Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, Essay Example

Guided Art Tour: Ancient Roman, Early Christian, and Byzantine Art

Throughout the history of art, paintings and sculptures could never be separated from their social, economic, political, and culture contexts within which they were produced. Studying art from the distant past requires people to avoid modern assumptions that can hinder an appreciation of what artifacts actually represents. The Etruscans were considered the precursors to ancient Roman society, although the dearth of surviving artwork poses various challenges to art scholars. Nonetheless, paintings found in Etruscan tombs provides clues into the daily lives and culture of the Etruscan peoples, who were “a dynamic people who dominated much of Italy between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE” and are believed to have migrated from Anatolia. (Bentley and Ziegler 271). However, they encountered various challenges from foreigners during the sixth century, which led to their downfall (272). Nonetheless, works of art have been found in catacombs that provide rich clues to the social and cultural contexts in which the Etruscans lived.  Very few full paintings from the ancient Roman era survive, yet the fragments reveal that they provided a vast array of themes, including still life, animals, mundane depictions of everyday activities, mythology, seminal events, and portraits (Bentley and Ziegler 278). Because Christianity was merely in its burgeoning stages, the majority of the corpus of Roman paintings do not reflect Christian tenets or values. Rather, they unequivocally reflected significant Roman values that were secular in nature and underscored the importance of order within a stringent hierarchical structure.  Once Christianity began to flourish in the fourth and fifth centuries, artwork became increasingly reflected its popularity through religious iconography and tropes that became ubiquitous in the art world during the Early Christian and Byzantine eras. Individuals who created, paid for, and used the art of the Early Christian and Byzantine world posed questions about how God should be depicted, what images of Christ should look like, and what iconography was appropriate for decorating the interior of churches (Lowden 4). Cultural artifacts and paintings created during the Etruscans, Ancient Romans and Byzantine periods reflect epochal contingencies and socio-cultural and artistic developments that caused seismic paradigm shifts in the art world.

The majority of what scholars know about the Etruscans comes not from the dearth of textual material but rather from the art that still remains. Various Etruscan sites such as sanctuaries and catacombs have been searched and excavated in which a vast array of tomb paintings–complete in vivid color–portray various scenes of myth, life, and death.  (“Etruscan Art”). The painting shown above, found in an Etruscan tombs, limns various scenes of the quotidian in a narrative manner and was found in Tomb of the Leopards in Tarquinii. It portrays various musicians playing the lyre and pipes during a banquet, as banquets were a common feature in Etruscan paintings. The frescoes clearly only use two colors and it is interesting that both men and women are included in the frescoes, thereby insinuating that women had a greater role in Etruscan society unlike in ancient Rome. Because of the dearth of information on the Etruscans, it renders it impossible to assertively make conclusions about social and cultural idiosyncrasies. Nonetheless, the presence of servants in this painting suggests that a social hierarchy was firmly in place in which hedonism formed an integral component of elite.

Because Christianity was merely in its nascent stages during the Ancient Roman era, paintings and sculpture often reflected important secular values and provide a window into roman culture and society. The treatment of human death in civilizations traversing various temporal and geographical contexts forces people to confront come to terms their limitations as mortal human beings. Societies throughout world history have indeed purposely killed other humans so that they could prosper and feel safe and secure (Kyle 40). Violence therefore becomes critical and necessary for the perceived survival and safety of an empire. Ancient Rome represents one exceptional example of a culture and society that violently and publically murdered human beings on a macro scale. Although ancient Romans extensively wrote about the natural processes of life and death, their obsession with orchestrated and forced killings as a form of public entertainment consumes the majority of the corpus of literature on death within the Roman Empire (Kyle 42). Public displays of death in the form of gladiatorial fighting, wild beast hunting, and fighting vastly proliferated beginning in the third century BCE due to the vacuum of political opportunities for Roman leaders as a well for perceived social necessity. Roman “spectacles” of deaths developed from merely being a private event that only the social elite could partake in into a very public one. Public deaths thus resulted in the germination of “blood sports” in ancient Roman society (Kyle 45). These public killings occurred in public locales called amphitheatres, and they were provided for and consumed by Romans from all social classes. The shift in the function of ancient Roman “blood sports” including gladiatorial games from a deferential, elite ritual honoring the fallen to a diffuse form of public entertainment to be enjoyed by all of Roman society reflects that this state-sponsored form of institutionalized violence within the scope of Roman leisure functioned as a social and political tool to preserve a stringent and embedded social hierarchy in order to maintain security within the Roman Empire as a result of Roman expansion. Expansion threatened both the status quo and safety of Roman society.

