The Palaeologan Renaissance or Palaiologan Renaissance is the final period in the development of Byzantine art. Coinciding with the reign of the Palaiologoi, the last dynasty to rule the Byzantine Empire (1261–1453), it was an attempt to restore Byzantine self-confidence and cultural prestige after the empire had endured a long period of foreign occupation.Cormack 2000, pgs. 199-200 The legacy of this era is observable both in Greek culture after the empire's fallTalbot Rice 1959, pg. 14. and in the Italian Renaissance.Palaeologan Renaissance Scholars of the time utilized several classical texts.
History Following the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Crusaders established a Latin Empire to rule what had been Byzantine territory. Extensive looting took place in the fallen capital, and many relics and art treasures were shipped back to Western Europe.Cormack 2000, pg. 187. Seeking refuge in unconquered remnants of their empire, the Byzantine elite formed governments-in-exile at Nicaea, Trebizond, and Epirus.Cormack 2000, pg. 198. These new political entities continued to commission works of art, which however bore marks of limited resources and fragmented imperial authority. Craftsmen worked with less rare and expensive materials than before— an example is the use of steatite in sculptures that would formerly have been made of ivory— and sponsorship came from a multitude of private patrons instead of being dominated by the emperor.Talbot Rice 1959, pg. 78. One of the emperors of Nicaea, John III Doukas Vatatzes (r. 1222–1254), undertook projects to ensure the survival of traditional culture. He commissioned public libraries in all the cities of his possessions and ordered municipal leaders to allocate salaries to scholars of medicine, mathematics and rhetoric. In 1238, he also instituted a school of philosophy directed by Nikephoros Blemmydes.
Constantinople was recaptured in 1261 by Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1261–1282), founder of the Palaeologan Dynasty and former co-emperor of Nicaea. Amid triumphal ceremonies, he declared the Byzantine Empire restored and instituted a campaign of renovation in the capital. Made necessary by the damage done to the city under Latin rule, the renovation was also intended to symbolize the empire's recovery from the destitution and humiliation it had just undergone.Cormack 2000, pgs. 200–201. The conception of the Palaeologan period as a cultural "renaissance" owes much to Michael's efforts to revive the glory of Constantinople; in Byzantine lands unconquered by the Crusaders, art production had never been so seriously disrupted as to require a period of "rebirth".Rodley 1994, pgs. 339-340.Talbot Rice 1959, pg. 82.
Certain conditions established by the sack persisted after the recovery of Constantinople. The imperial boundaries had been permanently diminished, and the rulers of Trebizond and Epirus remained independent of the central government.Cormack 2000, pg. 198 In the aftermath of the Crusades there was unprecedentedly close contact between the Greek world and Western Europe, and Byzantine and Western artists borrowed each other's techniques. Fluency in multiple styles was useful for catering to a more diverse group of patrons, but these borrowings were also motivated by interest in foreign artworks and a desire to learn from them.Cormack 2000, pgs. 190-192. As in the era of exile, much Palaeologan art was funded by the aristocracy instead of the emperors. Pictorial works from this era feature an unprecedented number of non–imperial donor portraits.Talbot Rice 1959, pgs. 84–86. The Palaeologan period was also the first in which Byzantine painters regularly signed their works; it is not clear why this custom developed, since innovation and stylistic individuality continued to be discouraged in Orthodox art.Cormack 2000, pg. 211
Michael VIII ordered work in Hagia Sophia, which had been converted to a place of Catholic worship by the Latin emperors. The church was re-furnished for the performance of Orthodox rites, and a colossal mosaic of the Deesis, 5.2 meters in length and 6 meters wide, was installed in its south gallery.Cormack 2000, pgs. 201-202. Among the other objects of Michael's patronage were the Blachernae Palace and several sections of the city defenses, along with public service projects. Private patrons sponsored restorations of Constantinople's churches, many of which were maintained for the next two centuries even as the residential portions of the city fell into neglect.
Between 1316 and 1321, Theodore Metochites, deputy of Michael's successor Andronikos II, sponsored an extensive rebuilding of the Chora Church. An artist, whose name is not preserved, was called away from a project in Thessaloniki to design Chora's frescos and mosaics, which emerged as one of the foremost achievements of Palaeologan art.Cormack 2000, pgs. 205-206. David Talbot Rice points out that, contemporaneously, "Giotto was decorating the Arena Chapel at Padua. The Byzantine painter [working in Chora] had other ideas and a different outlook, but in his own way he was just as great a genius".Talbot Rice 1959, pg. 84. Andronikos II had Hagia Sophia's walls reinforced with buttresses in 1317. Late in his reign there was a decline in the empire's fortunes, and little building was undertaken in the capital after 1330.Mango 1978, pg. 148. The optimism fostered by Michael VIII gave way in subsequent times to a sense that "the present generation had sinned and was inferior to its predecessors".Cormack 2000, pg. 199.
