page_title: Byzantine art
section_title: Macedonian art
hierarchical_section_title: Byzantine art / Periods / Macedonian art
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die vierzig Märtyrer von Sebaste; Elfenbein-Relieftafel; Konstantinopel, 10. Jh. n. Chr. Museum für Byzantinische Kunst (Inv. 574; erworben 1828; Sammlung Bartoldi), Bode-Museum, Berlin. English: The forty Martyrs of Sebaste; ivory relief panel; Constantinople, 10th century AD. Museum für Byzantinische Kunst (Inv. no. 574; acquired in 1828; Bartoldi collection), Bode-Museum, Berlin.
context_page_description: Byzantine art comprises the body of Christian Greek artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of Rome and lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start date of the Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political history, if still imprecise. Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some degree the Muslim states of the eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's culture and art for centuries afterward.
  A number of states contemporary with the Byzantine Empire were culturally influenced by it, without actually being part of it. These included the Rus, as well as some non-Orthodox states like the Republic of Venice, which separated from the Byzantine empire in the 10th century, and the Kingdom of Sicily, which had close ties to the Byzantine Empire and had also been a Byzantine possession until the 10th century with a large Greek-speaking population persisting into the 12th century.
context_section_description: The rulings of the Council of Hieria were reversed by a new church council in 843, celebrated to this day in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the "Triumph of Orthodoxy." In 867, the installation of a new apse mosaic in Hagia Sophia depicting the Virgin and Child was celebrated by the Patriarch Photios in a famous homily as a victory over the evils of iconoclasm. Later in the same year, the Emperor Basil I, called "the Macedonian," acceded to the throne; as a result the following period of Byzantine art has sometimes been called the "Macedonian Renaissance", although the term is doubly problematic (it was neither "Macedonian", nor, strictly speaking, a "Renaissance").
  In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Empire's military situation improved, and patronage of art and architecture increased. New churches were commissioned, and the standard architectural form (the "cross-in-square") and decorative scheme of the Middle Byzantine church were standardised. Major surviving examples include Hosios Loukas in Boeotia, the Daphni Monastery near Athens and Nea Moni on Chios.
  There was a revival of interest in the depiction of subjects from classical greek mythology (as on the Veroli Casket) and in the use of a "classical" hellenistic styles to depict religious, and particularly Old Testament, subjects (of which the Paris Psalter and the Joshua Roll are important examples).
  The Macedonian period also saw a revival of the late antique technique of ivory carving. Many ornate ivory triptychs and diptychs survive, such as the Harbaville Triptych and a triptych at Luton Hoo, dating from the reign of Nicephorus Phocas.
caption: An example of Macedonian-era ivorywork from Constantinople: the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, now in the Bode Museum, Berlin
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