Tenor of Our Times Volume 6 Article 8 2017 Windows to the Divine: The evelopmeD nt of Byzantine Art Sam Klein
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.harding.edu/tenor Part of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons, Cultural History Commons, Esthetics Commons, History of Christianity Commons, and the Medieval History Commons Recommended Citation Klein, Sam ( 2017) "Windows to the Divine: The eD velopment of Byzantine Art," Tenor of Our Times: Vol. 6, Article 8. Available at: https://scholarworks.harding.edu/tenor/vol6/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Humanities at Scholar Works at Harding. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tenor of Our Times by an authorized editor of Scholar Works at Harding. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WINDOWS TO THE DIVINE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF BYZANTINE ART By Sam Klein Byzantine art, at times belittled and overlooked by critics, is now better understood within the mindset and motivations that produced it. Judged in terms of realism such as accurate bodily proportions, precise detail, or subtle and complex color, Byzantine style indeed lacks much. Its goals were elsewhere.1 While the classical mind and its echo in the Italian Renaissance strove to depict the world as it was, if not more vibrant, the Byzantine eye looked beyond the world. Its scenes were not “representations but reenactments.”2 Its abstractions were not failures to capture reality, but conscious efforts to reflect a higher reality beyond mere sensation and emotion.3 The nonrepresentational nature of Byzantine art, while not universally acknowledged, has been widely observed and is essential to framing its history.