Since then the name Byzantium has symbolized the lost glory of the Hellenic culture of the Orthodox Church. Its value today, however, goes further than its Christian mysticism or its monumental icons: Byzantine art would go on to inspire future masters. Renaissance painters like Gerard David and El Greco, 19th-century impressionists like Cezanne and Gauguin, and 20th-century masters like Picasso and W. B. Yeats are all indebted to Byzantium’s legacy.
This iconic Byzantium is celebrated in a vast new exhibit, “Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557),” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum this spring. Two previous Met exhibits featured the earlier history and arts of Byzantium; this one glories in its awesome late artifacts. Pictures like “The Cambrai Madonna,” mistakenly valued as a relic painted by Saint Luke, is now considered a late Byzantine Virgin of Tenderness, hugging a baby Jesus who looks out at us. It launched later Madonnas like David’s ethereal “Virgin and Child.” Most of the objects, pulled from nearly 30 countries, have never been seen before outside the churches and monasteries that have housed them for hundreds of years. There are 40 such objects from St. Catherine’s Monastery in the mountains of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, once a major artistic center. The “Icon of the Archangel Gabriel,” a wood panel in tempera and gold, is a stunning portrait, with the angel’s serene face framed by enormous wings and the intricate folds of his garment. A silver-gilded chalice with translucent enamels, a gift from France’s Charles VI, attests as much to the religious importance of the Sinai monastery as to the varied media in which Byzantine artists worked.
One of the the Met’s most ambitious projects, costing $4 million, “Byzantium” brings together monumental paintings, medieval icons, a huge chandelier and exquisite miniature mosaics in brilliantly colored glass. An icon of the dead Christ (“The Man of Sorrows”) is an arresting image that is modern in its physicality and its use of bold monotones; one does not need to be Christian to be deeply moved by this painting. Later, after the Ottomans took over, representations of the Prophet’s life were surprisingly based on scenes from Christ’s.
This is not just an exhibit but an education. It brings to vivid life the artistic glories of a dead empire, encourages us to reconsider familiar modern works and points us forward to yet another Byzantium exhibit. The curator, Helen C. Evans, plans a sequel that will explore the romantic vision of Byzantium. The empire lives on.
