Transcript for:
Exploring Classical and Medieval Art

Hello everybody welcome back to art appreciation this is module 3 part three um so if you haven't watched part one and two go back and watch those and just another reminder that you should include part one two and three all in the same document um but make sure to separate them with some kind of subheading so distinguish which one is part one which one is part two and which one is part three but put them all in the same document so part three is going to be a little bit longer than Parts one and two um we're covering classical and medieval art so just a heads up this is a massive period of time it's very very long period of time they're recovering very quickly so we're really just going to be sort of scraping the surface um for art for this period of time um really classical and evil um typically it's divided up they're not together but we're including them together just for sake of time within this semester um so let's start in Greece first we're going to look at this aora so aora refers to the shape of this vase um it was created around 530 BCE and it's considered archaic Greek so this is an example of black figure Pottery in Greek art Greek artists used either either black figure or red figure when depicting images on their Pottery these images were painted on using a slip or wet clay so this vase was made with clay and then wet clay was added to add the details and then it was all baked in the Kil so it's called black figure because the figures are used are painted using black slip red figure would be the opposite the base would be black the images the figures would be red that's the only difference so this scene on this aora shows Ajax and achilles playing a dice game so this is a mythological scene from the stories of the Trojan War in which a in which Ajax and achilles both fought next we have the choros so this was made about 590 580 BCE it's also archaic Greek um and it's made with marble so you may have an idea in your head of what Greek sculpture looks like the fact that this is archaic Greek is why it does not meet those ideals um this archaic Greek means it's the very early forms of what we consider classical Greek so this is considered one of the earliest marble statues of a human figured it was carved in ATA Greece the pose is to believed to have been derived DED from Egyptian art um which if you're familiar with Egyptian art you can kind of see that we looked at that before um with some different um statues in the previous parts so this style of figure led to an exploration of new forms and techniques of displaying the human form and art so this par particular statue marked the grace of a young Athenian aristocrat so now we're going to see a little bit later this is 440 BCE so about 100 years give or take um later we have the derus so you may notice it says after polyclitus um again this is a Roman copy of the original the original was cast about 440 BCE so the dieras just means spear Bearer again the original probably would have been bronze not um marble so this sculpture has several armatures which are used to support the figure um because it's carved out of stone the original bronze would not have had these so the armatures we have one here connecting the hip and the arm we have this guy coming up to the leg none of that would have been there with the with the bronze it's believed that at one point he would have been holding an actual spear um whether card from Marble or of another material um again the bronze would not have been C from Marble it would have either been a wooden spear real spear or it would have been cast in bronze as well so this sculpture shows the classical Greek display of idealism that we're used to so we are no longer in AR archaic Greek period This is gree as we typically know it so he has that stoic face in that perfect form that we associate with classical Greek art this figure is standing in what's called a contraposto pose so this was believed to be the ideal way to display the human body and we'll see this a lot um not just in the Greek period but with the Romans and even into the Renaissance we'll see the contraposto post so contraposto adds the a realism by creating a dynamic composition it makes the figure appear to be an active movement it also displays all the muscles in both a relaxed and flexed State this shows understanding of the human body and muscle structures so relaxed State Flex State relaxed State Flex state so we have that and it sort of twist twisting so one arm is flexed one leg is flexed one arm is or one leg is relaxed one arm is relaxed and they are not per they're diagonal from each other he also has his head turned slightly so it sort of gives this um what we call an s-shaped but even when we talk about painting and we talked about that sort of circular movement of the eye through the painting this sort of pulls your eye around so it sort of pulls the the viewer's eye around the sculpture next we're going to move on to classical architecture so our classical Greek architecture um this is the Parthenon um and it's in a quite a state of disrepair these days um it was made about 447 to 432 BCE um we actually know the designers names iktinos and calices um and it is located in Athens Greece this is a very famous landmark so the paron is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis so the Acropolis sits above the rest of the Town um of Athens and it's dedicated to the goddess Athena it had series of decorative sculptures along the outside and a larger than life-size sculpture of the Goddess herself on the inside um however those are all missing the current state of the parthona to misuse um it's been many different things over the year it was converted to a Catholic Church at one point it was a mosque and there were rumors that at one point it might have even been a fireworks or explosives Warehouse um it's believed that it was used to store Munitions in the 1600s and then