Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/359

 x] BYZANTINE PAINTING 341 kind. If this was Asiatic in part, it had begun with Diocletian. At all events, ceremonialism, passing into art, conduced to the hardening of certain in- herited Hellenic principles, — for example, the prin- ciple of symmetry. Classical art had reached the pliant symmetry of life. In Byzantine art the sym- metry of life gives place to a formal arrangement of figures. In harmony with its ceremonialism, and following the spirit of the Greek formulation of Christianity in dogma, Byzantine art presents a dogmatic orthodoxy. This appears in its symbolism, which is systematized and made strictly to conform to the doctrines of the Church. It also appears in the representations of Christ and the Virgin. There is no mistaking the divine nature of the Byzantine Christ — he is ever virepoi5<no«, as in the great hymn of Romanos ; and the Virgin is ever BeoroKrjy the mother of God. Byzantine images of Christ and his mother differ from those of mediaeval Western art as the same poet's Hymn of the Virgin at the Cross differs from the Stabat Ma- ter. One may not seek in them the humanity of the God-man. The Sufferer is not in Byzantine art, nor does the Madonna weep for a crucified Son. The symbols attached to the images of Christ signify un- mistakably the God. No nature less than absolute divinity might bear the great crossed nimbus, whereon the letters Alpha and Omega declare that this is He who was before all time and is eternal — in whose eternity the earthly episodes of Jesus* life are but a ])oint. These are images of God the Son rather than of the Sou of God.