Constantinople Under Siege

We saw yesterday that hostility between Byzantines and the Fourth Crusade came to a head when the new(est) emperor, Alexios V, ejected all the foreigners from the city and began reinforcing the defenses. The Crusaders of course had brought siege engines with them for use against Saracens in the Holy Land, but they were happy to use them here against a Christian city.

The first assault came on 9 April 1204 on the northwest walls. Unfortunately (for the westerners), the open ground between the shore and the wall left them open to a hail of arrows. That and bad weather made them retreat.

The weather cleared a few days later, so on 12 April the Crusaders attacked again. They managed to knock a few holes in the wall sufficient for knights to crawl through. Meanwhile, Venetians were scaling the walls and encountering the ferocious Varangian Guards. The northwest was the site of the Palace of Blachernae, where the emperors prior to Alexios V had barricaded themselves. The Crusaders used Blachernae as a base. Creating a wall of fire to defend their base got out of hand and started burning down other parts of the city.

Emperor Alexios V fled the city that night. The Crusaders spent three days looting and pillaging. Now we come to the point of the week-long build-up to explain the last paragraph of this post about influences of Italo-Byzantine art. Constantinople was looted of many of its art treasures, which found there way west to reside in and influence Western Europe.

St. Mark's Basilica in Venice became the recipient of a large number of valuable artworks, thanks to Doge Enrico Dandolo commanding them as part of the Crusade's debt to Venice. Bronze horses from the Hippodrome, a sculpture of Four Tetrarchs (confirmed by the broken-off foot being identified in Constantinople), marble reliefs (including of Alexander the Great), and even carved marble pillars taken from Byzantine buildings—these and more found their way to Venice. The Treasury of San Marco (see more here) is full of the spoils of Constantinople.

Icons and other artworks were claimed by Crusaders and became family heirlooms.

Other art was too large to take but had more valuable purposes. Gold, silver, bronze artifacts were melted down for their value in precious metal and to become coins. Contemporary historian Niketas Choniates mentions a bronze statue of a resting Hercules that was so large "it took a cord the size of a man's belt to go round the thumb, and the shin was the size of a man." That and hundreds of bronze statues at the Hippodrome were melted down. So also was a bronze statue of Hera, so large that her head alone needed four oxen to move it. You can see a longer list by Niketas Choniates here.

So what happened afterward to Constantinople? I'm going to turn back to the Western European knight who also wrote a history, Geoffrey de Villehardouin, and talk tomorrow about how history is written by the victors.

The Italo-Byzantine style

Yesterday I introduced the Florentine artist Coppo di Marcovaldo (c. 1225 – c. 1276), who painted in the Italo-Byzantine style, which became the major style of Italian painters in the 13th century, continuing for some painters into the 15th century. (Cimabue and Giotto started developing their own styles, helping to usher in the Italian Renaissance.) The illustration here is of a 13th-century Italian triptych in the Italo-Byzantine style.

The original Italo-Byantine artworks were religious icons, primarily of the Madonna and Child; small framed works, often with a golden background. The term is also applied to some architecture, and is apparent in a few very old structures, such as San Marco in Venice.

Whence came this influence? You may remember recently this post that discussed the presence of Byzantines in parts of Italy. Emperor Constans II had moved his headquarters to Sicily in the 7th century, and although the following emperors remained in Constantinople, there was still a lot of Greek culture and cultural influences in the middle part of the Mediterranean.

Although the 7th century influx of Byzantine influence in Sicily and southern Italy may have hung around until the 13th century, there was a later event that brought a larger influx of Byzantine artistic influence to the West. I'm talking about the Fourth Crusade and the events of 1204.

Called by Pope Innocent III, it did not attract as much excitement as he would have liked. Saladin had reconquered Jerusalem, and the Third Crusade had barely finished, so enthusiasm for the Crusades was waning. One result was a lack of donations to finance the venture. One must plan ahead, however, and so six envoys were sent to Venice to discuss arrangements for ships to transfer thousands of men, their horses, and supplies across the sea to the Holy Land. What these envoys did not know, of course, was how much (few) the donations were back in England and France.

It is fortunate for us that one of the envoys was a literate man who wrote a detailed account of the negotiations (after the fact, so we have to question how faithful he was to his own part in everything, once he knew how badly things had gone). He, and why the Fourth Crusade was crucial to bringing Byzantine art to Western Europe, will be a subject worthy of a few entries, starting tomorrow.