Byzantine art . Artistic expression that is configured from the sixth century strongly rooted in the Hellenistic world as a continuation of eastern early Christian art. In its first moments it was considered as the natural conservator in the eastern Mediterranean countries of the Roman Empire, being a transmitter of artistic forms that powerfully influence medieval western culture. The periods of Byzantine art conform, of course, to the great phases of its political history.
Summary
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- 1 Historical development
- 2 Byzantine architecture
- 1 Characteristics of Byzantine architecture
- 2 Byzantine domes
- 3 Byzantine arches
- 4 Byzantine columns
- 3 Byzantine figurative arts
- 4 Byzantine sculpture
- 5 Byzantine mosaic and painting
- 1 Byzantine mosaics
- 2 Byzantine painting
- 6 Sources
Historical development
It was born and developed from the 4th century after Christ in the Eastern Roman Empire , where it flourished until the 15th century . From there, it goes to the countries of Eastern Europe .
Various events affect its development. The most notable are: the iconoclastic movement of the 8th century , and in the 11th century , the rupture between the eastern and western church. This art produces a monumental architecture manifested in its churches, some splendid mosaics and impressive sculptures. Two cities of particular interest for Byzantine art are Byzantium – Constantinople and Ravenna .
Since the beginning of the 5th century , a formal artistic language of its own, differentiated from that which is maintained in the Western Empire, has been created. Later, in the time of Justinian I (527-565) the first specifically Byzantine stage begins: it is the First Golden Age that includes the 6th and 7th centuries , it is the stage of formation of Byzantine art in its basic formal aspects.
After the period of the iconoclasts’ struggle, although poor in monuments, middle Byzantine art or Second Golden Age began, around the year 850, which lasted until the year 1204 , when Constantinople was conquered by the crusaders; at this time the formal and spiritual aspects of Byzantine art are essentially consolidated; it is the true creative and defining stage of Byzantine aesthetics.
After the Latin rule, with the dynasty of the Palaiologos, the Third Golden Age began, which was centered in the 14th century and ended with the taking of Constantinople in 1453 . Later, Byzantine art flourished in the Slavic countries, Russia and southeastern Europe, being transmitted to this day through Mount Athos.
Byzantine architecture
In the First Golden Age, the time of Justinian I, 6th century, the greatest architectural works were made that reveal the technical and material characteristics, as well as the constructive sense that characterizes the Byzantine art of this period. From the eastern Roman and early Christian world, it maintained various elements such as materials (brick and stone for exterior and interior mosaic cladding), semicircular arches, a classical column as a support, etc. but they also provided new features, among which the new dynamic conception of the elements and a new spatial sense stand out and, above all, their most important contribution, the systematic use of the vaulted roof, especially the dome on pendentives, that is, spherical triangles in the angles that facilitate the passage from the square to the circular plan of the dome. These hemispherical vaults were built using concentric courses of brick, as crowns of decreasing radius reinforced externally with mortar, and were conceived as a symbolic image of the divine cosmos.
Characteristics of Byzantine architecture
- Byzantine architecture is varied and monumental.
- Use the plan of the basilica inherited from the Romans, the circular plan of the martyrdom and the Greek cross . * To achieve larger sizes, multiply the arches, vaults and domes, as well as the columns. In addition, the Byzantines have learned to build lightweight domes with brick and ceramic .
- In the elaboration of the walls they easily mix brick, stone and mortar. The external walls are sober, with a natural finish. The interior mosaic decorations are lavish.
- The Basilica of Santa Sofia , in Istanbul , is one of the most important Byzantine constructions. This church of divine wisdom, dedicated to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, built by the architects Antemio de Tralles and Isidore de Mileto, between the years 532 and 537, following the direct orders of Emperor Justinian I , allows you to observe its numerous domes around the main. The 4 tall towers on each side of the building are minarets erected by the Muslims, who conquered the remains of the Roman Empire .
- It kept various elements such as materials (brick and stone for mosaic exterior and interior cladding), semicircular arches, classical column as support, etc.
- b) they also contributed new features, among which the new dynamic conception of the elements and a new spatial sense stand out.
- Its most important contribution, the systematic use of the vaulted roof, especially the dome on pendentives, that is, spherical triangles at the angles that facilitate the passage from the square to the circular plan of the dome. These hemispherical vaults were built using concentric courses of brick, as crowns of decreasing radius reinforced externally with mortar, and were conceived as a symbolic image of the divine cosmos.
