RA Magazine Autumn 2008

Issue Number: 100

Professor Cyril Mango, Byzantium scholar, paints the historical backdrop to the once-neglected art of the period

Among the various strands of Byzantium’s legacy, it is its art that appeals most directly to the modern observer. But that has not always been so. Until the first half of the nineteenth century, the art of what was the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages was either ignored or treated with condescension for being ‘gothick’; to
its detractors, this often-glittering legacy lay outside the genuine classical canon.

If one were to pick a symbolic date that heralded a change in European taste in this respect, it would be 1847-9, which witnessed, in the glare of media coverage, the restoration of the mosque of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople - modern-day Istanbul - by the Fossati brothers. Soon after, the novelist and poet Théophile Gautier declared that ‘Byzantine architecture is certainly the style necessary for Catholicism. Even Gothic architecture, whatever its religious value, is not so perfectly adapted to this object’.

If the initial reassessment was focused on architecture, it was because little was known at the time of Byzantine painting and mosaics, save for some monuments in Italy (Ravenna, Venice, Norman Sicily) and illuminated manuscripts preserved in Western libraries. The discovery of Byzantine pictorial arts was largely an accomplishment of the twentieth century, and caused a shift of focus from Italy to the East, to lands formerly occupied by the Ottoman Empire or on its fringes.

As geographical horizons expanded, the question of definition naturally arose. What were the Byzantine Empire’s creative centres? When did the Byzantine period begin and when did it end? Visitors to this autumn’s Royal Academy exhibition will have some 300 objects, including icons, wall paintings, mosaics, ivories and pieces of metalwork to marvel at. Some have never been displayed in public before. Rarely can there have been a better opportunity to answer the fundamental question: what exactly do we mean by Byzantine art?

A reasonably uncontroversial answer (adopted in the forthcoming exhibition at the RA) would be that Byzantine art was that of the Christian Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople, also including monuments outside the Empire, but created under its direct cultural influence. So defined, the chronological limits would be AD330 (the ceremonial inauguration of Constantinople as the Second Rome) and 1453 (its fall to the Ottoman Turks). That makes for an unduly long time span, justified in constitutional terms by the nearly unbroken imperial succession from the First (306-37) to the Eleventh (1449-53) Constantine. It was by virtue of this continuity
that the Byzantine state claimed its legitimacy, its true Romanity, in contrast to the degradation of the Elder Rome, which had long ceased being the seat of an emperor. Ideology, however, is one thing, material culture is another.

To put Byzantine art into historical context, we need to carve the eleven-plus Byzantine centuries into more manageable segments. The first would be Early Byzantine, corresponding to what is now called Late Antiquity. For our present purpose, its dates would be 330-c.641. The Early Byzantine Empire ruled the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean basin and, at times, considerable portions of the western half as well. It was made up of a multitude of cities, some of which, such as Alexandria and Antioch, had older and more illustrious traditions of culture than upstart Constantinople. While maintaining these, basically pagan, traditions, the Early Byzantine Empire saw the definitive triumph of Christianity, but failed to impose it in the form of a single orthodoxy. In the artistic sphere, it created a Christian iconography representing the biblical story and the martyrdom of saints, often expressed in a style of pompous grandeur borrowed from the imperial sphere.

The near collapse of the Early Byzantine Empire was followed by a Dark Age (641-c.850) that witnessed a de-urbanisation of the provinces and a drastic reduction of territory, leaving Constantinople as the only sizeable city. Dominated by a grim struggle for survival, this period naturally produced little art. But, by about 850, the worst threats had been averted. Byzantium went on the offensive, both against the Muslims in Asia Minor and the Bulgars and Slavs in the Balkan peninsula, scoring one long-lasting achievement, namely, the conversion to Orthodox Christianity of Bulgaria, Serbia and, a little later, Kievan Russia.

The medieval Byzantine Empire reached its apogee by 1025, but, 50 years later, suffered a major setback: the loss of most of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks. By the time of the First Crusade, it was again on the point of collapse, but managed to survive, not without some glory, for another 100 years. In the 1180s, it started to fragment at the edges. In 1204, Constantinople fell, without putting up any serious resistance, to the knights of the Fourth Crusade.

The final phase of Byzantine history - the formation of several Greek statelets ‘in exile’, the recovery of Constantinople in 1261 and its precarious survival until 1453 in the face of mounting Ottoman aggression - forms a tale of infinite complexity that is of regional rather than international interest. Unexpectedly, this period produced an abundant artistic activity in all lands of Orthodox faith.

