Art Evolution in Early Christian, Byzantine & Islamic Periods

1. Introduction to Art Chapter 13 Early Christian, byzantine, Islamic Period

2. REVIEW • Read pages 275-311 • 46 questions including vocabulary • Studio Art

3. Beginning Blog • Imagine that the United States ws planning to adopt an official state religion. How would such a development affect the kinds of art the government would sponsor or even allow?

4. Historical Timeline—Unit 5 (includes the Early Christian and Byzantine Art • Roman Empire legalized Christianity 313AD • Plans for the Vatican Palace begin in Rome • Muhammad, prophet of Islam, born in Mecca (A.D. 570) • Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem is written • slam spreads throughout Northern Africa • Charlemagne becomes the first Holy Roman Emperor • Charlemagne dies (814) • Charlemagne dies (814) • Feudalism emerges in Western Europe • Crusades begin in Europe (1095) • Pilgrimages to Jerusalem begin • Pointed arch and flying buttress developed by French architects • King John of England signs the Magna Carta (1215) • Pointed arch and flying buttress developed by French architects • King John of England signs the Magna Carta (1215) • Dante completes The Divine Comedy (1321) • The Plague (Black Death) kills one-third of England’s population (1349) • Limbourg Brothers produce a luxurious Book of (p. 343) Hours for the Duke of Berry (1413–1415) • Hundred Years’ War between England and France (1337–1453)

5. In quest of salvation • Remember: (Prior to examining the art of Asia, Africa, the Americas we left off with the art of ROME. • Prior to the fall of Rome, the Christians were persecuted because they did not worship the Emperor • While persecuted, they had to go “underground” for their religious service in the catacombs or underground passageways. • With the rise of King Constinenople, Christianity became “legal” and Christians could practice their faith. • How Rome Fell.

6. Questions to ask and answer • Do you know why early Christians used art to express their religion? Have you ever seen a mosaic? What do you know about the Moors? The Roman Empire began to decline in the latter part of the second century. • The Christian Church gained power in the West. In the East, the Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire. Christians, Muslims, and Jews developed a rich culture in which the arts flourished.

7. Catacombs • For many years, the Christian religion was not legal throughout the Roman Empire, resulting in much hardship and persecution for its many followers. Finally, in A.D. 313, Christianity was made legal when the emperor Constantine signed the Edict of Milan. Pictures with hidden Christian meanings were being painted long before that time, however. • Many of those early paintings were made on the stone walls of narrow underground passageways. When persecuted by Roman emperors, the Christians dug catacombs, or underground passageways, as places to hold religious services and bury their dead. In time, the catacombs grew into a vast maze of tunnels. A painting found on a catacomb ceiling (Figure 13.3) in Rome tells a great deal about the early Christians’ outlook on life and offers insights into the characteristics and purpose of their art.

8. More than 1,650 years ago, an unknown Christian artist completed a painting on the rough ceiling of a gallery in one of the catacombs. The artist who painted on that rough catacomb wall borrowed heavily from art forms seen all over Rome, but these forms were given new Christian meanings.

9. BASILICAS • Not long after the catacomb painting was completed, the status of Christians began to improve. Christianity had spread rapidly across the entire Roman Empire, and the emperor Constantine finally granted Christians the freedom to practice their faith openly. • A new kind of building was needed for the large numbers of worshipers. Again, the Christians borrowed from the Romans. Christian builders selected the basilica as their model. This was the long, spacious building that the Romans had used for their public meeting halls. • Christian churches were intended as retreats from the real world, places where worshipers could take part in a deeply spiritual event. The exterior of these churches was quite plain, especially when compared to classical temples. The later addition of a campanile, or bell tower, did little to change the outer simplicity of these early churches. • In contrast to the plain exterior, the inside of the church was designed for dramatic . Sant ́ Apollinare in Classe (interior, looking toward the apse). Ravenna, Italy. 534 AD

10. MOSAICS • When eyes strayed from the altar, theyrose to view walls richly decorated with mosaics. • A mosaic is a decoration made with small pieces of glass and stone set in cement. • Christian artists placed mosaics on walls where light from windows and candles caused them to flicker and glow mysteriously. • This may be one of the reasons why early Christian churches came to be known as “Houses of Mystery.” The Virgin and Child, 10th century CE, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, Mosaic.

11. Byzantine art • Byzantine art includes work created from the fourth century to the fifteenth century and encompassing parts of the Italian peninsula, the eastern edge of the Slavic world, the Middle East, and North Africa. So what is Byzantine art, and what do we mean when we use this term?

12. Periods of byzantine art • Early Byzantine (c. 330–750)Middle Byzantine (c. 850–1204)Late Byzantine (c. 1261–1453)

13. Early byzantine art 330-750 • Constantine adopted Christianity • Moves capital from Rome to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) • Christianity flourished and gradually supplants the Greco-Roman gods. • This religious shift dramatically affects the art created across the empire. • Earliest Christina churches are built during this period including the Hagia Sophia • The interior of the church were mosaics. • Mosaics are small pieces of glass and stone set in cement

14. Mosaics • Virgin (Theotokos) and Child between Saints Theodore and George, sixth or early seventh century, encaustic on wood, 2' 3" x 1' 7 3/8"(St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt)

15. Mosaics • Similarly, mosaics, such as those within the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, sought to evoke the heavenly realm. • In this work, ethereal figures seem to float against a gold background that is representative of no identifiable earthly space. • By placing these figures in a spiritual world, the mosaics gave worshippers some access to that world as well. • At the same time, there are real-world political messages affirming the power of the rulers in these mosaics. In this sense, art of the Byzantine Empire continued some of the traditions of Roman art.