A fragment of a wall painting done in 59 AD depicts a brawl which occurred within the amphitheatre of Pompeii. It shows a fight that escalated on the arena floor of the amphitheatre between two groups of conquered peoples: the Pompeian’s and the Nucerines, their neighbors. The explosive fighting resulted in the deaths and serious injuries of those involved, causing the amphitheater to close for the next ten years. The painting exhibits the cloth awning architects including when constructing amphitheaters in order to shield onlookers from adverse weather such as rain. It also shows that double staircases were included in the construction in order to facilitate the movement of large crowds of people (Gardner 189-190). This wall painting functioned as a reminder to ancient Romans of the absolute necessity for Roman authorities to assert dominance and control over the conquered peoples living within the Roman Empire, as the national differences amongst Roman subjects and the Romans posed a perpetual and tenable threat to Roman order and stability. Such public spectacles were effective tools of the Roman state to ensure the preservation of their social hierarchy in the face of Roman imperialism and expansion.

Artwork produced during the Byzantine era was unequivocally governed by Christianity and religious iconography, thereby reflecting the centrality of religion in the lives of people during that epoch. Theological debates and controversies thus figured largely in public discourses and the canon of art produced. Between 726 and 843, the Byzantine Empire was ensconced in a theological dialogue that scholars refer to the Iconoclast Controversy (Lowden 147). Iconoclasm retain significant social and political ramifications and profoundly affected artistic production and Byzantine iconography therein. The Iconoclast Controversy was catalyzed by Leo III and then subsequently carried on by his son Constantine V. They believed that that God was unhappy with idol worship practices that was so ubiquitous since prominent Christians in the early Byzantine period were concerned about the proliferation of Christian images and idols in the early period. In 726 AD, the icon of Christ that hung on the bronze gates of the imperial palace were removed by soldiers, which spawned a riot because of the confusion surrounding such a blasphemous act. In 730 AD, Leo III called a silentiam, or a silent meeting in which a decree was passed to have icons removed and/or destroyed from all churches (Lowden 148). This antipathy towards icons and idols manifested in Byzantine artwork and reflect how strongly religious concerns were during the Byzantine era.

A Cross mosaic in the apse of St. Irene in Istanbul proffers one example of how this mandate to destroy icons and images as a means for religious primacy affected Byzantine art. This eighth century cross created out of tesserae–or tiles used when producing a mosaic–that were different colors, used to cover up the image of a Madonna and Child mosaic as well as angels that flanked it in the presbytery vault. An inscription from the original scheme remain, which quotes Psalm 109:3: “I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning” (Lowden 160). This antipathy towards religious iconography of Christ and the Angels reflects the rising influence of militant Islam in the region, as Islam deplored the use of idols and imagery because they undermined the power of God. Later, once the iconoclast controversy was settled, and the iconophiles–or those who revered relics and icons in this controversy–proved victorious, many of the apse mosaics in churches such as that in Hagia Sophia had a mosaic of Madonna and Child was inserted (Lowden 160). While the apse mosaic in St. Irene did not alter the simple cross mosaic from the St. Irene apse, most other churches did. These mosaics underscore how central one’s position in the Iconoclast Controversy was because of its centrality to the Byzantine Empire and Christendom and the implications it had regarding Byzantine imperial position within the world.

This original artwork reflects the principles and values evinced in the Byzantine art during the Iconoclast controversy. Simplicity is underscored, and as a Jew, it is clear that the Byzantines shared the antipathy towards idols and iconography as stated in the Ten commandments. The Star of David, like the Cross, are poignant tropes of Judaism and Christianity respectively.

Works Cited

Bentley, Jerry H., and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters: a Global Perspective on The Past. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000. Print.

“Etruscan Art.” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Nd. Web. 25 Jul. 2015. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/etru/hd_etru.htm

Kleiner, Fred. Gardner’s Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. United States: C-Engage Learning, 2012.

Kyle, Donald. Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. Routledge: London, 1998. Print.

Lowden, John. Early Christian & Byzantine Art. United States: Phaidon, 1997. Print.