Purse Cover

Early Medeival

From the Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk, England ca 625

Gold, glass, and cloisonne garnets.

This large purse cover is one of many treasures foun in a ship beneath a royal burial moun. The combination of abstract interface ornament with animal figures is the hallmark of early midieval art in western Europe.

Saint Matthe, folio 25 verso of the Lindisfarne Gospels

Early Medieval

Northumbria, England, ca. 698-721. Tempera on vellum

The inspiration for this author portrait may have been a Mediterranean book. The illuminator converted the model's fully rounded forms into the linear flat-color idiom of northern European art.

Book of Kells,Chi-rho-iota page.

Early Medieval

Iona, Scotland, late 8th/early 9th century. Tempera on vellum.

In this opening page to the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the painter transformed the biblical text into abstract pattern, literally making Go's words beautiful. The intricate design recalls early meieval metalwork.

High Cross of Muiredach

Early Medieval

Monasterboice, Ireland, 923.  Sandstone.

Early medieval Irish high crosses are exceptional in size. Muiredach's cross marked his grave and bears reliefs depicting the Crucifixion and Last Judgment, themes suited to a christian funerary monument.

Equestrian portrait of Charlemagne (Charles the Bald)

Carolingian

Metz, France, 9th century, Bronze, origionally gilt

Carolingian emperors sought to revive the glory an imagery of the ancient Roman Empire.  This equestriat portrait depicts a crowned emperor holding a globe, the symbol of world domination.

Saint Matthew, folio 18 verso of the Ebbo Gospels

Carolingian

Hautvillers, France, ca. 816-835. Ink and tempera on vellum

Saint Matthew writes frantically, an the folds of his drapery writhe an vibrate. Even the landscape behind him rears up alive.  The painter merged classical illusionism with the northern linear tradition.

Palatine Chapel of Charlemagne

Carolingian

Aachen, Germany, 792-805

Charlemagne's palace chapel is the first vaulted structure of the Midle Ages north of the Alps. The architect transformed the complex, glittering interior of San Vitale into simple and massive geometric form.

Saint Michael's

Ottonian

Hildesheim, Germany, 1001-1031

Built by Bishop Bernward, a great art patron, Saint Michael's is a masterpiece of Ottonian basilica design. The church's two apses, two transepts, an multiple towers give it a distinctive profile. Entrances are on the side.  Alternating piers an columns divide the space in the nave into vertical units.  transformed the tunnel-like horizontality of Early Christian basilicas.

Hildesheim Doors with relief panels

Ottonian

Saint Michael's, Hildesheim, Germany 1015. Bronze

Left door = Genesis. Right door = Life of Christ.

Bernward's doors vividly tell the story of Original Sin an ultimate reemption, and draw parallels between the Ol an New Testaments, as in the expulsion from paradise and the infancy and suffering of Christ.

Gero Crucifix

Ottonian

Cologne, Germany, ca 970. Painted wood.

In this early example of the revival of monumental sculpture in the Middle Ages, an Ottonian sculptor depicted with unprecedented emotional power the intense agony of Christ's ordeal on the cross.

Lectionary of Henry II, Annunciation to the Shepards.

Ottonian

Reichenau, Germany, 1002-1014. Tempera on vellum

The golden background of the illuminations in the Lectionary of Henry II reveals Byzantine influence on Ottonian art, which received added impetus when Otto II married the Byzantine pricess Theophanu.

Saint-Sernin

Romanesque

Toulouse, France, ca. 1070-1120

Pilgrimages were a major economic catalyst for the art and architecture of Romanesque perio. The clergy vied with one another to provide magnificent settings for the display of holy relics.

Saint-Sernin Interior

Romanesque

Toulouse, France, ca 1070-1120

Saint-Sernin's groin-vaulted tribune galleries housed overflow crowds and buttressed the stone barrel vault over the nave. The transverse arches continue the lines of the compound piers.

Bernardus Gelduinus, Christ in Majesty

Romanesque

Relieft in ambulatory of Saint-Sernin

Toulouse, France, ca. 1096. Marble

One of the earlisest series of large Romanesque figure reliefs decorated the pilgrimage church of Saint-Sernin. The models were probably Carolingian an Ottonian book covers in metal or ivory.

South Portal

Romanesque Church Portal

Moissac, Tympanum & Trumeau

The clergy considered the church doorway the beginning of the path to salvation through Christ. Many Romanesque churches feature didactic scultural reliefs above and beside the entrance portals.

