The Byzantine and Medival Empires

Despite the differences in their political rule, Byzantine and Medival empires had the religion of Christianity in common. The early Byzantine empire under Emperor Leo III, who publicially pushed the agenda of banning to worship of icons or idols. The agrument is founded from a scriptire in the bible Exodus 20:3-5, which states “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image – any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth. You shall not adore them, nor serve them”. Because of this, there are no sculptors depicting realism due to it being considered idoltry. Artist would paint regligous figures Jesus or the vigir mary confirming their partricpation in the Chrisian religion. Early christian art was one dimensional, generally front facing, there was not an attempt humanize the subject. Artist were members of the church or monastaries. All Christian religious expressions were in churches, and were controlled by the church’s tradition with the purpose of emphasizing Christian theology, There for Byzantine architecture, paintings, and illuminated manuscripts are mirrored this perspective.

Byzantine medieval art began with mosaics decorating the walls and domes of churches, as well fresco wall-paintings. The beautiful mosaics were taken up in Italy, especially in Rome and Ravenna. A less public art form in Constantinople, was the icon of the holy image panel-paintings which were created in the monasteries of the eastern church, using encaustic wax paint on portable wooden panels. The greatest find of this type of early Biblical art is in the monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, which was founded in the 6th century by the Emperor Justinian.

The first major movement of Medevial Art, the style known as “Romanesque”. Discovered depitctions in windows, capitals, pedestals, friezes, corbels, tables of arches, the prelude, and accompaniment, of the sculpture of the human figure. Churches were built with gorgeous vaulted roofs, the crossing of nave and transepts determined the whole ground-plan of the Romanesque basilica. Lateral thrust on the semi-cylindrical barrel vaulting was seldom adopted, and the crosssvaulting which had already been used by the Romans for covering wide spans. The cross-vaulting is created when two barrel-vaults intersect each other at right angles above a square ground-plan. The load is then carried by the four corner-posts or piers. But since the nave is twice as high as the aisles, this Romanesque technique became a necessity. The square intersection or crossing determines the span of the rest of the nave, which is intersected at intervals by two bays from the aisles. The columns of the nave which carried the heaviest load were gradually replaced by piers.