Sirarpie Der Nersessian

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Sirarpie Der Nersessian
Born(1896-09-05)September 5, 1896
Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
DiedJuly 5, 1989(1989-07-05) (aged 92)
Paris, France
Alma materSorbonne University
AwardsOrder of Saint Gregory the Illuminator (1960, First Class)
Anania Shirakatsi Award (1981, Armenian Academy of Sciences)
Scientific career
FieldsArmenian studies, Byzantine studies
InstitutionsDumbarton Oaks
Wellesley College
Harvard University
Doctoral advisorGabriel Millet

Sirarpie Der Nersessian (5 September 1896 – 5 July 1989) was an

Armenian Academy of Sciences (1966).[2]

Biography

Education

Der Nersessian was born the youngest of three children in

Paris, France in 1919.[4]

Der Nersessian was admitted to the Sorbonne, where she studied history in the École des Hautes Études de l'université de Paris. She worked under the Byzantine scholars Charles Diehl and Gabriel Millet and art historian Henri Focillon.[4] In 1922, she became Millet's assistant, and with his help, published one of her first articles in 1929.[2] The two theses (graduates students then had to submit 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,[3] were well-received (earning a Mention très honorable), and both 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 being promoted to full professor and later becoming the department chair of the art history program and director of the Farnsworth Museum (now the Davis Museum).[4] Der Nersessian was the first woman to teach Byzantine art at a women's college, the first woman to be decorated with the medal of Saint Gregory the Illuminator by 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.[5] In 1947, she received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women.

Der Nersessian remained at Dumbarton Oaks until 1978, when she retired to France and lived with her sister in Paris.[2] Upon retirement, she had her entire library shipped to the Matenadaran in Yerevan, so as to better help Armenian scholars in their studies. Shortly after her death in 1989, an endowment fund for prospective art history students in Armenia, the Fonds Sirarpie Der Neressian at the Institut de Recherches sur les Miniatures Arméno-Byzantines, was created in her honor.[3]

Select bibliography

Der Nersessian's scholarly output chiefly focused on art history, and more specifically on the study of

Jurgis Baltrušaitis,[8] and Alexander Vasiliev.[9] Vasiliev wrote in his review of the book that she was "the best authority of our day on Armenian history, art, and civilization."[9]

Books

  • Armenia and the Byzantine Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945.
  • Aght'amar: Church of the Holy Cross. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.
  • Armenian Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore: The Trustees, 1973.
  • Armenian Miniatures from Isfahan. Brussels: Les Editeurs d’Art Associés, 1986.
  • The Armenians. New York: Praeger, 1969.
  • (in French) L'Art arménien. Paris: Art européen. Publications filmées d'art et d'histoire, 1965.
  • (in French) 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 and chapters

  • "The Armenian Chronicle of the Constable Smpad or of the 'Royal Historian.'" Dumbarton Oaks Papers 13 (1959): pp. 141–168.
  • "An Armenian Gospel of the Fifteenth Century," The Boston Public Library Quarterly 2 (1950): pp. 3–20.
  • (in Armenian) "A General View of the Manuscripts of San Lazarro."
    Bazmavep
     (1947): pp. 269–272.
  • "Pagan and Christian Art in Egypt. An exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum." The Art Bulletin 33 (1941): pp. 165–167.
  • "Two Miracles of the Virgin in the Poems of Gautier de Coincy," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): pp. 157–163.
  • "The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia," in Kenneth M. Setton, ed., A History of the Crusades, vol. 2: The Later Crusades, 1189-1311. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1969.

References

  1. ^ Kouymjian, Dickran (2005). "Sirarpie Der Nersessian (1896-1989): Pioneer of Armenian Art History". In Jane Chance (ed.). Medievalists and the Academy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 483.
  2. ^
    JSTOR 1291601.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  3. ^ a b c Sorensen, Lee, ed. (2018-02-21). "Der Nersessian, Sirarpie". Dictionary of Art Historians.
  4. ^ a b c Chookaszian, Levon (1985). "Ter Nersesyan, Sirarpi Mihrani". Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia (in Armenian). Vol. 11. Yerevan: Armenian Encyclopedia. p. 683.
  5. ^ Kouymjian. "Sirarpie Der Nersessian", pp. 482-493.
  6. ^ For a more comprehensive list, see: Dumbarton Oaks Papers. "Sirarpie Der Nersessian." Dumbarton Oaks 21 (1967): pp. 1-5.
  7. doi:10.1093/ehr/LXI.CCLX.271-b
    . Miss Nercessian's factual treatment is again welcome in a field where narrow partisanship has often tended to obscure the issues. Her book is likely to prove useful to all students of near eastern history, as well as to archaeologists and art historians.
  8. JSTOR 3047064
    . In bringing together elements of such diversity, and in placing them clearly in their true relations, Sirarpie Der Nersessian has accomplished a tour de force.
  9. ^
    JSTOR 2856749
    . …its subject is very little known, and is here dealt with by the best authority of our day on Armenian history, art, and civilization… …I can say from the point of view of Byzantine studies that I consider Miss Der Nersessian's book the best study which has yet appeared in which, in a concise and most reliable form, the reader for the first time has a picture of political, religious, cultural, and artistic interrelations between Armenia and the Byzantine Empire.

External links
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