Download PDF | Grabar Andre_The art of the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine Art in the Middle Ages (Art of the World), 1967.
225 Pages
THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK
The aim of this book is to present and study Byzantine medieval art, the origins of which go back to the Iconoclasts (762-843), and which in principle stops with the fall of the East Christian Empire and the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1543. It is evident that these limits are somewhat theoretical. There were, before the year 726, works of Byzantine art which heralded the Middle Ages — and the disappearance of the Byzantine state in 1453 did not mean that at that date all artistic activity faithful to the Byzantine tradition ceased. We shall often be writing of the Byzantine traditions established before the Iconoclast period which maintained and renewed themselves during the period we are to study.
It seems useful to state from the beginning that the history of Byzantine art during the period which stretches from the end of antiquity to the eve of modern times presents a far greater continuity than the history of Western art during the same period. We will explain later the reasons for this continuity. Nevertheless in Byzantium, as in the West, art as practised during the Middle Ages had its own characteristics, which it is useful and fair to separate from those of the art which was practised previously — between the reign of Constantine, who founded Constantinople in 330, and the beginnings of the Iconoclast crisis (330-726). It is entirely to medieval art that we are going to devote ourselves, re- turning to its origins only where it may help us to a better understanding of medieval Byzantine works and the artistic life of Constantinople during the Middle Ages.
When one tries to imagine the territory over which the artistic works of the Byzantines stretched during the period we are studying, one naturally thinks of Constantinople, of Greece with its islands, and of the whole of the Mediterranean provinces around the capital on the Bosphorus. This summary description of the area in which Byzantine artists were active is not false, but it requires more precise definition. One must above all remember the essential fact that Byzantine territory itself and that of the area it influenced in mattersof art and culture did not remain the same between 726 and 1453.From the end of antiquity to the period of the foundation ofConstantinople, and again in the sixth century under Justinian andhis successors, the art which was to remain the basis of Byzantineart was practised, with fairly evident regional differences, in thewhole eastern half of the Roman Empire, which then stretched asfar as the Euphrates and upper Mesopotamia, and as far as theNubian desert in Egypt. The Arab conquest in the seventh centuryremoved Egypt, Syria and a part ofAsia Minor so that the ByzantineEmpire was reduced by halfand came to be concentrated around theGreek lands. It then became definitely hellenized and kept to thevery end that ethnic and cultural predominance of things Greek,tothe detriment of the Latin element which the Roman conquests hadestablished everywhere around the Mediterranean. It also dis-carded the Semitic elements which, after the annexation of thecountries of the Levant by Rome, had played an active part in thedevelopment of the empire. While the Arabs seized from Byzantium her rich provinces in theLevant, the Lombards reduced her Italian possessions and the Bulgars crossed the Danube and settled in the north-eastern Balkans,where Slav infiltration spread progressively, reaching the shores ofSalonika (Thessalonica) and the core of the oldest Greek provinces.At times Arabs, Khazars, and Bulgarians ventured as far as thegates of Constantinople and endangered the very existence of theByzantine state.
The historical role of the emperors ofthe eighth andthe beginning of the ninth centuries was to have stopped these in-vasions, and to have ensured the survival of the Christian empireofByzantium. The attack against images which they launched at thesame time, undoubtedly with military reasons in mind (in ordertoensure the active participation of the Christians of eastern AsiaMinor — a frontier district, where the fate of the empire wasatstake), earned them the title of Iconoclasts. This sobriquet, althougha questionable one if we take into consideration the whole of theirwork, does however describe one particular aspect of their reign —their religious and artistic activities. We shall return to this point,only observing in passing their opposition as emperors to images an attitude taken up in defence of Byzantine territory at the period when it was most reduced. Their military successes, which were continued and increased during the rule of the Amorian (820-867) and particularly the Macedonian dynasty (867-1056), gave back to Byzantium a political stability which she was losing, and at the same time remarkable economic strength and great international prestige.
