Byzantine Decorative Arts

Byzantine Decorative Arts Byzantium's decorative arts developed within the context of the late Roman world. The variable starting points assigned to Byzantine history reflect this essential continuity, which maintained Roman artistic means and ideas and only gradually defined a distinctive artistic style. The earliest phase of Byzantine material culture (fourth through seventh centuries) has received the greatest archaeological attention, as a result of excavations conducted at classical sites that were continuously inhabited into Byzantine times. Lacking comparable study of Byzantium's Dark Age (eighth through ninth centuries) and later years (tenth through fifteenth centuries), traditional scholarship has focused on the artistic production of Constantinople and has emphasized formalist approaches to the study of later Byzantine art. Recent scholarly interest has also included the cultural life of small settlements in the provinces and their interaction with neighboring states. Special attention has been paid to understanding how the arts functioned within contemporary society and the relationship between visual and literary images. Byzantine decorative arts encompass objects used in daily life as well as in civil and religious ceremonies. The most common artifacts are ceramic and glass vessels, lamps, and other domestic objects. On archaeological sites, the best-dated Byzantine objects are fine red-slipped ceramic tablewares, which in the early Byzantine period originated in north Africa, western Asia Minor, and Cyprus. Common forms include broad dishes and plates stamped with vegetal and animal images and religious symbols. The subsequent development of glazed wares led to distinctive pottery styles that flourished in the east Mediterranean during the tenth through fifteenth centuries. Regional workshops produced wares with different patterns of incised and glazed decoration representing fanciful animals and floral motives as well as stylized human figures. Thin-walled glass vessels for table use were manufactured throughout the empire. Small oil-burning lamps usually were made of ceramic and glass. Terracotta mold-made lamps were typically discor slipper-shaped with raised decoration. Glass lamps were often goblet-shaped and suspended in bronze stands or hanging chandeliers. Metal objects also figured prominently in Byzantine daily life. Heavy iron implements were used primarily for building and as tools for commerce, industry, and warfare. Bronze was widely used for such household furnishings as tables and stands as well as lamps, braziers, and censers. Elaborately decorated pieces of silverplate and gold signified high social rank and were often donated for church use; they are known primarily from buried hoards and literary descriptions. Items of personal adornment included finely worked pins, fibulae, buckles, strap ends, and jewelry of bronze, silver, and gold, depending on the status of the owner. These highly mobile and intrinsically ornamental objects helped spread new ideas from the Byzantine borderlands, including the animal motives and polychrome style of northern migrating peoples and Arab decorative themes. The working of gems in Constantinople was complemented by a sophisticated enamelworking tradition that flourished during the tenth through twelfth centuries. Apart from literary descriptions, Byzantine Textiles have survived primarily in Egypt and in west European church treasuries. Curtains were woven of linen, wool, and silk, and were hung as wall decoration and as partitions between rooms. Preserved fragments reflect the special popularity of repeated floral patterns enclosing animal or figural scenes.

Items of everyday dress included the tunic and short cloak; contemporary mosaics and illuminated manuscripts depict elaborately woven and embroidered garments that were worn by churchmen and officials at court. Other important categories of Byzantine decorative arts include small-scale sculpture in bone, ivory, and stone. Cosmetic implements and toys carved of bone and ivory have been excavated in residential contexts. Much less common were early Byzantine ivory reliefs or diptychs, which were often carved with portraits and decorative scenes to commemorate religious and political events among high-ranking families and officeholders. In the tenth through twelfth centuries, ivory workshops provided aristocratic families with small boxes, carved with mythological and other figural scenes, as well as devotional plaques and triptychs. Books and illuminated manuscripts for aristocratic and ecclesiastical patrons were produced in cities and monasteries across the empire. Early surviving examples include fifth- and sixth-century editions of classical and biblical literature, while the production of gospel and liturgical books was especially popular during the later empire. Byzantine culture may be best known for its monumental painting and mosaics. Popular classical themes, including architectural moldings, floral patterns, and vegetal borders, continued to appear in early Byzantine floor mosaics and in wall mosaics and paintings through the fifteenth century. The illusionistic representational techniques of late Roman artists were combined in the fifth and sixth centuries with a hieratic formality to produce a distinctive means of visual communication that both influenced and was shaped by contemporary Christianity. This process is best documented by the icon, or painted devotional panel depicting a religious person or event. Debate over the spiritual properties of religious images led to their official banishment during the Iconoclastic Period (726– 843). The restoration of such images in the midninth century fostered the development of complex programs of decoration that evolved together with ecclesiastical architecture. The synthesis of these two traditions in the body of the Byzantine church constitutes one of the most distinctive features of the cultural landscape of modern Greece.[See also Roman Decorative Arts: Roman Mosaics.]

Bibliography

Cyril Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453: Sources and Documents (1972). Ernst Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (1977). John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art, 2nd ed. (1979). Kurt Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality, Late Antique and Early Christian Art, exhibition catalog (1979). Eunice Dauterman Maguire, Henry P. Maguire, and Maggie J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House, exhibition catalog (1989). Lyn Rodley, Byzantine Art and Architecture: An Introduction (1994). Marcus Rautman How to cite this entry: Marcus Rautman, Jodi Magness, Robert Schick "Byzantine Culture" The Oxford Companion

to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan, ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Open University of Cyprus. 27 December 2007