The Byzantine is a very easy style to recognize, because of the inflexible stiffness of the figures, depending for any beauty largely upon the use of burnished gold, and the symmetrical folds of the draperies, which often show a sort of archaic grace.  Byzantine art is not so much representation as suggestion and symbolism.  There is a book which may still be consulted, called “A Byzantine Guide to Painting,” which contains accurate recipes to be followed in painting pictures of each saint, the colours prescribed for the dress of the Virgin, and the grouping to be adopted in representing each of the standard Scriptural scenes; and it has hardly from the first occurred to any Byzantine artist to depart from these regulations.  The heads and faces lack individuality, and are outlined and emphasized with hard, unsympathetic black lines; the colouring is sallow and the expression stolid.  Any attempt at delineating emotion is grotesque, and grimacing.  The beauty, for in spite of all these drawbacks there is great beauty, in Byzantine manuscripts, is, as has been indicated, a charm of colour and gleaming gold rather than of design.  In the Boston Art Museum there is a fine example of a large single miniature of a Byzantine “Flight into Egypt,” in which the gold background is of the highest perfection of surface, and is raised so as to appear like a plate of beaten gold.

There is no attempt to portray a scene as it might have occurred; the rule given in the Manual is followed, and the result is generally about the same.  The background is usually either gold or blue, with very little effort at landscape.  Trees are represented in flat values of green with little white ruffled edges and articulations.  The sea is figured by a blue surface with a symmetrical white pattern of a wavy nature.  A building is usually introduced about half as large as the people surrounding it.  There is no attempt, either, at perspective.

The anatomy of the human form was not understood at all.  Nearly all the figures in the art of this period are draped.  Wherever it is necessary to represent the nude, a lank, disproportioned person with an indefinite number of ribs is the result, proving that the monastic art school did not include a life class.

Most of the best Byzantine examples date from the fifth to the seventh centuries.  After that a decadence set in, and by the eleventh century the art had deteriorated to a mere mechanical process.

The Irish and Anglo-Saxon work are chiefly characterized in their early stages by the use of interlaced bands as a decorative motive.  The Celtic goldsmiths were famous for their delicate work in filigree, made of threads of gold used in connection with enamelled grounds.  In decorating their manuscripts, the artists were perhaps unconsciously influenced by this, and the result is a marvellous use of conventional form and vivid colours, while the human figure is hardly attempted at all, or, when introduced, is so conventionally treated, as to be only a sign instead of a representation.