Byzantine Art

A Painting In studying their prototypes the Byzantine artists learned anew the classical conventions for depicting the clothed figure, in which the drapery clings to the body, thus revealing the forms beneath—the so-called damp-fold style. They also wanted to include modeling in light and shade, which not only produces the illusion of three-dimensionality but also lends animation to the painted surfaces. Religious images, however, were only acceptable as long as the human figure was not represented as an actual bodily presence. The artists solved the problem by abstraction, that is, by rendering the darks, halftones, and lights as clearly differentiated patterns or as a network of lines on a flat surface, thus preserving the visual interest of the figure while avoiding any actual modeling and with it the semblance of corporeality. Thus were established those conventions for representing the human figure that endured for the remaining centuries of Byzantine art.

B Architecture In contrast to the artistic experimentations in the Justinian age, the mid-Byzantine period was one of consolidation. Recurring types of the centralized church were established, and the program of their mosaic decoration was systematized in order to conform to Orthodox beliefs and practices.

A common type of the mid-Byzantine centralized church was the cross-in-the-square. As at Hagia Sophia, its most prominent feature was the central dome over a square area, from which now radiated the four equal arms of a cross. The dome was usually supported, however, not by pendentives but by squinches (small arches) set diagonally in the corners of the square. The lowest portions of the interior were confined to the small areas that lay between the arms of the cross and the large square within which the whole church was contained.

Under imperial sponsorship, Early Christian architecture flourished throughout the empire on a monumental scale. Buildings were of two types, the longitudinal hall, or basilica, and the centralized building, frequently a baptistery or a mausoleum.

Christian worship, being congregational, requires a hall, and the Roman basilica—a civic hall—became the model for both large and small churches. In Rome the principal shrines became the sites of enormous timber-roofed basilicas, all erected in the 4th and 5th centuries—Old Saint Peter's (replaced in the 16th century), Saint Paul's Outside the Walls, and Santa Maria Maggiore, among others. The plan often included an atrium, or forecourt; a narthex, or porch; a long nave (central hall) flanked by side aisles; a transept hall crossing the nave; and a semicircular or polygonal apse (east end of a chapel, reserved for clergy) opposite the nave. In front of the apse, the altar was set directly over the shrine. Pagan spoils (stolen, pillaged goods) were used throughout; columns, decorative panels, masonry, and bronze roof tiles from imperial buildings were incorporated in the new structures. Smaller basilican churches were built in large numbers, as exemplified by the Church of Sant!

' Apollinare in Classe (5th century) in Ravenna, and the Church of Santa Sabina (5th century) in Rome.

B The Centralized Building Baptisteries, mausoleums, and martyria (martyr shrines) were built in centralized form. They were either circular or polygonal, with the object of veneration—the baptismal font, the sarcophagus, or the holy place—visible to the faithful from the cloister or aisle circling the site. A typical baptistery is that found next to San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, parts of which date from as early as 313. Built entirely of spoils, the elegant circular building has massive bronze doors and, for the font, a huge porphyry (very beautiful and hard rock) basin, both from the Baths of Caracalla. A typical mausoleum is the domed, circular Church of Santa Costanza (4th century) in Rome, built as the tomb of Constantia, daughter of Constantine the Great. Her magnificently carved porphyry sarcophagus, now in the Vatican Museums in Rome, stood under the dome. Mausoleums were also built in the equal-armed Greek cross form, such as the famous Tomb of Galla Placidia (5th century) in Ravenna. The most famous martyria are the domed Church of the Holy Sepulchre (4th century; numerous rebuildings) in Jerusalem, and the octagonal shrine of the Church of the Nativity (4th century; rebuilt 6th century and later) in Bethlehem. Both have adjoining basilicas to accommodate the crowds of pilgrims.

The exteriors of Early Christian buildings were generally plain and unadorned; the interiors, in contrast, were richly decorated with marble floors and wall slabs, frescoes, mosaics, hangings, and sumptuous altar furnishings in gold and silver (see Metalwork).

A clear picture of Roman architecture can be drawn from the impressive remains of ancient Roman public and private buildings and from contemporaneous writings, such as De Architectura (trans. 1914), the ten-volume architectural treatise compiled by Vitruvius toward the close of the 1st century BC.

The typical Roman city of the later Republic and empire had a rectangular plan and resembled a Roman military camp with two main streets—the cardo (north-south) and the decumanus (east-west)—a grid of smaller streets dividing the town into blocks, and a wall circuit with gates. Older cities, such as Rome itself, founded before the adoption of regularized city planning, could, however, consist of a maze of crooked streets. The focal point of the city was its forum, usually situated at the center of the city at the intersection of the cardo and the decumanus. The forum, an open area bordered by colonnades with shops, functioned as the chief meeting place of the town. It was also the site of the city's primary religious and civic buildings, among them the Senate house, records office, and basilica. The basilica was a roofed hall with a wide central area—the nave—flanked by side aisles, and it often had two or more stories. In Roman times basilicas were the site of business transa!

ctions and legal proceedings, but the building type was adapted in Christian times as the standard form of Western church with an apse and altar at the end of the long nave. The first basilicas were put up in the early 2nd century BC in Rome's own Forum, but the earliest well-preserved example of the basilicas (circa 120BC) is found at Pompeii.

The chief temple of a Roman city, the capitolium, was generally located at one end of the forum. The standard Roman temple was a blend of Etruscan and Greek elements; rectangular in plan, it had a gabled roof, a deep porch with freestanding columns, and a frontal staircase giving access to its high plinth, or platform. The traditional Greek orders, or canons (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian), were usually retained, but the Romans also developed a new type of column capital called the composite capital, a mixture of Ionic and Corinthian elements. An excellent example of the canonical temple type is the Maison-Carrée (circa AD 4) in Nîmes, France. Roman temples were erected not only in the forum, but throughout the city and in the countryside as well; many other types are known. One of the most influential in later times was the type used for the Pantheon (AD118-28) in Rome, consisting of a standard gable-roofed columnar porch with a domed cylindrical drum behind it replacing the traditional rectangular main room, or cella. Simpler temples based on Greek prototypes, with round cellas and an encircling colonnade, such as that built about 75BC at Tivoli, near Rome, were also popular.