Medieval period

Medieval Art
• The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000
years of art in Europe, and at times 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 the later phases of Early
Christian art, Migration Period art, Byzantine art, Insular art, Pre-
Romanesque, Romanesque art, and Gothic art, as well as many other periods within
these central styles. In addition each region, mostly during the period in the process of
becoming nations or cultures, had its own distinct artistic style, such as Anglo-Saxon
art or Viking art.
• Medieval art was produced in many media, and works survive in large numbers
in sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork and mosaics, all of
which have had a higher survival rate than other media such as fresco wall-paintings,
work in precious metals or textiles, including tapestry. Especially in the early part of the
period, works in the so-called "minor arts" or decorative arts, such as metalwork, ivory
carving, enamel and embroidery using precious metals, were probably more highly
valued than paintings or monumental sculpture.[1]
Byzantine monumental Church
mosaics are one of the great
achievements of medieval art. These
are from Monreale in Sicily from the
late 12th century.
The jewelled cover of the Codex
Aureus of St. Emmeram, c. 870, a
Carolingian Gospel book.
 Byzantine Art

Byzantine art is generally divided up into three distinct

periods:
1.Early Byzantine (c. 330–750)
2.Middle Byzantine (c. 850–1204)
3.Late Byzantine (c. 1261–1453)

Byzantine art comprises the body of Christian Greek artistic

products of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, as well as the
nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire.
Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of Rome and
lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the start date of the
Byzantine period is rather clearer in art history than in political
history, if still imprecise. Many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern
Europe, as well as to some degree the Muslim states of the
eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's
culture and art for centuries afterward.
One of the most famous of the
surviving Byzantine mosaics of the Hagia
Sophia in Constantinople – the image of Christ
Pantocrator on the walls of the upper southern
gallery, Christ being flanked by the Virgin Mary
and John the Baptist; circa 1261
EARLY BYZANTINE (C. 330–750)

The first golden age of the empire, the Early Byzantine period,
extends from the founding of the new capital into the 700s.
Christianity replaced the gods of antiquity as the official religion
of the culturally and religiously diverse state in the late 300s
(2006.569). The practice of Christian monasticism developed in
the fourth century, and continued to be an important part of
the Byzantine faith, spreading from Egypt to all parts of the
empire.
Emperor Justinian Mosaic, San Vitale,
Ravenna, c. 546-56
 MIDDLE BYZANTINE (C. 850–1204)

• The Middle Byzantine period followed a period of crisis for the arts
called the Iconoclastic Controversy, when the use of religious images
was hotly contested. Iconoclasts (those who worried that the use of
images was idolatrous), destroyed images, leaving few surviving images
from the Early Byzantine period. Fortunately for art history, those in
favor of images won the fight and hundreds of years of Byzantine artistic
production followed.

• The stylistic and thematic interests of the Early Byzantine period

continued during the Middle Byzantine period, with a focus on building
churches and decorating their interiors. There were some significant
changes in the empire, however, that brought about some change in the
arts. First, the influence of the empire spread into the Slavic world with
the Russian adoption of Orthodox Christianity in the tenth century.
Byzantine art was therefore given new life in the Slavic lands.
Hosios Loukas, Greece, early 11th century
(photos: Jonathan Khoo, C BY-NC-ND 2.0)
 LATE BYZANTINE (C. 1261– 1453)

• While the political boundaries of Late Byzantium under the Palaiologan emperors were
drastically reduced from the expansive lands of the Early and Middle Byzantine periods,
Byzantine religious influence still extended far beyond its borders (2006.100). The focus of
Byzantine power was now centered in Constantinople, and extended westward to northern
and central Greece, and south into the Peloponnesos. In the east, the Byzantine Empire of
Trebizond, which had flourished during the Latin Occupation, continued to exist as an
independently ruled Byzantine territory in competition with the Palaiologan-ruled empire
with its capital at Constantinople. The last Byzantine lands would be conquered by
the Ottoman Turks in the mid-fifteenth century, with Constantinople taken in 1453, and
Mistra and Trebizond in 1460. These Islamic conquests brought an end to an empire that
endured more than 1,100 years after its first founding. Long after its fall, Byzantium set a
standard for luxury, beauty, and learning that inspired the Latin West and the Islamic East
 Anastasis (Harrowing of Hell), c. 1310-20, fresco,
Church of the Holy Savior of Chora/Kariye Museum,
Istanbul
Icon of St. George ('The Black George'),
c. 1400-1450, tempera on panel, 77.4 x 57
cm (The British Museum)
 Romanesque Art

• Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the

rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century, or later, depending on region.
The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period. The term
was invented by 19th-century art historians, especially for Romanesque
architecture, which retained many basic features of Roman architectural
style – most notably round-headed arches, but also barrel vaults, apses,
and acanthus-leaf decoration – but had also developed many very different
characteristics. In Southern France, Spain and Italy there was an
architectural continuity with the Late Antique, but the Romanesque style
was the first style to spread across the whole of Catholic Europe, from Sicily
to Scandinavia. Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine
art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration
of the Insular art of the British Isles. From these elements was forged a
highly innovative and coherent style.
• The painted crypt of San Isidoro at León, Spain
Romanesque archivolts over
the arches of the nave of
Southwell Minster,
Nottinghamshire, England,
mid-12th century
Courtesy of The Conway
Two-headed Janus, who sees
Library, Courtauld Institute
forward and backward, a
personification of the month of of Art, London
January; Romanesque high-relief
stone sculpture, in the Museo del
Duomo, Ferrara, Italy.
SCALA/Art Resource, New York
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE
Romanesque architecture, architectural
style current in Europe from about the mid-
11th century to the advent of Gothic
architecture. A fusion of
Roman, Carolingian and Ottonian, Byzantine
, and local Germanic traditions, it was a
product of the great expansion
of monasticism in the 10th–11th century.
Larger churches were needed to
accommodate the numerous monks and
priests, as well as the pilgrims who came to
view saints’ relics. For the sake of fire
resistance, masonry vaulting began to
replace timber construction.
 In Britain, the Romanesque style became known as
“Norman” because the major building scheme in the 11th
and 12th centuries was instigated by William the
Conqueror, who invaded Britain in 1066 from Normandy in
northern France. (The Normans were the descendants of
Vikings—Norse, or north men—who had invaded this area
over a century earlier.) Durham and Gloucester Cathedrals
and Southwell Minster are excellent examples of churches
in the Norman, or Romanesque style.

Interior of the Palatine Chapel of

Charlemagne, Aachen, Germany, 792-805, Gloucester Cathedral, nave, begun 1089 (ceiling
photo: Elena ((CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) later), photo: Michael D. Beckwith (CC BY 2.0)
 Gothic art

• Gothic art was a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of
Romanesque art in the 12th century AD, led by the concurrent development of
Gothic architecture.

• It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Southern and Central Europe,
never quite effacing more classical styles in Italy.

• In the late 14th century, the sophisticated court style of International Gothic
developed, which continued to evolve until the late 15th century.

• In many areas, especially Germany, Late Gothic art continued well into the 16th
century, before being subsumed into Renaissance art.
•
• Primary media in the Gothic period included sculpture, panel painting, stained
glass, fresco and illuminated manuscripts.
• The earliest Gothic art was monumental
sculpture, on the walls of Cathedrals and
abbeys.

• Christian art was often typological in nature,

showing the stories of the New Testament
and the Old Testament side by side.
•
• Saints' lives were often depicted.

The Western (Royal)

Portal at Chartres
Cathedral. These
architectural statues are
• Secular art came into its own during this period with the rise of cities,
foundation of universities, increase in trade, the establishment of a
money-based economy and the creation of a bourgeois class who
could afford to patronize the arts and commission works.

• Increased literacy and a growing body of secular vernacular

literature encouraged the representation of secular themes in art.