16. Byzanatine versus Roman Art • Byzantine art differs from the art of the Romans in that it is interested in depicting that which we cannot see—the intangible world of Heaven and the spiritual. Thus, the Greco-Roman interest in depth and naturalism is replaced by an interest in flatness and mystery.

18. Middle Byzantine period: 850AM-1204AD • The Middle Byzantine period followed a period of crisis for the arts called the Iconoclastic Controversy, when the use of religious images was hotly contested. • Iconoclasts (those who worried that the use of images was idolatrous), destroyed images, leaving few surviving images from the Early Byzantine period. • Fortunately for art history, those in favor of images won the fight and hundreds of years of Byzantine artistic production followed.

19. Middle Byzantine Period: Churches • Middle Byzantine period, with a focus on building churches and decorating their interiors. • There were some significant changes in the empire, however, that brought about some change in the arts. • First, the influence of the empire spread into the Slavic world with the Russian adoption of Orthodox Christianity in the tenth century. Byzantine art was therefore given new life in the Slavic lands.

20. Late byzantine: 1261-1453 • Between 1204 and 1261, the Byzantine Empire suffered another crisis: the Latin Occupation. • Crusaders from Western Europe invaded and captured Constantinople in 1204, temporarily toppling the empire in an attempt to bring the eastern empire back into the fold of western Christendom. (By this point Christianity had divided into two distinct camps: eastern [Orthodox] Christianity in the Byzantine Empire and western [Latin] Christianity in the European west.) 

21. Late Byzantine • By 1261 the Byzantine Empire was free of its western occupiers and stood as an independent empire once again, albeit markedly weakened. • The breadth of the empire had shrunk, and so had its power. Nevertheless Byzantium survived until the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453. • In spite of this period of diminished wealth and stability, the arts continued to flourish in the Late Byzantine period, much as it had before.

22. Late byzantine • Although Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453—bringing about the end of the Byzantine Empire—Byzantine art and culture continued to live on in its far-reaching outposts, as well as in Greece, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire, where it had flourished for so long. • The Russian Empire, which was first starting to emerge around the time Constantinople fell, carried on as the heir of Byzantium, with churches and icons created in a distinct “Russo-Byzantine” style(left). • Similarly, in Italy, when the Renaissance was first emerging, it borrowed heavily from the traditions of Byzantium. Cimabue’s Madonna Enthroned of 1280–1290 is one of the earliest examples of the Renaissance interest in space and depth in panel painting. But the painting relies on Byzantine conventions and is altogether indebted to the arts of Byzantium. • Dr. Ellen Hurst

23. The Decline of Byzantine • Khan Academy

24. Islamic art • I n the seventh century A.D., a religion known as Islam (which means “followers of God’s will”) emerged in the Middle East. The • prophet of Islam was an Arab merchant named Muhammad, who was born in Mecca around A.D. 570. • Muhammad received personal revelations that forced him to challenge the superstitions of the Arabs, who worshiped many different idols. • Following years of meditation, Muhammad heard a divine call to be the last of the prophets and a teacher for all. He taught that there is only one god, Allah (in Arabic, “the God”), whose will should be followed in order • for people to live just and responsible lives. • Muhammad was opposed by those who wished to preserve established tribal and religious customs. • After Muhammad’s death, messages he received from God were assembled into the Koran (kuh-RAN), or Qur’an, the holy scripture of Islam. For Muslims, the Koran is the final authority in matters of faith. It also offers rules to guide the daily lives of Muslims. Leaf from Qur’an, in Maghribi script. Islamic. North African. C 1300. Ink, colors, gold on parchment, 21” x 22” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

25. MOSQUE • During the early centuries of Islamic his-tory, the center of the Muslim world was an area known as the Fertile Crescent, composed of parts of present-day Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. • Included among these was the mosque, or Muslim place of worship. • The interiors of Islamic mosques are unlike the interiors of Christian churches. Christian artists created religious images as a way of teaching the religion to people who could not read. • Islamic artists avoided portraying living creatures in mosques and other religious buildings, because they did not want in any way to diminish the greatness of God’s creative power by portraying such forms. Instead, these artists decorated mosques and other religious structures with ornate calligraphy, geometric patterns, and stylized plants and flowers. Spiral Minaret. Mosque of Al-Mutawakkil. Samarra, Iraq. 848-52 AD.

26. HagiaSophia

27. Quiz: None

28. Ending Blog • What is the one thing you learned in this presentation that you didn’t know before?

29. Next Week • The Earl Medieval Period, pgs. 310 to the Art of Emerging Europe 351 • Questions/Vocabulary= 56