Medieval art
An editied article from Wikipedia.
Byzantine monumental Church mosaics
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place,
over 1000 years of art history in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. It
includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres,
revivals, the artists crafts, and the artists themselves.
Art historians attempt to classify medieval art into major periods and styles,
often with some difficulty. A generally accepted scheme includes Early
Christian art, Migration Period art, Byzantine art, Insular art, Pre-Romanesque
and Romanesque art, and Gothic art, as well as many other periods within these
central styles.
Medieval art was produced in many media, and the works that remain in large
numbers include sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork
and mosaics, all of which have had a higher survival rate than other media like
fresco wall-paintings or textiles, including tapestry.
Medieval art in Europe grew out of the artistic heritage of the Roman Empire
and the iconographic traditions of the early Christian church. These sources
were mixed with the vigorous "Barbarian" artistic culture of Northern Europe to
produce a remarkable artistic legacy. Indeed the history of medieval art can be
seen as the history of the interplay between the elements of classical, early
Christian and "barbarian" art.[1] Apart from the formal aspects of classicism,
there was a continuous tradition of realistic depiction of objects that survived in
Byzantine art throughout the period, while in the West it appears intermittently,
combining and sometimes competing with new expressionist possibilities
developed in Western Europe and the Northern legacy of energetic decorative
elements. The period ended with the self-perceived Renaissance recovery of the
skills and values of classical art, and the artistic legacy of the Middle Ages was
then disparaged for some centuries. Since a revival of interest and
understanding in the 19th century it has been seen as a period of enormous
achievement that underlies the development of later Western art.
Romanesque carving
Overview
Detail of The Effects of Good Government, a fresco in the City Hall of Siena by
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1338.
The Middle Ages saw a decrease in prosperity, stability and population in the
first centuries of the period—to about 800, and then a fairly steady and general
increase until the massive setback of the Black Death around 1350, which is
estimated to have killed at least a third of the overall population in Europe, with
generally higher rates in the south and lower in the north. Many regions did not
regain their former population levels until the 17th century.
Scenes of courtly love on a lady's ivory mirror-case. Paris, 1300-1330.
At the start of the medieval period most significant works of art were very rare
and costly objects associated with secular elites, monasteries or major churches,
and if religious, largely produced by monks. By the end of the Middle Ages
works of considerable artistic interest could be found in small villages and
significant numbers of bourgeois homes in towns, and their production was in
many places an important local industry, with artists from the clergy now the
exception.
The impression may be left by the surviving works that almost all medieval art
was religious. This is far from the case; though the church became very wealthy
over the Middle Ages and was prepared at times to spend lavishly on art, there
was also much secular art of equivalent quality which has suffered from a far
higher rate of wear and tear, loss and destruction. The Middle Ages generally
lacked the concept of preserving older works for their artistic merit, as opposed
to their association with a saint or founder figure, and the following periods of
the Renaissance and Baroque tended to disparage medieval art. Most luxury
illuminated manuscripts of the Early Middle Ages had lavish book-covers in
precious metal, ivory and jewels; the re-bound pages and ivory reliefs for the
covers have survived in far greater numbers than complete covers, which have
mostly been stripped off for their valuable materials at some point.
The jewelled cover of the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, c. 870, a Carolingian
Gospel book.
The use of valuable materials is a constant in medieval art; until the end of the
period, far more was typically spent on buying them than on paying the artists,
even if these were not monks performing their duties. Gold was used for objects
for churches and palaces, personal jewellery and the fittings of clothes, and—
fixed to the back of glass tesserae—as a solid background for mosaics, or
applied as gold leaf to miniatures in manuscripts and panel paintings. Many
objects using precious metals were made in the knowledge that their bullion
value might be realized at a future point—only near the end of the period could
money be invested other than in real estate, except at great risk or by commiting
usury.
The small private Wilton Diptych for Richard II of England, c. 1400, with
stamped gold backgrounds and much ultramarine.
The even more expensive pigment ultramarine, made from ground lapis lazuli
obtainable only from Afghanistan, was used lavishly in the Gothic period, more
often for the traditional blue outer mantle of the Virgin Mary than for skies.
Ivory, often painted, was an important material until the very end of the period,
well illustrating the shift in luxury art to secular works.