For several centuries the empire of Constantinople again became the most important power in the Mediterranean world; but its territory was not significantly increased as compared with the Iconoclast period. There were of course brilliant reconquests in the tenth century7 , some temporary, others permanent, in the direction of Armenia, Syria and even Palestine, under Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces, and other reconquests at the beginning of the eleventh century towards Bulgaria, Dalmatia and even southern Italy. But these territorial extensions of the empire — which play a part in the history of art through Byzantine institutions in these territories being brought back to the mother country — were not to be maintained. A terrible defeat of the Byzantine armies by the Turks in 1071 and the development of the Slav kingdoms in the Balkans in the twelfth century prevented Byzantium from holding on to them. So one can say that, from the fall of the Iconoclasts (843) to the end of the twelfth century, the area of Byzantine expansion remained essentially the same. Roughly speaking, it included on one hand all the territory between Dalmatia and the lower Danube, and on the other the southern extremity of the Greek archipelago, as well as the western part of Asia Minor and its coastal regions, up to and including Trebizond in the north and Antioch in the south. During the twelfth century the territorial problems of the Byzantine state became complicated by frequent campaigns against the Serbian and particularly Norman kings, and by the Crusaders crossing and sometimes fighting their way through the countries of the Byzantine empire.
They even carved out for themselves fiefs in the Antioch area, whereas the Armenian princes, who had taken refuge from the Turks, made of the Byzantine province of Cilicia a 'little Armenia'. But for the study of art the passage to and fro of foreign armies, the political insecurity, and the more or less short lived changes in sovereignty which they brought about in oneorother of the frontier provinces, are of little importance. For in allthese territories within the area just described, quite independentlyof the politico-geographical fluctuations, it was the same Byzantineart that was invariably practised, whether it was executed by theByzantines themselves or by those who tried, and often succeeded,in displacing them politically from these provinces. In other words, from the point of view of artistic geography, Byzantium enjoyed such a true predominance in culture and in technicalskills, and such prestige in the artistic field, that the area of itsartistic expansion spread constantly beyond the frontiers of theByzantine state. The main agents of this expansion were the GreekChristians established in foreign countries — and the foreignChristians converted by Byzantine missions. This was the case inSyria, Armenia and southern Italy on one hand, and in Georgia andthe Slav countries on the other.
The mission to the Slavs wasparticularly fruitful from this point of view. If politically, during theperiod under review, the territory of the Byzantine Empire in-creased only occasionally and then for a short time, it did howeverundergo an extraordinary expansion between the end of the ninthand the end of the tenth centuries, following the religious conquestof all the Balkan countries, and of the whole of Russia. This timeitwas the field of religious (not political) conquest which served as abackground to the widespread influence of art. If there is one spherewhere the progress of Byzantium is a reality, and compensates forso many territorial withdrawals since the seventh century, it is in thefield of art. From the ninth century onwards the Orthodox religion,directed with a firm hand by the Church of Constantinople, wasanimportant vehicle in the spreading of this art beyond the bordersofthe Byzantine state. It was to continue to play this role, even to anenhanced extent, during the periods when the political power of theByzantine state suffered an eclipse. We must here note this fact, which is an important one for appreciating the exceptional part played by Byzantine art in theMiddle Ages. But in this book we shall only concern ourselves withtruly Byzantine works, reserving the study of art in the differentcountries of Eastern Europe for another volume in this series.
It is from the twelfth century onwards that one witnesses the divorce between the Byzantine state and the art which it had promoted, the immense territorial extent of the latter having no common measure with the very reduced territory of the empire under the Comneni and the Angeli (1081-1185, 1 185-1204). Admittedly it was the Comneni who reconquered the easternmost part of the southern coast of Asia Minor, as far as and including Antioch. But this modest increase in imperial territory did not spread beyond the districts of neighbouring Gappadocia, where however the execution of art in the Byzantine tradition continued even though the country was part of the Turkish sultanate of Iconium. In 1204, diverted from its real aim, the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople and devastated it.
