PLATE II.
Showing a typical scheme of internal decoration. The lower parts of the walls are covered with marble, and the upper surfaces and vaults with mosaics and paintings. Eleventh century. From a Drawing by Sidney Barnsley.
BYZANTINE ART.[[1]] By "Byzantine art" is meant the art of Constantinople (sometimes called Byzantium in the middle ages as in antiquity), and of the Byzantine empire; it represents the form of art which followed the classical, after the transitional interval of the early Christian period. It reached maturity under Justinian (527-565), declined and revived with the fortunes of the empire, and attained a second culmination from the 10th to the 12th centuries. Continuing in existence throughout the later middle ages, it is hardly yet extinct in the lands of the Greek Church. It had enormous influence over the art of Europe and the East during the early middle ages, not only through the distribution of minor works from Constantinople but by the reputation of its architecture and painting. Several buildings in Italy are truly Byzantine. It is difficult to set a time for the origin of the style. When Constantine founded new Rome the art was still classical, although it had even then gathered up many of the elements which were to transform its aspect. Just two hundred years later some of the most characteristic works of this style of art were being produced, such
as the churches of St Sergius, the Holy Wisdom (St Sophia), and the Holy Apostles at Constantinople, and San Vitale at Ravenna. We may best set an arbitrary point for the demarcation of the new style midway between these two dates, with the practical separation of the eastern and western empires.
The style may be said to have arisen from the orientalization of Roman art, and itself largely contributed to the formation of the Saracenic or Mahommedan styles. As Choisy well says, "The history of art in the Roman epoch presents two currents, one with its source in Rome, the other in Hellenic Asia. When Rome fell the Orient returned to itself and to the freedom of exploring new ways. There was now a new form of society, the Christian civilization, and, in art, an original type of architecture, the Byzantine." It has hardly been sufficiently emphasized how closely the art was identified with the outward expression of the Christian church; in fact, the Christian element in late classical art is the chief root of the new style, and it was the moral and intellectual criticism that was brought to bear on the old material, which really marked off Byzantine art from being merely a late form of classic.