Christian art was born in the catacombs; driven underground by the
pagan state, it was a symbolic art: its frescoes never sought to depict
historical events, but through the mystic signs which the Greek cities of
the Near East had created--the East whence Christianity had sprung--it
interpreted to itself its message of cheer, its "good spell" of salvation.
Thus from this present evil world the despised sect turned for confidence
and encouragement to the world of the spirit. The Alexandrian motives of
the anchor and the dove received a new meaning. Hermes with the ram on
his shoulder became the Good Shepherd bearing the lost sheep, while Psyche
and Orantes praying amidst the flowers of Paradise were figures of the
sure and certain hope of the soul's immortality. With the victory of the
persecuted Galilaeans in the fourth century art rose, like Demeter, from
the underworld to deck the triumph of Christianity. Everywhere under
royal favor churches came into being, as though by magic, and for their
embellishment the old symbolism seemed too slight, too wistful. The
winter was past, and spring called for pageantry.
In the first centuries of our era pagan Rome had created out of
Hellenistic art an imperial art, realistic and monumental, stamped with
the Roman mark, spreading through the provinces with the universalism of
her Empire: and as the City of Rome decayed in the third century, and the
East, as we have seen, reasserted its supremacy, this imperial tradition
found in the East the color and the decorative skill in which to clothe
imperial pomp. To the fresco was added an extended use of the wall-mosaic,
an art working for broader and larger effects, with sharper outlines, an
art to be viewed at a distance, a spacious art, needing for its
development the cooperation of the architect. But the new capital was set
in Greek-speaking lands, and alongside of this Oriental art of decoration
and of color, Greek humanism and the great types of human beauty which
Hellenism had created still exercised a mighty influence. Constantinople
might be an upstart city without traditions, but it claimed for itself
thesplendor of the classical past: into it were collected not only the
sacred relics of the Christian faith, but also the masterpieces of the
pagan world. New Rome became a museum, an unmatched school of art.
A PICTURED HISTORY OF REDEMPTION
At the same time the Church had a great story to tell: she wished
to record with pride the heroism of the faithful departed and the loyalty
of the martyrs in face of torture and death. Not only so: the walls of
her sanctuaries should become for the illiterate converts an illustrated
Bible, a pictured history of redemption. Just when in East and West alike
a purely ornamental and decorative art seemed about to triumph, the
Christian Church, dropping her early prejudices, joined with the state in
accepting the legacy of Hellas, and by her influence preserved for the
world an art which could still express human personality with its depth of
religious and emotional sentiment. The Savior had assumed the form and
nature of man, and by so doing had given an untold value to human
individuality. The Church refused to rest content with ornament alone. In
that complex art of New Rome there was indeed room for all: for the
picturesque motives of the school of Alexandria--for nature with her vine
tendrils and her acanthus leaves, for pagan scenes of sport and
country-side, for animals and the games of naked children by the river,
for all the play of Hellenistic fancy: there was room for the Roman
tradition of processional pageantry, of pomp and power: room for the
lavish color and magnificence of Persian decoration and arabesque, and
room too for those types of human nobility that Greece had created, while
in architecture the Empire took what the East could give and raised it to
a new potency, until it flowered in the world wonder of Justinian's church
of the Holy Wisdom....
The Byzantine world drew from many wells, and at times it seems to
the historical student that art critics have hardly realized how
many-sided was the receptivity of theEastern Empire; New Rome borrowed
freely from other peoples, but yet, nowhere truer to the traditions of old
Rome than in this, set her own impress on that which she had borrowed,
until it took new form and shape under her hand.
Sancta Sophia, consecrated in 537, was five years in building, and
the whole Empire was put under contribution for Justinian's masterpiece.
Its architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus both came from
Asia Minor, and while from the East Constantinople might derive the cupola
and the decorative scheme of multi-colored marble, yet we may surely trace
Greek subtlety in the masterly use of the pendentive, whereby on a
rectangular basis the circular cupola might rise with such grace that it
appeared rather to be suspended from Heaven. God and man, contemporaries
felt, had cooperated in this marvellous building, for if from God came the
skill of the architects, it was the Emperor who had chosen them for the
creation of this building, alive in all its parts: for here Byzantine art,
scorning the dead weight of sheer mass, "sought in the play of thrusts a
new equilibrium."
