2. The lively style of painting which had been invented in Greek and Rome lived on in
Byzantium but this time for Christian subjects.
3. What is Byzantine Art?
Between Emperor Constantine I's
Edict in 313, recognizing
Christianity as the official religion,
and the fall of Rome at the hands of
the Visigoths in 476, arrangements
were made to divide the the Roman
Empire into a Western half (ruled
from Rome) and an Eastern half
(ruled from Byzantium). Thus, while
Western Christendom fell into the
cultural abyss of the barbarian Dark
Ages, its religious, secular and
artistic values were maintained by its
new Eastern capital in Byzantium
(later renamed Constantinople after
Constantine). Along with the transfer
of Imperial authority to Byzantium
went thousands of Roman and Greek
painters and craftsmen, who
proceeded to create a new set of
Eastern Christian images and icons,
known as Byzantine Art. Exclusively
concerned with Christian art, though
derived (in particular) from
techniques and forms
of Greek and Egyptian art, this style
spread to all corners of the Byzantine
empire, where Orthodox Christianity
flourished. Particular centres of early
Christian art included Ravenna in
Italy, and Kiev, Novgorod and
Moscow in Russia.
4. General Characteristics
The style that characterized Byzantine art was almost entirely concerned with religious expression; specifically
with the translation of church theology into artistic terms. Byzantine Architecture and painting (little sculpture
was produced during the Byzantine era) remained uniform and anonymous and developed within a rigid
tradition. The result was a sophistication of style rarely equalled in Western art.
Byzantine medieval art began with mosaics decorating the walls and domes of churches, as well fresco wall-
paintings. So beautiful was the effect of these mosaics that the form was taken up in Italy, especially in Rome
and Ravenna. A less public art form in Constantinople, was the icon (from the Greek word 'eikon' meaning
'image') - the holy image panel-paintings which were developed in the monasteries of the eastern church,
using encaustic wax paint on portable wooden panels. [See: Icons and Icon Painting.] The greatest collection of
this type of early Biblical art is in the monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, founded in the 6th century by the
Emperor Justinian. And see also, the Byzantine-influenced Garima Gospels (390-660) - world's most ancient
illuminated gospel manuscript - from Ethiopia.
During the period 1050-1200, tensions grew up between the Eastern Roman Empire and the slowly re-emerging
city of Rome, whose Popes had managed (by careful diplomatic maneuvering) to retain their authority as the
centre of Western Christendom. At the same time, Italian city states like Venice were becoming rich on
international trade. As a result, in 1204, Constantinople fell under the influence of Venetians.
This duly led to a cultural exodus of renowned artists from the city back to Rome - the reverse of what had
happened 800 years previously - and the beginnings of the proto-Renaissance period, exemplified by Giotto di
Bondone's Scrovegni Chapel frescoes. However, even as it declined, Byzantine influence continued to make
itself felt in the 13th and 14th centuries, notably in the Sienese School of painting and the International Gothic
style (1375-1450), notably in International Gothic illuminations, like the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry,
by the Limbourg Brothers.
5. ROMANESQUE PAINTING
“Christ in Majesty” Painting from the Church of Saint Climente, Tahuli, Lerida
Spain, c.1123 Musue National d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona.
6. Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately
1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th 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.
7. Characteristics
Outside Romanesque architecture, the art of the period was
characterized by a very vigorous style in both sculpture and painting.
The latter continued to follow
essentially Byzantine iconographic models for the most common
subjects in churches, which remained Christ in Majesty, the Last
Judgement and scenes from the Life of Christ. In illuminated
manuscripts, for which the most lavishly decorated manuscripts of the
period were mostly bibles or psalters, more originality is seen, as new
scenes needed to be depicted. The same applied to the capitals of
columns, never more exciting than in this period, when they were often
carved with complete scenes with several figures. The large
wooden crucifix was a German innovation at the very start of the
period, as were free-standing statues of the enthroned Madonna, but
the high relief was above all the sculptural mode of the period.
Master of Pedret, The Virgin and Child in Majesty and the Adoration of
the Magi, apsefresco from Tredòs, Val d'Aran, Catalonia, Spain, c.
1100, now at The Cloisters in New York City.
Colours, which can be seen as bright in the 21st century only in stained
glass and well-preserved manuscripts, tended to be very striking, and
mostly primary. Stained glass became widely used, although survivals
are sadly few. In an invention of the period, the tympanums of
important church portals were carved with monumental schemes, often
again Christ in Majesty or the Last Judgement, but treated with more
freedom than painted versions, as there were no equivalent Byzantine
models.
