Etienne from Wahki

He was born, presumably, at the end of the XII century or the beginning of the XIII century in the Cilician Armenian kingdom. He lived and worked in the fortress Vakhka , which was the ancestral castle of the royal dynasty - the Rubenids . The miniaturist’s works that have come down to us are kept in various museums around the world.

Among the famous works, it is worth noting a miniature in the “Royal Treasury” of 1270 , where King Levon II with Vasak (half-brother of King Hetum ), holding the crown behind him, appears before the face of the baby Christ. The image of Christ in this work is unique - a similar one is no longer found in Armenian fine art. Apparently, the work was created under the influence of Western models ^[1] ․

Another noteworthy work is The Collection, compiled near Barzraberd around 1266 . One of the pages of the collection depicts the king’s brother - Hovhannes ( Hovhannes Arkaehbayr ), kneeling at the feet of John the Evangelist . This manuscript emphasizes its originality with the characteristic beauty of the letter and the special arrangement of the text. If the Evangelist is depicted in a static manner, then the customer of the work sits at his feet quite realistically. The inscription under the thumbnail clarifies that the customer is f Bishop Hovhannes, brother of the king ^[2] .