Photos of the Beautiful Byzantine Fresco Paintings Art

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Photos of the Beautiful Byzantine Fresco Paintings Art from Byzantine Roman Churches & Byzantine Museum Antiquities. Photos by photographer Paul E Williams.  (TIP – use the icons below the slideshow for thumbnail photos and info)

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Photos of the Beautiful Byzantine Fresco Paintings Art

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Photos of Medieval Byzantine fresco paintings.

Byzantine art refers to the body of mostly Christian artworks produced in Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire between about 500 AD to 1453 AD. It also refers to art influenced by the Byzantine Style but made outside the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantine Fresco Paintings

The fragile nature of fresco means that Byzantine paintings are very rare. Byzantine style frescoes stopped being made by the mid Middle ages which was 500 to 600 years ago. Most frescoes were then painted over as church interiors were redecorated. Other Byzantine church frescoes succumbed to damp and old age.

In many Byzantine frescoes that have survived pigments have often faded making them difficult to read.

Enough Byzantine fresco paintings have survived for us to be able to appreciate what an impact they had on early to mid medieval religious art. Great example of Spanisn Romanesque Byzantine frescoes can be found in the MNAC (National Museum of Catalan Art) Barcelona. Some of the best surviving examples of Byzantine art can be seen in Georgia such as found at the Gelati monastery. Great example of late Byzantine fresco can be seen at the Chora monastery, the Kariye Museum, in Istanbul.

Who were the Byzantines?

The term Byzantine is a misnomer adopted by historians to differentiate the Romans of the Eastern Roman Empire after about the 6th century. Form around the 6th century the Western Roman Empire went into decline leading to it being taken over by Barbarian tribes. The impression given by Western historians used to be that this was a total collapse of the Roman Empire.

This is far from the truth as the Eastern Roman Empire carried on until the fall of Constantinople until 1453.

Eastern Orthodox Christians

The Byzantine Romans were Orthodox Christians. This effected how their art could be made. The second commandment says “Thou shall not make false idols”. Read literally this means that all forms of figurative religious art cold be against this commandment. This is the position the Jews and Muslims take and it was also the views later Puritan Christians took.

The Development of Icons

Orthodox Christianity struggled with the problem or religious depictions and came up with a rigid set of rules. All depictions can only be two dimensional. There are virtually no religious sculptures in Orthodox Art. The question of religious depictions reseted on them depicting “false Idols”. It was decided that depictions of the one true god and the stores from the Bible and New Testament were ok. The church discouraged all non-religious human images, the Emperor and donor figures counting as religious. 

The artworks produced under Orthodox rules are known as Icons. It was believed that the word icon referred to any and all images, not just religious ones. The term Icon means that the depictions are representations to be used for only devotion purposes. The Icon paintings are not Idols in themselves to be worshipped.

Distinctive Byzantine Fresco Art Style

Having to work to strict Icon rules gave Byzantine art a distinctive style.

Byzantine artworks depict figures usually against single colour backgrounds. In Byzantine frescoes dark blues are popular to help make the figures stand out especially in the dark interiors of Byzantine churches.

The figures in Byzantine frescoes are dressed in sumptuous clothes made of wonderful fabrics. The cloths in these artworks give some idea of how colourful and sophisticated in dress styles the Byzantines were.

he Influence of Byzantine Art on the West

Because the Eastern Roman Empire had no collapse, as western Europe rebuilt itself after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, it looked to the Byzantines for guidance and inspiration.

The new churches and monasteries of the Catholic western church were built in Romanesque styles using Byzantine architecture as their template. They were also decorated with Byzantine style artworks inside. The only difference was the use of sculpture art in Catholic churches. 

Soldiers and pilgrims returning from the First Crusade in 1095 had seen wonderful Eastern Roman Byzantine churches and art and wanted to imitate them.