Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Jesus healing the bleeding woman, Roman catacombs, 300–350. Early Christian art and architecture (or Paleochristian art) is the art produced by Christians, or under Christian patronage, from the earliest period of Christianity to, depending on the definition, sometime between 260 and 525.
Byzantine art comprises the body of artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, [1] as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of western Rome and lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, [2] the start date of the Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political history, if still ...
The earliest surviving Christian art comes from the late 2nd to early 4th centuries on the walls of tombs belonging, most likely, to wealthy [17] Christians in the catacombs of Rome, although from literary evidence there may well have been panel icons which, like almost all classical painting, have disappeared.
In Byzantine religious art, unlike the Classical Greek and Roman art that preceded it, symbolism became more important than realism. Instead of concentrating on making the most realistic images possible, mosaic artists of this time wanted to create idealized and sometimes exaggerated images of what existed inside the soul of a person.
Byzantine capitals break away from the Classical conventions of ancient Greece and Rome with sinuous lines and naturalistic forms, which are precursors to the Gothic style. In the same way the Parthenon is the most impressive monument for Classical religion , Hagia Sophia remained the iconic church for Christianity .
Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture. Penguin Books. Lowden, John (1997). Early Christian and Byzantine Art. Phaidon Press. Milburn, Robert (1988). Early Christian Art and Architecture. Scolar Press. Webb, Matilda (2001). The churches and catacombs of early Christian Rome: a comprehensive guide. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1902210582.
The single most important piece of Byzantine Christian mosaic art in the East is the Madaba Map, made between 542 and 570 as the floor of the church of Saint George at Madaba, Jordan. It was rediscovered in 1894. The Madaba Map is the oldest surviving cartographic depiction of the Holy Land.
Late 13th-century Byzantine mosaics of the Hagia Sophia showing the image of Christ Pantocrator.. Much of the art surviving from Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire is Christian art, although this is in large part because the continuity of church ownership has preserved church art better than secular works.