Early Medieval Art

In my previous post, I explained how I would use VoiceThread to accompany the students’ preparation for class through closely looking at the Altar of Duke Ratchis.  It is rather clumsy, but so are most first attempts at something new, so please do not judge me too harshly.

Nevertheless, I will not neglect to post on the altar in my usual manner.

I can offer two of my own photos. First, you see the entire altar from the front,

and then the altar, including its fenestella, from the back:

The best images come from Europe of the Invasions, but the Honors Program at the University of Alabama, Birmingham has some almost usable images on a webpage devoted to the Lombard Renaissance.  The Italian Wikipedia has fuzzy images of the front and sides, but I cannot link to them directly.  You can find them in the entry on the altar by searching for “Altare del duca Rachis”.

I have translated, roughly, the inscription:

[M]AXIMA DONA XPI ADCLARIT SUB(L)EIMI CONCESSA PEMMONI UBIQUE D(E)I REFO/RMARENTUR UT TEMPLA NAM ET INTER RELIQUAS/DOMUM BEATI IOHANNIS ORNABIT PENDOLA TEGURO PULCHRO ALT/ARE DITABIT MARMORIS COLORE RATCHIS HIDEBORHOHLRIT

RATCHIS HIDEBOHOHLRIT MADE KNOWN THE GREATEST GIFTS OF CHRIST GIVEN TO THE EXALTED PEMMO [HIS FATHER] WHEREEVER THE TEMPLES OF GOD WERE RESTORED SO THAT, AMONG OTHERS, HE ORNAMENTED THE HOUSE OF BLESSED JOHN WITH OBJECTS HANGING FROM THE BEAUTIFUL CANOPY AND ENRICHED THE MARBLE ALTAR WITH COLOR.

The reference to Ratchis’s father, Pemmo, becomes more meaningful when one reads what Paul the Deacon has to say about him in his History of the Longobards, in book 6, chapters 26 and 51.

Please feel free to comment. Also, please be forgiving of my commentary. I am a bit shy and am trying not to feel too self-conscious. If I waited until it was perfect, I would never post this!

Cross-posted on Caves to Cathedrals.

Yesterday evening, I came across this post on 21st Century Teaching & Learning, a blog about “how to effectively integrate web 2.0 tools into instruction”. The blogger, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, teaches art history and, at least from my perspective, stands at the cutting edge of digital learning.

In this post, Dr. Pacansky-Brock shares a slideshow that she presented as part of a series on on-line teaching. I was most struck by slides 5 and 6 showing a traditional syllabus and a web-inspired syllabus. Although the more traditional among us may abhor such seeming frivolity or even pandering, looking at these two versions of a syllabus, I realized that the form of the traditional syllabus reflects the limitations of the technology of a different age. Why shouldn’t we take advantage of our technological capabilities in order to make syllabi, first, more visually appealing, and second, more interactive?

In this post, she also shares a VoiceThread from one of her classes (you may also discover other uses to which she has put VoiceThread). VoiceThread is not new to on-line educators, but it is new to me. VoiceThread amazes me, and I easily see its potential for the traditional classroom. The greatest struggle, I find, is to create autonomous learners. I ask students to spend time looking closely at works of art in order to prepare for class, but they seldom understand what this means. I also encourage them to form study groups to force them to articulate what they see; this they rarely do. The next time that I teach, I will use VoiceThread to guide the students preparation for class and to facilitate a conversation among the students about objects and monuments and thereby to train them to look at and talk about art. In turn, such preparation would permit greater depth and more meaningful discussion during class time.

The Tempietto sul Clitunno stands as yet another early medieval monument whose dating remains imprecise. One could easily pass over this small church, especially as good color photos prove difficult to find, but I have my own images that I offer here, in combination with some that you may find on Flickr.

Flickr offers a nice view of the exterior. The refinement of the carving in the pediment will contrast with other Longobard sculpture that we will soon encounter, and the dedicatory inscription evokes an imperial past. For its translation see The Tempietto Del Clitunno Near Spoleto: Text and Illustrations by Judson Emerick.

The painting inside, however, captures my attention. Flickr has a broader shot of the east wall. In the apex of the wall,

two angels in medallions flank a gemmed cross, also in a medallion. My photo does not show the cross clearly, but a black-and-white photo in the second volume of Emerick’s monograph does.

Christ appears in the conch of the niche,

and on the side walls, Peter

and Paul.

In the Flickr photo of the entire niche wall, you may also see palm trees on the flanking walls.

This assembly of wall paintings lacks a personalizing element, as in the Chapel of Theodotus, thereby permitting a more general interpretation. The gemmed cross recalls the actual Visigothic votive crosses from the Guarrazar Treasure. The panels of Peter and Paul recall those in the Sancta Sanctorum, which I can only find here and here. And the palm trees actually have counterparts in the Chapel of Theodotus, if you can find photos of them! The paintings of course may then be related to the pediment carvings of the exterior. Emerick suggests multiple historical circumstances, and I am tempted to suggest yet another, but I think greater value derive from a discussion of how these images relate to one another and to images elsewhere, and what these observations reveal about the function of individual images relative to the space of the church and the function of the program as a whole, especially as it relates to Rome.

