The Book of Job with commentaries

Composed between the 6th and 4th centuries BC, the Book of Job was translated into Greek around the 3rd century BC; in the form of stories and dialogues, it tells the story of a rich and pious man named Job, whose faith is put to the test. Inspired by the exegeses, the text was compiled in the 6th century by Olympiodorus the Younger. The citations follow its outline and provide the missing links in the “chain”. In the 150v folio, the text of Job is copied in large letters at the top of the page; below, the commentaries in small characters are preceded by the name of their author in red.

Among the many Books of Job with commentaries in conservation today, testimonies of a typically Byzantine literary tradition, only fifteen were illustrated. Varying in their dates, they carry a cycle of more or less long images that belong to the iconographic and stylistic Byzantine repertory. While the 195 illustrations in the Paris. Gr. 135 follow the habitual cycle, their style stands out for its eclecticism and especially striking in its penchant for detail and in the blend of both eastern and western artistic influences.

Drawn in brown ink and then enriched with colour with the aid of two techniques, gouache and aquarelle, the images illustrate the text in a very literal way. With only two exceptions (7v and 8v), they have no frame or background colour—two characteristics closer to the oriental than to the western tradition of illuminated manuscripts. With no elaborate framing or background colour, they are either vermiculated or chequered. The conception of the space also recalls the eastern tradition: The elements are arranged, one next to the other, very much like decorative motifs, such as the coats and crowns above the heads of Job’s friends (folio 40v) or the figures in the scene above in folio 150v, all represented on the same scale and appearing to take up the same plane as the cow and the giant tree.

The grassy band dotted with flowers that provides a support to each image is also a reference to the oriental world, but more discreetly than those images with flowering bushes and clumps of brightly coloured flowers.

The traits of the faces and the figures’ wavy locks evoke those figures drawn in western manuscripts of the late 13th and 14th centuries, especially among French productions. The silhouettes are less tapering, however, in the Paris. Gr. 135 where their gestures always appear quite natural.  Some of the drapery is treated in graphic form with daubs of colour, while others have more volume, thanks to the subtle use of colour, imitating the western style. And lastly, while the crenellated building with its two towers in folio 150v derives its architecture from the Gothic world, other constructions refer equally to the world of the Orient (dovecots, mashrabiyas).

In folio 40v, two elements sum up this combined atmosphere of the Gothic and the oriental in the Paris. Gr. 135: the crowns, western in style with their fleurs de lys, and the position of the first friend of Job, seated “oriental style”.

This variety in their techniques and styles raises the question of how the artist was trained. The colophon of the Paris. Gr. 135 gives no indication of the name of the scribe Manuel Tzykandyles who worked, most notably, for John VI Kantakouzenos and other noble families who took part in the imperial court of Constantinople and the Morea court of Mystras, two very cosmopolitan milieus at the time. The path followed by the Paris. Gr. 135 from its theoretical site of fabrication to France remains unclear, despite certain clues that would suggest it passed through Venice and the south of France.