Byzantine Art

History, Characteristics: Christian Mosaics, Icons of Constantinople.

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The Collapse of Rome and the Rise of

Byzantine Art (c.500-1450)
Contents

What is Byzantine Art?

General Characteristics
Byzantine Mosaics (c.500-843)
Byzantine Art: Revival and Development (843-1450)
Barberini Diptych (c.500-550)
Louvre Museum, Paris. A Byzantine
masterpiece of ivory carving. Ivory
reliefs were the main form of
early Christian sculpture in
Constantinople.

What is Byzantine Art?

Between Emperor Constantine I's Edict in 313, recognizing Christianity as the official
religion, and the fall of Rome at the hands of the Visigoths in 476, arrangements
were made to divide the Roman Empire into a Western half (ruled from Rome) and
an Eastern half (ruled from Byzantium). Thus, while Western Christendom fell into
the cultural abyss of the barbarian Dark Ages, its religious, secular and artistic
values were maintained by its new Eastern capital in Byzantium (later renamed
Constantinople after Constantine). Along with the transfer of Imperial authority to
Byzantium went thousands of Roman and Greek painters and craftsmen, who
proceeded to create a new set of Eastern Christian images and icons, known as
Byzantine Art. Exclusively concerned with Christian art, though derived (in
particular) from techniques and forms of Greek and Egyptian art, this style spread to
all corners of the Byzantine empire, where Orthodox Christianity flourished.
Particular centres of early Christian art included Ravenna in Italy, and Kiev,
Novgorod and Moscow in Russia. For more detail, see also: Christian Art, Byzantine
Period.

Barberini Diptych (c.500-550)

Louvre Museum, Paris. A Byzantine
masterpiece of ivory carving. Ivory
reliefs were the main form of
early Christian sculpture in
Constantinople.

General Characteristics
The style that characterized Byzantine art was almost entirely concerned with
religious expression; specifically with the translation of church theology into artistic
terms. Byzantine Architecture and painting (little sculpture was produced during the
Byzantine era) remained uniform and anonymous and developed within a rigid
tradition. The result was a sophistication of style rarely equaled in Western art.
Byzantine visual art began with mosaics decorating the walls and domes of
churches, as well fresco wall-paintings. So beautiful was the effect of these mosaics

that the form was taken up in Italy, especially in Rome and Ravenna. A less public
art form in Constantinople, was the icon (from the Greek word 'eikon' meaning
'image') - the holy image panel-paintings which were developed in the monasteries
of the eastern church, using encaustic wax paint on portable wooden panels. [See:
Icons and Icon Painting.] The greatest collection of this type of early Biblical art is in
the monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, founded in the 6th century by the Emperor
Justinian.
During the period 1050-1200, tensions grew up between the Eastern Roman
Empire and the slowly re-emerging city of Rome, whose Popes had managed (by
careful diplomatic manoeuvering) to retain their authority as the centre of Western
Christendom. At the same time, Italian city states like Venice were becoming rich on
international trade. As a result, in 1204, Constantinople fell under the influence of
Venetians.
This duly led to a cultural exodus of renowned artists from the city back to Rome the reverse of what had happened 800 years previously - and the beginnings of the
proto-Renaissance period, exemplified by Giotto di Bondone's Scrovegni Chapel
frescoes. However, even as it declined, Byzantine influence continued to make itself
felt in the 13th and 14th centuries, notably in the Sienese School of painting and
the International Gothic style (1375-1450), notably in International Gothic
illuminations, like the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, by the Limbourg
Brothers. See also Byzantine-inspired panel-paintings and altarpieces including
Duccio's Stroganoff Madonna (1300) and Maesta Altarpiece (1311).
NOTE: For other important historical periods similar to the Byzantine era, see Art
Movements, Periods, Schools (from about 100 BCE).

Medieval Byzantine mosaics in

St Mark's Basilica, Venice.

Byzantine Mosaics (c.500-843)

Using early Christian adaptations of late Roman styles, the Byzantines developed a
new visual language, expressing the ritual and dogma of the united Church and
state. Early on variants flourished in Alexandria and Antioch, but increasingly the
imperial bureaucracy undertook the major commissions, and artists were sent out to
the regions requiring them, from the metropolis. Established in Constantinople, the
Byzantine style eventually spread far beyond the capital, round the Mediterranean
to southern Italy, Up through the Balkans and into Russia.

