MEDIEVAL ART OF THE WEST

Here we are faced with one of the most distinctive aspects of the medieval conception of the human personality, which while difficult to comprehend is also evident in other spheres of cultural life. Isn’t it amazing that the identity of the genius behind Corpus Areopagiticum, one of the greatest works of medieval Christian philosophy, was hidden under the name of Dionysius Areopagite,1¹AreopagiticaA collection of theological texts, presumably compiled in the fifth century CE. In the early Middle Ages, authorship of these works was attributed to one of the most revered saints in Christianity, Dionysius the Areopagite (first century CE), a disciple of the Apostle Paul and the first bishop of Athens. who was converted to Christianity by the Apostle Paul? It appears not to be fame or glory that drove medieval artists and thinkers when they created their masterpieces. Instead, it was a dialogue with the deity and a search for their own place—not under the sun or among people, but in the heavenly chambers. The absence of a name—in the form of a signature—or testament to the glory of a bone carver, does not mean they were not valued or appreciated or suggest that patrons didn’t poach artisans from one another.iA wealthy patron of science and the arts.

This anonymity was never all-consuming, although the practice ceased to be followed only on the eve of modernity. The pioneers it would seem were Italians of the communal age. The following is a typical description of an artist’s virtue in the twelfth century, an inscription to the sculptor Wiligelmo at the cathedral he helped to decorate in Modena:

What is important is not only the inscription itself, which is probably posthumous, but the fact it is held in the hands of Elijah and Enoch.iProphets Elijah and Enoch: Characters from the Old Testament. In Christianity, it is believed that both will appear to people before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Last Judgment. According to Old Testament legend, they are the only ones who did not die but were brought up to heaven alive. Here, they are guarantors of the afterlife for the great artist. The master who created the bronze doors of the cathedral in Briud (Auvergne) rather extravagantly engraved his name over the door handle in the form of a monkey face, which, according to an inscription running around it, symbolized the devil.

As far back as the sixth century, the Rule of Saint Benedict2²Saint Benedict of Nursia (480–547)Reformer of Western European monasticism, author of a monastic rule that regulated all aspects of monastic life.advised artists to work 'with the utmost humility', and this goes a long way in explaining the process of creating artifacts in both their external appearance and internal content. Nevertheless, during the Middle Ages, the value of a great master, a regular master, and an apprentice were well-known. During the mid-thirteenth century, Greeks, Arabs, and Romans worked together in the Capella Palatina (Palace Chapel) in Palermo by the order of Roger II. The mosaics displaying the most impressive artistry are least accessible to the human eye—they are situated closest to heaven and the gaze of God. The faces of the Pantocrator3³PantocratorPantocrator or Almighty Savior (from Greek παντοκράτωρ, ‘all-powerful’, ‘omnipotent’) is one of the most common and principal types of representations of Jesus Christ in Christian iconography. This iconographic image presents Jesus Christ as the Heavenly King and Judge. In Pantocrator icons, frescoes, or mosaics, Jesus holds the Gospel in his left hand, and his right hand makes a blessing gesture.and his angels within the dome create a stunning impression at close quarters. The lower down the restoration scaffolding along the chapel walls you go, the simpler the figures become. However, this creeping simplification never reaches the point of crudeness. We can be certain that the most important faces were made by the master while the less important ones were produced by his assistants. There is a clear hierarchy in terms of the hand by which works were created as well as the values behind them, which are embodied in the organization of artistic space within the chapel in a hierarchy of genres and styles.

As early as the Hellenistic era,4⁴HellenismThe period in the history of the Mediterranean from the fourth century BCE, after the conquests of Alexander the Great, to 30 BCE. During this period, Greek culture spread to the civilizations of the ancient East: Persia, Egypt, Syria, and India.the floors palaces and villas were decked with colorful mosaics – ornamental or containing a narrative. This custom was preserved by early Christians. In Jordan during the first millennium, a great many churches featured just such “carpet coverings”. The floor of one such church in Madaba featured a large and fairly accurate map of the Holy LandiPan-European historical name for Jerusalem and the surrounding lands.complete with all biblical relics.

The floor mosaic spoke in a “humble style” (stilus humilis), although its contents partially coincided with the “sublime style” (stilus sublimus) of mosaics and frescoes on the walls and vaults. At the same time, floors were sometimes graced with fairly detailed plot compositions. In the basilica in Aquileia (early 4th Century) the floor is decorated as if a sea – an allegory of earthly life. In Ótranto cathedral (12th century) – the floor is decorated with a tree of life, in whose branches we can find “The Fall of Adam and Eve”iAdam and Eve: In the Bible, the first humans on Earth and “The Ascension of Alexander the Great”iAlexander the Great (356–323 BCE): King of Macedonia, founder of a world empire from Greece to the borders of India. located near to the altar.

