The medieval World

The middle ages/ The medieval world notes

Roman empire

·      400 to 1400 AD

·      The Roman empire was at its height at around 200 AD

·      Early Christianity began

The Dark ages

·      From c.500 to 1000 AD

·      Decline of 50% in the population because of the plague.

·      Lots of people joined the church and lots of religious art was created.

Medieval Britain 

·      (Celtic cross) Anglo Saxon jewelry was made and beautiful manuscripts in books had the same look as the jewelry.

·      The books were made in monasteries. The main language used was Latin

·      Not many people could read so they believed ‘knowledge is power’

·      Battle of Hastings 1066 the Bayeux tapestry was made its 70m long

·       Important documentation it shows the whole story of the battle

·      It even shows the death of King Harold.

Islam

·      12^th century Quran was very different to the Christian bibles because there was no images of people.

·      It was all based on typography, calligraphy and intricate patterns

Far east, China

·      They invented ink, paper and movable type between 1041-1048

·      The movable type didn't last very long in china because they had too many letters

·      They created paper money

·      They drew as if they were writing. It flowed very naturally

·      They only used ink “colour fascinates the eye not the mind”

·      In china to be a good painter first you must be a great calligrapher.

·      To be an artist you had to be well educated (a scholar)

India

·      Main religions were Hinduism and Buddhism 

·      They created art purely for religious ceremonies (it was destroyed straight away)

·      They were very sexual and celebrated sex a lot within their art

Miso America

·      America was accidentally discovered

·      There was a lot of people native to the country but a lot of them dies because of the Europeans invading.

·      The Mayan calendar consisted of a series of cycles and it ended on the 21^st of December 2012

·      Mixtee art 1350-1500 AD

 research task

Analyse two examples of imagery from Christian/Celtic Europe, using three or more different academic sources.

For this topic I decided to look at the Bayeux tapestry. The Bayeux tapestry is basically a really long comic strip that shows the battle of Hastings. It records England being invaded by the Normans. The tapestry is two hundred and thirty foot long and around twenty inches wide. The tapestry consists of 8 different sections that have been stitched together after they were embroidered.[1] The tapestry will have had an artist to draw the scenes onto the linen, then to be embroidered on by someone else.  The images used in the tapestry are very literal and descriptive of what is going on but the tapestry has no speech or dialogue. It does have Latin inscriptions that give a basic outline of what is happening in the image (figure 1.)

Unlike modern strip cartoon it has no conversation and does not make use of those interesting bubbles saying, "Thinks-." The Latin inscription gives us some indication of what’s going on, but for the most part the pictures are left to speak for themselves.[2]

(figure 1) opening section of the tapestry 

The tapestry is very simplistic in the way that it shows faces and buildings. All of the faces are side ways on as opposed to full on or three quarter as seen in (figure 2). This was probably done for ease, as it is easier to create a simple profile face than any other. Buildings were also really simple and they were more suggestive of buildings rather than showing them in their entirety. This was done so the people inside of the buildings are visible to the viewer. 

The extent to which profile faces are utilised in the tapestry is unusually great in the context of eleventh-century art as a whole. The main reason for this having nothing to do with race, but rather the literal flow of the narrative, and the fact that it is easier to embroider profile faces than three-quarter ones. In point of fact the use of profile faces was increasing in England as much as in Normandy and France during the later eleventh century. [3]

(Figure2) Bayeux tapestry 

The tapestry uses eight different colours red, two different yellows, two of green and three blue these most likely wont have been symbolic of real life colours. The tapestry will have had many different people working on it to get it complete. Baring this in mind the style does not differ at all throughout the tapestry. This is because an artist or designer will have drawn out the design before passing it on to the embroiders.

Yet while many different hands must have been at work along the tapestry, we cannot at present tell one from another [4]

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[1] N Denny & J Filmer-Sankey, The Bayeux Tapestry the Norman conquest 1066, Collins, London,1966

[2] N Denny & J Filmer-Sankey, The Bayeux Tapestry the Norman conquest 1066, Collins, London,1966

[3] R Gameson, The study of the Bayeux Tapestry, Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1997. P 170.

[4] L Musset, The Bayeux Tapestry, 2002. P 19

17th and 18th Century

17^th and 18^th centuries – notes

·      A lot of advances in science

·      Galileo was arrested by the Catholics because what he believed was against the churches beliefs. His books were burned, he was jailed for life and forced to dent all of his beliefs.

Baroque art

·      Over the top decretive art.

·      It was accepted by the church as it showed religious themes.

·      Women in the paintings were idealised and shown with a fuller figure as this showed wealth and prosperity.

·      The British Empire was dominant throughout the world.

·      Money and wealth were important in paintings.

·      Capitalism started so everything became tradable.

·       People bought oil paintings to show wealth and intelligence.

·      The church was incredibly wealthy and had galleries packed with paintings.

·      People included black servants as well as farmers and workers in their paintings to show wealth as if they were possessions.

·      The slave trade was a product of capitalism

·      some artists showed how bad it was for the poor people in their art work (Gin Lane) showed real life not wealth

·      Vermeer created a lot of similar paintings that always had the same light source coming from the same window. This was refered back to a lot in future art.

·      The camera obscurer was created so artists started to create art that looked like photographs.

Research task 

Compare the paintings of Vermeer and Rembrandt, particularly relating to their methods of lighting in their subjects.

Rembrandt was the first artist to use studio lighting in his paintings. his lighting technique worked so well that it is still used regularly within photography lighting today. The way that rembrandt used lighting was completely new and revolutionary when he first tried it out. It worked really well and added a new sense of realism to his paintings. Rembrandt cared a lot about the use of lighting so much so that he'd start to re think the colours that he used to get a better effect of light in the painting. The lack of colour in the centre of the face compared to the dark colours in the background is how he achieved the lighting effect best as seen in (figure1).[1]

Rembrandt reconsidered colour from 1627, he had tended to sacrifice colour in his effort to strengthen the 'spotlighting' effects in his paintings. In the 1640's he began searching for his possibilities of more frontal lighting in which larger areas of colour particularly reds, yellows and whites were allowed to retain their force

(figure 1) Rembrandt van Rijn, Self portrait, 1659, oil on canvas

Rembrandt's use of lighting was very different to how vermeer (one other great painter of the time) used lighting. Rembrandt used artificial lighting in his paintings and vermeer always used natural light from a window in his studio as seen in (figure 2) and almost all of his paintings. The fact that his studio had a window with lots of natural light also allowed him to create a camera obscurer in his studio. It is thought that he used the technology of camera obscurer to create his images. The reason people think he used this technology is because his paintings are so accurate even down to the reflections in windows and mirrors. To create the camera the window would have been blocked out and a tiny hole would be cut out to allow light in. This would then project an image onto  a flat surface inside of the studio then it just had to be traced over.

Fink mentions as possible evidence of Vermeer using the camera, the fact that he seems to depict the shapes and sizes of objects with considerable precision though he fails to justify this assertion with any actual measurements.[2] 

(figure 2) Jan Vermeer, Girl reading a letter at an open window, 1657

These two painters don’t just have differences with the way they light their paintings but they are also very different in the ways that they set up the compositions of their images.

[1] E van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter at work, Amsterdam University press, p 289.
[2] P Steadman,Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the truth behind the masterpieces, Oxford university press, 2001. p39.