This next video about the early period of Byzantine art -- so moving over to
Constantinople, which becomes modern day Istanbul,
so we'll be focusing on the early Byzantine period, which runs from 324
to 726 AD or CE. This is the period of
Constantine, who we've already focused on, so we'll be moving on passed Constantine,
on to Justinian and what's considered "The Golden Age of Justinian" when the
Byzantine Empire
reaches a very large extent until the period of "Iconoclasm",
when there will be a period of religious images being systematically destroyed
so we'll focus on that at the end
So starting off -- just a reminder of
Constantine, so we see him here. Constantine moves the imperial capital
east. Moving it to you Constantinople, which had been
"Byzantium". He names it "Constantinople after himself.
Today it is known as Istanbul. So this move -- this big move happens in 330 CE
We see here the portrait of Constantine from the Basilica Nova in
Rome just to remind you what he's portraiture looked like.
So just a few things to keep in mind as we move into the Byzantine
Empire. So first off the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire
refer to themselves as Romans. They did not consider themselves
a different from the Romans
that were inhabiting the city of Rome. They saw themselves as
continuing
the Roman Empire. So outsiders referred to them as "Greeks"
-- so their inhabiting that eastern portion of the Mediterranean -- so outsiders referred to
them as Greeks,
but they viewed themselves as continuing the Roman Empire and
in fact early on the official language was Latin, which was the language of the
Roman Empire in Rome,
but later on it will become Greek, and we start to see more and more
Greek being used for documents and
manuscripts and things like that, as we proceed or as we move through
at the Byzantine period. So let's zoom in to Constantinople -- modern day Istanbul --
and you see there's this horn shape here,
and it a great city or a great location in terms of protection, as well as
trade. So you can see it's deep within this area here but it connects
the black sea into the Mediterranean, so you have a nice location there.
It links Asia Minor to Europe,
so you have that nice connection there as well. So a really ideal trading
location and also ideal in terms of
protection. So Constantinople will be defeated
a few time -- some outsiders will come in and takeover on certain occasions --
but it will not fall until 1453
to the Ottoman Turks, so that will happen much, much later.
This is partially because it
really had a very ideal location. And the idea --
once they came to Constantinople -- was to
create a city that was not unlike Rome, so it would have
many the entertainment features of Rome,
the conveniences of Rome, the places of worship
of Rome -- of course in the new Christian religion, however.
No longer having some of the temples that we've seen previously.
Now the religious structures will be churches. So we'll see
in this area -- near the Imperial Palace -- the construction of Hagia Sophia,
which will be our key church for today. Just a few details here:
in the golden age of Justinian, he ruled
from 527 to 565, so we've moved quite a bit
forward [in time]. The capitol city of Constantinople. You can see that he did expand the empire
quite a bit going West here, and this is
of course very expensive. It costs a lot of money,
and so he's trying to take over areas that have been taken by groups like the
Vandals, the Ostrogoths,
and other group. So he's trying to retake land that had previously been part of the Roman
Empire.
He did have a historian named Procopius.
There were secret histories and official histories, and one of the most intriguing
parts
of these histories is about his wife Theodora,
who becomes an important figure in his rule. It was known that she was a
prostitute
/ actress before she married Justinian, but then he became
enchanted by her. Justinian created this impressive program of Public Works.
One of the most important -- following what was known as the "Nika Riots" --
was Hagia Sophia or the church of holy wisdom,
so today it's greatly modified from the time of Justinian through the
addition of minarets
when it became a mosque after the Ottoman Turks
inhabited Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul. So the minarets we added.
Also the dome is not the original dome we'll talk more about that in just a
second.
The the dome is not the same as the one that was first created by
the two architects that were employed by Justinian so that's Anthemius of
Tralles and Isidoros of Miletus.
These individuals were scholars.
They had never built anything of this size,
and, in fact, it was built in about five years, which is really incredible -- the
speed in which something of this side
is built -- is really unprecedented. So you can see some of the forms of the buttresses
or buttressing, the massive dome at the center, the subsidiary domes that
span out
and would add support because this dome would need so much support
as it is so large.
As we look at the ground plan you see it is in a Greek cross, which means the
arms of the cross
are about equal in size. This is a massive church,
very, very important, so you have things like a double narthex or
double entrance way. You would have had an atrium out
front. You have a massive space for the liturgy or for the Christian ritual to
take place.
So you have this area of what would be the "nave" or the "naos". You have the side
aisles here.
You have the apse towards the back. Everything here is done in
very, very grand scale and rather than the Latin plan where you tend to have
that really
longitudinal plan -- that really long nave-- here the emphasis is much more
vertical, right? Because you're looking up towards this dome and so your
eyes are being pulled upwards, so as we look inside
you can see that the dome really is that main attraction. You can see the light
entering in
from down below, the smaller domes off to the side.
You can see that there's a gold mosaic up here at the top, so
suggesting the heavens and celestial elements
and then marble and the earthly realm down below,
but still beautiful materials. Later on, they start adding
imagery -- Christian imagery -- but during the time of Justinian, it was really aniconic
or avoided representing holy figures.
