The Realms of Gold

2019 ◽  
pp. 68-86
Author(s):  
Averil Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Gold Silver ◽  
Dominant Feature ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Hagia Sophia ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
Precious Stones

This chapter focuses on Byzantine art and architecture. Not all Byzantine art was a luxury art. However, the lasting appeal of its use of gold, silver, enamel, and precious stones is evident from the choice of objects in blockbuster exhibitions and in the admiring reactions of their visitors. The latter represent a response to Byzantine art and architecture that also found expression among the Byzantines themselves, who composed many lengthy and detailed literary descriptions of art works or buildings. Light and color, as well as gold and glitter, are key features in these works, and light is the dominant feature in the description of the newly built Justinianic Hagia Sophia by Procopius of Caesarea—when Byzantines described marble, what they emphasized was its sheen and brilliance. Moreover, a high proportion of surviving Byzantine art is religious. This does not mean that the Byzantines were all religious themselves; rather, it reveals something about patronage and how art was commissioned.

Reassessing a Late Byzantine masterpiece: the Deesis mosaic in the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Konstantinos M. Vapheiades
Keyword(s):  
Artistic Production ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Hagia Sophia

After the recapture of Constantinople (1261) artistic production in Byzantium experienced a recovery. In the capital of Byzantium itself this period is marked by the mosaic panel of the Deesis in the Hagia Sophia. This work constitutes a ‘one-off’ in Byzantine art. This fact poses a series of questions concerning the dating, the creator and the patron of the mosaic, as well as the reasons for its creation, given that no source makes any reference to these matters. The present study attempts to re-examine these issues.

Byzantine Art and Perception

2021 ◽  
pp. 30-46
Author(s):  
Bissera V. Pentcheva
Keyword(s):  
Architectural Space ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Hagia Sophia

Byzantine art preferred chameleonic materials such as gold, glass, jewels, and variegated marbles with which to make images and shape architectural space. When set in shifting diurnal light and the flicker of candles, the variegated surfaces of the icon and ecclesiastical interiors produced a spectacle of shifting appearances, or poikilia. Both before and after Iconoclasm, ekphrasis explicitly trained the viewer’s perception to interpret these phenomena as manifestations of the ephemeral dwelling of the metaphysical in matter. Focusing on three examples—the ambo and apse mosaics in Hagia Sophia and the portable icon of the Archangel—this essay explores how the perception of animation of the icons and architectural interior emerge out of the synergy among material images, imagined visions, and ekphrasis.

Byzantine Art and Architecture

Art History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen C. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean Region ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Byzantine Architecture ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Elements Of Style ◽  
Art And Architecture

Byzantine art and architecture may be defined as the artistic production of the eastern Mediterranean region that developed into an orthodox set of societies after the relocation of the Roman capital to Constantinople in 330 ce. While there is a debate about the use of the term “Roman” for emperors as late as Justinian (r. 526–565), the churches and their decoration in Ravenna, as well as the 6th-century purple Bible and Gospel manuscripts clearly show the beginnings of the new iconographic and stylistic concerns that we call “Byzantine.” While Byzantium itself was conquered when the capital fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the types of buildings and the traditions of monumental and portable arts continued on, even to the present day in places such as Mount Athos. Thus it is hard to define the era with clear-cut beginning and endpoints. It is similarly difficult to define Byzantine architecture and art in geographic terms. The quintessential middle Byzantine church type, the cross-in-square, continues in Russian churches in contemporary times. Elements of style in icon painting are preserved as well. The orthodox traditions that are expressed in these artistic forms cover much of eastern Europe; autocephalous churches form part of the orthodox confession despite the differences in language as well as the addition of some local saints. Areas included in what has been called the “Byzantine Commonwealth” include Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Russia, and parts of Albania and Romania, among others. The relationship of the style to Italy has never been satisfactorily explored. Byzantine art and architecture have largely been studied in terms of religious buildings, decoration, reception, and liturgical use. New approaches such as the study of gender, light, and sound (both vocal and musical) in Byzantine art are yielding significant results. Recently, secular arts have begun to form a focus of examination. New technologies have allowed closer viewing of objects such as ivories; modern approaches have also been applied to the consideration of Byzantine buildings and artifacts, yielding innovative interpretations. Although a tiny fraction of what we believe was created still exists, Byzantine art has continued to fascinate viewers as seen by a number of recent exhibitions worldwide.