Art in the Middle Ages is a broad subject and art historians traditionally divide
it in several large-scale phases, styles or periods. The period of the Middle Ages
neither begins nor ends neatly at any particular date, nor at the same time in all
regions, and the same is true for the major phases of art within the period. The
major phases are covered in the following sections.
Byzantine art
King David plays the harp in the 10th century Paris Psalter, a classicising work
of the Macedonian period.
Byzantine art is the art of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire formed after
the division of the Roman Empire between Eastern and Western halves, and
sometimes of parts of Italy under Byzantine rule. It emerges from the Late
Antique period in about 500. During the period of Byzantine iconoclasm in 730843 the vast majority of icons (sacred images) were destroyed; so little remains
that today any discovery sheds new understanding, and most remaining works
are in Italy (Rome and Ravenna etc), or Egypt at Saint Catherine's Monastery,
Mount Sinai.
Byzantine art was extremely conservative, for religious and cultural reasons, but
retained a continuous tradition of Greek realism, which contended with a strong
anti-realist and hieratic impulse. After the resumption of icon production in 843
until 1453 the Byzantine art tradition continued with relatively few changes,
despite, or because of, the slow decline of the Empire. There was a notable
revival of classical style in works of 10th century court art like the Paris Psalter,
and throughout the period manuscript illumination shows parallel styles, often
used by the same artist, for iconic figures in framed miniatures and more
informal small scenes or figures added unframed in the margins of the text in a
much more realist style.[10] Monumental sculpture with figures remained a taboo
in Byzantine art; hardly any exceptions are known. But small ivory reliefs,
almost all in the iconic mode (the Harbaville Triptych is of similar date to the
Paris Psalter, but very different in style), were a speciality, as was relief
decoration on bowls and other metal objects.
The Byzantine Empire produced much of the finest art of the Middle Ages in
terms of quality of material and workmanship, with court production centred on
Constantinople, although some art historians have questioned the assumption,
still commonly made, that all work of the best quality with no indication as to
origin was produced in the capital. Byzantine art's crowning achievement were
the monumental frescos and mosaics inside domed churches, most of which
have not survived due to natural disasters and the appropriation of churches to
mosques.
6th or 7th century Coptic icon of Jesus and an abbot shares in more homely
form the anti-realist style of Byzantine iconic art.
Byzantine art exercised a continuous trickle of influence on Western European
art, and the splendours of the Byzantine court and monasteries, even at the end
of the Empire, provided a model for Western rulers and secular and clerical
patrons. For example Byzantine silk textiles, often woven or embroidered with
designs of both animal and human figures, the former often reflecting traditions
originating much further east, were unexcelled in the Christian world until
almost the end of the Empire. These were produced, but probably not entirely
so, in Imperial workshops in Constantinople, about whose operations we know
next to nothing—similar workshops are often conjectured for other arts, with
even less evidence. Some other decorative arts were less developed; Byzantine
ceramics rarely rise above the level of attractive folk art, despite the Ancient
Greek heritage and the impressive future in the Ottoman period of İznik wares
and other types of pottery.
Gothic art
Chartres cathedral c. 1220; the best High Gothic sculpture had largely
rediscovered the art of naturalistic figure representation.
Gothic art is a variable term depending on the craft, place and time. The term
originated with the Gothic architecture which developed in France from about
1137 with the rebuilding of the Abbey Church of St Denis. As with
Romanesque architecture, this included sculpture as an integral part of the style,
with even larger portals and other figures on the facades of churches the
location of the most important sculpture, until the late period, when large carved
altarpieces and reredos, usually in painted and gilded wood, became an
important focus in many churches. Gothic painting did not appear until around
1200 (this date has many qualifications), when it diverged from Romanesque
style. Gothic sculpture was born in France in 1144 and spread throughout
Europe, by the 13th century it had become the international style, replacing
Romanesque, though in sculpture and painting the transition was not as sharp as
in architecture.
The majority of Romanesque cathedrals and large churches were replaced by
Gothic buildings, at least in those places benefiting from the economic growth
of the period—Romanesque architecture is now best seen in areas that were
subsequently relatively depressed, like many southern regions of France and
Italy, or northern Spain. The new architecture allowed for much larger
windows, and stained glass of a quality never excelled is perhaps the type of art
most associated in the popular mind with the Gothic, although churches with
nearly all their original glass, like the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, are extremely
rare anywhere, and unknown in Britain.
