Assignment 2 Essay By Wednesday, September 24, 2014, sele.docx

Assignment 2: Essay
By Wednesday, September 24, 2014, select one of the questions
listed below and develop an essay
response of approximately 350 words. Analyze and identify
specific historical and visual examples to
support your understanding of the topic. Include images with
complete identifying information of the
specific works of art you chose. Compose your thoughts with
careful research and formulate independent
conclusions.
Reference and cite (using MLA format) the textbook and at least
one other scholarly source (e.g., a class
lecture, scholarly article, or museum website). If you need help
with MLA formatting, please visit the
Writing Center or Tutoring Services. Note: Wikipedia, blogs,
and answers/Yahoo! websites are not
permitted scholarly sources.
Grammar and spelling are expected to reflect college-level
work. Please spell-check and proofread all
work prior to submission.
Post your response in a Microsoft Word file to the W4
Assignment 2 Dropbox (do not post anything to
the Discussion Areas for the questions). Name your file
LastNameFirstIntial_W4_A2_QuestionNumber.doc
Note: Rubrics provide an explanation for full or partial credit.
If a criteria listed is not addressed you will
receive a zero for that section.

Assignment 2 Grading Criteria Maximum Points
Develop a response with accurate and relevant historical
information that thoroughly supports the topic and the culture
discussed.
10
Analyze and thoroughly identify multiple, visual examples that
thoroughly support the topic. 10
Formulate independent conclusions based on research,
analysis, and visual observations that support the topic. 10
Utilize the text and scholarly sources that support the
response. 10
Employs correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and
appropriate logic, voice, and utilize correct MLA formatting. 10
Total: 50
Question 1: Sculpture
This Is the to do---Question 1. Sculpture reflects a culture’s
values through its style, subject, and
function.
In your essay, discuss the style, subject, and function of
sculpture. Compare and contrast specific
examples of sculpture from the Romanesque and Gothic eras.
In your own words, summarize how the artworks are reflective
of the cultures that created them.

Romanesque Era:
6-19: South portal of Saint-Pierre, Moissac, France, ca. 1115–
1135
https://digitalbookshelf.aionline.edu/#/books/1111904871/pages
/51103489
Romanesque churches served a largely illiterate lay public. To
attract worshipers, the clergy
commissioned sculptors to carve Christian symbols and stories
on the portals opening onto the town
squares.
Many variations exist within the general style of Romanesque
sculpture, as within Romanesque
architecture. The extremely elongated bodies of the recording
angels, the cross-legged dancing pose of
Saint Matthew’s angel, the jerky movement of the elders’ heads,
the zigzag and dovetail lines of the
draperies, the bandlike folds of the torsos, and the bending back
of the hands against the body are all
characteristic of the anonymous Moissac sculptor’s distinctive
style. The animation of the individual
figures, however, contrasts with the stately monumentality of
the composition as a whole, producing a
dynamic tension in the tympanum.
Below the tympanum are a richly decorated trumeau and
elaborate door jambs with scalloped contours,
the latter a borrowing from Islamic Spain (FIG. 5-7). On the

trumeau’s right face is a prophet displaying
the scroll where his prophetic vision is written. Six roaring
interlaced lions fill the trumeau’s outer face.
Lions were the church’s ideal protectors. In the Middle Ages,
people believed lions slept with their eyes
open.
/51103489
https://digitalbookshelf.aionline.edu/books/1111904871/content/
id/F5-7
Romanesque Era:
6-22: Initial R with knight fighting a dragon, folio 4 verso of
the Moralia in Job, from
Cîteaux, France, ca. 1115–1125. Ink and tempera on vellum, .
Bibliothèque
Municipale, Dijon.
/51103492
Ornamented initials date to the Hiberno-Saxon era (FIG. 6-4),
but this artist translated the theme
into Romanesque terms. The duel between knight and dragons
may symbolize monks’ spiritual
struggle.
Holy Roman Empire and Italy