As seemingly simple as this monument is, we must understand that it is a tribute to the hierarchy of styles. No artist would portray a saint or God on the floor, for man to walk over. In iconographic terms this is far from simple, it is on the contrary a bold juxtaposition of a biblical story with a famous pagan narrative perceived as a glorification of earthly power. And as a warning to this very power – whose biggest vice was pride.

This style was not only “an expression of the mood of an era, a people or of personal temperament” (Wölfflin),iHeinrich Wölfflin: Swiss writer, historian, and art theorist. or “a form of meaning” (Valerie),iFrench poet, essayist, philosopher, art critic. it was also the result of a conscious choice made in a particular situation, to solve a specific problem, for a specific commission, artist or workshop. It would be more appropriate to refer to language levels or rhetorical techniques, if we may use a literary analogy (Zaurlander).iWillibald Sauerländer (1924–2018): German art historian, professor, art critic, and the former director of the Central Institute for Art History. One master from the Romanesque era could depict “The Last Judgment” in a fine, hieratic styleiThat is, sacred style. on a tympanumiArchitectural element named by analogy with a percussion instrument. Located on the facade of a building. above the main portal of the church,iThat is, entrance. while on the friezes,iArchitectural elements located between the capitals of columns and the cornice of a building. Often decorated with figurative sculpture. column caps and walls of the exact same facade the master could transform into a narrator using imagery which in the most important compositions within the cathedral would appear tactless, anti-aesthetic and humorous. As with the chapel of the Norman kings, on the facades of the Mu'assaq or the Angoulême in France the most dignified and meaningful compositions, that are most refined in style, are located high above the heads of spectators.

Let’s try to think about the correlation of style and shape, high and low, permitted and forbidden looking at a specific medieval kind of figurative plasticiVisual artworks that have a three-dimensional form and are created from pliable materials: plaster, clay, or wax. – church capitals, which decorated the top of the support or column. After visiting the newly built gigantic Abbaye de Cluny in the early 1120’s, the ascetic Bernard de Clairvaux5⁵Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153)French medieval theologian, mystic, social activist, Cistercian monk, abbot of the Clairvaux monastery. Revered by the Catholic Church as a saint and Doctor of the Church. was left distraught by the daunting luxury he encountered. On this occasion he spoke abruptly, for centuries:

“Why are there such ridiculous monsters in the cloister, where the monks devote themselves to their readings? This bizarre ugly beauty and beautiful ugliness? What reason can there be to have in this place dirty monkeys, wild lions, fearsome centaurs, half-man half-beasts, spotted tigers, battling knights and trumpeting hunters? You might see many bodies on one head, or several heads on one body. A four-legged creature with the tail of a snake, a fish painted with the head of a beast. You look and see the front of a horse with the back half of a goat. Or vice versa – a horned head resting on the body of a horse. All around you there is such an unthinkable variety of shapes you would rather read on marble than flip through a book, and stare at these works all day instead of thinking about God’s law. Good Lord! If they are not ashamed of their foolishness, at least let them regret the means they have wasted here!”

We can easily find two-headed and one-headed eagles, centaurs and elephants above the altars and in the cloisters6⁶CloisterA rectangular courtyard in a monastery or church, inaccessible to laypeople. of Romanesque churches in France, Italy and Spain. In the magnificent cloister of the Sicilian Monreale Cathedral (final quarter of the 12th century), which has recently been beautifully restored, you can discover the entire history of the world and medieval bestiary, including both the fantastical and the real. The iconographic and dogmatic boldness of its creators, working for Norman kings, is so remarkable that a centaur has even taken the place of the dove in the scene of the Annunciation.7⁷AnnunciationThe announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary about the future birth of Jesus Christ. A Christian holiday.This alone is a blatant indiscretion in terms of dogma, and even more so due to the presence of Mithras8⁸MithraA deity whose cult, in various variations, spread from India to the Roman Empire. Mithra patronizes friendship, justice, and concord.in the same scene.

However, it was possible in order to achieve a very pronounced rhetoric of the exotic, with richness of forms and styles, since several artists’ guilds worked here at the same time. The kings wanted to demonstrate that anything was possible in their beloved cathedral. The fact that the commissioner of the cathedral King William II the Good appears in mosaics and capitals can leave us in no doubt that the colorful world of his cloister, which surpasses even the best surviving specimens in Provence, Burgundy or Languedoc in sheer scale of design, was the face of authority. As a result, like with other large cloisters, the Monreale complex cannot be deciphered without a degree of ambiguity. However, the hiring of first-class artisans and the significant freedom afforded to them is itself a cultural and political manifesto by the sovereign who built his palace here.