Most Gothic wall-paintings have also disappeared; these remained very
common, though in parish churches often rather crudely executed. Secular
buildings also often had wall-paintings, although royalty preferred the much
more expensive tapestries, which were carried along as they travelled between
their many palaces and castles, or taken with them on military campaigns—the
finest collection of late-medieval textile art comes from the Swiss booty at the
Battle of Nancy, when they defeated and killed Charles the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy, and captured all his baggage train.
The central panel of Duccio's huge Maestà altarpiece for Siena Cathedral.
As mentioned in the previous section, the Gothic period coincided with a
greatly increased emphasis on the Virgin Mary, and it was in this period that the
Virgin and Child became such a hallmark of Catholic art. Saints were also
portrayed far more often, and many of the the range of attributes developed to
identify them visually for a still largely illiterate public first appeared.
During this period panel painting for altarpieces, often polyptyches and smaller
works became newly important. Previously icons on panels had been much
more common in Byzantine art than in the West, although many now lost panel
paintings made in the West are documented from much earlier periods, and
initially Western painters on panel were very largely under the sway of
Byzantine models, especially in Italy, from where most early Western panel
paintings come. The process of establishing a distinct Western style was begun
by Cimabue and Duccio, and completed by Giotto, who is traditionally regarded
as the starting point for the development of Renaissance painting. Most panel
painting remained more conservative than miniature painting however, partly
because it was seen by a wide public.
Reconstruction of the temple of Jerusalem, Burgundian miniature, c. 1460.
International Gothic describes courtly Gothic art from about 1360 to 1430, after
which Gothic art begins to merge into the Renaissance art that had begun to
form itself in Italy during the Trecento, with a return to classical principles of
composition and realism, with the sculptor Nicola Pisano and the painter Giotto
as especially formative figures. The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is one
of the best known works of International Gothic. The transition to the
Renaissance occurred at different times in different places - Early Netherlandish
painting is poised between the two, as is the Italian painter Pisanello.
The invention of a comprehensive mathmatically based system of linear
perspective is a defining achievement of the early 15th century Italian
Renaissance in Florence, but Gothic painting had already made great progress in
the naturalistic depiction of distance and volume, though it did not usually
regard them as essential features of a work if other aims conflicted with them,
and late Gothic sculpture was increasingly naturalistic. In the mid-15th century
Burgundian miniature (right) the artist seems keen to show his skill at
representing buildings and blocks of stone obliquely, and managing scenes at
different distances. But his general attempt to reduce the size of more distant
elements is unsystematic. Sections of the composition are at a similar scale,
with relative distance shown by overlapping, foreshortening, and further objects
being higher than nearer ones, though the workmen at left do show finer
adjustment of size. But this is abandoned on the right where the most important
figure is much larger than the mason.
Death comes for the Cardinal, from a printed blockbook with hand colour, c.
1455-58, an early example of the Dance of Death.
The end of the period includes new media such as prints; along with small panel
paintings these were frequently used for the emotive andachtsbilder
("devotional images") influenced by new religious trends of the period. These
were images of moments detached from the narrative of the Passion of Christ
designed for meditation on his sufferings, or those of the Virgin: the Man of
Sorrows, Pietá, Veil of Veronica or Arma Christi. The trauma of the Black
Death in the mid-14th century was at least partly responsible for the popularity
of themes such as the Dance of Death and Memento mori. In the cheap
blockbooks with text (often in the vernacular) and images cut in a single
woodcut, works such as that illustrated (left), the Ars Moriendi (Art of Dying)
and typological verse summaries of the bible like the Speculum Humanae
Salvationis (Mirror of Human Salvation) were the most popular.
Renaissance Humanism and the rise of a wealthy urban middle class, led by
merchants, began to transform the old social context of art, with the revival of
realistic portraiture and the appearance of printmaking and the self-portrait,
together with the decline of forms like stained glass and the illuminated
manuscript. Donor portraits, in the Early Medieval period largely the preserve
of popes, kings and abbots, now showed businessmen and their families, and
churches were becoming crowded with the tomb monuments of the well-off.