The Lighthouse: The History of Rome II

Saturday, July 26, 2008

The History of Rome II

Art Daily: "Royal Academy of Arts Announces Ground-Breaking Exhibition Devoted to Byzantium"

From October 2008, the Royal Academy of Arts will host a ground-breaking exhibition devoted to Byzantium. Highlighting the splendours of the Byzantine Empire, the exhibition will comprise around 300 objects including icons, detached wall paintings, micro-mosaics, ivories, enamels plus gold and silver metalwork. Some of the works have never been displayed in public before.

Byzantium 330–1453 will include great works from the San Marco Treasury in Venice and rare items from collections across Europe, the USA, Russia, Ukraine and Egypt. The exhibition begins with the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great and concludes with the capture of the city by the Ottoman forces of Mehmed II in 1453. This will be the first major exhibition on Byzantine Art in the United Kingdom for 50 years.

- Caption: Byzantine Empire in 1265 (more maps on Historical Maps Viewing Space Over Time) -

Byzantium 330–1453 will follow a chronological progression covering the range, power and longevity of the artistic production of the Byzantine Empire through a number of themed sections. In this way the exhibition will explore the origins of Byzantium; the rise of Constantinople; the threat of iconoclasm when emperors banned Christian figurative art; the post-iconoclast revival; the remarkable crescendo in the Middle Ages and the close connections between Byzantine and early Renaissance art in Italy in the 13th and early 14th centuries. (...)

- Caption: The Ships of Lesvos - The Byzantine empire used both sails and rowers. Circa 1100 AD -

Up to the end of the Byzantine Empire, with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, manuscripts, micromosaics and metalwork demonstrates the virtuosity of its artists. (...) >>>