- Another contribution of great significance was the decoration of capitals, of which there were several types; thus, the Theodosian type is a Roman heritage used during the 4th century as an evolution of the Corinthian and carved with a trephine, resembling wasps; Another variety was the flat-sided cubic capital decorated with two-plane reliefs.
Byzantine domes
Dome of the Church of Hagia Sophia
Domes are the most obvious element of Byzantine architecture. They are large and numerous, originally circular. They evolve, with the passage of time and under Arab influence, towards the onion- shaped domes so characteristic of the Russian landscape. They are placed directly on the walls of the building or isolated by a drum. They are attached to the square base by means of triangular and curved pendentives.
Byzantine arches
The semicircular arch is an essential element of Byzantine architecture. The blind arch is frequently integrated as a decorative element of the walls. The open semicircular arch supports tall walls that do not need to be very thick. Arches parallel to the outer walls and repeated over several floors are common.
Therefore, there is no problem in leaving wide openings in the walls, and the Byzantine churches, with their many windows, are filled with natural light that underlines the spiritual symbolism present in all Byzantine art. The same arches give entrance to wide barrel vaults, often with edges.
Byzantine columns
They are decorative columns. They participate in the play of light and colors that takes place in Byzantine buildings. Many times they are colored marble. Because they do not support lintels, but arches in series, they require voluminous capitals. In these you will find all kinds of decorations, in particular, intricate plant motifs. The abacus also changes, adopting a trapezoidal shape, more convenient in arches.
In the typology of the temples, depending on the plan, there are many centralized ones, undoubtedly in accordance with the importance given to the dome, but the basilica and cruciform churches with equal sections are not inferior in number (ground plan of cross Greek ).
In almost all cases it is common for the temples, in addition to the body of the main nave, to have an atrium or narthex, of early Christian origin, and the presbytery preceded by iconostasis, so named because the painted icons were placed on this openwork enclosure.
The first Christian work, from the first third of the 6th century, is the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, in Constantinople (527-536), a building with a square central plan with an octagon in the center covered by a half-covered dome on eight pillars and a nave in your enviroment. At this same time in the first half of the 5th century, the rectangular church with two domes of Santa Paz or Santa Irene, also in Constantinople, corresponds.
Also important was the missing Church of the Holy Apostles of Constantinople, projected as an imperial mausoleum and inspired by the church of Saint John of Ephesus, offering a model of a Greek cross plan with five domes widely imitated throughout the Byzantine world, for example in the famous Byzantine Church of San Marcos in Venice, built in the 11th century.
Constantinople was not the only important focus in this first Golden Age of Byzantium, it is necessary to remember the nucleus of Ravenna (capital of the Byzantine Empire in the West from the 6th to the 8th century ), the western exarchate located in the northeast of the peninsula Italian, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, next to Venice.
The Byzantine churches of Ravenna present two models: one of clear Constantinopolitan inspiration related to the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, that of the Church of San Vital in Ravenna (538-547), in which, like its model, it is from octagonal plan with a surrounding nave between the high pillars and with a semicircular extension at the chevet, in front of the apse of the presbytery; in the feet it has a wide atrium with lateral towers.
In this church of San Vital the most characteristic features of the stylistics in medieval architecture of the West are already foreshadowed, especially in those that refer to the vertical direction of the construction to the detriment of the previous horizontality. The other Byzantine churches of Ravenna have early Christian influence due to their basilical structure with a flat roof. They are the church of San Apolinar in Classe and the church of San Apolinar il Nuevo, both from the first half of the 5th century and with outstanding mosaics.
In the Second Golden Age, churches with a Greek cross plan dominated, covered with domes raised on a drum and with a prominent wavy cornice at the outer base. This new type of church is reflected in the defunct church of Nea in Constantinople (881), built by Basil I. To this same compositional scheme corresponds the cathedral of Athens, the church of the Daphni monastery, which uses horns instead of pendentives, and the monastic complexes of Mount Athos in Greece.
In Italy, the aforementioned Basilica of San Marcos in Venice stands out, from the year 1063, a Greek cross plan inscribed in a rectangle and covered with five domes on a drum, one on the transept and four on the arms of the cross, resembling in its structure to the defunct Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. In this Second Golden Age, Byzantine art spread to the Russian area of Armenia, in Kiew the church of Hagia Sophia was built in the year 1017, faithfully following the influences of the architecture of Constantinople, it was structured in a basilica form of five finished naves in the apses, in Novgorod the churches of San Jorge and Santa Sofía, both of central plant rise.