While the Byzantine state, Greek and Orthodox, reconstituted itself on the Asiatic coast of the Bosphorus around the city of Nicaea, the conquerors of 1204 attempted to found a Latin and Catholic empire based on Constantinople. This state, organized on the Western pattern of the period, was bordered by a series of feudal principalities covering practically the whole territory of continental Greece and its islands; it did not resist long attempts at reconquest led by the exiled Greek emperors in Nicaea. In 1 261 the latter returned to Constantinople, reconstituting the link with the Byzantine past.
We know practically nothing of Greek artistic activities during the Latin Empire. This is perhaps due in part to the accidental destruction of works of art which date from that half-century. One may of course ask oneself whether an art, which at that period was exclusively religious, must not have been dimmed by the brutal installation of the Latin clergy in Constantinople and the forced withdrawal of the Greek clergy and of those who, by the means at their disposal and their influence, were the traditional patrons of Byzantine artistic works — that is to say, the emperors and the aristocracy of Byzantium. The Latin domination, which in Constantinople and its district lasted for half a century and even longer in certain parts of Greece and in the islands, left remarkably few traces of monuments. This fact is very striking when one thinks of the considerable and simultaneous expansion of Western art in the Holy Land. Although this question has neverbeen studied, it is worth bearing in mind. The lack of Latin activityin the field of art in the truly Greek countries is probably duetoseveral causes. The absence of powerful opponents in the districtmade the building of a great number of fortified castles andothermilitary works unnecessary; the small number of Latin residentsdid not encourage the founding of more churches ; but aboveall,contrary to their experience in the Levant, the Crusaders foundonthe spot numbers of ready-made churches of which they madeuseto practise their religion, after removing the Greek clergy. Itwasonly in places where the power of the Western states or that oftheirprinces lasted much longer, as in the islands seized by the Venetians(i.e., the Ionian Islands, Crete and Rhodes), or by the Genoese(Chios), or in Cyprus where Lusignan kings reigned that thecontribution of European art was felt — at least in certain fields,andparticularly in military and religious architecture.
As far as therestis concerned the loss of Greek sovereignty in these territories didnotbring about a new artistic orientation. Thus here, too, the prestigeof the Byzantine tradition worked with success — all the moresoas the population, which was Greek and Orthodox, continuedtobelong to their Church. Even more strongly was the Byzantine artistic tradition abletoperpetuate itself in all those more or less independent small statesof the empire of Constantinople, even when the princes who reignedthere were momentarily at war with the Byzantine emperors.Thiswas to be seen in the Morea, Epirus and in Macedonia wherethepopulation was either Greek or hellenized and Orthodox.Theprinces of these states, which lasted for varying lengths of time(suchas Serbia and Bulgaria, which had re-formed or consolidatedtheirpower in the thirteenth century and were to disintegrate underthecontinued blows of the Turks a hundred or a hundred andfiftyyears later), everywhere exercised an influence favourable totheextension or maintenance of Byzantine artistic tradition ; for thesepotentates dreamt either of usurping the power of the emperorsinConstantinople itself or of imitating them within the boundariesoftheir own possessions. In both cases Byzantine art was part oftheshow of imperial tradition it was necessary to display.
In other words, during this last period of the Byzantine state, when the name of empire was only given to Constantinople and its suburbs, Byzantine art continued to flourish in all the territories which, whatever the race, language or creed of their inhabitants, were governed by Christian potentates. This flowering was complete where the Orthodox religion predominated. Also, whereas during the period from the ninth to the eleventh century the conquest of new territories by Byzantine art was mainly accomplished through missionaries, behind whom often stood the government of Byzantium, during the Palaeologian period this part was reserved to the slow action of frequent contacts between Greeks and Latins, Greeks and Slavs, Rumanians, Georgians. All these foreigners had been able to see for themselves innumerable works of Byzantine art in the countries where that art was traditionally practised. As for the Western world, it was the technical, aesthetic and religious qualities of Byzantine works which alone were responsible for the great Influence of Byzantinemovement to the West of Byzantine works of art and for their art on st imitation everywhere in Europe, from Italy to England, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and particularly at the end of the twelfth and in the thirteenth century.
