Art The distinctive term Byzantine Art is applied to that of Eastern Christendom, from the time when Byzantium became the capital in 330 A.D. until the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, and even later. Monuments of this arts exist in all the Mediterranean countries. The luxury of Byzantine art lay in splendour, in the profusion of colour and gilding. It is a truly Asiatic luxury, which found inspiration in the Persia of Sassanides, and took as its models the carpets of the Orientals.

The Byzantines worshipped icons - images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints in painting, sculpture or ivory relief. In every Byzantine church a huge and awesome figure of Christ as "Pantocrator" , or Ruler of the Univers, looked down from the centre of the main dome. Meny of these glowing mosaics were destroyed during a wave of iconoclasm, or "imagebreaking" in the 8th century.Christian art went through a redoubtable crisis at Byzantium in connection with the ascetic heresy of the image-breakers, called the Iconoclasts, who gained the upper hand for a time. A bitter controversy began in 726 A.D. when Emperor Leo III banned the worship of icons, which most churchmen regarded as idolatrous. For more than a centrury after this the iconoclasts, or "image-smashers", whitewashed or defaced thousands of church paintings and sculptures.

Architecture was no more successful than painting and sculpture in discovering a new formula, when it was applied to the building of temples for the new faith. The Christian Church is a place for the gathering together of the faithful, thus differing esentially from the pagan temple, which was the abode of the divinity. The first Christian churches were accordingly modelled on those enclosed places of assembly known as basilicas. Characteristic example is St. Paul without-the-walls basilica, built by Constantine and restored after a fire in 1823. It consists of a large nave with a horizontal roof, and of two lower side-aisles; the central nave is lighted by windows above the side-aisles. At the end is a gate called the Triumphal Arch, behind which is the altar; the end wallis circular and forms the apse. Both apse and triumphal arch are richly decorated with glass mosaics on a blue or gold ground, that of goldsmiths enamels. These mosaics ornament the vertical walls and the vaults, instead of forming pavements as in Roman houses and temples.

If the architectural type of the basilica, characterised by its rectangular plan and flat roof, predominates in the churches in Italy, those of Constantinople applied and developed the principle of the dome. The great church of Byzantium, St Sophia was built between 532 and 562 A.D. under Justinian. The architects os St. Sophia were probably inspired by Asiatic models, and not by Roman Pantheon. This Byzantine style of church architecture was widely copied, especially in Italy and the Balkans. Icon