art history

Byzantine Christian Art

Looking closely at the first piece of art on the left side, one can easily recognize that it is a painting from its point of view. When examining the paintings closely one can easily identify that they represent a certain religion or a certain way of life. Therefore one can clearly see that these paintings are trying to identify with a given religion. Additionally one clearly sees that this art is represented in wall paintings creating highly sophisticated and rigid pieces of art. The artist who presented these pieces of art highly depended on visual language in order to bring out these masterpieces. Also one can clearly note the artists employed the use of grained cover that seems to be made out of marble stones (Gardner, & Kleiner, 2013).

From one of the pieces, a person can easily identify the painting of a group of people who have gold like rings of light surrounding their heads. On the middle of this group is a person seated and the group seems to be paying keen attention to what the individual seated in the middle is trying to say. “Some people in the group have some writing materials and they seem to be scribbling some form of writings. Therefore one can easily see that the bodies portrayed in this painting seem to possess some form of supernatural form due to the presence of the floating gold-like circles.” (Gardner, & Kleiner, 2013).

These pieces of art cannot be defined as being realistic because they seem to depict a form of an idea or a belief. One can say that this piece of art is trying to idealize the idea that the person seated in the middle of the group tends to be of higher hierarchy when compared with the other members of the group.

This piece of art seems to fit the period of time it was developed. This is due to the fact that from the painting one can easily note that this painting was developed during the mosaic period when people were trying to identify themselves with the religions that were in existence during these periods of time.

The waterworn pebble is can be used as a good comparison to the byzantine Christian art. This form of art of the waterworn pebble is seen to represent a human face. This particular piece of art is thought to have existed during the Paleolithic period. Therefore it can be described as being part of the Paleolithic art. The waterworn pebble can be described to be one of the oldest imagery to ever have been in existence. “This piece of art proved the fact that man was able to recognize the existence of images in a natural form or naturally. This piece of art was discovered in South Africa at a place known as Makapansgat and it is believed to be one of the earliest forms of art to take or to have an imagery that represented features of a human body.”

In this particular case, the pebble represented the face of a human. Therefore it can be said that the art of sculpturing has been in existence for a long time even before the civilization of man. “The waterworn pebble is a clear indication that most of the art that was developed in the Paleolithic period were easily portable and were of meager size.” Due to the size, the waterworn pebble was described as being figurative. This means that this particular art had a real representation and as indicated above this particular piece of art was representing the face of a human being. This pebble also proved that the early man had developed an abstract form of thinking in order to come up with such piece of art.

References

Gardner, H. & Kleiner, F. (2013). Gardner's art through the ages : a global history. Australia United States: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

NoAuthorFound. (1990). Early Christian and Byzantine art. Shaftesbury: Element in association with the Temple Gallery.

https://www.penn.museum/exhibitions/special-exhibitions/sacred-spaces