MEDIEVAL PERIOD
The history of Medieval art covered almost ten centuries between the Sack of Rome (c. 450
C.E.) and the Early Italian Renaissance (1400). Only one institution survived: the Christian Church
- centered in Rome and Constantinople. The church became the main sponsor of architecture and
the other types of art during the medieval era. It was during this time that not only were most
artists laymen, but a number of artworks were commissioned by wealthy middle class patrons for
personal enjoyment.
Medieval Architecture
This refers to architectural styles in medieval Europe during the middle ages. The architecture
of structures in medieval Europe was predominantly related to the building of sacred buildings,
such as churches, which was the primary structure signifying Christian faith.
The Roman basilica was the primary model of medieval religious architecture, and the Latin cross
plan was the most common among these religious buildings.
The medieval secular architecture that survived to this day mainly served defense purposes
during the medieval period. Castles and walls were the most notable nonreligious examples of
medieval architecture throughout Europe.
Romanesque Architecture
The earlier period of Romanesque architecture could be classified as Carolingian architecture
or Pre-Romanesque. The later period of Romanesque architecture was called Ottonian architecture
developed under the reign of Emperor Otto the Great (936-975).
Romanesque architecture was the name given to the style of architecture used in very early
Middle Ages. The name of this style of architecture led to the immediate association with the Roman
Empire.
Romanesque architecture was known by its massive quality, thick walls, round arches, sturdy
pillars, barrel vaults, large towers, and decorative arcading. The Romanesque period was defined by
important churches and monastic buildings. Romanesque architecture was succeeded by Gothic or
Perpendicular style of architecture of the later Middle Ages (1066 - 1485).
Lessay Abbey, Normandy, France Maria Laach Abbey, Germany
Gothic Architecture
This started in the 12th century in France. It was the new style in architecture and design
referred to as the French style. It was later on called the Gothic style during the Renaissance period.
Gothic architecture was light, graceful, and mostly spacious in nature. These changes included the
use of a pointed arch, ribbed vaults, and buttress. Heavy piers were also replaced by clustered
slender ones while window dimensions became larger as vaults and spires increased in height.
Gothic architecture Notre Dame de Paris, France and Reims Cathedral, France
Types of Medieval Art
Medieval art expanded from the type of art shown in religious paintings in the form of art
presented in illuminated. manuscripts, mosaics, and fresco paintings in churches.
1. Illuminated Manuscripts
These were religious texts decorated with rich colors, which often featured the use of gold
and silver. The word "illuminated" comes from the Latin word illuminare, meaning adorn, or
illuminate and is defined as the embellishment of a manuscript with luminous colors
(especially gold). The artists who produced the luxurious artwork on illuminated manuscripts
were called Illuminators. Illuminators could be male or female and were members of
monasteries or convents.
The jewelled cover of the Codex Aureus of St.
Emmeram and a page from the French Book of Hours
2. Metalwork
Metals with great luster, such as gold, silver, and bronze were frequently used as mediums in
the creation of religious artifacts.
Silversmiths and Goldsmiths
Fine artists who used precious metals and produced new forms of jewelry were called
silversmiths and goldsmiths.
Statue of Saint Faith (Sainte Foy), 870 Reliquary by Nicholas of Verdun in Tournal, 1205
3. Paintings
Medieval paintings included artworks in iconography, fresco, and panel painting depicting religious
scenes.
Panel Painting
It refers to a type of painting done on a single or several pieces of wood board known as a panel. The
Icons of Byzantine art were usually featured and done as panel paintings.
The "Merode Altarpiece," attributed to the workshop of Robert Campin
4. Embroidery
One of the most celebrated historical events of the Medieval era was the Bayeux Tapestry. It
was the history and the story of William the Conqueror, the Norman invasion of England and the
Battle of Hastings. It was an embroidery made of colored wool used to embroider important scenes.
The Bayeux tapestry was made of eight long strips of unbleached linen, which had been sewn
together to form a continuous panel. The linen formed the background of the Bayeux tapestry. The
Bayeux tapestry was about 20 inches high and 230 feet long•
A segment of the Bayeux Tapestry
5. Ceramic
Ceramic art: Ceramics were done handmade and not wheel-turned during the early medieval
period, producing common cooking ware, such as pots, jars, pitchers, and crucibles.
6. Mosaics
Mosaic is the artful creation of pictures with the use of broken pieces of colored glass, rock, or any
other material. Christian churches and cathedrals have used mosaic as wall and ceiling display.
7. Sculptures
Gothic sculpture emerged from the early rigid, inflexible, and elongated style of statues used in
Romanesque art into a more naturalistic style in the late 12th and early 13th century.
