Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

accursed Latins would plunder our wealth and wipe out our race....

Between us there can be only an unbridgeable gulf of hatred....They

bear the Cross of Christ on their shoulders, but even the Saracens are

kinder.”^7

The Latins set up kingdoms within Byzantium, notably in Con-

stantinople itself. What remained of Byzantium split into three small

states. The Palaeologans ruled one of these, the kingdom of Nicaea.

In 1261, Michael VIII Palaeologus (r. 1259–1282) succeeded in re-

capturing Constantinople. But his empire was no more than a frag-

ment, and even that disintegrated during the next two centuries. Iso-

lated from the Christian West by Muslim conquests in the Balkans

and besieged by Muslim Turks to the east, Byzantium sought help

from the West. It was not forthcoming. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks,

then a formidable power, took Constantinople and brought to an

end the long history of Byzantium (see Chapter 13). But despite the

state’s grim political condition under the Palaeologan dynasty, the

arts flourished well into the 14th century.

Painting

During the 14th and 15th centuries, artists throughout the Byzan-

tine world produced masterpieces of mural and icon painting rival-

ing those of the earlier periods. Four characteristic examples from

the old capital of Constantinople and as far away as Russia can serve

to illustrate the range and quality of painting during the Late Byzan-

tine period.

CHRIST IN CHORA A fresco (FIG. 12-30) in the apse of the

parekklesion (side chapel, in this instance a funerary chapel) of the

Church of Christ in Chora in Constantinople depicts the Anastasis.

One of many subsidiary subjects that made up the complex mosaic

program of Saint Mark’s (FIG. 12-24) in Venice, the Anastasis is here

central to a cycle of pictures portraying the themes of human mor-

tality and redemption by Christ and of the intercession of the Virgin,

both appropriate for a funerary chapel. Christ, trampling Satan and

all the locks and keys of his prison house of Hell, raises Adam and

Eve from their tombs. Looking on are John the Baptist, King David,

and King Solomon on the left, and various martyr saints on the

right. Christ, central and surrounded by a luminous mandorla,

reaches out equally to Adam and Eve. The action is swift and

smooth, the supple motions executed with the grace of a ballet. The

figures float in a spiritual atmosphere, spaceless and without mate-

rial mass or shadow-casting volume. This same smoothness and

lightness can be seen in the modeling of the figures and the subtly

nuanced coloration. The jagged abstractions of drapery found in

12-30Anastasis, apse fresco in the parekklesion of the Church of Christ in Chora (now the Kariye Museum), Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey,

ca. 1310–1320.

In this Late Byzantine funerary chapel, Christ, a white apparition surrounded by a luminous mandorla, raises Adam and Eve from their tombs as

John the Baptist and Kings David and Solomon look on.

336 Chapter 12 BYZANTIUM

12-30ASaint
Catherine,
Thessaloniki,
ca. 1280.