Early Medieval Art

CAA Reviews has a review of Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797.

Roger Rosewell, Medieval Wall Paintings in English and Welsh Churches (Publisher’s Description)

Ettore Bianchi et al., Ariberto da Intimiano: Fede, potere e cultura a Milano nel secolo XI

Antonio E. Momplet Miguez, El Arte Hispanomusulman/ The Hispanic-Muslim Art (Publisher’s Description)

Elisabeth Piltz, From Constantine the Great to Kandinsky: Studies in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art and Architecture

I don’t intend to make this website a forum for conference information.  Other sites fulfill this need.  I prefer that the material on this site not have an expiration date for its usefulness.  On the other hand, I wish to document trends in early medieval art.

Medieval Spatiality (page 10 in the Call for Papers)

Byzantine Art as Medieval Lingua Franca, International Center for Medieval Art Session (page 11)

On the Erotic and the Sensuous in Islamic Art, Historians of Islamic Art Association (page 14)

Interpreting Spolia in Medieval Architecture and Art (page 23)

The Art and Archeology of Ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria, Art History Open Session (page 25)

http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/CallforParticipation2009.pdf

Although the course started ca. 600, the strategic use of flashbacks, which I would do more systematically in any future reincarnation of the course, enables the introduction of important earlier monuments that anticipate the material of the course.  Among others, these monuments include: the Catacombs of Rome, Christ as Helios in the Vatican Necropolis, San Vitale in Ravenna, and Saints Cosmas and Damian in Rome.

In this particular class, I introduced Santa Maria Maggiore.  Santa Maria Maggiore may not seem the most obvious fit with the material associated with John VII.  I discussed Santa Maria Maggiore on this day for two reasons.  First, by this class, I had already wanted, on several occasions, to make references to Santa Maria Maggiore with the result that my frustration had reached a critical mass.  Second, although a fascinating patron worthy of highlighting, John VII didn’t leave as much material as I usually cover in one class, so I had time on this day.

Santa Maria Maggiore displays vivid mosaics that exemplify the use of typology in church decoration.  (John VII, as I will show in subsequent posts, actually employed a similar system in Santa Maria Antiqua, hence the connection).  Old Testament mosaics in the apse lead the worshipper to the New Testament mosaics on the apsidal arch.  The Old Testament culminates in the New, and the New thereby fulfills the Old.  And the designer of the program even altered the order of the biblical narrative in order to enhance the typological meaning of the Old Testament panels, in particular, the three scenes closest to the apsidal arch on the left wall.  The designer placed the Blessing of Melchizedek (Genesis 14) after the Visit of the Three Angels at Mamre(Genesis 18) in order to place the strongest prefiguration of the Eucharist adjacent to the wall that once framed the altar (the transept dates to a later renovation).

For Santa Maria Maggiore, neither Flickr nor Wickimedia Commons offer any help.  L’Orrizonte tardoantico e le nuove immagini, 312-468, Corpus volume 1 of the series La Pittura medievale a Roma, 312-1431, has a complete series of the mosaic panels, although each somewhat small in size (pages 312-329). The Atlante volume from the same series, to which I refer to in an earlier posting (use the search function to find) offers great reconstructions.

The historical study of art also develops skills particular to the discipline.  These include: 

• the precise description of the content and form of a work of art (for pedagogical purposes, I label these skills Iconography and Formal Analysis)
• the identification of traditional and innovative elements in a work of art
• the establishment of the historical context of a work of art through the meaningful relating of image to text
• the discernment of a program encompassing the various elements of a single monument.

I have ordered these skills from lower level to higher.  I will elaborate on each in due course.

When I taught the first part of the two-semester art history survey last fall, I decided to privilege the cultivation of the students’ looking and describing skills.  With this decision came, by necessity, a de-emphasis on content.  Although one cannot separate higher-level thinking skills from meaningful content, the massive amount of information presented in any ‘Caves to Cathedrals’ survey text far surpasses the time that even the most devoted of undergraduates would allot to an introductory art history class.  I reasoned that the skills that the study of art history develops would prove of greater value to my students than knowledge of the precise dates of every object and monument in the textbook.  Furthermore, recognizing the wide range of student abilities in my classes, I quickly adjusted my expectations so that they need only know the period of every work of art.  The lecture component of any given class consisted of clarifying the defining features of a given period - generally speaking, time, place, and style.  But I devoted the remainder of class time to active learning.  Mostly, I presented an image from the textbook and asked them what they saw.  I wanted my students to see things for themselves, not have them pointed out to them (active versus passive learning).  At the end of the course, my students knew how to describe a work of art, the importance of which only a non-art historian would doubt.