• With the growth of cities, trade guilds were formed and artists were
often required to be members of a painters' guild—as a result,
because of better record keeping, more artists are known to us by
name in this period than any previous; some artists were even so
bold as to sign their names.
• The Gothic period coincided with a great resurgence in Marian
devotion, in which the visual arts played a major part.

• Images of the Virgin Mary developed from the Byzantine hieratic

types, through the Coronation of the Virgin, to more human and
intimate types, and cycles of the Life of the Virgin were very popular.

• Artists like Giotto, Fra Angelico and Pietro Lorenzetti in Italy, and
Early Netherlandish painting, brought realism and a more natural
humanity to art.

• Western artists, and their patrons, became much more confident in

innovative iconography, and much more originality is seen.
Gothic Mary Magdalene in St.
John Cathedral in Toruń.
 Painting:

• Painting did not appear until about 1200, nearly 50 years after the
origins of Gothic architecture and sculpture.

• The transition from Romanesque to Gothic is very imprecise and not

at all a clear break.

• The figures become more animated in pose and facial expression,

tend to be smaller in relation to the background of scenes, and are
arranged more freely in the pictorial space, where there is room.

• Painting during the Gothic period was practiced in four primary

media: frescos, panel paintings, manuscript illumination and stained
glass.
 Frescoes:

• Frescoes continued to be used as the main pictorial narrative craft on church walls
in southern Europe as a continuation of early Christian and Romanesque
traditions.

• Among the finest examples are those of the Elmelunde Master from the Danish
island of Møn who decorated the churches of Fanefjord, Keldby and Elmelunde.

• Albertus Pictor is arguably the most well-known fresco artist from the period
working in Sweden.

• Examples of Swedish churches with well-preserved frescos include Tensta,

Gökhem and Anga churches.
Frescoes at the Fanefjorde Cathedral, Frescoes at the Elmelunde
Denmark. Cathedral, Denmark.
Fresco at Tensta Cathedral in Fresco at Anga Cathedral in Sweden.
Sweden.
 Stained Glass:

• In northern Europe, stained glass was an important and prestigious

form of painting until the 15th century, when it became supplanted by
panel painting.
• Gothic architecture greatly increased the amount of glass in large
buildings, partly to allow for wide expanses of glass, as in rose
windows.
• In the early part of the period mainly black paint and clear or brightly
coloured glass was used, but in the early 14th century the use of
compounds of silver, painted on glass which was then fired, allowed
a number of variations of colour, centred on yellows, to be used with
clear glass in a single piece.
• By the end of the period designs increasingly used large pieces of
glass which were painted, with yellows as the dominant colours, and
relatively few smaller pieces of glass in other colours.
France, Sens Cathedral,
showing Flamboyant window Chalons-en-Champagne St Etienne Cathedral
incorporated into a large South Transept Rose of St Joseph.
composition.
 Illuminated Manuscripts:

• The earliest full manuscripts date to the middle of the 13th century. Many such
illuminated manuscripts were royal bibles, although psalters also included
illustrations.

• During the late 13th century, scribes began to create prayer books for the laity, often
known as books of hours due to their use at prescribed times of the day.

• Nobility frequently purchased such texts, paying handsomely for decorative

illustrations.

• Among the most well-known creators of these is Jean Pucelle, whose Hours of
Jeanne d'Evreux was commissioned by King Charles IV as a gift for his queen,
Jeanne d'Évreux.
Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux.
• From the middle of the 14th century, block books with both text and images cut as
woodcut seem to have been affordable by parish priests.

• By the end of the century, printed books with illustrations, still mostly on religious
subjects, were rapidly becoming accessible to the prosperous middle class, as
were engravings of fairly high-quality by printmakers like Israhel van Meckenem
and Master E. S..

