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Dec 6, 2023 · Woman with Scroll. Evan and Anne discuss Marble Portrait Bust of a Woman with a Scroll, late 4th–early 5th century C.E., pentelic marble, 53 x 27.5 x 22.2 cm ( The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection) Additional resources: This sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Smarthistory’s free Guide to Byzantine Art e-book.
Woman with Scroll, An Early Byzantine Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (video) | Khan Academy. Google Classroom. About. Hear Byzantine art historians Evan Freeman and Anne McClanan unlock the meanings of a marble sculpture from the past, showing an early Byzantine/Late Roman woman holding a scroll.
- 6 min
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Title: Statuette of a Woman. Date: 5th–6th century. Culture: Byzantine. Medium: Copper alloy. Dimensions: Overall: 7 15/16 x 3 11/16 x 2 9/16 in. (20.2 x 9.3 x 6.5 cm) Classification: Metalwork-Bronze. Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1949. Accession Number: 49.60.5
The medium of the miniature mosaic icon enjoyed particular popularity during the Late Byzantine centuries, with their brilliant surfaces and illusion of luxury formed from more modest materials such as colored stone, semiprecious gems, and glass embedded in wax or resin on a wooden support ( 2008.352 ).
- Summary of Byzantine Art and Architecture
- Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- Beginnings of Byzantine Art and Architecture
- Byzantine Art and Architecture: Concepts, Styles, and Trends
- Later Developments - After Byzantine Art and Architecture
Existing for over a thousand years, the Byzantine Empire cultivated diverse and sumptuous arts to engage the viewers' senses and transport them to a more spiritual plane as well as to emphasize the divine rights of the emperor. Spanning the time between antiquity and the Middle Ages, Byzantine art encompassed an array of regional styles and influen...
In further developing Christian iconography that began during Roman times, images became powerful means to spread and deepen the Christian faith. Many of the now-standard iconographic types, such a...Byzantine emperors used art and architecture to signal their strength and importance. Often, depictions of the emperor were less naturalistic and instead used compositional clues such as size, plac...Beginning with the basilica and central plans used by the Romans, Byzantine architects and designers made huge engineering innovations in erecting domes and vaults. The use of pendentives and squin...The architectural surfaces of Byzantine churches were covered in mosaics and frescoes, creating opulent and magnificent interiors that glittered in the candle and lamp light. In building such elabo...To Start: Defining the Byzantine Period
The term Byzantine is derived from the Byzantine Empire, which developed from the Roman Empire. In 330 the Roman Emperor Constantine established the city of Byzantion in modern day Turkey as the new capital of the Roman empire and renamed it Constantinople. Byzantion was originally an ancient Greek colony, and the derivation of the name remains unknown, but under the Romans the name was Latinized to Byzantium. In 1555 the German historian Hieronymus Wolf first used the term Byzantine Empire i...
The Roman Empire
In the era leading up to the founding of the Byzantine Empire, the Roman Empire was the most powerful economic, political, and cultural force in the world. A polytheistic society, Roman religion was deeply informed by Greek mythology, as Greek gods were adopted into the Roman mos maiorum, or "way of the ancestors," viewing their own founding fathers as the source of their identity and worldly power. At the same time, as the empire absorbed the deities of the peoples they conquered as a way of...
Early Christian Art
Creating frescoes, mosaics, and panel paintings, Early Christian art drew upon the styles and motifs of Roman art while repurposing them to Christian subjects. Works of art were created primarily in the Christian catacombs of Rome, where early depictions of Christ portrayed him as the classical "Good Shepherd," a young man in classical dress in a pastoral setting. At the same time, meaning was often conveyed by symbols, and an early iconography began to develop. As the Edict of Milan was foll...
Architectural Innovations
Known for its central plan buildings with domed roofs, Byzantine architecture employed a number of innovations, including the squinch and the pendentive. The squinch used an arch at the corners to transform a square base into an octagonal shape, while the pendentive employed a corner triangular support that curved up into the dome. The original architectural design of many Byzantine churches was a Greek cross, having four arms of equal length, placed within a square. Later, peripheral structu...
Poikilia
Byzantine architecture was informed by Poikilia, a Greek term, meaning "marked with various colors," or "variegated," that in Greek aesthetic philosophy was developed to suggest how a complex and various assemblage of elements created a polysensory experience. Byzantine interiors, and the placement of objects and elements within an interior, were designed to create ever changing and animated interior as light revealed the variations in surfaces and colors. Variegated elements were also achiev...
Iconographic Types and Iconostasis
Byzantine art developed iconographic types that were employed in icons, mosaics, and frescoes and influenced Western depictions of sacred subjects. The early Pantocrator, meaning "all-powerful," portrayed Christ in majesty, his right hand raised in a gesture of instruction and led to the development of the Deësis, meaning "prayer," showing Christ as Pantocrator with St. John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, and, sometimes, additional saints, on either side of him. The Hodegetria developed int...
During its almost one thousand year span, the Byzantine era influenced Islamic architecture, the art and architecture of the Carolingian Renaissance, Norman architecture, Gothic architecture, and the International Gothic style. When the Turkish Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, renaming it Istanbul, the Byzantine Empire came to an en...
Culture. Ancient Greek. Title. Statuette of a Woman. Date. 450 BCE. Medium. terracotta, polychromy. Dimensions. 27.6 × 8.3 × 6.4 cm (10 7/8 × 3 1/4 × 2 1/2 in.) Credit Line. Katherine K. Adler Memorial Fund. Reference Number. 2014.969. IIIF Manifest. https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/222013/manifest.json. Publication History.
Dec 6, 2023 · In this sense, art of the Byzantine Empire continued some of the traditions of Roman art. Generally speaking, 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 ...
