Chapter 16
Europe After the Fall of Rome: Early Medieval Art in the West -Notes
Historians once referred to the thousand years (roughly 400-1400) between the dying Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity as its official religion and the rebirth (Renaissance) of interest in classical antiquity as the Dark Ages. Scholars and lay persons alike thought this long “interval” - between the ancient and what was perceived as the modern European world - was rough and uncivilized, and crude and primitive artistically. They viewed these centuries - dubbed the Middle Ages - as simply a blank between (in the middle of) two great civilizations.
This negative assessment, a legacy of the humanist scholars of Renaissance Italy, persists today in the retention of the noun Middle Ages and the adjective medieval to describe this period and its art. The force of tradition dictates that we continue to use those terms, even though modern scholars long ago ceased to see the art of medieval Europe as unsophisticated or inferior.
Art historians date the art of the Early Middle Ages from 500 to 1000. Early medieval civilization in Western Europe represents a fusion of Christianity, the Greco-Roman heritage, and the cultures of the non-Roman peoples north of the Alps. Although the Romans called everyone who lived beyond the classical worlds frontiers “barbarians,” many northerners had risen to prominent positions within the Roman army and government during the later Roman Empire. Others established their own areas of rule, sometimes with Rome’s approval, sometimes in opposition to imperial authority. In time, these non Romans merged with the citizens of the former northwestern provinces of Rome and slowly developed political and social institutions that have continued to modern times. Over the centuries a new order gradually replaced what had been the Roman Empire, resulting eventually in the foundation of today’s European nations.
The Art of the Warrior Lords
Rome’s power waned in Late Antiquity, armed conflicts and competition for political authority became common place among the non Roman people of Europe - Huns, Vandals, Merovingians, Franks, Goths, and others. Once one group established it self, another often pressed in behind and compelled it to move on. The Visigoths, for example, who once held northern Italy and formed a kingdom in southern France, were forced south into Spain under pressure from the Franks, who had crossed the Rhine River and established themselves firmly in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany. The Ostrogoths moved to Italy, establishing their kingdom there only to be removed 100 years later by the Lombards. In the North Anglo Saxons controlled what had been Roman Arian. Celts inhabited France and parts of the British Isles, including Ireland, the one area of Western Europe that Roman never colonized. In Scandinavia the great seafaring Vikings ruled.
Art and Status
Art historians do not know the full range of art and architecture these non Roman people produced. What has survived is not truly representative and consists almost exclusively of small “status symbols” - weapons and items of personal adornment such as bracelets, pendants, and belt buckles that archeologists have discovered in lavish burials. Earlier scholars, who viewed medieval art through a Renaissance lens, ignored these “minor arts” because of their small scale, seemingly utilitarian nature, and abstract ornament, and because the people who made them rejected the classical idea that that the representation of organic nature should be the focus of artistic endeavor. In their own time, these objects, which often display a high degree of technical and stylistic sophistication, were regarded as treasures. They enhanced the prestige of those who owned them and testified to the stature of those who were buried with them.
Merovingian Fibulae
Characteristic of the prestige ornaments was the fibula the decorative pins favored by the Romans and were used to hold together garments of men and women. Made of bronze, silver, or gold, they were often decorated with inlaid precious and semi precious stones. Fibulae were symbols of power and prestige. The entire surface is covered with decorative pattern carefully adjusted to the shape of the form to describe and amplify it. Often zoomorphic elements were so successfully integrated into this type of highly disciplined, abstract decorative design that they became almost unrecognizable. A fish may be discerned in the in the lower half of the fibulae. The looped forms around the edges are stylized eagle heads.
Burial Ships
In 1939, a treasure laden ship was discovered in a burial mound at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England. It epitomizes the early medieval tradition of burying great lords with rich furnishings.
Of the rich finds at Sutton Hoo, the most extraordinary is a purse cover decorated with cloisonné-enamel plaques. The cloisonné technique is documented as far back as the New Kingdom in Egypt. Metal workers produced cloisonné jewelry by soldering small strips of metal or cloisons (French for partitions), edge up, to a metal background, and then filling the compartments with semi precious stones, pieces of colored glass, or glass paste fired to resemble sparkling jewels. Today we call this enameling. Cloisonné is a cross between mosaic and stained glass.
On our piece there a four symmetrically arranged groups of figures that make up the lower row. The end groups consist of a man standing between two beasts. He is frontal they are in profile. As you should remember this is called a heraldic grouping and has its roots back in ancient Ur. The arrangement also carried a powerful contemporary message. It is a pictorial counterpart to the epic saga of the eras when heroes, such as Beowulf battle and conquer monsters. The two center groups represent Eagles battling ducks. The convex beaks of the eagles fit against the concave beaks of the ducks. The two figures fit together so snugly that they seem to be a single dense abstract design. This is also true of the man beast motif.
Above these figures are three geometric designs. The outer ones are clear and linear in style. In the central design, there is an interlace of pattern that turns into writhing animal figures. Elaborate interlace patterns are characteristic of many times and places, notably in the Islamic world. But the combination of interlace with animal figures was uncommon outside the realm of the early medieval warlords. In fact, metal craft with a vocabulary of interlace patterns and other motifs beautifully integrated with animal form were without doubt the art of the early Middle Ages in the West. Interest in it was so great that the colorful effects of jewelry designs were imitated in the painted decorations of manuscripts, in stone sculpture, in the masonry of churches, and in sculpture in wood, an especially important medium in Viking art.
