Mid-TermReview

Humans make art. We do this for many reasons and with whatever technologies are available to us.

The oldest known representational imagery comes from the Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic period. The oldest of these is a 2.4-inch tall female figure found in the Hohle Fels cave. It dates to around 35,000 BCE.

The caves at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, Lascaux, Pech Merle, and Altamira contain the best known examples of pre-historic painting and drawing.

Archeologists that study Paleolithic era humans believe that the paintings discovered in 1994 in the cave at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc dates to around 25-35,000 BCE.

What can we really know about the creators of these paintings?

Pre-History (before around 3000 BCE)

The way we live today, settled in homes, close to other people in towns and cities, protected by laws, eating food grown on farms, and with leisure time to learn, explore and invent is all a result of the Neolithic revolution, which occurred approximately 11,500-5,000 years ago. The revolution which led to our way of life was the development of the technology needed to plant and harvest crops and to domesticate animals.

The massive changes in the way people lived also changed the types of art they made. Neolithic sculpture became bigger, in part, because people didn’t have to carry it around anymore; pottery became more widespread and was used to store food harvested from farms.

The Neolithic period is also important because it is when we first find good evidence for religious practice.

Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern day Iraq, is often referred to as the cradle of civilization because it is the first place where complex urban centers grew.

Southern Mesopotamia was known as Sumer. Sumer was not a unified country, but consists instead of many city-states, such as Ur and Uruk.

The origin of written language was born out of economic necessity and was a tool of the theocratic ruling elite who needed to keep track of the agricultural wealth of the city states. The first fully developed written script, cuneiform, was invented to account for surplus commodities.

Ancient Cultures (3000 BCE – 400 CE)

The ziggurat is the most distinctive architectural invention of the Ancient Near East. The structure would have been the highest point in the city and a focal point for travelers and the pious alike. As the Ziggurat of Ur supported the temple of the patron god it is likely that it was the place where the citizens of Ur would bring agricultural surplus and where they would go to receive their regular food allotments.

Hammurabi of Babylon conquered much of northern and western Mesopotamia and by 1776 B.C.E., he is the most far-reaching leader of Mesopotamian history.Documents show Hammurabi was a classic micro-manager, concerned with all aspects of his rule, and this is seen in the famous legal code, which is carved on a stele, or column.

The Assyrian empire dominates Mesopotamia and all of the Near East for the first half of the first millennium, lead by a series of highly ambitious and aggressive warrior kings and an aggressive military culture.

The Assyrian empire comes to an end at around 600 B.C.E. And is replace by the Babylonians. This period is called Neo-Babylonian because Babylon had already risen to power earlier and become an independent city-state.

The Neo-Babylonians are most famous for their architecture, notably at their capital city, Babylon. Some of the wonders include the hanging gardens and the famous gates into the city, including the Ishtar Gate.

Egypt's Old Kingdom (c. 2649–2150 BCE) was one of the most dynamic periods in the development of Egyptian art. During this period, artists learned to express their culture's worldview, creating for the first time images and forms that endured for generations. Architects and masons mastered the techniques necessary to build monumental structures in stone. Sculptors created the earliest portraits of individuals and the first lifesize statues in wood, copper, and stone.

These images and structures had two principal functions: to ensure an ordered existence and to defeat death by preserving life into the next world. To these ends, over a period of time, Egyptian artists adopted a limited repertoire of standard types and established a formal artistic canon that would define Egyptian art for more than 3,000 years.

The Kouros, or boy, is one of the earliest Greek marble statues of a human figure. The rigid stance, with the left leg forward and arms at the side, was derived from Egyptian art. The pose provided a clear, simple formula that was used by Greek sculptors throughout the 6th century B.C.

The marble Kritios Boy shows the Greek artist has mastered a complete understanding of how the different parts of the body act as a system. The statue supports the body's weight on the left leg, while the right one is bent at the knee in a relaxing state. This stance is known as contrapposto.

When we study ancient Greek art, so often we are really looking at ancient Roman art, or at least their copies of ancient Greek sculpture. Basically, just about every Roman wanted ancient Greek art. For the Romans, Greek culture symbolized a desirable way of life—of leisure, the arts, luxury and learning.