During the Third Golden Age, between the 13th and 15th centuries, Byzantine art continued to spread throughout Europe and Russia, predominantly church floors covered by domed domes on circular or polygonal drums. To this stage correspond in Greece the church of the Holy Apostles of Salonica, from the 14th century, the church of Mystras, in the Peloponnese, and some monasteries on Mount Athos.
Likewise, Byzantine temples are multiplying through the Danube valleys, through Romania and Bulgaria, reaching the Russian lands of Moscow where the Kremlin’s Assumption Cathedral stands out, in Red Square, built in the time of Ivan the Terrible ( 1555 – 1560 ), whose five domes, the tallest and slender in the transept and another four located at the angles that form the arms of the cross, stand out for their coloration, for the high drums and for their characteristic bulbous profiles.
Byzantine figurative arts
Byzantine painting and mosaics, more than their sculpture, have had a singular importance in the history of forms of plastic representation, since they have served as a bridge to Eastern Christian models towards Europe, as well as to the transmission of forms classical when in the West it had disappeared due to the action of the barbarian peoples, and finally, Byzantine art has been the main source in the fixation of Western iconography.
Byzantine sculpture
Byzantine sculpture is of two types: huge or small, and in any case, scarce. Contrary to Roman tradition, he cares little about portraits. The sculptures are frontal, hieratic and formal. The eyes, large and looking upwards, pretend to convey transcendental concerns.
The large statues are made of stone ( marble , etc.). The small ones are reliefs organized in portable diptychs made of ivory .
Byzantine sculptural art was the culmination of early Christian art, maintaining its techniques and aesthetics of progressive departure from classical qualities: greater rigidity, the repetition of stereotyped models, the preference of bas-relief to works with a round shape and the use of materials rich (ivory) that provide small pieces, are the most prominent characters of the Byzantine statuary of the first stage.
After the systematic destruction of the iconoclastic period there is a return to the cult of images, but in order not to fall into idolatry and under the influence of the new Islamic currents, the human figure disappears in the exempt statuary.
The most outstanding works are the ornamental work on the capitals with plant and animal motifs faced such as those of San Vital de Ravenna or the sarcophagi of the same city in which the themes of the Good Shepherd are represented.
But the capital works of Byzantine sculpture are the small works, diptychs and boxes, carved in ivory, highlighting the Barberini diptych, from the Louvre Museum, from the 5th century, or the famous Chair of Bishop Maximiano, in Ravenna, carved around the year 533 on ivory plates with meticulous work.
Byzantine mosaic and painting
Byzantine mosaics
Byzantine mosaics, abundant and exuberant of light and color, perform didactic and above all symbolic functions. As in late Roman art, the technique adopted is the opus tesselatum, which mixes stones and colored glass.
A marked preference is now given to gold and rigid symbolism is instituted for the other colors (purple of the emperors and of the risen Christ, for example). Mosaics cover the interior walls and domes. In the walls the space is symbolically divided into three parts: lower for terrestrial representations, middle for transitional representations and upper for sky.
The elements included follow strict canons that dignify the lives of emperors and religious figures. The taste for the richness and the ornamental sumptuousness of Byzantine art, eminently aulic, required the covering of the walls of its temples with mosaics, not only to hide the poverty of the materials used, but also as a means to express religiosity and religion. semi-divine character of imperial power ( Cesaropapism ).
From the First Golden Age, the most important set is that of Ravenna, which connects with the early Christian mosaics of the 5th century: in the churches of San Apolinar Nuevo and San Apolinar in Clase their upper walls are covered with mosaics that represent, in the first a processional procession, led by the Magi , towards the Theotokos or Mother of God, in the second, in the apse, a celestial vision is shown in which Saint Apollinaris (from Ravenna) leads a flock.
The masterpiece of museum art is undoubtedly the set of mosaics of San Vital de Ravenna, composed around the year 547, and in which various biblical themes are represented and on the sides of the apse the groups of Justinian I and of his wife Teodora with their respective entourage.
With the iconoclastic struggle over, the middle of the 9th century is when the Byzantine aesthetic and its iconography were truly configured. A new Golden Age will emerge, the second, which will mean the heyday of the figurative arts, radiating its influences to Islamic art, then in formation, and the nascent European Romanesque art.
The figures show a certain rigidity and monotony, but very expressive in their symbolism, with evident disregard for nature and spatial laws; they are elongated and with an aspect of certain dehumanization.
