THE MIDDLE PERIOD: 8TH AND 9TH CENTURIES The obscure 7th century seems to be a period of transition. The coins of Justinian II. (d. 711) are designed in a new flat style.
From the foundation of Con stantinople to the beginning of the reign of Phocas (602-61o) rulers are, with very few exceptions, represented as beardless youths. In the 7th century, mature emperors are shaggy, bearded warriors. From the 8th century onwards, the reigning emperor has a carefully trimmed, pointed beard, long hair and an oval head tapering to the chin. The princes of ten appearing on the reverses of coins are beardless. The imperial costume is no longer classic or military, but consists of long, stiff, jewelled robes usually covered with pearls in a lozenge pattern. The type of royalty thus created pervades not only the empire but, in the course of the middle ages, all Europe. The extreme rarity of human repre sentations in any other medium for the whole middle period makes it necessary to have recourse to coins in order to bring out this most significant change. A well-preserved silk textile in Sens Cathedral, the shroud of S. Victor, traditionally held to have been given by Willicarius (d. 769), presents a lion-tamer whose oval head, long hair and lozenged breast-piece closely resemble representations on the coins. This shroud is of a rough texture; on a background of tawny yellow the design stands out in greenish blue enlivened by gold in the lion-tamer's hair and white dots in the border. Even on textiles, human shapes are rare, but the type of animal seen on the shroud of S. Victor and on other silks, some of which are associated with the 8th century, appears on many carved slabs and on an enamelled ewer at S. Maurice d'Agaune, which, according to tradition, was a gift of Charle magne (d. 814).
The slabs found on Greek territory, in Athens, Salonika and Constantinople, are undated. A character istic example in Salonika is reproduced on Pl. I., fig. 4. In the West, some slabs of corresponding style are dated; for instance, one at Cividale bears the name of Sicvald, Patriarch of Aquileia (762
The interlace, which in the East is sparsely used (see the shroud of S. Victor at Sens), tends in the West to crowd out animal shapes. On the Salonika slab, there is a new variety of tree ornament with simple trilobed leaves. This type of flat relief showing beasts, birds and monsters, often combined with foliage or with interlace borders and crosses, is almost the only existing sculpture of the 8th and 9th centuries. Other things must have existed, for it is recorded that Constantine V., Copronymus (reigned 741-775) had statues made of himself and his empress, as did also Philippicus ( 711-713) and Constan tine VI. (78o-797). High up on a mighty cliff in north-eastern Bulgaria there is a colossal relief of a horse and rider, a lion and a hound, accompanied by a long Greek inscription, as yet incom pletely deciphered, in which occur the names of Krum, Sublime Khan of the Bulgars, of his son Omurtag and of the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I., who was defeated and slain by Krum in 811. The manner in which this magnificent relief is placed on the face of the cliff may recall Sassanian rock-sculpture. In character it is more like the riders on the famous silk from Mozac now in the Lyons museum, which is Byzantine. This carving, probably by a Greek, is in higher relief than are the slabs men tioned above and its planes are more rounded. In the museum at Constantinople, in Top Kapu Gate in the same city, and in the Byzantine museum at Athens there are fragments of beasts in similar high relief though on a small scale. The art of the middle period is thus known principally by carved slabs and textiles.
The gold ground of the few remaining mosaics of this period in the East, such as those in the apse and bema (q.v.) of S. Sophia in Salonika and in the bema of S. Irene in Constantinople, is tawnier than the earlier golds. In Roman work of the early 9th century the gold is also tawny although far inferior to the Eastern.
The distaste for human representation which characterizes the middle period culminates in the official prohibition of sacred im ages. From 726 to 842, with interludes, not only was the making of images a punishable offence, but existing images were destroyed or covered with whitewash. The seated Virgin in the apse of S. Sophia at Salonika is believed to have been executed in one of the pauses in the iconoclastic struggle under Irene (787-797). If this dating is correct, a decorative system, the i ith century examples of which are numerous and well known, had been mas tered before the 8th was over. The semi-dome of the apse is covered with a gold ground, on which stands out alone the figure of Our Lady holding the Child. Here again, the Byzantines let simple surfaces play their reasoned part in the composition of interiors.
Perhaps because the supply of tusks was cut off from Constantinople by the Arab wars, very few carv ings survived that can be assigned to the 8th or 9th century. A group that takes its name from the Veroli casket (P1. II., fig. 1) in the Victoria and Albert museum, London, is by some supposed to be of this period, but more likely dates from the i oth and i i th centuries. Few painted manuscripts can be attributed to this period; these show the same style of fantastic animal decoration met with on slabs and in textiles, but in coarse, washy colours. Among the very numerous manuscripts of the Carolingian age in the West, there are in all probability types which represent imita tions of Eastern originals now lost.
The origins of the cloisonné enamelling technique so much used by the later Byzantines are lost. Descriptions of the altar given by Justinian to S. Sophia appear to refer to such enamels, and a small panel at Poitiers may be the central part of a reliquary sent by Justin II. about 569 to S. Radegonde. The Beresford Hope cross in the Victoria and Albert museum and a cross-shaped box in the Vatican have translucent enamels of brilliant colour and quality. In them the designs made by the cloisons are clumsy, and there are stylistic and iconographical reasons for assigning to them an early date, perhaps the 7th century. They are surely earlier than the highly accomplished convex enamels on the ewer of Charlemagne at S. Maurice d'Agaune, which tradition and style agree in dating somewhere about goo. In the Camara Santa at Oviedo there is a cross with enamels not unlike those in the ewer, but perhaps earlier.
No outstanding Byzantine plate or jewellery is certainly of this period. Western treasures which contain Carolingian goldsmith's work, ivories and illuminated manuscripts in plenty preserve many Byzantine textiles and a few enamels. We know that the West could not weave silk, and was unable to produce enamels of the quality attained by Eastern artists, but it appears to have been satisfied with its own ivory carving, goldsmith's work and illumination.
