Page 149 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter II
In our view, this heightened level of abstraction, which, paradoxically, does not di- minish the kind of Byzantine realism characteristic of the period preceding the Hesy- chast Debate, is a common feature of both Kalenić and Perivleptos frescoes. In the past, certain scholars have argued that the hesychast influence has also actually had a nega- tive effect on the art and culture of Byzantium. A particularly noteworthy case is that of Delvoye Charles (1967), who argued that: “Under the influence of the hesychast reaction, Byzantine art receded into a closed world.”63 Another typical example is the opinion of a historian Apostolos Vacalopoulos, who argues: “Its eremitic and introspective outlook affected many who would otherwise have devoted themselves to the philosophy of an- cient Greece. Hesychasm was therefore inimical to the development of a liberal spirit, which might have regenerated the Byzantine world.”64 Such perceptions owe to common misconstructions of the essence of the hesychast experience, which is why we have sum- marised the Hesychast Debate in the previous section.
From what has been said so far in this chapter, we can observe how the consequences of not properly understanding the context and the actual nature of the hesychast influ- ence in Byzantine art are indeed immense, as they often lead to erroneous assumptions that Byzantine painters of the Palaiologan period aspired to follow, or even worse, that they should have followed the artistic currents which in Italy eventually led to the rise of Renaissance. We would argue that this is not the case. In spite of the range of influ- ences, some of which came from the West, the tradition of Byzantine painting followed a steady course of aesthetic development, within which, its basic Greco-Eastern65 char- acter remained unmistakably recognisable.66 The period of Post Byzantine painting, which lasted longer than two centuries, affirms this most unequivocally.
63 Our translation. The original excerpt in French reads as follows: “Sous l’effet de la réaction hésychaste, l’ art byzantin s’est replié dans un monde clos.” The Greek translation of the same excerpt reads as follows: «Υπό την επίδρα- ση της ησυχαστικής αντιδράσεως, η βυζαντινή τέχνη αναδιπλώθηκε μέσα σ’ ένα κλειστό κόσμο.» See: Charles Del- voye, L’art Byzantin (Arthaud, 1967), 352.
64 Apostolos Vacalopoulos, Origins of the Greek Nation (New Brunswick: Rutgers Byzantine Series, 1970), 58.
65 It is often said that Byzantine art is a combination of a Greco-Roman and Eastern artistic heritage. However, we prefer to use the term Greco-Eastern, because the Roman element in Byzantine art cannot tangibly be conceived as distinct from the Greek – which was dominant in the last phase of the Byzantine painting. Accordingly, Panayotis Mi- chelis states the following: “They have continuously influenced one another, but in the making of Byzantine art, an Eastern element was dominant, whereas in its decline, the Greek.” Our translation of: «Αλληλοεπηρεάστηκαν συνεχώς, αλλά στη γένεση της βυζαντινής τέχνης κυριάρχησε το ανατολικό, ενώ στη παρακμή της κυριάρχησε το ελληνικό (στοιχείο).» See: Παναγιώτης Μιχελής, Αἰσθητικὴ Θεώρηση τῆς Βυζαντινῆς Τέχνης (Αθήνα: Ίδρυμα Παναγιώτη & Έφης Μιχελή, 2006), 278.
66 Accordingly, David Talbot-Rice insightfully observes: “What may be termed the spiritual responsibility of art was never felt in the west to the same degree as in the Orthodox world, and therefore, with Giotto’s experiments in the way of realism accomplished, art was free to develop along a course of realistic representation which was quite foreign to any possible line of development in the east.” See: David Talbot-Rice, Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 149–150.
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