The way the dome is supported is through pendentives, which we
see here,
basically curved triangles that move between the square base
and the curved dome. And the first dome was
quite flat -- more of what we would call "platter dome" rather than more like a bowl,
and it actually did collapse. The church began to buckle,
and later on they will have another architect --
on of the nephews of the original architects -- will come in and create dome
with a higher pitch,
which at pushes the weight
down into the ground, rather than having so much weight pushing down in the center.
So that's Hagia Sophia -- very, very famous structure. Now we're moving on to Ravenna --
Ravenna was
the Western capital of the, empire
and Justinian was successful in retaking this from the Ostrogoths in
539. If we focus in on the church of San Vitale --
this church was dedicated by a bishop in
547 -- Bishop Maximianius, who we'll see inside.
It has extensive mosaics just like a Hagia Sophia -- gold mosaics up at the top,
marble down at the bottom,
so again separating that celestial and terrestrial.
You see Christ right here at the center beardless, wearing a purple garment suggesting
royalty,
authority. You have the figure of the original Bishop
Ecclesius -- who was the bishop when it was first founded -- presenting a little
model [of the church],
and then you have a figure of San Vitale -- of "St Vitalis" [in Latin] --
the individual, who was martyred, and for whom this church was
named. Off to the right side --
or the superior side -- of Christ is Justinian.
So Justinian is here with what we call a "nimbus" -- looks like a halo --
it's a suggestion of authority and power and importance.
He looks very Christ-like here right at the center. He has followers similar
to the followers of Christ around him --
so kind of like his own apostles. He has what look like
warriors -- men who are soldiers,
men of warfare, but holding the Chi-Rho,
so that was an important symbol of Constantine -- the first
letters of Christ's name in Greek. Justinian clearly differentiated here
with his purple robe,
and he's holding the paten or a vessel to carry in
the bread, which will be used for the liturgy,
and then you have Maximianius, who is the individual who's the bishop when the
church is finished.
This is probably individual who helped pay for the church. And then you have other elements of
the liturgy -- you see up the book, you have the incense --
all of that indicated here. Justinian probably never came to this church,
but here he is symbolically
in image, so a reminder of his power.
And then on the opposite side we have Theodora and her attendants,
and she carrying the chalice or she's carrying the cup,
so she's going to participate as well, and you can see she's probably out in
the atrium -- out
you know in the church atrium and they're telling her now it's time to
come in, and pushing the curtain away,
She is dressed in similarly fine garments --
easy to spot her -- very kind of flattened figures --
similar to what we saw in Dura Europas, but remember that through candle
illumination, these figures would look much more three-dimensional.
So now we need to move on to Monasticism and think about this period of
"Iconoclasm", when people were
actually destroying images, so you're gonna see the production of icons become very
popular
in the early Byzantine period and places like the monastery
of St. Catherine, which we see here, protecting some of those icons, so the Monastery of
St. Catherine was vervy very isolated, so a lot of the icons or images there did
survive.
So just a brief bit of background on "Monasticism", [a monastery] is a compound for monks.
The individual in charge is known as "The Abbot". Monks were intended to live lives
of austerity -- away from the temptations
the city -- although we do start to see monasteries in the medieval period that
become more and more luxurious. We'll talk about that later on.
You usually see cell residences for the monks,
a dining hall or "refectory", a monastic church, and then
a guest house for pilgrims -- especially places like Mt. Sinai, that
were considered very sacred. So
the icon that do survive from the early Byzantine period are quite few and far
between,
and most of them do survive at St. Catherine's at Mount Sinai,
so one example is the "Theotokos" or
the Virgin as the bearer of God, and this is something that she was declared or a role
that she was declared to
occupy early on. So you see her here, functioning almost as a
throne. Christ here on her lap. Both of them are gazing off to the side,
so the idea here is you're supposed to engage with the image to the gaze.
You would gaze, and you would pray to these two saints.
So, you've got Theodore and George -- these two saints here.
So you would gaze towards them in your prayer, and they are supposed to be the intercessors that
will pass along your message to the Virgin,
and then, of course, you see divine influence with the little hand coming
down
from up above. Another famous
icon is this Christ icon -- also from the monastery of St. Catherine's --
and this is another one where you are going to engage to be through the gaze. You're
going to look upon it
as you praying you're going to put perhaps a candle in front of it,
incense, and all this will help the icon to come alive.
And the idea here is that it's representing the true likeness
of these holy figures. This is the closest you're really going to get to these
holy figures -- through these icons
So just a brief reminder that we did have a second commandment that people
were thinking about people, that people were worried about
so having these icons leads to this period iconoclasm.
This period where in 726 you have this banning of
picturing the divine by Leo III, however,
120 years later or so, you have this destruction of images being condemned, so
for about 120 years
images are not be produced of holy figures and also
images are being destroyed, so a lot of these icons don't survive --
very unfortunate for art historians -- so you have these iconoclasts that would
systematically go through and destroy these
images, so unfortunately we've lost a lot of the early Byzantine heritage --
artistic heritage, cultural heritage --
but it's a really interesting period in terms of
this idea that images became very dangerous, that they were
getting a little too close to becoming idols, that these icons
that were thought to you represent the divine were being
treated like idols, and people were praying to them with great devotion.
People would sometimes take bits of paint from them believing that it would have
special powers --
that these icons functioned almost like these
divine figures themselves, so we'll keep that in mind as the move on to the
period of Islamic art, which will
come up next!