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Elegant Byzantine Fresco Chapel Art Glass

 

Some years back, I had the luck of visiting the Byzantine Fresco Chapel in Houston, Texas. At the time, it was the only place in the entire western hemisphere where one could view intact Byzantine frescoes of such size and significance. It was also one of the most elegant examples of a chapel art glass installation that I’ve experienced in this country.

Francois de Menil/FdM:Arch designed the chapel around two 13th century Byzantine frescoes, a dome, and an apse that had been rescued from thieves (stolen in the 1980s from the church of St. Evphemianos in Lysi, Cyprus for sale on the black market) and restored by the Menil Foundation. These relics stayed in Houston for more than a decade, thanks to a long-term loan agreement with the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus. The structure that housed the frescoes was based on the plans and measurements of the original chapel in Lysi—”only pulled apart.” It used embedded steel and freestanding glass as mediators between the contemporary and the sacred, telling the “tragic story of the frescoes” while also celebrating their restoration. As FdM:Arch writes, “The immaterial materiality of the infill glass panels intensifies the absence and presence of the original site and transforms the glass structure into an apparition that changes as one moves through.”

 

 

On the Byzantine Fresco Chapel’s website, you can view some lovely images of the construction process, which began in 1994, through to the finished chapel, which opened in 1997. Sadly, in 2012, the frescoes were returned to Cyprus. If you ever find yourself there, you can visit them at the Byzantine Museum in Nicosia. As for the chapel and its beautiful art glass, the future remains to be seen.

To learn more about the history and current developments surrounding the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, check out ”Transforming Absence: Perspectives on the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum,” an excellent essay by Francois de Menil and Olivia Hiller that was recently published in Yale University’s Conversations: An Online Journal of the Initiative for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion.