FRAGILE TREASURES OF THE SINAI

SUNRISE is spectacular public theater on Mt. Sinai. Hours before dawn, tourists and pilgrims -- on foot or camel -- start a trek to the 7,349-foot peak, determined to get there before the show begins. When the sun finally makes its appearance, the audience at the pinnacle breaks into applause or bursts into song. Oohs and ahs accompany the second act, when light transforms the sky into an ethereal, golden hemisphere and the land far below into a craggy moonscape.

Day arrives more quietly, but no less dramatically, at the foot of the mountain. Mass begins in near darkness in the Greek Orthodox basilica at the heart of the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine. A few candles provide just enough flickering light for monks to read from ancient texts. As the service proceeds, the basilica’s clerestory windows change from hazy gray pillows to crisp blue rectangles. Icons lining the walls and dangling from columns begin to glow. Little by little, the sun gathers force, sending a dazzling play of light into the ornately appointed sanctuary. The icons’ gold backgrounds morph into auras around images of saints. Wayward beams dance on the contours of bronze candelabra and ostrich-shell chandeliers.

This is the place where, scriptures say, Moses received the Ten Commandments and God revealed himself in the burning bush. Continuity and tradition are watchwords at St. Catherine’s, the world’s oldest continuously operating Christian monastery. Built in the 6th century by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, the walled complex is an isolated retreat in the forbidding terrain of south Sinai’s barren deserts and precipitous mountains. But change has come with modern roads, tourism and technology. Some things seem as old as the sun, others as young as the dawn.

Bearded monks in long black robes read 1,000-year-old manuscripts, but they also use cellphones, correspond by e-mail and help a woman with a state-of-the-art baby stroller navigate a steep flight of stairs just outside the basilica. A fire extinguisher sits near the burning bush, a scruffy wild raspberry bush said to have been moved hundreds of years ago to accommodate the nearby chapel marking the location of the original shrub. Bedouins guard the monastery, as they have for centuries, but they also sell beer and soft drinks to tourists in a nearby plaza outfitted with plastic tables and chairs.

And now, in a development that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, the monks have lent 52 of the monastery’s most valuable objects to an exhibition opening Nov. 14 at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai” will present 43 icons from the monastery’s 2,000-piece collection. St. Catherine’s has the world’s largest holding of Byzantine icons -- paintings of saints and other sacred subjects, intended for veneration -- and more than half of those that have survived. Five illuminated manuscripts will represent the 3,300-piece collection of early, handwritten texts at St. Catherine’s library, second in number and importance only to the Vatican’s trove. Four richly embellished liturgical objects -- a candelabrum; a lamp stand and cross, each in cast bronze; and a priest’s stole embroidered in metallic thread -- will exemplify rare objects used in services at the basilica.

Plans for the exhibition have sent shock waves through an institution that rested in sublime peace for centuries, never allowing its sacred artistic bounty to leave the walled premises. But tremors began in 1997, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York persuaded the monks to lend 10 pieces to a major exhibition of Byzantine art. The Met borrowed an additional 43 works for another show in 2004, and a few objects from the monastery have appeared at Greek museums, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery in London.

Still, the Los Angeles show is a landmark event and a feat of international diplomacy. Including many objects lent for the first time, it was organized by Kristen M. Collins, the Getty’s assistant curator of manuscripts, and Robert S. Nelson, an art historian at Yale University, in collaboration with St. Catherine’s and the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt.

“This is the first exhibition that is comprehensive and devoted exclusively to the monastery here in Sinai,” says Father Justin, a tall, thin American monk who takes all the excitement in stride. His eyes twinkle as he welcomes guests to the library, where he oversees the rare and valuable collection. “Considering the complexity and the difficulty and the cost of such an exhibition, I don’t envision that it will be equaled.”

The monastery has been inundated with requests for loans of manuscripts and sacred objects since it agreed to make loans to the Met, Father Justin says, settling into a red upholstered chair that has seen better days. The Getty prevailed, he says, because it is “uniquely qualified” to care for the works, present them in an appropriate context and contribute to scholarship.

“This is a very special exhibition,” he says. “It takes resources, and it takes enthusiasm. They have both at the Getty. I don’t know where else you would find them.”

