Iv. Art of the Late Middle Ages in the East 1. Late Byzantine Art (1250–1450)

The Crusaders, establishing their Latin empire on the shores of the Bosphorus in 1204, began with the devastation of the wonderful New Rome of Constantine and Justinian. Precious ancient sculptures were broken, melted or stolen. Church domes collapsed, and mosaics and frescoes turned into piles of garbage. When in 1261, Mikhail Paleolog, the founder of the last Byzantine dynasty, again entered Constantinople as a winner, there was only a glint of former magnificence on it, and although the emperors from Paleolog's house were distinguished by their love for art, they rebuilt and restored the old , Byzantine art during their rule only in the field of monumental painting survived a new rise, in some respects going parallel to the rise of Tuscan wall painting, if only it was not due to this the last.

Fig. 313. Mary before the high priest. Mosaic at Kahrieji Monastery in Constantinople. With photos of Sebah

In Constantinople, the church buildings of this time almost did not survive. But in the field of mosaic and fresco painting, in addition to the late mosaics of the church of St. Sofia, preserved the most interesting works - mosaics and frescoes of the small church of the monastery of Chora, which now forms the porch of Kahridj. The mosaic above the entrance door of the outer porch depicts the great Chancellor Theodore Metohit, kneeling before the Savior sitting on the throne, with whom he stretches the model of the church. Since we know that this event relates to the restoration of the church at the beginning of the 14th century, and other mosaics are similar in technique to this initiating image, this also determines the time of the entire painting. The mosaics of the outer porch depict the events of the Savior’s earthly life, the inner one depicts events from the life of the Mother of God. Of the two domes of this inner porch, one is decorated with a bosom mosaic of the Savior, the other - in the same way of Our Lady; They are surrounded by ray-shaped figures of the ancestors of Jesus Christ; Above the church entrance a bouncy, but somewhat differently made image of Christ shines. The most beautiful is the mosaic with scenes from the life of the Mother of God, which is why some scientists (Kondakov, Springer) date back to the founding of the church, that is, to the XI century. But just the most famous of them (Fig. 313) in its calmly and clearly unfolding in the space of the composition goes beyond the limits of the Byzantine art and it already feels the new spirit of the times prevailing in Italy in the last quarter of the XIII century. Here is the high priest who gives Mary the purpurea, which was given to her by lot to spin the church curtain. The frescoes of this church are executed less than mosaics, they are attributed to the XIV century. They depict Christ in glory, the Virgin and Child among the angels and the Last Judgment. Bearing in mind these mosaics and frescoes that can dispel all our preconceived opinions about the stiffness of the late Byzantine art, the author of this work in 1878 raised the question whether Byzantine art could have done it if not for the sudden end of Islam’s triumph under the influence of Italian art. connection with the old, devoid of inner life, and again return to greater freedom. If we cannot prove such an impact of the monumental art of Italy on these mosaics and frescoes, then even less we consider it reasonable to say that they themselves had an impact on the Tuscan monumental style. The desire for greater depth of composition was carried in the air both in the east and in the west of the Adriatic.

Works of Byzantine small art are still based on a different soil. Even easel paintings on gold backgrounds, found in the Christian museum of the Vatican and in other collections, and some of them with the signatures of the masters, acquaint us with the Eastern Christian art of the Palaeologic century not with the best of his hand. The decline is even more clearly revealed in the Byzantine manuscripts, studied in detail by Kondakov. Once again, the body’s short and long proportions randomly alternate, the errors in the drawing become even sharper, the facial expressions getting coarser and more uniform, the modeling disappears little by little. We find similar drawbacks on ivory-carved reliefs. When the Turks planted a crescent on the walls of the ancient capital of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, they completed the destruction begun by the Franks. Happiness was that, turning the church into a mosque, they plastered the mosaics with plaster, so that their restoration seemed possible.

The late Byzantine art of the Morea peninsula, where Frankish rule was retained for most of the period under consideration, stands out most clearly in the ruins of Mystra (near ancient Sparta, on the slopes of Tayget), not without reason called Strigovsky "Byzantine Pompeii." These extensive ruins, picturesquely located at the entrance to the valley of Evrota, testify to the past greatness of the most important, after the century of crusades, the Peloponnesian city. Some of his churches, such as the cathedrals of Perivept, Pantanassa, still stand now, but most are destroyed. Usually, the churches of Mystra, as shown by Lucien Man, do not depart from the Byzantine tradition, for example, the church of Sts. Theodora (1296) was built in the old type of massif with an internal arched system with struts and a dome, the diameter of which corresponds to the width of the three eastern apses. But then the more clearly in some other churches of Mystra are revealed Frankish features. Particularly founded in 1302, the Pantanassa Cathedral and then Panagia represent a peculiar combination of the western basilica shape with the eastern central-domed building. These are three-nave basilicas with a developed five-dome system. The Pantanassa church, which belongs to the beginning of the 15th century (fig. 314), resembles the Romanesque buildings of France, and in some places the pointed arch competes with the semicircular.