The Greeks created their free-standing sculpture in bronze, but because bronze can be melted down and reused, sculpture was often recast into weapons. This is why we often have to look at ancient Roman copies in marble to try to understand what the Greeks achieved. 

Augustus’ most famous portraits is the so-called Augustus of Primaporta of 20 BCE.  At first glance this statue might appear to simply resemble a portrait of Augustus as an orator and general, but this sculpture also communicates a good deal about the emperor’s power and ideology. The statue also foretells the 200 year period of peace that Augustus initiated, called the Pax Romana.

The Middle Ages (400 CE – 1400 CE)

In 330 the capital of the Roman Empire Moves to Constantinople in the East. In 380, Christianity is declared the official religion and beginning in c. 400, Rome is sacked by barbarian tribes in Europe. Constantinople will be the capital of the Roman Empire and Byzantium until c. 1300.

By the middle of the fourth century Christianity had undergone a dramatic transformation. Before Emperor Constantine's acceptance, Christianity had a marginal status in the Roman world. Attracting converts in the urban populations, Christianity appealed to the faithful's desires for personal salvation; however, due to Christianity's monotheism, Christians suffered periodic episodes of persecution. But by the middle of the fourth century, Christianity under imperial patronage had become a part of the establishment. The elite of Roman society were becoming new converts.

In both its style and iconography, the Junius Bassus Sarcophagus witnesses the adoption of the tradition of Greek and Roman art by Christian artists. Works like this were appealing to patrons like Junius Bassus who were a part of the upper level of Roman society. Christian art did not reject the classical tradition: rather, the classical tradition will be a reoccurring element in Christian art throughout the Middle Ages.

Manuscripts were essential to the practice of Christianity. Medieval Christian missionaries brought books with them as they traveled from place to place preaching and establishing new churches. They usually contained the text of the gospels, an essential work for teaching potential converts about the life of Christ. A series of images illustrating the life of Christ prefaces the text and each book of the gospels begins with an illustration detailing the events unique to that gospel, though some of these are now lost.

In illuminated manuscripts, words and images worked together to inform the medieval reader and occasionally these readers left their own mark. These books are highly interactive. Nearly all medieval manuscripts provide ample space in the margins for readers' notes and comments.

Byzantine art can be characterized by the use of mosaic. The emperor Justinian is immortalized in a very famous example. This mosaic establishes the central position of the Emperor between the power of the church and the power of the imperial administration and military.Like the Roman Emperors of the past, Justinian has religious, administrative, and military authority.

Iconoclasm refers to the destruction of images or hostility toward visual representations in general. The word is used for the Iconoclastic Controversy that shook the Byzantine Empire for more than 100 years.

Charlemagne, King of the Franks and later Holy Roman Emperor, instigated a cultural revival known as the Carolingian period. Carolingian art survives in manuscripts, sculpture, architecture and other religious artifacts produced during the period 780-900.

Figurative art from this period is easy to recognize. Unlike the flat, two-dimensional work of Early Christian and Early Byzantine artists, Carolingian artists sought to restore the third dimension. They used classical drawings as their models and tried to create more convincing illusions of space.

After Charlemagne’s legacy had begun to die out, the warlike tribes in what is now Germany banded together to elect a king from among their nobility. In 919 they chose Henry the Liudolfing. Henry’s son Otto I became emperor in 962 and lends his name to the Ottonian period.

Ottonian manuscripts were most often produced of religious texts, and usually included a dedication portrait commemorating the book’s creation.  The royal or religious donor is usually shown presenting the book to the saint of his or her choice.

The remains of Roman civilization were seen all over the continent, and legends of the great empire would have been passed down through generations.When Charlemagne wanted to unite his empire and validate his reign, he began building churches in the Roman style–particularly the style of Christian Rome in the days of Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor.

For the average European in the 12th Century, a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Jerusalem was out of the question—travel to the Middle East was too far, too dangerous and too expensive. Santiago de Compostela in Spain offered a much more convenient option.

Pilgrimage churches can be seen in part as popular destinations, a spiritual tourism of sorts for medieval travelers. Guidebooks, badges and various souvenirs were sold. Pilgrims, though traveling light, would spend money in the towns that possessed important sacred relics. The cult of relic was at its peek during the Romanesque period (c. 1000 - 1200 C.E.). Relics are religious objects generally connected to a saint, or some other venerated person.

