For the past decade Professor of Art History Annemarie Weyl Carr has sought clues to the history of a Byzantine icon that seems as mysterious as the Holy Grail. Known today as the Kykkotissa, the great miracle-working icon of the Mother of God is named after the 11th-century Monastery of Kykkos, located on the highest mountain in Cyprus. Powerful on the island already when Cyprus was a Crusader kingdom (1191-1489), the Kykkotissa attained international fame during the height of the Ottoman reign (1570-1878).

Today the Kykkotissa remains deeply engaged in the republic’s life. The icon has been veiled from view for centuries, but its persona can be traced through the hundreds of replicas that survive in churches and icon collections throughout the Christian world. Its history, Carr says, exposes the shifting nature of icons over time, and the interplay of Orthodox tradition and Western European intervention in shaping those shifts.

Carr, who has taught at SMU since 1972 and spent her career illuminating the mysteries of the Byzantine world, was named University Distinguished Professor last fall. Her distinguished service to SMU includes two terms as chair of Meadows School of the Arts’ Division of Art History. Her classroom skills have earned her SMU’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Methodist Church Award for Outstanding Teacher and Scholar, and the Meadows Foundation Distinguished Teaching Fellowship. In addition, Carr’s scholarship has been recognized worldwide. She has traveled throughout the Mediterranean and the Middle East to conduct research and attend international conferences to present the results of her research on Byzantine art.

The empire called Byzantium – a term created in late 16th-century Germany – was the medieval, Christian component of the Roman empire. It lasted from the installation of the Roman government in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 330 C.E. until the city’s fall to the Ottomans in 1453. Byzantium’s own citizens called themselves Romans. To Western Europeans, however, they seemed exotic, "dominated by mysticism, women, and Christianity," Carr says. Among the Byzantines’ greatest art forms was the icon, images of sacred figures or events venerated by believers as holy that served as mediators between the viewer and the image depicted.

"The Byzantines produced ravishing images engaged with the inward self," Carr says. "But because much of this art seemed alien to Western sensibilities, the icons have been perceived as mysterious and ‘Eastern.’ But they are not ‘Eastern;’ they are Byzantine."

For Carr, the Crusades served as an avenue into the historical process that "orientalized" Byzantium and its icons. Cyprus emerged as a place in which to observe that process as it occurred over centuries, because it stands at the meeting point of what has become defined by European history as opposites: as "East" and "West," she says. The island, desired by every power seeking naval domination of the eastern Mediterranean since the days of ancient Egypt, has experienced an endless succession of invaders – from the Crusaders in the 12th century to the Ottomans in the 16th century. It was reclaimed by Britain in 1878, and launched as a bicommunal Christian/Muslim republic in 1960.

"Cyprus remains one of the most stimulating places I’ve been because it has very powerful contemporary issues that make history an extremely visible part of life there," Carr says. Today Cyprus is a country divided between Greek-speaking Christians and Turkish-speaking Muslims. "How the different cultures live and resolve their conceptions of history and ethics makes life tremendously vibrant in Cyprus, because history is a way of defining who one is." To Carr, Cyprus seemed an ideal site to study the life of a great icon as it negotiated its place in the interplay of Crusader and Byzantine, Catholic and Orthodox.

Carr has visited churches on Cyprus, hunting icons that repeat or reflect the Kykkotissa. They show the Mother of God nestling her cheek in the curls of a Christ child who twists in her arms, his little bare legs kicking from a tunic thin enough to reveal his belly button. "It’s the way real children behave," Carr says. "There’s none of this little king sitting on her arm like a puppet. That’s one of the really striking aspects of it." Icon painters today continue to paint images of the Kykkotissa; some of the icons that repeat the Kykkotissa have become miracle-workers in their own right.

How the Kykkotissa came to Cyprus has become a matter of legend – it was sent by a Byzantine emperor in the 12th century. The earliest icon known that displays the Mother of God in the posture associated with the Kykkotissa was created in the 12th century, most likely in Constantinople, Carr says. But evidence of an icon cult at Kykkos does not emerge until the late 14th century, and it is difficult to know just how the cult formed, or why it crystallized around an icon of this particular type. The icon’s greatest fame developed in the 17th through the 19th centuries, when it was venerated throughout the Orthodox world.

"Kykkos was remarkably effective at disseminating the fame of its icon. What requires more thought is why the reception was so eager," Carr says. "This goes deep into the condition of Orthodoxy under the Ottoman Empire, when many icons achieved great fame. But the Kykkotissa’s case also specifically has to do with its role as an icon of Cypriot identity and, eventually, national identity. This gave the Kykkotissa a vitality long into the modern era that many other icons did not enjoy. Over the centuries, the Kykkotissa has adapted to many different social, political, religious, and ethnic contexts, on Cyprus and abroad."

Since at least the early 1700s, the Kykkotissa has been concealed behind a silver cover and heavily embroidered veils, only adding to the icon’s mysteriousness and allure. Skeptics and scholars have long challenged the monastery to uncover it, but this seems unlikely to happen, Carr says. "Cypriots have a deep feeling for the way their complex heritage has taken shape. And the veiled Kykkotissa is as much a part of their heritage as George Washington and the cherry tree is of ours. What good does it do to take it apart?"

As the audience that responded to it changed over the years, the Kykkotissa icon has assumed different meanings. "Anything that had the longevity of an image like that must have constantly renegotiated its place in people’s lives," Carr says. What do you look for if the composition remains the same, but its meaning is constantly changing?"

To that question, Carr responds by studying "styles of use." There are periods in which the Kykkotissa icon was replicated in large panels designed for public roles in congregations. At other times the icon was replicated in small paintings for private use, registering a shift in the icon’s special appeal, she says. Many of the early replicas made of the Kykkotissa appear to be of high quality and created with expensive materials. There were periods of its life, however, particularly in the 18th century, when the majority of replicas were cheaply made. The audience that bought the cheap replicas was different from the audience responding to the costly replicas.

"I’m piecing together how the icon lived its life," Carr says, "and in the process, I suggest ways in which art historians can learn to see the icons not as static, unchanging figures on a gold ground, but to see the life in them."

Carr, who earned her M.A. degree and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, has written numerous books and articles on Byzantine art, including Byzantine Illumination, 1150–1250: The Study of a Provincial Tradition and A Masterpiece of Byzantine Art Recovered: The Thirteenth-Century Murals of Lysi, Cyprus. The books won Vasari Awards in 1987 and 1991 from the Dallas Museum of Art for outstanding art history book. Her research has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Meadows Foundation, and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, among others.

As she continues her research, Carr hopes to learn more about icons’ relationship to the West since the fall of Byzantium. "The Crusaders took to icons like ducks to water. But at some point, icons ceased to look like ‘our’ art in Western Europe and became ‘somebody else’s art.’" But "somebody else’s art" that seems too alien to Western sensibilities also raises the same perennial issues that much of Western European art raises, Carr adds. "How does one relate to the holy? How do societies build shared imaginations? What are the threads that link us to one another?

"Icons are powerful threads that tie people together. They were fundamental in creating a shared conception of the world. Through my research and my classes, I hope the Byzantine works become moving, and less alien."

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