Byzantium and the West: A Morphological and Structural Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

In the millenary artistic development in the Mediterranean cultural area, from the 6th to the 15th century, the attention should be focused not only to morphological differences that separate Byzantium from Western artistic centres, but to their structural affinities as well. From the point of view of methodology, it is probably necessary to give more precise definition of the idiomatic expression "structural unity" of the Western art and Byzantine art, because those terms are frequently being used as undoubtedly and unquestionably antithetic. The structural analysis of Eastern- and Western-European medieval works of art shows the existence of profound relations of the Pre-Romanesque, Romanesque and Gothic with, Macedonian, Comnen and Palaeologue Renaissance on the other side, to such an extent that one can talk about the parallelism between pre-Romanesque and Macedonian, Romanesque and Comnen and Gothic and Palaeologue Renaissance. The comparative analysis shows, as well, that the contemporaneous Western and Eastern art (the method of reduction of the 12th c.; narrativity of the 14th c.) show much more affinities than the successive phases of the Western and Byzantine art (Romanesque and Gothic sculpture in the West, fresco painting of the Comnen and Palaeologue period in the East).