Icons – more or less formulaic likenesses of otherworldly beings, sacred
events and scenes – offered the Byzantines access to the holy par excellence,
and although reviled as idols by some emperors (see below, pp. 278–84),
they became engrained in private piety and collective imprecation. After the
Mother of God’s protection of her City of Constantinople in the seventh
century, icons representing her were revered and, eventually, panel icons
were processed regularly through Constantinople’s public spaces, helping
to render them and the City yet more sacred.7 Icons were deemed truer
than words in conveying the divine. The sense that their contrasting brightness
and shade, yet stable basic forms, could relay sacred happenings and
communicate spiritual essentials was strong; it is notable in, for example,
late Byzantine art, when directly experiencing the energies and uncreated
light of God was the ambition of prominent ascetics.8
Integral to private devotions, ritual routines and theological truths, icons
were painted on wood or walls, or portrayed in mosaics, ivory or metalwork,
and from the ninth century onwards the beings on them were generally
identified by inscriptions.9 Significantly, they were not sharply distinguishable
in style from images of emperors, past and present, and an emperor
could be shown in the company of Christ or a saint (see below, fig. 33,
p. 154). A particularly fine mosaic of Christ graced St Sophia from soon
after Michael VIII Palaiologos (1258–82) restored empire to Constantinople
(see below, fig. 58, p. 826), while Michael demonstrated the imperial
presence at newly regained points through wall-paintings, as at Apollonia,
south of the strategic base of Dyrrachium (Durazzo) on the Adriatic coast
(see below, fig. 57, p. 800).
Michael VIII’s projection of his authority far and wide through visual
media belongs to a great tradition, involving coins, seals and the minor
arts, reaching back beyond Justinian to the heyday of imperial Rome. The
ways in which the emperor and his order were portrayed and idealised
are discussed and illustrated in specialised but accessible studies as well as
in more general works.10 That beauty and superlative technical expertise
should be attributes of imperial power was a tenet of Byzantine thinking
until virtually the end. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (945–59) could
claim that ‘all beauty and adornment had been lost to the empire’ for want
of due attention to ceremonial. He was in fact taking a sideswipe against
his detested former co-emperor, who had manipulated political imagery
against him.11
The grand halls for the reception of visitors, the gardens, feasts, exotica
and religious rites experienced, and the ‘diplomatic gifts’ presented at court
or sent to notables and potentates further afield have enjoyed considerable
scholarly attention.12 The Constantinopolitans’ penchant for dignifying
workaday or dilapidated buildings with silks and other splendid hangings
has also been noted. Wealth in this flexible – and portable – form became
the hallmark of the elite. The minor arts and ceremonial could cover for the
limitations and condition of structures of brick and stone. This held true
not only of the capital but also of citadels in ancient cities and strongholds in
outlying regions, which could be reoccupied and refurbished when threats
loomed.13
The authorities’ alertness to the impact of sights on outsiders is registered
in a text for receiving envoys in the capital: if they came from
greater powers, they were to be shown the ‘masses of our men, good order
of our weaponry and the height of our walls’.14 In the empire’s later years,
mosaicists could still portray in St Sophia the emperor wearing a crown and
vestments replete with gemstones. Yet, as Nikephoros Gregoras deplored,
his actual crown and vestments were ‘make-believe (phantasia)’, ‘made
of gilded leather . . . and decorated with pieces of glass of all colours’.
Here again, one art or craft could substitute for another in the imperial
kaleidoscope, to keep up appearances. A peculiarly Byzantine blend of
faith, self-belief and expectations of ultimate vindication underlay such
improvisations.15
The choicest of the visual arts, crafts and architecture were reserved to
display imperial majesty, superlative craftsmanship and beautiful artefacts
denoting possession of supernatural powers and legitimate authority. Some
of the highest-quality imperial silks named their place of manufacture near
the Great Palace or the emperor reigning when they were made.16 Such
association of extraordinary skills, technical and aesthetic, with hegemony
is characteristic of numerous pre-industrial societies,17 and to many Byzantines
reverence for the emperor appeared interwoven with service of God,
however firmly churchmen drew the line.
By and large the imperial authorities and the leading monks and churchmen
were, from the mid-ninth century onwards, in alignment as to what
was acceptable ‘official’ and religious art. Their command of skills and
resources meant that they could set the tone and contents of the more elaborate,
public examples of the visual arts. The forms, decorative programmes
and ritual significance of ecclesiastical and monastic buildings have received
scholarly attention, and the prominence of churches in studies on Byzantine
art and architecture is not wholly an accident of survival: the empire
was well- (if not over-)stocked with churches and monasteries from at least
the time that Justinian was building more churches in Constantinople than
strictly pastoral needs warranted.18 But not all buildingswere commissioned
by churchmen or the imperial authorities. Private secular architecture after
the seventh century is known to us only from occasional mentions in literary
sources and from archaeology. Further excavations should shed light
on the material facts of life in Byzantine towns and even, eventually, in
rural settlements, which have mostly as yet only been identified from field
surveys.19 Likewise collation of excavated artefacts with long-studied objets
d’art, wall-paintings or even manuscript illuminations is beginning to highlight
other kinds of subject-matter in the representational arts, unofficial
visual statements which could veer far fromthe ‘party-line’ of court orations,
sermons and other literary set pieces. Ceramics can be particularly eloquent
in revealing the fancies, fantasies and humour of Byzantines having little
or no connection with the imperial-ecclesiastical establishment.
World History
