Icons

Painted panels assumed a new importance in the last phase of Byzantine art. The most sophisticated work was done at Constantinople, some of it for patrons from elsewhere (notably Russia), and a number of icons survive that can be associated with Constantinople on the basis of literary evidence or inscriptions. A particularly fine double-sided icon, with the Virgin on one face and the Annunciation on the other, now in the museum at Skopje in Macedonia, was brought from Constantinople about 1300.

At this period the Russian school was the most important outgrowth of Byzantine icon painting; after the 13th century the influence of Byzantine models continued to be felt more in Russian icons than in the frescoes, but both wall and icon painting were showing local characteristics as early as the 13th century itself. The rigid Byzantine patterns, the dark colours, and the austere lines gradually became graceful, bright, and less solemn. Novgorod’s style of icon painting, for example, gradually strengthened and took shape: the severity of faces was softened, composition was simplified, the silhouette became bold and increasingly important, and the palette was lightened by bright cinnabar, snow-white, emerald-green, and lemon-yellow tones.

Icons were produced in many other places, notably at Salonika, on Mount Athos, and in many other centres in what are now the Balkan states and areas such as Russia and Ukraine. In a few instances icons can be assigned to a definite centre, thanks to inscriptions or other records, but the study of these panels has not progressed far enough to permit any reliable classification under localities on the basis of style alone. After the Turkish conquests of the mid-15th century, icons continued to be painted in large numbers in every part of the Orthodox world. In the 16th century Crete became an important centre, and many Cretan painters worked also in Venice, where there was a large Greek colony; many of the products of this school are to be found there today in the museum attached to the Church of St. George of the Greeks.

Wall painting

The last phase really began in the 12th century with the decoration at Nerezi in Macedonia (1164). It was done for a Byzantine patron and is in the same emotional style as “Our Lady of Vladimir.” Work in a similar style is to be found in Russia from the late 12th century, and these models were followed by local craftsmen. In the 13th century new styles predominated in such paintings as those at Mileševa (1235) and the Church of the Trinity at Sopoćani (c. 1265), in Serbia, and in the church of Hagia Sophia at Trebizond (c. 1260; Trabzon), on the Black Sea.

It is probable that artists who had fled the capital after 1204 established themselves in a number of different areas and that wall paintings such as those mentioned above were the work of men they had trained. By the end of the century, the local art in the Byzantine Empire emerged as the regional art of Salonika. Examples of this last school are found in the Chapel of St. Eugenius, attached to the Church of St. Demetrius at Salonika, in the Protaton (i.e., the First Church, in the sense of the first in rank, c. 1300), at Kariaí (Karyaes) on Mount Athos, on the north coast of the Aegean, and in some of the monasteries there, as well as in a number of churches in Serbia and Macedonia decorated under the patronage of King Stephen Uroš II Milutin at the end of the 13th century and in the early years of the 14th century. There has been some dispute among authorities as to whether King Milutin’s painters were Greeks from Salonika or local Slavs. Throughout the 14th century a great deal of work was done by painters in the Balkan region, notably in Greece and Bulgaria.

In Russia the Mongol invasion about the middle of the 13th century disrupted previous centres of production, such as Kiev and Vladimir-Suzdal. Only in the northern regions of Russia—particularly in the Novgorod district—did painting continue to develop. As early as the second half of the 12th century, the city of Novgorod had developed an individual style, combining Byzantine severity with a folk-art picturesqueness. (Examples are the frescoes in the Church of St. George in Staraya Ladoga [c. 1180] and the Church of Nereditsa.) Novgorod escaped damage by the Asiatic hordes and became virtually the metropolis and cultural centre of old Rus after the fall of Kiev (1240). Together with the city of Pskov and other northwestern Russian population centres, it harboured many Greek artists, who continued to work in the traditions of Byzantium.

A prominent figure in Russian painting was Theophanes the Greek, a native of Constantinople who moved to Russia after about 1370. His paintings, though closely adhering to Byzantine styles, show distinctive Russian features, notably elongated proportions and delicacy of detail. Similar characteristics and features can be seen in his Novgorod frescoes and especially in the central part of the iconostasis in the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Moscow Kremlin.

Among the immediate followers and collaborators of Theophanes was Andrey Rublyov, whose religious types are imbued with a fresh spirituality. His best-known work is the icon “The Old Testament Trinity” (c. 1410), painted for the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery at Sergiyev Posad. The subject—popular in Byzantine iconography—is the visit of three angels to Abraham and Sarah. But the severe symbolism of the old Byzantine tradition is transformed into something more human. It is one of the great creations of medieval Russian painting.

Another inspired Novgorod painter of the 15th century was Dionisi, whose art is marked by the extreme elongated stylizing of his figures as well as a subtle and glowing colour scheme. He and his predecessor Rublyov succeeded in expressing the aura of spirituality that is the essence of the Russian icon.

At Constantinople some paintings of outstanding quality were executed at the Monastery of the Chora, now known as Kariye Cami, and it is known from the texts that similar paintings existed in a number of other churches there. Several were painted in the third quarter of the 14th century by Theophanes the Greek before he went to Russia. The same style was also introduced to Mistrás, in the Peloponnese, and there the wall paintings of the Brontocheion (early 14th century), the Church of the Peribleptos (c. 1350), and the Pantanassa (1428) are all of high quality. Paintings in the monasteries of the Morava Valley in Serbia done at the end of the 14th century and beginning of the 15th are in the same refined style.

Illuminated manuscripts

Illuminated manuscripts of the last Byzantine age are not as numerous as those of the middle period, but their quality is often just as high. A few seem to have been produced during the 13th century, both at Constantinople and in the cities where Orthodox nobles established themselves while the Latin crusaders were in possession of the capital, notably Nicaea and Trebizond. After the return to Constantinople in 1261 the noble families seem to have played a greater role than the emperors as patrons of all arts, and many of the more important works of art of the age were produced on their behalf. A copy of a work attributed to the 5th-century-bc Greek physician Hippocrates, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, was made for the high admiral Alexius Apocaucos, and a beautiful copy of the Gospels in the same library was made for the emperor John VI Cantacuzenus between 1347 and 1355. Manuscripts were, of course, also copied and illuminated in the monasteries, and this process continued until printing made it obsolete. Few of the later ones contain illuminations of great quality. In the Slavic lands, however, fine work continued, and in Romania excellent manuscripts were executed in the 16th century.