Fig. 314. Pantanassa church in Mystra. According to Manyu

Curious as well, though preserved only in parts, wall and dome murals of the churches of Mystra. Fresco is everywhere preferred mosaic. Perivept's church gives some insight into the painting of Mystra in the fourteenth century, the church of Pantanassa in the fifteenth century. From the dome Perivept still looks down the bosom image of Christ the Almighty. The best frescoes of the main nave depict the Transfiguration of the Lord and the myrrh-bearing women at the tomb. The background is blue, the colors of the clothes are light and transparent, with white highlights, the body is modeled with greenish shades, relatively soft, and the black outlines are not so strong. Along with these frescoes, the murals of the Pantanassa church, for example, “The Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem” and “The Resurrection of Lazarus”, are very weak in execution: the figures are poorly drawn, the architectural backgrounds are unbalanced, and the color combinations are coarse. Apparently, the rise of Byzantine monumental painting lasted a little longer than the end of the XIV century.

The significant role that Trebizond, the Asia Minor city on the Black Sea coast, played in church architecture, has not yet been adequately covered. But then we have in the book of Brockhaus a clear picture of the state of Athonite art. In the forest monasteries of the Holy Mountain washed by the sea, throughout the whole epoch of the Palaeologus, active artistic life boiled. Nevertheless, it is precisely proved that only 5 church buildings appeared before 1500: the Cathedral of Protat, the church of the Vatopeda monastery, the chapel of St.. Nicholas in Lavra, which already existed in 1360, the chapel of St.. George in the monastery of sv. Paul, built before 1423, and the church of the Iversky Monastery, restored in 1492. The architecture of these churches and chapels does not represent any new features. Most of them are interesting in rich fresco painting, replaced by mosaic in some particularly important places. So the mosaic technique was readily applied to the image of the holy patrons of churches. The extensive murals of 1312 in the church of the Vatopeda monastery are fairly well preserved. It is here that mosaics are attached to the frescoes, but along with the authentic works of the XIV century, which bring to the Byzantine scheme and composition a certain freedom of movement, there are frescoes dating back to the restoration of the painting. The best preserved frescoes of the temple paraklisa of St.. Nicholas in Lavra (1360). "Not a single image," said Brockhaus, "is not written in haste, but each is composed and executed with real depth, the faces of the saints have individual features and at the same time are distinguished by meekness and goodness of expression, which disappears at a later time." The author of these frescoes, Frangos Catellanos, was from Thebes, but from a family of Spanish, Catalan immigrants. Therefore, we should not be surprised by a certain affinity in his works with contemporary Western wall painting. Finally, the only Athos cycle of 16th century frescoes adorns the walls of the St. George Chapel in the monastery of Sts. Paul's These murals, executed in 1423 by the Byzantine Andronicus, are weaker than the works of Frangos. It should be noted that the fresco painters of this time, as opposed to miniaturists, already here, on Athos, were not monks, but artists by vocation.

All these frescoes of the Athos churches, written mainly on blue backgrounds, completely cover the walls and vaults. Their abundance at first leads to confusion. Nevertheless, their liturgical-conditioned choice and distribution remain almost the same as in the church of Sts. Luka in Phocis and in the church of the Daphne monastery (see fig. 121). In the sails of the domes the place of the compositions representing the youth of the Savior is now and forever occupied by four evangelists. The Dormition of the Mother of God still occupies the western wall of the church; The Resurrection of Christ is still depicted as going down to hell; The Trinity - under the guise of three angels who are Abraham. The images of Christ and Our Lady are old, ideal types, with elongated faces, narrow, straight nose and small mouth.

Icons in the Athos churches are found in significant numbers both on the iconostasis and on the walls. Tradition, as elsewhere, ascribes ancient icons to the Evangelist Luke. Preferably depicted are Christ, the Mother of God, the archangels and the saint, in whose name this church is consecrated. Their artistic and historical evaluation makes it difficult, however, the fact that almost all of them were rewritten at a later time.

The Late Byzantine facial manuscripts of Mount Athos could be studied more thoroughly. But they repeat everything we know before. The Vatopedi monastery, for example, still contains the elegant Gospel of 1304 with images of evangelists, dots and strokes on the frame, remnants of an ancient frame in the form of precious stones and golden capital letters with vegetative curls. “After the XIV century,” says Brockgauz, “we can no longer study the further development of Athos painting, guided by miniatures. The time of decline is followed by a time of complete rest. ”

Only at the beginning of the 16th century did the compilation of the famous “Guide for painters of the Mount Athos” (published in French by Didron, in German by G. Shefer). But since its author, Dionysius, refers mainly to the more ancient, rather mysterious master Manuel Panselin of Thessaloniki, it actually belongs to the era under consideration. This Guide does not have any claims on the ecclesiastical or artistic obligatory nature of its rules, but it is important for us because it confirms both the agreement of its written instructions with the actual choice and the system of Byzantine church frescoes and their disagreement in details that tradition, linking Byzantine painters in general, did not constrain them in detail. In any case, the Mount Athos forms a kind of artistic island in the sea of ​​time, and its monastic schools were given the weight to weave the thread of Byzantine art, already very thin and weak, up to the present day.