was bombed during the 1687 Siege of the Acropolis resulting in an explosion that severely damaged it and really once it was damaged it never got repaired so that sort of led to its decomposed state in current in present day so this is what it would have looked like during its on time we see all this sculpture uh things up at the top it would have also been painted um the paint that was used was sort of wax based so over time it just kind of deteriorates off it doesn't stay um there is a little bit of residue still left um and so that's what we how we know what colors they used wear um so some of the sculptures that once adorned the exterior are called the Elgen marbles they still exist and are in the British museum in London if you know anything about the British museum you know it's full of stolen things and that's one such stolen thing their argument is that the Elgen marbles probably would have been lost had they not taken them um which you know might be true but also they could give them back and they refuse so here we are um there are restoration efforts at the paron um it's just going to take time the paron is built in the Doric order um which is based on the style or the type of column so the D column has no base um and it has a plain Capital at the top just this square with a circle Capital at the top sometimes the columns are fluted which are these little um lines right here that's fluted sometimes they're not um they are in the case of the paron an interesting feature of the Parthenon um is that the columns are designed using what's called anasis which is a slight bulge as the column gets taller so let's go back to our original image this bulge near the top help helps the column appear straighter um this ocular effect relates to the way parallel lines look as they move away from the viewer so we talked about that with one point perspective and our example was the road the further away the road is the closer together each side looks until it's just vanished so this building is so large you can see little people down here again if you're standing below the column these columns would not look very sturdy because those lines are going to move towards each other until the very top of the column looks very skinny and weak um and you're not going to expect that to hold up a roof above you so they made the top a little bit larger than the bottom and even from this distance that the viewer is standing it appears the top is smaller than the bottom but that is incorrect um so with that bulge even with that bulge the top still appears to be smaller than the bottom it's just because of how big it is okay moving on um we have the leaan group so we've briefly talked about this one before so it comes from about 27 to uh BCE to 68 CE and we do have the uh creator for this it was Ed sand sorry Edis sander and pooris so the story of leaan is told by Virgil in his anad so leoan was a priest of Poseidon during the Trojan War who was killed with both of his sons after trying to warn those of his town that the Trojan Horse was a ruse the snakes were sent as punishment by the gods killing Lakwan and his two sons so this work shows the intense Agony in lakan's face of not only being attacked by the serpents but also of losing his two sons so we see that just Agony and pain so you may be thinking this looks a little bit different um than what our previous sculptured looked like so we looked at derus before very stoic very solemn and then we moveed to this which is a lot of emotion a lot of movement um we still see a little bit of that contra um especially in the sun right here bent straight straight bent even in leak one like this is almost straight this is very bent this is very bent this is almost straight but it's really the emotion um so this is an example of helenistic Greek art so during this period of time sculptors are moving towards the belief that ideal ISM was not just remaining stoic but was rather showing true deep emotion and so this sculpture is an example of that so we still have idealism of the human form but I the the concept of idealism has changed so moving from Greek into Rome so the Roman EMP Empire um really started to gain um Traction in the late BC um the Greek culture and the Roman Empire overlap um and if you don't know the Romans took a lot of inspiration from the Greeks and you will see that almost immediately in their art um so that's why when we classify Greek and Roman art we usually classify them together especially if we're doing sort of an overview like we are doing in this class and we'll call it all classical art so that's where our term classical comes from it's going to be Greek and Roman art and a lot of other cultures especially Western Art looks back to the classical art of Greek and Rome so here we have a look at the Roman Empire it covered a large portion of land um it had a great diversity of people it's known for its democracy and use of voting in government as well as its technological advancements the Romans provided aqueducts that carried fresh water and they also provided roads to its entire Empire Rome is also the first known culture to have indoor plumbing so very very huge piece of land where it says Roma right here this is where um the city of Rome is located but influence in their Arc came from all over the Empire so our first work of art of Roman art uh comes from the mid 1st Century ad um and it is a marble bu of a man so the Roman Empire showed an increase in individualism um so individualism is thoughts of oneself we're not thinking about the culture at large all the time we're thinking about the individual so they still they still created sculptures depicting idealism however they also recognized the need for individual lifelike depictions so lifelike depictions were often used for busts um like this one so portrait bus showed the not so ideal nature of individuals it showed wrinkles and age as well as individual facial characteristics so this is likely