Liz James

Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae: some material considerations

Issues about the manufacture of Byzantine mosaics and the implications of these in wider terms relating to social and economic questions about the art form have been little discussed. This paper brings together evidence about Byzantine glass mosaic tesserae gathered from archaeology, glass technology and glass analysis, and synthesizes these into a discussion of three aspects: distribution; manufacture; trade and price. It looks to examine how these different elements can be used to form a more detailed composite picture about the production and distribution of Byzantine mosaics. It also proposes ways in which glass analysis can be used in a more coherent way to extend our understanding of mosaic glass production.

Color and Meaning in Byzantium

The aesthetics of early Christian and Byzantine art offer an area of insight into attitudes both to religion and to art, and to the place of art in religious devotion in this period. Color and the conceptual nature of color formed a key area in the definition of form in nature and art, and a means of justifying religious images as objects of devotion rather than idolatry. In a recent article, Patricia Cox Miller has shown how the aesthetics of light and brilliance in late antiquity played an intrinsic role in the transformation of human body parts into sacred Christian relics. She asserts that late antique Christians were concerned to create a religioaesthetic environment which allowed body parts to be treated as relics, and thus as spiritual and holy, rather than as idols, that is to say, material and earthly. Her aim is to show how the physical environment of relics, the buildings, and the decoration and furnishing of those buildings, with their stress on light and brilliance, served to create an intense, sensual environment that aimed to overcome the “spectre of idolatry.” Allied to the physical appearance of art, accounts of the experiences of viewing and participating in art, which we might label for convenience ekphraseis, formed a bond between the material and the spiritual, forming a bridge between the earthly and heavenly spheres which was both rhetorical and experiential.

Matters of Materiality in Byzantium. The Archangel Gabriel in Hagia Sophia, Constantinople

Summary This article considers questions of materials and materiality in the context of the very large Byzantine mosaic of the Archangel Gabriel in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. It looks at the ways in which the materials of mosaics affected and affect the appearance of the image, and discusses how this sits with Byzantine conceptions of angels as both embodied and disembodied beings.