Gothic

The Gothic period was a time of not only great prosperity but also turmoil in EUrope.  In 1337 the Hundred Year's War began, shattering the peace between France and England.  The Black Death swept over western Europe and killed at least a quarter of its people, and the political-religious crisis known as the Great Schism happened.  Above all the Gothic age was a time of profound change in European society.

The Royal portal is named because of the statue columns of kings and queens flanking its three doorways.  The right portal archivolts for example, depict the seven female Liberal Arts and their champions.  The figures represent the core of medieval learning and symbolize human knowledge, male which thierry and others believed led to true faith.  The tympanum's theme and composition recall Byzantine representations of the theotokos.  The cult of mary reached a high point in Gothic Age.  

Three figures from the Porch of the Confessors reveal the changes Gothic sculpture underwent since the Royal Portal statues of the mid-twelfth century.  The saints communicate quietly with one another, like waiting dignitaries.  They turn slightly toward and away from each other, breaking the rigid vertical lines that, on the royal portal, fix the figures immovably.  The drapery folds fall softly over the bodies.  The faces have individualized features and distinctive personalities. 

Romanesque

The Romanesque era is the first since Archaic and Classical Greece to take its name from an artistic style rather than from politics or geography.  Stone sculpture almost had disappeared from the art of western Europe during the early Middle Ages.  Around 1110 another sculptor, Wiligelmo, carved one of the first fully developed narrative reliefs in Romanesque art.  The facade of Modena Cathedral has a frieze representing scenes from Genisis.  The framing device is derived from late Roman and Early Christian sarcophagi.  The creation and temptation of adam and eve serve as a reminder of Original Sin and suggest that the only path to salvation is through the Christian Church.  Christ is at the far left framed by a mandorla held up by angels.  Although the figures appear in an architectural frame, they break through the arcade's constriction to make for a more continuous narrative.  They are not linear patterns but high reliefs.  Some parts are almost entirely in the round.

The Bayeux Tapestry is a woven tapestry related to Romanesque manuscript illumination.  It is a continuous frieze like, pictorial narrative of a crucial moment in England's History where the Norman defeat the Anglo-Sazons at Hastings in 1066.  The first detail depicts King Edward's Funeral procession.  The Hand of God points the way to the church.  The second detail shows the Battle of Hastings in progress. The lower border is filled with the dead and wounded while the upper register continues the animal motifs of the rest of the embroidery.  The Romanesque artist co-opted some of the characteristic motifs of Greco-Roman battle scenes.  The horses have twisted necks and contorted bodies.  The artists translated the figures into the Romanesque manner.  Linear patterning and flat color replaced 3 dimensional volume. 

Early Medieval

Historians often refer to this stage as the Dark Ages.  During this time artists looked to the Greco-Roman tradition for inspiration.  Early Medieval civilization in western Europe represents a fusion of Christianity, the Greco-Roman heritage, and the vibrant yet very different culture of the Celtic- Germanic barbarians.  Over the centuries a new order gradually replaced what had been the Roman Empire resulting eventually in the foundation of today's European nations.  This period of slow change was characterized by struggles for power between competing armies and between church and state.

THE ART OF THE WAR LORDS

The SUtton Hoo purse cover had four symmetrically arranged groups of figures in the lower row.  The two heraldic groupings on the outsides have venerable heritage in the ancient world.  The figures at first seem to be single dense abstract designs, but when viewed closer are actually animals and men snuggled together.  Elaborate interlace patterns are characteristic of many times and places, notably in the art of the Islamic world, but the combination of interlace with animal figures was uncommon outside the realm of the early medieval warlords.  

HIBERNO-SAXON ART

Hiberno-Sazon art's most distincive products were illuminated manuscripts of the Christian Church.  The artists' models for the human figure were generally the abstract designs of buckles and pins, not the world about themor imported works in the classical tradition.  There are however some exceptions.  In the portrait of Saint Matthew from the Lindifarne Gospels his figure is interpreted with lines abstracting the classical model's unfamiliar tonal scheme into a patterned figure.  His face looks like that of a playing card with the folds of his drapery in sharp regularly spaced, curving lines.  The artist used no modeling and there are no variations of light and shade.

CAROLINGIAN ART

Charlemagne united Europe and laid claim to reviving the ancient Roman Empire's glory.  Carolingian Renaissance was a remarkable historical phenomenon, an energetic, brilliant emulation of Early Christian Rome's art, culture, and political ideals.  The Ebbo Gospels illuminator replaced the classical calm and solidity of the Coronation Gospels with an energy that amounts to frenzy and the frail saint almost leaps under its impulse.  HIs hair stands on end, his eyes open wide, the folds of his drapery writhe, and vibrate, the landscape behind him rears up alive.  The artist forsook all fidelity to bodily structure to concentrate on the saint's act of writing.  The native power of expression illustrated became one of the important distinguishing traits of late medieval art.  The Ebbo Gospels artist translated the classical prototype into a new Carolingian vernacular, merging classical illusionism and the North's linear tradition.