what this man actually looked like um and in case you didn't know and you couldn't tell from this image a bust um is basically just part of the shoulders the neck and the head of an image or of a figure portrait busts like this one were often used as funeral bus um they were created prior to burial and sometimes accompanied the Tomb of the individual sometimes they function in the same way that photographs work today so they were a way to remember the deceased after death so we can view a photograph a or today we view a photograph of our great grandparent um and that's how we have their image and know what they looked like so this sort of functioned the same way as that and so generations of this person's family could be like this is what your ancestor looked like so moving on we're back to the Coliseum we talked about the coliseum in architecture we're going to dig a Little Deeper um in this section so the Coliseum was built between 72 and 880 ad um and as discussed in part two the Coliseum was commissioned by Emperor Vespasian and finished under Emperor Titus of the flavian dynasty it was originally known as the flavian amphitheater but we just call it the Coliseum today so prior to this being built um one of the previous Emperors Nero had misused Roman wealth to the disdain of the people after after a tumultuous time theasian took over his Emperor he destroyed the Palace of Nero which was rumored to be made completely of gold and built the coliseum in its place in the center of Rome for the people so the um Nero's Palace was originally at this location in the very center of the Roman city um and so the flavians tore it down melted down all the gold and built a place of entertainment for the people instead the first 100 days after the coliseum's opening were filled with games including Gladiator combats wild animal fights um and even um battle reenactments the Coliseum was used for literary readings or orations which were stories told from memories um and some of the battles they recreated were even SE sea battles the main portion of the amphitheater was designed with tunnels underneath yep we have picture that um for this was for holding animals or people water could be flooded into the amphitheater for uh Recreations of sea battles and then drained out so there was a cover over all of this during its uh Heyday that's no longer here um and so that that cover could be flooded so that there would be water so they could bring ships in um and then or it could be just the standard base they usually put some kind of dirt or sand down but not always um some of your TV and movie depictions of the Coliseum are not accurate um they usually have some sort of dirt floor which might not have actually been there um but these tunnels would have held Gladiators they been used for transporting things in and out of their Arena um and they would have held animals as well Shades were designed to cover portions of the seating at different times of the day and it's likely that concessions were served so we're missing large chunks of the Coliseum um people would invade Rome and take things and so um a lot of the columns are missing on the outside so this side is the most intact so there likely would have been um Shades that pulled from one side to the other and um to shade both of you are and the stage if need be after four centuries of active use so that's 400 years of active use the arena fell into neglect and up until the 18th century it was used as a source for building materials so about 2/3 of the original Coliseum um has been destroyed over time so again going back to the outside people would just take things off the outside um there's several palaces in other parts of Italy and of course in the British Empire um that boast that their palaces contain pieces of the Coliseum so as mentioned previously concrete is the reason such a large bu building was able to be built the Coliseum uses every order of column the orders are usually referred to as Greek columns but the Roman Coliseum uses all three Greek orders the col The Columns at the Coliseum are not fluted like the ones in the diagram which I'm going to show you here um and again the flutes are these sort of vertical pieces so we go back here these are all smooth these have the flutes those little ridges so here we have the DOR the ionic and the Corinthian sometimes you may see ionic spelled with a c instead of a k it's the same thing so we have the capital which is the top decorative piece the shaft which is the length and then the base the DOR order typically does not have a base in Greek art but in Roman art it almost always does so here um you can see the bottom row of columns uses the Dork order has a base because it's Roman it has a standard um capital so the DOR columns are believed to be more for function than design um at in the Coliseum the Doric is thought to be at the base or bottom level because that's where the poorer people or the lower class would have sat the bottom was believed to be the worst view it also was the most dangerous view there was no guards between the people and what was happening um there was no to today we have Nets and things like that even if you go view the circus to protect you from the animals from anything that may fly up even at like a baseball game or football game they raise a net to protect the viewers from the ball if the ball could possibly go into the crowd in a bad way um but there was no such safety measures taken at the Coliseum um there might have been some kind of wall or rail but it wasn't necessarily for protection um so it was usually not better to be in the front row so dork order was for the lower class the middle row is the ionic so you see the Scrolls barely but they're there um so again they have the Scrolls my mouse will come back they have the Scrolls in the capital for the ionic order I columns have always had a base um at the bottom of the shaft so they're always going to have a base and they do