8. Stained Glass
Stained Glass art: Stained glass was displayed to the windows of Medieval churches,
cathedrals, and castles. Stained glass art exemplified the type of pictorial art that survived the
Medieval era of the Middle Ages. Stained glass art makes use of fragmented pieces of glass set to
look like an image or a picture. The pictures are joined together by strips of lead supported by a
hard durable frame.
RENAISSANCE (14th- 17th century)
It was considered the link between the Middle Ages and modern history. The term
"Renaissance" is from the French word, meaning rebirth. It comes from the Italian Rinascimento,
"Re" meaning "again" and nascere meaning "be born." Its influence altered literature, philosophy,
art, politics, science, religion, and the other aspects of intellectual investigation.
The Renaissance period embraced a rebellion of classical-based learning, the promotion and
use of linear perspective in painting and the gradual but widespread educational reform. The most
important development of the period was not a specific discovery but rather a process for discovery,
the scientific method. Early and influential promoters of these ideas included Copernicus and
Galileo.
Early Renaissance
It begun in Tuscany in the 14th century in the city of Florence. The characteristics and the
other variety of factors in the social and civic customs of Florence at the time, such as the political
structure; the patronage of its ruling family, the Medici; and the migration of Greek scholars and
texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, led to the
development of the Renaissance.
Classical artistic principles, including harmonious proportion, realistic expression, and
rational postures, were followed. During this period two artistic regions of Western Europe were
particularly active: Flanders and Italy.
Some of the early Renaissance artworks were the Dome of Florence Cathedral, designed by
Filippo Brunelleschi, Expulsion From the Garden of Eden by Masaccio, Jacob and Esau Relief,
Gates of Paradise by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, The Adoration
of the Kings (Monforte Altarpiece) by Hugo van der Goes, Primavera by Sandro Boticelli.
The Dome of Florence Cathedral, designed Expulsion From the Garden of Eden by
by Filippo Brunelleschi; Masaccio And Donatello's, David
High Renaissance Period (c. 1490-1530)
This was the period when classical ideals of humanism were fully implemented in both
painting and sculpture, and when painterly techniques of linear perspective, shading, and the other
methods of realism were mastered.
Techniques involving linear perspective and vanishing points, foreshortening, illusionistic
devices, chiaroscuro, and sfumato shading were all the methods mastered during the High
Renaissance. High Renaissance artists wanted beauty and harmony more than realism. Their
paintings might have been portraying nature, but they had no interest in mere imitation. It was this
that provided artists with the ideals of perfection: their aesthetics.
David by Michelangelo
Mannerism or Late Renaissance
Mannerism is derived from the Italian maniera, meaning "style" or "manner." Mannerism was a
European art style that appeared in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520,
lasting until about 1580 in Italy, when the Baroque style began to replace it.
Mostly, the Mannerist painting was more artificial than natural as compared with the
Renaissance painting. This could be attributed to such characteristics as the unnatural display of
emotions, unproportionate human figures, unnatural poses, uncommon effects of scale, use of
lighting or perspective, and bright loud colors.
BAROQUE PERIOD (1590-1720)
Baroque was taken from the Portuguese barocco meaning, "irregular pearl or stone" and
originating in Rome. Baroque art showed the religious conflicts of the age. The term Baroque
defined something that was extravagant or intricate and highly detailed.
The development of the Baroque style was associated closely with the Catholic Church. The
popularity of the style was due to the Catholic Church.
Painters portrayed a strong sense of movement, using spirals and upward diagonals, with
strong sumptuous color schemes, meant to delight and surprise. Exaggerated motion and clear
detail were used to describe the Baroque style.
The Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens; Ecstasy of St. Teresa by Bernini
ROCOCO PERIOD
The term Rococo is a hybrid word combining both rocaille (French for "shell") and barocco,
Italian for Baroque, the artistic style before the Rococo period. Rococo art broadly featured shell-
shaped curves and wavelike motifs, particularly in its extravagant furniture design and interior
décor. It was also known as the age of artificiality as depicted in artworks showing unreal or
artificial subjects. Artists of the period emphasized more the attention to detail, ornamentation, and
use of bright colors.
Rococo artists instead focused on secular, light-hearted, asymmetrical design while continuing
the Baroque taste for decorative style. Canvases were decorated with cherubs and myths of love
while keeping with the playful trend of the period; portraiture was also common.
ROMANTICISM
The Industrial Revolution began in the latter part of the 18th century, starting in England and
spreading to France and America. This revolution brought a new market economy based on new
technology. Industrialization made consumer goods cheaper and increased the production of food,
but there were those who looked back to the past, before people were commodified and nature was
destroyed, looking at it as a romantic period.
Romantics emphasized a life filled with deep feeling, spirituality, and free expression, considering
such virtues as a defense against the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.
Artists from the Romantic period tried to portray these principles into their works.
