Introduction to Byzantine Art
T
oday Byzantine art, and more generally Byzantine culture, occupy a special niche in the world history of art and form a precious and integral part of the culture of Europe. The centuries-long bondage into which it Fig. 83. Cathedral of Agia Sofia, was reduced after the fall in 1453 of the “Royal city of cities”, of Constantinople. the “City of Cities”, that is to say, of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, shrouded the Byzantine art of the eastern Orthodox Roman state in a veil of darkness and oblivion. The brilliant art that had developed throughout the eastern Mediterranean, from Italy to Syria, from the Hellespont and distant Russia to Cyprus and Egypt, was misunderstood in the West to such a degree that philosophers and historians mentioned it in condescending terms. Moreover, the terms ‘Byzantium’, ‘Byzantine art’ and ‘Byzantine culture’ are clearly notions of 17th century historians. It is worth pointing out that never did the inhabitants of the eastern Roman Orthodox Empire call themselves ‘Byzantines’ nor their civilisation ‘Byzantine’. ‘Byzantium’ was the Christianised and Hellenised Roman Empire of the East. The heart of this empire, from the day of its founding on 8 November, 324 A.D., and especially after its formal inauguration on 11 May, 330 A.D., until its fall at the hands of the Turks on 29 May, 1453 A.D., was Constantinople. This city was the ‘New Rome’, the ‘City’, ‘the Queen of Cities’, the seat of the Byzantine emperor and capital of the Hellenised Eastern Roman state. Not only was it the breakwater to successive waves of barbarian tribes for a thousand years - paying a heavy price for the salvation of Europe - but also the centre and epicentre of Byzantine art. All the latter’s achievements originated in this City: movable icons, mosaics, wall paintings, manuscripts, miniatures, architecture; and they spread forth in concentric circles to the extremities of the immense empire.
Fig. 84. Sketch of a Byzantine church and cupola. A circle inscribed within a square.
With the Orthodox faith as a bonding link, Byzantine art developed in the Hellenised east as a continuation of the Greek and Hellenistic art of the region. It is only as a continuation of Hellenistic, and by extension ancient Greek, art that the art of Byzantium can be understood. The fact that Christianity prevailed merely gave new subject-matter to the art of the east, and it is that art which we call ‘Byzantine’. During the first centuries, from the 3rd to the 7th, Byzantine art is basically the culmination of ancient Greek and Roman art. The crisis of iconomachy, which lasted nearly a century, from 726 to 843 A.D., was the most decisive theological battle ever waged over the veneration and worship of icons. With the restoration of icons by the 6th Ecumenical Council convened in Nicaea in 787 A.D., in
fact it was Orthodoxy itself that was preserved. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the Orthodox Church is the Church of icons. After iconomachy, and until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Byzantine art can show a succession of high points, producing unsurpassable works of art: the mosaics of the country’s Cathedral church - the mosaics adorning Agia Sofia in Constantinople; the wall-paintings of Manuel Panselinou in the ‘Protato’, or executive seat, of Mount Athos; the manuscript miniatures of incomparable technique produced by imperial and monastic workshops; the moveable icons, especially those in Sinai and Mount Athos; but also works of art of all kinds within the entire jurisdiction of the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine art was, and will always remain, one that expresses the incarnation of God through Jesus Christ. It is a theological art, never limiting itself to merely religious or worldly art. Employing simple expressive methods, it attempted to depict the eternal, that beyond the senses, beyond even the mind and logic itself. All the manifestations of Byzantine art – in architecture, painting, icons, miniatures and miniature art – have as their sole aim to render that which happens beyond the tangible world, to raise man up to the heavens and bring heaven to earth. The Orthodox Church ‘theologises’, that is, it interprets the divine word through the ‘sacraments’ of the arts, architecture and painting. Cyprus was an integral part of the Byzantine Empire for many centuries, but never was deprived of its participation in Byzantine heritage, even during the interminable years of foreign enslavement beginning in 1191 A.D. with its conquest by the Latin Crusaders and lasting until the end of the Turkish occupation in 1878. Cyprus, a small island in the eastern Mediterranean and a far-flung outpost of the Byzantine Angelic Hymns, world, can show superb examples of Byzantine art: the from the skies above. early Christian mosaics in the Church of Panagia Angeloktisti (‘built by angels’) in Kiti village; the mosaics of Panagia of Kanakaria; 12th century wall-paintings of unparalleled beauty from Asinou, Lagoudera, the Hermitage of Agios Neofytos and of Agios Ioannis Chrysostomou in Koutsoventis; the wall-paintings from the time of Frankish rule and Venetian occupation that adorn numerous churches on the island; the great number of movable icons that make up a part of the entire Byzantine heritage, a heritage that today is the foundation of European culture. This island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, with its own distinct world that is both great and small at the same time, participates in this European heritage with its centuries-long Byzantine Fig. 86. Mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel from the Church of Panagia tradition and through its Byzantine art. Angeloktisti in Kiti. Fig. 85. Perspective – the interior of a Byzantine church.
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