Early Christian Art

Art History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Marsengill
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Art History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Art And Architecture

Early Christian art history encompasses a range of material loosely dated from the first known appearances of Christian art in the late 2nd or early 3rd century and continuing through the 6th, 7th, and sometimes even into the early 8th centuries. Early Christian art history, however, has proven to be an inchoate term, often overlapping with, or including, Early Byzantine art history. In previous divisions of the field, Early Byzantine art tended to be too politically confining when one considers cities such as Ravenna before and after its inclusion in the Eastern Byzantine Empire. On the other hand, Early Christian art implied only the earliest centuries, usually through the 4th or mid-5th centuries, and usually centered on Roman art. Thus, many scholars today favor the term Late Antique in order to integrate the study of art and architecture of the Eastern Roman Empire and Western Roman Empire as well as to understand Christian art in dialogue with Jewish and pagan art. In terms of dating, scholars generally acknowledge the genesis of Christian art and architecture around 200 ce, although some pursue theories that Christians participated in visual culture in the early 2nd century, if they had not yet developed a distinctly Christian visual language. In terms of geography, the eastern and western Mediterranean, Palestine and the Near East, and sometimes even northern Europe and Britain are all included. One result of this large geographical span has been the separation of Early Christian art in Rome, the Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, the Near East, and so on. In the last decade or so, however, scholars have generally recognized a more cohesive Mediterranean world and a more fluid transition from Late Antiquity to medieval art and culture. Questions of continuity between these periods have ultimately made dating the end of “Early Christian” or “Late Antique” difficult, if not impossible. Most scholars see the end of Late Antiquity as coinciding with the death of Justinian I or, for the convenience of a rounded date, the year 600. Others argue the end of the period occurred at the beginning of the 7th century with the spread of Islam in the Near East and across North Africa. Byzantinists sometimes recognize the beginning of the iconoclastic controversy in 730 as the end of Late Antiquity. Accordingly, “true” Byzantine-era art begins after iconoclasm in the 9th century, what some refer to as the Middle Byzantine period, which marks the beginning of a distinguishable Byzantine state and extends until the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, then followed by the Late Byzantine period (until 1453). Those who assert the continuity of Late Antique traditions in early Islamic art have recently broached the year 800 as the cut-off point.

scholarly journals XXXIV. On the crystallizations observed on glass.

1776 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 530-542 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rock Crystal ◽  
Gold Silver ◽  
Other Substances ◽  
Precious Stones

The peculiar figure of rock-crystal has been long observed. Many other substances, as spars, precious stones, pyrites, ores, metals, salts, water, and oil, are also known to affect an uniformity of shape, when they are exposed to certain degrees of heat, cold, fluidity, and other necessary circumstances. From their resemblance in this respect to rock-crystal, they are said, when they assume their peculiar forms, to crystallize; and the regularly-shaped bodies, into which these substances concrete, are also called crystals. In many substances, when broken, the parts appear to have some determinate figure. This determination of figure, or grain, as it is called, is obvious in bismuth, regulus of antimony, zinc, and all other metallic bodies, which may be broken without extension of parts; and although the ductility of gold, silver, lead, and tin, prevents the appearance of the peculiar grains, when pieces of these metals are broken, yet we have reason to believe, that, by exposing them to proper circumstances, they also would shew a disposition to this species of crystallization, as it may be called, by a further extension of that term; for Mr. Homberg has observed, that when lead is broken while hot, in which state it is not ductile, a granulated texture appears.

Archipenko, Alexander (1887–1964)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Kochman
Keyword(s):  
Direct Observation ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Fernand Leger ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Art School

Alexander Archipenko studied painting and sculpture at the Kiev Art school from 1902 until 1905, when he was expelled for criticizing its conservatism. Outside formal schooling, he was interested in ancient art indigenous to Ukraine—stone sculptures of females known as "babas," Scythian works, as well as those from Neolithic Trypillian culture being excavated in the region at the time. These would inform his work throughout his career, as would ancient Egyptian, pre-Columbian and Byzantine art. His polychromed sculpture was exhibited in his first show in 1906 in a village outside Kiev. He moved to Moscow that same year, participated in group exhibitions, and saw French avant-garde art first-hand, particularly the first "Zolotoe runo" Salon in spring 1908. Later that year, he moved to Paris, and after two weeks at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, decided to study independently from direct observation of art works at local museums. Archipenko opened a studio and built relationships with many artists of the cubist circle, particularly brothers Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Fernand Léger. He first exhibited with them in 1910 at the Salon des Independents XXVI, joining them regularly until their last group show in 1920.

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