Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The empire from Constantine the Great to Justinian

Literature, learning, education, and art 

Page 12

The time from the fourth to the sixth centuries is one when various elements were gradually blending into a new art which bears the name of Byzantine or East-Christian. As the science of history probes more deeply into the roots of this art, it becomes increasingly clear that the East and its traditions played the predominant part in the development of Byzantine art. By the end of the nineteenth century German scholars advanced the theory that the art of the Roman Empire (Römische Reichskunst), which had developed in the West during the first two centuries of the Empire, replaced the old Hellenistic culture of the East, which was in a state of decline, and, so to speak, laid the cornerstone for Christian art of the fourth and fifth centuries. At present this theory is repudiated. Since the appearance in 1900 of the famous work of D. V. Ainalov, Hellenistic Origin of Byzantine Art, and the publication in 1901 of the remarkable work of the Austrian scholar J. Strzygowski, Orient or Rome, the problem of the origin of Byzantine art has assumed an entirely new form; it is taken for granted that the main role in the development of East-Christian art belongs to the East, and the problem is only that of determining what is to be understood by the term East and eastern influences. In a large number of very stimulating works the tireless Strzygowski argued the enormous influence exerted by the ancient Orient. At first he sought the center of this influence in Constantinople; later he turned to Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, and moving still farther to the east and north, he crossed the borders of Mesopotamia and sought the roots of the main influences in the plateau and mountains of Altai-Iran and in Armenia. He contended, What Hellas was to the art of antiquity, that Iran was to the art of the new Christian world. He drew also upon India and Chinese Turkestan for further elucidation of the problem. While recognizing his great services in investigating the origin of Byzantine art, contemporary historical science is still very cautious with regard to his most recent hypotheses.

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