ABSTRACT
As I write this brief afterword, in February 2009, an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London is drawing the popular gaze to Byzantium 330–1453. Of the various treasures gathered from across, principally, Europe, among the most precious are those dating before ad 700, the imprecise but broadly observed starting date for contributions to this volume. My eye was drawn to two fourth-century pieces: a cameo with a warrior horseman, perhaps Constantine, now kept in Belgrade, and the “Projecta Casket,” in embossed and partially gilt silver, from the British Museum; to ivory diptych leaves lent by Liverpool, London and Florence, celebrating consuls of the fifth and sixth centuries; and to the magnificent silver plates depicting scenes from the life of David, discovered in Cyprus and kept in Nicosia.1 Are these late Roman, late antique or early Byzantine? one might reasonably ask. An equally reasonable answer would be that they are all of these, and that while they are distinct from it, they are also the foundation for the art of the Byzantine World, c. 700–1453. Thus one can delight in but also locate in a developing tradition – without denying “external” influences or ignoring the fierce academic argument surrounding them – the stunning ivory triptychs from the Louvre and Vatican Museums; the ivory of Constantine VII crowned by Christ, lent by Moscow’s Pushkin Museum; the glorious twelfth-century icon of the Archangel Michael, in silver gilt on wood with cloisonné and enamel, plundered from Constantinople to be stashed in the treasury of San Marco, Venice; and the series of magnificent ivory caskets, carved between the later ninth and eleventh centuries, including the “David Casket,” the “Veroli Casket” and the “Troyes Casket.”2
