Early Medieval Art

This class covered yet one more mosaic in Rome with mention in the Liber Pontificalis and accompanying inscriptions.  Flickr (”Stefano Rotondo”) has some extraordinarily large, albeit sometimes somewhat blurry images (I must here confess how much I enjoy the the random images brought by up some of these searches!).  Pope Theodore dedicated the chapel in the the fifth-century round church to two saints whose bodies he translated from catacombs on the Via Nomentana with, at the least, a side purpose of sanctifying the burial spot of his father.  The symbolic Crucifixion and the papal life together point to the Holy Land by way of the Monza Flasks of the first class. 

The material of this class proves especially useful in demonstrating contextualization through the interrelating of image and text. 

Please permit me to say a bit about my teaching philosophy, as it informs much of the material on this website. 

Text-based disciplines develop close reading skills, but only a student who ventures into an art history class chances upon an opportunity to develop his or her close looking skills.  These close looking skills include: the careful observation of detail; the precise recall of images no longer before the eye; the awareness of the scale of objects and monuments and their relation to the beholder through space; and the recognition of patterns and of differences.  These skills form the foundation for art historical study and should therefore inform the teaching of the traditional art history survey. 

One develops attention to detail simply by slowing down the looking of the students and developing their patience with visual material. Practice in visual recall may be incorporated into a class by naming a previously-studied image and asking the students what they remember about it before showing it for comparison purposes.  A tape measure provides the best tool for the development of the appreciation of scale.  The careful selection of images – for example, showing corners, floor-to-ceiling views, and people standing within a space - and the presentation of an image in a church with the image’s location highlighted on a plan of the church or a detail alongside an image of the whole with its location highlighted cultivate spatial awareness. 

Slide: Image and Location and Spatial Awareness

Slide: Relation of Detail to Whole and Spatial Awareness

Finally, the traditional slide comparison enables the recognition of pattern and difference.  Power Point reduces the scale of two projected images; details therefore become essential.

Most of the image resources for Sant’Agnese fuori le mura also apply to the Oratory of San Venanzio in the Lateran.  At Flickr, search for “S Venanzio.”  Gillian Mackie has written about the Croatian connection (published in Early Christian Chapels in the West: Decoration, Function, and Patronage), which perhaps would create a good segue-way to some Croatian material (if only one had the time!).  The Oratory of San Venanzio also provides a good occasion for another flashback, for San Venanzio forms part of the same complex as the Lateran Baptistery and the Lateran Basilica, and the composition in the apse at San Venanzio reflects, in part, the composition in the apse of the Basilica.  And we must not forget the background provided by the papal life of John IV and the inscription describing the function of the mosaic!  This pattern will repeat itself one more time…

After an assessment of religious art at the time of Gregory the Great, we stayed in Rome to discover the church art of the seventh century. 

We began with the church of Sant’Agnese fuori le mura, built and decorated by Pope Honorius 625-38).  As with San Lorenzo fuori le mura, the best images come from Maria Andaloro, La Pittura medievale a Roma, 312-1431: Atlante, volume 1.  I should also note that Walter Oakeshott’s Mosaics of Rome has decent usable images for every Roman monument with mosaics, although not so many in color.  Flickr (note link on the right side of this page) has interior shots of Sant’Agnese as well as good details of the hand of God and the face of Agnes (search “Agnese fuori le mura”).  And an official website, only in Italian, has a good set of medium-sized images.

Bill Storage also has some slightly larger than medium-sized images.

And, as is standard, Honorius’s papal biography devotes several lines to his work there, and two inscriptions frame the apse (translations of which I may post at some point in the future), so close reading well accompanies close looking. 

Also, Sant’Agnese stands above catacombs and formed part of the same complex as a Constantinian basilica and the Mauseoleum of Constantina, providing the perfect opportunity for a flashback to early Christian Rome and to Constantinian Rome.

How should a department that aims for a comprehensive view of the history of art through offering upper-level survey courses divide up the early Middle Ages?  Accordance with the grand art history surveys may prove convenient, but it separates material that students should encounter within a single learning context. 

I offer here a few possibilities.

Option 1: A Pan-Mediterranean Approach, 3 Classes

Art of the Late Antique Mediterranean (4th through 6th Centuries, Constantine through Justinian with the earliest Christian art of the 3rd century included, also earlier Sassanian)

Art of the Post-Antique Mediterranean (6th through 8th Centuries: Early Byzantine, Coptic, Visigothic, Longobard, Merovingian, earlier Anglo-Saxon, later Sassanian, Umayyad)

Art of the Early Medieval Mediterranean (Carolingian, Ottonian, early Middle Byzantine, Abbasid, Asturian, Mozarabic, and Umayyad Spain, later Anglo-Saxon England)

Option 2: The Gardner Model, 3 Classes (does not include Islamic)

Late Antique

Byzantine (beginning with Justinian)

Early Medieval

Option 3: The Stokstad Model, 2 Classes (again, does not include Islamic)

Early Christian and Byzantine

Early Medieval

My preference leans toward option 1.  It encourages meaningful contextualization, for each course would cover a reasonable span of time and the transmission of ideas through visual means would tie the courses more tightly together than the artificial narrative traditionally imposed upon the artistic production of the Early Middle Ages.

The curriculum within which I teach this semester set the parameters of my Early Medieval Art course.  The medieval curriculum here at FSU (amazingly) includes: Byzantine Art; Late Antique/Early Christian Art; Late Medieval Art; and Early Medieval Art.  EMA therefore begins after Ravenna, ends before Romanesque, and sticks rather closely to Western Europe (although I could have probably ventured a bit further eastward- for example to medieval Croatia).  This curriculum accords with the history of art surveys of Gardner, Stokstad, and Adams (but not Honour and Fleming).  I will have more to say about these surveys at a later time.