As an Italian art historian said recently, during the thirteenth century every Italian artist had personal experience of Byzantine art. In short, during this late period (thirteenth to fifteenth century) Byzantine art, in an even more spectacular fashion than in the past, spread beyond the frontiers of the small state which continued to be called the Byzantine Empire. However, this drive towards the West was far less permanent and its effects were more limited than was the case when this same art spread in the countries of the Byzantine missions, and in Sicily and Venice during the preceding period. But this later conquest is perhaps even more astonishing, if one takes into consideration the tremendous flowering ofthe arts in all the countries of Western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Here we probably have a case of the contributions from outside which an art attracts when in the throes of its own development. Certain of its powers of assimilation, it profits from this contact. In the artistic geography of Byzantium it is necessary to note several peculiarities, which in some ways are even more important than the frequent overlapping of the territory of the Byzantine state by the area of its artistic expansion. i . Geographically, Byzantine territory proper is very limited whencompared with that of the countries of Western Europe, whichcreated and made regular use of medieval art of Latin origin fromthe Carolingian to the Gothic age. One must bear this in mind whenone compares or contrasts the two traditions, that of the OrthodoxEast and the Catholic West. Whereas the latter was a collective achievement in which all the great peoples of the Latin world tookpart, the former was created in Byzantium itself, and was communicated as an established system to the peoples of the Byzantinemissionary sphere. Ofcourse these various peoples eventually workedout their particular versions but, except beyond the Danube, theynever went beyond the basic rules which define Byzantine art. Onemust also add another difference which separated the two parallel experiments, those of the Orthodox East and the Catholic West,during the Middle Ages. In the East the experiment only lasted for a relatively short period (and only for a very short time in the countries of the Byzantine mission south of the Danube), because duringthe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Byzantium herself and herBalkan clients were influenced in matters of civilization and art bythe Muslim conqueror. The period of Turkish rule was to producenothing in the artistic field — and this pause coincided with the period when the Western countries were only just beginning to experience their extraordinary upsurge. 2.
As was the case elsewhere, the different parts of the Byzantineterritory were not always equally active in the arts which they practised during the Middle Ages. In the period under review —in other words, in the Iconoclast and Macedonian periods —Byzantium appears not as a traditional country, organically balanced, butas the relic of a much greater whole, which had been made coherentand unified by long centuries of history. The part that remained wassoon to organize itself, and to become accustomed to doing withoutdaily contacts with the countries ofthe Levant, or with the importantcontributions made by the countries of the eastern Mediterranean,with their rich populations, their wheat and their industries. In this reduced Byzantine state there remained an excess of large cities around a rather narrow sea, soon to be deprived of its 'hinterland' of Asia Minor. Of these cities only three or four were to remain important, but nevertheless this was enough to make the Byzantine state the only country at that time which counted enough cities of sufficient importance, where the usual activities of an urban population were pursued without interruption from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Crafts of all kinds, including art, had their place and because of this the workshops of Byzantine craftsmen in Constantinople particularly, but also those in Salonika, Smyrna and Corinth were centres where old traditions were maintained and where it was possible to obtain articles of quality. Ofcourse Salonika, Athens and Corinth were devastated by the Arabs and the Normans, but only temporarily, whereas Constantinople remained untouched until 1204.
