BYZANTINE ART.
We may take as the next period for illustration the centuries that
witnessed the break up of the old Roman constitution and the gradual
formation of a new order of society down to the end of the first ten
centuries of our era. Seven hundred and fifty years out of those ten
hundred belong in great part to mediæval history. The misfortunes of
Italy, and the incessant state of war, invasion, and struggle in that
peninsula were too destructive of personal wealth and the means of
showing it in costly furniture to leave us any materials from thence
for our present subject. The history of furniture and woodwork, as
applied to civil and social uses, now belongs to such civilisation
as took its origin and its form from Constantinople. Art of these
centuries is called Byzantine.
[Illustration]
The woodcut is from the chair of St. Peter in Rome, the oldest and
most interesting relic of antique furniture in existence; that is, of
furniture made of wood and kept in use from the days of ancient Rome.
But it has had repairs and additions, and a description of it shall be
referred to in another section.
Byzantine art is a debased form of the classic, but with a large
mixture of Greek; not of the old classic Greek type which had long
been exhausted, but of that Asiatic Greek which derived so much of its
splendour from the rich but unimaginative decorations of Persia. The
objects actually executed at Constantinople or by Byzantine artists
now remaining can scarcely be included in a treatise on furniture.
They are mostly caskets and other small pieces executed in metal or in
ivory. Accounts of many interesting pieces of Byzantine sculpture will
be found in the "Description of the ivories in the South Kensington
museum." Amongst them the diptychs of the consuls are not only the
most important, but the most interesting to a treatise on furniture,
as we see in them consular seats and thrones of many varieties.
We may select amongst other examples the following, which can be
studied in the museum or referred to in that work. For instance,
n^{o.} 368 (fully described in Mr. Maskell's "Ivories") is one leaf
of a consular diptych of Anastasius Paulus Probus Sabinianus Pompeius.
The consul is represented seated on a chair of very ornate character.
It is like the old folding curule chairs of Rome, but with elements
both of Greek and Egyptian ornamentation, such as belong to the
massive marble seats, supported by lions or leopards, with the heads
sculptured above the upper joint of the hind legs. In the mouths of
these lions' heads are rings for the purpose of carrying the chair,
and the top frame is ornamented with little panels and medallions
containing winged masks and portrait heads of the consul and his
family or of members of the imperial family. On each side of the seat
are small winged figures of Victory standing on globes and holding
circular tablets over their heads. These probably represent the front
of the arms, and are supposed to have a bar stretching from the heads
or the circular tablets to the back of the seat. This feature too is
a continuation of types that are to be found on Greek vases and in the
chairs of both Nineveh and Egypt. A low footstool with an embroidered
cushion on it is under the feet of the consul, and another cushion,
also embroidered, covers the seat. This represents a chair of the
sixth century.
A seat still more like the curule chair, but with a high back, is
represented in another ivory, n^{o.} 270, in the South Kensington
collection. This piece is a plaque or tablet with a bas-relief of
two apostles seated. The chairs are formed of two curved and
recurved pieces each side, which are jointed together at the point of
intersection. One pair of these pieces is prolonged and connected by
straight cross-bars, and forms a back. Two dolphins, with the heads
touching the low front pieces and the tails sloping up and connected
with the back, form the arms. This belongs to the ninth century. The
lyre back, a form not unknown in old Greek and thence adopted among
Roman fashions, is also to be seen in chairs on ivories and in
manuscripts. Round cushions were hung on the back, others covered the
seat. These are seen also figured in the mosaics of Venice, and later
of Monreale in Sicily which retained much of the Byzantine spirit. The
art of Sicily continued longer subject to Constantinople than that of
most of its Italian provinces, and Venice preserved her old traditions
far into the period of the European revival of art.
The beds, as represented in manuscript illuminations, belong chiefly
to religious compositions such as the Nativity, or visions appearing
to saints in their sleep. They are couches in the old Roman form, or
are supported on turned legs, from the frames of which valances hang
down to the ground. Sometimes a curtain acts as a screen at the head
or on one side, but testers are wanting.
Chariots and carriages of all sorts remained more or less Roman in
type. There were a greater number of waggons or carriages for the
conveyance of women and families than had been in use in ancient
times. Christianity had materially altered the social position of
women, and they appeared in public or moved about with their families
without the restraints which in the old Roman society forbad their
appearance in chariots and open carriages, and made the covered couch
or closed litter the usual conveyance for ladies of rank in Rome.
Several forms of chariots or carriages of this larger kind can be seen
in the sculptures of the column of Theodosius in Constantinople.
