A műemlékek sokszínűsége (A 28. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1998 Eger, 1998)

Előadások / Presentations - Georgiosz PROKOPIU: The polychromy in byzantine art church decoration, origin, form and technique

tion is that of an amateur of antiquity. Therefore, on looking at the mosaics of Byzantine art, we seek if not Praxitelean, or Michalangelesque forms, at least their anatomy. And in Byzantine buildings we look, if not for the system of construction and the classic morphology, at least for something of the proportions of the Parthenon, of the moduli of Vitruvius. Now, Byzantine painting in presenting unnatural, dematerialised forms, subordinated to a curious perspective, disappoints us. The same may be said of Byzantine architecture. It works with poor materials. It neglects precision in adjustment and geometric regularity in form, and subordinates the proportional articulation of pyramidally graded cubes and domes to pictorial, „picturesque" expression. Before we can reveal how Byzantine art differs from classical, we must first discover that eternal quality about it, which can move man today, as it did then. And these works must have surely sprung directly from the artistic spirit abroad in their day, since we may sense it even now on contemplating them. But it is only by revealing their eternal quality to the spectator as „an inherent tendency" in man that we shall divest him of the burden of his humanistic knowledge and enable him, to forget himself in a communion with Byzantine art, in which he will discover and feel its peculiar beauty. The spectator will then forget, for a while at least, the ancient Greeks and the Renaissance, and the conviction will grow upon him that the works of Byzantine art are not necessarily ugly because they are not beautiful in the manner of ..classical" works; they express another kind of sublimity. This sublime transcendental quality is the basic feature of Christian art as a whole: an art which, adapting itself to the prevailing conditions of time and place, to the psychology and the intellectual and spiritual trends of the various peoples who cultivated it, each time created an original style, a distinct form suited to its environment. FORM AND SYMBOLISM IN BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE The effort to make man's works conform to celelstial prototypes in evident from early Christian times. Cosmic symbolism, which characterizes architectural creation in the ancient world, continues in the Christian era. Buildings in the shape of the cross, appear very early, both in texts and in architecture itself, and leave no doubt as to the symbolic intentions of their creators. A particular example is the case of St. Abrosius, who stated in the inscription of the church of the Apostles in Milan (4th cent. AD): „Forma Crucis Templum Est, Templum Victoria Christi Sacra, Triumphalis Signât Imago Locum". In the 6th century, an age of great innovation and creativity in architecture (and under the influence of theological conferences and doctrinal discussions), the use of the dome for covering large square or octagonal spaces, in monumental buildings, became a widespread practice. According to Bald. Smith, this form of roofing a concentric church, martyrium or baptistery, was not, then, simply a matter of construction. The Christians attributed an esoteric meaning to the elements of architecture. The choice of a particular form, such as the dome, was not dictated by the utilitarian and aesthetic criteria that govern modern design. Using a system of analogical thought, the Christians tried to create a mystical language for architectural expression. The rapid diffusion of the domed-church type in the lands of the Eastern Empire, in the 5th and 6th centuries A. D, cannot be attributed simply to the introduction of methods of dome-construction from Rome or Persia. On contrary, is must have derived from the longestablished popular traditions, relating to the mystical cosmological connotations of the dome. „In St. Sofia, the great church built by Justinian in Constantinople, the dome crowns a vast cubic building" wrote my late father professor Ang. Procopiou. „This conjugation of the sphere and the cube is sym-