The Gothic period (c. 1200 - 1300 C.E.) sees architecture pushing up into the sky, lifting the faithfuls eyes towards heaven as engineering advances make tall spires possible.

The Renaissance (1400 CE – 1600 CE)

A revolution is beginning to take place in the early 1300s in the way people think about the world, the way they think about the past, and the way they think about themselves and their relationship with God.

The 13th and 14th centuries in Italy are known by a variety of different names in art history.  This period in Italy is when artists and scholars break from Medieval thought, philosophy and representations in art and begin to embrace the ideas of Humanism.

The artist who takes the biggest step away from the spiritual style of the Middle Ages is Giotto. You could say, in fact, that Giotto changed the direction of art history. Giotto is perhaps best known for the frescoes he painted in the Arena Chapel. Giotto is interested in representing something (even something divine and sacred) in a very familiar way.

Cimabue, Giotto and Duccio are all in fact exploring the psychology of the figures they are painting and whatever one chooses to call this period in art, it is now evident that the ideas of Renaissance Humanism are taking hold in society.

Florence ushered in the 15th-century with what we'd now refer to as a "juried" competition in sculpture. There was - and is - an enormous cathedral in Florence known as the Duomo, whose construction was begun in 1296 and continued for nearly six centuries. Adjacent to the cathedral was/is a separate structure called the Baptistery, whose purpose, obviously, was for baptisms. In the 14th-century, the Proto-Renaissance artist Andrea Pisano executed a pair of immense bronze doors for the east side of the Baptistery. These were modern wonders at the time, and became quite famous.

1. The Church, stabilized and unified once again under one Pope, provided artists and architects with a seemingly endless supply of subject material.

2. Florence was determined to out-do everyone. This meant building, decorating and embellishing what was already there, which meant plenty of gainful employment.

3. Humanism, which found a welcoming home in Florence, gave some major gifts to the arts. Between the new intellectual crowd and the ideas they introduced to the artistic community, it was a great time to be an artist in Florence.

4. The Medici, who literally could not spend all of their money, funded all sorts of artists' academies and workshops.

5. Finally, the "door" contest made it possible, for the first time, for artists to enjoy fame. Artists went from being glorified craftsmen to celebrities.

Prior to Brunelleschi's ideas for the cupola of the Duomo, building a self-supporting structure the size of the dome was impossible. The techniques that the Romans had used to build such things as the Pantheon were long forgotten. Despite his secrecy, they chose Brunelleschi's plan, and construction on Brunelleschi's dome began. He had an ingenious idea that is common practice today, but revolutionary in its time. He created a herringbone pattern with the bricks that redirected the weight of the bricks outwards towards the dome's supports, instead of downwards to the floor. By observing carefully the curve of the dome as it took shape, Brunelleschi was able to place this bricks in key areas. The building (1446–ca.1461) would occupy most of his life.

Donatello 's bronze statue of David (circa 1440s) is famous as the first unsupported standing work of bronze cast during the Renaissance, and the first freestanding nude ale sculpture made since antiquity.

The Renaissance in the North of Europe can be characterized by a strong attention to detail, careful observation of the world around us, the discovery of oil paint, strongly codified symbolism, and lack of convincing perspective.

During the Middle Ages, official doctrine had placed earthly realities on the lowest level of the scale of Creation - if they were not, indeed, the work of the devil himself. However, by the time of the Van Eyck brothers. People began to view the entire world as the work of God, the source of all creation, and present in its every detail, no matter how small and insignificant.

A the Humanism of the Early Renaissance grows, a problem begins to develop. Painting has become so real, the figures so human, that we can hardly tell that these are spiritual figures (except for the faint shadow of a halo). On the other hand, we have seen that in the Middle Ages, if you want to make your figure spiritual then you sacrifice its realism. Leonardo Da Vinci changes this. He invents the technique of sfumato, in smoke, to give his paintings a hazy softness.

In the High Renaissance, beginning with Leonardo, we find that artists are considered intellectuals, and that they keep company with the highest levels of society.

Michelangelo, who was not primarily a painter but a sculptor, was reluctant to take on the Sistine Chapel. The Pope was adamant, leaving Michelangelo no choice but to accept. Work began in 1508 and would not be finished until 1512.