Byzantine metalwork

Byzantine metalwork is characterized by a blend of classical and Eastern artistic styles, featuring intricate designs, rich colors, and religious themes. Notable examples include bronze church doors, silver vessels, and elaborate jewelry, often inlaid with silver or decorated with techniques like niello and opus interrasile. 

Byzantine metalwork

Byzantine metalworkers utilized a variety of materials, including gold, silver, bronze, copper, and their alloys. They employed casting, hammering, engraving, repoussé, chasing, and punching. A distinctive technique was opus interrasile, where metal sheets were pierced to create fine patterns. Silver and niello were used to highlight patterns and inscriptions. 

Many metal objects, especially those made of silver, were used in religious contexts, such as chalices, patens, and book covers. Metalwork also extended to everyday objects like tableware, furniture, and jewelry. 

Byzantine metalwork influenced later artistic traditions and even inspired the revival of bronze casting in the West. 

Military innovations included the riding stirrup which provided stability for mounted archers and dramatically transformed the army

Examples of Byzantine Metalwork: Bronze doors: Inlaid with silver and featuring intricate designs. Silver vessels: Including chalices, patens, and other liturgical items, often stamped with control marks. Jewelry: Often large and heavy, with a focus on gold and intricate ornamentation. Enamels: Byzantine enameling, particularly the cloisonné technique, was highly developed and used to decorate small, precious objects. Metal furniture fittings and decorative panels: Found in both religious and secular settings. 

Byzantine silver

Silver was important in Byzantine art and society more broadly as it was the most precious metal right after gold. Byzantine silver was prized in official, religious, and domestic realms. Aristocratic homes had silver dining ware, and in churches silver was used for crosses, liturgical vessels such as the patens and chalices required for every Eucharist. The imperial offices periodically issued silver coinage and regulated the use of silver through control stamps. About 1,500 silver plates and crosses survive from the Byzantine era.

In the early Byzantine period (4th-7th centuries CE), silver vessels for domestic settings showed pagan mythological scenes and objects such as the Sevso Treasure. Luxurious silver pieces continued to be rendered in the classical style by early Byzantine artisans. At the same time, silver used in church settings depicted a range of Christian subject matter, and in later Byzantine art these subjects predominate.

Because the material was so valued, silver items were control stamped by imperial authorities, sometimes with up to five control stamps on a single piece, between the fourth and eighth centuries. During the reign of the Emperor Heraclius (r. 610-41 AD), the production of silverware halts, which coincides with the Byzantine state confiscating valuable metals to help replenish the imperial treasury during the Persian War.

Byzantine enamel

The craft of cloisonné enameling is a metal and glass-working tradition practiced in the Byzantine Empire from the 6th to the 12th century AD. The Byzantines perfected an intricate form of vitreous enameling, allowing the illustration of small, detailed, iconographic portraits.

The development of the Byzantine enamel art occurred between the 6th and 12th centuries. The Byzantines perfected a form of enameling called cloisonné, where gold strips are soldered to a metal base plate making the outline of an image. The recessed spaces between the gold filigreed wire are then filled with a colored glass paste, or flux, that fills up the negative space in the design with whatever color chosen. Byzantine enamels usually depict a person of interest, often a member of the imperial family or a Christian icon. Enamels, because they are created from expensive materials such as gold, are often very small. Occasionally they are made into medallions that act as decorative jewelry or are set in ecclesiastical designs such as book covers, liturgical equipment like the chalice and paten, or in some examples, royal crowns. Collections of small enamels may be set together to make a larger, narrative display, such as in the Pala d'Oro altarpiece.

Many of the examples of Byzantine enamel known today have been repurposed into a new setting, making dating particularly difficult where no inscriptions or identifiable persons are visible. The Latin Crusaders, who sacked Constantinople in 1204, took many examples of Byzantine enamel with them back West. The destruction of Constantinople meant that the production of enamel artwork went into downfall in the 13th century. It is possible that many examples left in the city were melted down and repurposed by the Ottoman Empire, who cared little about the religious significance of the art and could reuse the gold but not the glass.

Byzantine coinage

Byzantine currency, money used in the Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of the West, consisted of mainly two types of coins: gold solidi and hyperpyra and a variety of clearly valued bronze coins. By the 15th century, the currency was issued only in debased silver stavrata and minor copper coins with no gold issue. The Byzantine Empire established and operated several mints throughout its history. Aside from the main metropolitan mint in the capital, Constantinople, a varying number of provincial mints were also established in other urban centres, especially during the 6th century.

Most provincial mints except for Syracuse were closed or lost to Arab Muslim invasions in the Mediterranean Region by the mid-7th century onwards. After the loss of Syracuse in 878, Constantinople became the sole mint for gold and silver coinage until the late 11th century, when major provincial mints began to re-appear. Many mints, both imperial and, as the Byzantine Empire fragmented, belonging to autonomous local rulers, were operated in the 12th to 14th centuries. Constantinople and Trebizond, capital of the independent Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461), survived until the invasion of Anatolia by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-15th century.

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