It was this which allowed this great city, and to a lesser degree the other coastal cities of the Aegean Sea, to ensure for centuries the survival of qualified craftsmen, which was a vital necessity for the continuation of art of value. The Byzantine Empire of the Middle Ages was much more favoured from this point of view than the countries of the West, where the Roman cities had nearly all been reduced to large villages. Constantinople was by far the most populous city in all Christendom, even after the rise of the trading ports of Italy — Pisa, Genoa and Venice. Consequently one is not surprised to learn that the main Byzantine works of art were fashioned in Constantinople (the part taken by other cities in this work remains to be established) . This was very different from the situation in the West, before the thirteenth century, where the centres of artistic activity were situated not in towns, but in monasteries. The role of certain Byzantine convents was no less important, at least where manuscript-painting was concerned; but the few in- dications we have from the sources mention mainly the monasteries established in Constantinople itself. These convents of the capital were numerous and well endowed, the most important among them enjoying royal patronage ; whether they liked it or not, members of the reigning dynasty and of the great Byzantine families often came to spend the end of their lives there. It would be difficult to dif- ferentiate between the art practised within these convents and religious art produced outside their enclosures. Of course in the great centres of Byzantine monastic life, such as Mount Athos, all the buildings and all the paintings were done by the monks ; it wasDenis de Fourna, a monk, who was the author of a post-Byzantine'Manual of Painting', which has been preserved for us to see. Panselinos, a fourteenth-century painter who enjoyed a greatreputation, was an Athonite monk. The frescoes which decorate theTroglodyte monasteries of Gappadocia are too rustic for us to ex- clude a priori the theory that painters outside the small communityof monks were called in. In short, Byzantine monks certainly tookpart in the execution of religious works of art. But the anonymity ofmost of these works prevents all evaluation of the relative importance of their participation — and, above all, the style andextent of the works which have been preserved do not allow us to recognize an artistic field limited to monastic workshops.
This remark also applies to other social groups. The scarcity ofdedicatory inscriptions, and of written information, and also the absence of sufficient differentiation between works of art, preventany attempt to distinguish between a court art and an art particular to middle-class town dwellers or the like, and attempts made in this direction by various art critics have never led anywhere. Finally, almost no success has been registered in the efforts to distinguish between local or regional schools and workshops. It is of course quiteusual to find in various current works assertions to the contrary, andto read that a certain Byzantine work is 'aristocratic' or 'popular', orthat it represents the style of Asia Minor rather than that of anotherprovince. But when one looks into the question carefully, one finds that these are more or less gratuitous statements. Thus works ofquality are generally attributed to the capital, and rustic works areconsidered to be provincial; works which bear a strong classical influence are said to be of aristocratic and not of monastic origin. Manuscripts with purple sheets are recognized as coming fromConstantinople, because purple was the imperial colour. Paintingsand sculptures which seem to reflect an Asiatic influence are said to have originated in the eastern provinces of the empire. Now it is quite obvious that these conclusions are valueless and that to eachof these apparent theories just as many others can be opposed.However, these uncertainties are in themselves of obvious interest.
They stem from the fact that in our present state of knowledge we are generally unable to establish a connection between the works of art which have been preserved and the geography and social structure of Byzantium. This may be pursued with more success in the future. But we know enough about the Byzantine art of the Middle Ages not to expect any notable progress in this direction, for several general facts make this difficult : the systematic anonymity of Byzantine works, the extreme dearth of written sources, due to the almost total loss of archives, and finally the insufficient dif- ferentiation of the works themselves. This last point is essential, and one can see here a characteristic of medieval Byzantine art, especially when one compares it to the art of the Middle Ages in the West.
