HA2290

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

Summer Examinations: 2001/2002

THE ART OF BYZANTIUM

Time allowed: 2/3 hours.

Candidates sitting the two-hour examination must attempt questions 1 - 4.

Candidates sitting the three-hour examination must attempt questions 1 - 5.

Each question carries the same weight and candidates are advised to spread their time evenly between the questions.

Refer to each image by the number and letter on the back.

Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the particulars required are entered on each answer book.

Photographs and photocopies MUST NOT be defaced or removed from the examinations room.

1. Identify, date and compare A with the following extract from Photios, Homily XVII:

`Seest thou of what beauty was the face of the church bereft? Of what splendour it was deprived? Over what graces did gloomy dejection prevail? That was the daring deed of a wretched Jewish hand, lacking in no insolence. [...] For verily are these things the prizes and gifts of a most sincere and divine love, from which depends likewise the veneration of holy images, just as their destruction [comes] from an irrepressible and foul hatred. Those men, after stripping the Church, Christ's bride, of her own ornaments, and wantonly inflicting bitter wounds on her, wherewith her face was scarred, sought in their insolence to submerge her in deep oblivion, naked as she was, so to speak, and unsightly and afflicted with those many wounds-herein too emulating Jewish folly. Still bearing on her body the scars of those wounds...she now regains the ancient dignity of her comeliness, and sheds the rude mockery of those who have insulted her, pitying their truly absurd madness. If one called this day the beginning and day of Orthodoxy (lest I say something excessive) one would not be far wrong. For though time is short since the pride of the iconoclastic heresy has been reduced to ashes, and true religion has spread its light to the ends of the world, fired like a beacon by imperial and divine command, this too is our ornament, for it is the achievement of the same God-loving reign.'

2. Identify, date and compare A with B.

3. Identify, date and compare A with B.

4. Identify, date and compare A with B.

5. Is it accurate to discuss middle byzantine church decoration in terms of a `classical system'?

End

PHOTOMASTER

HA2290

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

Summer Examinations: 2001/2002

THE ART OF BYZANTIUM

1. A Nicaea, Church of the Dormition, apse mosaic

2. A Limburg Staurotheke (with lid in place)

B Leo Bible, Leo presents his bible to the Virgin (f. 2v)

3. A Hosios Loukas, Anastasis mosaic

B Nea Moni, Anastasis mosaic

4. A Nerezi, St. Pantaleimon, fresco of the Deposition

B Kastoria, Double-sided icon (Man of Sorrows side)