and then above that we have the Corinthian order so the Corinthian columns are the most decorative they have a leafy Botanical Capital um they're very very highly decorative the Botanical pattern can change based on location um and the use of the column so there are some columns in American buildings that have corn because it's the Botanical because um corn is originated in America so just a fun little fact there Corinthian and ionic orders are sometimes combined um but that usually happens later um it's not really done a lot during the Roman times it usually happens more in the 19th century so basically instead of these sort of little hanging overs it's going to be a big scroll and then the leafy Botanical as well so we've talked about the arch construction before so we're not going to talk about that a whole lot but just a reminder the main part of the arch is the Keystone holds it all together and an arch is B basically just a half circle we've also previously talked about the pantheon so the pantheon is a former Roman Temple um and then since 609 ad a Catholic church it's cylindrical with a rectangular Portico and it has Corinthian columns so it has those sort of floral Botanical capitals the pantheon is known for its um large Coffer Dome so those are the square shapes in the top again and they help reduce the weight of the Dome on the walls and help to reduce Echo within the Rotunda when Renda is the round building at the top is the Oculus which lets in light but remember there's no glass or any kind of cover um so and there likely never has spin um so it also lets in rain so the floor curves to the outside to let all that water drain out the normous stone would not have been able to be made without the use of concrete the lighter weight and strength of concrete allowed for it to be built up in the walls to carry the weight and thinned in the very top to reduce weight and you can see that in the crosssection diagram right here so the walls are very very thick the bottom of the Dome gets thicker as it goes down we sort of have this stair stepping happening on the outside um to help carry that thickness so it's thinner up at the top because it's a lighter weight material um but it's still strong it allows you to make it that thin up at the top but it has to be built up as it goes down to carry all that weight this building design was unique in its own time um but it was later looked to for inspiration during later classical revivals and was copied by many Architects throughout history so we do have existing examples of Roman painting um we don't really have a lot of existing examples of Greek painting so that's why we don't really talk about it um we do know that it's very very like that they painted in some capacity we just don't have a lot of examples of it um but the reason we have um Ro Roman painting examples um is actually because of Pompei so we had writings about realistic and exquisite Roman paintings um but for a very long time we had no examples we just had people talking about them and so Roman art inspired a lot of Renaissance art but for a long time it was only inspired through writings and descriptions um we didn't actually have any examples so we have plyy the Elder um who is a very famous sort of historian he wrote during his on time about things that he experienced and saw and he made a point to write things of importance historically important things so so his writing still exists today you can buy a copy of plyy the elders writings so he wrote about the eruption of vvus at Pompei at the time of its eruption py was on a ship near vvus when it erupted and he watched and recorded the entire event he actually later died from the smoke Ash and toxic fumes he was on a ship at Sea watched it happen from a distance but the smoke Ash and toxic fumes spread out so much that it affected him on the ship and he eventually died from it so for a long time people thought that Ply's writings were myth and that the eruption at Pompei was a legend however in the late 19th century and early 20th century the ruins of Pompei were discovered excavation actually began in 1909 um so again plan's were writings were considered myth for a really long time we actually talked about him when we talked about the lean group because that's another work of art that he wrote about um and people didn't know if it was real or not until we actually found it so slowly people have realized that PL of the Elder actually wrote real events so we found Pompei we realized it was real that's how we know the name for Pompei that's how we know vvus is the name of the volcano that erupted and wiped it out those names did not exist the area was no longer called Pompei so that's why we didn't know if it was real so during excavation archaeologists discovered many Roman paintings these were the first Roman paintings seen in hundreds of years many of the paintings are in the form of Fresco which are wall paintings painted in plaster and we might have had like canvas paintings and things like that um but they likely would have been burnt up in the volcanic eruption so the wall paintings still survive so here is an interior wall Fresco some of it has been damaged over time um even though it was buried so we've talked briefly about Fresco before um when mentioning uh the cine Chapel feeling but basically plaster painted on the wall and painted um sort of with like a watercolor paint we'll talk more about Fresco and we talk about painting later on but um it's attached to the wall and it's a very sturdy form of painting so here we see they're realistic painted figures um we have what is meant to look like Stone it's sort of deteriorated so it doesn't look as realistic as it would have originally um so it's very neat it's very cool that we found this so now we're moving on to early Christian and Byzantine art so we're still in the Roman Empire um but we're sort of shifting so here we have a lot of nudes we have everyday life scenes this