In this sense, in typological terms the joint efforts of the king, archbishop, synodic capituliCollege of clerics at a bishopric or church. and the artisans is comparable with that of their contemporary Prince Vsevolod of Vladimir, who gave a richly decorated carved facade that was unlike anything else seen before in Russia to his local church in Vladimir – the Cathedral of Saint Dmitrii.

Let us not forget that the bestiary of Romanesque capitals, which is connected by direct ties with the earliest handwritten, illustrated bestiaries, is only one such bright and glorious episode in the history of church decoration.

The Ottonian basilica did not feature historicized capitals,9⁹Historiated capitalsCapitals (the crowning element of a column, pier, anta, pilaster, or any other columnar structure, offering structural support for the horizontal member (entablature) or arch situated above it.) decorated with narrative compositions: scenes from the Old and New Testaments, images of historical characters, heroes of epic works, and fables. The tradition of decorating capitals in this way reached its peak in Romanesque architecture, which was prevalent in European architecture in the eleventh to twelfth centuries CE. The name of the style comes from the active use of semi-circular arches and vaults, characteristic of ancient Roman architecture. although it eagerly accepted plastic arts on its altars and episcopal pulpits using both stone (ciborium of the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio in Milan) and precious materials like ivory (lectern of Aachen chapel) and repoussé (Basel cathedral Altar, Cluny Museum). The first significant experience of a narrative theological complex of narrative capitals is the “tower-portico” of the great Benedictine church at the abbey of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, from the first half of the 11th century.

This flourished throughout the 12th century, with reference points of Moissac and Toulouse at the beginning, and Monreale at the end. Following Monreale, with the shift from Romanesque style to Gothic,10¹⁰GothicGothic (French gothique, Italian gotico, from Latin gothicus, ‘belonging to the barbarian tribe of the Goths’) is an artistic style in European art from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries CE.the capital retained the “monstrousness” that irritated some, and also the sublime and intricate narrativeness. Sculptors returned to nature and imitations of flora. The masters working on French, German and English cathedrals achieved amazing results, which are striking even in fragments. However foliage is not history, it is merely a metonymy of nature, an impression, which means that this new direction constituted something gained, and something lost.

Sometimes the diabolical, grimacing world of Romanesque capitals is interpreted as a kind of intermediate space between the floor and vaults, and metaphorically as an intermediate space between the earth and the sky, between carnal man and the spiritual heights. This sea of vices spills not only over the cloister but directly into the church itself (for example, in Vézelay and Autun). The only reason for this is to show the believer the full horror and perversity of sin. Therefore, the more wicked the grin fashioned by the carver, the more convincing the evangelistic proclamation behind it. One can agree in part with this interpretation.

However the overall picture may be even more complex if you try to decipher hundreds upon hundreds of these stone “baskets” as a single phenomenon, ranging from the smallest (for cloister columns) to the largest examples. For example, the choiriUpper gallery inside a church. of Cluny III or the surviving in situ programs of Auvergne churches that even retain their original colouring. The tone of the narrative within the greater whole can seemingly differ quite significantly. This of course is due to the simple fact that several pairs of hands worked simultaneously on a major order. However, unfortunately our knowledge of how and in what way the work of the artisans was controlled is negligible. We can only see that one capital “smiles at us”, while another one ten meters away is intimidating, and a third causes us to blush, feel repentance, exhorting us to pray, heartfelt contrition as the preachers put it. In one row of columns, that form the space of the church, we can see a twiform monster staring at a martyr on a nearby column or a scene from the New Testament. Does that mean that by definition the devil’s face is in front of us? This isn’t written anywhere.

We can also see a whimsical ornamental motif, which was increasingly departing from the “conventionalities” of Romanesque style toward Gothic “naturalism” during the 12th century. Does that mean we’re on track toward a portrait of nature? Although it’s not written anywhere, our instinctive attraction to the system forces us to search for coherence, forethought, completeness of design and wholeness where there is none, since they were not required for the visual and intellectual experience of the commissioner nor the spectators. The historicized capital both constructs the story and at the same time blows away the visual order, because paradoxically its intermediate position is both central within the space of the main nave,11¹¹NaveThe space between columns in a church.as well as on the side wall of the nave, if the half-columns are decorated with capitals like in Autun. It serves as a visual joint in the body of the church, one which was also brightly colored.

An Ottonian capital of the year 1000, for example, in Michaeliskirche, Hildesheim erected by Bishop Bernward, consciously rejects the use of imagery, using abstraction harmoniously combined with the wonderfully peaceful space of the basilica, where nothing can disturb the calm of prayer. The historicized capital breaks the silence, requiring an inquisitive glance and is therefore in dialogue rather than monologue with the silent prayer. In Auvergne, for example, unlike neighboring Burgundy, the main doctrinal content of the church was designated to the capitals of the nave and choir, which are statuesque, extremely visible and easy to read.

