What was the nature of art and learning in the Byzantine Empire? What sort of art and learning was valued by its artists and scholars?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Nature of art and learning
1. war and losses strained art and learning
a. most constant and careful Byzantine work in copying and
analyzing the texts of classical authors and of the fathers of the
Church was probably over by the tenth century
b. mystics, represented by Saint Symeon the New Theologian
proposed an alternative route to learning, through divine illumination
2. changes in art
a. painters abandoned realism in favor of stylized, formal figures
b. set against abstract or sketchy backgrounds
c. indebted to the mosaic tradition, in which Byzantine artists
excelled, than to classical painting or sculpture
d. painters worked only on religious commissions and accepted
the artistic vocation as a sacred obligation
1. work that captured the spirit of its subject and that
would be revered as holy in itself
2. innovation happened slowly and subtly
3. artists had to treat every subject strictly in accordance
with tradition and church dogma
3. preservation and development of the classical legacy in art and learning
a. eleventh and twelfth centuries, revived in an intellectual
movement comparable with the renaissance of the same period
in the West
b. historian and biographer Michael Psellus
1. wrote in an antique style based on classical Greek
models, interpreted the meanings of ancient art, and
lectured on Plato and Aristotle
c. Anna Comnena's historical work
1. saturated in knowledge of Homer, and she
commissioned commentaries on previously neglected
works of Aristotle
d. renaissance of classical pagan themes in art followed in the
twelfth century
e. Byzantine scholarship of the late twelfth century, nothing
commanded more prestige than classical research
1. Michael Choniates, archbishop of Athens made the famous temple of the goddess Athena, the Parthenon, as a church to preach in and classical Greek poets to read for pleasure
2. Byzantine bishop wrote commentaries on ancient Greek poetry and searched through old manuscripts to improve the texts of classical plays
f. tradition of art and learning is Byzantium's most significant legacy
1. texts and art works inherited from ancient Greece and
Rome survived in the Byzantine portion of the former
Roman Empire
2. recovery of classical traditions in the West would
probably have been impossible without cross-
fertilization with the Islamic world and Byzantium
LO 1