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

ture and inconography in union serve the doctrine, propounded insistently and emphatically by the official church. So, it is the symbolism attributed to this architectural type of the inscribed-cruciform-domes church that explains its exclusive use. In the Palaeologian era (1204-1453), Byzantine architecture continues, (with many variations), the themes established of old Monumentality, however, declines, and proportions become more slender, yet the new modes of expression do not interfere with the structure of the form consecrated by holy-tradition, but add to it the qualities of refinement and suggestive inner space, and lend to it a more human scale. We shall now turn to consider, in a general sense, the semantics of the type of naos prevailing in Byzantine architecture and of all its variations that followed in the years of decline, which did not, however, change its basic structure. a, The naos is Jmago Mundi", a miniature „image" of the world, a microcosm in which heaven and earth are joined in a symbolic way. This derives from the use (in the structure of the edifice) of the forms of the cube and sphere, which had acquired, from time immemorial, a widespread and deeply established connotation as the „images" of heaven and earth. b, The naos is the center of the world, because it materializes the axis leading from the earth to the sky by combining in its structure the three fundamentel cosmocentric symbols - the cross, the circle, and the square. This universal cosmogramme is a „Mandala", determining the meeting of the cosmic levels, as well as the Axis Mundi, which becomes the ladder of Jacob, for ascending to the Above from the below. This axis is based on the „navel", the omphalos, symbol of a spiritual - and not geographic - center of the world, to where Divine Grace is transmitted for the realization of the mystical function of the church in its capacity as sacred space. So, Byzantine architecture can be placed in the currents of symbolic thought, and its morphological constant parameters. It contains, in the structure that constitutes its most characteristic creation - the naos - the universal and traditional symbols of the center the world and the sky in a combination, that not only continues the symbolic traditions of antiquity and the East, but also gives them a new dimension through a more systematic interpretation, by means of iconography and liturgical uses, together with a morphological crystallization, based on clarity and permanence. This is why the type of the inscribed cruciform-domed church remains the immutable prototype of Byzantine and post-Byzantine architecture and, more generally, of the art of Eastern religious building a model which has not been surpassed until today. Consequently, the Byzantine church cannot be considered as a phenomenon to be explained by historic, social, economic, structural or aesthetic factors only. The Byzantine church is above all a sacred form, manifesting the conception of an Idea, a cosmology, an esoteric experience. It is a mystical sign in space, that uses matter and its forms, in order to depict the unseen through visible means and to make the unknown known. For these reasons, the design of the church is based upon the fundamental symbolic forms that correspond to the deepest archetypal structures of the human spirit. THE POLYCHROMY IN BYZANTINE ART AND CHURCH DECORATION ORIGIN, FORM AND TECHNIQUE Let us however examine the origin and form of byzantine architecture and iconography: Where from it derivs and how it started: The first emergence of palaeo-Christian art from the catacombs occurred during the fourth and fifth cen-