is not religious that doesn't have a religious or mythological purpose but now we're shifting into early Christianity so this is 4th Century ad which would have been the 300s so this is very um this is about 300 years after Jesus would have died so um if you don't know a lot about Christianity um in the Christian faith people believe that Jesus was born of a Virgin Mary so we've seen we've talked about Mary before his mother um he came in he did a lot of Miracles and great works he was crucified by the Romans which means he was hung on a cross um to die he was buried 3 days later he rose from the dead which was a miracle and it's on right and then he ascended into heaven where he lives in heaven as the judge so that's a very simplified version of Christianity but that's the basics um Jesus is believed to have died at Zer ad so a ad means after death we call it CE now to take the religious aspect out of it um cuz not everybody believes in Christianity so um that's some of my dates get mixed up with CE and ad because of that so um typically when we talk about Christian I'll include the ad dates they're the same as the CE dates so this is 300s which is about 300 years after Jesus's death so this is still fresh I mean we're in 2024 which is 2024 years after Jesus's death so this is still early this is still fresh at 300 and these are some of the first Christian works of art um so it took a while to establish um Christianity as a widespread religion after Jesus's death so we're going to see the reason I explained that is because we're going to see a lot of Christian artart from this point forward um Christian art dominates Western Art for a really long time um really until the 19th century so we're going to see a lot of it so this is a tomb Fresco and if you are used to seeing Christian art in any way you may be looking at this thinking how is this Christian art um again this is very early so these tomb frescos were found in the catacombs of marcelus and Peter um and there are some examples of early Christian art so during the early phases of Christianity people were unsure how to depict Christ first of all believers weren't sure if depictions of Christ would be considered worshiping another God they were afraid of punishment like the Israelites received in the Torah and then translated into the Old Testament um when they created the golden calf second worshiping Christ was illegal at the time in the Roman Empire the Romans had a Pantheon of gods they usually allowed any religion to exist many of which were polytheistic which meant they worshiped more than one God however the Romans had one rule and that was that the Emperors past and present be worshiped and treated as Gods Christianity did not do this um because they only believed in one God which is monotheism therefore they were punished for not worshiping the Emperors for the Roman emperors it was all about power it wasn't necessarily hatred of Jesus or the Christians it was more about maintaining their control so if Christians were found out they were part they were harshly persecuted usually in terrible and public ways so this was all meant to display the emperor's power so because of these two things early Christians learned to hide their iconography they Ed Jonah to represent Jesus and traditional Roman scenes to represent the Life of Christ so Jonah existed in the Torah as well so there was already a precedence for art including Jonah um and so they they basically hid the fact that it was Jesus and then we have traditional Roman scenes as well so we're going to specifically look at the ceiling Fresco in this tomb so this depicts scenes from the life of Jonah that were believed to be predictions of the acts of Christ so we see Jonah coming out of the whale or out of the it actually the translation actually says say fish not whale um 3 days just as Jesus came out of the Tomb after 3 days we see Jonah louing lounging under Vines to represent Jesus's time um in the wilderness away from everyone else so this could have been a typically Roman Lounge scene that was very common um men on a ship wouldn't have been anything uncommon to see so and then we have a figure with Lambs again wouldn't have been anything very uncommon and then just people hanging out wouldn't have been anything that would have been a red flag that it was overtly Christian so these devices were used so that Christians could worship in secret um some scholars believe that Christians may have even met in the Tomb to worship together but this is very unlikely um the tombs were not well ventilated they were a little bit dangerous um because of air quality they also would have smelled awful because of rotting corpses so it's very unlikely um that they actually came and worshiped in the tombs also people didn't visit tombs that often so it would have been suspicious if people were entering and exiting the tombs that frequently next we're looking at the Colossus of Constantine and it was made about 312 to 315 ad this is not a religious work of art um but we'll get to why it's important in this context so what remains of the Colossus of Constantine was meant to be a large statue of the emperor it's unsure whether the actual sculpt was ever fully assembled um it's believed that the Marble Head arms hands legs and feet were assembled onto a bronze body that was pillaged sometime in late Antiquity so the clothing may have been bronze or it may have been cloth the Colossus was originally located in the Basilica of maxentius which was a legal building and would have functioned to intimidate people in the emperor's absence Constantine is known as the first Christian Roman Emperor however Constantine's mother Helena was converted before he was because of her Christianity was made legal Pilgrim pilgrimages to the holy lands were encouraged and the first Roman Christian buildings were sponsored by the state Constantine is not actually recorded as converting although it was rumored that he converted