Christian Art After the Iconoclasm. 1000-1400 AD
As Iconographers, I think we all realize that the Byzantine culture was influential in creating a nuanced visual language that was able to convey important principles of religious art . Can we today consider and contemplate how the Byzantine style developed in order to create a visual language that can bring Christian concepts to our culture today?
An important influence of the development of Christian art in the 11th century was the schism, or split, in Christianity in 1054, which resulted in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Roman Catholic Church. In the next centuries, each division of the church would develop its own culture and approach to worship, prayer, liturgy, and art.
Let’s Take a Look First at the Eastern Church’s Artistic Development
The expansion of monasticism was the main force behind the unprecedented artistic and cultural activity of the eleventh and twelfth century. In 963 AD, Athanasius of Trebizond founded the first monastery on Mt Athos, Greece. Legend has it that early hermits were visited by The Virgin Mary who gave the place her blessing and there are many icons that convey this story and remembrance of the visitation .
In 988, Russia adopted Christianity and in 1017, Prince Yaroslavl the Wise erected the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev. A Byzantium team of artists and iconographers, Russian and Greek, decorated the cathedral with beautiful frescoes and mosaics.
1054 began the schism between the Holy thrones of Rome and Constantinople, resulting in a wide divergence stylistically in religious art making that reflected differences in theological values between the two cultures. The Eastern Church continued to develop the Icon, keeping the flat pictorial space of Egyptian art, and the simplicity of rendering human forms borrowed from the Greco Roman tradition of the early centuries.
In 1130, A miracle working icon, Our Lady of Vladimir Icon of the Virgin Mary was brought to Kiev. This icon has lasted through the centuries and today is a symbol of Love and Tenderness.
The Paleologue dynasty in Constantinople, 1259-1453, was the last resurgence of Byzantium. The attempt to have a rebirth of Byzantium after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, resulted in the rebuilding and decoration of many churches, including Chora Church, which is considered one of the highest artistic achievements of that era.
Gregory Palamas, (1296-1359), was the Archbishop of Thessalonica and an eminent theologian who supported Hesychasm, a mystical movement in Eastern monasticism that promoted fervent prayer, silence, and contemplation.
In 1378, according to legend, Theophanes the Greek came to Russian from Byzantium, and painted the Church of the Transfiguration in Novgorod and many others, along with his student, Andrei Rubylev. This period of icon painting is considered by many to be one of the greatest achievements of Russian Iconography.
St. Sergius of Radonezh was a great Russian saint who promoted Russia’s spiritual revival. He dedicated his monastery to the Holy Trinity and preached unity in love. He taught brotherly love and divine service and commissioned the Holy Trinity Icon to be painted by Andrei Rubylev. Rubylev and St. Sergius were in large part responsible for Russia becoming one of the great centers of spiritual enlightenment in this time. St. Sergius passed away in 1392.
In the West….
Religious art in 10th century Europe, also known as Romanesque art, was symbolic, vibrant, and hierarchical. It was characterized by its emphasis on the suffering of Christ and other sacred figures, and depicted saints and religious leaders as larger and more important than ordinary people. Artists also used animals, flowers, and fruits to convey religious messages and ideas. Some common symbols used in medieval Christian iconography include: Fire, light rays, or wind to symbolize the Almighty God; Lamb or fish: symbolize Jesus Christ and his love; Crucifix: Depicts Chrstianityand eternal life; a dove symbolizes the holy spirit from heaven or an individual’s soul, and lilies in a vase or water to portray the purity and spirituality of the Virgin Mary.
One of the most spectacular achievements of medieval artists in the west was their desire to emphasize heavenly light in their creation of places of worship. Beginning with the 12thcentury, heavy, dark, Romanesque architecture began to be replaced by Gothic vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses that made it possible to bring more light into the churches than ever before. Light for a Christian had great significance because of the extensive Biblical associations of the nature of God with Light.
After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by Christian armies of the Fourth Crusade, precious objects from Byzantium made their way to Italian soil and profoundly influenced the art produced there, especially the brightly colored gold-ground panels that proliferated during the thirteenth century.
Romanesque Art, one of the first innovative and coherent styles to spread across the western Church,was greatly influenced by the Byzantine art that preceded it.
European countries of Italy, France, England, and Spain responded to this stylistic innovation that was more in keeping with shifts in cultural values.
The main purpose for the development of Romanesque art was to visually record biblical events and to chronicle important figures, like influential leaders and saints in a more naturalistic way, hoping to bring the viewer into closer contact with God.
The Bridge Between Eastern and Western Art
At the end of the thirteenth century and beginning of the fourteenth, three great masters appeared who changed the course of painting from the more abstract Byzantine style, to a more naturalistic one:
Cimabue, Italian, (1240-1302) painted religious paintings that were heavily influenced by Byzantine models, yet he was also innovative and eventually broke away from the Byzantine style of religious painting. For this reason, his work is considered to be a transitional bridge between icon painting and the more naturalistic developments of Renaissance painting.
Giotto di Bondone, (d. 1337), is believed to have been a pupil of Cimabue, and to have decorated churches in Padua, Florence, Naples, Assisi, and Rome. His volumetric figures are in sharp contrast to the linear, stylized shapes of Eastern religious art of the same period. In his work, the flatness of icons began to disappear in favor of a new kind of pictorial space that achieved the illusion of depth visible in the natural world. With Giotto, considered by many to be the father of modern European painting, the flat world of thirteenth-century Italian painting was transformed into an analogue for the real world. Giotto’s figures are volumetric rather than linear, and the emotions they express are varied and convincingly human rather than stylized. He created a new kind of pictorial space with an almost measurable depth that prefigured the pictorial developments of the Renaissance..
Duccio, (1278 – 1318), is considered to be the father of Sienese painting. Together with Giotto he is considered to be one of the founders of Western art. His religious paintings introduce lyricism and a refined color sense into the Byzantine tradition he inherited. He became interested in portraying human emotions and a more naturalistic space- both in conflict with Byzantine art principles. His purpose was to bridge the gap between the spiritual world of the figures he painted and the real world of the viewer by an illusionistic rendering of objects and space- the first of its kind in Western painting, and not a style embraced by Eastern iconography until later centuries.
Overlapping of Panel Painting with Icon Painting
Through the fourteenth century in Europe, the primary support for portable paintings was the wooden panel. The lengthy and complex preparation of the panels had already been the way of icon creation as well, hailing from the very early centuries of Christianity. Many of these methods of icon board preparation are continued in the practice of icon painting today. They are described in detail in Cennini’s Il Libro dell Arte.
So, to summarize, the schism of the Church into an Eastern and a Western Church resulted in different approaches to creating a visual language that would best convey concepts of God, Bible stories and saints. Western culture evolved from a more theocratic culture to a humanistic one with, in my opinion, disastrous results. I think I am more drawn to the Byzantine visual language because of its ability to convey purity, focus on God, and demonstrate a clear difference between God’s world and the naturalistic world we live in. And I think this ability to transcend the moment and connect with the Divine reality is crucial to humans coping with an increasingly stressful world today. The question is: Can we create a visual spiritual language that will engage modern men and women in a meaningful way? How will we do that? What do we learn from the simplified account of religious art development above? I believe that each of us will be inspired by God to create a variety of approaches, for it is of great importance to the modern world that we do.
Until next month, when we take a look at…The Renaissance and Icon Painting!! Glory to God whose power, working within us, can do infinitely more that we can ask or imagine.
Christine Simoneau Hales
My website: New Christian Icons. My Youtube Channel
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