Rome, occupied by the Visigoths in 410, was sacked again by the Vandals in 455,
and by the end of the century Theodoric the Great had imposed the rule of the
Ostrogoths on Italy. However, in the sixth century the Emperor Justinian (reigned
527-65) re-established imperial order from Constantinople, taking over the
Ostrogothic capital, Ravenna (Italy), as his western administrative centre. Justinian
was a superb organizer, and one of the most remarkable patrons in the history of
art. He built and re-built on a huge scale throughout the Empire: his greatest work,
the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, employed nearly 10,000 craftsmen
and labourers and was decorated with the richest materials the Empire could
provide. Though it still stands gloriously, hardly any of its earliest mosaics remain,
thus it is at Ravenna that the most spectacular remnants of Byzantine art in the
sixth century survive. See: Ravenna Mosaics (c.400-600).
Within the dry brick exterior of S. Vitale in Ravenna, the worshipper is dazzled by a
highly controlled explosion of colour blazoned across glittering gold. Mosaic art and
beautifully grained marble cover almost all wall surfaces, virtually obliterating the
architecture that bears them. The gold, flooding the background, suggests an
infinity taken out of mortal time, on which the supernatural images float. In the
apse, wrapped in their own remote mystery, Christ and saints preside
unimpassioned. Nevertheless, in two flanking panels of mosaic, one showing the
Emperor Justinian with his retinue and the other, opposite, his wife Theodora with
her ladies, there persists a clear attempt at naturalistic portraiture, especially in the
faces of Justinian and Theodora. Even so, their bodies seem to float rather than
stand within the tubular folds of their draperies.
In S. Vitale, and in Byzantine art generally, sculpture in the round plays a minimal
part. However, the marble capitals (dating from the pre-Justinian's era) are carved
with surprising delicacy, with purely oriental, highly stylized vine-scrolls and

inscrutable animals. A rare example of Byzantine figurative sculpture is an

impressiye head, perhaps that of Theodora, in which the Roman tradition of
naturalistic portrait art lingers.
To the East, Justinian's most important surviving work is in the church, (slightly later
than S. Vitale), of St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. There, in the great
Transfiguration in the apse, the figures are again substantial presences, suspended
weightlessly in a golden empyrean. The contours, however, are freer, less rigid,
than at S. Vitale, and the limbs of the figures are strangely articulated - almost an
assemblage of component parts. This was to become a characteristic and persistent
trait in the Byzantine style.

Elsewhere (notably at Thessaloniki) there were other vocal variations of style in

mosaic. Relatively little remains in the cheaper form of fresco, and still less in
manuscript illumination. A very few 6th century illuminated manuscripts, on a
purple-tinted vellum, show a comparable development from classical conventions
towards an austere formality, though pen and ink tend to produce greater freedom
in structure and gesture. In the famous Rabula Gospel of 586 from Syria, the
glowing intensity of the dense imagery may even bring to mind the work of Rouault
in the twentieth century. Ivory panels carved in relief have also survived, usually
covers for consular diptychs. This type of diptych consisted of two ivory plaques,
tied together, with records of the departing consul's office listed on their inner
surfaces. The carvings on the outside, representing religious or imperial themes,
have the clarity and detachment characteristic of the finest mosaics, and are
splendidly assured.
In the 8th and 9th centuries the development of the Byzantine style was
catastrophically interrupted in all media. Art was not merely stopped in its tracks:
there was a thorough, wide-ranging destruction of existing images throughout the
Byzantine regions. Figurative art had long been attacked on the grounds that the
Bible condemned the worship of images; in about 725 the iconoclasts (those who
would have religious images destroyed) won the day against the iconodules (those
who believed they were justified) with the promulgation of the first of a number of
imperial edicts against images. Complicated arguments raged over the issue, but
iconoclasm was also an assertion of imperial authority over a Church thought to
have grown too rich and too powerful. It was surely owing to the Church that some
tradition of art did persist, to flower again when the ban was lifted in 843.

