It is with great emotion and affection that I write these few lines of introduction to this book, which assembles articles by the late Dr. Nira Stone.

Of her rich and varied work, I would like here to recall a number of themes and subjects drawn from her foundational book, The Kaffa Lives of the Desert Fathers (1997). The culmination of sustained and fruitful research, this book is the only in-depth study of an exceptional manuscript (Jerusalem 285) which was copied and richly illuminated in Kaffa in 1430 and contains the texts of the Lives of the Desert Fathers. This manuscript’s originality lies partly in its rich illuminations, which include 45 full-page miniatures and numerous marginal miniatures. Most of these have no known exemplars. Nira Stone brilliantly demonstrates the complexity of a study on the art of the handwritten book, which involves various and varied fields of knowledge (history of religions, hagiography, textual traditions, history, history of art, iconography, etc.). The diversity and originality of the subjects treated and a singular method, combining simplicity and efficiency, as well as the complexity of the features studied make this book an indispensable work of reference, a veritable paradigm of iconographic and hagiographical studies.

Nira Stone had the great virtue of stressing in her scholarly work the importance of the documents illustrated, their origins and their influences as part of her understanding of art. Broad textual knowledge allowed her to reassess the translation of a text, a religious concept, a dogma, a belief, or a tradition into image. The direct relationship between the text and the image form the foundation of most of her research and her discoveries. She also shared her understanding and thoughts on this subject in several articles such as “The Relationship between Text and Illustration” (1993) and “Narrativity in Armenian Manuscript Illustration” (2006).

In several studies, Nira Stone demonstrates as well the importance of the apocryphal texts in the illustrations of the Bible and the Gospels. The data she collected from apocryphal texts allowed her to propose a new approach in the study of illustration and iconographic reading of Gospel or other biblical images that are enriched with new elements. Through the light cast by apocryphal texts, she was able to show the legitimacy and deeper symbolic meaning of unusual figures and other elements that previously had been misunderstood or simply ignored. From this line of research, she produced a series of articles and communications devoted to various Gospel and other biblical subjects. Thus she dedicated a series of studies to the iconography of miniatures of the Annunciation, the Baptism, the Transfiguration, the Dormition of the Virgin, the depictions of Adam and Eve, the four rivers of paradise, and even the Garden of Eden. These came to fruition, for example, in her papers on “Apocryphal Stories in Armenian Manuscripts” (1999), “The Illuminations of the Transfiguration” (2010) and “The Four Rivers that Flowed from Eden” (2008). She rightly drew the attention of scholars to the importance of folk and apocryphal traditions, often unknown, in the iconography of Gospel scenes. Highlighting the unusual elements of each of the compositions under examination, she demonstrates the importance of detail in medieval imagery which guides us towards the text, tradition or interpretation, of which the miniature is an “illustration”.

Nor is her work limited in any way to biblical manuscripts. Her article “The Illumination of non-Biblical Armenian Manuscripts” (2011) highlights a very rich pictorial tradition in Armenian culture, of themes and subjects that sadly, even today, are very little known or studied. Thanks to her great erudition and a singularly exact overview of the material, she opened up and illumined a very broad field of research. Young researchers would be well advised to attend to the future development and deepening of this field in which her article established such firm foundations.

Indeed, her curiosity together with her fine intelligence and her great sense of culture give rise to very varied themes: “Notes on the Mosaic Floor from Shellal and the Mosaic Workshop near Gaza” (1988), “Judith and Holofernes: Some Observations on the Development of the Scene in Art” (1992) or “Jerusalem as a Point of Conversion from Sin to Sainthood: A Story of a Woman Pilgrim in Art”(2002) are excellent examples.

Several studies written in collaboration with Michael E. Stone are the true fruits of a shared passion for the art of the book. Different items such as “An Illuminated Armenian Gospel in the National and University Library, Jerusalem” (1980) or “A Pair of Armenian Manuscript Missals in the Library of Congress” (2003/2004) reveal studies both painstaking and profound. This holds true equally for the recent catalogue of the Armenian manuscripts of the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Catalogue of the Additional Armenian Manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (2012), as well a jointly written orientation to Armenian art and culture, The Armenians: Art, Culture and Religion (2007) produced for that Library. These are precious supplements to our knowledge of this rich collection of Armenian manuscripts, previously described by Sirarpie Der Nersessian.

All those who were fortunate enough to know Nira Stone personally will always remember her scholarly generosity and exceptional simplicity. I myself was so privileged. Some of her enthusiasm for the history of art will endure within me. I still remember her advice and encouragement on my work and on stylistic studies of miniatures in particular. The truest tribute that we can pay her now is through our students and young researchers, striving to keep alive the work in those fields of research which Nira so generously opened up….