Sirarpie Der Nersessian

Sirarpie Der Nersessian (5 September 18965 July 1989) was an art historian who specialized in the art of Armenia and the Byzantine Empire. Der Nersessian was a renowned academic and a pioneer in Armenian art history. She taught at several institutions in the United States, including Wellesley College in Massachusetts and as Henri Focillon Professor of Art and Archaeology at Harvard University. She was a senior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, its deputy director from 1954 to 1955 and 1961–62, and a member of its Board of Scholars. Der Nersessian was also a member of several international institutions such as the British Academy, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1978), and the Armenian Academy of Sciences (1966).

Biography

Education Der Nersessian was born the youngest of three children in Constantinople in 1896. She came from a well-to-do family (her maternal uncle was then-Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople Maghakia Ormanian). She attended the Essayan School and the English High School for Girls in Constantinople, gaining fluency in Armenian, English and French at an early age. In 1915, during the height of the Armenian genocide, Der Nersessian and her sister Arax (by then orphans) managed to flee to Europe, settling in Geneva.

Der Nersessian studied at the University of Geneva for several years until moving to Paris in 1919. She was admitted to the Sorbonne, where she studied history in the École des Hautes Études de l'université de Paris. She worked under Byzantine scholars Charles Diehl and Gabriel Millet and art historian Henri Focillon. In 1947, she received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women.

Der Nersessian remained at Dumbarton Oaks until 1978, when she retired to France and lived with her sister in Paris. Jurgis Baltrušaitis, and Alexander Vasiliev. Vasiliev wrote in his review of the book that she was "the best authority of our day on Armenian history, art, and civilization."

Below is a partial list of books and articles that she authored.

Books Armenia and the Byzantine Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945. Aght'amar: Church of the Holy Cross. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964. Armenian Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore: The Trustees, 1973. Armenian Miniatures from Isfahan. Brussels: Les Editeurs d’Art Associés, 1986. The Armenians. New York: Praeger, 1969. L'Art arménien. Paris: Art européen. Publications filmées d'art et d'histoire, 1965. L'illustration du roman de Barlaam et Joasaph. Paris: de Boccard, 1937. Miniature Painting in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 1993.

Articles and chapters "The Armenian Chronicle of the Constable Smpad or of the 'Royal Historian.'" Dumbarton Oaks Papers 13 (1959): pp. 141–168. "An Armenian Gospel of the Fifteenth Century," The Boston Public Library Quarterly 2 (1950): pp. 3–20. "A General View of the Manuscripts of San Lazarro." Bazmavep (1947): pp. 269–272. "Pagan and Christian Art in Egypt. An exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum." The Art Bulletin 33 (1941): pp. 165–167. "Two Miracles of the Virgin in the Poems of Gautier de Coincy," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): pp. 157–163. "The Kingdom of Cilician Armenia," in Kenneth M. Setton, ed., A History of the Crusades, vol. 2: The Later Crusades, 1189-1311. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1969.