The Romanesque successors of the Ottonians were the Salians
(r. 1027–1125), a dynasty of
Franks of the Salian tribe. They ruled an empire that
corresponds roughly to present-day
Germany and the Lombard region of northern Italy (MAP 6-1).
Like their predecessors, the
Salian emperors were important patrons of art and architecture,
although, as elsewhere in
Romanesque Europe, the monasteries remained great centers of
artistic production.
/51103492
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Romanesque Era:
6-23: Hildegard receives her visions, detail of a facsimile of a
lost folio in the
Rupertsberger Scivias by Hildegard of Bingen, from Trier or
Bingen, Germany, ca.
1180. Abbey of St. Hildegard, Rüdesheim/Eibingen.
/51103492 Hildegard of
Bingen-The most prominent nun of the 12th century and one of

the greatest religious figures of
the Middle Ages, Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), was born
into an aristocratic family that
owned large estates in the German Rhineland. At a very early
age she began to have visions, and
her parents had her study to become a nun. In 1141, God
instructed Hildegard to disclose her
visions to the world. Bernard of Clairvaux certified in 1147 that
those visions were authentic.
Archbishop Heinrich of Mainz joined him in endorsing
Hildegard. In 1148 the Cistercian pope
Eugenius III (r. 1145–1153) formally authorized Hildegard “in
the name of Christ and Saint
Peter to publish all that she had learned from the Holy Spirit.”
At this time Hildegard became the
abbess of a new convent built for her near Bingen. As reports of
Hildegard’s visions spread,
kings, popes, barons, and prelates sought her counsel.
One of the most interesting Romanesque books is Hildegard’s
Scivias (Know the Ways [Scite
vias] of God). On the opening page (FIG. 6-23), Hildegard sits
within a monastery experiencing
her divine vision. Five long tongues of fire emanating from
above enter her brain, just as she
describes the experience in the accompanying text. She
immediately sets down what has been
revealed to her on a wax tablet resting on her left knee. Nearby,
the monk Volmar, Hildegard’s
confessor, copies into a book all she has written. Here, in a
singularly dramatic context, is a
picture of the essential nature of ancient and medieval book
manufacture—individual scribes
copying and recopying texts by hand. Hildegard of Bingen was
one of the great religious figures of the
Middle Ages. Here, she experiences a divine vision, shown as

five tongues of fire emanating from above
and entering her brain.
/51103492
id/F6-23
Gothic Europe Era :
7-1: West facade of Reims Cathedral, Reims, France, ca. 1225–
1290.
/51103504?return=/books/11119048
71/outline/8
The facade of Reims Cathedral exemplifies French High Gothic
architects’ desire to reduce sheer
mass and replace it with intricately framed voids. Stained-glass
windows, not stone sculpture, fill
the tympana. The 12th through 14th centuries were a time of
profound change in European
society. The focus of both intellectual and religious life shifted
definitively from pilgrimage
churches and monasteries in the countryside to rapidly
expanding secular cities with enormous
cathedrals reaching to the sky. In these new urban centers,
prosperous merchants made their
homes, and guilds (professional associations) of scholars
founded the first universities. Modern
Europe’s independent secular nations began to take shape (MAP
7-1). To describe the art and
architecture of this pivotal period, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574),

the Italian artist and biographer
known as “the father of art history,” used the term Gothic.
Vasari chose the term to ridicule what
he considered the “monstrous and barbarous” art of the uncouth
Goths whom he believed were
responsible for both Rome’s downfall and the destruction of the
classical style in art and
architecture.1 Italian Renaissance artists and scholars regarded
Gothic art with contempt and
considered it ugly and crude. In the 13th and 14th centuries,
however, when the Gothic style was
the rage in most of Europe, especially north of the Alps,
contemporaries referred to Gothic
architecture as opus modernum (Latin, “modern work”) or opus
francigenum (“French work”).
They recognized that Gothic buildings displayed an exciting
new style—and that the style
originated in France. For them, Gothic cathedrals were not
distortions of the classical style but
images of the City of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem. Although
the Gothic style achieved
international acclaim, it was a regional phenomenon. To the east
and south of Europe, the
Islamic and Byzantine styles still prevailed. And many regional
variants existed within European
Gothic, just as distinct regional styles characterized the
Romanesque period. Gothic began and
ended at different dates in different places, but it first appeared
in northern France in the mid-
12th century.
/51103504?return=/books/1111904871/outline/8
/51103504?return=/books/1111904871/outline/8