Vikings
In 793 the pagan traders and pirates known as Vikings (named after the viks - coves or “trading places” - of the Norwegian shoreline) set sail from Scandinavia and landed in the British Isles. They destroyed the Christian monastic community on Lindisfarne Island off the Northumbrian (northeast) coast of England. Shortly after, these Norsemen (North men) attacked a monastery at Jarrow in England, as well as one off the coast of Scotland. From this time until the mid 11th century the Vikings were the terror of Western Europe. From their great ships they seasonally raided the coasts of the West. Their fast seaworthy longboats took them on wide ranging voyages, from Ireland to Russia, Iceland and Greenland, and even as far as Newfoundland in North America, long before Columbus.
The Vikings were intent on colonizing the lands they occupied by conquest. They were exceptional in organization, administration, and war, enabling them to govern large areas of Ireland, England, and France, as well as, the Baltic regions and Russia. For a while in the early 11th century, the whole of England was part of the Danish empire. When the Vikings settled in northern France in the early 10th century, their territory became known as Normandy. Those that lived there became known as Normans. Later, a Norman Duke, William the Conqueror, sailed across the English Channel and invaded and became the master of Anglo-Saxon England.
The Art of the Vikings was early associated with their great wooden ships. One burial ship, found in Oseberg, Norway, was more than 70 feet long and contained the remains of two women. It size and carved wooden ornament attested to the greatness of the one buried there. Long ago robbed of its many precious objects, there still remained some of the carving.
Our example is a wooden animal head post. It combines in one composition the image of a roaring beast and the deftly controlled and contained pattern of tightly interwoven animals that writhe, gripping and snapping in serpentine fashion. This piece is a powerfully expressive example of the union of two fundamental motifs in the art of the warrior lords of the northern frontiers of the old Roman Empire - the animal and interlace pattern.
Animal Art on a Church
By the 11th century, much of Scandinavia had become Christian, but Viking artistic traditions continued. No where is this more evident than in a decoration of the portal of a stave church (staves are wedge shaped timbers placed vertically), at Urnes, Norway. The portal and a few staves are all that is preserved of the mid 11th century church. It is preserved because it was incorporated in the walls of a 12th century church. Gracefully elongated animal forms intertwine with flexible plant stalks and tendrils in spiraling rhythm. The effect of natural growth is astonishing, yet it has been subjected to the designer’s highly refined abstract sensibility. This intricate style is the culmination of three centuries of Viking inventiveness (8th - 11th centuries).
Hiberno - Saxon Art
In 432 St. Patrick established a church in Ireland and began the Christianization of the Celts. The new converts developed a monastic organization, liturgical practices, and calendar of holidays different from that of the Church of Rome. This independence was do partly to the isolated, inaccessible and inhospitable places that the monasteries were located. These monasteries evangelized England and Scotland setting up monasteries there. These places later became great centers of learning and established monasteries in other countries.
A distinct style of art developed within these monasteries that has been called Hiberno - Saxon (Hiberno was the ancient name of Ireland), or Insular to denote the Irish English Islands where it was produced. Its most distinctive products were illuminated manuscripts of the Christian Church. Liturgical books were the primary vehicles in the effort to Christianize the British Isles. They literally brought the Word of God to a predominantly illiterate population who regarded the monks’ sumptuous volumes with awe. Books were scarce, jealously guarded treasures. Most of them were housed in the libraries and scriptoria (writing studios) of monasteries or major churches. Illuminated books are the most important extant monuments of the brilliant artistic culture that flourished in Ireland and Northumbria during the seventh and eighth centuries.
Carpets and Crosses
The marriage between Christian imagery and the animal lace style of the North may be seen in the cross inscribed page of the Lindisfarne Gospels. This type of page is called a carpet page because they resembled textiles. The book produced in the Northumbrian monastery on Lindisfarne Island (hence the name), contains several ornamental pages and exemplify Hiberno - Saxon art. According to a later colophon (an inscription, usually on the last page, providing information regarding the books manufacture), Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne between 698 and 721 wrote the Lindisfarne Gospels. “for God and Saint Cuthbert” Cuthbert’s relics recently had been deposited in the Lindisfarne church.
The patterning and detail of our example are very intricate. Serpentine interlacements of fantastic animals devour each other, curling over and returning to their writhing elastic shapes. The rhythm of expanding and contracting forms produces a most vivid effect of motion and change. But it is held in check by the regularity of the design and by the dominating motif of the inscribed cross. The cross stabilizes the rhythms of the serpentines and perhaps by contrast with its heavy immobility, seems to heighten the effect of motion. The illuminator placed the motifs in detailed symmetries, with inversions, reversals, and repetitions that must be studied to appreciate their maze like complexity. The zoomorphic forms intermingle with clusters and knots of line, and the whole design vibrates with energy. The color is rich yet cool.
Saint Matthew
All the works viewed so far display the Northern artists’ preference for small, infinitely complex, and painstaking designs. Some exceptions exist. Some insular manuscripts are clearly based on compositions from classical pictures from imported Mediterranean books.
In our example, the portrait of Saint Matthew in the Lindisfarne Gospels, The artist’s model must have been one of the illustrated Gospel books a Christian missionary brought from Italy to England. Author portraits were familiar features of Greek and Latin books, and similar representations of seated poets and philosophers writing or reading about ancient art. Unlike the cross page of the same book, the Lindisfarne Evangelist portrait follows the long tradition of Mediterranean manuscript illumination.