There may have been another cause besides morbid asceticism which in the ninth century caused the Church to adopt such an unearthly type of humanity; namely, the fear of the Jews and Mahometans, who were very numerous at Constantinople.
It was natural that the growing sanctity of the grim mosaics should be associated in the minds both of Jew and Mahometan with idol-worship, and accordingly we find that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian wished to conciliate his non-Christian subjects by the prohibition of all representation of the human form.
This, however, did not suit the monks. A synod was called, and ultimately it was agreed that sculpture alone should be interdicted; but may we not suppose that a kind of compromise was made about painting, and that it was settled that any near approach to the human form should be tabooed, that art in short was to be of the nature of that which graced the Auld Brig of Ayr?—
“Forms like some bedlam statuary’s dream,
The crazed creations of misguided whim,
Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee,
And still the second dread command be free,
Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea.”
Kugler’s description of these Byzantine heads is so good that I cannot refrain from giving it. He says:
“The large ill-shaped eyes stare straight forward; a deep unhappy line, in which ill-humor seems to have taken up its permanent abode, extends from brow to brow beneath the bald and heavily-wrinkled forehead. The nose has the broad ridge of the antique still left above, but is narrow and pinched below, the anxious nostrils corresponding with the deep lines on each side of them.
“The mouth is small, but the somewhat protruding lower lip is in character with the melancholy of the whole picture. As long as such representations are confined to gray-headed saints and ecclesiastics they may be tolerated, but when the introduction of a kind of smirk is intended to convey the idea of a youthful countenance this type becomes intolerable. Even the Madonna, to whose countenance the meagreness of asceticism was hardly applicable, here assumes a thoroughly peevish expression, and was certainly never represented under so unattractive an aspect.”
I have given you this quotation from Kugler, in order to show you the opinion of a learned and liberal-minded writer, who certainly cannot be called a severe critic.
He goes on to compare Byzantine with Chinese art, which is, I think, rather hard upon the poor Celestials.
Both styles of figure-painting are equally conventional, and equally untrue to nature, but Chinese figures are far more cheerful and decorative than the unhappy Byzantine.