil Collection website] ]

The collection

The major part of the collection consists of the frescoes of the dome and apse. According to the guide to the museum, "the Lysi dome represents Christ Pantokrator, 'All sovereign'. It defines a space with no beginning and no end." [Guide to the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.] The depiction of Christ gazing directly forward "has driven time out of space. His gaze is transworldly: not looking but all-seeing." [Guide to the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.] By not depicting the Lord below the bust, he is "universal and ubiquitous." [Guide to the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.] Surrounding the figure of Christ is a double row of angels moving towards the throne prepared by God the Father for the Second Coming of Christ. The throne is guarded by the Archangel Michael and Archangel Gabriel and two seraphim. The Virgin Mary leads one line of angels to the throne, while John the Baptist leads the other.

In the apse, the Virgin is depicted as flanked by the two archangels with a medallion on her breast of the infant Christ, symbolizing the Incarnation of Christ. [Guide to the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.]

Architecture

This innovative convert|4000|sqft|m2|sing=on, $4 million building, was designed by architect François de Menil. The interior combines rough stone, opaque glass, and rich woods, to create a space that is both art museum and spiritual space. [ [http://www.houstonmuseumdistrict.org/default/museumpages/museumpage.asp?MID=15 Houston Museum District] ] The suspended-glass "walls" are not replicas of the chapel that the frescoes were removed from, but create a new context for displaying the icons. In order not to simply replicate the original chapel, de Menil designed "a mediating external building with an embedded steel structure - a 'reliquary box' - which forms a neutral enclosure for a freestanding chapel," according to Christine Slessor in "The Architectural Review". [Slessor, Christine. Out of this world - Chapel Museum, Houston, Texas - Glass and Transparency. "The Architectural Review". May, 1998.]

"The Byzantine Chapel Museum is a religious building whose purpose is to restore spiritual significance and function to two thirteenth-century Byzantine Frescoes, a dome and an apse, rescued and restored by the owner … The materiality of the original chapel is shattered and made ephemeral through the fragmented, freestanding sandblasted laminated glass structure which is an abstracted evocation of the original chapel. The infinite is evoked through the play of darkness and light." François de Menil, May, 1997 [ [http://www.dupont.com/safetyglass/lgn/stories/0802.html "Laminated Glass News". E.I. Dupont de Nemours Company. August, 2002.] ]

The Byzantine chapel is oriented to face the cardinal directions - the facades face completely north, south, east and west. The enclosed space measures approximately convert|116000|cuft|m3. There are no windows on the surface area of the building, except for a a skylight of convert|1012|sqft|m2 of clear, double glazed glass, that permits natural light to pervade the interior. [http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~arch316/byz.pdf Byzantine Frescoe Chapel climatology study by Rice University]

A rough limestone wall on the outside of the building evoked the rough construction of the original chapel in Cyprus. [Slessor, Christine. Out of this world - Chapel Museum, Houston, Texas - Glass and Transparency. "The Architectural Review". May, 1998.]

References

External links

* [http://www.menil.org/byzantine.html Menil Collection website]