id/term280
id/MF7-1
id/term271
id/FN7-1
id/term428
id/term427
7-6: Royal Portal, west facade, Chartres Cathedral,
Chartres, France, ca. 1145–1155. Gothic Era :
/51103509
The sculptures of the Royal Portal proclaim the majesty and
power of Christ. The tympana depict, from
left to right, Christ’s Ascension, the Second Coming, and Jesus
in the lap of the Virgin Mary. The
sculptures of the Royal Portal proclaim the majesty and power
of Christ. Christ’s Ascension into Heaven
appears in the tympanum of the left doorway. The Second
Coming is the subject of the center
tympanum. The theme—in essence, the Last Judgment—was
still of central importance, as it was in
Romanesque portals. But at Early Gothic Chartres, the Second
Coming promised salvation rather than
damnation to those entering the church. In the tympanum of the
right portal, Christ appears in the lap
of the Virgin Mary. Mary’s prominence on the Chartres facade
has no parallel in the decoration of
Romanesque church portals. At Chartres the designers gave her
a central role in the sculptural program,

a position she maintained throughout the Gothic period. As the
Mother of Christ, Mary stood
compassionately between the Last Judge and the horrors of Hell,
interceding for all her faithful.
Worshipers in the later 12th and 13th centuries sang hymns to
Notre Dame, put her image everywhere,
and dedicated great cathedrals to her. Soldiers carried the
Virgin’s image into battle on banners, and her
name joined Saint Denis’s as part of the French king’s battle
cry. She became the spiritual lady of
chivalry, and the Christian knight dedicated his life to her. The
severity of Romanesque themes stressing
the Last Judgment yielded to the gentleness of Gothic art, in
which Mary is the kindly Queen of Heaven.
Statues of Old Testament kings and queens decorate the jambs
flanking each doorway of the Royal
Portal (FIGS. 7-6 and 7-7). They are the royal ancestors of
Christ and, both figuratively and literally,
support the New Testament figures above the doorways. They
wear 12th-century clothes, and medieval
observers also regarded them as images of the kings and queens
of France. (This was the motivation for
vandalizing the comparable figures at Saint-Denis during the
French Revolution.) The figures stand
rigidly upright with their elbows held close against their hips.
The linear folds of their garments—
inherited from the Romanesque style, along with the elongated
proportions—generally echo the vertical
lines of the columns behind them. (In this respect, Gothic jamb
statues differ significantly from classical
caryatids; FIG. 2-42. The Gothic figures are attached to
columns. The classical statues replaced columns.)
And yet, within and despite this architectural straitjacket, the
statues display the first signs of a new
naturalism. The sculptors conceived and treated the statues as

three-dimensional volumes, not reliefs,
and they stand out from the plane of the wall. The new
naturalism—enhanced by painting, as was the
norm for medieval stone sculpture—is noticeable particularly in
the statues’ heads, where kindly human
faces replace the masklike features of most Romanesque
figures. The sculptors of the Royal Portal
statues initiated an era of artistic concern with personality and
individuality.
/51103509
id/F7-6
id/F7-7
id/F2-42
Gothic Era :
7-12: Saint Theodore, jamb statue, Porch of the Martyrs (left
doorway), south
transept, Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France, ca. 1230.
/51103515
Chartres South Transept
The sculptures adorning the portals of the two new Chartres
transepts erected after the 1194 fire
are also prime examples of the new High Gothic spirit. The
Chartres transept portals (FIG. 7-
5, right) project more forcefully from the church than do the

