Byzantine Art and Architecture

I

Introduction

Byzantine Art and Architecture, the art of the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, Empire. It originated chiefly in Constantinople, the ancient Greek town of Byzantium, which the Roman emperor Constantine chose in ad 330 as his new capital and named after himself. The Byzantine Empire continued for almost 1,000 years after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476. Byzantine art eventually spread throughout most of the Mediterranean world and eastwards to Armenia. Although the conquering Turks destroyed much in Constantinople in the 15th century, sufficient material survives elsewhere to permit an appreciative understanding of Byzantine art.

Byzantine art and architecture arose in part as a response to the needs of the Eastern, or Orthodox, Church. Unlike the Western Church, in which the popular veneration of the relics of saints continued unabated from early Christian times throughout the later Middle Ages, the Eastern Church preferred a more contemplative form of popular worship focused on the veneration of icons. These were portraits of religious figures, often depicted frontally and rendered in a highly stylized manner. Although any type of pictorial representation—a wall painting or a mosaic, for instance—could serve as an icon, it generally took the form of a small painted panel.

Much of Byzantine art is imbued with something of the abstract quality of icons. The artistic antecedents of the iconic mode can be traced back to Mesopotamia and the hinterlands of Syria and Egypt, where, since the 3rd century ad, the rigid and hieratic (strictly ritualized) art of the ancient Orient was revived in the Jewish and pagan wall paintings of the remote Roman outpost of Dura Europos on the Euphrates and in the Christian frescoes of the early monasteries in Upper Egypt. In the two major cities of these regions, Antioch and Alexandria, however, the more naturalistic (Hellenistic) phase of Greek art also survived right through the reign of Constantine. In Italy, Roman painting, as practised at Pompeii and in Rome itself, was also influenced by Hellenistic art.

Byzantine art never entirely lost its Hellenistic heritage but continued to draw upon it as a source of inspiration and renewal. In this process, however, the Classical idiom was drastically modified in order to express the transcendental character of the Orthodox faith. Early Christian art of the 3rd and 4th centuries had simply taken over the style and forms of Classical paganism. The most typical form of Classical art was the free-standing statue, which emphasized a tangible physical presence. With the triumph of Christianity, artists sought to evoke the spiritual character of sacred figures rather than their bodily substance. Painters and mosaicists often avoided any modelling of the figures in order to eliminate any suggestion of a tangible human form, and the production of statuary was almost completely abandoned after the 5th century. Sculpture was largely confined to ivory plaques (called diptychs) carved in low relief, which minimized sculptural effects.

Mosaics were the favoured medium for the interior adornment of Byzantine churches. Consisting of small cubes, or tesserae, made of coloured glass or glass overlaid with gold leaf, and spread over the walls and vaults of interiors, mosaics produced a luminous effect, well suited to expressing the mystic character of Orthodox Christianity. At the same time their rich, jewel-like surfaces were also in keeping with the magnificence of the imperial court, presided over by the emperor, the de facto head of the Orthodox Church.

II

Early Period

Although the 5th-century art of the empire is sometimes referred to as early Byzantine, it is more accurately called late Antique. It is a transitional phase between the Classical antiquity of Early Christian art and the emergence of a truly Byzantine style shortly after 500, when the portraits of the Byzantine consuls on ivory diptychs assume the hieratic, depersonalized character of the icons. The golden age of early Byzantine art and architecture falls within the reign (527-565) of the emperor Justinian, a prolific builder and a patron of the arts.

A

Mosaics

The development of Byzantine art in the age of Justinian is reflected in the variety of mosaic styles. They range from the austere grandeur of the Transfiguration of Christ (c. 540) in the apse of the monastery church of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, Egypt, to the mid-6th-century processions of the martyrs in Sant' Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, which recall the endless rhythmic sequences of marching figures in the art of the ancient Near East.

The most extensive series of mosaics of the Justinian age, and the finest, were those completed in 547 in the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna. Rather than a mere expression of stylistic diversity, the different pictorial modes of these mosaics were each adapted to its subject matter. The Old Testament scenes in the choir exemplify the narrative mode, in which the action takes place in picturesque settings of rocks and flowers against a background of rose-tinted clouds, all reminiscent of the illusionistic landscapes of Pompeian painting.

Beyond, on the curving wall of the apse, the emperor Justinian, surrounded by members of his court, confronts the empress Theodora in the midst of her attendant ladies; both rulers are sumptuously arrayed in diadems and imperial purple mantles. The emperor, venerated as Christ's representative on Earth, and the revered empress are depicted, along with their retinues, standing fully frontal and with the fixed gaze of the otherworldy figures in icons.

The Classical heritage in Byzantine art is visible in the beardless Christ, who, like a youthful Apollo, sits on the globe of the universe in the gold semi-dome of the apse—a Western type of the seated Christ derived from Early Christian sarcophagi. All three modes—the narrative, the iconic, and the Classically inspired—are encountered again and again in all major periods of Byzantine art.

B

Architecture

In the early Byzantine period, as wide a diversity of styles is seen in ecclesiastical architecture as in art. Two major types of churches, however, can be distinguished: the basilica type, with a nave flanked by colonnades terminating in a semicircular apse and covered by a timber roof; and the stone-vaulted centralized church, with its separate components gathered under a central dome. The second type—the stone-vaulted centralized church—was dominant throughout the Byzantine period.

Hagia Sophia, or the Church of the Holy Wisdom, in Constantinople, built in five years for Justinian by Anthemios of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus and consecrated in 537, is the supreme example of the centralized type. The unadorned exterior masses of Hagia Sophia combine to form an imposing pyramidal complex. As in all Byzantine churches, most attention is lavished on the interior. The vast central dome, which rises some 56 m (185 ft) from ground level, appears to be dramatically poised over a circle of light radiating from the windows piercing the drum on which it rests. Four curved or spherical triangles, called pendentives, support its rim and are in turn locked into the corners of a square formed by four huge arches. The transition between the circular dome and its square base, achieved through the use of pendentives, was a major contribution of Byzantine builders to the development of architecture. To the east, a vast semi-dome surmounts the three large vaulted niches of the sanctuary below. Arcades that recall the arcaded naves of the basilica churches occupy the ground storey on the north and south sides of the central square. To the west, another huge semi-dome precedes a barrel-vaulted narthex.

The effect is of a dome hanging in midair, its supports visible on the exterior as four immense buttresses but effectively disguised on the interior. The ethereal quality is reinforced by the shimmering mosaics and sheets of polished marble that cover the interior walls and arches.