on his deathbed but basically he is the first Roman Emperor to allow Christianity to be legal to exist as a religion during Constantine's rule the capital of the Roman Empire was moved from the Western city of Rome to the eastern city of Constantinople and it was named after himself of course Constantinople is today Istanbul Turkey and there's a little song about it if you um know it the capital was moved because of multiple sackings of Rome by the Goths um and other Invaders so people would come in from the north and invade Rome because for some reason people thought if they controlled the city of Rome that meant they controlled the Empire of Rome which is very very wrong um so they just moved the capital still controlled the Empire just gave up a portion of the Empire basically people thought if oh sorry again so now we're kind of moving back into what we typically think of with Christian art um this is Old St Peter's Basilica St Peter's Basilica still exists today it just doesn't look like this anymore so this is the first one built it was completed about 360 um which this is 80 and it was demolished in in 1505 it is one of the first Roman churches built um and it was sponsored and commissioned by Emperor Constantine over the years this structure has been rebuilt and added on to many times so the Basilica plan was often used by the Romans for government building design it was meant to hold a lot of people in function for processions so usually when ruler would come into a building they would process through a central portion so there would be a flag bearers um usually some sort of guard it's usually a lot of people accompanying a ruler so there would be a procession as they entered the building so um it was meant to hold a lot of people to view that um but it also worked well with the early Christian faith because processions tended to be part of their worship and their practice so this structure uses a central Nave with side aisles separated by columns so we have a central Nave and then these side aisles and they're all separated with these columns this plan is used over and over again and then later Christian added Wings to create a cross shape so you can see that here we have this Wing or These Wings that come in and then sort of a half do over to the in the very back for the choir Old St Peter's Basilica became the standard designed for Christian churches after its completion so we will see this Basilica design a lot um from this point forward for any Cathedral or church that we look at so now we're going to move the capital has moved to Constantinople so now we're going to look at some um Byzantine art so once the capital moves from Rome to Constantinople we call the Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire they did not call themselves that they were they still considered themselves the Roman Empire um even later on we have in the 1600s we have the Holy Roman Empire um and the capital is still in this area and so for a very very long time the Roman Empire exists but not as the classical Roman Empire and so we call it something different to distinguish that movement of the capital A lot of things change when the capital moves so we've looked at the hogia Sophia before um it was made about 360 to 537 ad and it it's ashler masonry or Roman brick and it is in what is currently Istanbul Turkey so about 150 years after Constantine's rule Justinian the came into Power Justinian was a Christian Emperor from the start he commissioned the hagio Sophia in Constantinople to help complete the move of the capital from Rome to Constantinople so it did take time they had to build structures government structures to completely move their Capital um and so they already had a lot of government buildings Jus Indian was already living in Constantinople but they needed a church and so he commissioned the hogi of sofhia this structure was the largest interior space of its time the most notable feature of the Hagi of sopia is its Dome the Dome was created with hidden windows at its base which led in just enough light to create an aura of mystery as smoke from candles and incense Rose into the air the Dome would be filled with smoke leading further to the feeling that one was looking into the heavens after the fall of the Roman Empire the cedral was converted into a mosque many other Christian works of art were destroyed but the architecture of the Hagia sopia was so powerful that it was converted instead upon its conversion a lot of the frescos and mosaics were were destroyed so we still see pieces bare pieces missing where things were rubbed out the medallions were added um there are a lot of like chapels along the sides that had um a lot of mosaics and all of those were ripped out so the hogia Sophia I don't I have a better picture no I don't the hogia Sophia followed a modified basilic to plan the main difference was the use of the dome in the center so the Dome um exists where the two Wings would have connected the central Dome covers the middle of the Nave while still leaving the side aisles the Hao Sophia Sophia is considered Byzantine art however again it would have been considered art at the time by its own people so again here's the outside the turrets were are added later um they weren't part of the original design they didn't function with that style it's movie Gone um we are back in Italy but we're not in Rome uh this is from Rena Italy it's later than the hogia sophat 527 to 547 um and this is the Basilica of San Vitali so even though the capital was in the East works of art and architecture were still being commissioned in the west things were being built all over the Empire all the way through the entire Roman control of the empire so this building is described as a basilica but it's more centrally planned than most basilicas the most famous thing about this church is its Byzantine mosaics Byzantine mosaics use small stones or tile called tessora oh I don't have it written down