Art
• [BYZANTINE ART IN PARIS.) THAT over a thousand years of the art of Byzantium should be represented by so small an exhibition as that now being held in Paris of Byzantine Art is testimony to those disruptive and destructive powers which scattered the treasures of Constan- tinople and melted down her gold and silver on those two occasions in 1204 and 1453 when the city was given over to un- restricted looting. But if the exhibition is a small one, its quality is exquisite. For the first time the treasures of Byzan- tine art that lie forgotten or inaccessible in the smaller museums, churches and monasteries of the remote corners of Europe can now be seen together, and for the first time one is able to derive a general impression of the merits, intentions and achievements of Byzantine artists. One Byzantine object in a museum filled with other things ; one stray illuminated manuscript or gold jewel in a remote church fails to convey
that particular impression at which Byzantine art aimed.
For it was an art which required a setting of gilt cupolas, revetments of coloured marble, mosaic panels and Imperial splendour—in fact, the background of a city of unlimited wealth and power. To-day the poor fragments of what remains struggle against the cold framework of a museum atmosphere to regain their ancient warmth and richness.
Unfortunately Byzantine art is suffering from its friends. Those who have been able to study it and see its power and beauty become appalled at the injustice which has relegated it to the ranks of the decadent arts. They _realize that, once it is understood, it will be placed in a class by itself, and its influence as the greatest formative element in the growth of
European art in the early Middle Ages will be recognized. But, insensibly, advocacy slips into propagandism. The enthusiasts become aposCes, and the main. object is forgotten.
Byzantine art has its own standards and its own outlook, which differ essentially from those of Hellenistic art on the one hand and Italian art of the Quattrocento on the other. Nor will it profit anyone to attempt to diminish the value of those periods of art which have achieved recognition in order to reinstate at their expense one which has not. You cannot hope to convert a Renaissance enthusiast into a votary of Byzan- tium by a mere process of denigration of all that he admires.
Still less can you convert him by pointing out that Italian art owes its early merits to Byzantine painters and that it is all derivative from Byzantium. As well might you suggest that Greek art of the fifth and sixth century was but deriva- tive from ancient and finer Oriental art, merely because Assyria and the Hittites played an important part in the in- spiration of early Greek artists.
For Byzantine art has its own peculiar genius which has nothing at all to do with what preceded it or with what fol- lowed it. In this exhibition in Paris you can get a proper impression of that genius and find out, by a process of com- paring one work of art with another, what the Byzantine artist was trying to express, how he worked and what was his general aesthetic intention. You will see at once that Byzan- tine art has a directness and a certainty of touch about it which recall the character of Greek art of the best periods. Like a Greek artist, the Byzantine made no distinction between the arts and the crafts. Among modem artists a certain snob- bery, if I may so call it, has segregated the " Fine " arts and left the rest to those who ex hypothesi are supposed to be rela- tively incompetent. Not so the Byzantine and the ancient Creek: both alike saw no difference between a small master- piece a few inches high and the adornments of a temple. You can see at this exhibition a miniature mosaic six inehes square that might have been made by the artist of an apse as high as that of St. Sophia, or a carved sapphirine as perfect as a life-size emperor in porphyry. Like the Greek also the Byzantine aimed at perfection in the general plan and in the particular detail. There is nothing that is either impressionist on the one hand or fussy on the other about his work. It is all marked by perfect integrity of intention • he was not seeking
fortuitous effect or incidental charm. intention; was essentially a formalist, in the sense that he preferred design to detail and certainty of touch to accidents of effect. I have never dis- covered what "intellectual art " may be, but I am certain that it is not a description that can be applied to Byzantine art : for Byzantine art is both intimate and emotional; though in a sense totally distinct from the intimacy and emotions which are felt by a contemplation' of true Western art. The emotions that you will feel in the presence of a perfect Byzan- tine masterpiece are recondite and remote, but they are emotions all the same, and, by their quality, more impressive than the turbulent emotions which • may be caused (shall we say ?) by the work of Velasquez or Raphael. With Byzantine art one marvels at the thing made rather than at the maker.
It is a commonplace to say that Byzantine art has some- thing of the Orient about it. To me it seems that the Orient (or that part of it which concerns Byzantium) has somethinf Byzantine about it. For the outlook and methods of the Byzantine artist are those of the archaic Greek. The mediaeval Greek was, like his archaic ancestor, re-adapting the Orient once more to his own purposes and inspiring the Orient by his own synthesis of Oriental achievement. The tragedy is that we know so very little about vast periods of Byzantine art. As I see it, its beginning was the most startling of all. In the fourth century A.D. a complete and radical change comes over- late Roman art with a suddenness that is one of the un- explained mysteries in the history of art. Roman por- traiture changes abruptly into a new style and manner of workmanship which is as virile and vivid as its preceding period was decadent and dull. Byzantine art is born fully armed from the head of Zeus. Then it fades into an eclipse until the sixth century, when its predilections were mainly architectural. Yet of the sixth century and the age of Justinian we know almost nothing, and the whitewashed walls of St. Sophia still hold their secrets. A further period of darkness and then the summit is reached in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries. That is the great period. Another pause, this time due to the invasion of Crusading "barbar- ians," and at the end of the thirteenth century comes a final flash of virility and invention, the Renaissance of Byzantium.
A year or so ago I showed to a famous expert on the Re- naissance a Byzantine masterpiece of the tenth century. "Yes," he said, it is not unpleasant, but, you see, Byzantine artists went on copying one another's work and you can never tell whether what you have is the original or a copy ten times removed from it : and, of course, it is all so dull and uninspired." What I showed him was in fact the prototype of his hypothetical "ten copies" and he could not identify it as such. To-day that prototype is in the exhibition at Paris. But that any expert of any period of art should be unable to distinguish an original from a copy ten times removed is a reflection upon his judgement of any age. The exhibition May help to educate those who still are unable to distinguish gold from dross, for in it are the authentic works of every branch and period of Byzantine artistic activity. S. C.
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