LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Byzantine Art: Artists
built 628 days ago
Byzantine art is, above all, a religious art. Not that it treated religious subjects only. There was a fine efflorescence of the 'minor arts' of metal-work, textiles, carved ivories, enamels, jewelry, etc. Secular paintings and mosaics ... adorned the imperial palaces. But these, which have largely disappeared, were few in comparison with the subjects taken from the Old and New Testaments, from the apocryphal books (Gospels of the childhood of Christ or of the Virgin, of Joseph the Carpenter, etc.) and the lives of the saints. It is also a theological art, in the sense that the Byzantine artist did not aspire to freedom of individual interpretation but was the voice of orthodox dogma and subject to the Church which established the dogma.
Source:
The most extensive series of Comnenian mosaics are those created by Byzantine artists in the large church at Monreale in Sicily, begun in 1174. The mosaic program... had to be readapted to the basilica form of the interior. Following a Western precedent, scenes from the Book of Genesis occupy the areas between and above the arches of the long nave arcade. The Sacrifice of Isaac, Rebecca at the Well, and Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, all masterpieces of a new dynamic narrative style, are skillfully adapted to the format of the undulating frieze that continues around and above the arches. Above, in the vast semidome of the apse, looms a gigantic bust of the Pantocrator.
Source:
German artists often borrowed themes and styles from Byzantine art. Here a German artist depicts the archangel Gabriel approaching the Virgin, who is dressed in a Byzantine veil. The gold background and the folds and highlights of the angel's drapery reflect aspects of Byzantine art.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Artists