Category:Byzantine art on stamps

The Byzantine Art consist of different styles of creative expressions in the spatial areas of the Byzantine Empire after the partition of the Roman Empire in a Western and an Eastern part in 395 A.D. until to the fall of Constantinople (= the contemporary Istanbul) to the Ottomans in 1453 A.D.. Constantinople was not only the capital of the East-Roman Empire, it was also the cultural center of this Empire.

Predecessor styles: Phoenician Art; Roman art; Art of the Ancient Middle East (as spatial and chronological enlargement of the British term "Near East" from the 19th century), Art of the late Antique and the early Christianity with Greek character; Art of the Iron Age
Successor style: Moscovite Empire style; Levantine Art; Islamic Art
Parallel styles:Art styles of the Late Antique and the Early Middle Age; Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and others in the West; Art of the Kievan and Novgorod Rus; Viking art; Art styles in the riches of the Middle East (Slavic, Asiatic and Ottoman) in neighbouring regions of Europe, Asia, and North Afrique from the Balkans over China and India to the pre-Islamic Arab riches.

Chronologically one is distinguishing:

- Early Byzantine Art: beginnings - Emperor Iustinianus (482 A.D. -565 A.D.)

- Time of the Iconoclasm: after Emperor Iustinianus - 726 A.D.

- Time of the Iconoclastic controversy: 726 A.D. - 843 A.D. as time of the controverse between Iconoclasts and Iconoduls → new consolidation of the Byzantine Empre

- Middle Byzantine Art:

a) Era of the Macedon dynasty and the Dynasty of the Komnenos family (843 A.D. - 1204 A.D.) = relative cultural revival of Constantinople as cultural centre

b) Latin conquest of Constantinople (1204 A.D.) = errection of a foreign rule (Greek) in Constantinople = broadly cessation of each building and creative art works in Constantinople, increasingly disappearance of Constantinople as cultural center

- Late Byzantine Art: Palaiologic Renaissance (13th Century A.D. - 1453 A.D.) = for instance one of the paragons for the Mannerism in Europe

Very difficult is a differentation between Late Antique Roman Art and Early Byzantine Art.

The Art of the Byzantine Empire and whose successor states in particular and the Byzantine historical and cultural heir in general is until to today (unjustly) characterized by a deep ideological and psychological demarcation in the mindset of the Western peoples since a Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) had denigrated all after his opinion "non-aesthetic" in the antique art as "Barbarian", "degenerated", and "anti-naturalistic". However, also the Non-Roman world had had a golden age of creative work. At that, the Byzantine artists have never lost their cultural basis to Constantinople and the classic Roman and Greek world. Especially wall-painting, iconography, mosaic arts (among others) and also certain architectural elements of the Byzantine Art were borrowed from classical paragons. The late phase with the Palaiologic Renaissance is substantial characterised by an revival of the humanism and a sense for reality which was also inspiration for many West European artists (for instance at El Greco in his early phase (among others)). The period of the Byzantine Art ended with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.