Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Learning, literature, science, and art

Page 19

A striking rise in art, at first sight rather unexpected considering the general situation of the Empire under the Palaeologi, must also be emphasized. The revival of Byzantine art under the Palaeologi, which produced such work as the mosaics of Qahriye-jami, Mistra, Athos, and Serbia, was so sudden and incomprehensible that scholars have advanced various hypotheses to explain the sources of the new forms of art. The followers of the so-called western hypothesis, taking into consideration western influence on Byzantine life in all its aspects since the Fourth Crusade, compared the Byzantine monuments with the Italian frescoes of trecento in general and with those of Giotto and some other artists in particular, who were living in Italy when the first productions of art of the eastern renaissance under the Palaeologi appeared. They came to the conclusion that the Italian masters of trecento might have influenced Byzantine art, and that this was the explanation of the new forms in the East. The western hypothesis, however, cannot be accepted, because an exactly opposite situation, that is, Byzantine influence upon Italian art, rather than Italian influence upon the art of the Byzantine Empire, has now been proved to exist.

The second or Syrian hypothesis, advanced at the beginning of the twentieth century by Strzygowski and Th. Schmidt, consists of the assumption that the best achievements of Byzantine art under the Palaeologi were mere copies of old Syrian originals, i.e. of originals which, in truth, from the fourth century to the seventh, furnished not a few new forms adopted by Byzantine art. If one accepts this theory, there is no renaissance of Byzantine art in the fourteenth century, or any originality, or any creative power of Byzantine masters of that epoch; in this case all is reduced to good copies from some good old models very unsatisfactorily known. This theory, which N. Kondakov called archaeological sport, has found a few adherents.

In the first edition of his Manual of Byzantine Art, published in 1910, Ch. Diehl rejected both these theories and saw the roots of the renaissance of art under the Palaeologi in the general cultural rise so characteristic of their epoch, and in the awakening of a very vivid feeling of Hellenic patriotism, as well as in the gradual rising of new currents in Byzantine art which had appeared in Byzantium as early as the eleventh century, i.e. beginning with the time of the Comnenian dynasty. Therefore, for him who examines the matter attentively, the great artistic movement of the fourteenth century is no sudden and unexpected phenomenon; it owed its being to the natural evolution of art in conditions particularly favorable and vigorous; and if foreign influences partially contributed to its brilliant flowering, it drew from itself, from the deep roots embedded in the past, its strong and original qualities.

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/literature-learning-science-art.asp?pg=19