Byzantine and Persian Art

Byzantine art reached one of its highest expressions under the emperor Justinian I, who commissioned the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, built between 532 and 537 CE by the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus and crowned by a vast dome that seems, in the words of contemporary observers, to float on light. Byzantine mosaic art, using glass tesserae with gold and colored backgrounds, reached similar heights outside the capital, notably in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, whose sixth-century panels of Justinian and his empress Theodora, each shown with their retinue in solemn frontal procession, exemplify the hierarchical, otherworldly style of Byzantine imperial imagery. Alongside monumental mosaic, the Byzantine tradition developed the painted icon, a devotional image of Christ, the Virgin as Theotokos, or the saints, intended less as naturalistic portraiture than as a sacred window onto the holy figure it depicted.