USAD 22: Art History and Appreciation (Week 11)Prepared By:Miss Ida Shaheera Azhar idashaheera@salam.uitm.edu.my ida.mandarin@gmail.com+6 019 204 6161 | w 201

Byzantine Empire

•Capital city: Constantinople (Istanbul)

•Location: Ravenna, Italy (was briefly the capital of the Western Roman Empire)

•Constantinople: City of Constantine

•Constantine was the first Christian emperor

Constantinople:

•The Byzantine Empire lasted for over a thousand years

•Capital of the World: Trading position in the center of the medieval world

•Constantinople (Turkey) is a transcontinental city in Eurasia

•Napolean Bonaparte: If the Earth were a single state, Constantinople would be its capital

Basilica of San Vitale:

•The most important sixth-century church is San Vitale in Ravenna

•Location: Ravenna, Italy (was briefly the capital of the Western Roman Empire)

•The church is most famous for its wealth of Byzantine mosaics

Basilica of San Vitale:

•The art of Early Christian period were affected by an ongoing controversy between those who sought to follow the biblical prohibition against the making of images and those who wanted pictures to help tell the stories

•Byzantine style developed as a way of inspiring the illiterate while keeping the biblical commandment that forbids the making of graven images

Justinian and his Retinue:

•Mosaic in apse of San Vitale, Ravenna

•The elongated, abstracted figures provide symbolic rather than naturalistic depictions of the Christian and Royal figures

•Figures are depicted with heavy outline and stylized shading

• Justinian are shown with halo and royally attired and bejeweled

Hagia Sophia:

•6th Century

•Location: Istanbul, Turkey

•As the central sanctuary of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church

Hagia Sophia:

•After Islamic conquest of 1453, minarets (towers) were added and it was used as a mosque

• It is now a museum

•Hagia Sophia’s distinctive dome appears to float on a halo light

•Contrast to the Pantheon’s dome on a cylinder, the dome of Hagia Sophia rests on a square base

Hagia Sophia:

•“Holy Wisdom” also known as AyaSofya

•Mathematics was at the time regarded as the highest of the sciences

•Design by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus

•One of the magnificent domes in the world