4.1 From Giorgio Vasari to Sir Steven Runciman

Unfortunately for Byzantine art, it was not El Greco’s opinion that prevailed – it might have been helpful if the Cretan had explained his statement further. Vasari’s opinion that the contemporary Greek (Byzantine) style is ‘rough’ and ‘rude’, in short ‘bad’, placed it on the disadvantaged side of the division, always falling short when compared to the masterpieces that ‘good’ art – deriving from ancient Greece and Rome revived by the Italian Renaissance – had to offer.

Vasari, however, was not the only author to put the shackles of ugliness and inferior quality on Byzantine art. In the late eighteenth century, Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) compiled a monumental work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in no fewer than six books published between 1776 and 1789. In chapters 15 and 16 of his first book, Gibbon put forward Christianity as a major reason for the decline of the Roman Empire, while in chapter 48 (the introduction to the fifth book) he dealt a devastating blow against Byzantine art. According to Gibbon, the subjects of Byzantium ‘assume and dishonour the name of both Greek and Romans …’ and ‘Nor are the defects of the subject compensated by the skill and variety of the painters.’ Gibbon’s landmark publication painted a very ugly picture of the Byzantine Empire, with its art being the collateral damage in a process of decline. His description of some glimpses of good were unable to counterbalance the enormous weight of negativity.

With El Greco long dead by the time Gibbon’s works were circulated and read, it was Sir Steven Runciman (1903–2000) who came to the defence of the Empire and Byzantine art in a paper published in Daedalus in 1976. Sir Steven’s article was short, yet punchy, placing Gibbon’s disdain for the Empire within the latter’s contemporary social perspective. Sir Steven, like El Greco did with Vasari, concluded that ‘for all his [Gibbon’s] greatness as a historian, the spirit of Byzantium eluded him’. Sir Steven underlined that Gibbon had no interest in Byzantine art, and in fact (in another echo of Vasari) ‘never saw Byzantine art in its homelands’.

The two most dismissive opinions to have been cast upon Byzantine art came from people who did not know, understand or engage with it on a deeper level. The two counter-statements came from people who knew, understood and had engaged with it. It is not a coincidence that, from the 1970s onwards, there has been a marked rise in interest in the Empire, its art and its interaction with the west. Manolis Chatzidakis’ crucial publications on the Cretan post-Byzantine icons and their artistic dialogue with the west date from that period (Chatzidakis, 1974a; Chatzidakis, 1974b; Chatzidakis, 1977). They reflect a considerable shift to comprehend, acknowledge, highlight and celebrate Byzantium’s cultural place within the development of European civilisation.