Such, in briefest outline, was the history of the Byzantine Empire against which its art must be viewed. Not surprisingly, the roots of that art lay in the urban centres of the eastern Mediterranean in the Late Antique period. Whereas the adoption of Christianity as the state-sponsored religion cannot be said to have favoured a particular artistic agenda, the elaboration of a Christian iconography at that time naturally made use of current formulas and conventions that became a perennial feature of Byzantine pictorial art - draped figures in the antique fashion, landscape settings, personifications of moral qualities, cities and rivers, festooned altars, etc. That is what we have in mind when we speak of its Hellenistic origins.

The sixth century saw a change in taste, certainly in architecture and decoration. The timber-roofed basilica went progressively out of fashion. So did the horizontal architrave, the tessellated pavement and the classical orders - the Ionic and the ever-popular Corinthian. Modelling was replaced by undercut tracery. A good example is provided by the capitals of Hagia Sophia, which, in the words of Edward Gibbon, ‘every order of architecture disclaims’.

In the view of many scholars, the sixth century also witnessed a proliferation of portrait panels depicting Christian saints. That icons had existed earlier can hardly be doubted, but it is certainly the case that known instances of excessive devotion paid to them and of miracles performed by them multiplied during the period
in question.

For a long time, the Church remained unconcerned. When it reacted, it was to rule, at the so-called Quinisext Council, held in Constantinople in 692, that Christ ought to be represented in human form so as to express the plenitude or completeness of his incarnation, not in the symbolic guise of a lamb. The reaction that followed - we call it iconoclasm - was precipitated, in the first instance, by political and military disasters. Indeed, it was evident that the Christians were being cruelly punished by the Almighty. What sin had they committed?

Emperor Leo III, who had broken up the siege of Constantinople by the Arabs (717-8), became convinced that the Christians, like the Israelites of old, had fallen into idolatry. In 730, he banned the manufacture and veneration of icons. The ban remained in force until 787, when it was repealed by the Second Council of Nicaea, but reintroduced between 815 and 842.

What had started as a disciplinary measure soon spilled into the domain of theology. The outcome of a lengthy polemic conducted entirely in theological terms and the eventual victory of the ‘iconophiles’ was that icons were sacralised. It was conceded that the worship accorded to them was ‘relative’ or, as we would say ‘second degree’, but, by partaking of the ‘person’ of the model (say, Christ or the Virgin Mary), they served as direct intermediaries. Prayers addressed to them were conveyed to the model (the archetype). The validity of iconographic formulas authenticated by accompanying inscriptions was further confirmed by visions and dreams in which saints manifested themselves in the form in which they were depicted. It followed that iconographic types sanctioned by tradition were sacrosanct and the painter’s imagination was denied to him - he was merely the executant of received schemata.

The rulings of Nicaea II, though questionable on several counts, remained unchallenged for the duration of the Byzantine period. To the extent that medieval Byzantine art was very largely religious, it may be described as an art of reproduction rather than creation. Even so, without departing from the constraints laid upon it, it underwent a stylistic development that enables us, not always with complete assurance, to date works that are almost invariably anonymous and undated.

We may thus isolate, in the second half of the ninth and in the tenth centuries, what has been called a ‘Macedonian Renaissance’ (after the so-called Macedonian dynasty inaugurated in 867 by Basil I), i.e. a return to Late Antique models, mostly in biblical illustration; a more abstract phase in the eleventh century, veering again at its close towards classicism, as in the mosaics of Daphni, near Athens; a highly convoluted ‘baroque’ phase at the end of the twelfth century; and, most easily recognisable, even to the untrained eye, a late Byzantine or ‘Palaeologan’ style that delights in multi-figure narrative compositions, rocky landscapes and fragmented perspective.

Even at its most abstract and ornamental, Byzantine art never severed entirely its antique roots. In the eyes of some critics, its highest achievements are those that are most classical, such as the famous tenth-century Paris Psalter (held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris) or the unusual horizontal format scroll known as the Joshua Roll (held in the Vatican) - both reproducing Late Antique models.

To others, the essence of Byzantine art lies, on the contrary, in its rejection of naturalism, the two-dimensionality of the icons, its other-worldly gold backgrounds, its disregard of perspective and cast shadows - in short, in what is seen as its spirituality. Both reactions are the product of modern fashion: traditional academicism on the one hand, twentieth-century avant-garde on the other. The Byzantines themselves did not think in those terms. To the extent that they expressed any aesthetic judgments, they appear to have regarded their own pictorial art as being highly true to nature.

The Royal Academy show, which includes a wide range of Byzantine artefacts, many of them little known, offers visitors the opportunity to form their own judgment. They will certainly be dazzled by the richness of materials - gold, precious stones, enamel, ivory - put at the service of imperial grandeur and religious devotion. At the same time, they may recognise an artistic idiom that is both part of our European tradition (since ultimately derived from the same source), yet sufficiently distinctive to appear exotic.

RA Magazine Autumn 2008

Professor Cyril Mango, Byzantium scholar, paints the historical backdrop to the once-neglected art of the period

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RA Magazine Summer 2008