The Kaffa Lives of the Desert Fathers. a Study in Armenian Manuscript Illumination

The 15th century Armenian Lives of the Fathers, Jerusalem Arm. Patr. 285, was copied and illustrated by Thadeus Avremenc' n Kaffa in 1430. It is the first fully illustrated manuscript of the Lives of the Fathers in any language. Nira Stone has analyzed the illuminations, and shown that they stem from a previously unrecognized school of Armenian monastic painting in Kaffa. She has examined the movements in the religious thought and in the social and political life of the time which brought about the production of this manuscript and determined crucial stylistic and iconographic aspects of its illumination. The manuscript includes a long colophon by the copyist-painter which describes the way he compared various copies, decided upon a text which he incorporated into his own copy, and also highlights the religious motives which animated the painter/copyist. The cycle of paintings is very rich and it includes full- and half-page pictures, as well as 50 marginal medallions.