USAD22: Art History and Appreciation Early Christian and Byzantine

1. USAD 22: Art History and
Appreciation (Week 11)
Prepared By:
Miss Ida Shaheera Azhar
idashaheera@salam.uitm.edu.my
ida.mandarin@gmail.com
+6 019 204 6161 | w 201

3. Byzantine Empire
• Capital city: Constantinople (Istanbul)
• Location: Ravenna, Italy (was briefly the capital
of the Western Roman Empire)
• Constantinople: City of Constantine
• Constantine was the first Christian emperor

4. Constantinople:
• The Byzantine Empire lasted for over a thousand
years
• Capital of the World: Trading position in the
center of the medieval world
• Constantinople (Turkey) is a transcontinental city
in Eurasia
• Napolean Bonaparte: If the Earth were a single
state, Constantinople would be its capital

6. Basilica of San Vitale:
• The most important sixth-century church is San
Vitale in Ravenna
• Location: Ravenna, Italy (was briefly the capital
of the Western Roman Empire)
• The church is most famous for its wealth of
Byzantine mosaics

7. Basilica of San Vitale:
• The art of Early Christian period were affected by
an ongoing controversy between those who
sought to follow the biblical prohibition against
the making of images and those who wanted
pictures to help tell the stories
• Byzantine style developed as a way of inspiring
the illiterate while keeping the biblical
commandment that forbids the making of graven
images

9. Justinian and his Retinue:
• Mosaic in apse of San Vitale, Ravenna
• The elongated, abstracted figures provide
symbolic rather than naturalistic depictions of the
Christian and Royal figures
• Figures are depicted with heavy outline and
stylized shading
• Justinian are shown with halo and royally attired
and bejeweled

10. Hagia Sophia:
• 6th
Century
• Location: Istanbul,
Turkey
• As the central
sanctuary of the
Eastern Orthodox
Christian Church

12. Hagia Sophia:
• After Islamic conquest of 1453, minarets (towers)
were added and it was used as a mosque
• It is now a museum
• Hagia Sophia’s distinctive dome appears to float
on a halo light
• Contrast to the Pantheon’s dome on a cylinder,
the dome of Hagia Sophia rests on a square base

13. Hagia Sophia:
• “Holy Wisdom” also known as AyaSofya
• Mathematics was at the time regarded as the
highest of the sciences
• Design by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of
Miletus
• One of the magnificent domes in the world