04/05/2022

NEXT POST
Byzantine Mosaics Byzantine mosaics and paintings One of the most admired Byzantine paintings, the Virgin and Child (late thirteenth century, National Gallery of Art, Washington). It is said that this document reflects the Italian influence is evident in the Byzantine world during this time. The desire for wealth and magnificence of Byzantine art ornamental eminently courtly, demanded the lining of the walls of their temples with mosaic, not only to conceal the poverty of the materials used, but also as a means of expressing religiosity and semi-divine nature of imperial power (Caesaropapism). From the First Golden Age include the most complete is that of Ravenna, which links to early Christian mosaics of the V century: in the churches of St. Apollinaris St. Apollinaris in New Class and covered its walls with mosaics representing higher in the first a processional cortege, headed by the Magi, to the Theotokos or Mother of God, in the second, in the apse, is a heavenly vision in which St. Apollinaris (Ravenna) leads a flock.The masterpiece of art musivario is without doubt the whole mosaic of San Vitale in Ravenna, composed around the year 547, and which represent various biblical themes and sides of the apse groups of Justinian I and his wife Theodora with their respective entourage. After the iconoclastic struggle in the mid-ninth century is when he really sets the Byzantine aesthetics and iconography. Emerge a new Golden Age, the second, which will mark the peak of visual arts, radiating its influences to Islamic art, then in formation, and the nascent European Romanesque art. The figures show a certain rigidity and monotony, but very expressive in its symbolism, with obvious contempt laws of nature and space, are elongated and looking a certain dehumanization.The new suit symbolically iconographic types, according to a preset program (''Hermeneia''), to different...

Recent Comments