Byzantine Architecture and Art: Churches and Basilicas

Symbolism of the New Byzantine Buildings

The division of the Roman world into two, the West and the East, meant the separation of two worlds. The emergence of artistic and Byzantine iconography differed. Byzantine buildings are structured around the central dome. The difference between the cemetery and the new Byzantine churches lies in the system employed, and their system of buttressing. In Byzantine buildings, the domes do not rely directly on the wall, but they do so through the scallops in huge piers.

Not only was there a variety of floor plans, but also a variety of interior decoration, predominantly gold ornamentation. The increase in gold was due not only to the identification of the divinity with gold but also to the conception of power in the Byzantine Empire, a close tie between religion and political power. Byzantine art is an art of the court. Its paintings show a strong hierarchy. Regarding technique, they mastered the chromatic, which clashes with the rigid treatment of bodies, faces, and cloths. This lack of skill is partly due to iconoclastic struggles.

The interior decoration is based on paintings and mosaics, highlighting the gold backgrounds symbolizing divinity. Despite the evolution, decorative buildings remained, without exception, the central plan. The space for the exterior is covered by an ambulatory. The row of buttresses and the succession of composite input buttresses become progressively more complex and pointed. The use of architectural elements gives the sensation of height. The arches began to be checkmated with gables, towers, and buttresses with very ornamental needle pyramids. The central body has a large rose window and a gallery with statues. The portals evolved, although they remained static: the figures in the archivolts, eardrums with stories, the mullion-columns, and statues in the jambs of the entry.

The Basilica

Roman art is an art of a functional nature. After the Edict of Milan, Christianity was declared the official religion of the Empire. Christians sought to differentiate their places of worship, rather than devising a new building, and adapted an existing building: the basilica. The Roman basilica was designed to administer justice. This building consisted of a rectangular space divided into three naves, the central one sticking out above the side ones, which allowed it to open a row of lights. This nave is topped with an apse covered with a vault or a lintel. The Christians introduced changes: they lengthened the vessels, exacerbating the flight lines and the horizontal.