Romanticism strongly placed emphasis on emotion and individualism, as well as glorification
of the past and of nature.
IMPRESSIONISM
Created by Claude Monet and the other Paris-based artists from the early 1860.
Impressionism is the first modern movement in painting. It began in Paris and influenced Europe
entirely, and eventually, the United States. Its founders were artists who refused the official,
government exhibitions. In shifting away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of
their day aspired, the Impressionists aspired to seize the momentary, sensory effect of a scene - the
impression objects made on the eye in a passing instant.
The Impressionists relaxed their brushwork and included pure, intense colors. They
abandoned traditional linear perspectives and avoided the clarity of form.
POST-IMPRESSIONISM (1886 and 1905)
Post- Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic
depiction of light and color. The movement was led by Paul Cézanne (known as father of Post-
impressionism), Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat.
Post-impressionists rejected the idea that the main focus of the artwork should be on the
opticality of the creation. The Impressionists' interest for the naturalistic depiction of light and color
drew a negative reaction from the emerging post-impressionist artists.
The Card Players by Paul Cezanne The Starry Night by Vincent van Gough
POINTILLISM
It was developed by painters George Seurat who was able to study the science of colors and
optics to invent this new technique, and Paul Signac. Pointillist artists used only small dots of pure
color to make an entire composition. Pointillism has nothing to do with the subject matter of the
painting unlike the other art movements. It was only the specific way of applying the paint to the
canvas that made it different from others. Pointillism used the science of optics that created colors
from many small dots placed in close proximity to one another that would blur into an image to the
eye. Vincent Van Gogh was known to have experimented with the Pointillism technique. It could be
seen in his 1887 self portrait. Pointillism most often used dots of complementary colors to make
their subjects more lively; Complementary colors are colors of the opposite hue that balance each
other.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Femmes au Puits by
Jatte by Georges-Pierre Seurat Paul Signac
ART NOUVEAU (1890 and 190)
It was practiced in the fields of art, architecture, and applied art. It is a French term meaning
"newart" and is best described by organic and plant motifs, as well as any other highly stylized
forms. The organie forms usually take the form of sudden violent curves, which were commonly
termed as whiplash. The greatest graphic artists of the Art Nouveau movement were the French
lithographer Jules Cheret (1836-1932) and the Czech lithographer and designer Alphonse Mucha
(1860-1939).
Swan, rush and iris wallpaper design by Walter Crane; Poster by Alfons Mucha; and The Kiss by Gustav Klimt
SYMBOLISM
Symbolism in painting represents a mixture of form and feeling, of reality and the artist's inner
subjectivity.
Albert Aurier published in 1891 gave the first definition of symbolism as an aesthetic,
describing it as the subjective vision of an artist expressed through a simplified and non-
naturalistic style and hailing Gauguin as its leader.
Wanting to add spiritual value to their artworks, these founders of Symbolism produced
imaginary dream worlds populated with biblical figures and Greek mythology creatures, which were
often monstrous. Their artworks created what would become the most persistent subjects in
Symbolist art: love, fear, anguish, death, sexual awakening, and unrequited desire. Women became
the favorite symbol for the expression of these universal emotions.
FAUVISM
Fauvism started in France to become the first new artistic style of the 20th century. Fauves
created bright cheery landscapes and figure paintings with pure intense color and bold distinctive
brushwork.
During the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, artworks from the movement had shown the difference
of the art to traditional art that led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe the artists as Les Fauves
or "wild beasts," and, thus, the name was born.
EXPRESSIONISM
Expressionism was a modernist movement, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th
century. Its conventional trait was to show the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting
it radically for emotional effect to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists tried to express the
meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism was an artistic style in
which the artist tried to describe not the objective reality but the subjective emotions, objects, and
events that aroused him.
He achieved his goal by distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid,
violent, or dynamic application of formal elements.
The Scream by Edvard Munch The Large Blue Horses by Franz Marc
CUBISM
Cubism was started by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Cubist artworks were easily
recognizable because of their flattened, nearly two-dimensional appearance; an inclusion of
geometric angles, lines, and shapes; and a fairly neutral color. As the movement progressed, color,
texture, and graphic elements were added, to the point where later Cubist works often appeared
more like collage than anything else. Cubism allowed artists to see in a different way of seeing and
depicting real-life objects.
Cubist paintings were not meant to be realistic, instead, the artist would place together
fragments of the subject from different vantage points into one painting. By doing this, the artist
was trying to give a fuller, more detailed explanation of the subject. The most renowned Cubists
were probably Picasse and Braque, for both were instrumental in founding Cubism.
Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris
DADAISM
Dadaism or Dada was a form of artistic anarchy born out of hatred for the social, political, and
cultural values of the time. It embraced elements of art, music, poetry, theater, dance, and politics.
