How did artists in the byzantine empire enhance traditional roman art?

Answer 1

Byzantine art did not necessarily followed traditional Roman art. It developed new forms of art. Byzantine art produced great mosaics, frescoes, stained windows, icons, illuminated manuscripts (books with decorations such as decorated initials and borders and miniature illustrations).

European illuminated manuscripts originated form the eastern part of the Roman Empire and form the Byzantine period of the eastern Mediterranean and in Italy. This art was developed from the 3rd to 6th century and continued until the 15th century; that is, until the advent of the printing press. The word miniature comes from the Latin minium: red lead, vermilion. This pigment was initially used to mark particular words and for miniating or delineating the early codices (books) with simple decorations. The mediaeval Italian word miniatura evolved for mediaeval Latin verb minare (to rubricate, to illuminate). It was used to indicate the small pictures in illuminated manuscripts and then became associated with smallness, minuteness.

Icons were religion images which could be images carved in stone, cast in metal, done in mosaic work, embroidered on cloth, or impressed on parchment. The Byzantines are most famous for icons which were flat (usually wood) panel paintings or bas reliefs on small works, such as ivories. Wooden panel icons decorate the altars of Orthodox churches (the Byzantine were orthodox Christians) and early medieval Italian churches, bearing images of Jesus, Mary or the saints. Early Christianity saw the naturalistic reproduction of humans as pagan idolatry. The Orthodox Church continued to hold this view. Hence the icons were preferred to statues because the latter seen as associated to idolatry because they had been the preferred form of cult image of the pagan Romans and Greeks. The images were stylised to emphasise holiness rather than humanity. This stylisation was enhanced by the use of halos. Although halos were used by the ancient Greeks and Romans and in Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, they were at its most widely used in Byzantine art.

The Byzantine made skilful and abundant use of the art of gilding for their icons and illuminations. Gilding refers to the techniques used to apply gold or silver leaf or power to surfaces such as wood, stone or metal to produce a decorative thin coating of gold. It was used for the background, for decorations of clothes or to emphasise drapery for halos and for borders. Byzantine artists glued gold leafs onto the wooden panels

Whereas mosaics disappeared in Western Europe, they remained central to Byzantine culture where it flourished from the 6th to the 15th centuries. Byzantine churches often had golden mosaics instead of frescoes. The most beautiful Byzantine mosaics are those of the Macedonian Renaissance (867-1056) which carefully mingled traditionalism with innovation.

Not much of Byzantine architecture has survived and what is extant is mainly churches. They were built in the Byzantine Empire, Italy and the parts of Eastern Europe which converted to Orthodox Christianity through contact with the Byzantines: Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia. The most impressive church is the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople (now Istanbul). Other prime examples are the Hagia Irene (built in 330s-40s and restored in 548 and in740) the Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora (built in the early 5th century and rebuilt in 1081) St Mary Pammakaristos (11th-12th century Church of the Saints Sergius and Bacchus (or little Hagia Sophia, 537) also in Istanbul, the Basilica of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo in (504) and the Basilica of San Vitale (527) both in Ravenna, the 10th-century monastery of Hosios Lukas in Greece St. Mark's Basilica in Venice (1084) The Panagia Chalkeon and the Hagia Sophia in Thessalonki, the Hagia Spohia in Sophia (Bulgaria, 6th century) monasteries of Mount Athos (9th-10th century) in Greece. Six churches and two monasteries are also in Mystas, Greece Major Byzantine churches in ruins are the Church of the Holy Apostles (6th century) in Istanbul, the Basilica of St. John in Ephesus (Turkey) and Saint Simeon Stylites in Aleppo (Syria).

Early Byzantine architecture was a continuation of classical Roman architecture, but it also changed in style and advanced in technology. The Byzantines preferred the circular or central church plan than the basilica or axial (long) plan, which was favoured in Western Europe. Annexes could be built from the central round area to form a cross. Greek cross plans with increasing geometrical complexity were built. The Byzantines liked the central/circular because they liked to build domes, often with a larger one in the central part and two to four smaller ones on its sides. At the Holy Apostles five domes were applied to a cruciform plan; the central dome was the highest.

One of the advances of Roman architecture was the pedentive dome which was experimented with in the 2nd and 3rd century and was perfected with the building of the Byzantine Hagia Sophia in the 6th century. Pedentives are triangular segments of a sphere which fill the spaces between four or eight arches placed as a square or octagon and form a continuous circular of elliptical base which supports the dome. The area under the dome could be enlarged by building an apse to one side, as it was done at San Vitale and Saints Sergius and Bacchus. This technique was perfected with the masterpiece of Byzantine architecture: the very elaborate Hagia Sophia. The central space is greatly extended by two large apses with large semi-domes at the eastern and western ends. Two smaller apses which protrude from the semi-domes are placed at the sides of the large apses, enlarging them. They also extend the northern and southern sides of the walls of the square area under the dome, doubling their length and giving the central space a long rectangular shape. The dome had a diameter of 30.5 m (100 ft.) and was slightly larger than the dome of Baths of Trajan in Rome (30 m) and the second largest dome in the world after that of the Pantheon in Rome until 1436. The eastern apse has a third smaller apse in the centre.