This spring, in my early medieval art survey, I couldn’t sacrifice content for skills, so I have reverted to the more traditional lecture format to ensure that the students acquire a certain amount of knowledge.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I lack a survey text to rely on to present the most basic of information about the objects and monuments that we study.  To compensate, I provide a comprehensive image guide a pdf document of the slides before each class, in addition to a pdf document of images from the same period that we do not have time to cover in class.  For each and every object or monument, I strive to make available to the students every illuminated folio, painted wall, or carved side.  I then ask the students to prepare for class by looking closely at all of the images while referring to the image guide.  Of course, if an assignment does not involve reading or writing, students need some convincing of its value.  Although I believe that undergraduates should develop independence in their learning, I still do not know how best to enforce it.  And yet, the employment of active learning techniques in my early medieval art survey depends on the students having covered some ground on their own, and, in general, they don’t, so I haven’t.

In subsequent postings, I will offer some ideas that I have had a chance to try out and others that I would have liked to, and I welcome ideas on how to cover larger areas of content without a survey text and still using active learning techniques.

Since the early medieval survey that I teach this semester begins ca. 600 and ends ca. 1050, finding a textbook proved challenging.  Most of the newer early medieval surveys (such as Early Medieval Art (Oxford History of Art) by Larry Nees and The Early Middle Ages: From Late Antiquity to A.D. 1000 (Taschen’s World Architecture) by Xavier Baral I Altet) begin with late Antiquity and/or include early Byzantine material, neither of which I cover in this class.  For both, I considered the number of relevant chapters too few.  An older survey, such as John Beckwith’s Early Medieval Art: Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque (World of Art) doesn’t cover the first third of the class, and I do not consider Romanesque early Medieval, as a matter of principle.  Furthermore, this text shows too much its age and would require constant correction. 

If I should wish for a translation, Piotr Skubiszewski’s L’art du haut Moyen Age covers most of the objects and monuments that I do, if not more and, at moments, even offers profound insights.  But it too reveals its origin too clearly.  The edited volume, De Mahomet à Charlemagne : la Méditerrannée et l’art, most closely matches my pan-Mediterranean approach, but this course, for reasons of curriculum, restricts itself to the West.

Ultimately, I opted for Charles McClendon’s The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe, A.D. 600-900 combined with the essays dealing with art and architecture in the first three volumes of the New Cambridge Medieval History series, the first by Ian Wood in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700, the second by Larry Nees in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 2: c. 700-c. 900, and the third by Henry Mayr-Harting in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 3: c. 900-c. 1024.  McClendon stops slightly short of the terminus of the course, but his focus on architecture well complements my own emphasis on art, and he is utterly reliable.  I did not require its purchase, however, because of its cost.  The NCMH essays condense the material quite a bit, but I could rely on them.

I felt keenly the lack of a suitable survey and apparently so did the students, for I heard reports that some even consulted Stokstad’s Art History.  Perhaps some day…

Book 6, Chapter 5 of Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards tells how in 680 the story of the dedication of an altar to Saint Sebastian in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli ended a devastating plague.  The church of Michaelangelo’s Moses preserves a mosaic panel that presents a full-length, labeled portrait of Saint Sebastian.  The coincidence of text and image helps date and contextualize this panel, elevating it from a random fragment to a historical document.  Although a minor work, who can resist such a great convergence of image and text.

Flickr has several images (search “pietro in vincoli mosaic”), none of which are especially good.

I stick to the traditional dating of the Maccabees panel, the full-length portraits of Saint Anne, Saint Barbara, Saint Demetrios, the lower Annunciation in the nave, and layer 6 of the palimpsest wall to the pontificate of Pope Martin.

Interactive Palimpsest Wall

Making this material accessible to undergraduates presents, however, difficulties.  The life of Pope Martin and the inscriptions on the scrolls of the Church Fathers on the palimpsest wall together create a compelling, if complex, historical context.  Students can relate to the propagandistic value of these images.  The panel of the Maccabees provides an occasion to explore a less popular Biblical account leading to a discussion of the presentation of these Old Testament figures as Christian martyrs.  And the individual devotional panels depicting various saints all have holes where worshippers once attached precious materials as votive offerings in order to enhance the intercessory powers of the saints.

These ideas fascinate, but at the same time pull the students in so many directions! 

Layer four of the palimpsest wall at Santa Maria Antiqua preserves the face and part of the so-called fair angel and the lower part of the face of the Virgin from a scene of the Annunciation.  Traditionally dated to the early seventh century, I presented this Annunciation at the end of the previous class, on religious art ca. 600, but it could also fit in the class on seventh-century Rome, in which case it must precede the layer associated with Pope Martin.  (See following post)

Interactive Palimpsest Wall