In this First Golden Age of East Roman artistic achievement by the
side of a majestic symbolism which had replaced the simple imagery of the
catacombs (cf. S. Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna) mosaic elaborated the
splendor of a new historical realism, as in S. Vitale at Ravenna, and,
greatly daring, introduced new themes, such as the passion of Christ,
which an earlier age had hesitated to portray. At this period are formed
the types of sacred iconography, of Christ and the Virgin, of prophets and
apostles....
THE TRIUMPH OF THE SACRED IMAGE
The fire of persecution [of Iconoclasm] awoke the monks to fresh
vigor in religious painting. The miniature artists gained a new freedom:
they too became realists, and, interpreting biblical metaphors with a
literalism which is at times humorous, they appealed to the people with a
vigorous pictured polemic against the Iconoclasts. But the triumph of the
monk and of the sacred image had a double effect on Byzantine sacred art:
it tended to hallow those traditional forms which had been attacked, and
thus to perpetuate a fixed iconography, and it also strengthened monastic
influences: the monastery of Studius became the vigorous center of a
cloistral art....
But the outstanding feature of the period is the elaboration of
that iconography which from henceforth was to dominate Byzantine sacred
art. The issue of the Iconoclast controversy had been the triumph of
dogma, and the decoration of the Churches now became a systematic
exposition of the orthodox creed. In the narthex and the nave is pictured
the cycle of the great Christian festivals, and here are ranged the armies
of the faithful, victorycrowned--saints, monks, martyrs and bishops. From
the world of sense one passes into the sanctuary, where the institution of
the Eucharist typifies the greatest mystery of the Church Terrestrial:
thence the artist ascends to the apse figuring the celestial church, where
is enthroned the Mother of God "higher than the Heavens": finally, far
above in the main cupola of the church, the whole is dominated by the
Incarnate image of God, Christ the Lord of all, combining in his
Consubstantial Person the Divine Son and the Ancient of Days Who, as even
iconodules were prepared to allow, could not be represented by the hands
of mortals. Such is the supreme expression of the heart of the Church of
the Seven Councils....
THE SECRET LIES IN A RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM
The civil art of East Rome is almost entirely lost to us, but much
of what was most characteristic of the Byzantine Empire--the art of the
Church--remains. The supreme artistic achievement of Constantinople is
its architecture with its glorious sense of color in wall mosaic and
marble revetment, and next to this its exquisite technical perfection in
what must be called the "minor" arts: ivory-- carving and miniature
painting, enamel work and the production of fabric designs. Byzantine art
has often been scorned as decadent and lifeless; but of recent years there
has been manifest a growing appreciation of its permanent value and
significance.
Why does the beauty of this art still move us? How came it to
transcend the limitations of its ancestry--the somewhat pompous heaviness
of Roman imperial art, the triviality of Hellenistic art, the monotony of
the art of the East? The secret surely lies in a religious enthusiasm
which did not exhaust itself either in asceticism or dogma, but spent its
reserves of energy in the expression of beauty--in the purity of line and
color. Retaining his Hellenic legacy of an art that was not confined to a
decorative symbolism, inheriting those majestic types which had early
become traditional in the iconography of the Eastern Church, the Byzantine
was never distracted by his search for originality of theme, never tempted
to think that in mere verisimilitude lay the artist's goal--he was free to
create the imperishable forms of his ecstatic vision. And thus before the
masterpieces of that creative genius we today are conscious not primarily
of any technical achievement, but rather of a religious emotion which art
has immortalized. The East Roman ascetic, driven by his enthusiasm into
the wilderness, craved a calm of soul which was not of this world's
giving; its fruits: joy, courage, power; that which the anchorite often
failed to win from his desert solitude the artist found in beauty, for at
the heart of that passion which inspired Byzantine art there is peace.
from The Byzantine Empire (1925), Ch XI.
Taken from the Fall 1993 issue of "The Dawson Newsletter." For
subscriptions send $8.00 to "The Dawson Newsletter", P.O. Box 332,
Fayetteville, AR 72702. John J. Mulloy, Editor