This is partly due to the fact that the social structure of Byzantium was more stable but less precise than the feudal society of Latin countries. The ethnic uniformity of the Byzantine state, with its overwhelming predominance of Greeks, could also be contrasted with the national diversity of medieval Europe during the period of Romanesque and Gothic art. Let us remind ourselves from now on (we shall return to this in the chapter devoted to architecture) that political, administrative and judicial continuity were for centuries ensured by the imperial power and that of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and that economically, too, during this period Constantinople was the heart of the whole country. All these factors certainly contributed to give a certain uniformity to Byzantine taste and to the need that may have been felt for art. The work of art — particularly in the field of religious art, which we know best — belonged in Byzantium to the realm of the traditional, regularly repeated on similar occasions, where individual temperament or passing sentiment are hardly reflected. This form of art in no way attempts to tell us about the man who Distance between initiated it in these regular conditions. If the artist should of image and reality necessity express himself, the margin of his intervention is rather narrow and generally limited to nuances of style. It would also be fruitless to look in these Byzantine works, by analysing the subject of the paintings or bas-reliefs, for references to men and to the world in which they lived.
There are no such references, no details taken from life, no indiscretions which might indicate the social class or the geographical origin of their authors. Byzantine images,even those which served as illustrations for chronicles, always kepttheir distance from reality. It is easier to understand the reason for this when saints or sacred events are represented: the irrational is expressed by establishing a distance between the image and materialreality. But secular or profane images are just as slow to reflect reality. They remain brief and vague, and impress one by the veryabsence of sharpness in the reproduction of beings and objectspertaining to everyday life: they are 'symbols' rather than representations. Here we touch upon an essential characteristic ofByzantine art — one which is in opposition both to Muslim andWestern art. This conception of artistic representation in relation to transitorylife and the things which support that life, explains what we weresaying earlier on : that Byzantine art is difficult to integrate into thehistorical and geographical background. It touches lightly on whatis accidental, including the fate of the individual and even eventswhich are of interest to society. It had its proper role and went its own way. This is a feature to which we will return later. Veryexceptional circumstances (such as the Iconoclast edicts of theemperors of the eighth and ninth centuries) were necessary to changethis even temporarily.
Other happenings did not affect them, andit shows a certain lack of 'historical sense' to expect Byzantine worksto provide direct evidence about the social and economic historyof Byzantium in the Middle Ages, or about the reactions of a class oran individual to any given event of history, including even religious history. Relations between The overwhelming majority of Byzantine works of art were createdChristian faith and art in the seryice of the Church or the Christian faith. This is the es- sential fact about them. One is entitled to suppose that, as theChurch was the main patron of Byzantine art, important changeseither in the content of this faith or in its ritual would have createdmodifications in ecclesiastical art. This is what did in fact happenduring the reign of the Iconoclast emperors. But after the end ofofficial Iconoclasm in 843 the religion of the Byzantines was notmodified in any perceptible way, or at any rate not in fields whichwere reflected in art. This was notably the case with liturgy —that is to say, all the rites celebrated in the Church. As to the heresies which made repeated appearances in the Byzantium of the Middle Ages, they of course troubled the conscience of the Byzantines — but neither the Paulicians, the Bogomils nor the doctrines ofJohn Italus etc. modified in any way the ritual of Byzantine art. Nor were the Hesychasts of the fourteenth century any more active in this field, although the contrary has several times been maintained, and we may possibly owe them a few iconographic details : e.g. images of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, with the idea ofdistinguishing three fights, symbols of the three persons of the Trinity in the halo surrounding the Risen Christ.
Later studies may perhaps increase the number of alterations that the Hesychasts made to iconographic tradition. But in any case they will never be more than details, as there is an obvious continuity in Byzantine traditions before and after the Hesychasts. Similarly, we can dismiss the influence of Catholic art, which did penetrate into Byzantine territory, notably in the thirteenth century. Of course, more or less superficial in- fluences derived from Latin art can be observed here and there during that period and subsequently. But when one remembers the extraordinary flowering ofreligious art in the West from the eleventh century onwards, the extreme modesty ofits influence on Byzantium never ceases to surprise us. It would undoubtedly have been difficult to reflect in art the break with Rome in 1054. But, after all, Catholic art in the sixteenth century reflects the Reformation.
