An unknown Armenian monument in Italy ?

[pomposaitaly]

Hi all. Despite the fact that Art histortians have neglected this matter, I
present you a famous Italian monument, dating back to the 11th century, with a lot of Armenian symbols in its façade: the Pomposa Abbey in NE Italy.
In fact, one can see, together various symbols connected to the numbers:
- 3 Katchars stuck on the wall
- the Tree of Life
- friezes in high relief depicting the Lion and the Eagle (Armenian symbols)
besides the Peaxxxx.
According to me, this Italian monument is strictly connected with the Holy
Cross church at Aghtamar in the Van lake:
http://www.lib.rpi.edu/dept/library/html/ArmArch/Agh.html

The Aghtamar church was built only few years before the one of Pomposa.

With my best regards :wave:
--
Menotti Passarella
guide@pomposa.info
www.pomposa.info

[bell-the-cat]

Sorry, but I don't see anything specifically Armenian there.

The reliefs of the animals:
http://web.unife.it/facolta/architettura/labs/NubLab/Pomposa_tesi/31.GIF
are no different from the relief carvings you can find on countless early romanesque buildings in Europe.

The tree-of-life reliefs in that specific form are not like anything I've seen in Armenia art:
http://web.unife.it/facolta/architettura/labs/NubLab/Pomposa_tesi/40a.GIF

And the tree-of-life motif in general is found throughout the Christian world and beyond. The crosses are just normal crosses, the "flowering base" seems to be just a background pattern, and there is no stepped base to the cross like an Armenian khatchkar would have:
http://web.unife.it/facolta/architettura/labs/NubLab/Pomposa_tesi/35.GIF

Some of the other reliefs, like this one: http://web.unife.it/facolta/architettura/labs/NubLab/Pomposa_tesi/28.GIF
remind me very much of carvings I've seen at Ani - but there again there is nothing specifically Armenian about them, and they are probably just copied from textiles imported from the East.

[bell-the-cat]

PS: A better webpage on the Aghtamar sculpture is here:VirtualAni (http://www.virtualani.freeserve.co.uk/aghtamar/index.htm) (Better not just because I made it! :) )