Neo-Byzantine

also: Byzantine Revival · Neo-Byzantine style

style movement from the 1840s Western Europe Russia

Neo-Byzantine, or Byzantine Revival, is the revival of Byzantine art and architecture that emerged in Western Europe in the 1840s and peaked in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It reaches back to the Christian architecture of Constantinople and Ravenna - domed and pendentive churches, Greek-cross plans, brick-and-mosaic surfaces - and redeploys it for churches, public buildings, and institutions. Paul Abadie's Sacré-Cœur in Paris made it famous; monumental cathedral building carried it across the Russian Empire and Bulgaria, and Russian emigré architects kept it alive in interwar Yugoslavia. In painting and decoration the revival likewise returned to Byzantine models: gold-ground icons, mosaics, and hieratic figures, often fused with Art Nouveau or national revival idioms. Its afterlife stretches worldwide, from Washington's National Shrine to Orthodox churches built today.

10 Strada Dumbrava Roșie, Bucharest
10 Strada Dumbrava Roșie, BucharestCC BY-SA 4.0 (credit: Neoclassicism Enthusiast) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Huge central domes on pendentives, often ringed by smaller subsidiary domes
  • Greek-cross plans with rounded apses and wide, mosaic-lit interiors
  • Gold-ground mosaics and frescoes with hieratic, frontal figures
  • Blind arcades, polychrome brickwork, and bands of ornament derived from Constantinople
  • Modern construction (reinforced concrete, iron) dressed in medieval Byzantine forms
  • Eclectic mixing with Romanesque, Art Nouveau, and national revival idioms

Key figures

  • Paul Abadie (1812-1884) — Architect of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Paris, the revival's most famous building
  • Theophil Hansen (1813-1891) — Danish architect in Vienna whose Neo-Byzantine churches spread the style through Austria-Hungary and the Balkans
  • John Francis Bentley (1839-1902) — Architect of Westminster Cathedral, London, the fullest British work in the style
  • Alexander Pomerantsev (fl. 1882-1912) — Architect of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, a landmark of Bulgarian Neo-Byzantine

Example works

Sources

← Back to the catalog