ART OF BYZANTIUM

FESTIVALGOERS at Edinburgh are getting a feast i of art such as has been assembled in Europe only twice before in this century. Spread out before them are more than 250 objects covering the whole richness of Byzantine art, from its glowing mosaics to its small ivories, enamels, rich metal work and superb icons (religious images). Rarest dish: a host of icons sent abroad for the first time from great collections in Turkey, Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. The total effect is a reminder that for more than a thousand years, from the sack of Rome in A.D. 410 to the Moslem capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Eastern branch of Christendom was the creator and guardian of classic art.

To Westerners, Byzantine art has seemed stiff, hieratic and almost primitive. A partial excuse is that, until this century, many of its major accomplishments were hidden. Moslems plastered over the great mosaics of the churches of St. Sophia and Kariye Camii (TIME, Sept. 12, 1955) in Istanbul. Much other religious art was tucked away in inaccessible monasteries. Icons were heavily overpainted and smudged by centuries of candle smoke.

Hidden Flames. A major breakthrough in Byzantine art was the rediscovery of the Russian icon, one of the great, traditional art forms. Medieval Russians carried wonderworking icons into battle against the Tartars, held them aloft in religious processions, encrusted church partitions with them. Because pious tradition held that the earliest images were painted-from-life portraits of New Testament figures, the icons were scrupulously copied for some 800 years, repaired when damaged and endlessly varnished.

Icons bought up at the turn of the century by N. P. Likhachev, whose collection is now in Leningrad’s Russian Museum, and I. S. Ostroukhov, whose collection is now in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, laid the basis for scholarly study. Cleaning them for the first time in centuries was a revelation. Says Soviet Expert Victor Lasareff: “In place of dark, gloomy icons coated with a thick layer of varnish, [viewers] beheld glorious works of art, radiant with colors as bright as precious stones. They blazed with the flame of cinnabar; they caressed the eye with their subtle shades of pink, violet and golden yellow.”

The Thunderer. Soviet researches, summarized in a handsome outsized volume published this year by UNESCO (Early Russian Icons, New York Graphic Society; $18), establish the medieval stronghold city of Novgorod, southeast of Leningrad, as one of the great centers of icon making. A Constantinople-trained Greek named Theophanes—called by a contemporary the “very excellent book illuminator and painter”—was the artist who brought the secrets of Byzantium’s golden age to the cold north in the late 14th century, sparked Novgorod’s greatest period.

Soviet experts doubt that The Prophet Elijah (see color page) was from the hand of Theophanes; it is too Russian in its overtones. But that the unknown painter was striving to emulate the Greek’s masterful touch seems certain. Painted on wood (the raised frame is part of the same panel) against a field of glowing vermilion, Elijah’s closely spaced eyes glow fervently from his high-cheekboned, ascetic face. Elijah was universally revered as a saint as well as a prophet, and his forceful image explains why in Novgorod this remote figure also became honored by the people as the great thunderer, giver of rain and protector of houses.