Byzantine Art: Revival and Development (843-1450)

The halt to iconoclasm - the destructive campaign against images and those who
believed in them - came in 843. The revival of religious art that followed was based

on clearly formulated principles: images were accepted as valuable not for worship,
but as channels through which the faithful could direct their prayer and somehow
anchor the presence of divinity within their daily lives. Unlike in the later western
Gothic revival, Byzantine art rarely had a didactic or narrative function, but was
essentially impersonal, ceremonial and symbolic: it was an element in the
performance of religious ritual. The disposition of images in churches was codified,
rather as the liturgy was, and generally adhered to a set iconography: the great
mosaic cycles were deployed about the Pantocrator (Christ in his role as ruler and
judge) central in the main dome, and the Virgin and Child in the apse. Below, the
main events of the Christian year - from Annunciation to Crucifixion and
Resurrection - had their appointed places. Below again, hieratic figures of saints,
martyrs and bishops were ranked in order.
The end of iconoclasm opened an era of great activity, the so-called Macedonian
Renaissance. It lasted from 867, when Basil I, founder of the Macedonian dynasty,
became absolute ruler of what was now a purely Greek monarchy, almost until
1204, when Constantinople was disastrously sacked. Churches were redecorated
throughout the Empire, and especially its capital: in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople,
mosaics enormous in scale took up the old themes and stances, sometimes with
great delicacy and refinement.
Despite the steady erosion of its territory, Byzantium was seen by Europe as the
light of civilization, an almost legendary city of gold. Literature, scholarship and an
elaborate etiquette surrounded the Macedonian court; the 10th century Emperor
Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos sculpted and himself illuminated the manuscripts
he wrote. Though his power continued to diminish, the Emperor had enormous
prestige, and the Byzantine style proved irresistible to the rest of Europe. Even in
regimes politically and militarily hostile to Constantinople, Byzantine art was
adopted and its medieval artists welcomed.
In Greece, the Church of the Dormition at Daphni, near Athens, of about 1100,
presents some of the finest mosaics of this period: there is a grave, classic sense of
great delicacy in its Crucifixion, while the dome mosaic of The Pantocrator is one of
the most formidable in any Byzantine church. In Venice, the huge expanses of S.
Marco (begun 1063) were decorated by artists imported from the East, but their
work was largely destroyed by fire in 1106, and later work by Venetian craftsmen is
in a less pure style. In the cathedral on the nearby island of Torcello, however, The
Virgin and Child, tall, lonely, and solitary as a spire against the vast gold space of
the apse, is a 12th century survival. In Sicily, the first Norman king, Roger II (ruled
1130-54), was actively hostile to the Byzantine Empire yet he imported Greek
artists, who created one of the finest mosaic cycles ever, in the apse and presbytery
at Cefalu. The permeation of Byzantine art into Russia was initiated in 989 by the
marriage of Vladimir of Kiev with the Byzantine princess Anna and his conversion to
Eastern Christianity. Byzantine mosaicists were working in the Hagia Sophia at Kiev

by the 1040s, and the Byzantine impact on Russian medieval painting remained
crucial long after the fall of Constantinople.
NOTE: Goldsmithing and precious metalwork were another Byzantine speciality,
notably in Kiev (c.950-1237), where both cloisonn and niello styles of enamelling
were taken to new heights by Eastern Orthodox goldsmiths.
The secular paintings and mosaics of the Macedonian revival have rarely survived their most spectacular manifestation was lost in the burning of the legendary Great
Palace in Constantinople during the Sack of 1204. Such works retained much more
clearly classical features - the ivory panels of the Veroli casket are an example - but
such features are to be found, too, in religious manuscripts and in some ivory reliefs
(sculpture in the round was forbidden as a concession to the iconoclasts). The
Joshua Roll, though it celebrates the military prowess of an Old Testament hero,
reflects the pattern of Roman narrative columns of relief sculpture such as Trajan's
Column in Rome; the famous Paris Psalter of about 950 is remarkably Roman both in
feeling and iconography: in one illustration the young David as a musical shepherd
is virtually indistinguishable from a pagan Orpheus, and is even attended by an
allegorical nymph called Melody.
Note: The importance of Byzantine murals on the development of Western painting
should also not be under-estimated. See, for instance, the highly realistic wall
paintings in the Byzantine monastery Church of St. Panteleimon in Gorno Nerezi,
Republic of Macedonia.
In 1204, the city of Constantinople was sacked by Latin Crusaders, and Latins ruled
the city until 1261, when the Byzantine emperors returned. In the interim,
craftsmen migrated elsewhere. In Macedonia and Serbia, fresco painting was
already established, and the tradition continued steadily. Some 15 major fresco
cycles survive, mostly by Greek artists. The fresco medium doubtless encouraged a
fluency of expression and an emotional feeling not often apparent in mosaic.
The final two centuries of Byzantium in its decay were troubled and torn with war,
but surprisingly produced a third great artistic flowering. The fragmentary but still
imposing Deesis in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople may have been constructed after
the Latin domination, rather than during the 12th century. It has a new tenderness
and humanity which was continued - for instance in the superb early 14th century
cycle of the monastic church of Christ in Chora. In Russia, a distinctive style
developed, reflected not only in masterpieces such as the icons of Rublev, but also
in the individual interpretations of traditional themes by Theophanes the Greek, a
Byzantine emigrant, working in a dashing, almost Impressionistic style in the 1370s
in Novgorod. Though the central source of the Byzantine style was extinguished
with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, its influence continued in
Russia and the Balkans, while in Italy the Byzantine strain (mingling with Gothic)

