aesthetic shifts in late antique art: abstraction, dematerialization, and two-dimensionality Slobodan C´urcˇic´ History of art as a discipline was born in Florence during the 15th century on the coattails of a new artistic tradition known as the Renaissance. The new art and its name, meaning “rebirth,” grew upon a broad ideological foundation aimed at reviving the artistic traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. Accordingly, the Middle Ages, the period between antiquity and the Renaissance, came to be viewed as an age of general decline in the arts. Thus, already three centuries before Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), the developments that took place between ancient Roman civilization and that of “pre-modern” Europe were dismissed by the Renaissance ideologues as products of an age dominated by the uncivilized “barbarians,” peoples originally living outside the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Their invasions of the Roman territories, starting in the 3rd century, contributed to the decline of the empire and eventually led to the total collapse of its western half. The “barbarian” order brought with it a new art whose accomplishments were perceived by the Renaissance elite as decadent failures. Thus, a lasting dismissive judgment of the artistic heritage of the Middle Ages was cast, while the notion of Art was confidently applied only to the artistic tradition associated with antiquity and its post-medieval “rebirth.” As Peter Brown points out in his historical introductory essay, this negative attitude gradually began to change only during the decades between the two world wars. New views of history and history of art began to emerge, and the “end of antiquity” eventually ceased to be viewed as an “end.” Recognized instead, as a new era in its own right, Late Antiquity emerged from a decreed “darkness” as a genuine and vibrant prolongation of the Greco-Roman cultural tradition couched within the Christian framework. As this exhibition of Late Antique art attests, the epoch, in Peter Brown’s words “was the last and the most open of the great ages of antiquity.” The goal of this essay is to highlight the main shifts in aesthetic principles that distinguish the art of Late Antiquity (ca. 200–ca. 700) within the context of the Roman Empire after ca. 500, also known as the Byzantine Empire. Largely, though not exclusively, the art in question is associated with Christianity, the new official religion of the Roman Empire after 313. In part reliant on older established aesthetic principles, but in part having also rejected them, Late Antique art introduced new principles, in keeping with the religious objectives and tenets of the new era. The shaping of early Christian understanding of the role of art was a long process marked by protracted, contentious debates. Inasmuch as the breakdown of ancient aesthetics and ancient principles in art has been associated with the rise of Christianity, it must be stressed that such a formulaic equation is inadequate and ultimately misleading. The process, as old as Christianity itself, actually began outside the Christian frame
work. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher, active during the first half of the 1st century, was one of the great thinkers whose outlook focused on the reconciliation of the ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman philosophical traditions. In the realm of aesthetics, he equated beauty in art with natural beauty. However—in what to us may seem a paradox— “natural” for Philo did not include the human body, which he referred to as the source of all “human misfortunes,” a “horrible prison” in which the human soul languishes incarcerated. In contrast to natural beauty, which he believed was stable (durable), the human body, and therefore beauty associated with humans was, in his view, ephemeral. And so, according to Philo, the quest of permanent beauty is what sets a wise man on the path of truth. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215), referred to by some as the first Christian scholar, in some ways followed in the footsteps of Philo by refining the concept of “true beauty” as the testimony of “divine wisdom.” Clement was responsible for the formulation of the general structural principle of the origins of the universe. According to his concept, it was the “archetype,” or “divinity” (he avoids the word God), that generated a sequence of imprinted images. “Image” in Clement’s way of thinking refers to both visible and invisible entities. The first imprint of the archetype, according to Clement, is Logos, the invisible image of the archetype. The next imprint is Jesus Christ, in whom both the invisible and the visible are conflated in a unique manner. Human beings constitute the next order of this sequence of “imprints.” Man, having been imprinted with Christ’s own image, has the potential, but also an obligation, to strive for spiritual perfection. The last, fourth order of imprints comprises man-made images. According to Clement, these are farthest removed from the archetype and therefore from truth itself. Clement’s hierarchic concept of the emanation and the meaning of images laid the groundwork for future Christian thinkers. Issues inherent in these matters were still actively debated during the 4th century by—among others—St. Athanasios of Alexandria and St. Gregory of Nyssa. The process continued through most of the 5th century, its final synthesis—so far as the aesthetic principles in Byzantine art are concerned—taking place about 500 in the work of an unknown author remembered only as Pseudo-Dionysios the Areopagite. It is ironic that the foundations of Byzantine aesthetic thinking, by virtue of an historical fluke, are associated with the theoretical work of a man whose name we do not know. Of marginal significance in central theological disputes of his time, Pseudo-Dionysios was of major importance on account of his sharpening of principles that were to become the foundation stone of Byzantine as well as Western medieval aesthetics. For Pseudo-Dionysios, the broadest philosophical-religious category was the symbol (το σu’μβολον), an overarching concept that included the meaning not only of “picture,” “sign,” “representation,” and “beauty,” but also of the human body and its parts (at times signifying spiritual or divine powers)—and beyond these also—light, aroma, liturgical functions, and, above all, the Eucharist. Thus, according to PseudoDionysios, the preeminent role of any symbol is in its inherent
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