The new iconographic types are symbolically adapted, according to a predetermined program ( Hermeneia ), to the different parts of the temple: the Pantocrator (Christ in Majesty blessing) on the dome, the Tetramorphs (four evangelists) on the pendentives, the Virgin in the apse , saints and evangelical themes on the walls of the ships.
The most repeated models are the figures of Christ with a split beard and mature age (Syriac model) and of the Virgin who appears under various invocations ( Kyriotissa or throne of the Lord in which she holds the Child on her legs, as if it were a throne ; Hodighitria , standing with the Child on the left arm while with the right pointing to Jesus as the way of salvation – it is the model developed in the Gothic -; the Theotokos , or Mother of God, offers the Child a fruit or a flower; the Blachernitissa or Platytera with an aureole on the belly in which the Child appears indicating the Virgin’s motherhood).
Byzantine painting
Other very repeated themes are the Déesis or group formed by Christ with the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, as intercessors, and those dedicated to the twelve liturgical festivals of the year, among which the Anastasis or Descent of Christ to Limbo, the Transit of the Virgin, the Vision of Manré, that is, the appearance of the three angels to Abraham, symbolizing the Trinity.
During the Third Golden Age the mosaic continued in use until the 13th century, at this time the iconography of the “Marian” cycles, of saints and evangelicals, is enriched, at the same time, due to Italian influences, greater freedom is appreciated compositional and an evident mannerism in the stylizations.
Once the mosaics of Constantinople were destroyed, the only references left are those of San Marcos in Venice, with abundant use of gilding that will exert a marked influence on the Gothic works of Cimabue, Duccio and other Italian painters.
Byzantine painting
The painting replaces the mosaic in this Third Era, counting on the precedent of the interesting groups of cave churches of Cappadocia, in Asia Minor.
The Russian workshops in Novgorod and Moscow are important, where Theophanos the Greek, fresco artist and panel painter in the 14th century works and in the following century the Virgin of Vladimir (Moscow) and the monk Andrés Rublev or Rubliov especially stand out as masterpieces Through its icon of the Trinity, this 15th century icon is considered the most important Byzantine icon of the Russian school, it represents the Trinity through the biblical scene called the vision of Manré , that is, three angels that appear to the patriarch Abraham.
It is characterized by the melancholic air, of intense spirituality, in which the angel in the center, with a red robe, is believed to represent Christ with a tree in the background; the one on the left represents God the Father and the one on the right the Holy Spirit. The perspective is typical of the Byzantine type, that is to say, inverse, opening the lines as they move away from the viewer’s eyes.
Somewhat later are the Venetian and Cretan schools where Andrea Riccio de Candia stood out, who is credited with creating the famous icon of the Virgin of Perpetual Help.
Icon painting has continued to be maintained throughout the Modern Age, taking as an aesthetic reference the characters of classical Byzantine painting, which is imposed on Italian influences.
The most complete icon collections are in the Tretyakov gallery in Moscow, in the Puskin museum in Leningrad, in the Sofia Cathedral (Bulgaria) and in the “La Casa Grande” icon museum in Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid). In the Cathedral of Santa María and San Julián de Cuenca is the diptych of the despots of Epirus corresponding to the Yugoslav school.
At the same time, the production of miniatures for the purple codices, named for the use of purple backgrounds, is being developed. From the first period is the Vienna Genesis, from the 5th century, the Rábula and Rossano evangeliaries, both from the following century.
In the following stages, the psalteries stood out with abundant representations throughout the page or in the margins full of narrative meaning. The Menologio de Basilio II (Vatican Library) and the treatise on Hunting by Oppiano (Paris) stand out.
In the sumptuary arts they excelled thanks to the Byzantine courtly atmosphere.
Textile work was inspired by Sassanid patterns (motifs enclosed in circles); in goldsmithing, the use of enamels on precious metals stands out, following the technique of partitioning or alveolation of Germanic origin, in which the colors are separated by gold filaments. The masterpiece of goldsmithing is the Pala de Oro, San Marcos in Venice or the enameled icon of San Miguel from the same temple.
Also noteworthy are the so-called Christ Pantocrator , which are figures of Jesus surrounded by an aura of white light (which symbolizes purity), and stands with his legs crossed. In one of his hands he has the index finger raised and in the other hand the Holy Scriptures. It is located inside an almentra (that is, an ovoid drawing) and is surrounded by the four evangelists or ocepas , one in each corner. This image denotes fear, command and even fear. We can highlight the Pantocrator of the Museum of Saint Sophia in Constantinople.