Gislebertus, Last Jugment, Saint-Lazare

Romanesque

Autun, France, ca. 1120-1135. Marble

Christ in a mandoria presides over the separation of the blessed from the amned in this dramatic vision of the Last Jugment, designe to terrify those guilty of sin and beckon them into the church.

(Virgin and Child) Morgan Madonna

Romanesque

Auvergne, France, 2nd-half 12th century. Painted wood.

The veneration of relics brought with it a demand for small-scale images of the holy family and saints to be placed on chapel altars. This wooden statuette depicts the Virgin as the Throne of Wisdom.

Head reliquary of Saint Alexander

Romanesque

Stavelot Abbey, Belgium. 1145. Silver repousse, gilt bronze, gems, pearls, and enamel.

Saint Alexander's reliquary is typical in the use of costly materials. The combination of an idealize classical head with Byzantine-style enamels underscores the stylistic diversity of Romanesque art.

Baptistery of San Giovanni

Romanesque

Florence, Italy. Dedicated 1059

The Florentine baptistery is a domed octagon escended from Roman and Early Christian central-plan buildings. The distinctive Tuscan Romanesque marble paneling stems from Roman Wall designs.

Bayeux Tapestry

Romanesque

Bayeux, France, ca. 1070-1080. Embroidered wool on linen.

The Bayeux Tapestry is unique in medieval art. Like historical narratives in ancient Roman art, it epicts contemporaneous events in full detail, as in the scroll-like frieze of Trajan's Column.

Saint-Denis Ambulatory and radiating chapels.

French Gothic

Saint-enis, France, 1140-1144

Abbot Suger's remodeling of Saint-Denis marked the beginning of Gothic architecture. Rib vaults with pointed arches spring from slender columns. The radiating chapels ahve stained-glass windows.

Royal Portal, west facade, Chartres Cathedral

French Gothic

Chartres, France, 1145-155.

The sculptures of the Royal Portal proclaim the majesty an power of Christ. The tympana depict, from left to right, christ's ascension, the secon coing, and Jesus in the lap of the Virgin Mary.

Notre-Dame

French Gothic

Paris, France. Begun 1163; nave and flying buttresses, ca. 1180-1200; remodeled after 1225

Architects first used flying buttresses on a grand scale in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. The buttresses centered the outwar thrust of the nave vaults and held up the towering nave walls.

Chartres Cathedral.

French Gothic

Chartres, France, as rebuilt after 1194.

Architectural historians consider the rebuilt Chartres Cathedral the first great monument of High Gothic architecture. It is the first church to have been planned from the beginning with flying buttresses.

Annunciation and Visitation, jamb statues.

Central door-way, West Facade. Reims Cathedral

French Gothic

Reims, France, ca. 1230-1255

Different sculptors working in diverse styles carved the Reims jamb statues, but all detached their figures from the columns and set the bodies and arms in motion. The figures converse through gestures.

Sainte-Chapelle

French Gothic

Paris, France, 1243-1248

At Louis IX's Sainte-Chapelle, the architect succeeded in dissolving the walls to such an extent that 6,450 square feet of stained glass acount for more than 3/4 of the Rayonnant Gothic structure.

Choir of Gloucester Catheral

French Gothic

Gloucester, Englan, 1332-1357

The Perpenicular style of English Late Gothic architecture takes its name from the pronounced vertically of its decorative details. The multiplication of ribs in the vaults is also a charactersitc feature.

Robert and William Vertue, fan vaults of the Chapel of Henry VII

French Gothic

Westminster Abbey, London, Englan, 1503-1519

The chapel of Henry VII epitomizes the decorative an structure-disguising qualities of the Perpendicular style in the use of fan vaults with lacelike tracery an hanging pendants resembling stalactites.

Ekkehard and Uta

French Gothic

Naumburg Cathedrl, Germany, 1249-1255. Painte Limestone.

The period costumes an inividualized features of these donor portraits give the impression that Ekkehard and Uta posed for their statues, but they live long before the Naumburg sculptor's time.

Nicholas of Verdun, Shrine of the Three Kings

French Gothic

Cologne Catheral, Germany. Begun 1190. Silver, bronze, enamel, and gemstones.

Cologne's archibishop commissioned this huge reliquary in the shape of a church to house relicsof three magi. The figures are sculpted versions of those on the Kolsterneuburg Altar.