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Nothing is harder than being forced into silence. Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (Russian: Иван Константинович Айвазовский; Armenian: Հովհաննես Այվազովսկի, 1817–1900) was a Russian Romantic painter, widely regarded as one of the greatest masters of marine art of the Romantic period. Baptized as Hovhannes Aivazian, he was born to Armenian parents in the Black Sea port of Feodosia in Crimea and spent most of his life based there. From 1840 to 1844, he traveled throughout Europe: first to Italy, then to France, Germany, Holland, England, Spain, and finally Malta. During this journey, he was admitted as a member of numerous academies: Florence, Rome, and Paris (which awarded him a gold medal), Stuttgart, and Amsterdam. His works enjoyed great success and, in 1841, Pope Gregory XVI had this version of Chaos (The Creation) placed in the Vatican collection, rewarding the artist with a gold medal. In Italy, he met Nikolai Gogol and visited his older brother Gabriel Aivazovsky (1812-1880), a Mekhitarist monk and philologist, on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni near Venice.
San Lazzaro degli Armeni is a tiny rectangle of land in the Venetian lagoon, barely three hectares today and originally no more than 7,000 square meters of sand and reeds, a handful of Armenian Catholic monks have lived, studied, and printed books for more than three centuries. Much of that ground was patiently reclaimed from the water, meter by meter, as the community grew with the help and support of the diaspora.
When Napoleon dismantled a thousand years of Venetian monasteries and institutions, he spared this fragile house of learning, reclassifying it as an “academy” rather than a religious order. That decision allowed the Mekhitarists of San Lazzaro to keep their language, their press, and their sovereignty on this speck of land. Imagine, one day, a small human settlement buried in the Martian regolith, taking San Lazzaro as a model: a dozen people, almost self‑sufficient, guarding their own books, rituals, and experiments at the edge of a hostile world. Չկա ավելի դիմացկուն օրինակ, քան հայկականը։ Nullum robustiōris exemplum quam Armenum.
You are, for a moment, stepping into another country, as distinct as San Marino and just as proud of its quiet sovereignty.
Byron arrived in Venice in November 1816, exhausted by the scandals of London and a disastrous marriage, and sought intellectual refuge to channel his energy. From November 1816 to February 1817, he traveled almost daily by gondola to the island of San Lazzaro, where he studied Armenian with Father Pasquale Aucher (Harutiun Avgerian). Byron learned enough classical Armenian to translate passages into English and to co‑author with the monks English and Armenian grammars (1817–1819), for which he partially financed the printing; his desk, books, and small “study room” are still preserved and shown to visitors.
A copy of the first edition of the book resulting from Byron’s regular visits to the monastery‑island, where he translated Armenian texts and rendered Father Pasquale Aucher’s Armenian grammar from Italian into English, since Aucher’s English was still uncertain. When a proposed preface denouncing Ottoman rule led to a rift between them, Byron left San Lazzaro for good, leaving behind his manuscript grammar. Later in 1819 Aucher published it under his own name, drawing on Byron’s text but not always able to decipher it correctly. The Mekhitarists regard the collection of manuscripts the greatest treasure of San Lazzaro. During the 19th century, Mekhitarist monks extracted from these manuscripts and published some previously unpublished pieces of Armenian and non-Armenian literature.
The oldest dated Armenian manuscripts are the Mlkʿē Gospels of 862, san Lazzaro, Venice and the Łazarean Gospels of 887 in the Matenadaran, Erevan. The codex triumphed over the roll in the fourth century. Therefore, it is likely that when Mesrop Maštocʿ devised an Armenian alphabet in the 5th century, Armenians used the codex right from the start without a transition from the roll.
As a boy of barely thirteen, during the German occupation, his father sent him to the island of San Lazzaro, believing that this tiny Armenian monastery under the Pope’s protection would be the safest place if racial laws reached Paris. The plan was generous, but the child, who had innocently voiced doubts about Holy Scripture and his own faith, was judged harshly. For an entire year he was sentenced to silence, forbidden to speak or to receive a single word of comfort from the other inhabitants of the island.
– Omnia facilius quam nōn oboedīre. May your days be merry, your nights comfortably warm, and may you one day plan a visit to the tiny island of San Lazzaro !
La Fotografia antica è la più bella delle collezioni … ma non e gelosa Senigallia, città della fotografia, ospita un nuovo spazio dedicato alla collezione di fotografie. Atelier 41, si trova 41 via fratelli Bandiera. In preparazione la IV Biennale di Senigallia, estate 2025, conferenza, fiera 13-15 Giugno 2025. Senigallia diventerà la Città delle collezioni.
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