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Byzantine

Byzantine architecture and decoration is of considerable importance, not only on account of its intrinsic merits, with its rounded forms, lavish ornamentation, and gorgeous colouring, but because, though a transition style, it has developed into a living and progressive form of art-practically the art of Eastern Europe and Russia, holding sway wherever the Greek Church dominates. To this style, too, we owe several decorative motifs and methods-for instance, the painting on gold or silver backgrounds with bright body colours and the use of mosaics. Both the architecture and ornamentation are the result of a union between the Western or Roman, and the Eastern styles as they developed under the Roman Emperors reigning in Byzantium, or old Constantinople. So we find it largely influenced by Asiatic feeling, while it, in its turn, influenced the Romanesque and all its off-shoots, such as the Saxon.

In the architecture the dominating notes are the cupola, usually shallow, arcading with broad archivolts, lengthy pendentives, squat columns with inverted truncated cones, deep cornices, with carving which is of a flat design with depressed, gouged-out background.