there it's okay if you spell it wrong it's it's a weird spelling um but they the Tess make up the mosaics the Byzantine style seems to shift from the typical Roman realism into more flat generic shapes of forms this is in part because of mosaics um but also because of the ideas of the iconoclasts so the iconoclasts believe that there could be no representations of Christ or other religious figures they believ that such images would turn into icons that would be woried instead of worshiping the Christian God the compromise um between religious leaders who were used to art and the people who were used to seeing all this art in Rome um in the iconic class was to make images less lifelike um so they had the idea that no one would believe this image was an actual image of Christ because it's very flat and generic it doesn't look real the background of many Byzantine mosaics were gold so the artist used gold cover clay to make the Tess the gold Tess the golden backgrounds made the figures appear to float off the surface Byzantine mosaics are unique in the way that the tesser are laid into the surface artists would tilt each Tess creating this glittering effect on the surface of the Mosaic from a distance you can't see the rough surface but the glittering golden backgrounds so here you kind of see it's very rough little bitty tiles there is a ground in this one this green blue color down here um that sort of makes him sit but this further distant look you can see they sort of appear to float here's an another view so they're little little bitty tiles and they would cover the surface with these mosaics so where we have painting later on um when we looked at the cinee chapel that's comes much later this is like a thousand years later that we get cistin Chapel um the mosaics came first we also start to see some of the stained glass it's not the same as the gothic Windows um again we have the regular arches not pointed arches this is still Rome um but we start to see the use of stained glass it's still plain and it's not super decorative um but they are start starting to put that into the windows so this is an image of Justinian who is the Emperor that we talked about that we've been talking about that um commission the haio Sophia so he is very famous for being a Christian Emperor so now we're going to move on to What's called the Middle Ages or the medieval period um a lot of PE this is a the Middle Ages is given to this period of time obviously after this period of time existed people don't go into a period of time and be like ah we're going to start the Renaissance today um these names are given after the time has come and gone but the Middle Ages um the term was given to it this period sort of at the late Renaissance early 19th century um to be sort of derogatory um saying that this is the period of time between the classical Roman art and the Renaissance so it's just the middle it's medieval it's not as good um that's not really fair to the Middle Ages it's just different there's different um ideas about what art should be and so we even see that in modern day there's different ideas now about what art should be so this is a Cairo so here's the standard version of it this one's a very decorative version of the Cairo the Cairo was uh used as a symbol of Christ and was often included in medieval Bibles or Christian texts instead of the image of Christ so we'd see this symbol instead the Middle Ages are known for their handmade manuscripts and the pages of these manuscripts were made of Vellum which was a very thin animal hide and they were very very decorative um we're not going to talk a lot about manuscripts but there are tons of them in existence they're all extremely fragile so it's hard to find good images of them um for things for this class but um and a lot of people study the manuscripts not for their art but for their contents so we don't have a ton of information about manuscripts but they were used frequently and they're very very decorative so during the Middle Ages um pilgrimage had been present for a very long time Helena Constantine's mother that we talked about before documented her famous pilgrimage to the Holy Land however due to war in the Holy Land travels to jerus Jerusalem became much more dangerous um this piqued an interest in traveling instead to visit holy objects many churches already had holy relics but they began storing them in decorative reliquaries both for protection and for viewer enjoyment it was much more enjoyable to view a golden statue rather than a long skull or mummified hand also um the reliquaries protected the items um there was a period of time that people would come in and steal items items and usually not in the way you would think they would come in uh see a mummified hand go to kiss the hand and bite a finger off and take it with them and bring it back to their home Church um so really gross um so but the re quaries protected the items so this requery the requery of St Foy dates from about the 9th century um and it houses a skull and several bones believed to be from St Foy the reliquary consists of a wooden core covered in gold and precious jewels it's unclear whether there's a particular iconography to the jewels that are used um but the main purpose was just to house The Relic and now we're getting into everybody's favorite thing I say everybody's favorite thing my my favorite thing about the Middle Ages uh the cathedrals so this is um Cathedral notredam Des chartress so you may have heard of notredam cathedral in Paris there are a lot of notredam cathedrals and so we do include when we're talking about them academically we include the location this one's in chartress uh notrad is the uh Noble woman usually it's in reference to Mary but sometimes it's in real sort of a personification of the location so this one's in chartress it was completed in 1252 um it's actually the most notable of the sorry this is Gothic architecture um the gothic AR architecture