Weathered by history

ENORMOUSLY complicated in its details of negotiation, planning and execution, the exhibition builds upon a relationship based on worries about an institution that has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site but can’t keep up with its needs for renewal and refurbishment. In 1999, a $70,000 grant from the Getty Foundation, the Getty Trust’s philanthropic branch, sent a team of architects, conservators and engineers to St. Catherine’s to analyze structural problems caused by water infiltration and earthquakes. Today, conservators are at work on a huge mosaic panel in the central apse of the basilica, funded by an additional $250,000 grant from the Getty.

The object of all this attention is a bastion of Christianity in an Islamic land settled by monks in the early 4th century. Justinian ordered construction of the monastery’s walls and basilica, which were completed around 550. Sinai’s population soon became predominantly Muslim, but the monastery had secured protection from the Prophet Muhammad in return for hospitality he received there. During the monastery’s history, Sinai has been controlled by the Byzantine and Ottoman empires and occupied by Napoleonic France, Britain and Israel. The peninsula has been governed by Egypt since 1982.

Originally dedicated to the Virgin and renamed for Catherine around 800, after her bones were discovered on the summit of Sinai’s highest peak, St. Catherine’s also has been protected by its remote location and the independence afforded by having its own archbishop. Many objects in its collections are gifts from faithful visitors who have viewed the monastery as a multicultural oasis as well as a Christian pilgrimage site. The illuminated manuscripts are written in 11 languages, including Arabic.

Tourists, allowed to visit a few areas of the monastery from 9 a.m. to noon, enter through a small door in the thick granite walls and find themselves in a warren of twisting paths, uneven stairways and tightly packed buildings. Some objects in Los Angeles won’t be missed by these visitors, who have no access to the cavernous library on the third floor of a large building along one wall, or the treasury, a private storehouse of icons under the care of a Greek monk, Father Porphyrius, who often wears a sporty gray cotton vest over his black robe.

But those who visit the elegantly appointed museum will find a dozen or so photographic images replacing prime pieces lent to the Getty. Still, with its marble floors, polished wood and glass display cases designed by the German team Glasbau Hahn and wall text in Greek, Arabic and English, the museum remains worth seeing.

One day in late September, as a team of conservators, technicians and packers prepares to fill custom-made crates with precious cargo, Getty curator Collins points out museum pieces that she and Nelson have selected. Immersed in her sixth trip to St. Catherine’s, where she has worked out countless exhibition details, she knows the icons down to the subtleties of saints’ facial expressions and intricacies of drapery folds.

In the first gallery, she stops at an imposing 6th century image of St. Peter, painted in encaustic on a 36 3/4 -inch by 21 1/8 -inch panel; smaller, jewel-like depictions of the ascension of Christ and the annunciation; and a calendar of feast days represented by saints whose tiny faces are executed in astonishing detail. One of her favorite icons is a 12th century work, “The Heavenly Ladder of St. John Climacus,” illustrating 30 steps to salvation and temptations along the way. Another is “St. Catherine With the Virgin of the Burning Bush,” a 13th century work, richly textured in tempera and silver-colored metal leaf on panel.

“It encapsulates the great cult figures here at the monastery,” Collins says, “with St. Catherine appearing crowned in imperial robes. Standing next to her is the Virgin with the Christ Child in her hands. She is enveloped in the winding red flames and green tendrils of the burning bush. On either side of her, you have two figures, each representing Moses.”

One last look

NEARBY at the library, where 3,300 manuscripts and 7,000 early printed books reside on the balcony and main floor of a long, plain room outfitted with simple shelves and a few pieces of mismatched furniture, Father Justin takes a last look at the five manuscripts selected for the show.

“This is one of the most beautiful we have,” he says, opening a large volume with boldly executed paintings in red, blue, green and gold. “It’s ‘The Sermons of St. Gregory,’ the bishop of Constantinople in the 4th century, who spoke with great eloquence and insight. Many passages from his sermons have been placed in orthodox services.” Commissioned by a monk who became an abbot in Constantinople, the 12th century manuscript will be opened in the exhibition to a page portraying St. Gregory writing homilies with a monastery in the background.

The monks are greatly concerned about letting such things leave St. Catherine’s, but they have worked closely with Getty conservators to be sure they are fit for travel -- with all due precautions for temperature and humidity control while in transit and on display.

