In the mosaics of the 6th century are found the earliest refinement introduced by the Byzantines to enhance the brilliance of gold tesserae. This refinement, already described, involved setting gold cubes at oblique angles to direct their reflections toward the viewer. Used in haloes, the tesserae, obliquely set, convey to the holy figures a miraculous aura of light. The visages of the saints, with their dull stone surfaces and hues reminiscent of actual human skin, add a touch of mysterious reality to this theatre of effects.
Splendid mosaics from many parts of the eastern Mediterranean testify to the continuous cultivation and improvement of these effects. In the city of Thessaloníki the mosaics in the churches of Hosios David (5th century ce) and Áyios Dhimítrios (6th and 7th centuries) exemplify the trend, which is also expressed in apse decorations preserved at Cyprus (church of the Panagia Angeloktistós, at Kiti, and of the Panayía Kanakaria near Lythrangome; both 6th century) and in the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai Desert, founded by Justinian.
Apart from the gold ground, which had considerable impact, the technical subtleties essential to these mosaics met very little response outside Byzantium. When Byzantine artisans operated in foreign territory, they brought their particular techniques with them. Again and again the impact of this tradition was felt in the West, though, at its purest, mostly as short-lived episodes. To judge from a few surviving fragments, mosaics executed under Pope John VII (705–707 ce) in a chapel in St. Peter’s, Rome, might have been the work of artisans summoned from Byzantium. Technical and stylistical features demonstrate that the mosaics executed under the earliest Muslim rulers, in the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem (c. 690 ce) and in the Great Mosque at Damascus (c. 715 ce), are certainly the work of specialists called from Byzantium. Sources testify that even the mosaics in the mosque at Córdoba, Spain (965 ce), were made by Greek craftsmen.
The floor mosaics in the great palace of the Byzantine emperors at Istanbul—with their pastoral scenes, fights with wild animals, and figure groups taken from pagan mythology—testify to an undercurrent of Classical taste in Constantinople. The date, which according to archaeological evidence must be placed as late as about the year 600 ce, demonstrates the tenacity of that taste in the midst of the Christian milieu of the Byzantine metropolis.
Syrian mosaicMosaic floor fragment, stone tesserae from Syria, 6th century ce; in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.Photograph by Howard Cheng. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Nasli M Heeramaneck, M.76.174.252
Middle Byzantine mosaics
Scholars have been concerned to discover how Iconoclasm, the dispute concerning images during the 8th and 9th centuries, may have influenced the course of Byzantine art. In some respects, at least, mosaic reflects very little change. The main source of knowledge about the state of mosaic in the time shortly after the end of Iconoclasm is Hagia Sophia at Istanbul. Parts of the redecoration that the church underwent in the last half of the 9th century have been uncovered in recent times. In their colour and technique these show a continuation of the early Byzantine tradition: the preference for rather strong, clear tints, and the effects created by such techniques as the tilting of tesserae and the turning of gold cubes. The preoccupation with light seems stronger than ever: in badly lit places in the vestibule and gallery, the gold ground displays a high percentage of silver cubes among the gold ones to add to the sparkle. Stylistically, new ground had been broken. Particularly in faces, the tesserae are set in wavy lines which break up the modelling in bandlike configurations. Linearism (the expression of form in terms of line rather than colour and tone) had taken a great step forward.
In the arrangement and distribution of pictures new features are visible. In the apse of Hagia Sophia, the Virgin with the Child sits surrounded by a vast expanse of gold. She is one of the first of a family of similar majestic madonnas, the most striking of which is in the Cathedral of Torcello near Venice (12th century). The tendency to depict icon-like, motionless mosaic figures isolated on a gold background has pre-Iconoclastic precedents, but from the 9th century onward it became a leading decorative principle.
Nineteenth-century drawings show that the decoration of Hagia Sophia also included comprehensive series of saints. Of these saints, which stood in rows on the nave walls above the galleries, only a few have survived. According to the drawings, those of the middle zone represented prophets, those of the lower, holy bishops. Higher up there may have been a guard of angels and in the centre of the cupola, probably a mosaic of Christ. The disposition of the pictures, in other words, may have corresponded to that which at this time was being tried out especially for the new church architecture and which was to become the accepted system of decoration in the middle Byzantine churches.
The monastery church at Daphni, near Athens, contains one of the best preserved decorations of this type. The building belongs to a category of central-plan structures that had come into fashion and was to dominate for centuries both in Byzantium and in other areas under the influence of the Orthodox Church. The interior of the church at Daphni displays a layout which, compared with the wealth of detail of the early Christian period, appears single-minded and concentrated. In the centre of the dome is a medallion containing a colossal bust of Christ as Pantokrator, the All-Ruler. In the lowest part of the dome, separated from the medallion by a broad zone of gold, stand prophets with their scrolls. Further down, there may originally have been medallions with portraits of the Evangelists. In the four arches that carry the drum of the cupola are scenes from the life of Christ which, with eight more Christological scenes in the transepts, formed a cycle devoted to the central feasts of the church. The Virgin is represented in the apse, her guard of archangels on the side walls of the sanctuary. About thirty saints, depicted either as busts or as full-length figures, fill the remaining wall space. In the vestibules are more scenes from the life of Christ and the remains of a cycle devoted to the life of the Virgin. Golden frames with floral ornaments surround the panels, and gold once covered every inch of wall between them.
The ensemble represents a visualization of the Christian cosmos, its effect created by an intricately conceived interplay of pictures and architecture. The worshipper who moves within this golden shell finds its world of pictures thoroughly involved with space. Space in fact fuses the decoration into one giant image, in which the ruler, hailed by the prophets surrounding him, presides in his sphere above the host of saints that people the lower part of the room.
Subtle spatial devices animate the individual pictures; figures of saints, their two-dimensionality emphasized by their outlines, appear in niches sunk in the wall or lean forward in the interior curves of arches. The 20th-century Austrian scholar Otto Demus, in studies on the aesthetics of middle Byzantine mosaic art, coined the term space icons for this kind of imagery, in which the forms of architecture collaborate to make the solemnly stylized figures appear with unexpected tactility. As shown by Demus, the spatial element contributes to the narrative scenes also. In the four arches, for example, the hollow plane on which the scenes from the life of Christ unfold adds a dimension of spatial realism to the total image. This is most clearly to be observed in the Annunciation scene, where Mary and the Angel face each other across a stretch of real space. The figures share or are made to appear to share the room with the beholder.