applies to the cathedrals it doesn't apply not everything in the Middle Ages is gothic usually only applies that term applies to the architecture so the floor plan is the Basilica Style with wings so we see that Basilica plan going back and then we see this Wing coming off the side so it creates a cross shape from above we don't have or I don't I couldn't find an above image of this so here's another view so the Nave coming up the middle we have the wings coming off of the sides and we have the choir um we have Chapel within as well so these are each little chapels that pop that come off of the choir the exterior of the church is decorated with relief sculptures of Christian iconography so there are three portals of the church each decorated with iconography and this bombards the viewer with Christian imagery before they even enter the church there are each portal is decorated with Jam figures I don't know if I have a zoomed in portion yes okay so this is our three portals this is the uh Royal portal this is the north portal this one says it's also the north portal but it's not and I don't know why it has the wrong name on it but you can see there is sculpture everywhere covering the outside all around the entrance so as you walk up you're just going to be bombarded with all of this imagery here are some Jam figures so these figures act as columns um so it supports the arch above but they're also decorative so these figures are carved in high relief um and most appear to be freestanding in the traditional medieval style they're very similar in flat um they don't contain a a lot of individualism so these could be anybody off the street we do know who they are because of their iconography um which we're not going to go into that today but they carry symbols to display who they are they have different symbols holding them up that also kind of tell a little bit about who they are or who they represent interior of the church shows the coll classic Gothic groin vaed ceilings and stained glass windows so we have the groin vaults that we talked about we talked about architecture we see all the windows so many windows so again going back to architecture the windows are able to be viewed because or able to exist in these churches because of the um flying buttresses they pull the weight from the walls and the roof down to the ground so that we can have these Hollow spaces in the stone for the windows at this point we have lost the recipe for roaming concrete so we are not using Concrete in any of this all of this is Stone this is a rosary window some people just call it a rose window It's usually the circle flower shape it sort of has different um what people call petals coming off of the center and all of this is full of images sometimes we have um images repeated sort of like a pattern sometimes we have individual images usually these are going to have iconography and be there for a purpose here's a up view from the from the choir here's another view where you can really see the groin vaults I have a lot of pictures of the windows for some reason okay so moving on this is um the last judgment tum is from the Cathedral of St laar and it is by a artist called gilbertis and this is located in Aon France so when we talk about Gothic Cathedrals um we're going to see them more in the north which is going to be France Germany um England so the northern style is different but this is where we're going to get the gothic Cathedrals we talk about a lot of medieval art um this is where we're going to see our Prime examples because they don't have the Roman influence the way the South does so in places like Italy Spain Portugal they're still seeing Roman art every day so that influence is still in existence um and so our Prime examples of medieval art are going to be in the north instead but going back to the last judgment um it dates from about the 12th century so we're moving forward in time so this last judgment scene is above the West Portal of the Aton cathedral in France it's a low relief sculpture carved into the tonum and so the tonum is just the open area over the door this scene depicts people being judged and either welcomed into heaven or cast into hell so that's what makes it a judgment scene so we have people being pulled up or cast down we also see scales here weighing people we have Christ in the Cent as the judge depicts Jesus enthroned surrounded by Angels demons and the souls waiting to be judged so again this would have been a way of just pushing a ton of Christian imagery right as soon as you were coming into the door so before you even enter the building you're being reminded of Christ's judgment so do you want to be a good person or do you want to be cast into hell so that's it for module 3 sorry this one was kind of a long one um the rest of the modules from here on out should not be quite so long um we just have a lot of information to push in the beginning so everything from this point forward sort of builds off of this classical and medieval art um and then our first you know our first two modules were sort of an introduction to art itself um so everything from here on out should not be quite so in-depth and quite so long so just a reminder to put your lecture notes questions and answers at the very bottom of your notes um they should be seen on the screen right here um they're also located in your lecture notes Dropbox so don't forget to answer those um and again make sure all of your notes are turned in in one document not a bunch of documents all one document submitted in the Dropbox and as always if you have any questions about anything please feel free to contact me send me an email and let me know um there's also additional resources if you're interested in anything that we talked about um or getting more information about something check out the additional resources tab um or if you're just interested in this period of time want to know a little bit more so I will see you all in module 4