Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

ICONSGospel books such as the Rabbula Gospels played an im-

portant role in monastic religious life. So, too, did icons,which also

figured prominently in private devotion (see “Icons and Iconoclasm,”

page 326). Unfortunately, few early icons survive. Some of the finest

early examples come from Saint Catherine’s monastery at Mount

Sinai. The one illustrated here (FIG. 12-18) was painted in encaustic

on wood, continuing a tradition of panel painting in Egypt that, as

true of so much else in the Byzantine world, has roots in the Roman

Empire (FIGS. 10-62and 10-63). In a composition reminiscent of the

portrait of Anicia Juliana (FIG. 12-16) in the Vienna Dioskorides,the

Sinai icon painter represented the enthroned Theotokos and Child

with Saints Theodore and George. The two guardian saints intercede

with the Virgin on the viewer’s behalf. Behind them, two angels gaze

upward to a shaft of light where the hand of God appears. The fore-

ground figures are strictly frontal and have a solemn demeanor. Back-

ground details are few and suppressed. The forward plane of the pic-

ture dominates. Space is squeezed out. Traces of the Greco-Roman

illusionism noted in the Anicia Juliana portrait remain in the Virgin’s

rather personalized features, in her sideways glance, and in the posing

of the angels’ heads. But the painter rendered the saints’ bodies in the

new Byzantine manner.

ICONOCLASMThe preservation of the Early Byzantine icons at

the Mount Sinai monastery is fortuitous but ironic, for opposition to

icon worship was especially prominent in the Monophysite provinces

of Syria and Egypt. There, in the seventh century, a series of calami-

ties erupted, indirectly causing the imperial ban on images. The Sasa-

nians (see Chapter 2), chronically at war with Rome, swept into the

eastern provinces early in the seventh century. Between 611 and 617,

they captured the great cities of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.

The Byzantine emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) had barely defeated

them in 627 when a new and overwhelming power appeared unex-

pectedly on the stage of history. The Arabs, under the banner of the

new Islamic religion, conquered not only Byzantium’s eastern

provinces but also Persia itself, replacing the Sasanians in the age-old

balance of power with the Christian West (see Chapter 13). In a few

years the Arabs were launching attacks on Constantinople, and

Byzantium was fighting for its life.

These were catastrophic years for the Eastern Roman Empire.

They terminated once and for all the long story of imperial Rome,

closed the Early Byzantine period, and inaugurated the medieval era of

Byzantine history. Almost two-thirds of the Byzantine Empire’s terri-

tory was lost—many cities and much of its population, wealth, and

material resources. The shock of these events may have persuaded the

emperor Leo III (r. 717–741) that God was punishing the Christian

Roman Empire for its idolatrous worship of icons by setting upon it

the merciless armies of the infidel—an enemy that, moreover, shunned

the representation not only of God but of all living things in holy places

(see Chapter 13). Some scholars believe that another motivation for

Leo’s 726 ban on picturing the divine was to assert the authority of the

state over the Church. In any case, for more than a century, Byzantine

artists produced little new religious figurative art. In place of images of

holy figures, the iconoclasts used symbolic forms already familiar in

Early Christian art, for example, the Cross (FIG. 12-12).

Middle Byzantine Art

In the ninth century, a powerful reaction against iconoclasm set in.

The destruction of images was condemned as a heresy, and restora-

tion of the images began in 843. Shortly thereafter, under a new line

of emperors, art, literature, and learning sprang to life once again. In

this great “renovation,” as historians have called it, Byzantine culture

returned to its ancient Hellenistic sources and accommodated them

to the forms inherited from the Justinianic age. Basil I (r. 867–886),

head of the new Macedonian dynasty, regarded himself as the restorer

of the Roman Empire. He denounced as usurpers the Carolingian

monarchs of the West (see Chapter 16) who, since 800, had claimed

the title “Roman Empire” for their realm. Basil bluntly reminded their

emissary that the only true emperor of Rome reigned in Constantino-

ple. The Carolingians were not Roman emperors but merely “kings of

the Germans.” Iconoclasm had forced Byzantine artists westward,

where doubtless they found employment at the courts of these

Germanic kings (see “Theophanu, a Byzantine Princess in Ottonian

Germany,” Chapter 16, page 428). They strongly influenced the char-

acter of Western European art.

Architecture and Mosaics

The triumph of the iconophiles over the iconoclasts meant that Byzan-

tine mural painters, mosaicists, book illuminators, ivory carvers, and

metalworkers once again received plentiful commissions. Basil I and

his successors also undertook the laborious and costly task of refur-

bishing the churches the iconoclasts had defaced and neglected.

THEOTOKOS, HAGIA SOPHIA In 867, the Macedonian

dynasty dedicated a new mosaic (FIG. 12-19) depicting the en-

throned Virgin with the Christ Child in her lap in the apse of the Jus-

tinianic church of Hagia Sophia. In the vast space beneath the dome

12-19Virgin (Theotokos) and Child enthroned, apse mosaic, Hagia

Sophia, Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey, dedicated 867.

Shortly after the repeal of iconoclasm, the emperor Basil I dedicated a

huge new mosaic in the apse of Hagia Sophia depicting the Virgin and

Child enthroned. It replaced one the iconoclasts had destroyed.

Middle Byzantine Art 327

12-18AChrist
blessing, Mount
Sinai, sixth
century.