BYZANTINE ART. From the time of Constantine the great, the emperors of the east arrogated to their imperial city the pre-eminence which, for so long a period, ancient Rome had actually possessed; and, as a necessary consequence of this assump tion, Constantinople, or Byzantium, as it still continued sometimes to be called, became the rival of the mother-city in the richness and variety of its artistic monuments. In Rome, and, indeed, in the whole of western Europe, the first effect produced by the influx of the mighty stream of barbarian life, and the consequent dissolution of existing society, was the almost total suppression of artistic effort. It was then that the artists of the west, willing and eager to avail themselves of the invitation held out to them, poured into Constantinople, carrying with them what yet remained of the artistic life of the ancient world. Byzantium was the hearth on which, during the dark period of the middle ages, those feeble sparks of ancient art were kept alive, which served to kindle the new and independent artistic life of the modem world. Not only were the painters and sculptors of Italy indebted to the art of Byzantium for the tradition of that ideal mode of conception to which the term classical is peculiarly applied, but artists in every department derived thence the elements of that technical knowledge without which the embodiment of such conceptions is impossible. This practical acquaintance with the technical rudiments of their respective arts, which could scarcely have been derived from a mere examination of ancient Works, was communicated to the fathers of Italian art by living 13yzantines, some of them probably the descendants of those whom barba rian conquests had driven into the east, and whom the conquests of a still more barba rous race now restored to western Europe. It is impossible to doubt that modern art was largely indebted to this circumstance for the marvelous stride which it imme diately after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. But though its chief value may consist in its having thus transmitted to us the succession of antiquity, B. A. was by no means devoid of original and individual character; and it is only in so far as it possesses this, and not when regarded as a mere conservation of antique types and processes, that it takes rank as a school of art. The characteristic element in B. A. may be described as the earliest artistic recognition and representation to the senses of what was new and peculiar iu Christian as opposed to heathen life. To the fullest extent to which it could
claim a separate and individual existence, B. A. was Christian art; and consequently in Germany, where the subject has received more attention than iu this country, the two terms are frequently used as synonymous. The appearance of B. A., in this its only peculiar sense, dates from the age of Justinian, i.e., from the earlier half of the 6th c., and its productive period may be said to terminate with the couquest • of the eastern empire by the crusaders in 1204. But though its declension dates from this event, B. A. continued to exist in considerable vigor down to the final destruction of the empire of the east, in 1453; and even now may be seen as the inseparable handmaid of the Greek church, both in Europe and iu Asia. It is in this point of view, and more particularly as forming the basis of artistic life in Russia, that B. A. possesses its chief living interest in our day. What Rome was to the western, Byzantium was to the eastern European; and the relation of the latter to his mother-city, if it commenced at a somewhat later date, continued during the whole period of the middle ages.
Though the inhabitants of eastern Europe thus derived their traditions of antiquity from a meaner source than the Romanic nations, they received them more unbroken; and, from first to last, were subjected to their influences during a much longer period. To them the living voice and hand continued to communicate what for nearly a thou sand years Italians, Spaniards, and Franks had had to seek in the dead image and letter alone; and if anything still remains unrecorded of ancient thought, it doubtless dwells on Greek, and not on Roman or German tongues. Indolent, luxurious, and dissolute as their ancestors had been in classical times, the citizens of Constantinople were dis tinguished by an intellectual character, which, unfruitful and enfeebled though it was, was systematic, subtle, mystical, and pedantic. They were eminently an instructed people; but, like individuals whose glory is in the past, they were more conservative than original; and, however justly we may despise the chaff which they engendered, it is impossible to overestimate the of the corns of gold which clung to their memo ries.