This was not the case in Byzantium; at any rate, there is next to nothing in the works of art which have been preserved. They ignore totally the break between the Greek and Latin churches. In this Christian Byzantine art there are no reflections of either the The Christian art ofbirth of Islam or the flowering ofIslamic art. Here again the example **»**«• ™d Islamof the West, so receptive to Muslim creations in architecture and interior decoration, only makes us even more aware of the extreme reserve of the Byzantines. One might have thought that it was a deliberately negative attitude; but it is more a general refusal, probably a tacit one, to allow themselves to be influenced by the events which affected contemporary religious life. As we shall see, it was on a different level that certain Muslim contributions to Byzantine art took place, and they appear only in ornamental decoration or at the most in certain manuscripts, particularlysecular ones. When all is said, one must admit that the religious art of theByzantines, superbly indifferent to things of the world, was little influenced by the fluctuations of the history of religious life itself. That does not in any way mean that those who practised this art daily were not themselves passionately interested in all that con-cerned the faith and administration of the Church. In Constantinople people perhaps suffered rather from an excess of interest intheology, and there were many famous discussions on matters offaith. But figurative Byzantine art was not concerned in this, andthis fact, although a negative one, is characteristic. So we are concerned with a form of art which was an independentactivity within Byzantine civilization, and which did not react at all to political, social and ecclesiastical events; nor did communitiesor individuals expect to find their particular experiences reflected init.
We are dealing with a form of activity inherited by medievalByzantium from an earlier period, with its procedures, its techniquesand its tastes, which the Greeks of that period continued withoutperceptibly modifying its formulas. Later we shall give the positivecharacteristics of Byzantine works of art, only pointing out in this outline that the historic and geographical background was a verystable one during the period we are studying, because of the natureof Byzantine art and the limited number of factors capable of givingit stimulus. However, to make things easier, we shall distinguish inthis work between the four traditional periods The Iconoclast Period The Reign of the Macedonians The Reign of the Comneni The Reign of the Palaeologi. The very titles of these periods, called after the dynasties, underlinethe artificial character of this division, but in so far as essentials go, artistic life went on without apparent changes from the end ofIconoclasm up to the fall of Constantinople, and each of theseperiods possesses features which are its alone. These particularities are not necessarily linked to political, social or other events, andthey are not even exclusive to this or that period, but each period had its own way of accenting tradition; or at any rate, this is what is suggested by the essential works of each of these successive periods. The Iconoclast period attempted a form of art without figurative images — a Christian version of aniconical religious art, such as was at the same time inaugurated by the Muslims. The emperors of the Macedonian dynasty attempted to create around themselves a renovatio of the arts and the literature of antiquity. So far as art is concerned we only know what effect it had on religious works.
These magnificently proclaim achievements of Greek taste in the arts, but they also prove the limitations of this renaissance. This period corresponds to a general burst of activity in Byzantium, where works of art of different tendencies flowered at the same time. The antique tendency was undoubtedly the most remarkable, but the particular Byzantine style of the Middle Ages evolved during this period, which more than any other in the history of Byzantium deserves the title of the 'golden age'. It is obvious that the limits which separate these periods are not strict ones. It is in consequence practical to start the third period only in the last third of the eleventh century, with the advent of the first Comnenus, and to prolong it up to 1204.
The greatest number of Byzantine or Byzantine-inspired monuments, churches, mosaics, frescoes, miniatures, ivories and ceramics belong to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They are of a well-established style which codified the creations of the preceding period. But it was also under the Comneni that the aesthetics of centuries to come were evolved and future tendencies suggested. During the fifty years of the Latin Empire of Constantinople Byzantine works are almost entirely non-existent. But the works of the twelfth century prepare the way for those which appeared at the end of the thirteenth, after the restoration of the Greek Empire. In architecture and particularly in painting this was to be another and final renovatio which, parallel with the art of the Italian Dugento and Quattrocento and of the new creations of the northern European countries, attempted to recast inherited traditions into a form of art, at the same time faithful to established usages and yet rather different — and probably better adapted to the demands of a more advanced age.
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