In 1346 an earthquake damaged the domes of Hagia Sophia, which were repaired by Andronikos III. Manuel II (r. 1391–1425) created an institution called the Katholikon Mouseion in the early 15th century. It was located in a hospital and attached to the monastery of St. John Prodrome, whose rich library had at its disposal numerous teachers including Georges Chrysococè and Cardinal Bessarion, who later settled in Italy. The library welcomed many Italians who came to Constantinople to learn Greek language and culture. Also during the reign of Manuel II, the scholar Demetrios Kydones wrote several texts such as the Discourses and Dialogues on the relationship between Christianity and Islam, on politics and on civil subjects such as marriage and education. He also made a treatise on the seven ecumenical councils, a poem on how to convert unbelievers, and a refutation of Catholic doctrine on the procession of the Holy Spirit.
Notable contributors
Under the impetus of the Palaeologan emperors, many politicians, scholars and writers took part in projects of literary revival and the expansion of knowledge. Among these were the judge and historian George Pachymeres (1242 – c. 1310), and four great philological scholars of the time of Andronikos II: Thomas Magistros, Demetrius Triclinios, Manuel Moschopoulos, and the theologian Maximus Planudes (c. 1255/1260 – c. 1305/1310). The scholar and statesman Nikephoros Choumnos (c. 1250/1255 – 1327) was one of the most important figures of the renaissance, while Theodore Metochites (1270–1332) was a philosopher and a patron of the arts and sciences, considered the most complete scholar of his time. He studied Classical antiquity, although not with the same intense interest as his contemporaries in Trecento Italy.Cormack 2000, pg. 210. The fourteenth-century poet Manuel Philes wrote pieces commemorating a wide variety of artworks and the aristocrats who had sponsored them. His work gives some insight into the creative activity of his time and place, although it is also full of "clichés or the praises and lineage of his noble patrons".Mango 1986, pg. 244. A tradition of polemic also existed during the time, exemplified by the historian Nikephoros Gregoras, who expanded the criticism of Aristotle in his dialogue Phlorentius. Gemistos Plethon was exiled by Manuel II to the Despotate of Morea, an important intellectual center; his lectures there revived Platonic thought in Western Europe. Plethon had offended the emperor by studying heretical and even pagan doctrines, and thus displaying an openness of mind "very similar to Renaissance humanism".Cormack 2000, pgs. 194-195.
Art and architecture
The Palaeologan style
Cyril Mango describes "a distinctive new style" in Palaeologan painting, "marked by a multiplication of figures and scenes, by a new interest in perspective (however strangely rendered), and by a return to much earlier models such as illuminated manuscripts of the 10th century".Mango 1986, pg. 243. These mannerisms appear with equal frequency in works of all sizes.Rodley 1994, pg. 314. Contemporary trends in church painting favored intricate narrative cycles, both in fresco and in sequences of icons; to serve this need, the traditional large, portrait-style holy images were partially superseded by landscape scenes with comparatively small figures, often depicted in motion.Mango 1978, pg. 167. The landscapes themselves are barren, perhaps intended to invoke the wilderness traditionally occupied by prophets and ascetic hermits. There are informal attempts at using foreshortening to create the illusion of three dimensions,Cormack 2000, pg. 196. notably in the curious buildings which sometimes form a backdrop for figures. The scholar Lyn Rodley refers to "lurching architectural forms that suggest distant, and none too committed, reference to the formulae of perspective drawing".Rodley 1994, pg. 302. In the mosaics and frescos of Chora Church, as well as certain other works from Constantinople, foreshortening is used for narrative purposes, making buildings lean toward the intended focus of the viewer's attention.Cormack 2000, pgs. 207 and 210.
In depicting people, Palaeologan artists favored a "small-headed, wide-bodied, 'boneless' figure style". Kurt Weitzmann speaks of "over-elongated figures", placed in "swaying poses" and wearing draperies which "bulge slightly, giving the impression of detachment from the frail bodies underneath". Hard, geometrically patterned highlights are used to give figures the appearance of volume, albeit without interest in depicting realistic anatomical construction or a coherent light source. This technique was extensively employed by Cretan School artists and thus became a standard in post-Byzantine icon painting.
Icons
Tempera paintings on wooden panels had always made up part of the corpus of Byzantine icons,Cormack 2000, pg. 213 but they proliferated in the Palaeologan period; the word "icon", formerly used to describe any image employed in a religious context, became increasingly associated with this kind of panel painting. The phenomenon was probably linked to new customs related to the templon, a screen used in churches to separate the congregation from the sanctuary where priests conducted rituals. The practice of affixing icons to this screen dated back to at least the 8th century. As part of a general increase of paintings in late Byzantine church interiors, more panels were added and the templon evolved into the iconostasis, "a solid wall of icons... between the worshipper and the mystery of the Christian service". By the 12th century, usage in this important and highly visible context had made panel paintings into a more prestigious art form, suitable for wealthy patrons to commission. Even quite large icons, 1.2 to 1.8-meters high or more and depicting figures greater than life size, began to be executed in tempera, rather than in the traditional media of fresco or mosaic.