Dada was not an art style; it was more of a protest movement with an anti-establishment platform.
SURREALISM (20th Century)
The term "surreal" is often used loosely to mean simply "strange" Or "dreamlike."
The word "surrealist" (suggesting "beyond reality" was introduced by the French modernist poet
Guillaume Apollinaire in a play written in 1903 and performed in 1917. But it was Andre Breton
defined surrealism as: "Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally;
in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the
absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation."
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dall The Red Tower by Giorglo de Chirico
DE STIJL
The term is Dutch for "The Style! De Stifl was established in 1917. The artists most famous
with the movement were the painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, with the architect
Gerrit Reitveld, The movement suggested simplicity and abstraction through which the artists could
express a perfect idea of harmony and order. The harmony and order was created by decrensing the
elements to pure geometric forms. and primary colors.
Composition VII by Theo van Doesburg Composition en couleur A by Piet Mondrian
POP ART (1950s- 1960s in America and Britain)
"The term is short for "popular art." It showcased common household objects and consumer
products, like Coca-Cola and Campbell's Soup cans, as well as widely diverse forms of media, such
as comics, newspapers, and magazines.
Pop artworks done by artists were often made using mechanical or commercial techniques, such as
silk-screening.
Campbell's Soup cans Drowning Girl by Roy Lichtenstein
OP ART
Op Art (or Optical Art) was an international artistic movement in the 1960s that gave a new
form of abstraction that played with the viewer's visual perception, French-Hungarian artist Victor
Vasarely, considered the "grandfather" of Op Art, began creating mind-bending paintings as early as
the 1930s by using his studies of science, color; and opties to produce images that seemed to move,
swell, or change forms. Fashion brands soon recognized and promoted the bold patterns of Op Art
through their "Mod" designs.
Movement in Squares by Bridget Riley 1961; An optical illusion by the Hungarian-born artist Victor Vasarely in Pécs; and
Caracas by Jesús Soto
PHOTOREALISM
Photorealism- also called Hyperrealism or Superrealism was based on artists that mostly relied
on photographs to make an artwork. The artists projected photographs onto a canvas to be
captured with precision and accuracy with the aid of an airbrush. Photorealism as a movement
began within the same time and circumstances as Conceptual art, Pop art, and Minimalism. It
showed a strong attention to realism in art as compared with that of idealism and abstraction.
Photorealists: reintroduced the importance of process and deliberate planning over that of
improvisation into the making of art. In other words, traditional techniques of academic art were
again of great significance. The first and best-known Photorealists were Chuck Close, Don Eddy,
Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, Robert Bechtle, Audrey Flack, Denis Peterson, and Malcolm Morley:
Ralph's Diner by Ralph Goings; Telephone Booths Painting by Richard Estes
MINIMALISM
One of the most significant and powerful artistic styles of the 1960s, Minimalism artworks
were most often made of geometric shapes in simple arrangements and without any decorative or
dynamic displays. The geometric shapes defined the elemental or "bare bones" forms of art, which,
according to critics, represented the peak of modern art's advancement toward the most simplified
form of abstract art possible.
Donald Judd's Untitled and Tony Smith's Free Ride
CONCEPTUAL ART
Conceptual art put emphasis upon the concept or idea, and ignored the actual physical
appearance of the work. Conceptual artists did not need manual skill to create their work; in fact,
they could get away with not making anything at all.
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Jacek Tylicki's, Stone sculpture, "Give If You Can - Take If You Have To"
INSTALLATION ART
This is a relatively new type of contemporary art, applied by an increasing number of
postmodernist artists, which involves the "installation" of objects in a space, such as a room or
warehouse. The resulting arrangement of material and space comprises the "artwork."
An installation allows the viewer to enter and move around the arranged space and interact
with its elements; it offers a very different experience for the viewer from a traditional painting or
sculpture, which is normally seen from a single reference point. An installation can engage several
of the viewer's senses, including touch, sound, and smell, as well as vision.
Forest of it Numbers by Emmanuelle Mureaux
PERFORMANCE ART
This refers to artworks that are produced through actions performed by the artist or any other
participants, which may be live or recorded, spontaneous or scripted. The terms "performance" and
"performance art" only became popularly used in the 1970s although the history of performance in
the visual arts could be traced back to the futurist productions and dada cabarets of the 1910s. All
throughout the twentieth century, performance was always seen as a nontraditional way of making
art.
Lively and temporary with physical movement, it offered artists alternatives to the stationary
permanence of painting and sculpture. Widely accepted now as part of the visual art world, the
term has since been used to also describe film, video, and photographic and installation-based
artworks through which the actions of artists, performers, or the audience are expressed.
Bryan Zanisnik's performance of When I Was a Child and Marina Abramovit performing The Artist is Present
