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L’art byzantin

Hayford Peirce and Royall Tyler intended to publish five volumes on the history of Byzantine art in a series titled L’art byzantin. The volumes were to be in catalogue format and to contain a thousand illustrations. Only two volumes were published; a third volume was completed but was left unpublished due to the German occupation of Paris during the Second World War. The first volume (Paris: Librairie de France, 1932) covered the period from 300 to 500 and included 200 plates. The text distinguished between Early Christian and Early Byzantine art, which the authors found to be relatively unrelated, and emphasized the imperial rather than the religious nature of Byzantine art. The authors differentiated between the provinciality of Western, especially Italian, works of this period and the sophistication of Eastern, especially Constantinopolitan, works. The second volume (Paris: Librairie de France, 1934) dealt with Byzantine art of the sixth century and included 208 plates. The authors posited that a coherent, identifiably Byzantine art style was employed throughout the empire and extolled the extraordinary vitality of Byzantine ornamentation in this period. They found that no important variation on this Constantinopolitan style arose in the provincial centers of Italy, Persia, or Egypt, and denigrated those metropolitan works whose style was influenced by the traditions of Classical art. The two volumes of L’art byzantin remain an important contribution in the history of Byzantine art scholarship.


M. Chevallier-Vérel, "Hayford Peirce et Royall Tyler.—L’Art byzantin, des origins au déclin. Cinq volumes in-4o contenant mille phototypies tirées par Daniel Jacomet. Paris, Librarie de France, 1932," Syria 14, no. 3 (1933): 327–28.

Alan Francis Clutton-Brock, "L’Art Byzantin. Par Hayford Pierce et Royall Tyler Tome I (Paris: Librairie de France)," The Times Literary Supplement, September 22, 1932.

Alan Francis Clutton-Brock, "L’Art Byzantin. Par Hayford Peirce et Royall Tyler. Tome II (Paris: Librairie de France," The Times Literary Supplement, September 6, 1934.

Lord Conway of Allington, "A Corpus of Examples of Byzantine Art," The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 62, no. 360 (March 1933): 144–45.

Émile-A. van Moé, "Hayford Pierce et Royall Tyler. L’art byzantin. Paris, Librairie de France. Gr. In-4o. T. I, 1932, 116 pages et 200 planches en phototypie; t. II, 1934, 150 pages et 208 planches," Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 96, no. 1 (1935): 392–94.

O[tto] v[on] F[alke], "Hayford Peirce et Royall Tyler, L’art Byzantin. Tome I. Paris, Librarie de France 1932," Pantheon 11 (June 1933): xxvii–xxviii.