Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

the visual arts 885
questions of pictorial continuity and change, and illuminate the problems
of isolating what is classical and non-classical in the material evidence. At
the same time, it is accepted that if ‘classicism’ is taken to be an attitude of
mind rather than an essentialist component, the pursuit of the classical may
only be a way of seeking to deduce the intentions of the planners and producers
of this art. It may turn out to be more constructive for future
research to ask how the art functioned among its viewing audience rather
than to emphasize the conditions of production. 2
The art-historical viewing of the period from 425 to 600 has, then, traditionally
developed largely along ‘formalist’ lines. From this perspective,
the central questions which emerged were (predictably, perhaps) how to
define the essence of the period and how to describe its stylistic character.
The formalist emphasis also encouraged a critical assessment of the art of
the period, frequently couched in terms of ‘decline’; more recently, this
negative reaction has been increasingly replaced by more constructive
attempts to find the positive ‘transformations’ of ‘early Christian art’ into
a new art form with its own visual expressiveness; in this respect, art history
has conformed with other historical and literary approaches.
Parallel with this critical and general overview of these centuries has
been the debate on whether the term ‘early Christian art’ (or alternatively
late antique art) is the appropriate label for the production of all or part of
this period – for not all of it was produced in the service of the religion,
and even some art produced in the service of the religion does not appear
to modern hindsight to be sufficiently ‘Christian’. 3 Some have wished to
subdivide the period, resisting the idea that ‘early Christian art’ could label
the artistic situation right up to the period of Byzantine iconoclasm in the
eighth century. The debate is really about whether it is useful to use a coverall
term encompassing all the complex and changing historical circumstances
within which a ‘European’ art was developed. There is also the
long-running issue of how far a distinction should be made between the
artistic spheres of the ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ parts of the Roman empire.
But since the production of the sixth century has generally been seen in
terms of an attempt by Justinian to produce an international art, there is a
case for treating the production of the period as a unity, with certain
regional factors operating on occasion, rather than setting up a division in
this period between east and west (or between supposed regional or provincial
identities). On this model, the best label for the period might be
‘early Byzantine’, although without the implication that Constantinople
was the only centre of production. Nevertheless, there is as yet no agreed
2 Such as Elsner (1995).
3 For ‘discourses’ or overlapping ‘discourses’ see Cameron, Rhetoric of Empire, mostly in relation to
the verbal: developed in Cameron (1992). Definitions of the period are discussed in Clover and
Humphreys (1989) and Shelton (1989).
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