I define my field of research more broadly and in an ideal world would call it the early medieval Mediterrannean.  As such, early medieval art includes the art of the following periods (some overlapping perhaps inevitable):

• Early Byzantium, from Constantine’s establishment of Constantinople as the imperial capital up to and including Iconoclasm
• The later Roman Empire in the west, from the moment of the earliest Christian art (mid 3rd C.) to the end of the Roman empire in the west (476)
• Coptic Egypt
• The Sassanian Empire
• The Umayyad Dynasty
• The Abbasid Dynasty
• Papal Rome from the time of Sylvester to the beginning of the eleventh century
• Ostrogothic Italy
• Longobard Italy
• Visigothic Spain
• Merovingian France
• Anglo-Saxon England (from Sutton Hoo to Alfred the Great to Aethelwold)
• The Spanish Kingdom of Asturias
• Umayyad Cordoba
• Mozarabic Spain
• Carolingian Europe
• Ottonian Europe

This semester, I have chosen to group the Ashburnham Pentateuch with works associated with Gregory the Great.  We cannot date (or even locate) the Ashburnham Pentateuch with any degree of certainty.  Its script could place it in the late sixth, early seventh century; its text possibly points to Rome.  The other option was Seventh-Century Rome, but as you will soon see, we can date every monument there to a specific papacy, so it would not fit there as neatly.  Here, we can compare it to the Corpus Christi Gospels.   

I was about to write that the Ashburnham lacks images suitable for the examination of detail.  This semester I relied on the images that the Bibliotheque Nationale provides on-line:

Mandragore (For “Cote”, type in “Nouvelle acquisition latine 2334″, then click on “Chercher”, then the upper “Images”)

But I just looked at Wikimedia Commons, and they have 11 high quality digital images of 5 different folios.  That still leaves 13 miniatures without good images, but better than none.

Ashburnham Pentateuch on Wikimedia Commons 

Wherever it may belong, the Ashburnham Pentateuch should come somewhere for two reasons: its later use by the scriptorium at Tours ands its profusion of inscriptions, which I have translated and may someday post.  I recommend folio 76r and its illustration of Exodus 24 for close examination.

For maps of early medieval Rome, I use the maps in the back of the each of the three volumes of Raymond Davis’s translation of the Liber pontificalis – Book of the Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis) (Liverpool University Press – Translated Texts for Historians); Lives of the Eighth Century Popes AD 715-817 (Liverpool University Press – Translated Texts for Historians); and Lives of the Ninth-century Popes (Liber Pontificalis) (Liverpool University Press – Translated Texts for Historians). 

I have struggled this semester with how to develop a sense of topographic awareness of Rome without walking around the city.  I show maps of Rome with the site in question  circled (in the example, San Lorenzo fuoir le mura) and relate it to other known sites.  I would love to hear more ideas…

Location of San Paoli fuori le mura

To create the rectangle in Power Point 2007: “Home,” in the box “Drawing” click on the rectangle with rounded corners, then change “Shape Fill” to none, and “Shape Outline” to red.

San Lorenzo fuori le mura belongs to the papacy of Pelagius II, Gregory’s predecessor and under whom he served.  It offers the only surviving monument that we can connect, even by one degree of separation, to Gregory.  Among non-surviving monuments, we have his restorations to Saint Peter’s as described in his papal life. 

San Lorenzo has an even more interesting text, at least in my opinion- his well-known letter to Constantina (4.30, in which he refuses the empress’s request for the head of Paul.  Among other tales, Gregory relates how when workers inadvertently opened the tomb of Saint Lawrence, they all died.  San Lorenzo, like most mosaics in Rome, has two longer inscriptions.  I have not yet found translations and therefore made my own.  I have not yet decided whether to post my translations (I have prepared many this semester).  The longer inscription describes in detail the process of construction.

San Lorenzo fuori le mura also has nice spoliated building materials, including a capital depicting a trophy flanked by victories.

If you have good details, then you can also discuss the varying size of the tesserae, within single figures and across figures. 

The best images of San Lorenzo fuori le mura come from Maria Andaloro, La Pittura medievale a Roma, 312-1431: Atlante, volume 1.  

Jaca Books (click “A”, then “Andaloro”, then “Atlante: percorsi visivi…“)

Flickr has good exterior and general interior shots, but only a couple including the mosaic and none suitable for close examination of details.

The site of photographer Bill Storage also has a couple images:

When I have the time, I will compile a list of the books of interest to early medieval art in the Michael Shamansky Bulletins.

Mario de Matteis and Antonio Trinchese, eds., Il Complesso basilicale di Cimitile: Patrimonio culturale dell’umanita? Der basilikale Komplex in Cimitile: Ein Weltkulturebe? .

Flavia de Rubeis and Federico Marazzi, eds., Monasteri in Europa occidentale (secoli VIIII-XI): Topografia e strutture (click on “indice titoli,” then “M-N”).

Peregrine Horden, ed,., Freedom of Movement in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 2003 Harlaxton Symposium (scroll to the bottom of the page)

Luke Lavan, Ellen Swift, Toon Putzeys, eds., Objects in Context, Objects in Use: Material Spatiality in Late Antiquity (Late Antique Archaeology) (Late Antique Archaeology).

A. G. Poulter, The Transition to Late Antiquity, on the Danube and Beyond (Proceedings of the British Academy).

Juergen Rasch and Achim Arbeiter, Das Mausoleum der Constantina in Rom .