Forgotten wonders
Andrew Lambirth
Byzantium 330-1454 Royal Academy, until 22 March 2009 Supported by the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, the A.G. Leventis Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation In his excellent book Portrait Painters, written more than half-a-century ago but still full of wisdom and stimulating observations, Allan Gwynne-Jones includes a note on the character of English art. He has been discussing the great glories of the medieval school of manuscript illumination in Britain, often forgotten when an assessment is made of our contribution to the visual arts. Yet between 1000 and 1300 the English school was the finest in Europe without a doubt.
Gwynne-Jones writes: ‘In order to understand English art one must study its source. English art is Byzantine in root, the Byzantine tradition having found its way to Durham and thence to Winchester by way of Ireland. It is a very austere tradition. But the English genius is exuberant rather than austere, intimate rather than generalised; and so, when the noble tree of Byzantine art is transplanted to England, it not only bursts into a richer and more varied leaf but is soon twined round with honeysuckle, and haunted by many birds and beasts; and the hieratic quality we find persisting right through this greatest period of English art is always combined with an intense naturalism — one that not only extends to birds and beasts and flowers, but in which angels and, still more, devils and monsters, are rendered with an equal intensity of conviction.’ For anyone interested in the art of this country, no other justification is necessary for a trip to the Royal Academy to see its current blockbuster. Of course, Byzantine art deserves to be studied for its own sake, extensively and in depth, though I’m not sure that an exhibition of this sort is the way to achieve it. There is so much essential art that cannot be transported — the architecture, the murals, the mosaics — that a museum show can only ever tell part of the story. And it is very much a partial testament that is now retailed at the RA.
The visitor is greeted by a massive chandelier in cast copper alloy, hanging from the ceiling of the central hall. It dates from the 13th or 14th century and is a wonderfully intricate object, which no doubt looks magnificent in its proper setting, in the dome of a church. In the RA, and competing with the newly-restored gold niches of the hall’s own resident worthies, it looks less impressive than it should. It doesn’t make a good beginning to the exhibition, but it does highlight the main problem of context. This is always the challenge facing exhibition curators: to encourage the objects to speak to us though they have been removed from their natural habitat, and to convey their meaning and relevance without simply looking exotic. To my mind, Byzantium is only a qualified success.
You see the effect on visitors — what I call ‘Museum Glaze’, that blank, slightly stunned look assumed after drifting past too many works of art that have insufficiently moved them. Sometimes even professionals have difficulty in maintaining a keen enthusiasm and quickened perceptions over the acreage of exhibits that modern blockbusters cover, so how can those with only a general interest be expected to take it all in? Luckily, there are objects of such fine workmanship and artistry on display that the size of this show (and it exceeds 320 items) is frequently forgotten in wonder.
The adjective Byzantine has come to mean extremely complicated or inflexible, and is often linked with another lovely word — machinations. That deviousness does not accord well with the actual austerity of Byzantine art, so try to forget it and encounter the objects here with an open mind. The show really starts with a mosaic pavement from Thebes, though more dramatic and beautiful are the early fifth century wall paintings on a recreated tomb from Thessaloniki nearby. A cabinet contains two rather amazing marble renditions of Jonah, dating from the second half of the third century, one showing him cast out of the belly of a dog-headed whale with paws, the other reclining beneath the canopy of a gourd tree. It’s objects such as these, and the carved fragment of a sarcophagus front featuring St Peter, or the marvellous wooden relief of a besieged city, that make the exhibition essential viewing.
The big opening room is full of good things, and if I can’t get particularly excited by most of the silverware from the Emperor Justinian’s time, a plate decorated with goats is a beautifully composed exception. The show is strong on ivories, a few of which can go a long way, but there are such memorable treasures as the animal-bone plaque of a Nereid and a diptych of a stag hunt. ‘The Antioch Chalice’, once thought to be the Holy Grail — the cup used by Christ at the last supper — is a fabulous mythical object, despite being squashed out of shape. Elsewhere there are such marvels as ‘The Virgin’s Grotto’ set in rock crystal, a couple of mid-12th century ceramic plates, decorated with a lion attacking a deer and a siren on a bird respectively, a gold body chain, wondrously patterned silk and dyed linen hangings, wall tiles, lots of pectoral reliquary crosses, exquisite micromosaics difficult to decipher, and icons aplenty. These are strangely disappointing, with some exceptions, notably the last exhibit, ‘Icon of the Heavenly Ladder of St John Klimakos’.
The exhibition covers the entire history of the Byzantine empire, from the founding of Constantinople in 330 AD to its final sacking by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The geographical net is wide, including much of southern Europe, the Balkans, Anatolia and the Middle East. It’s an enormous subject and a single exhibition cannot possibly do justice to it. One of the main problems of the show, besides its size and dim lighting, is that quite a number of the exhibits are so small and displayed in such a way that they’re incredibly difficult to see with any clarity. This is when the catalogue (a weighty tome of nearly 500 pages, costing £27.95 in softback) comes into its own, to be studied peacefully at home. Then you can enjoy a full-page illustration of an enamel and gold plaque which is actually half the size of a playing card.
There is a handsome metal perfume brazier, a large, ornate object in the shape of a domed building, which slightly resembles Santa Sophia, the great cathedral of Constantinople. It has been used a lot in the show’s publicity, partly because it encapsulates the essence of the exhibition in its highly-wrought and decorative craftsmanship, but also because it provides a much-needed taste of architecture, albeit on a miniature scale. There is so much missing from this survey that it’s impossible to make anything like a balanced assessment of Byzantine art, but there are so many good things to see that they should be enjoyed for what they are — high-quality artefacts from a civilisation that greatly affected our own and deserves an honoured place in our affections. ❑
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