The art and the domestic manners and customs that had been in
fashion in Rome maintained themselves with some modifications in
Constantinople. The life there was more showy and pompous, but it was
free from the cruelties and the corruption of the elder society. It
was founded on the profession of Christianity, and the numbers and
magnificence of the religious hierarchy formed an important feature
in the splendid social aspect of the Greek capital. The games of
the circus, without the cruelties of gladiatorial combats, were
maintained. Chariots were in constant use, much wealth was spent on
their construction, and chariot races were kept up. Furniture, such as
chairs, couches, chests, caskets, mirrors and articles of the toilet,
was exceedingly rich. Gold and silver were probably more abundant in
the great houses of Constantinople than they had been in Rome. As the
barbarous races of the east and north encroached on the flourishing
provinces of the Roman empire, constant immigration took place to
Constantinople and the provinces still under its sway. Families
brought with them such property as could be easily moved, gold of
course and jewels; and, naturally, these precious materials were
afterwards used for the decoration of their furniture and dress.
The ancient custom of reclining at meals had ceased. The guests sat on
benches or chairs. At the same time the "triclinia aurea," or golden
dining room, was still the title of the great hall of audience in
the palace at Constantinople. The term only served to illustrate
the jealous retention of the old forms and names by the emperors and
patricians. The last branch of the ancient empire did little for
the arts of painting and sculpture, though it long preserved the old
traditions of art, gradually becoming more and more debased with every
succeeding generation, whilst outward splendour was increased because
of the greater quantity of the precious metals that had accumulated or
been inherited during so many centuries.
The decay of art and skill in the old world was, however,
counterbalanced by the rise of new societies, which were gradually
being formed in various parts of the empire. These consisted partly
of the races of Huns, Goths, Saxons, and others, who had invaded
Italy and settled themselves in it, partly of the old municipal
corporations, who defended their property and maintained their
privileges in the great walled towns of Italy. The cities profited to
a great extent by this infusion of new blood; and became the parents
of the future provinces of Italy, so rich in genius and industry, so
wealthy and powerful in peace and war. The most important of them was
Venice, and it is in Venice that, in the later middle ages, we
find the birthplace of most of the art with which the furniture and
utensils of home and warlike use were so profusely decorated.
We point to Constantinople as the last stronghold of the old arts of
the Roman period, but it is because it was from the Greeks that the
new states borrowed their first notions of art. Nearly all the early
art we meet with throughout the west in manuscripts and ivories bears
a Byzantine character.
A remarkable piece of monumental furniture has survived from these
early centuries of the Christian era, half Byzantine and half western
in character, the chair of St. Maximian of Ravenna, preserved in
the treasury at Ravenna, and engraved and described in the "Arts
Somptuaires" of M. Du Sommerard. Ravenna was the portion of the empire
that most intimately connected the east with the west. The domed
churches of San Vitale, San Giovanni in Fonte, the tomb of Galla
Placidia, the round church of Santa Maria, built by Theodoric,
together with the great basilica of Saint Apollinare in Chiasse, and
others of the Latin form, unite the characteristics of the eastern
and western architecture. What is true of architecture can also
be pronounced as to painting, sculpture, textile fabrics, and all
decoration applied to objects, sacred or domestic, that were in daily
use.
But events occurred in the declining state of the empire that went far
to transfer what remained of art to northern Europe. The sect of the
iconoclasts, or image-breakers, rose into power and authority
under the emperor Leo the Isaurian, who published an edict in 726
condemnatory of the veneration and use of religious images and
paintings. During a century this principle was at work, and it caused
the destruction not only of innumerable antique statues, such as those
defaced in the Parthenon of Athens, but the loss of vast quantities
of ivory and wood sculpture and precious objects of all kinds. Many
artists took refuge in western Europe, and were welcomed in the
Rhenish provinces of the empire by Charlemagne.
How much ancient and domestic art in the form of bronze or other
metal furniture, such as chairs, thrones, tripods, &c., whole or in
fragments, survived the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. we
cannot conjecture. Perhaps the royal palaces, or still more possibly
the mosques which have been the banks and depositories of family
treasures under Mahometan rule, may contain valuable bronzes, ivories,
and carved wood, relics of the luxurious life of the latter days of
the Greek empire, and such evidences may some day come to light. No
doubt, however, much antique art and much that belonged to the first
eight centuries of our era survived the ordinary shocks of time and
war, only to be destroyed by the quiet semi-judicial action of a
furious sect protected by imperial decrees, after the manner in
which mediæval art suffered under the searching powers of fanatical
government commissioners in our own country, in the sixteenth century.
It is to the impulse which the Lombard and Frankish monarchs gave to
art in western and northern Europe by the protection of Greek refugee
sculptors and artists that we should trace the beginnings of the
northern school called Rhenish-Byzantine.