OTTONIAN ART


The breakup of the Carolingian empire into weak kingdoms brought a time of darkness and confusion to europe.Only in the mid-tenth century did the eastern part of the former empire consolidate under the rule of the Ottonians.  Otto III dreamed of a revived Christian Roman Empire, but he died at 21 without his dream materializing.  The illuminator represented emperor enthroned holding the scepter and cross inscribed orb that represent his universal authority, confoming to a christian imperial iconographic tradition.  Stylistically remote from Byzantine art, the picture still has a clear political resemblance to the Justinianic mosaic in San Vitale.

Islamic

During the early centuries of Islamic history, the Muslim world's political and cultural center was the Fertile Crescent of ancient Mesopotamia.  Islamic rulers often surrounded themselves with luxuries commensurate with their enormous wealth and power.  Islam has much in common with Judaism and Christianity.  In addition to the belief in one God, Islam incorporates many of the Old Testament teachings, with their sober ethical standards and hatred of idol worship, and those of the New Testament Gospels.  Islam also differs from Judaism and Christianity in its simpler organization.  Muslims worship God directly, without a hierarchy of rabbis, priests, or saints acting as intermediaries.  For this reason there isn't any art depicting the human figure for quite some time.  

Shah Tahmasp was a great patron of miniature painting.  Around 1525 he commissioned an ambitious decade-long project to produce an illustrated 742 page copy of the Shahnama.  It recounts the history of Iran from the Creation until the Muslim conquest.  This page is widely regarded as the greatest of all Persian miniature paintings.  It depicts Gayumars, the legendary first king of Iran and his court.  The King is surrounded by light amid a golden sky.  Dozens of human faces are portrayed within the rocks themselves.  The sense of lightness and airiness that permeates the painting is enhanced by its placement on the page- floating, off center on a specked background of a gold leaf.

Figures and animals do however adorn one of the most impressive examples of Islamic metal work known today, a brass basin from Egypt inlaid with gold and silver and signed six times by Muhammad Ibn Al-Zayn.  The central band depicts Mamluk hunters and Mongol enemies shown in composite view.  Running animals fill the friezes above and below.  Arabesques of inlaid silver fill the background of all the bands and roundels.  Figures and animals also decorate the inside and underside of the basin.  This basin testifies to the prestige of Islamic art in western Europe.  

Byzantine

Byzantine emperor asserted the only permissible faith for his subjects was Orthodox Christianity.  Byzantine emperors were believed to be the earthly vicars of Jesus CHrist whose imperial will was God's will.Art historians divide the history of Byzantine art into three periods of glory.  The first period was called Early Byzantine.  One such work is "Saint Michael the Archangel."  This panel depicts Saint michael the Archangel in an Early Christian tradition.  The prototype of Michael must have been a pagan winged Victory.  He holds an orb with a cross as a symbol of Christianity's triumph as an offering to a Byzantine Emperor.  The flowing classical drapery, delicately incised wings, and facial type are also of the pre-Christian tradition.  However there is also a lack of concern for the rules of naturalistic representation.  His feet hovering above the steps and the placement of the body behind and in front of the column signifies the emergence of a new aesthetic that characterized Byzantine art for centuries.





Middle Byzantine Art: In the ninth century, a powerful reaction against iconoclasm set in.  The destruction of images was condemned as heresy, and restoration of the images began in 843.  Shortly after under a new line of emperors, the Macedonian dynasty, art, literature, and learning sprang to life again.  Basil I and his successors undertook the laborious task of refurbishing the churches the iconoclasts defaced.  In Hagia Sophia a new mosaic was installed in the apse depicting the enthroned Virgin with the CHrist CHild in her lap.  Here the strict frontally of Mother and Child is alleviated by the angular placement of the throne and footstool.  It is in a perspective that although imperfect, recalls once more the Greco-Roman roots of Byzantine art.  The folds of Christ's robes by contrast is more schematic and flatter than in earlier mosaics.  These seemingly contradictory stylistic features are not uncommon in Byzantine paintings and mosaics.



Late Byzantine: Throughout it's history, Byzantine art looked back to its antecedents, Greco-Roman illusionism as transformed in the age of Justinian.  Like their Orthodox religion, Byzantine artists were suspicious of any real innovation, especially that imported from outside they Byzantine cultural sphere.  They drew their images from a persistent and conventionalized vision of a spiritual world unsusceptible to change. Byzantine art was not concerned with the systematic observation of material nature as the source of its imaging of the eternal.  In the apse of the parekklesion of the Church of Christ in Chora formal symmetry has returned with CHrist at the center, his pose and gaze essentially frontal and his hands, free of the cross, reaching out.  The action is swift and smooth.  All tension is erased and the figures float and levitate in a spiritual atmosphere, spaceless without mass or shadows.  The drapery is characteristic of the long tradition of classical illusionism.