Byzantine Empire

Hagia Sophia - original architects of this structure were a mathematician and physicist and examined how a round dome (such as the Pantheon) could be placed on flat walls.  They invented the pendentive; a triangular piece of masonry with dome resting on the long side while the other two sides channel the weight down to a pier below.  The pendentive allows for the dome to be supported by four piers, one in each corner of the building.  This also allows for greater window space unlike the Pantheon, that only contains the oculus.

Ground plans - Churches in Early Christian era concentrate on one of two forms: the circular building containing a centrally planned altar and the longer basilica with an axially planned nave facing an altar.  Hagia Sophia is a marriage of these two forms.

Most Byzantine architecture has plain exteriors made of brick or concrete that becomes more richly articulated in the Middle and Late periods.  

Interiors are marked with extensive use of variously colored marbles, mosaics, and frescos.  Interior arches reach into space to create mysterious areas clouded by half-light and shimmering mosaics.

Greek Orthodox tradition dictates that important parts of the Mass take place behind a curtain or screen.

Icon - a religious devotional image usually of portable size and hanging in a place of honor either at home or in a religious institution.  Icons have wooden foundations covered with preparatory undercoats of paint.  Successive layers of stucco are then applied and then a sketch is placed on the surface so the image can be traced, gilded, and then painted.  Finally, the artist applies varnish to make it shine and protect it.

Icons are often touched, handled, and embraced.  Many icons have become blackened due to the votive candles placed beneath them.  To restore them, some icons have been repainted and no longer have the original surface texture.  

Icons are paraded in religious processions on feast days and sometimes exhibited on city walls in times of invasion.  Believed that they contained spiritual powers.

Byzantine painting marked by combination of classical ancient Greece and Rome with more formal hieratic medieval style.

Artists employ soft transitions between color areas and showed a more relaxed figure stance with frontal poses, symmetry, and almost weightless bodies.   Drapery is emphasized and little effort to reveal the body underneath.  Perspective is unimportant because figures occupy a timeless space.  Backgrounds are flattened with a single layer of gold to emphasize eternal space.

Portraits are fairly standardized with large eyes and long, thin noses and short, closed mouths.  

Art avoids nudity.  Nudity is associated with paganism and debasement of character.

Illuminated manuscripts are meticulously executed and employ the same use of gold seen in icons and mosaics.  The possession of illuminated manuscripts is seen as a status symbol as most could not read or write.

Interior church walls are covered in fresco and mosaics meant to create a "heavenly" and mysterious space as they flickered against the candlelight.