“…Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”
— Excerpt from William Butler Yeates
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
The very humble but beautiful objects shown here are all Byzantine. So little of the often overlooked or misunderstood Byzantine world and its material culture still remains that every antiquity of that great civilization should be treated with the greatest respect. The links below lead to pages on our website that, among other cultures, include Byzantine antiquities —
http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/c26_p1.html
http://www.clioancientart.com/catalog/c21_p1.html