Compositions usually had little depth, and needed to be flexible to be
squeezed into the shapes of historiated initials, column capitals, and
church tympanums; the tension between a tightly enclosing frame, from
which the composition sometimes escapes, is a recurrent theme in
Romanesque art. Figures still often varied in size in relation to their
importance, and landscape backgrounds, if attempted at all, were closer
to abstract decorations than realism - as in the trees in the "Morgan
Leaf". Portraiture hardly existed.
8. Background
During this period Europe grew steadily more prosperous, and art of
the highest quality was no longer confined, as it largely was in
the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, to the royal court and a small
circle of monasteries. Monasteries continued to be extremely
important, especially those of the expansionist new orders of the
period, the Cistercian, Cluniac, and Carthusian, which spread across
Europe. But city churches, those on pilgrimage routes, and many
churches in small towns and villages were elaborately decorated to a
very high standard - these are often the structures to have survived,
when cathedrals and city churches have been rebuilt. No Romanesque
royal palace has really survived.
The lay artist was becoming a valued figure – Nicholas of
Verdun seems to have been known across the continent. Most masons
and goldsmiths were now lay, and lay painters such as Master
Hugo seem to have been in the majority, at least of those doing the
best work, by the end of the period. The iconography of their church
work was no doubt arrived at in consultation with clerical advisors.
9. PAINTING FROM THE GOTHIC ERA
“ Lady and The Unicorn Tapestry”
1506-1513
Subjects usually depict popular legends and love stories. Patterns like mille fleur
or thousands flowers show influence which may have been due to Crusades.
10. 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 easily
recognizable shifts in architecture from Romanesque to Gothic, and Gothic to Renaissance styles, are
typically used to define the periods in art in all media, although in many ways figurative art developed
at a different pace.
The earliest Gothic art was monumental sculpture, on the walls of Cathedrals and abbeys. Christian art
was often typological in nature (see Medieval allegory), showing the stories of the New Testament and
the Old Testament side by side. Saints' lives were often depicted. Images of the Virgin Mary changed
from the Byzantine iconic form to a more human and affectionate mother, cuddling her infant, swaying
from her hip, and showing the refined manners of a well-born aristocratic courtly lady.
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 resulting in a proliferation of paintings
and illuminated manuscripts. 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.
11. Gothic art emerged in Île-de-France, France, in the early 12th century at the Abbey Church of St Denis built
by Abbot Suger.[1] The style rapidly spread beyond its origins in architecture to sculpture, both monumental and personal
in size, textile art, and painting, which took a variety of forms, including fresco, stained glass, the illuminated
manuscript, and panel painting.[2] Monastic orders, especially the Cistercians and the Carthusians, were important
builders who disseminated the style and developed distinctive variants of it across Europe. Regional variations of
architecture remained important, even when, by the late 14th century, a coherent universal style known as International
Gothic had evolved, which continued until the late 15th century, and beyond in many areas.
Although there was far more secular Gothic art than is often thought today, as generally the survival rate of religious art
has been better than for secular equivalents, a large proportion of the art produced in the period was religious, whether
commissioned by the church or by the laity. Gothic art was often typological in nature, reflecting a belief that the events
of the Old Testament pre-figured those of the New, and that this was indeed their main significance. Old and New
Testament scenes were shown side by side in works like the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, and the decoration of
churches. 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 initimate 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, although copied formulae were still used by most artists.
Iconography was affected by changes in theology, with depictions of the Assumption of Mary gaining ground on the
older Death of the Virgin, and in devotional practices such as the Devotio Moderna, which produced new treatments of
Christ in subjects such as the Man of Sorrows, Pensive Christ and Pietà, which emphasized his human suffering and
vulnerability, in a parallel movement to that in depictions of the Virgin. Even in Last Judgements Christ was now usually
shown exposing his chest to show the wounds of his Passion. Saints were shown more frequently, and altarpieces showed
saints relevant to the particular church or donor in attendance on a Crucifixion or enthroned Virgin and Child, or
occupying the central space themselves (this usually for works designed for side-chapels). Over the period many ancient
iconographical features that originated in New Testament apocrypha were gradually eliminated under clerical pressure,
like the midwives at the Nativity, though others were too well-established, and considered harmless.[3]
12. “Rose Window from the North Transcept”
about 1230
Stained glass window s were created to transform the vast stone interiors with
warm and glowing color and the same time to instruct Christians in their faith.
13. The painting show some realistic
details and naïve naturalism.
“The Shepherd David”
13th century, Gothic manuscript illustration.
