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Document Details : Title: Figure et abstraction sur les xač'k'ar Subtitle: Concilier les contraires Author(s): MAHÉ, Jean-Pierre Journal: Revue des Études Arméniennes Volume: 43 Date: 2025 Pages: 67-91 DOI: 10.2143/REA.43.0.3295019 Abstract : When J.-M. Thierry published Armenia in the Middle Ages in 2000, the study of the xač‘k‘ars was still included in that of sculpture and the applied arts. Nevertheless, by observing that these stelae, which number in the thousands from the 12th century onwards, play a major role in the 'Armenian mentality', the author already senses that the phenomenon goes beyond craft technologies to assert itself as an ethnic marker, a social fact, a religious experience rooted in the Armenian collective unconscious. Since then, investigations into the evolution of forms and the chronology of different types, as well as the abundant harvest of photographers, have made these stone crosses an autonomous field of research. Their originality lies in the fact that they represent the cross not as a three-dimensional volume, but as the luminous Sign of the end of time. Until the 12th century, stelae remained aniconic. The figures that appear thereafter are confined to the periphery. The four examples of xač‘k‘ar amenap‘rkič‘, which seem to belie this statement, are in fact Byzantine-inspired ‘Descents from the Cross’. By being located in the upper part of the vertical upright of the cross, the position of the intersection of the four arms imposes an ascending reading of the stele. Erected at the foot of a tomb, the xač‘k‘ar symbolizes the intercession of the cross, a stone ladder that will enable the deceased, at the time of the universal resurrection, to leave the underworld and ascend to the tetramorphic throne. |
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