BYZANTINE SCULPTURE. When contrasted with the ignoble, tasteless, and meaning less productions of the later plastic art of Rome, that of Constantinople claims both admiration and respect. The figures are not deficient in dignity either in form or in attitude, and a deeply Christian spirit is traceable both in their general conception, and in their rich and significant symbolical accompaniments. In sculpture, as in architec ture, the peculiar Byzantine type first exhibits itself towards the beginning- of the 0th century. Alongside of unmistakable reminiscences of the antique, it exhibits charac teristics which are as unquestionably oriental. The figures are positively laden, not with drapery alone, but with costume, which obscures the nobler and freer lines in which the ancients delighted. The execution is careful, even painful. All this becomes more and more the case as we advance in the order of time, the earliest Christian works, and those immediately suggested by the antique, exhibiting such faults only to a limited extent. Down to the 12th c., the defects which we have described were the worst which could be laid to the charge of B. sculpture, and it is scarcely earlier than the 13th c. that
it assumes that mummy-like aspect by which it is too generally known. The art of carving in ivory was practiced with great success at Constantinople, and in the exam' pies of it which remain, the gradual decline—the benumbing process, as it has been aptly called—may be traced with great distinctness. Of this species of work, in its earlier and better time, a fine specimen in alto-rilievo of the " forty saints" may be seen in the museum at Berlin. The decorations of the churches, and of the sacred vessels used in the service of the altar, formed no insignificant objects of art in the better Byzantine period. Cups, plates, lamps, candlesticks, crosses, and the like, were either of gold or silver, and frequently adorned with jewels; whilst the altar itself, the chancel, and sometimes the whole interior of the church, were covered with precious metals, the panels being adorned with mosaics or frescos.