persisted in the era of Pre-Renaissance Painting (c.1300-1400) ushered in by the

works of Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255-1319) and Giotto (1270-1337).

Byzantine Icons
Icons (or ikons), generally small and so easily transportable, are the best-known
form of Byzantine art. A tradition persists that the first icon was painted by St Luke
the Evangelist, showing the Virgin pointing to the Child on her left arm. However, no
examples that date from before the 6th century are known. Icons became
increasingly popular in Byzantium in the 6th and 7th centuries, to some degree
precipitating the reaction of iconoclasm. Although the iconoclasts asserted that
icons were being worshipped, their proper function was as an aid to meditation;
through the visible image the believer could apprehend the invisible spirituality.
Condensed into a small compass, they fulfilled and fulfil the same function in the
home as the mosaic decorations of the churches - signalling the presence of divinity.
The production of icons for the Orthodox Churches has never ceased.

The dating of icons is thus fairly speculative. The discovery at St Catherine's

monastery on Mt Sinai of a number of icons that could be ordered chronologically
with some certainty is recent. Many different styles are represented. An early St
Peter has the frontal simplicity, the direct gaze from large wide-open eyes, that is
found again and again in single-figure icons. It also has an almost suave elegance
and dignity, allied with a painterly vigour that imparts a distinct tension to the
figure. There is a similar emotional quality in a well-preserved Madonna and Saints,
despite its unblinking symmetry and rather coarser modelling. Both surely came
from Constantinople.

Immediately after the iconoclastic period, devotional images in richer materials, in

ivory, mosaic or even precious metals, may have been more popular than painted
ones. From the twelfth century painted icons became more frequent, and one great
masterpiece can be dated to 1131 or shortly before. Known as "The Virgin of
Vladimir", it was sent to Russia soon after it had been painted in Constantinople.
The Virgin still indicates the Child, as the embodiment of the divine in human form,
but the tenderness of the pose, cheek against cheek, is illustrative of the new
humanism.

From the 12th century the subject matter of icons expanded considerably, though
the long-established themes and formulae, important for the comfort of the faithful,
were maintained. Heads of Christ, Virgins and patron saints continued, but scenes of
action appeared - notably Annunciations and Crucifixions; later, for iconostases, or
choir-screens, composite panels containing many narrative scenes were painted.
Long after it had ceased in Constantinople with the Turkish conquest, production
continued and developed in Greece and (with clearly discernible regional styles) in
Russia, and in Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. In Russia, individual masters emerged
even before the fall of Constantinople, along with important centres such as the
Novgorod school of icon painting. The most famous Russian iconographer was the
monk Andrei Rublev (c.1370-1430), whose masterpiece, The Holy Trinity, is the
finest of all Russian icons. He transcended the Byzantine formulae, and the
mannerisms of the Novgorod school founded by the Byzantine refugee Theophanes
the Greek. Rublev's icons are unique for their cool colours, soft shapes and quiet
radiance. The last of the great Russian icon painters of the Novgorod school, was
Dionysius (c.1440-1502), noted for his icons for the Volokolamsky monastery, and
his Deesis for the Cathedral of the Dormition in Moscow. He was in fact the first
celebrated figure in the Moscow school of painting (c.1500-1700), whose Byzantineinspired icons were produced by the likes of Nicephorus Savin, Procopius Chirin and
the great Simon Ushakov (1626-1686).

Source: I gratefully acknowledge the use of material in the above article from David
Piper's outstanding book "The Illustrated History of Art".