Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/363

 In the Byzantine School. 333 that He had no beauty of person, — exercised a most important influence on the art both of the East and the West, and accounts in a great measure for the difference in the treatment of sacred subjects by the artists of the two schools. Our limits forbid us to do more than name the most important mosaics of the Byzantine school. Those of S. Sophia at Constantinople, although many have been Fig. 122.— Christ adored by Justinian. Mosaic from the Porch of S. Sophia, Constantinople. destroyed, still retain much of their original splendour : our illustration (Fig. 122) is from the porch, and represents the Emperor Justinian doing homage, with truly Oriental servility, to the enthroned Redeemer. Until the thirteenth century Venice was little more than a Byzantine colony, and in the mosaics of Saint Mark's we have an opportunity of studying the Byzan- tine style in all its purity. Other Western Byzantine mosaics, dating from the time of the Normans, may be