Early Gothic portals of its west
facade (FIGS. 7-5, left, and 7-6). Similarly, the statues of saints
on the portal jambs are more
independent of the architectural framework. Saint Theodore
(FIG. 7-12) from the Porch of the
Martyrs in the south transept reveals the great changes Gothic
sculpture had undergone since the
Royal Portal statues (FIG. 7-7) of the mid-12th century. These
changes recall in many ways the
revolutionary developments in ancient Greek sculpture during
the transition from the Archaic to
the Classical style (see Chapter 2). The High Gothic sculptor
portrayed Theodore as the ideal
Christian knight and clothed him in the cloak and chain-mail
armor of Gothic Crusaders. The
handsome, long-haired youth holds his spear firmly in his right
hand and rests his left hand on
his shield. Although the statue is still attached to a column, the
architectural setting no longer
determines its pose. The saint turns his head to the left and
swings out his hip to the right,
breaking the rigid vertical line that, on the Royal Portal, fixes
the figures immovably. The body’s
resulting torsion and pronounced sway call to mind Classical
Greek statuary, especially the
contrapposto stance of Polykleitos’s Spear Bearer (FIG. 2-34).
It is not inappropriate to speak of
the changes that occurred in 13th-century Gothic sculpture as a
“second Classical revolution.”
Although this statue of Theodore is still attached to a column,
the setting no longer determines its pose.
The High Gothic sculptor portrayed the saint swinging out one
hip, as in Greek statuary.

/51103515
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id/F7-5
id/F7-5
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Gothic Era :
7-17: God as architect of the world, folio 1 verso of a moralized
Bible, from Paris,
ca. 1220–1230. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum,
Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
/51103519
God as Architect
One of the finest examples of French Gothic book illustration is
the frontispiece (FIG. 7-17) of
a moralized Bible produced in Paris during the 1220s.
Moralized Bibles are lavish books in
which each page pairs Old and New Testament episodes with

illustrations explaining their moral
significance. (The page reproduced here does not conform to
this formula because it is the
introduction to all that follows.) Above the illustration, the
scribe wrote (in French rather than
Latin): “Here God creates heaven and earth, the sun and moon,
and all the elements.” God
appears as the architect of the world, shaping the universe with
the aid of a compass. Within the
perfect circle already created are the spherical sun and moon
and the unformed matter that will
become the earth once God applies the same geometric
principles to it. In contrast to the biblical
account of Creation, where God created the sun, moon, and stars
after the earth had been formed,
and made the world by sheer force of will and a simple “Let
there be …” command, on this page
the Gothic artist portrayed God as an industrious architect,
creating the universe with some of the
same tools mortal builders use. Paris was the intellectual capital
of Europe and the center of
production for fine books. This artist portrayed God as an
industrious architect creating the universe
using the same tools as Gothic builders.
/51103519
id/F7-17
id/term3906-19: South portal of Saint-Pierre, Moissac, France,
ca. 1115–11356-22: Initial R with knight fighting a dragon,
folio 4 verso of the Moralia in Job, from Cîteaux, France, ca.
1115–1125. Ink and tempera on vellum, . Bibliothèque
Municipale,

Dijon.https://digitalbookshelf.aionline.edu/#/books/1111904871
/pages/51103492Holy Roman Empire and ItalyRomanesque
Era:6-23: Hildegard receives her visions, detail of a facsimile of
a lost folio in the Rupertsberger Scivias by Hildegard of
Bingen, from Trier or Bingen, Germany, ca. 1180. Abbey of St.
Hildegard, Rüdesheim/Eibingen.7-1: West facade of Reims
Cathedral, Reims, France, ca. 1225–1290.Chartres South
Transept7-17: God as architect of the world, folio 1 verso of a
moralized Bible, from Paris, ca. 1220–1230. Ink, tempera, and
gold leaf on vellum, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Vienna.https://digitalbookshelf.aionline.edu/#/books/111190487
1/pages/51103519

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