I have not posted course content for quite some time. As a reminder, we were last in the duchy of Bavaria.

After some time north of the Alps, at last we return to Italy and to Rome, and yet again, to Santa Maria Antiqua, not to the palimpsest wall, but to the Chapel of Theodotus. In contrast to print resources, which abound, digital resources for the Chapel of Theodotus, more or less, do not exist. The Soprintendenza offers two smallish photos, of the Crucifixion in the niche of the main south wall and of the interior with an angle toward the west wall. Wikimedia Commons offers a larger image of the Crucifixion.

Other than these images, the internet turns up little else. Needless to say, I am eagerly awaiting the digital reconstruction of Santa Maria Antiqua. In the meantime, the next time I go to the library, I will take my own scans from Wilpert’s corpus and will make them available here.

The Chapel of Theodotus presents a complex assemblage of images. The Crucifixion in the niche references traditional imagery from the Holy Land, while a cycle of the martyrdoms of Quiricus and Julitta running along the east and then the west wall offers one of the earliest surviving exemplars of this type. The threefold appearance of Theodotus then makes the decoration of the chapel highly personal. In a general survey of early medieval art, one probably does not have the time to delve into the various interpretations of precisely what the chapel meant to Theodotus, but questions of context and placement would stimulate a fruitful discussion of the function of images in early medieval churches.

On a side note, a search of Flickr turns up a new photo of Santa Maria Antique, uploaded on the 14th of June: a view into the presbytery with the panel of the Maccabees partially visible.

From this review in the New York Sun, which contrasts nicely with the recent negative reference to the Dark Ages courtesy of Charlotte Allen, I have learned of this new book by Peter Wells on the early Middle Ages: Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered.

I must confess that I am unfamiliar with Professor Wells’ scholarship, but I assume that it tends toward the popular.

On May 18th, the website of the magazine, Archaeology, posted an online feature on the Catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus.  The partial collapse of the foundation of the Instituto Sacra Famiglia revealed five unexplored chambers of the Catacomb.  The article focused on a mass grave, but three photos of wall painting accompany the article.  The first, according to its caption, dates to the seventh century, and the second supposedly shows Peter and Marcellinus.  The third shows Orpheus, in a relatively familiar scene.  The article does not mention any of these images, and I cannot assert with any certainty that they come from the newly discovered chambers.  I am intrigued by the fresco labeled seventh-century and devotional.  I will look into it, but thought I would share what I have found so far!

Thanks to the Digital Research Tools Wiki, I have discovered two on-line tools for creating timelines. While Simile requires facility with HTML, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University offers a more accessible Timeline Builder.

I usually encourage students to make timelines, in order to manage the periods and works of art, but they seldom do. An on-line program would make this task much more enticing. To promote active learning, the students should really do the work, but I think I will make my own next time as well!

The blog, Talking Philosophy - The Philosophers’ Magazine Blog, has posted the responses of ten “leading thinkers” to the question, “Has philosophy responded adequately to the big events and debates of the last decade, such as climate change and the post-9/11 world?”

I direct your attention, in particular, to the response of Jerry Fodor:

“I suppose so; though I don’t think that responding to such issues is plausibly a philosophical responsibility. Has Art History responded adequately to the post-9/11 world? Why should philosophy be different?”

Well, the question of the relevance of art history, in particular early medieval art history, rears again its ugly (?) head. But, in this instance, I think that art history has responded, perhaps not to climate change, but at least to 9/11. Islamic art flourishes as a field of study, and cross-cultural communication and exchange, a timely theme, forms a major topic of research in medieval art and beyond.

Personally, I have responded in my teaching philosophy. I think about the development of the skills that students may apply to our increasingly complex and global visual culture. On this front, please see my earlier posts on Looking Skills and Art History Skills.

To connect art to climate would constitute a bit of a stretch, but medieval history, at least, has intensified its study of climate and climate change in the early Middle Ages, so at least my other field has indeed responded. So, Mr. Fodor, Art History (nor Medieval Studies, if you should also have them in mind) should not typify the irrelevance of certain paths of academic inquiry!

(And yet, part of me, as you know, relishes the possibility of irrelevance!)

The Jordan Times has an article about a recently-discovered cave church in Rihab. A mosaic inscription in the church of Saint Georgeous, built above the cave church ca. 230 CE, refers to “the 70 beloved by God and Divine” (see the previous link for a rather complete set of photos of the site). The archaeologists of the site claim to have discerned a living area immediately adjacent to the area for worship, as well as a water source, in order to create the picture of a secret location for persecuted early Christians to hide.

Verum Serum identifies the passage in Eusebius describing the exile of members of the Jerusalem church to nearby Pella on which the interpretation of the archaeologists depends. Wikipedia has a useful entry on the Seventy Disciples, with some helpful reminders.

*Update* See also this article in the Catholic Courier.