In Western France, at Saint-Pierre d'Aulnay (Charente Maritime), a priest standing next to the altar in the central apse facing the nave could see an elephant on one of the columns of the central cross, whose body is divided in two, encircling the capital basket. Further up but still visible without the need for binoculars, the same priest’s gaze from the same position would fall upon the cautionary tale of Samson.12¹²Samson and DelilahSamson and Delilah are characters from the Old Testament. Samson gained fame for his exploits in the Jewish struggle against the Philistines. Delilah was a Philistine woman whom Samson fell in love with and whom she betrayed.In his sleep, Delilah cut off his hair with huge scissors, and the Philistine bound his hands. How would he have interpreted this story? As a typological allegory of the Eucharist,13¹³EucharistEucharist (Communion) is one of the two main sacraments (rites) in Christianity. During the ritual, believers partake of bread and wine, which symbolize the body and blood of Jesus Christ.which he himself gives on this very altar? Or more straightforwardly as a moral warning that applies to the layman visiting the church and the clergy serving in it in equal measure? And why is there an elephant here that has been confidently and lovingly carved, and is therefore artistically compelling? Despite the clarity of the scene, its place within the series (even if there was no clear program) and its relationship with the neighbouring images – which are not accidental, as one would like to believe – remain unclear. This makes the Romanesque capital an element that is both eloquent and also destructive of the architectural order it is supposed to create.

Around the year 1200, Bishop Sicard of Cremona wrote a work dedicated to worship which would later inspire the vault of Guillaume Durand. The first book is devoted to the design and symbolism of the church. Sicard “builds” his church based on an idealized image of human society, assigning all the main parts of the building and even materials symbols derived from biblical exegesis. He proposes images of the bishops on the columns, with the suggestion of scaling down their multitude to a symbolic seven because it was said that “Wisdom has built her house, she has carved out her seven pillars” (Proverbs 9:1), and these pillars should be fulfilled seven times by the Holy Spirit, i.e. the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The apostles can be found at the foundations of the columns, supporting both the bishops and the building itself.

Sicard wrote for the clergy of his diocese, addressing them in his role as primate, as the name of his work “Mitrale” hints, but the influence of his work soon spread far beyond the borders of Cremona and Lombardy. Let’s consider how to interpret his work: if, say, an allegory of vice or a hanged Judas, twisted juggler or centaur are depicted on the capitals, would the column also be a “bishop” or “apostle”? And is Salomé,14¹⁴Dance of SalomeDance of Salome before King Herod: One of the episodes in the New Testament. Herod Antipas was one of the Jewish kings of the first century CE. During Herod's reign, Jesus Christ was crucified. Salome was the stepdaughter of Herod and the daughter of his wife Herodias. During a banquet, Salome danced before the king, which so delighted Herod that he promised to grant any wish of Salome. At the request of her mother, Salome asked Herod to bring the head of John the Baptist on a platter, the prophet and the immediate precursor of Jesus Christ, because he had condemned Herod's marriage to Herodias. Herodias was married to Herod's brother, but contrary to Jewish law, she entered into a relationship with the king of Galilee.dancing seductively in front of the brooding old Herod, a good example for any believer?

There were in fact enough paradoxes like this in the symbolic language of plastic art. Bernard saw a lack of restraint – even scurrilousness that was unheard of prior to his generation, and unknown to us, as most of it has not survived to this day. Some customers believed that scurrilousness could help to teach monks, but perhaps this was deceptive? Bernard was not alone in his reaction.

Once again: the capital is not a narrow genre designed for a small circle of connoisseurs. If the stained glass window, which had been perfected around the year 1200 when the century of historicized capitals was coming to an end, had been intended as a systematic account of Salvation then the world of capitals would be a polyphonic concert. Perhaps this is why stained glass windows didn’t borrow much from capitals, and this gap in something akin to the transition from early scholastics to classical scholastics – from the school of Chartres to Thomas Aquinas. However, it is in the capital, this “spatial frame” (Fosillon)3, that the medieval artist has achieved such amazing freedom, which neither he nor the connoisseurs of his art have ever forgotten. The physiognomic experiments, naturalism and empiricism of gothic sculptors and artists of the 13th century, their taste in storytelling, detail and amusement are based on a treasure trove of forms accumulated over previous generations. These forms were embodied using not only sublime style, stilus altus and portals, but also in the narrative style of capitals. The Romanesque church learned to speak several languages and passed on its knowledge to the Gothic Cathedral.