United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
True to their class, Byzantine officials indulged a taste for furniture, giving thereby an unintentional sting to their attack. Like the grandees of the Classical Renaissance, they degraded art, which is a religion, to upholstery, a menial trade.
It has been very confidently stated that Chosroes the Second "brought Roman artists" to Takht-i-Bostan, and by their aid eclipsed the glories of his great predecessors, Artaxerxes, son of Babek, and the two Sapors. Byzantine forms are declared to have been reproduced in the moldings of the Great Arch, and in the Victories.
From the time of Narses, during all the two hundred years of Lombard assault and Byzantine neglect and exaction, the Pope alone, watchful and unceasingly active, carried out the fabric of the Roman hierarchy.
The situation and trade of Ancona rendered it an important garrison in the heart of Italy: it was twice besieged by the arms of Frederic; the imperial forces were twice repulsed by the spirit of freedom; that spirit was animated by the ambassador of Constantinople; and the most intrepid patriots, the most faithful servants, were rewarded by the wealth and honors of the Byzantine court.
For centuries Italy had been a treasure-house of Greek, Etruscan, and Byzantine Art. In no other country had a civilization like that of ancient Rome existed, and no other land had been so richly prepared to be the birthplace and to promote the development of the art of the Renaissance. The intellectually progressive life of this period did much for the advancement of women.
A large and marked part in it was taken by the man who for thirty-eight years was to rule the eastern empire, to expel the Goths from Italy, thus recovering the original seat of Roman power, and the Vandals from Africa, and so once more attach the great southern provinces, for so many ages the granary of Rome and Italy itself, to the existing Byzantine realm.
'For aught I know, began Morton, 'you may at this moment be drifting on the Euphrates, or pondering on the site of Alexandreia Eschate. It is you who owe me an account of yourself; nevertheless, I am prompted to write, if only to tell you that I have just got the complete set of the Byzantine Historians. A catalogue tempted me, and I did buy.
Exasperated by this disgrace, the Byzantine court despatched two hundred ships and eight thousand men to plunder the sea-coast of Calabria and Apulia: they assaulted the ancient city of Tarentum, interrupted the trade and agriculture of a happy country, and sailed back to the Hellespont, proud of their piratical victory over a people whom they still presumed to consider as their Roman brethren.
A noble bronze head, tying on the German stove, in the corner of the room, a handsome Roman lamp and some antique coins, were all that could be shown of the ancient Moesia; but there is a fair collection of Byzantine and Servian coins, the latter struck in the Venetian manner, and resembling old sequins.
While, on the contrary, people without any formula or any attempt at imitation, like the Byzantine architects and those of the fifteenth century, merely because they are obeying their own passionate desire for congruity of impressions, for harmony of structure and function, will succeed in creating brand-new, harmonious, organic art out of the actual details, sometimes the material ruins, of an art which has passed away.
Word Of The Day