CHAPTER IV.
BYZANTINE ART.
We may take as the next period for illustration the centuries that witnessed the break up of the old Roman constitution and the gradual formation of a new order of society down to the end of the first ten centuries of our era. Seven hundred and fifty years out of those ten hundred belong in great part to mediæval history. The misfortunes of Italy, and the incessant state of war, invasion, and struggle in that peninsula were too destructive of personal wealth and the means of showing it in costly furniture to leave us any materials from thence for our present subject. The history of furniture and woodwork, as applied to civil and social uses, now belongs to such civilisation as took its origin and its form from Constantinople. Art of these centuries is called Byzantine.
The woodcut is from the chair of St. Peter in Rome, the oldest and most interesting relic of antique furniture in existence; that is, of furniture made of wood and kept in use from the days of ancient Rome. But it has had repairs and additions, and a description of it shall be referred to in another section.
Byzantine art is a debased form of the classic, but with a large mixture of Greek; not of the old classic Greek type which had long been exhausted, but of that Asiatic Greek which derived so much of its splendour from the rich but unimaginative decorations of Persia. The objects actually executed at Constantinople or by Byzantine artists now remaining can scarcely be included in a treatise on furniture. They are mostly caskets and other small pieces executed in metal or in ivory. Accounts of many interesting pieces of Byzantine sculpture will be found in the "Description of the ivories in the South Kensington museum." Amongst them the diptychs of the consuls are not only the most important, but the most interesting to a treatise on furniture, as we see in them consular seats and thrones of many varieties.
We may select amongst other examples the following, which can be studied in the museum or referred to in that work. For instance, no. 368 (fully described in Mr. Maskell's "Ivories") is one leaf of a consular diptych of Anastasius Paulus Probus Sabinianus Pompeius. The consul is represented seated on a chair of very ornate character. It is like the old folding curule chairs of Rome, but with elements both of Greek and Egyptian ornamentation, such as belong to the massive marble seats, supported by lions or leopards, with the heads sculptured above the upper joint of the hind legs. In the mouths of these lions' heads are rings for the purpose of carrying the chair, and the top frame is ornamented with little panels and medallions containing winged masks and portrait heads of the consul and his family or of members of the imperial family. On each side of the seat are small winged figures of Victory standing on globes and holding circular tablets over their heads. These probably represent the front of the arms, and are supposed to have a bar stretching from the heads or the circular tablets to the back of the seat. This feature too is a continuation of types that are to be found on Greek vases and in the chairs of both Nineveh and Egypt. A low footstool with an embroidered cushion on it is under the feet of the consul, and another cushion, also embroidered, covers the seat. This represents a chair of the sixth century.
A seat still more like the curule chair, but with a high back, is represented in another ivory, no. 270, in the South Kensington collection. This piece is a plaque or tablet with a bas-relief of two apostles seated. The chairs are formed of two curved and recurved pieces each side, which are jointed together at the point of intersection. One pair of these pieces is prolonged and connected by straight cross-bars, and forms a back. Two dolphins, with the heads touching the low front pieces and the tails sloping up and connected with the back, form the arms. This belongs to the ninth century. The lyre back, a form not unknown in old Greek and thence adopted among Roman fashions, is also to be seen in chairs on ivories and in manuscripts. Round cushions were hung on the back, others covered the seat. These are seen also figured in the mosaics of Venice, and later of Monreale in Sicily which retained much of the Byzantine spirit. The art of Sicily continued longer subject to Constantinople than that of most of its Italian provinces, and Venice preserved her old traditions far into the period of the European revival of art.