recall that one of the primary goals of Charlemagne was to see to it that all of the people in his realm were educated so keep in mind this realm is enormous he is settled here in Aachen but this entire region is the Holy Roman Empire he wants everyone to be educated and so he is anxious to sponsor lots of book making and of course religious books were going to be the top priority as we look at these next set of illuminated manuscripts we need to keep in mind that they have tremendously different visual styles they're all made during the time of Charlemagne and most of them under his auspices but they have a very different look and some of them were made in a more metropolitan area closer to often or how Lou and then others were made in Reims much farther away from these urban centers and so then let's take a look here at this example from a very famous volume referred to as the coronation gospel there is a story that when this book was found in the year 1000 the third had opened the tomb of Charlemagne now why you open someone's tomb I don't know but when they opened the tomb they discovered this volume on Charlemagne's knees so it meant that Charlemagne thought so much of this particular version of the Bible that he was buried with it makes a good story don't know if it's true the image on the right is the one that we're focusing on and this is a highly unusual and certainly high luxury volume it is created on a vellum that has been dyed purple and you all recall the significance of the color purple is the color of royalty it has a lot of silver point on it which means that it is a certain kind of engraving that involves a certain amount of silver application and so this was made to be one of the finest books made by the finest book makers and artisans and what we note here is a big jump towards realism one of the things that is confounding when you study medieval art is how do we go from the interest in realism at the hype and near fall of the Roman Empire to singing all these flattened pointy-headed figures as we move through the early medieval period and that of course has to do with the lack of focus on the earthly realm and the new focus on the spiritual realm but every now and then we see big steps now not necessarily progress it's just another attempt at realism so all three of these images are of st. Matthew and we've got the very early version here we've got the Book of Kells version and then we have this version from the time of Charlemagne and you could easily or have a big conversation about how these three images differ what was going on in the artists mind here with these coronation Gospels we see a bold and illusionistic quality we see the images are rendered in a much more three-dimensional style so look at the face of Matthew and I think one of the things that is really of note here is the use of the disk behind his head we can see a lot of very silly halos whether it's a hula hoop halo a frisbee halo or disappearing into just a little sliver as we'll see in the Renaissance period what the artist does with the halo is very telling and what I find fascinating here is that you could easily mistake the halo for a setting or Rising Sun and there's a secret to the way that that idea comes forward and that is its placement on the horizon line look for the deep shadowing the modeling around the face of Matthew we have an unseen light source a cast strong cast shadow something for you to think about and then look carefully at the body and drapery with highlights and shadows brushed in you get the feeling that if you are walking down the street of Aachen you could recognize the person who modeled for Matthew he looks like a real person we don't have a lot of weird surface detail we don't have a lot of strange gestures but look how Matthew fills the picture plane he's not set off at a weird angle sitting in a weird chair so there's many things that make this much more realistic no architectural elements it's all about the idea of Matthew you might think back to those portraits of pump hands that we have from ancient Rome where it's a real people people who really lived and so in this particular volume then we refer to it as the palace style a style that was designed in Aachen closer to where Charlemagne lived in an urban center with sophisticated people living there so pause the recording now and on your scratch paper see how much of this you can fill out there might be some gaps in your knowledge but see how much of this you can come up with just in bullet point form how'd you do of course the style is Carolingian the technique illustrated manuscript composition wise composition definition what did the figures and symbols tell us about what's going on so the figure of course is Matthew the symbols he's got a text in front of him and so he must be writing the book of Matthew he's got a stylus in one hand an inkwell in the other he's got a podium with one foot up styling sandals right and he's got himself a very nice scissor leg chair that he's sitting on but again I want to mention the significance of the horizon line the place where the earth meets the sky the intentional high placement of that horizon line and then the slightly off center of that halo slash Sun Rise or sunset makes for a very dramatic composition also the transparency of his robes show another degree of sophistication so lots of things to talk about this work so who is this and how do you know pause the recording for a moment and jot down your thoughts on who this is and how you know and any other interesting details that you might see alright so we've talked about the fact that this is a vellum dyed purple so got the same purple pages and that means that it's probably from the coronation gospel if this is the way that Matthew is depicted and then we've got this figure there's a couple of possibilities so there's some hints that you get I look at this I love how the ink and paint has fallen off and the purple vellum shows through that's pretty cool look at the structure that the figure is seated in notice how he is frontal he faces his gaze is it us the viewer he's got a text in one hand a writing implement in the other and so then what helps us decide if this is an image of John or an image of Christ is the artist going to set up all these figures in the same conventionalized style is he going to change it up when it's time to represent Christ the cover of this book was added much much later and so we are not going to discuss it as a piece of Carolingian art but since the covers are always so fabulous you can see that this is one of these traditional gold representing completely different we looked at the style that was made in the urban center now let's take a look at what is happening out at Reims at a distance from the urban center in the countryside and so what I want you to do is take a look at this and set up a visual comparison talk about the composition think about the way the figure is placed in space and how you would divide this up using the terms foreground mid-ground background and horizon line pause the recording and do this now how'd you do again it is the horizon line that makes this so interesting it's always an intentional choice on the part of the artist as to where to locate the horizon line in the composition and here the artist has raised it way up high where you see this sort of rolling hills and you see two arbors ARB ORS like grape arbors the figure is pushed towards us and it's quite different than what we saw here same time same emperor as commissioner but not the same interest in realistic depiction even though it's 800 years too late this guy looks like he walked out of the greco-roman playbook hence the term Big C classical versus this reims style where you see the figure in a much more agitated line style one of my favorite moments in this work is the inkhorn that matthew is holding in his left hand look up from the inkhorn and you will see the source of the ink and it's this little angel that angel is pouring the ink into his ink horn which are the words of God which i think is really an interesting way of thinking about that matthew looks like he could use a comb he's got this wild hair this exaggerated facial expression this is part of a book called the iboga spells it was commissioned by court librarian and it is made in this Reims environment it's made far away from the urban center in a monastery I think that agitated line style is that is something that comes to phrase here it has a tremendous sense of motion and animation which you know sometimes is a good thing sometimes it's a bad thing sometimes it's just a thing and to an extent I feel like that's what we've got going on here not good not bad just different and something that sets up for a very nice dialogue a very nice comparison and I just wanted to throw in one more st. before we go who is this and how do you know as you think about that I you to be sure you understand the word painterly it comes up all the time in the history of art painterly means visible brushstrokes evidence of the artists hand both the coronation gospel and the mo gospel have aspects to them that are painterly but it is the mo gospel that is much more painterly and in some ways is more like what we would see coming during the modern period coming during the future something yet to be so there's st. John and I hope you saw his eagle look at his gaze he's given you the hint isn't he whereas Matthew had his inkhorn that he was focusing on being filled by the Word of God via the angel here is John st. John looking up at the eagle as a point of reference