by Natalie Bennett

You’re visiting the exotic and foreign Eastern Empire at the Royal Academy, but you begin on more familiar ground: in Classical territory – a spectacular full-room mosaic. While the subject of a modestly sized white marble sculpture is Jonah, the style is entirely Classical, as is that of a head of Constantine nearby.

But by the time you get to a sarcophagus front from Constantinople in the last third of the 5th century you’re heading into a recognisably Christian aesthetic; the saint’s hand is turned in benediction at a wholly impossible angle and his proportions greatly exaggerated for effect – symbol is becoming more important than harmony and naturalism.

But there’s also a reminder of just how kitsch the late empire could be — a trait we tend far more to associate with the Eastern Empire — in three elaborate gilded chair ornaments from Rome, and a multicoloured cameo from the same source. And one case of ivory demonstrates clearly the disappearance of perspective that becomes so characteristic of icons; some have it, if roughly; the makers (and presumably consumers) seem not so much to have lost the knowledge as lost interest. (Loss of perspective is what cubism did, of course, and we think that’s brilliant.) With a diptych leaf with a Byzantine empress in ivory from the 6th century, you couldn’t get a finer piece of craft work.

There are truly stunning, amazing items here, but there is one major problem. I don’t know what theory it is that informs exhibition design at the Academy these days, but I’ve emerged from several exhibitions there lately feeling as though I’d been ejected from a pinball machine. Rooms seem to be designed deliberately to discourage a natural flow of traffic, so that viewers approach cases from at least three directions, bouncing and tripping across each other. Major information panels are often placed right in the path from room to room, producing an awkward mix of walkers and readers. And entirely illogically, you get to the panel on iconoclasm before you have seen any icons.

Marks to the curator, however, for the admirably deadpan caption on the Antioch chalice. This was “discovered near Antioch 100 years ago, the inner cup was claimed as the holy grail and the holder dated later. Recent scholarship, however, describes the Antioch chalice as merely a standing lamp of the 6th century.”

But perhaps the best part of the show is the room focusing on everyday life, contrasting the traditional views of Byzantium life in gold-encrusted palaces. Here is lovely naïve-style pottery with animal and human figures from 10th-century Greece, starting here to see western early medieval influences. Just magical is an incised smiling fish little bowl in a simple white glaze.
In another example, showing two peacocks, from Thebes in 12th century, Islamic influences are clear in the foliage in the background.

Some items in this room also show that Byzantium, against the stereotypes, was capable of glorious simplicity: perhaps the best being a votive hand holding a cross from Syria/Palestine dated to the 6th to 8th centuries.

Little is known about icon painters, which adds to pathos to the story of the will of Angelos Lakotantos of Crete, who when about to sail for Constantinople in 1436 left a will saying “my child who is about to be born, if a boy, I wish him first to learn to read and write and then the art of painting. And if he learns the latter, I bequeath to him my drawings and all the articles of my craft”. Otherwise they were to go to his brother John.

His icon with St Theodore is one of the most attractive pieces here. The saint radiating energy and power whips out his sword from its scabbard and raises it to finish off an already vanquished dragon. He worked for the Catholic and Orthodox communities and the combined influences are clear.

We think we know what a “Byzantine” piece looks like, but from a city at the centre of a swirl of influences, it was in truth as varied, and rich, as that of any art you’d care to set it against. From this exhibition, for all its faults, that’s very clear.

Byzantium continues at the Royal Academy of Arts until March 22. Images from the exhibition.