The Art of the Middle and Late Byzantine Empire

This course looks at the arch of Byzantine art history spanning its Middle and Late periods. During that time, artworks were destroyed, banned, and reduced to non-human symbols for a short time under Iconoclasm, but ultimately, a resurgence of Classical and Hellenistic artistic sensibilities ushered in what is called the Macedonian Renaissance, which laid the groundwork for much of the Italian Renaissance which would occur a few centuries later. This course looks at Byzantine artworks as far removed as the sixth-century church of Sana'a, Yemen and as unusual as the moving throne and automata which appeared at the Constantinople court.