“Whenever a museum approaches us about an exhibition, the archbishop gathers the entire community,” Father Justin says. “Not just the 25 monks here, but 10 others who live in Greece and Cairo, and everybody is presented with: Should we participate in this or not? It’s everyone’s decision.” And each of the monks casts a vote.

“I think everyone has to be concerned when you ship such fragile objects around the world,” he says. “When you take so many objects, security concerns become stronger. But from the experience of previous exhibitions, we see the inspiration that it brings to people, both to Greeks for whom this is their heritage and for the wider public. It’s a very positive thing. The reason we take part in exhibitions is an obligation to share this amazing heritage.”

suzanne.muchnic@latimes.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

14 centuries and 8,000 miles in the life of a Byzantine icon

--

“The Heavenly Ladder,” an important marker of time and faith, illustrates the intricate steps taken by the J. Paul Getty Museum to bring it and other rare and sacred objects to Los Angeles.

--

Early 7th century

St. John Climacus, who became abbot of St. Catherine’s monastery after 40 years of hermetic existence in the Sinai desert, writes “The Heavenly Ladder,” a treatise describing 30 steps to salvation. The text becomes a hit in the Middle Ages, inspiring many images of monks climbing a 30-step ladder to heaven or succumbing to temptations and falling into hell.

Late 12th century

An artist, now unknown, paints a tempera and gold leaf version of “The Heavenly Ladder” on a 16 1/4 -by-11 3/4 -inch wood panel. The icon, which goes into the monastery’s collection, depicts St. John Climacus and archbishop Holy Antonios at the top of the ladder, being welcomed to heaven by Christ. Some monks on lower rungs are dragged off in chains by winged devils.

2001

The icon goes on view in the monastery’s newly expanded, elegantly appointed museum, among highly prized sacred objects in the primary gallery. Conversations about a possible St. Catherine’s exhibition at the Getty begin.

2005

January: As exhibition plans shape up, “The Heavenly Ladder” goes on a working list of objects to be shown.

February: Getty designers begin to develop plans for an exhibition with three parts: “Holy Image,” “Holy Space” and “Holy Site.”

Late spring: The curators draw up the final list of objects and work out ideas for the “Holy Site” section, where “The Heavenly Ladder” will be shown with other objects depicting the monastery and holy figures that have special significance for St. Catherine’s.

July: The curators designate a place for “The Heavenly Ladder” in an exhibition model.

2006

Spring and summer: Getty preparators design and build climate-controlled display cases for the exhibition with hidden compartments for packs of silica gel that will absorb moisture from the air and maintain the humidity inside the cases at 27% to 32%, similar to the dry climate at Sinai.

March 27 to Aug. 11: The preparators design and build nested shipping crates for objects to be transported from Sinai to Los Angeles. Each box-within-a-box-within-a-box creation consists of more than 25 layers of material to provide protection against vibrations and changes in humidity.

Aug. 31: The shipping crates are sent to Sinai.

Sept. 19: A Getty conservator prepares a detailed condition report on “The Heavenly Ladder.”

Sept. 22: “The Heavenly Ladder” icon is wrapped in clear archival polyester film and clear polyethylene sheeting, packed in an aluminum laminate cell, cushioned by several layers of foam, and sealed with thermic tape.

Early October: “The Heavenly Ladder” and seven other icons packed in individual cells are put into an aluminum-lined plywood crate and wedged into position between thick, doughnut-like shock absorbers made of viscoelastic polymer, or Sorbothane. The crate is placed in a second plywood crate, cushioned by another set of shock absorbers. Corners of the outer crate are sealed with silicone to maintain a desert-like climate around the icons. The crated objects leave the monastery in trucks and continue their journey to Los Angeles by air.

Oct. 10: The crates arrive at the Getty and go into climate-controlled storage.

Oct. 30: The icon is unpacked, examined and put into its display case with a computerized data logger to monitor temperature and humidity throughout the exhibition.

-- Suzanne Muchnic

*

‘Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons From Sinai’

Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive

When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and Sundays; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; closed Mondays

Dates: Nov. 14 through March 4

Price: Free

Contact: (310) 440-7300; www.getty.edu