• In the 15th century, the introduction of cheap prints, mostly in woodcut, made it
possible even for peasants to have devotional images at home. These images, tiny
at the bottom of the market, often crudely coloured, were sold in thousands but are
now extremely rare, most having been pasted to walls.
 Panel Painting:

• Painting with oil on canvas did not become popular until the 15th and 16th centuries
and was a hallmark of Renaissance art.
• Painters like Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck, made use of the technique of oil
painting to create minutely detailed works, correct in perspective, where apparent
realism was combined with richly complex symbolism arising precisely from the
realistic detail they could now include, even in small works.
• The Mérode Altarpiece (1420s) of Robert Campin, and the Washington Van Eyck
Annunciation or Madonna of Chancellor Rolin (both 1430s, by Jan van Eyck) are
examples.
• For the wealthy, small panel paintings, even polyptychs in oil painting were
becoming increasingly popular, often showing donor portraits alongside, though
often much smaller than, the Virgin or saints depicted. These were usually
displayed in the home.
The Mérode Altarpiece of Robert
Campin.

The Washington Van Eyck

Annunciation by Jan van Eyck.
 Monumental Sculpture:

• The Gothic period is essentially defined by Gothic architecture, and

does not entirely fit with the development of style in sculpture.

• The facades of large churches, especially around doors, continued to

have rows of sculpted figures spreading around them.

• A more naturalistic style and increasing detachment from the wall

behind, and some awareness of the classical tradition.
West portal at Rheims
Cathedral South portal of Chartres Cathedral.
In Italy Nicola Pisano and his son
Giovanni developed a style that is
often called Proto-Renaissance,
with unmistakable influence from
Roman architecture and
sophisticated and crowded
compositions, including a
sympathetic handling of nudity, in
relief panels on their pulpit of
Siena Cathedral (1265–68), the
Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, and
Giovanni's pulpit in Pistoia.

Nicola Pisano, Nativity and Adoration of the

Magi from the pulpit of the Pisa Baptistery.
• Another revival of classical
style is seen in the International
Gothic work of Claus Sluter and
his followers in Burgundy and
Flanders around 1400.

• There was a fashion for very

large wooden sculpted
altarpieces with increasingly
virtuoso carving and large
numbers agitated expressive
figures; most surviving
examples are in Germany.

Claus Sluter, David and a prophet from the

Well of Moses.
Detail of the Last Supper from Tilman Riemenschneider's Altar of the Holy
Blood, carved limewood, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria.
• Life-size tomb effigies in stone or
alabaster became popular for the
wealthy, and grand multi-level
tombs evolved, with the Scaliger
Tombs of Verona so large they had
to be moved outside the church.

• By the 15th century there was an

industry exporting Nottingham
alabaster altar reliefs in groups of
panels over much of Europe for
economical parishes who could not
afford stone retables.

Panelled altarpiece section

with Resurrection of Christ,
English Nottingham
alabaster.
 Portable Sculptures:

• Small carvings, for a mainly lay and often female market, became a
considerable industry in Paris and some other centres.

• Types of ivories included small devotional polyptychs, single figures,

especially of the Virgin, mirror-cases, combs, and elaborate caskets,
used as engagement presents.

• The very wealthy collected extravagantly elaborate jewelled and

enamelled metalwork, both secular and religious, like the Duc de
Berry's Holy Thorn Reliquary, until they ran short of money, when they
were melted down again for cash.
Lid of the Walters Casket, with the Siege A French Ivory Casket.
of the Castle of Love.
• Gothic sculptures were primarily created as devotional
objects for the home or intended as donations for local
churches, although small reliefs in ivory, bone and wood
cover both religious and secular subjects, and were for
church and domestic use.

• Such sculptures were the work of urban artisans, and

the most typical subject for three dimensional small
statues is the Virgin Mary alone or with child.

• Paris was the main centre of ivory workshops, and

exported to most of northern Europe, though Italy also
had a considerable production.

Virgin and Child

sculpture from the
Abbey Church of St
• Souvenirs of pilgrimages to shrines, such as clay or lead badges, medals and
ampullae stamped with images were also popular and cheap.

• Their secular equivalent, the livery badge, were signs of feudal and political loyalty
or alliance that came to be regarded as a social menace in England.

Lead pilgrim badge

Badge with the
showing St. George and
Virgin and Child.
the dragon.